Barbell Shrugged - Building the Diesel Dad Mentorship Part 3 w/ John Swanson - Diesel Dad Episode 33

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

Busy Dads 👇👇 2 Steps to Start building a strong, lean, and athletic body you are proud of. Join my free Facebook group: http://bit.ly/DIESELDADDOJO Or Schedule a call with me here and will see if I can help you: https://bit.ly/DieselDadConsult ► Connect with Anders Varner: https://www.instagram.com/andersvarner ► Connect with John Swanson: https://www.instagram.com/johnwswanson

Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner. John Swanson back in the house. Part three. If you missed part one and part two, make sure you go back. Part one, we discussed a lot of the current state of actually looks, what it looks like when you build a company centered around the most important person, which is the client and getting them results. And also what's the name of the Facebook group that we're all in? Let me double check. Online Fit Coaches, online coaching program. Online coaches community seeking profit and freedom. Is there a way besides typing all that in that people can find that? I'll put it in the show notes. But the reason I bring it up is because you should go to that group because you did a live last night that was 25 minutes long on the flywheel method.

And honestly, I think that people could, I wish that I could have all the money back on the business school and my MBA, because just the way that you put that system together and explain it, I think that every coach that is interested in doing this as a career needs to go watch that specific live. Today, we are talking about how to scale a coaching business. And this is something that I'm super interested in talking to you about. Because when I started to look into hiring a coach and a mentor for us, building what is now the Diesel Dad Mentorship Program, one thing I was absolutely terrified of was the model that we ran for our online coaching programs at the gym,

in which we were able to take on up to like 30, 35 people charging $250 a month to CrossFit athletes that wanted to go to regionals or to the games and providing individualized coaching in which we were spending like countless hours tailoring every single thing to every single person. And it just, there was the scalability was almost impossible. Um, when, when you think about taking that flywheel method and really centering everything around client success and building a program specific to the person that you want to be helping for us, dads that want to lose 20 to 40 pounds. They hear our voices. They see us on YouTube. They know who Barbell Shrugged is and the people and the voices attached to it and our coaching. But how do we keep that product and keep that flywheel method rolling, knowing that we have to grow a business.

The more of a business we grow, the more money we make, the more people we're able to help without the product and the success rate diminishing. It's a really good question. I think that's probably the question that every entrepreneur wrestles with as they look to scale. And it's, it's one only through trials and tribulation. I remember when the Granite Games, you know, kicked off, it was 49 athletes. And at the peak on site, I think we put 23 or the one year, I think we had 3,500 athletes participate on site, not the qualifier, like physically on site. And500 athletes participate on site, not the qualifier,

like physically on site. And so that, you know, starts to be the question of like, how do you, basically, how do you create a method? And that's what we did at the Granite Games is we created a methodology, a proven system of how the event would function. And you said it yourself that the diesel dad is not Anders. It's a, it's a method. It's, it's a way of doing things. And so I think what you're hinting on is number one is as you scale a company, culture becomes really important culture for your team and then culture for the students coming in. Also, you have to get a lot more clear on the type of people that you serve. See, when you have 10 or 15 clients, the amount of variance that you can get away with and still get that person, you know, results is, is much higher. And that's because

you're much more coaching dependent, much more coaching, uh, coaching dependent in the sense of like, you're relying on their high skill. And what I said to our actual team and our staff meeting today is I said, we are in the process of building a business that is not going to rely on any one of our unique skills, but rather the ability for us to build a machine that is simply a system and a process. And then we can plug really good people into it, but it allows for scale. I think so many coaches get started and they just, they build everything around how unique their skillset is. And that gets you so far. But the problem is if you take a vacation, you get sick or you want to bring somebody in, they don't have those unique skillsets. So it's kind of a, maybe too wide of an answer, but I think culture is number one. And number two is honestly, uh, building structure

and systems that carry the methodology in the proven process through and then teaching people how to run the play rather than hoping that every coach you hire is a complete A plus player. Because while I think you should always hire a great talent, I think you get into a really dangerous business model when your company is talent driven. One of our friends in business has ran that way and we're having a conversation about it. And I said, the owner of the company doesn't realize that if you walk, you're going to walk with 25% of the revenue and you're, there is no system. There's no, they're not actually providing you anything. You're almost like a subcontractor in that world, even though you're an employee.

