Ep 23: Cale Owen CEO of Gym Launch - Business Fundamentals

What's up guys, welcome back to Makin' Moves, the podcast for growth-minded chiropractors looking to grow personally and professionally through value-based conversations from chiropractors and business owners that are in the trenches, walking the walk, taking time away from their busy schedule to help uplift this community and this profession. Follow us on Instagram to stay up to date on episode releases and upcoming interviews, and check out our website or new YouTube channel for other practice growth resources. I also wanna mention that this podcast is brought to you by ChiroLux, the best portable table in the game. I use these tables for training, practice on the go, and as exam tables in our office. ChiroLux is supporting the future of our profession by giving away tables and other adjusting tools at every one of our Making Moves seminars. So if you're in the market for a portable table, use code Travis Stewart at checkout to score a sweet discount. I don't take any of the proceeds. They go straight into the giveaways for the chiro students in need. So it's not supporting me. It's supporting the youth of the profession. Huge thanks to ChiroLux. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to today's guest, Kale Owen, CEO of Gym Launch and Prestige Labs. Kale joined Gym Launch in 2018 and brought a unique perspective as a previous gym owner and a professional athlete. He's been a sales manager, coach, and general manager. In January 2022, he was promoted to CEO of Gym Launch and Prestige Labs, which I'm excited to hear about. Before joining Gym Launch, Cale played 4 years of collegiate baseball and 1 year in the Philadelphia Phillies organization. After that, he pursued his dream of opening a fitness facility and joined Gym Launch in 2017 as a client. Using Gym Launch, Cale and Maggie built their gym from 31 members to over 250 in less than 8 months while working a 9-to-5 sales role for a local web design company. He currently resides in St. Augustine, Florida with the love of his life, Maggie. Who is the Vice President of Operations for Gym Launch and Prestige Labs, and his two incredible children. Welcome to the podcast, Kale Owen.

Thanks, man. I'm excited to be here. That was quite the opener right there.

Yeah.

Thanks, dude.

Oh, well.

Yep.

It's part of it. Well, thanks for being here. Like, so, firstly, like, residing in St. Augustine, like, this episode was supposed to happen a few months back, and I believe you guys had a hurricane come in, and so we had to postpone it. And since then, we were just talking like off screen here for a few moments. At that time, you had— I mean, not to like kind of measure your growth against your Instagram following, but you had just a few thousand followers on Instagram and, you know, you weren't getting like a ton of engagement on your posts. I remember that. And now you and Maggie have blown up on there. So you've been super consistent building in the background, and I just want to recognize that from afar, first and foremost. And I'd like for you to kind of take us through what you've been up to throughout this episode and also just tell, tell the listeners who you are, how you got into entrepreneurship, and then we can go from there.

Yeah, I appreciate that, man. So I'll start in the beginning, like entrepreneurship and how I got into that first, and we'll get into kind of where we're at. So when I started my first business when I was 13 years old, window washing business, and I was fortunate enough to where my parents were always instilling in us this idea. My sisters— I have 3 sisters and myself— this idea of, you know, go out and build something, go out and start a business. My dad had always worked in corporate America and we moved around a lot and they'd always— my dad especially was like, hey, you don't have to do what I did. You can go out and start a business. You can have more freedom. Yes, it can be tougher, but at the end of the day, you can be the one calling the shots and you can have the really just no ceiling. At all. And I remember being told that and remember being encouraged to, you know, think outside the box, start a business, do all this stuff. So that was my first inroads into that window washing with my older sister. And then from there, you know, got into— my main focus was baseball from the age of 8 to 23. That's all I thought about. So most of the time, business-wise, was just really side things during the summer, winter breaks and stuff like that. I was thinking about what I could do. And then when I got done, With baseball, I really wanted to get into the health and fitness space. I wanted to start a gym, a sports performance facility specifically. I wanted to work with other athletes, high school, college, professional athletes, 'cause that was my experience. And I wanted to help athletes that would be really on kind of the mid, they'd be a mid-tier athlete, help them get to the next level, whether that was a mid-tier high school player, be able to get to the top tier districts and then be able to play in college or take a collegiate athlete and get them to the next level and play pros. And using health and fitness, strength and conditioning to get there. So started a gym with a buddy of mine and another partner from a financing standpoint in Tampa. So Westchase, Florida where we started. And then a little bit after that got the opportunity. I just married my wife Maggie at the time and started that job. A little bit after that we got approached by another couple guys across the state here in St. Augustine that were like, hey, we wanna start another gym anyways. Fast forward another year, ended up moving to St. Augustine, starting that gym here. And to be fair, I knew nothing about business. So I was very much the typical gym owner, typical business owner in my opinion, where the thought process is if I build it, they will come, right? And you know, I'm— my stuff is different, my programming is different, my business is different, like all this stuff. And then quickly realized that the market doesn't care. Shut up. And you do have to advertise, you do have to market, you do have to get better. So we were 8 weeks from shutting our doors in 2017 and I was a month after getting a job at this local marketing agency to do sales for them because I wasn't making any money. I was losing money every single month. My wife was bartending. We had a 1-year-old daughter and I've got a— in the next month, I found out I got a son on the way. So, second one coming. But, at this time, I was like, "Okay, 8 weeks from shutting our doors, I see these ads for Gym Launch and I'm like, 'Cool, last-ditch effort. Let's do it.'" We do it, we make more in 10 days than we did in the previous 9 months in my gym. And from there, my wife and I scaled it to from 33 members, like you mentioned, over 250 in 8 months, scaled a full team, scaled all the operations, all while I was working a 9 to 5 still going against everything that Alex Hormozy would tell me. He's like, you need to quit your job, all this stuff. The way I operate though, I'm way better when I'm busy because I'm just more focused with my time and Whenever I have a lot of time on my hands, you know, like a typical entrepreneur, I'll figure out ways to, you know, postpone things and procrastinate all that stuff. So I'm way better with just regimented time. And that led us to kind of where we are today. And then as a CEO, when I got named CEO of this, we now actually have 3 companies. I need to get Katie to update that bio. We have a third company called gymowners.com, which is a tech company. And thinking through and watching the growth of Alex and just trying to, you know, be someone who doesn't have to pay the ignorance tax because someone else did it. I wanted to learn from the growth of Alex and Layla and be like, okay, what did they do? Well, they started putting out content and they didn't just put out niche-specific content. Like, yes, Alex first started in gyms, but then he went broad and then started talking about some more philosophical things. He started talking about business, obviously, and just general business, period. And so I was like, okay, well, I want to start growing a bigger following. And when I first started and you saw me, I had like, I don't know, 4,000 followers on Instagram just talking about gym-specific stuff. And it was like all about gyms, just gyms, how to sell, how to market, how to keep clients longer, all that stuff. And I wasn't growing at all. No engagement, nothing. Ended up using a— working with a company right now that helps us with all of this. And that is I went from that to casting a broader net and talking about more broad topics. Specifically, I'm very passionate, my wife and I are very passionate about talking about marriages, relationships, and how they work within a business context. And so, just not just talking about marriages but also business in general and things like that. And since then, we've been able to, I went from like, I don't know, 6,000 followers to, I think that was what, 6 months ago, I'm at like 56,000, 57,000 followers just on Instagram, gained another 30,000 to 40,000 on TikTok, all that stuff. So, really just thinking about it from broad terms. And really, I think the lesson here for anyone listening to this, and I'm just going on about myself, so I apologize if it's boring, but the lesson that you can take from this is that if you want to attract more attention, you have to get out of your own head and start and stop thinking what you think the marketplace wants, and you have to start actually listening to the marketplace. And the marketplace is everyone around you in your community. If you want to reach more people, then you need to listen to your market and you need to give them what they want. You have to give them what they want. And that's what I did. That's what helped us grow our gym. That's what's helped me grow my brand. It's what's helped us grow our businesses across the board. So that was a, it's a big lesson. And I always try to remember that. It's like, it doesn't matter what I think. The only thing that matters is what does the marketplace want and what do they think?

