2640: Ten Lessons for the Fitness Entrepreneur

19:45Sal Di Stefano:Hustle out of a garage. Yeah, a chiropractic office that lets you train out of there

19:48Adam Schafer:or pay rent somewhere where you could build a little kind of, start there. Outgrow it. Lean before you get to the point where you take on. That's right, where you take on that kind of debt. Next is to learn to adapt to change. Markets move quickly. technology especially boy especially algorithms uh you got to be flexible and you got to be ready to pivot and be okay to pivot don't marry the strategy that you have because that strategy although it may work it may work now it may not work especially with how social media is and social media now such a big part of fitness businesses like algorithms can change overnight i mean i had a friend i had a friend who was making seven figures uh this is this was during this was a long time ago, but he was using Facebook.

20:34Adam Schafer:And at the time, Facebook was easy compared to how it is now. He was making seven figures. They changed the algorithm overnight. He went from making seven figures to making four. It went boom overnight. And he was totally screwed because he couldn't figure out how to pivot. How do I switch? What do I do? So you got to stay flexible and ready at all times to do this. One of the ways to do this with social media is to have a little bit of real estate in all the different platforms because one of them may change and may become obsolete. may not be the one that works for you anymore. So now you can pivot and use some other ones.

21:06Adam Schafer:But do this with all your strategies. By the way, this is an advantage to being a small entrepreneur. As you get big, this becomes hard. When you're a big company, it's hard to pivot. When you're small, this is like a superpower that I could just change directions, no problem, because it's just me and maybe one other person. Well, and it also highlights the earlier points of really diving into your customer service. So you can actually have that direct communication with your customer base and keep that regardless of whatever platform or whatever thing that you're doing your promotional stuff on.

21:41You can connect with them. Obviously, email is a great, valuable resource to do that as well and really build that up. But, yeah, things are going to change and you're going to have to adapt and you're going to have to do it on the fly a lot of times. And it's hard, but that's what you got to do.

21:56Sal Di Stefano:One of my favorite sayings is to love your ideas, but don't marry them. And that's because I think it's really important to be passionate about whatever idea you have. I think that's important. I think you should love them and be excited and passionate about moving it forward if you're going to be successful, but then also open to the idea that you could be wrong. And another thing that I love to share about my own personal journey, and I say it all the time about this business when people ask me and go like, this is what I think we should do, or this is what I think is best for our company right now, but I'm probably wrong.

22:30Sal Di Stefano:I almost always say that. If you ever heard me talk to somebody else about where we're at or what we're doing is this is where I think we're at. This is where I think we're going, but I'm probably wrong because what has been proven to me more often than not is I'm normally wrong. But I'm okay with that. It goes back to the first point you made is that I embrace the fact that I think I have a good idea in a good direction. I'm probably gonna be wrong. I'm gonna get there as fast as I possibly can. And let's go prove that I'm probably wrong. Maybe I'm right, or maybe I'm kind of right, but there's a better way.

22:59Sal Di Stefano:And so embracing the failure thing goes right in line with your ability to adapt and change. And the speed thing that we talked about is like, how fast can I go prove that theory is either right or wrong? And how open am I to going, shit, that's not the right way. Let's go left. Let's switch. And then being able to do that. And to your point, this is a major strength and an advantage when you're small, when you are just trying to start. Some of the things that you think is as disadvantaged, oh, I don't have all this money and I don't have all these people and all these leads and I don't have a huge following on social media.

23:34Sal Di Stefano:Well, yeah, that's that's definitely a disadvantage. But it's also an advantage because you are very connected to the small network of people or things that you're servicing and you can quickly pivot or change the idea. And I don't know how many times I've seen somebody who thought that the training business specifically, I was going to service these type of people because that's what I love to do. Or I think that's where I should go. And you realize like, oh, nobody wants to hear that from you. Like nobody gives a shit when I talk about sports performance. Yeah, nobody thinks I'm a great sports trainer.

24:04Sal Di Stefano:Like, I guess I'm not going to do that. And if you were so ingrained in that idea that you kept hammering it home and nobody is receiving that from you or nobody wants that from you, how long could you be potentially spinning your wheels? How quickly you accept that and go, oh, nobody cares about that. But for some reason, everybody pays attention to me when I talk about the mobility stuff or corrective exercise or injury prevention. Like maybe that's my wheelhouse and I had no idea. And I know so many successful stories of trainers that talk about, oh, man, when I first started, I thought I was going to be this or I was going to do this thing.