And I go by him allowing the business to be created like that, everything's good right now. But if anything suffers a little bit at the cultural level where you don't like this environment for yourself and you bounce, let's say two employees bounce. I'm like, they're just went 50% of the business revenue and that company goes bankrupt in less than six months because they won't be able to replace the talent and they never took time to build the system. You know, I, I I've heard this, I've, I've been a victim of this. I still struggle with it. Um, you know, when, when somebody comes into the mentorship program and we've hired our first coach, um, which is really awesome. He's super qualified. I've been

coaching over a decade and been in space for just like most of us, health and fitness training for his whole life. It has little to do with the qualifications. And I wonder what your thoughts are on like, is it the ego that doesn't allow us to let go of thinking that person's there because of us or like kind of the process of letting go and saying it's not, they're not here for me. They're here for the result. Yeah, I mean, I think that goes back to what we talked about with the flywheel method

in episode two is that when you truly have the proper intentions, we talk a lot about I give, when you have the proper intention and you put the customer at the center of it, it requires you as the owner to step aside and make the pathway and whatever's best for the client superior. And I do believe that it's hard. I mean, I even struggled with that a little bit personally selling the granite games

was like, wow, this is how people know me. Who am I going to be? And that's just ego getting in the way of like, if I sell this thing, I'm not the director of the granite games anymore. That's,

that's ego talking. And so I think it also, these are like deep rooted conversations, but like having a conversation around how you find your power and certainty. And if you find it because one of your clients is, is like giving you positive feedback, that's like deep rooted work that has to be done. Because a lot of times for us to scale a company, I don't think it's, even though I said it's

culture and systems and structure, it actually requires tremendous work to be done at the leadership level. And a lot of times that's some deep rooted things that we have to address because a lot of times we're actually the bottleneck. That's we, we stop our company because that's where we feel comfortable. I, it is already one of the hardest parts of this because we've taken on enough clients that Doug and I are maxed out with our ability to be able to serve the actual clients that we have. I mean, right now it's fine. Right now it's great. transitioning, hiring, training, building a coach, as well as building like a program director, somebody that can onboard clients with all of the proper information that they need, setting realistic goals. And having a program director is like a really challenging thing, because I know that when somebody sets a call with us and wants to reach their goals, like,

I know, I feel like my superpower, my entire career has been getting people to love training. So if I get on the phone with you, I know how to make you love fitness. I know how to make you love your goals. I'm so stoked about you hitting your goals that like, I don't know if the next person that we, that we build a position for. And it goes a little bit back to the talk you gave last night in our group about adjusting your thinking from that siloed marketing channel, a siloed sales channel, a siloed finance channel, and getting everybody customer-focused.

Where was that transition for you and realizing that those silos don't exist in a successful coaching business? They need to be all centered around kind of that flywheel method and focused on the client. It was a painful lesson that I learned because I paid a lot of people a lot of money to and they kept teaching us this system of marketing departments here sales departments here and I kind of at some point I don't know what hit me it was probably Jess that said John like you're a really smart person you don't need these people telling you how to run your business you built this thing from the ground up not many people have been able to do that how How are you doing it? And then I took some pen to paper and I said, well,

the only thing I care about is, is the athlete. And I care about the volunteer. And like, I look at, you know, the Granite Games is unique in the sense that you actually have three customers. You have your sponsors, you have your athletes and you have your volunteers. They're all customers. And so all I would do is say, how do we create that world-class experience for each one of those individuals? When truth be told in the hierarchical system, I think we prioritized athletes first in our early years. And then we brought the customer experience up for the volunteer. And eventually we would maybe get around to the sponsors.

