How a Real Estate Agent Built Two 7 Figure Fitness Businesses with Charlie Johnson

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like The Product Boss. Today, we'll be breaking down how a real estate agent built two seven-figure fitness businesses. To drop these value bombs, I brought Charlie Johnson into EO Fire Studios. Charlie is the founder of Seven Figure Scaling Systems, a 90-day fitness business accelerator that is the number one mastermind in the world in the health and fitness space. In the past two years, they on average 2.5x a client's business in the first 90 days.

0:35He has scaled two seven figure businesses from$0 after quitting being a real estate agent five years ago. And we'll talk about how realistic is it to make money in the online fitness world now. We'll talk about the biggest mistakes people make, what Charlie would do with a clean slate today, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Charlie and our sponsors. Hustle and Flowchart, hosted by Joe Fear, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Join Joe as he discusses systems, mindset tweaks, reframes, and strategies to help you build a business that gives you freedom and fuel for your life.

1:10A recent episode on using AI for effortless content creation is a must listen. Listen to Hustle and Flowchart wherever you get your podcasts. Charlie, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. The biggest thing I think most people disagree with is that success is guaranteed, but speed is not. And by that, I mean that if you just work really, really hard and consistent, it's impossible that you won't be successful eventually. Fire Nation, we're talking about how a real estate agent built two, not one, but two seven-figure fitness businesses.

1:49So I want to start, Charlie, by chatting about how realistic is it to make money online in fitness today? The biggest thing that I always look at is, has someone done what you want to do? And the reality is when I first started maybe 2015, 2016, there wasn't that many people making money online and certainly not in fitness. The reality is now there's so many people who have carved the exact path other people want to walk that it's then easy for them to model in terms of having people like myself to then help them. And if you actually look at the statistics and particularly in the United States, I think there's 25 times more people who are millionaires than people who have six-packs.

2:29So if you look at the correlation between people who have a lot of wealth and then also a lot of people who are out of shape, they have the money, but they also have a big problem, right? Which means it's a captive audience. Now, before we dive any deeper to this, let's actually talk about your transition because you were a real estate agent and you built two seven-figure fitness businesses, which you know there's can be some correlation there but maybe not at first glance so kind of talk about how you were mixing and mashing in the real estate world and then decided to take this shift this leap the big thing for me was i had a great career in the real estate industry i was earning good money i had the dream of probably what most people wanted but i wanted to escape the proverbial matrix in terms of i wanted to have time freedom location freedom and financial freedom which would allow me to do whatever I wanted, which I knew was not going to come from working with someone else.

3:24And fitness was my vehicle to escape the situation I was in, which wasn't necessarily a bad situation. And that came about for me initially getting in really good shape, hiring a coach, realizing it was actually really easy to get in good shape when you just do what someone tells you to do and follow their instructions. And then I just documented my journey and saw the power of social media. And my entire life changed in one moment. And I remember driving around in my black Mercedes in a place called Surrey in the UK, a very green village. And I listened to a Grant Cardone podcast that came on.

3:56I'm a big Grant Cardone fan, if anyone else who listens to that. And he said, if you don't learn sales, you'll be poor. And at the time, that really clicked with me in terms of when you're looking to try and sell online, you can be the best marketer in the world, but if you also don't understand the sales process, you won't ever make any money, which is why you see so many influencers who are broke, which is why I tell a lot of people we work with in growing businesses that they need to not think like an influencer. They need to think like a business owner. And step by step from there, I end up building one fitness business that transformed over 8 ,000 people's lives working all over the world.

4:29We featured in Forbes, Men's Health and Apple News. Moved to Dubai and we now have another business which is seven big scaling systems helping trainers take their passion and turn that into a profit using the same blueprint I've used in my own business that's changed my own life. So we're talking about successes, but I actually love also focusing on mistakes because when we talk about mistakes, we can learn from mistakes. And I want Fire Nation, our listeners, to not have to experience mistakes firsthand if they don't have to because we can learn the lessons from them, avoid them, save time, money, effort, pain, agony, and keep driving forward.