Yeah, yeah. The marketplace tells you, I mean, it's a good message for chiropractors, you know, I'm not sure what your experience with chiropractic is, but like, I would say that's one of the biggest bottlenecks in chiropractic or at least growing a chiropractic business is that first off, you kinda hit it on the head with like the, I'm special, my product is special, you know, my delivery is unique, I have kind of a unique offering that nobody's ever seen before. And you realize very quickly once you open your doors, like that's not true and the market doesn't care. And then second of all, typically we like to speak our message. So we like to serve our message instead of serving the moment. And something that I always like to talk about is Dan Kennedy's like one-liner, which is sell them what they want and then give them what they need over time. And I think that's exactly what you're saying, you know, listening to the market and responding appropriately. And that's a good lesson for me too, because like I have a wife that's been enveloped in my business since we started. She's my partner in the business and she has a unique perspective. And most of my content has been one-dimensional, me talking about business and practice growth. We haven't grown that much, um, either, you know, on those channels. We've grown a little bit, uh, which is, it's cool to see, but like, obviously I need to start listening to the marketplace as well and getting a little bit more broad. And I think something I saw Alex, uh, say today, and I think he was quoting Gary Vee, is like, you are the niche. And he, I think he was comparing it to Joe Rogan. He was like, uh, I'll throw in a little bit of comedy, a little bit of fighting stuff, some mushrooms, some aliens, and some politics. And, and there you got Joe Rogan, which is one of the most popular podcasters on the planet, which, you know, previously, if you were just using this as your buffer, like, that makes no sense. But the market loves it. So I love that lesson right off the bat.

Yeah, without a doubt. And one thing that's really interesting too is that if you think about all the people that are most successful, they didn't— it didn't happen overnight. They spent years and years and years doing it, which means that they actually enjoy and love what they do because it's sustainable. That's what makes it sustainable. And so like Joe Rogan, he talks about it on his podcast too. And I saw that video from Alex and it's true, but like he talks about it, he's like, I just like to interview really cool people. He's like, I just like to talk and ask really cool people questions and learn more about the world and life. And that's what he loves doing. And he found a way, obviously he's extremely talented. He found a way to monetize that to a level that no one ever has.

Yeah.

Someone will surpass that, but that's a testament to finding the things that you do enjoy and sticking with those because those are the things that are sustainable.

Yeah, compounding efforts over time and, you know, the passion comes through and I think that's something that can't be denied. Cool, man. So I saw, I saw a photo that you— I watched one of your, one of your, your sales calls or one of your webinars the other day, one of your free trainings that you were going through. And it was— I can't remember which one it was. It was like 6 months ago. But you showed a picture of the corner of your first business, which I believe was in, in another, uh, in another fitness facility. And you had like some, some like wall ball targets in the corner. Is that what, what gym is that that you're talking about there? Is that before you moved to St. Augustine? Okay.

No, that was the St. Augustine one. So the St. Augustine one, I started inside of a baseball academy. So I was in the corner of a baseball academy and I think I had 500 square feet, 600 square feet. So I put a little rig on the wall and tried not to get hit by baseballs when kids were in there.

Yep. And, and was that the business that was 8 weeks from closing because you were hemorrhaging, or was that another? Okay, it was cool.

That was it. So we actually, we grew, we grew out of that, that location because I went into that location because the one that we were supposed to in the same complex move into fell through. And so we moved into that location, got started, started getting some clients. We got to like 30, then we moved to the other one when it finally came about. But then we never grew really past like 40 clients and we'd go up and down, up and down. And obviously the business system and models that I was using were not best for scaling at all. And I wasn't marketing the right way, wasn't catering to the market the way that I should have. And then that's when, you know, I was we started in 2015. That picture was like January 2015. That's when I opened in that spot. We moved to the other one probably less than a year later. And then it wasn't until we were fighting and fighting and not making any money through 2016 and early 2017. I was just like, I remember sitting down with my wife and just, we were just like, yeah, we got like 8 weeks left. This isn't worth it. So then we turn it around.

So, so you jumped in with Gym Launch, I'm sure with like the last little bit of cash that you had. What was it that you implemented right away? I'm assuming it's probably acquisition. If I'm wrong, you can correct me, but what was it exactly that you implemented that was able to turn your gym around within 10 days' time? Yeah.

So, the main problem that most businesses face is they struggle to acquire clients regularly. And I'll take it a step further, they struggle to acquire clients profitably, meaning they don't make enough money when they sign someone up to cover the cost, to cover how much it costs to acquire them and to cover the cost to fulfill and to cover the cost of the next person. So when you start adding those things together, it's— it can be difficult, especially for a gym that's seen as a commodity, to be able to do that. But the way to do that is you have to come up with an offer that the marketplace wants and finds valuable, like truly valuable, and then you can charge a higher price for that, which will then offset your acquisition costs and allow you to just keep scaling. So what we did is we implemented the challenge format that we use here at Gym Launch still to this day, small little tweaks. But, if it works, we're not going to break it and we've tested all these other different things to see if they work too, but this continues to win. And, this offers a 6-week transformation challenge where clients will come in, they'll sign up, they'll pay money for it anywhere between— now we have clients charging $599 to $1,299 for 6 weeks. They come in, they get 3 workouts per week, they get nutrition coaching and plans and eating out guides, recipe guides, all these different assets that they need. And then they also get accountability because we teach our gym owners and we believe that to get physical transformation, true lifelong sustainable transformation, you need 3 things, right? In the fitness world, you need fitness, you need nutrition, and you need accountability. So if you don't have those 3 things, it's very hard to see transformation and change, especially you can see it in the short term, but it's very hard to sustain it. And so all of our programs that we sell are wrapped around those 3 things. And I remember we signed up 70 people, 75 people. Yeah, I think it was 75 people in 10 days when we launched it. Again, I had a gym of 33 people and I more than doubled it in the first—

Yeah, that's wild.

—10 days of doing that. It was nuts. Nuts.

So what was the main acquisition channel that you implemented? Did you start running ads, I'm assuming? Yep.

Started running ads on Facebook. That was it. Just Facebook. Ran them on Facebook. Didn't even run them on Instagram at the time. Ran them on Facebook and then we kept using that. Plus we had built as we grew, we focused so much on retention and the experience for our clients. We, we had exceptionally low churn for the gym business, for the type of gym that we had. And because we were like a group training facility, like strength and conditioning, some people would be like, are you CrossFit? No, we're not CrossFit, but we're kind of similar to that. But we would use referrals and internal plays and things like that to also get clients and community things to get clients. But our bread and butter was running Facebook and Instagram ads. So it's still the lowest cost.

And when you're comparing, like, what you guys do through Gym Launch, which is like, is it the 6-week free challenge and then the continuity is the $600 price point? And you're running ads to that. So that's obviously like your attraction channel. And then you're, you know, converting them into like the $600 upfront with the fitness nutrition and the accountability, which I'm sure you know, that's a great value stack. So you can charge more for what you're offering in your gym. Like, what are you seeing other gyms do outside of the Gym Launch ecosystem? Outside of Gym Launch? Yeah.