We were never, you know, we never ran it for money really. So we were probably a little bit, you know, not nearly as good at that, that segment, but I started to realize, and then when I got into Wendell again, people started to be like, Oh, you got to set up your business this way. This is how it's going to scale. And I'm kind of just like, no, like, I don't think that's the right way to do it at all. Because I don't like if my sales department is chasing dollars because it completely actually deleverages the momentum we're creating because they're putting the wrong type of people in the business. And I don't want my marketing team just to generate leads because

that overwhelms the sales department with maybe the wrong people to talk to in the first place. And so how do we get this ecosystem where it's like a family and we have one kind of major mission. And so we call that our critical number and our critical number in our company is active students. And so like, we're all trying to grow one thing. We're not necessarily measuring how many leads or how much money do we generate? We're saying, look, the only thing that matters to us is getting the right people in the program so we can help them. And we're going to set our company up that way. And that's what the conversation centers around. So we don't have a marketing chat or a sales chat. We have a conversation about how does that thing function together?

Because it's a machine. It's not these single pieces independently functioning. Yeah. It's also really easy. And again, I've been, uh, I've fallen into this trap so many times where you, you have like your successful training program aimed at whatever goal it is. And then the, the next play or you go, well, how do we make this bigger? And you make another training program named aimed at another goal. And you realize that all you've done is like start stacking training programs or nutrition programs. And you're growing so wide that all of a sudden, I mean, we, we were very, um, much this company throughout the pandemic because we didn't have, uh, the, the core offer that we were about to launch right before the pandemic hit was aimed at gyms that all got shut

down for eight months. And as we were just kicking that off and making sales and starting to work with gyms, and then boom, everybody gets shut down. There's no business anymore. And you go back to, okay, well, we're going to launch X number of training programs every three weeks aimed at specific goals that people have ways to keep, I mean, really keep the business going in a time in which there's massive uncertainty. How difficult, I mean, it's not, I would say it's, had I not gone through that, it would be difficult to think that wide is, is a better way to go getting more training programs out to more people. But how difficult do you find when working with, with coaches to say, just stay in this lane and go deeper, build a more complete program, keep refining what they're, what you're doing and, and make what you do in a way world-class. What's interesting is I think when people go wide,

they're lacking the understanding of, of the get it, want it and capacity to do it. And really what happens is they're like, I could be here. I could be here. I could be here. I could be here.

And while all those things are true for us to really dominate a certain spot, you have to, you have to kind of focus. We were just talking about sports prior to this. And it's like, you, you have to focus, you have to commit at a certain point. And so the other side is like, it goes back to that. If you really, really dig into the flywheel, like really dig into what we're teaching there for it to truly function. It has to pump out case studies. It has to work, right? I think so many coaching programs, I actually think 95% of coaching programs don't work. Like if you look at what you actually paid for and the problem you were trying to solve, is it still there after you've gone through it? Most people don't finish a coaching program to begin with, um, yet alone, alone they go through and it actually works. And so it's actually kind of simple to be successful. Make a coaching program that works. But that being said, the amount of focus you have to put into it, you can't try to

do eight other things. I have a dear friend of mine that wants to get coached by me. And I said, look, I'm ready. And I think the thing you want to do is going to smash. But in the five minute conversation, you told me you're launching a podcast, you're launching another business and you want to do this. And I said, so come to me when all those things are up and running and you have time to say, this is my priority and you build it through and through. So, you know, go through beta, launch your program, grow it, and then turn back around and say, how do we optimize it? Which is how do you machine it, and then turn back around and say, how do we optimize it? Which is how do you machine it out and then start to scale it. And at that point, the company is no longer dependent on you. So like, can you grow beyond diesel data? Is this going to be the