5:04So what are the biggest mistakes that trainers are making today? The biggest mistake most trainers make, and I think every probably entrepreneur makes, is they think who not how so they try and think how do i become successful how do i get clients how do i do xyz and i refer to this earlier on in terms of my life changed when i hired a coach i think all coaches should have coaches i have various coaches who work with me in different uh players of my life and my business from speaking coaches to business coaches to fitness trainers still and so the secret people want to eliminate the guesswork is to hire someone to do who's done the thing you want to do.

5:42And the second thing I'd say is the biggest problem every single person who has right now who wants to be successful online has is obscurity. Not enough people know you. And if people don't know you, they can't give you their money. So the number one first point people need is trafficking to become more known. Let's talk about a real world example because it's one thing to kind of talk about these things, but it's another thing to actually dive into a real world example of maybe how you or maybe one of your clients has successfully done what you're talking about right now. And, you know, kind of bring it to life for Fire Nation.

6:16I'm going to give an amazing example of a client of ours who last month did his first 100 ,000 euro month in fitness. So he made six figures. Well, in the US, that's like$120 ,000 in four weeks. And he's from a very rural area of Ireland. And why this gets even better, he lives on a farm and his specific niche is farmers. so he's basically like a farming fitness coach helping farmers get in shape and i helped him in terms of how he creates um basically viral contact to his specific niche that he literally like films on his farm of him like respectfully shoveling and actually like making content and he's done that and it's actually blowing up his business because there's a specific avatar he can help who can buy into him and that's where every single person has something unique about them which is their story of who they are they need to tell and the biggest mistake that most portrayals are making when they're trying to get out of obscurity is they're too vanilla and they're blending in with everyone else and that's where people need to identify what's unique about them and what's beautiful now say if talking about dave's example dave not just changed his life he's also changed his brother's life who also lives with him on the farm they now work together now have the ability to have time freedom financial freedom location freedom to then move to Dubai, which they're doing later in the year.

7:35They can travel wherever they want and they don't have to be stuck, which is what happens to most people in Ireland who are young, who actually want to leave. Because anyone who's ever been there, all it does is rain and it's very gray a lot of times. A bit like the UK. That's why I moved to Puerto Rico, my friend. I totally get it. Now listen, somebody who's built not one, but two seven figure fitness businesses, Liz and Dubai has the matrix figured out, as you mentioned earlier. Sometimes to be frank, Charlie, you're just not super relatable to a listener who is just starting at square one. And it's like trying to just figure out not even a hundred thousand dollars a month, but how about like a thousand dollars a month?

8:16So let's do this for them. Let's start with a clean slate. If you had to start again in the fitness space today, what would you do? three-step framework i really look at to grow any business online one have have a skill so if you're a trainer should already have that ability two is you need traffic so you need to make content and get people to know about you and then three is ask those people to help you so um what i would do is a step-by-step process to give a bit more detail for anyone listening i would focus on getting traffic by making viral content and i have a course which helps people in terms of how to do that with how you can forex your story views how you can generate leads which i'm sure we can drop in the show notes which is called our 4c course which is completely free and once you basically have the ability to create viral traffic and pull through traffic an actual hack i'll give everyone that you can use on this is actually using tiktok to search up what's trending so if you use a search function on tiktok you can look at you can search like fat loss tips for men for example uh most liked last 30 days and show you what's trending to give you ideas in terms of what to make you then have traffic coming from content the goal is you then have to engage those people in a conversation so we call our lead generation method the 4c method because it's turning we help you create content to create conversations to create calls to create clients so once you first make the content you then have to engage those people to either message you or you message these people on social media platforms make them problem aware book them in for a sales call and then have the ability to actually sell them into a program which is understanding their actual human emotional needs in terms of why do they want to get in shape so to give some example that most people talk about thinking uh people want to they want to lose 20 pounds because they just want to feel more confident okay why do you want to feel more confident okay the guy's single and he wants to find a girlfriend so the reason he actually wants to lose the weight isn't just to like be more confident he doesn't want to be single and he wants to have a partner and probably a family further down the line and that's really like a base terms in terms of the framework of how i would break that down for most people and the two things i would say that um most people don't understand is that everyone goes lumped in into instagram another platform we do very well with is linkedin and i'm aware obviously this is an entrepreneur's podcast we're speaking on but if you want to try and sell to higher clients a higher level clients you can charge more then And LinkedIn is the best platform because you can target specifically CEOs and executives, which is one of the big things I do in my own fitness business.