Yeah. The contrast is most of them don't spend money on advertising because they don't think it works. And the reason it doesn't work is because they don't charge enough when a client walks in to be able to offset that, or they don't have enough cash on hand or good enough retention, high enough retention to make enough on the LTV of the client. So this is a business podcast, so I'm going to keep it from a business standpoint. Their LTV isn't, isn't big enough to be able to offset their acquisition costs. So they churn out clients that come in and they'll churn out clients in 90 days and they don't make enough to cover that and the cost of fulfill and the cost to acquire them. It's just not enough. So what they need to do is be able to make all that, but they don't charge it because they would rather do it their own way, thinking they're more important and they understand it better and they know the marketplace better rather than realizing that the marketplace doesn't care about what they care about. And they usually will offer, uh, anywhere between like 14-day trials, 7-day trials, free classes, um, which Orange Theory has done a phenomenal job, by the way, about doing that. There's lots of businesses that can crush with that, but you have to do it at high volume, and you have to have a sales system that never gets missed. Like, every person has to come in the same way, and you go hard on sales if you're going to do that. And then others give away free months or discounted months to do that. And that is the only way those low-barrier offers work, is if you have high volume, you have an exceptional sales process, and you're conversion rates are exceptional. That's the only way it works. And your churn on the back end, your churn is really, really low. That's the only way those work in the gyms. And there's also— there's a reason why gyms today— the average gym in the United States in 2022, out of 115,000 establishments according to the IRS, the average annual revenue was $326,000, which breaks it down to— I think that's $27,000 a month. The average net profit across all 115,000+ establishments was 11.2%, which means that they netted roughly $33,000 or $36,000. I think it's $36,000 per month from their business or per year from their business. That's $36,000 per year. You could make more going to Starbucks and being a barista with better benefits. You could go to college for free and you could make the same amount of money just working as a barista from Starbucks. Yep. Right? Working 35 hours, 40 hours a week. And that's because most gym owners, myself included when I first started, we don't understand the game of business. We struggle to understand what it means to market, and we sometimes get stuck in our heads and we think that what we know is better than what we actually should be doing.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is— I mean, this is so analogous, like parallels chiropractic to the T. Like, I see most of the chiropractors that I see that struggle in practice, like, they don't spend money on marketing. They see marketing as an expense. But it's because they don't understand that it is an investment that, you know, if you're getting a 5 or a 7 to 1 ROI, you know, on the low end on your, on your marketing expense, quote unquote. I mean, I'm going to, I'm going to double down on that. And I think it's because they don't understand cost per lead, cost per show, cost per acquisition. So for example, what he's talking about with the LTV is the lifetime customer value. Churn is going to be attrition. So how many people are actually leaking through your bucket? Every month or every year and not having the LTV to actually float the cost per acquisition. So for instance, in our practice, it costs us about $67 to generate a lead because we're here in Boulder and the market's super tough, about $117 for a cost per show. We have a pretty high conversion rate, so we're at about $200 cost per acquisition, but our LTV is over $3,500. Our average ticket price on the front end is $1,500. So even on the front end, you know, with the upfront cash injection on that high-ticket, you know, conversion, high-ticket offer, you know, we're making $1,500 versus the $200 cost per acquisition. We'll do that all day, every day, as many months as possible until the market makes us change our strategy. And I think that, you know, once chiropractors and obviously the gym owners start to understand that, you know, it's gonna make business way easier. And then it, and then it becomes like a, a product and, and a fulfillment, um, conversation, you know, like, are you delivering on the promise that you're providing? And I guess that's going to be reflected in your retention and in your customer satisfaction. So do you have anything on that?

Yeah, I guess I have a question for you on this is, do you think that, do you think the reason that people, business owners see marketing as an expense Is it because that marketing doesn't work or because they don't know what to do with those leads to actually get them to show and then close and they don't know what to charge? And then they also don't really know how to make their program as impactful and valuable to the marketplace as it should be. Because the way I see it, and I'd be curious your thoughts on this, the way I see it is like all marketing can work. Like it doesn't matter what you do, right? All marketing can happen, but all marketing won't work if you don't have those other things in place. If you don't have the right lead nurture practices in place, like you can't get a lead to actually schedule and show, you don't know how to close them, doesn't matter what the offer is, and you don't know how to have an offer that's valuable to the marketplace in a way that allows you to charge enough on the front end. So I'm just curious your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's it exactly. I think firstly, like they don't know how to market first and foremost, like much less how to actually nurture leads once they get them. Like we have a very unique and specific nurture process that's just as important as our day 1, day 2, and conversion process. Like, I, the way that, that we see it is if it's important enough to do one time, it's important enough to do every single time. And like, we don't overlook any step in the process. Our sales choreography is 12 steps, and every single step is just important as a step before it and the step after it. So from the moment that, first off, I mean, you gotta be able to, to create, uh, captivating creative. You gotta be able to write compelling copy. You gotta have mindful messaging. You gotta be able to, to actually, uh, create a campaign and, and have the targeting strategies appropriately to generate leads. And then after you do that, you got to be able to nurture them, uh, appropriately, get them to, to book, and then get them to show up. And then once they show up, it's like the, the process has, has just begun. Well, that's— I think that's what most people believe, but it actually begins, you know, once the person raises their hand. And yeah, I think, uh, then, then, you know, that's, that's just like the choreography aspect. That's not even like your offer and the stack of value that you're able to put together that actually does provide a USP, a unique selling proposition, which is something that we've done, Move Chiropractic and Yoga. We've kind of innovated this model in this style. And so what we package now into our delivery is something that no one's ever seen before, and the way that we're able to communicate it and deliver it with so much perceived value that it's 10 times more valuable in the mind of the consumer or the prospect than what they're actually paying for it. I think that's what makes our marketing work so well. And I think that you can't leave any of those stones unturned if you want to like optimize your marketing spin. But it first starts with, I mean, the way that we like to coach. Sorry, I'm kind of like making this about me.

I was going to ask, I was going to ask you what your offer is, so keep going.

So yeah, cool. So the way that we coach is like anytime that we're helping people with any of these bottlenecks, like we first look at their product, we want to make sure that they actually have something to offer that is going to provide them an upfront cash injection that they can then take and spend on the advertising and the marketing spin. And we like to, you know, provide a pretty awesome value stack. So right now, our offer, it's, it's pretty sweet. So we offer the chiropractic adjustments along with private, semi-private sessions, group classes on corrective exercise. Then we provide an online program and mobility protocol. That is a custom app that we've made through Trainerize. And then we offer spinal molding as well, which is like a corrective tool. And then we offer the accountability aspect. And in most chiropractic practices, the reason why it's also considered a commodity is because you're just comparing your adjusting skill versus the person down, down the street, you know. And so for you to say my adjustments were $70, even though you can go to The Joint and pay $35 because I'm a better adjuster than they are, Like the market doesn't know, they can't differentiate skill set, and the market doesn't care. However, if they're coming into our practice and in their mind they need more physical reinforcement off the chiropractic table to actually get the long-standing results that they're looking to achieve, whether or not that matches with the science and the evidence or what we know to be true about chiropractic, it's what they believe. And so invalidating their belief is already an issue. And so we just— we've just learned over the past 3 years, like, we listen to the market, we listen to every person that comes in. So now not only is that offer super valuable in the conversion process, which makes— I mean, last quarter my conversion rate was 92% and I don't have X-ray. So this is all just telling the story through exam, hands-on communication, and offer delivery, which is kind of unheard of in chiropractic. Like, it's way easier to show somebody on an X-ray and kind of scare them into care, but that's not what we do. That's the robustness of our offer. But then we can now take that offer, which is very unique, and we can create our unique selling proposition, and we can put out advertisements and content that nobody else— I mean, we stand out from, from the crowd because nobody else is doing what we're doing. And so even though it costs us money, yes, on the front end to advertise in the way that we do, we're making it up through our monetization structure on the back end. And we're able to continue kind of filling that pipeline.

Yeah, I mean, you're 7.5 to 1 on your— like, exactly your CAC on your CAC day one. That's right. Yes. You can just keep spending and outspend everybody else in the marketplace, which is great. Question real quick. How does weight affect people's spine? Like, the heavier they get, or is there any studies or anything that shows that it will cause excess strain problems, pain and discomfort?

Spinal stress is all about like stress accumulation in either the joint surfaces and/or the discs themselves that start to affect change on the spinal canal, that start to interrupt or interfere with communi— the communication pathway of the brain down the spinal cord out the spinal nerves, which actually go out and supply all the organ and tissue cells in the body. So any type of increased like gravitational load is going to create more issues. So, I mean, yeah, a lot of chiropractic practices throw weight loss into— into their programming, you know. And then that's— now we're having a philosophical conversation because a lot of chiropractors, they want to practice straight chiropractic and they just want to provide chiropractic and stay true to the philosophy. But again, now we're having the conversation on like, are you serving your message or are you serving the market, you know? It's tough.