24:39Sal Di Stefano:And they're doing something totally different. That's a strength in them. Their ability to love their idea but then also accept that they're probably wrong and not marry it and pivot and move to the next thing.

24:49Adam Schafer:Yeah. Next, again, another one of my favorite ones is to network relentlessly. Network, network, network. Every business, every business, especially fitness businesses, are people businesses. Yes, there's technology, there's money, there's strategies with leads and how you communicate and ads and marketing and content. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But people are what build businesses. And the most successful entrepreneurs are masters at this. They're masters at networking with mentors and peers, investors, competitors, even. Like this is a big one. Like there's so many people in our space and in all spaces, but you see some fitness where they look at their competitors, especially when they first get started, and they don't want to learn from them because they're competing against them.

25:36Adam Schafer:What are you doing? Even if you hate what they're doing, they might be doing something right that you can learn from. Network and learn. If you make this a priority, the odds of success go through the roof. especially in fitness. I experienced this directly when I went to be an independent trainer on my own and had to really figure out like how I was going to market myself and, you know, just observing all of the top trainers and what they were doing. I would ask questions and, you know, it was not a scarcity minded thing. I see what they're doing well. I see also too, what I wouldn't, I would do differently, but that's a strength of mine that I could promote.

26:13And so, you know, this is something that led me towards a strategy I wouldn't have normally done, but I saw that is being successful and I could do just my own spin on it instead of being like, oh, screw this guy and be negative about what they're doing.

26:29Sal Di Stefano:I love this one. One of my favorite sayings is your true net worth is your network. And this is actually one of the most attractive things I found about Katrina when we first met was I'd met a woman who thought the same way as I did with this. And we met each other in our thirties and we had accumulated such a large network of people that we got to do so many cool things. This is outside of business and this I'll tie it to business too, but remember to go to concerts and games and all this like travel and stay in awesome hotels and for a lot of stuff that didn't cost us any money. And a lot of people would say on the outside, looking at that go like, oh, you're so lucky or, oh, it must be nice.

27:16Sal Di Stefano:And it's just like, well, yeah, her and I had spent both of us individually, 30 years of our life building our network by serving other people, by doing things for other people, by helping other people, even people that others would consider our competitors because we never had that scarcity mindset. We always looked at serving others and helping others. And what that looks like when you fast forward years and decades of doing that is this massive pool and network of people that like you. And when you have that at your disposal in business is extremely powerful because what you will find if you have any sort of even small amount of success in business is eventually you're going to run into something you don't have the answer for, or you don't know, or you don't know who the best guy or the best girl is that does that thing.

28:03Sal Di Stefano:But if you've invested in people and helping others and you don't operate from a scarcity mindset, you may be lucky enough to have this large network of people that you can pull from, that you can call upon, that can then help you in those times. And I do think that personally, a lot of the success that I've had as an adult, it's not because of me, it's because of the shoulders of other men and women that I stand on. Because I did, though, build the relationships with those people. And so it's not an overnight thing. You're not going to go do one or two things for somebody and then all of a sudden you have this massive network no it's it's a time it's a lifetime give and not it's a lifetime of giving without expecting anything in return and i try and teach this to all of our young entrepreneurs in our network that it starts right now in your teens and 20s and you keep investing in it and one day you'll look back decades later and go wow was that one of the best things that i ever did because i believe that this network that I've built has played such a huge role in the success I currently have.

29:10Adam Schafer:Totally. Next up is to prioritize time management. You want to focus on things that give you a big return right out the gates and delegate or say no to distractions that don't align with what you're trying to do. So I'll use an example for trainers, right? So you just became a trainer. Actually, in fact, this was an example of somebody that we talked to. There was a trainer that we recently talked to and he's trying to build his business. And he's talking about how he can, you know, use his social media more effectively to get more leads and more clients. And I told him, go outside and talk to people.

29:40Adam Schafer:You'll get more leads in an hour going outside than you will spending an hour making posts on social media. And that's what he did. That's exactly what he did. He went out, talked to people, gave water to people who are running. There's a place up here where you catch a lot of hikers and runners as he went up there and started talking to me. We did body fat test booth on the real world. I used to tell my trainers this when I had my studio, back when I had my studio, social media wasn't a big thing, but we did have the internet and they would come to me. They talked all about their website. How can I optimize my website?