10:48And we really focus on teaching clients doing seven-figure scaling systems. Fire Nation, you're getting some value bombs from somebody who, again, has done this twice and probably will do so three plus times in the future. That's building a seven-figure business. And we have a lot more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thinking our sponsors. The amount of software required to run a growing business can be daunting. And how do you even know if you're using the right tools? There's help desk software, payment software, email marketing tools, blogging tools, SEO tools. Well, I've got some great news for you, Fire Nation.

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13:05That's E-T-H-O-S life.com slash fire. Charlie, we're back and I want to talk about what you feel the most successful people have that makes them different from those who just can't quite find success. For me, I like to break that down as the three R's. So the first one is relentless. You just keep going. And that's the most important thing in terms of having the ability to go, go, go without seeing any success. The second would be in terms of like resilience, like you have the ability to handle when things aren't going the way you want and also trying to deal with problems. And then the third is resourcefulness.

13:46Now, that can come down to finances and also in terms of time, because a big thing that a lot of people, my honest, they don't have the money to do something. They don't have the time. There's no lack of resources in the world. There's just a lack of people's resourcefulness to go and get those things. And that's where, if you think about that three-step framework in terms of being relentless, being resilient, and also being resourceful, if you can do those three things, you will be incredibly successful. And if you also put that with consistency. Charlie, so many people, they just get stuck in the day-to-day of building their business.

14:20and that just doesn't allow them to scale. And if you want to enter the matrix like you have, like I have, you have to scale, you have to leverage. It has to be just more than you, nose to the grindstone, not looking up, just absolutely just pounding it out every single day. So talk about this. I would say expression here is most people think too small and a really good book I'd recommend everyone reads or you can listen to is 10X is easier than 2X. And it's basically changing the framework in terms of the way you think. So if you had to like try and 10x your business, you can't do that by doing more volume yourself.

14:56And the big mistake most people make is they're trying to do more output just over and over again, thinking it's going to get better results. And the reality is that isn't scalable. And there's four different types of leverage we can get. So there's code in terms of software, there's capital in terms of money, there's people in terms of resources. and then the fourth one which has now slipped my mind uh will come back to me oh media is like podcasts um youtube videos whatever those the four different forms of leverage you can get that will allow you to have actual scale and to take yourself out the business and this is i see it over and over again with personal trainers is the best example of this and dubai is rife with it um it's personal trainers who earn good money but they literally have the golden handcuffs where if they don't turn up to the gym that day they don't get paid if they go on holiday they They don't get paid for a week.

15:47And for me, for example, where I've designed my life, and I think you can design your life as you reverse engineer what you want, is like, for example, next week, I'm into the Maldives for four days and I won't have my phone on me. I won't work four days. And all my business will run without me and I'll come back and everything will continue. And that's really when people have a business, not a job. Fire Nation, it's time to create a business. It's time to let go, to release of your job. But the reality is, Charlie, I think there's a lot of things that people get intimidated by when it comes to scaling and leveraging and these things that we're talking about here.