Well, do you like— I guess it even goes back further than that, is if you got into the business to change people's lives and you're not doing everything you possibly can to change more lives, then are you actually doing what you set out? Yeah. And do you actually believe in what you say that you want to do? Yeah. That's the question. And that's the thing that I ask gym owners all the time, is like, if you say that you truly want to help people, then why are you not doing everything you possibly can to reach more people so that you can change more lives? And oh, by the way, by doing it this way, you can make way more money than you ever have. It's not a zero-sum game, right? It's not an if this then that. It's, it's not just, hey, you can only choose to serve people, you can't make money. You can do both, and you can do it in a way that truly does help more people. So do you guys offer nutrition and stuff at—

in your— man, we did, we did. That's where we started. So my, my minor was in nutrition, my wife's major was, uh, dietetics. And, um, so yep, we, we started with that, but it got pretty complex having to go through nutrition consultations with everybody and then outline something. So, I mean, it, it could be something that we either outsourced and/or created something a little bit more cookie cutter. And I, I would, I'd love to know like your, how, how you guys go about that on at a large scale, because that would probably help us out. But we, we pulled it off the table. Yeah.

So that's like when you get into the personalized stuff, that's when it's obviously it's hard to scale. When it's super personalized. What we figured out is there's specific weights, weight ranges that we could manipulate the calories and give them lists of things that they could choose from. And then we gave them how much they could eat from each one. And then we gave them lists of foods that they can choose from between obviously your proteins, your carbs, and your fats. And then we added veggies in as like a separate thing. But we basically give them an idea of like, hey, you need to stay within this range of the amount, but you can choose any food that you want. And so these, you can choose from this list. There's a whole bunch of stuff that you can choose, but this is the amount that you need to have for this amount of time. And we were able to scale it really, really easily with incredible results for clients across the board. I mean, we were getting ridiculous weight loss in the first 6 weeks of our programs. We were getting ridiculous sustainable weight loss years after, which was incredible. Yeah. So, but that's an easy way to scale it. It's just you have to, we have to put aside our beliefs around like it has to be specific and customized and stuff. And it's like at the end of the day, we're humans. We need proteins, fats, carbs in some form or fashion to the degree depends. But like at the end of the day, right, eat your lean meats, eat your veggies, eat your fruits, eat your carbs, like all that stuff. And it's really just the amount and portion control, which semaglutide is showing this across the board, right? Like we're seeing rapid weight loss and sustained weight loss through this drug semaglutide and Ozempic and everything else. Just by literally someone taking a shot once a week or twice a week and it's just curbing their appetite and controlling their insulin. And now all of a sudden people are now losing weight and keeping it off and just because they're eating less. Yeah. And they're really not changing much, much of anything in their actual daily routine.

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's something to think about. Like you just kind of control the macro intake and then you give them obviously low glycemic foods and, you know, healthy meats and fruits and veggies, and you just allow that simplicity to take over, and then they continue to compile the days. They just stack the days on that simple intake, and like, the results speak for themselves. I mean, dude, this is all about— it's conscious capitalism, you know. It's like, it's win-win-win-win-win. Like, they win more, uh, and, and so do you. And I, I don't know how anyone could argue with this model of business or practice. 100%. And you know what's interesting?

There's a quote by Dr. Kashey. He's the one that formulated our our Prestige Labs supplements. And he's also the one that was— helped Alex write his books. So he was the hand behind all that. And if you guys follow Alex Hormozy, you'll know he's mentioned Dr. Kashi. Yeah, Trevor Kashi. And he has this very interesting saying. We were just randomly threw it off once and he was like, you know, placebos have worked 100% of the time in every study that they've ever been a part of. And it's like there's been at least one placebo that's worked. And it's like you mentioned it earlier, but the power of the mind. And at the end of the day, the mind is so incredibly powerful and it can cause lots of crazy things to happen. And when you think about it, in every time a study where a placebo has been used, the placebo at one point with one, at least one person has worked right and gotten the type of results. And it's fascinating. It blew my mind at the time because I was like, okay, if that's true, then at the end of the day, what own— what really matters is the person that's receiving the treatment, the program, the supplements, taking the products, doing whatever. If they believe that it's true, that in and of itself is the most important thing possible because then they will be more accountable to it, though it's more sustainable, and they will end up doing the things that they need to to get whatever result they need. And that was a mind switch for me. That was a mental reframe.

Yeah. I mean, we, we just had that conversation. We brought in a new doc. We just had kind of a turnover. We had one of our docs that left and went to Utah that was an associate in our practice for a while. He's going to open his own practice, super stoked for him, and brought in another one who is just a rock star. But he's very clinical, he's very like product-focused, and he just started our sales process. He like just started, let's see, he's in his 6th day in the office. And he's had, he's had a, I hope he doesn't mind me talking about this, but he's had, he's had a few, you know, sales conversations thus far. And no, no, no conversions yet. I think it was just unique situation. But you know, I brought him in immediately and I was like, hey, I need you. To help me push this project forward. So working a little bit more on the product, kind of our custom mobility programs that we're creating. We're creating templates for different regions. And so whatever their chief complaint is, we're gonna give them a custom mobility protocol that is specific to them in their area. And I'm helping— I'm having him help me build that out now. And my reason for that was not necessarily because I needed help building it out, but because I wanted him to be invested in the product enough to where that starts to come through in his certainty and confidence in his delivery, um, in the conversion process, because I think that is one of the most important aspects to conversion, is like, are you able to arouse them emotionally? And, and do you believe in the product so much that it's not even your words that are communicating, uh, the efficacy, but it's actually your tone and your body language? And if they feel that, there's a vibration to that. If they feel that, like, no matter what words you're using like they're in, they're sold. And so I think that's, that's super true and it changes their biology. Like Bruce Lipton has already said, biology belief, right? Like if you believe this will work, there's a pretty damn good chance that it's gonna work for you, especially if you commit yourself to the fitness, accountability, and nutrition. You know, then you have those external factors and the strongest internal factor. Like, that's a win-win.

100%. I mean, sales is a transference of beliefs and if we take it a step further, a transference of conviction. So our goal is to transfer our conviction to the prospect and by doing so, get them to believe what we believe in, that our program is the best one for them. So yeah, I agree. That's also the reason why I think a lot of business owners struggle to sell their things at higher prices or they struggle to raise their prices because deep down in their core they know that their product actually sucks and that it's not worth it. I mean, how many gym owners that come to us and they're like, I can't charge that, my market won't pay that? Well, yeah, they won't pay it right now because your product sucks. But we can help you improve your product. We can help you improve your service. We can help you improve your workouts, just the class experience itself. We can help you improve your onboarding experience and then you can easily charge this. But sometimes the problem is, is people wait too long and they focus on their product. They're like, got to make it just right when it's like, no, what you need to do instead. What if we did this? What if we just raised your prices and now you're scared so much that you have to improve your service? Let's do that first, right? Because that will increase the speed at which you execute on the back end because now you have a deadline. You, if your product sucks now and I tell you, cool, you're going to sell this next person at $599 for a 6-week challenge for a gym that's never done that before and they've only ever charged $100 to $150 a month. I'm like, cool, next, this person, $599, they close. Great. Now you have like 3 days to improve your onboarding experience and the rest of your product. Go. You think they're going to get it done? Of course. And if they don't, if they go the opposite way and they're like, I'm going to fix my product before I ever do it, they're going to spend months, years being like, oh, it's not perfect. Yeah, it's not perfect. Well, yeah, because it's never going to be perfect. But like, you can make it better immediately. And by putting yourself in situations to do that, it definitely helps you increase the speed at which you move inside your business and how quickly your business will grow.

Yeah, dude, what a lesson right there. Like, you know, for you, for the young entrepreneurs looking to take anything away from this podcast, like, that's an important one. You know, we see that a lot even in like, you know, young, middle, and kind of veteran age chiropractors. Like, we're trying to like coach them into changing their product or changing something in their practice, and they want to procrastinate and like stretch it out. And I'm like, no, dude, have this done by Tuesday. And they're like, there's no way I can have that done by Tuesday. I'm like, there absolutely is. What's, what's the law? It's, it's kind of like the same with budgeting. Like if you, if you, if you, if you don't have a budget, Parkinson's law, is that what it is? Like you'll spend the amount of money or you'll spend the amount of time that you have available to you. So you just compress time and you create this like pressurized time window and you just execute. And I work best like that. And typically whenever I'm in that compressed time window, the product that I'm able to to actually get out or push out is better than if I would've taken months to produce it anyway. I just get locked in, man, and go after it. So that's a great point. So I guess, how would you create that even if it's artificial in your life as an entrepreneur?