only thing you are able to do? Absolutely not. But it's going to take you probably a good two years to build this thing up, put the infrastructure in place, put the systems, the software in place, put the team in place, put the leadership group in place that someday, if you want to start your next thing, because you're an entrepreneur and you love the idea of the launch phase, you can do that. But I think so many entrepreneurs, they get to the grow phase and it starts to make money. And then they jump back to the launch phase or the beta phase. And they never put enough infrastructure and systems in place. I think they jump back to the launch phase or the beta phase. And they never put enough infrastructure and systems in place. I think they avoid it because they don't feel comfortable doing it. And they're like, Oh, this is fine. It'll, it'll continue. But what they're relying on is

they probably hired one person that has high skillset. And if that person walks, that company crumbles. And then that's where you have too many balls in the air and stress, the anxiety, the, I don't want to do this anymore. That just starts to creep in because you're no longer able to make time for your health, your mindset, your family. Yeah. I imagine this is a big part of like your, your mastermind, um, in that, how do you, how do you get people to find out what their kind of their, their secret sauce is the special, special power that they have like i feel like over the years i've found that mine like i said is like i just i like to think that i'm the greatest training partner you've ever had in your life like if you walk into the gym with me i guarantee you're gonna have more fun than you've ever had in your life

lifting weights and that's what draws people to want to work with us because they're lifting weights. It's going to be so fun. And when you start to remove yourself from that, like it's hard to lose that personality and that fire that clients may be attracted to. Um, how, how do you go about taking the pieces and actually finding people that can maybe not replace, but build the system around, you know, creating a successful program by removing yourself and only doing that thing that really is your special power, the secret weapon that each person has. So it's actually identical to how you decide what your coaching program is going to do. So first question you got to ask yourself is, what am I passionate about? And then from there, so you can list several passions, right? I'm passionate about golf.

I'm passionate about marketing. I'm passionate about business. So you list all those out. And then write down, the next question is, what do I get? Of all these things that I'm passionate about, what do I get? I really get how to solve this problem. And then the last one is, which one do I have the capacity to do? Right now, I could do this.

And so a lot of times, I think people, they have aspirational businesses, meaning I've seen before where somebody's like, I really want to work with high-powered CEOs. I want to help them elevate their game. And I'm like, great. Like, have you worked with any high power CEOs? And they're like, no. And I'm like, have you been a high power CEO before? Like, no, like that's aspirational. And so you could be there in nine months working with that niche or that group, but where are you now today? What does that sandbox look like? So I think if you can fill those three and what you're doing is each time you fill the questions, I'll get it one in capacity, do it. You start to narrow down where you need to be. Now that same skillset, that same

tool that I just gave is exactly what we do when we hire. And it's exactly what we do when we do our reviews at six months in a year. What do you get? What do you want to do? And what do you have the capacity to do? And that's how we've gotten our team in the right spots. So Jess, who is my lovely wife, also business partner, was initially talking about going into the sales seat to be the sales director. And we took her through that exercise at a corporate, like a company level.

And she flat out said, I get it. I have the capacity to do it. I don't want it. I don't want the responsibility to be, to fall on my shoulders for that outcome in the apartment. She says, but here's what I think I've learned out of this exercise. I want to create the customer experience and I want everybody to feel like they're at Disney when they work with Wendell. I want to create the customer experience and I want everybody to feel like they're at Disney when they work with Wendell. I want to head up that department. And so by going through that, it was easy. And now she's, can she do sales? Yes.

She's done high ticket sales for 10 years, but where she's happiest is right here. This is where she's best. And that exercise has allowed us to get our team in the right seats. And then when we start to hire, we take them through that kind of same filtering system. Does that answer your question? Absolutely. It's something that's really, really hard to do. Like I actually remember, and we have these almost like stories of when we've done it wrong and how we would change it going back. And I remember there was a three-year time period when I owned the gym where we stopped coaching.