16:23And one of those things for sure is advertising. Because sometimes if you feel like you don't know what you're doing, you can just feel like you're burning money or letting it on fire because you don't know what kind of ROI you're getting. What ad strategies are you finding are working best today? I can definitely relate to the burning money on ads. I've spent, are you laughing because you know the pain? I know the pain. I've spent over 1.2 million dollars on fitness ads and Facebook alone and I've lost a lot of money. I've fortunately made a lot more money than that and the reality is you learn from actually doing yourself.

17:01I think the biggest mistake that most people make is they try and delegate out to ads agencies who don't really know what they're doing and the best ads actually work in terms of fitness and this is actually what we help our clients has set up specifically on our mastermind and we do it with them is direct messenger ads so we run like intent-based marketing ads to get people into inboxes um into dm conversation like i mentioned earlier in terms of our 4c method of create content to create conversations to create calls to create clients um but what gets even better than this we've actually just created something no one else has um it's an ai chat bot that can automate the whole conversation it can do in english spanish dutch whatever language you want and so we can run paid ads messenger ads into say my instagram inbox the ai chat bot can handle 100 conversations per minute and they will book them in for sales calls with our sales team and that's when you have the ability to have huge amounts of leverage because i can blast messenger traffic in from um facebook our ai bot it can outperform a human being and it's way better in terms of actually like constantly learning and then it's booking and prospects for calls the only part we haven't automated yet is the sales calls which will probably happen at some point um but that's the best ad strategy that i see works the second one would be um for people to boost the highest performing organic reels on say something like instagram and then outbound messaging new followers and content and engages.

18:27The issue you have with that is at some point you can't scale it because you can't send enough messages out without getting blocked from the platform. Charlie, you've dropped value bombs today, brother, and we are very appreciative. If you wanted to step back and give Fire Nation the one thing of everything we talked about here today that you really want to make sure we get, we walk away with, what is that? The most important thing I think anyone could take away with if they're looking to build a fitness business you have to think about becoming the person who can actually have a successful fitness business so a are you in good shape and like you look like a trainer and that doesn't mean you have to be an ifbb pro because i'd say most of them are ifbb broke most bodybuilders have no money but you just have to be like the attractive character that um your prospective clients are going to look up to and then storytell around that showcase world-class client results and have a leverage-based traffic system to then pull people into your ecosystem that you can then get to sales calls and then sell higher ticket prices in terms of programs.

19:32Like we specifically focus on a platform like LinkedIn with like say$5 ,000 coaching programs. And that's how you can generate significant income and achieve financial freedom, time freedom and location freedom and then change your own life and your future family's lives. Charlie, if Fire Nation wanted to connect with you, You wanted to learn more directly from you. What is your call to action for our listeners today? The best value I can give anyone, which is super strategic, you can take away and implement straight after this podcast is if you check out our 4C course, which we can drop in the show notes, which is our lead generation course, which is free.

20:07I would also check out Charlie Johnson Scaling Systems on YouTube, which we have literally everything you could ever need in terms of how to build a fitness business for walkthroughs on my YouTube channel. and then check me out on Instagram at Charlie Johnson Fitness. I personally reply to any like message requests or questions myself. I'll send you a voice note back. So if you check me out there as well, we have tons and tons of stuff that will give you some inspiration, maybe some of what some of our other clients are doing and also give you a lot of business value in terms of how you can get to the next level.

20:36Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with CJ and JLD today. So keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Charlie in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Charlie, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Charlie for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, what can 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you?

21:08How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment? My first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success is a revolutionary 17-step roadmap that will lead you to the lifestyle you've been dreaming about. This book took me 10 years of accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs. And you can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I'll catch you there or on the flippity flip side. Hustle and Flowchart, hosted by Joe Feer, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Join Joe as he discusses systems, mindset tweaks, reframes, and strategies to help you build a business that gives you freedom and fuel for your life.

21:51A recent episode on using AI for effortless content creation is a must listen. Listen to Hustle and Flowchart wherever you get your podcasts.