30:08Adam Schafer:Like, you don't have any clients. Let's go outside. There's a grocery store right there. We're going to set up a body fat test booth. And in one hour, we're going to come back with 10 leads and that'll turn into probably one or two clients. And it worked every single time. I'm like, spend your time doing that right now, rather than this other thing. You already have a website, leave it. Don't worry about optimizing it yet. You don't have enough people even for it to matter. Let's go Go spend some time doing the stuff that gives you a return right off the gates. Let's not waste our time on the things that take too much time to give you very little return.

30:33I do this immediately with anything administration related. Would pay for that and was investing in that because I knew that was something I was so uninterested in doing. And you have to do that as a business owner and you have to pay attention to your bookkeeping. You have to pay attention to all these things. But for me to operate and to get out there, market myself, and also service everybody I could service effectively and even at a greater pace, I needed to really account for that piece. And so investing in that was huge for me.

31:03Sal Di Stefano:So if you've been listening to the podcast for more than five years, I apologize because you've heard me tell this story before. But I tell this story as the most powerful and pivotal moment in my own personal business journey. And it's the story of my good buddy, Mark, when he was the general manager at the first gym that I managed with him. And I just recently came off a month of crushing goal. We had finished at like 115 % a goal. And I was celebrating with my team. And, oh, we did it. We're awesome. And I just caught word that the district manager and the VP was coming down to my club. They were going to come down and talk to me.

31:41Sal Di Stefano:And I was excited because I thought they're going to come down and tell me how great I was. So I'm just like, yeah, killed it. They're going to come down, pat me on the back. And they actually came down and they did like this massive audit on me. And never once did we talk about me crushing gold last month. It was all about the things that I wasn't doing well. And I'm a terrible person when it comes to administrative stuff. I was unorganized, much like Sal. I'm all over the board. I'm a mess and stuff like that. But I was good with people. I was good with my clients. I was good with my trainers.

32:08Sal Di Stefano:And they just tore me apart. And I'm definitely not the type of person that goes, oh, poor me. I was like, okay, this is where I get better. So like the next day I'm sitting at the desk and I'm doing all those things. I'm highlighting my book and I'm organizing my files and I'm hole punching the stuff and I'm doing it all right. And it's like, it's like mid prime hours in the gym, which is like five, 6 PM when the most people are in our gym that I could be talking to him about. But I'm back there getting organized and my buddy comes walking back who wasn't my buddy at the time. It was just a general manager.

32:35Sal Di Stefano:And he goes, what the fuck are you doing? And I'm like, oh, no, the team, you know, the boss came in and he said this about, and he says, I need to work on this. he's like listen you're in the position you're in at the age that you're at for a reason you are you are great and he starts listening off these things that i'm great at and he goes this is not your strength stop focusing on the things you're not good at focus on what you're good at and be fucking great and i was like it's like epiphany and that permission to like stop hanging on to all and i think entrepreneurs do this a lot is that we we compare ourselves to others and we go like, oh man, Justin, he's so, so much more organized than me.

33:13Sal Di Stefano:And he does this so much better than me. And you're trying to be him and you're trying to be more like them because you see them having success and you compare them versus realizing that God gave you a gift or you have some sort of a gift or there's something you're good at. And what is that thing that you're good at? And then pouring your heart and soul into the thing that you're already good and then become great at that. And boy, will that serve you so much more. And then learning how to outsource the things that you're not. And so I quickly figured out, wow, if I focus on the things that I already love that I'm good at and become great, it created more resources for me.

33:46Sal Di Stefano:And then if I took those resources and I invested in the people to take the things off my plate that I wasn't good at, that gave me even more time to go back to the thing that I was good at and become even more great at those things. And that cycle has continued to serve me throughout my entire journey, I think this is the greatest hack that I ever figured out as a young entrepreneur.

34:08Adam Schafer:Yeah. Next is to stay resilient, be resilient. Entrepreneurship is not a sprint. It's not easy success. It's hard, hard, hard, hard. And oftentimes the people that are successful, those are just the ones that hang in there and keep going. They're just the ones that go. And unfortunately today, I think it's more true today than ever. I believe social media has painted this picture of quick success where a trainer sees it and goes, oh, okay, so I should be able to make six figures within three months, or I'm going to build a social media page in six months and it's going to crush. No, business doesn't work that way.