We were no longer the face of the class and the training on a daily basis. And it was really hard because I felt like just a lot of the energy changes when you take the two head people out of the class situation. Doing it right now and realizing that there's a need, like I do not need to be specifically reaching out and finding what people's goals are through direct messenger. I do not need to be on onboarding people into the program. There's coaches that know how to handle nutrition. And what I need to be doing is making sure that all of the right people are in the right place doing what they're

supposed to be doing so that we get clients the results uh that they're looking for and be a part of the process as well in in the places that i can whether uh you know it's not like i i don't communicate with the clients it's just i'm not doing it as much as other um coaches um you you mentioned you allow them to let you allow your coaches to do the heavy lifting and then it's very similar to how Wendell works where I step in and, and then do the specific things I have to do. One thing I think is really an important distinction is like your background and my background. I would slide to like the last 10%.

So our ability, so in Wendell, you know, we launched Wendell in under seven months to, you know, whatever, but howell in under seven months to, you know, whatever, but how quickly we put a team underneath us, what I'm finding with most of our students, the play they need to run is to get an executive assistant that just comes in and does a lot of the tactical work. And they get a lot of work off of their plate that they don't need to touch,

like respond to emails and like schedule their Facebook posts or what have you. And then the next big hire to make is typically a coach. Because coaches, to be honest, at the pay grade that you're able to pay your coaches, you can basically pluck your coach out of anywhere in the United States and they'll be a world-class coach because you're able to pay them so much more because of the profit margins you have. Where we're at is I think because this is business two, three, four, maybe 10, our ability to see like how to get people in the places really, really quickly. Like you're one of the fastest of all the customer or clients I've worked with to put their infrastructure in place. But that's because of your background, going through a lot of painful scenarios previously and doing this and having some trials and tribulations. Can I give you

feedback and can I help you? Sure. But what I do find is that the average person we're working with right now at a high level still struggles with kind of the leadership because that's a really different role. Like what you just talked about is a really different role and i think most people can step into making six you know between a hundred thousand to five hundred thousand dollars a year and don't have to be a leader yet it's when they have the aspirations to take it to seven figures or really put that team underneath or really chase freedom that they're like oh so i have to learn how to lead and i'm like yes and it's it's so different because yeah there's ego work that has to get done there's um just so much work that has to get done that we never got taught yeah well we're in a really interesting this is actually

the first time we talked about it but uh we might as well do it we're going to be launching in like uh two to four thousand retail stores our relationship with walmart uh when we were in 12 stores last year and uh we partnered with a supplement company that is number one in their category and launching performance nutrition uh brand into the largest retailer. And us and our relationship with Walmart and the work we've done with them allowed for this partnership. And it's wild to think how many people will be coming into the program if we didn't have our infrastructure built immediately, we'd be so far behind.

And we almost like the speed at which we could grow would almost make our company go down because we wouldn't be able to, we'd be scrambling so hard, which has been a great exercise for me and just figuring out what are the pieces that we actually need to have in place. When you see, and we've talked about this, but when you see companies scaling, like where do they end up kind of having those pitfalls? Because once you start to scale, it happens quickly. If you're putting the pieces in the right place, but you know, where, where do, especially in these coaching offers where there is a lot of high, it is a high touch thing we're doing. It's a, it's a weekly conversation. It's weekly check-ins. It's actually multiple check-ins per week to make sure people are on track. Um, you know, if you're taking some coach that's doing this for the first time, like, where are they going to,

this is going to happen to many of the of the people that I've even recommended to come into the program that are in it now, you know, they went from running a gym to now an online business. And in the gym world, it's like we're hiring coaches. Everyone kind of knows how a CrossFit gym flows. It's not the first time they've coached people. So they just get in a rhythm, but this is a, in a way, it's a wildly different beast um scaling an online company that is also very high touch uh you know how

when your coach and i i thought naming all their names like i see people doing very well in the program um there's no way that that didn't come with a lot of trial missteps and is there common themes or is it is it a based off a personality of letting go like just some some places that people end up stumbling as they grow their company um so a couple things i want to back up the first thing we always need to do is you need to get beta off the ground, right? So you have this idea, this problem you want to solve, and you want to start to produce case studies, right? Which is where you're at right now. And what you did a really good job is that you said, okay, I have proof of concept. I believe in what we're doing.