Well, there has to be a deeper set in there. There has to be a deeper problem there first, which is you have to have this innate desire to change. And that could come from a lot of different things. It could come from you're trying to run away from something, right? Insecurities, past, all this stuff, which would be personal. Now I'm getting more on the psychological side. Or you could be running towards something where it's like, I want to make more money, I want to have more success, all this stuff. But either way, it doesn't matter. You can use pain, you can use anger, you can use jealousy, you can use frustration, you can use joy, you can use pleasure, you can use all those for motivations. But you have to figure that out on a deeper reason of like, why am I doing this business and what is my end goal? And really, at the end of the day, for me, so this is how I do it. I can't speak for anyone else. I have to look myself in the mirror every day. And I learned a lesson early on that it doesn't matter what you do in the light. It matters what you do behind closed doors when no one's watching. That is the true character of a man. And for me, it's like, got it. If that's the case, because it is true and I'm going to spend more time behind closed doors doing work, then that means that the higher percentage of my time will be spent behind closed doors. And if I can maximize that and get as much done as I possibly can, I'll be able to push more things forward and I'll be able to win more than anybody else. So it's really just, it's taking pride in, for me, it's taking pride in what I do. I want to be the absolute best that I possibly can be. Not the best in the business, not the best in the world, because I don't know, there's always going to be someone better than me at something. And for me, it's like, how, how can I make sure that I am the best that I could possibly be? And that means getting stuff done faster because there's a The laws in business are very simple, right? You have to move faster than the speed of the market in order to win. If you are staying the same, you are losing because you're going to lose money. Just look at inflation, right? If you're not growing, you are dying. And that's just one of the many ones. But like another one is you need to make a profit. Like you have to prioritize profits every single month and you have to prioritize for small businesses, free cash flow. You have to prioritize these. And you have to, as an owner, have the mindset that you are beholden to the business, not to anyone else. You're not beholden to your employees, anyone else. You have to be loyal to the business and you have to do what's right for the business no matter what the cost.

Yeah, I mean, it's an organism, you know, and if it's, if it's hemorrhaging, you know, like, like you guys say, on a long enough time horizon, that goes to zero. And so if you're, if you're not growing, you are literally dying. Especially like, like you said, like if you're staying the same and you have inflation, like that's a net loss. And then on a long enough time horizon, like that goes to zero. So quick question, like obviously me, you know, like stepping into fatherhood, which is something that I'm so excited about. And also like, not that I'm fearful of it, but it's just something that I've never experienced before. I've never done it before. So like, I don't know how it's going to affect me, but every one of every one of my like mentors, whether knowing or unknowing, or anybody that I've idolized, you know, anytime they step on, on, on a stage and in their intro, they typically talk about, you know, it's, it's that right there. And there's an image of their family up on the screen that drives me every day. Is that, is that true for you as well? You were talking about, you know, it's not what you do in light, it's what you do in the darkness, and looking, looking yourself in the mirror every day and kind of using that sense of pride to propel you forward. Is it, is it truly that, or is it looking at your daughter and your son and Maggie, and like, is that what drives you?

I'm gonna sound terrible when I say this. My kids don't drive me from like to be the best. Um, I've, I drive— that's innate for me. That's more of a thing, just a personal pride. I want to be the best, which makes— which my thought process is, if I am going to try to be the best, then that means I'm going to try to be the best in everything in my life, which means I'm also going to try to be the best dad, the best father, right? The best teacher to my kids, the best launch prep for them to launch into society and be a productive human being. But it's not the other way where they drive me. They have motivated me in a lot of ways to, you know, need to want to grow and make more money and accomplish more things to be able to take care of the family. But my, my drive is more innate now. My drive with my wife, like, she's my best friend. If anybody follows my content, you'll understand this. Best friend, like incredible human being. And she's the one in my life that I don't want to let down besides myself. So she is, I would say, the biggest motivator for me outside of myself. But at the end of the day, I still am— she's not the one setting my alarm to get up and go work out at 4 o'clock. She's not the one that's telling me in my office that I need to get these things done. Like at the end of the day, those are innate to me. But I would say for her being my best friend and someone that I am charged with taking care of and leading, that for me is, is a huge motivation. Yeah, I love that.

I mean, that's, that's just the competitor. It sounds like kind of competitive spirit, like that picture of a wolf right there. Like, I've always felt like a lone wolf kind of in a similar way. And, you know, I haven't, I haven't been able to harvest the fruits of my labor, but like, I'm putting in the work every day behind the scenes. And I know that there's a lot of other people that are doing that. As well. But like, at the end of the day, I'm proud of myself for what I'm doing. And I think that's what continues to drive me.

I'm going to challenge you real quick. You have definitely harvested the fruits of your labor. You just haven't hit the expectation that you've set for yourself yet. Sure. Right. Which is always going to be a moving target. And this is for everybody else out there, right? It's always going to be a moving target. So let's just say you go and you build a practice or you build your coaching company and you do this and you make $100 million. Well, cool. Now I want to make $500 million or $1 billion, right? Like, what's the next thing? So in all labor, there's reward because you're learning something. So I would say that you have, without a doubt, because you've grown, right? You've grown pretty much every single year since you started. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I've grown. I've grown in the business and I've grown in here. Right. You know, and I think that's— I think that's— that's something that can't be taken away. It's like this has been the best personal development journey ever.

Dude, that's the game. That's the point. Like, that is literally the game. At the end of the day, that means you won, right? Yeah, you won. And I can say that to you because you're not complacent and not being like, cool, I'm gonna sit back. You want to keep driving, kind of want to keep doing it. And everyone's a little bit different, but like, you've won because you figured out that the game is to keep getting better every single day and to keep doing this. Whether you reach the goal or not, you want to figure out what is the man— what is the type of man What type of man does it take to get there? Right. And how can I become that? And that's the same thing for me. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, dude, it's like at the end of every week I have this, this time of reflection and audit and I'm like, damn, I really, I really left some on the table there. Like I could have done this better. I could have had this conversation that I should have had. I could have, you know, like spent more time working on this project instead of doing this, you know? And then, and then it's like, okay, outlining for the next week. Like, how can I? How can I fill that hole, fill that gap, uh, without like, I mean, you know, and I know that there's, there's like a stigma around this word and you, you either, you're either in the hustle culture or you're not. And like, there's this kind of clash there, but like, I did experience some emotional burnout, you know, a year, a little over a year ago. And, uh, now that I know what that feels like, I also realize that it's because I didn't have passion projects. And so that's what this became for me. You know, that's what the podcast was, kind of teaching other chiropractors and chiropractic students what we've done in the practice. And now that I have this passion, I actually work more. I actually have less white space on my calendar, and I'm constantly working, but it doesn't feel like work. And so I feel better than I ever have before, even though I'm stretched more thin than I ever have been before.

Do you think that's also because publicly you've pronounced that you're an expert in some form or fashion by providing that, which now holds you to a higher standard, which requires you to live up to those standards that you've set for yourself? Yeah, maybe so.

I mean, that's what I was asking earlier. Like, are you— whenever you, whenever you have to like compress these things, like sometimes psychological, it's a psychological game within yourself. And, you know, I didn't have a coach, like I came to you, right? And like we had a call several months back and I like came to you looking for a little guidance and coaching and mentorship because I needed another carrot, right? I needed somebody to be able to highlight the deficiencies and or the areas that I needed to grow as a person and or as a business because I didn't really have that in my life. And so I think you're right. I think doing this kind of became that for me. It was like, okay, now people perceive me as an expert. Like, I got to live up to that.