34:48Adam Schafer:It never works that way. Those highlight reels you see on social media are the exceptions, not the rule. In fact, often, many times they're lying. They're not actually as successful as they seem. It would be like somebody who's like, oh man, I'm going to get jacked. And I'm going to get jacked in six months. It takes five years. It takes 10 years to do that. So this is all about staying resilient, fighting and pushing and trying and grinding and switching and pivoting and learning and keep going. Those are the ones that make it. The ones that quit. Look, if you quit, you fail 100%. Failure isn't about making a mistake because you can learn from those.

35:23Adam Schafer:Failure in this situation is quitting altogether. So make sure you stay resilient.

35:28Sal Di Stefano:I don't remember who said it first, but I do remember when I heard it, it stuck with me forever. And that is success is the battle of attrition. Your ability to just get beat up and get back up again and do it is truly like the definition of success. Can you do that? And I don't know how many businesses were one month away from it about to turn and somebody gave up. And the ones that make it are the ones that have decided that I'm going to do this at all costs. It's also why I know Sal's said this one before many times, like a definition of entrepreneur is jumping out of an airplane and building your parachute on the way down.

36:07Sal Di Stefano:Like you are just, I'm all in, I'm going all in and I'm risking it all and there's no turning back. I got to figure this out. And that attitude, that mentality going into business, that resiliency is what makes entrepreneurs successful. And some of them think they got it and they just don't. They get beat up a couple times and that's enough. And they're like, I can't, I can't handle this. And the ones that can take the beating and get back up and keep doing it and they will not take no for an answer. And they will figure this out, whether they have to learn from somebody else or reach out to others or figure it themselves or takes longer.

36:48Sal Di Stefano:Again, one of the things that I found most attractive about my, my, my, my partners was this mentality was that when we went, when we came into this business, like the idea of doing five podcasts a week, wasn't like some brilliant strategy of like, Oh, this is how we have the algorithm. It was like, no, uh, we're starting something that we all admit we suck at, and we don't know what exactly what we're doing. The quickest way to get good at anything or become an expert at something is to get reps and practice in. And so let's go. Let's go get beat up. Now, I hope it only takes us a few hundred and we're good, but no, it took a few thousand.

37:28Sal Di Stefano:But everybody got into it with the attitude of, I'm down. I'm down to do that. I'm down to get beat up. I'm down to suck at it for a long time and continue to do it. That resiliency is what turns into something years later that looks like success overnight.

37:47Adam Schafer:We all did this after work together late at night for an entire year before we asked for a single dollar. So that was a year of work, work, work, work, work, work, work. Work on top of work. Before we even tried to make any money. The other thing I like around entrepreneur is an entrepreneur is somebody who is willing to work 60 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week. And that is very true. That is very true. Last, keep learning. Always learn and grow. Now to put it differently, stay humble and be growth minded. You don't know everything. You'll never know everything. In fact, the best attitude is I don't know anything and I want to keep learning.

38:26Adam Schafer:This is what's going to keep you relevant. It's what's going to keep you excited. It's what's going to keep you successful. the second you become stagnant like a rock in the water is the second you start to grow moss and you become stale so you keep moving keep moving and keep growing and keep learning that's what's going to keep us exciting that's what's going to keep you growing and you have to have that hunger for it and don't think you know everything because the truth is you don't you

38:53Sal Di Stefano:just don't this is uh this is something of all the ones we've listed this is the one that i find myself repeating to myself more often than easily. And I get it as an entrepreneur, you can quickly get caught up within the business. And we talk a lot about this. You hear of us telling stories where we take off to Truckee and we get away. And a lot of that is to work outside the business because there's so many moving parts and it's so hard to do everything in it every day that really quickly you can lose sight of the big vision. You can lose sight of personal growth. And I'm guilty of this. And so I find myself, luckily I have a partner who knows that this is important to me.

39:35Sal Di Stefano:And so we always have these kind of check-ins where it's just like, what are we doing currently right now to grow? Are we reading right now? Are we listening to the podcast? What are we doing to better ourselves as humans, better our craft and our skills of the thing that we pride ourselves in what we do or whatever business that you're in? And so I think that this never stops. And the people that figure this out, that hack into building this into their lifestyle, really accelerate how fast they grow and build whatever it is they're trying to build.

40:07Adam Schafer:Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at mindpumpjustin. I'm at mindpumpdestephano. And Adam is at mindpumpad. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs.

40:43With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes, and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump. Hey, Chicagoland, the Wayfair store is in your neighborhood at Edens Plaza in Wilmette.

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