And then you kind of paused for a second and you started to ask yourself, how do you want to design your company? And that's, so when you, so I always say there's, there's basically the build phase, there's a launch phase, there's the grow phase, there's the optimize phase. And then when you hit scale, so the last two always get to at the point of scale is asking yourself this how do i want my company designed like that's a real question i ask our students like how do you want to grow and scale your company without sacrificing your health and your um your family if that makes sense yeah and so how do you get to that stage? Well, I would ask you like, there's a couple of ways we can take this. Do you want to bring a bunch of coaches underneath you and stay in the one-to-one model? Or do we want to take your proven process, turn it into an actual course? And now what we'll have is more of a medium ticket offer. Okay. And then eventually what you've already done well, and you, you knew this game coming into it, this is where you started is then you, you put low ticket, low ticket is,

is designed for lead generation. It's not to generate profit. It's designed to just fill the machine. Now the question is, do you want to fill that machine with all one-to-one high ticket clients, medium ticket clients, or a blend of both? And then down the road, you can slap on like experimental based offers, which is like an actual experience where they come out and there's the diesel dad, like summit or retreat and things like that. So how did those guys start to scale? Is they put a coach underneath them? I wouldn't say they're actually scaling yet. They're in the, well, they're in the early stages of scaling, but each one of them right now at our Wolfpack level, the conversation is centering around, do you want to have more of a one-on-one

business? Like I look at WEG. Michael and Adia have built a beautiful one-to-one business and they've done it exceptionally well. And they've kind of focused on more of that one-to-one. And then you look at, I'm trying to think of somebody that's got kind of a course, but let's say somebody that's got more of a course model with maybe a lighter coaching point. That would be more of your medium ticket. So to me, ultimately, it's a really big question that when you get there, that'll be the question I would ask you is, okay, we have everything going on in your life and Doug's life and family and your health. How do you want your company to function do you want to have you know a handful of coaches and a ton of clients going through your course or do you want to

have a bunch of coaches and you're selling a much more premium product and it actually comes down to total impact yeah because both will make profit both will create freedom for you but one might have a business where you have 200 clients and one could have a business where you have 10,000 clients. And so I think it also goes back to owner skillset. Do you want to get on camera? Do you want to record your course? Do you want to document? Do you want to go through that process? Not everybody does. Yeah. I mean, I can answer that question When I start to journal and write about the future and really do the deep work,

the more I realize that once you reach a certain place, what becomes the most important... always I shouldn't say always when my wife got pregnant pregnant we were having a baby the idea of success to me was that and it's interesting because we moved to a place that has year-round school was that every year whatever the kids were learning we would go do that thing to create an experience outside of the classroom and I had the freedom to be able to go do that like we learned about European history well we're gonna go spend three weeks in Europe and we're gonna go to all the places that you just learned about in school

that is like the the exact definition of what I consider success to be. I don't need a billion dollars to go do that. Like, if you're going to go learn about who knows whatever subject this is happens, US history, well, we just go to the place after you've learned about it in class, we make a family trip out of it. Like that, that is the, the amount of freedom that I want to have in my life. And if that can be done with 500 clients a year, phenomenal. It can be done with 200. If we need 10,000, those are, those are like the questions that I don't have the exact answer to, but I, I have a clear vision of where I want to be when I'm 44 years old and my daughter turns nine and we get to go create experiences around the life that she's living. In doing that,

I guess there isn't like a real question, more of an answer to your question, but part of that really is about freedom and creating the space to be able to do that. And that is one of the core tenets of your program is freedom. So how, I guess, how have you done that in building Wendell and selling the other programs or other businesses that you've had? Like, um, how do you teach freedom to people? Well, it's interesting. I think freedom is a, it's a pretty vague, pretty vague term. So to me, I think I'm assuming the most people haven't written out what they'd like to be doing at 44 years old, which is exactly 10 years after I sold the gym, which is why I know that, that thing. Yep. So for me, freedom just merely comes down that I have the

financial means and the time means to do what I would like to do. And so what's going to be interesting when you start to go to this next stage of your business, I actually brought, so we launched Wendell with one-on-one coaching. You were just working with me. It was a me and you relationship, got it off the ground. And I quickly realized, okay, I want to document the process. I want to take this to more coaches. I want to help more coaches in pain that are working the nine to five or really the 5am and the 8pm. And so we built our course, we refined it. We're actually about to redo the entire course again and relaunch it, which will be not its final version, but a much improved version. And what I realized is that I missed coaching.