There's a lot to that. I know for me, one of the motivators for me to compress time is my team, because, okay, why would I follow someone when— follow someone if I work harder than them, right? Why would I follow someone if I am able to show up more consistently than the leader, right? And so for me, it's like I need to lead from the front. I need to show the team that if we have major projects, we need to push things through, that I will always hit my goals. I will always make sure that my most important task, which is something that we use for our planning phases for our businesses, is like every 90 days we, we have our quarterly and then we, we set our goals up. We have DSOs, which are 3 to 5 year desired sphere outcomes, and we have VFOs, which are vital few objectives, which are really 12-month rolling objectives that we want to do, which help us reach our DSOs. And then we have every 90 days MITs, most important tasks that help us get to and complete our VFOs. So with each stack on them. So if I have an MIT, I'm going to make sure that I crush it. If I have a VFO, I'm going to make sure that I crush it if I'm responsible for it, because I want to make sure that the team understands that, you know, I am going to get it done. Like right now we have a major project that we're doing for, we're basically redoing our entire portal for our clients and like that's on me. So I'm doing it. I have a deadline and I got to crush it. And it's definitely not an easy deadline by any means, but I'm going to make sure that I get it done because there's a lot more people that are relying on me. And I also want to show up as a good leader for them. I want to show up as someone who can do the work, can do it exceptionally well, and can do it under stress and under pressure.

Yeah, I mean, you got to find those constant motivating factors because if you're working on inspiration, like, inspiration's fleeting, you know, and it's transient and it's volatile. And so if you're just working on like how you feel that day, like your mood, your energy, like did you sleep well? Like I think that, that, you know, it takes, it takes the amount of work that you can do in a shorter period of time and, and extends that tremendously. Um, that's good. So just kind of now tactical questions. Uh, are you taking your MITs and you're breaking that down into like weekly and daily actionable items? No.

Uh, we are breaking it down into actionable items with deadlines, but not really weekly or anything else. Because at this size, when you think about it within a company, any MIT that we make is going to probably touch multiple departments. So, there's going to be multiple things that have to happen in order to get that MIT done. And we only choose 5 per entity. So, we have 3 companies. Every quarter, we go through all of them and we choose 5 MITs for Gym Launch, 5 MITs for Prestige Labs, and 5 MITs for gymowners.com. And then, each one has an owner, each one has a clear objective that's measurable to know when we're successful. And then within each MIT, we then break out what are the steps, the high-level steps that we need to make sure that we hit. And then we review them every single week when we do our strategic calls with our leadership team.

Very cool. So you have somebody that owns that MIT and then they— or that objective, and then they're reporting directly to you. And then you guys have like a weekly, monthly, and quarterly review.

Yeah. So we do weekly group calls within our strat team. So we call them strat team, which is our leadership teams within each one. So the way that we have the hierarchy set up inside of our organization, the way I want to continue to build it as we expand is we have an executive team which will cover— which has myself. So C-suite, so CEO, VP of Ops, which is like COO. We have a CFO, we have a CTO, and then we have our two other— so Prestige Labs and Gym Launch, the head of those companies. So we have a GM for Gym Launch and then we have a leader ahead of growth for Prestige Labs. Our CTO currently is kind of the head of gymowners.com from— because it's all dev and everything right now. And yep, that's the C-suite. So we have an executive meeting every Monday. Then after that, we go into our leadership meetings for each entity. So then we have our strategic meetings, which that leadership team is comprised of departmental leaders, so directors, managers, anyone that leads a department, they will be on the strat team and they're part of this discussion. And so everyone in that meeting then gives updates as it relates to the MITs. And so I don't have to do one-on-ones, or I still do one-on-ones with the executive team to the people that report to me, but they have their own one-on-ones with their teams and so forth all the way down throughout the organization. Yeah.

So how can you take that— and this is probably a different question— but how can you take that at scale, which is what you're working on now with the, the 3 companies under a holding company, I'm assuming, and then put that into now like a single gym or a single practice with like like a similar outcome and kind of like productivity, you're just scaling it back several orders of magnitude. Like, what does that look like?

Yeah, for sure. You need to have less goals. So what we found is for a typical gym, you really every quarter should really only have one goal and it should be somewhere in the growth aspect of like top line revenue or something with profitability, like reducing, cutting churn or attrition, maybe increasing your profit per customer by selling products or something like that. But you should have one goal. And then what you'll do is that one goal is an owner. And then you need to then really in detail for smaller organizations, you need to have in detail what are the tasks that need to be done with deadlines associated with every task, with owners for every one of those tasks. And then every week you do a weekly meeting. It could be a quick one, it could be a 15-minute or 30-minute meeting where you're reviewing progress on those. So you're reviewing your progress on, are we hitting these goals? Because the two things that happen in the business, right, or the one thing, the main thing, this is what keeps most businesses from reaching goals, is what is known as the whirlwind of business, which is just everyday business, right? And so when you think about it, for the CEO or the leader, the business owner, if you're doing it, you have a little bit more time and the freedom to be thinking long-term and be thinking about these higher-level things. But when you have employees and those employees are thinking, I've got to keep my job. In order to keep my job, I've got to maintain this production and do these tasks. When something comes up outside of the norm and they have to do it, let's say I have to work on this project as part of my— part of the MIT. I'm responsible for this task to get done in order to move the MIT forward. But a client just called and I'm in charge of making sure that I keep this client or I have to answer this. Which one do you think I'm going to choose? I'm not going to say no to the client, and the owner should never tell the person to do that either. They're going to work with the client, which takes away time from moving that MIT forward, which is why we found that really small businesses should really only have one goal, um, per quarter really to work on, and then just crush it and then move to the next one, then move to the next one, move to the next one. So the bigger your organization is, with the more departments and the more leaders and the better executors that you have, you can add more to it. But most of the time for a gym— now chiropractic, I think it would be probably one or two maybe, depending on the size of the practice— but within most gyms, you really should only have one goal. If you're a bigger health club with maybe close to 100 employees across the board and you got multiple locations, cool, you could do two. But the end of the day, what we found is that when you get into 3 to 5, none are hit. Like they don't hit any of the goals because they get too distracted with day-to-day work and they just all— they lose, they lose track of what's actually happening. And there's no scoreboard, there's no tracking system in place, there's no weekly check-ins, and it just gets pushed off to the side.

Yeah, I have two questions or one statement. You know, you talked about the whirlwind of business. Like, I think that's something that needs to be talked about more frequently amongst entrepreneurs and business owners. We always seem to like try to depict entrepreneurship and like business ownership as this like super shiny and pristine just experience. And it's not, it's fucking messy. First off, it's very messy and it's very chaotic. One thing that I'll say that I resonated with, like, freaking crazy deep, something that you mentioned, and it's— I don't even know when you put this out there, but you had a text thread with Alex and he said, how you doing? And you said, feeling like this thing could blow up or could go under at any minute or something like that. And he said, good, something like that. And I was like, dude, I feel that every single day. It's freaking crazy. And anybody that's out there acting like they don't feel that as an entrepreneur, they need to pull the curtain back and be more real and transparent with their following and their audience. Next. That's a statement. Do you have anything on that?

Yeah, 1,000% agree to this day. So I think I told the story before, but like it would be somewhere on my channel. But the day that I was named CEO, the next night I couldn't sleep and I almost had like first time in my entire life, first time my entire life. And I've had playing professional baseball, like doing all these things, playing at a high level in sports. Like I've never felt this type of pressure. And for some reason it just hit me and I had this little mini panic attack laying in bed trying to go to sleep and I had to go through the mental frameworks and the process of like logical stuff. Like it's not gonna happen. Nothing's like it is what it is. It's life will go on no matter what. Worst case scenario, all this stuff and did it. But then since that day, every single day, there hasn't been a day where I haven't had a fleeting moment of like, this could all come crashing down today. And like, what if it does? And I think that's healthy. A lot of people and a lot of people are going to push back and be like, that's not healthy, all this stuff. But if you don't have that, in my opinion, you are in blissful ignorance. About your business because your job as an owner, as a CEO, as a leader in your business is to be looking for the problems in your business because those are the things that are going to take your business down. But like all the good things, great. Everyone knows they're good. The bad stuff is when people— is when things that aren't being done right to the standards that they need to don't get done. And that's the stuff that kills businesses. And it is— I remember texting Alex too, like he used to say this all the time and he's like, heavy is the crown. And I was like, I texted it to him as well. And he texted me again. He's like, how you doing? I was like, heavy as the ground. And he's like, yep. And I was like, yeah, I mean, it is because I got 70-ish, 70-plus employees that are, that if I make the wrong move, right, it costs them their jobs, their livelihoods. And yes, they could go get another job somewhere, but there's families, there's mortgages, all this stuff that's, you know, on my shoulders to make the right decisions and the right calls. And it— I wouldn't have it any other way.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's what drives us as entrepreneurs. I have a few questions to ask. First off, this is kind of relevant to something we were talking about a few minutes back, but do you guys run open book management or do you advise open book management specifically in gyms or small organizations?

I think that they're— when you talk about financing, is that what you mean? Yeah. Like showing— yeah, exactly.

Because you're talking about like growth metrics. Exactly.

Yeah. I mean, we're very open about it within Gym Launch, Prestige Labs and everything else. I'm also a big proponent of it within businesses because you should never hide behind it and your employees are already doing the math in their head and it's always wrong. So I think that you should actually show them the books because in their mind they're thinking you're making so much more money than you actually are. But if you open up the books, they realize, oh shoot, owning a business is difficult. And it's like, you're not making as much money as I thought you were. And even if you are making money, that should be something that spurs them on and motivates them, because you should be also giving back to them through bonuses and compensating your employees well above average if you're making an exceptional profit.

Yeah, if you want to keep talent, then that's what you have to do. Um, that's, that's what we do. We, we practice open book, and I've had a few people tell me that, that they don't advise that or recommend that, you know, they the team should never know how much money we're making or not making, but I disagree. So I'm glad that you agree with that as well. Um, kind of second question is, do you believe that everybody's cut out to be an entrepreneur? And no. Can you expand on that?

Definitely not. I don't think so. I think that there are lots of— I think the vast majority of people are not cut out to be an entrepreneur. Can they learn how to be? Anyone can learn how to be. But I don't think most are because most people do not have the internal desire to take massive risks and chances with their just everyday well-being. And I don't think most people, the vast majority of people truly would enjoy the discomfort, the pain, the agony, and the hardship that comes with owning a business. And I think deep down, a lot of people understand that, and they value security and comfort more than the unknown, the risk, and the potential reward. Because most people— real quick, one thing, sorry, I know there's a delay. Most people are driven by fear of loss rather than the potential gain and reward. So, if you think about that, the average human has that. Their fear of loss is if I lose this job and I go out this, I could lose everything and I could have nothing. They'd rather just sit and be shackled to a job that they hate than the fear, than the potential reward of going out and starting something on their own.

Yeah, I mean, that's the same concept that you were talking about earlier, like running from pain or toward pleasure. Like typically the largest motivating factor is running from pain instead of toward pleasure. So it does take, I think, a certain type of person to be the other way around. So what do you think about this like new trend of people on social media that are just like using regurgitated motivational speeches that are just out there telling everybody to bet on yourself, you know, and, and what we know statistically is that if 86% of small businesses don't make it outside of the first 3 years, like, do you think that we're setting up a larger percentage of people for failure?

I can't answer the— I think yes, there would be a— I don't know if the percentage would change, but I think the absolute number of failures would happen. Because I think the percentage would probably stay the same, right? But for these people on social media that are doing that, you have to think about anytime you look at someone on social media, anytime, myself included, anyone, you have to think of what's the motive, right? Why are they doing this and why are they saying this? So most people that say stuff like that have a reason to say that, whether it's, whether it's as simple as I want to grow a following so that at some point I can sell them something, or I'm currently selling them something based on what I'm saying. So, I think it's really important to understand where does the money flow, who's making money off of this, are they making money off of this? And, that can sound really cynical, but that's the truth. That's just how the world works. I've been able to pull the curtain back on some pretty interesting people on social media and realize how much money they're actually making and it's absurd. And then, there's other people that you think are making a lot of money and they're not making any money. But it's— you have to really look at that. And I think, I think they're saying stuff that people truly want to believe. They just are gonna be unable to execute on that.

Yeah, and I guess I'm asking the question because I'm in this phase right now where like I went through a similar situation where I kind of believed everything that was being displayed or depicted. And, you know, I latched on to a mentor and you know, the style of delivery in chiropractic. And once I pulled back the curtain and realized that absolutely none of it was true, not just that like some of it was true and they were cherry-picking, but none of it was true, I think I felt so jaded. And for a long time, like, it was emotionally challenging for me to have this person that I'd pedestalized and somebody that I was gravitated towards and that I wanted to be like for so, so long. And then once I actually pulled back the curtain. It was like a Wizard of Oz moment, you know, where I realized that it just wasn't what it seemed like, um, at all. And I think it was something that I carried for a long time. So now I'm in this like protection phase, protector phase, you know. I'm like, I want to expose a lot of these, a lot of these stories and these narratives that I know to be untrue. But I also don't want to be the villain, you know. I also don't want to be the villain. I want to be somebody that can uplift through resources and through, you know, providing true value in conversations like this and different resources that are actually valuable and that actually work and are tried and tested because they're universal concepts. So it's a dichotomy that I'm in. So if you have advice, I'd love to hear it.

Yeah, I have a little bit. I'm still trying to work on this right now, but a couple of things. One is you went through that and it sucks and it's rough, but you also did learn something from that and you probably learned lots of things from moment, which is great. So those lessons will never leave you. In fact, those scars are deeper, those cuts went deeper, the scars are thicker, and which means you definitely will never forget them, which is a learning lesson and valuable in and of itself. The other thing that I would say is when you're thinking about what happens— when I see this is a lot of times when people go from being hurt or anything else, they go on social media and they want to be the ones to basically call out all the problems inside of the industry, what happens is it becomes a me show rather than really truly trying to help people. So, it becomes I'm going to try to vindicate myself or trying to point the finger at everybody else, watch me, I'm the true source of truth, I am the one rather than being like, cool, I'm just a guide, you're the hero, I'm here to help guide you through your journey, whoever the listener is or the viewer, the customer, the client. You are the hero. They are the hero in their own story. It's our job to just guide them and help them along the way. And that's in every story. Like you watch any movie, any story, like the person that always falls is the one that has the ego thinking they're the best. It's the person that is the guide that helps the hero in the story be able to achieve what they want. And that's what we all want. And I would just caution you, and I don't think you're like this at all, but for anyone listening, if you ever get that way and you're like, my way is better, all this stuff, You have to position it, position your messaging in a way where it serves your end user, not you. And that's really, really important. Yeah.

I mean, that's— dude, that's great. I mean, I think that's great for me to hear because I can use that as a self-check mechanism, you know, and anytime that I am trying to provide like more illumination and more truth, like you said, you know, it's checking myself, like, what's the motive? What's the motive here? Like, am I trying to like get one over, get one back and like, like have this exposure because it satisfies a deep, unrelenting need inside of me, uh, or am I truly, like you said, just trying to be a guide in someone else's hero's journey? Um, so that's, you know, and dude, I, I'm not fucking perfect and nobody is, and like I go through these all the time and like I'm willingly open to like share that because like we're freaking human beings and we're competitive men at that. So there's not a day that goes by that I don't feel like trying to extinguish someone else's flame in order to make it seem like mine is burning brighter, you know? And I think that's just part of this, like, competitive spirit. And that's part of what makes me a great entrepreneur. But it's also something that I have to constantly check and make sure that, you know, the ego doesn't scream too loudly. Yeah, man.

I mean, I'm definitely not perfect. I mean, I have a list of names of people that have screwed us inside of our business. And I keep it and I don't look at it often, but I know them. Like, I know every single one of them and I add to them every time something happens. So it's just extra motivation for me to prove everybody wrong and to also just remain on top.

Yep. Yep. That's beautiful. Can we, can we do a little quickfire round right here? I got 5 quickfire questions. Go for it. Best marketing advice.

Give them what they want and later on you can give them what they need.

Okay. And then let's say best marketing method. The best— there is no best marketing method.

It's whatever method that gets the people, gets your ideal client or your potential clients, that meets them where they are. I guess the best way is the method that meets your clients where they are. So that could be anywhere. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be direct mail, phone calls. It could be— it doesn't matter. It's the easiest way to be able to— Yeah, the media doesn't matter.

Nope. Okay. Best sales advice? Ask more questions. Mm. Okay. Socratic method. Help them to come to a conclusion by asking better questions. Yep. Always. That's good. That's really good.

Best retention advice? You need to earn your clients' money every single day. Mm.

That's also really good. Because I think a lot of times, especially as in, in high-pressure small businesses, um, you're trying to earn the money of your new prospects or your new clients instead of your established clients. Interesting. Yep. Okay. What, what were you gonna say, uh, before I interjected with the best retention advice?

You should try to make every sales situation where if it's one-on-one where you never make a statement. Mm. You're just asking questions. Yeah, those are the most fun. Those are also the people that have the most— you talk about transference of beliefs and convictions that happens because they have to own it. There's autonomy there. They're the ones that made the decision because you just simply ask them the right question to lead them to the result, the best result for them.

You just become the resource. Oh, that's good. That's good, Cale. Best life advice.

This has to do with a marriage, and this is what my mom told me. My mom passed away in 2015 from cancer, and she gave my wife and I this piece of advice. So this is for married couples. So this is not just overall life, just married couples. Is the two things to have a really amazing marriage is to make plans and make love. Make plans to grow together, be together, do incredible things together, to go on adventures together, even if you have separate lives from a business standpoint, you're not in the same business, if you have different work, doesn't matter, just plan together, like make plans together. And then make love is self-explanatory.

Yeah, for sure. I don't have to explain much there. That's, that's brilliant. Last question is, I know what your best book recommendation is because I've seen it on your page. And it was The Motive. Outside of Gym Launch, it was The Motive. By Patrick Lencioni, I think is who the author was. Why is that your favorite book, especially because it's a fable and it's on leadership and team dynamic? So talk me through that.

Yeah, because it outlined and highlighted my own deficiencies as a leader. He talks about in that book, the CEO is not a CEO, he's a CRO. He's a chief reminding officer, not in the nitpicky like reminding of just always being on top of people and micromanaging, but more so of reminding people of the vision, the mission, our core values, why we're doing what we're doing. And then also reminding everyone the standards that we have set within the business, which for me, the way I took it is really holding people accountable, not just myself, but holding the rest of the team accountable to what we've set out to accomplish and making sure that we are hitting those deadlines and not I have a tendency as a leader to, cool, you got this, great, go and do it, because that's how I operate. But that's not how everyone else operates, right? For me, like, I was a guy that Alex would be like, hey, here's the thing that I need you to go do. And I'd be like, cool, got it, I'll go do it. I'll come back with questions and stuff, updates. Great, go back, get it done. So I was much more of a doer. But as a leader, it's my job to make sure that I meet people where they're at and be able to provide the support that they need. And that book helped me from a leadership position immensely to understand that.

Yeah, I mean, from my standpoint, obviously, like, I'm not in your organization, I'm not on a leadership team, I'm not reporting and being reviewed by you, but it seems like you do kind of stand for the epitome of that, the premise of that book, which is like being a chief executing officer and a chief reminding officer, not just a CEO and not just an executive. You're executing. And like, I think that you Express that through like how you actually are constantly pushing projects forward as the leader. You're going first and you're eating last. And I think that that is the sign of, of a great leader. And that's something that I aspire to be. You know, right now I'm trying to put a little bit more of that into my business and it's a constant battle. Chief Reminding Officer, first and foremost, vision, mission, core values, constantly coming to that and not just reading them. Off the top of our meeting agenda every Monday, but actually dissecting them and like, what is the true kind of depth and the roots here? These aren't just words on a paper. These aren't just numbers that are wrapped in words. Like, like, what is our why here? And I think that that's something that's making me a better leader every week, every day. And then kind of the next piece is this is just something that I'm trying to implement in my practice just for tactics and other chiropractors listening. Is something I like to call EGR, which is Expectations, Goals, Reporting, and Review. And so actually setting clearly defined expectations, allowing them to, to create metric-based goals based on what they believe is possible so that they can own that, and then having a rhythmic reporting sequence, and then having a monthly review where we come together and it's like, how do we do here? And what are we actually measuring our success against? Is it the Is it the effort? Is it your buy-in? Um, and, and there's not ever, I think, like a, a hard answer to that, you know, I think that that's, uh, that, that is constantly like fluctuating, at least from my perspective, but that's something that I'm having to get better at because I was similar to you, you know, like if you give me a task and, or I know what the task is, we need to grow, we need more new clients, we need to increase our conversion percentage. Like I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna give everything I have. But not everybody's like that. So learning as a leader that, uh, we're entrepreneurs and we're the business owners for a reason, and it's because of our chemical makeup up here. And so better kind of molding ourself to the needs of our team, um, is something that I, I aspire to continue to, to grow in. And I, I read The Motive and now I'm going through The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Have, have you read that one? Yeah. All his, all his books. They're exceptional. Okay. Have you read The Advantage?

Yep. Read The Advantage. Well, that was actually the first one that I ever read.

How is that?

They're all like— they're all exceptional. No, it's really good. It's really good. I think for me, when I look at all of his books, though, for me, I typically— whenever I read any book, I typically will skim it first and then see if there's stuff that I like from it. And then I'll go back and then I'll read specific areas. And that's what I did with The Advantage. And that was the first one I read a while ago. But the motive for me was the one that stuck the most out of everything. And I've read all of his books, but they're all like, there's all little things that I will take from it and then implement on a daily basis. It's like, hey, I'll take this little piece, I like this, I'll take this little piece, I like this, and then make sure that I implement those into the business. But he's an exceptional writer. He's got a ton of experience and the way that he writes and brings things forward, he does them just very clearly and he paints the story of what needs to happen. So he does a good job. For anyone that's listening, if you haven't read him, I highly suggest it. This stuff is exceptional.

Me too. Yeah. I mean, it just like, dude, that was it. It hit deep on a different level. And I think it's like the story form. There's just, there's something about it. Cool, man. Well, thanks for being here, dude. We're coming up on an hour and 15 minutes and, you know, I just appreciate you taking this time to, to have this interview with me. And it's been a few months coming. So thanks for being here.

Thanks for being able to, or being willing to push it back. I appreciate it. I didn't— I don't think I would have made it happen with that hurricane that almost hit us, but we had power going in and out. So I appreciate you, you pushing this back. This has been awesome, man. Yeah, for sure, man.

All right. Anything you want to leave with the listeners or where to find you? Maybe how they can gain any more value from you, even if you're not a chiropractor? Yeah, for sure.

If you did find any value from this, awesome. If you want to give me a follow, you can go on any of the social media accounts. So Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, I'm on there as Kale Owen. So, @kaleowen, C-A-L-E-O-W-E-N. You can follow us. You can go, if you want to learn more about what we do at Gym Launch or anything like that, you can go to gymlaunch.com. Then, we have prestigelabs.com and then gymowners.com. We're about to go through a redo of gymowners.com's website, but you can find out more about our companies there. And then, one thing, if you're interested, my wife and I do a podcast called the Cookies and Coffee Podcast. You can find it on iTunes, Shopify, And that is really just us kind of documenting our story as executives within a company and being married at the same time with kids and how we handle it all and just all the marriage stuff that we go through. And if you find value in that, we'd love it if you give it a listen and subscribe. Yeah.

I mean, I've been, I've been watching some of your stuff. I haven't listened to any of the episodes, but I'm looking forward to it. And then last question, how do I become number 8? So right now you're following 7 people on your Instagram page. How do I become number 8?

Can't right now. It'd have to be someone. It's usually it's someone really, really close to me or a business that I own. So it's like I think the only people that I follow, I follow the Gym Launch account, Prestige Labs account, gymowners.com account. I follow Alex and Layla. That's 5. Maggie. And then there's something else that I follow. Oh, GymCon. I follow our GymCon page. So it's got to be like a business or someone super, super close to me. So no offense to anyone, I've got tons of friends that I still don't follow.

So I'm going to keep working on it, man. Just keep providing value to the marketplace. And yeah, there you go. Cool, man. Well, I hope to be at GymCon next year. It sounds like it'll be in May according to what you said whenever we started this podcast. So I hope to be there. And if I'm there, I'd love to run into you and maybe have a few words in person. But it's really cool to see the growth that you've had. Thanks for being here.

And yeah, appreciate you, man. Thank you. I appreciate it, man.