And so that's where I brought Alpha back in. And so then I started to ask myself, well, what would I need to charge where I can scratch that itch and then at same time, still create that like really one-to-one experience. And so I capped my one-to-one coaching at only 10 clients. I think we're at six right now. And so I know that that'll be my threshold. Um, cause otherwise it starts to infringe on the freedom component because it starts to require too much time. And I don't really care how much money you're willing to pay me. It's, you can't pay me for my time if it takes me away from my father or my son or my wife or vacations. So that's where I think it'll be interesting for you. A lot of my top students, here's kind of the model they're running. They're going beta first, launching high ticket. They're

moving to hiring coaches underneath them. They're putting their course in play. And then they're actually bringing back an extremely high ticket where they work with like somebody directly. And, uh, but it's, it's the, the package is, is well into the, you know, 20 K. And the reason why they do it is that it allows them to still stay in that coaching. They like coaching. They don't want to give up coaching. They just can't have it be the single source of the revenue for the business. And it also allows them to stay, I think a little bit in the game of testing what is working, what's not working. And, um, and it's tremendous value. I mean, some of our current coaches, um, they're getting actresses ready, uh, you know, for movies and things like that. It's crazy because here's the deal.

They're, they were no different than who you and I were. We just taught them how to market and reach out to people and have conversations. And it's really neat. So I think that the model we teach is launch beta, get a coach underneath you. You have a high ticket coaching program. Awesome. Get your, your thing. That's going to scale out, which is typically your medium ticket coaching program. Then throw in your low ticket, which you guys do exceptionally well already and then after all that's built and your systems and your processes are there make a decision do you want to get back in the coaching game great maybe maybe take three maybe five maybe seven charge an absolute premium for it it allows you to scratch that itch at the same time it doesn't

take away from the thing that we're actually after impact profit and freedom yeah that you know you touch on a point there that's so real to me of like actually being a coach like especially when you get into the online world and you start to see people that have massive followings and you they they do really well but they're not in they're not actually coaching they're selling a shit ton of programs which is phenomenal but they i i really started to miss the idea of coaching i mean i still to this day like i have a kid that comes over and trains with me during the summer uh plays lacrosse at west point. And I'm like, dude,

how do I find all the other high school and college athletes around here? I want them in the gym. I want them in my garage, training hard with us. And he goes, well, I can make that happen. And I was like, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Actually I have an idea that I'd like to coach all of them, but I really don't want to. Cause as soon as they sign up, I'm an idea that I'd like to coach all of them, but I really don't want to because as soon as they sign up, I'm going to be like, oh, no, now I owe you 12 hours a month. I'm never getting that back.

It's a really tough thing for coaches, especially getting into the online world because you just don't want to overextend yourself, but at the same time, you lose your edge a little bit when you're when you're not in the grind doing the work i i had a neighbor good friend of mine on a sunday i walked over he was grilling and i just got done power washing the deck and i walk over and he looks and he goes how do i how do i look like you what does it cost for me to get coached by you? And I looked at him and I said, you can't pay me enough to coach you. That's the honest answer. There's no sum of money that would allow

for that relationship to exist. But I said, here's what I'll do for you. I work out every day at 1130. Show up in the garage and during the 90 minutes, you can ask me any question while we're training and I will not charge you a dollar. And what I was doing in that moment was protecting my time because if I take his a thousand or $2,000 a month or 3000 or 4,000, whatever it is, it requires me to give up some of these things that were hard to achieve. So instead I'm like, I train at this time. If you're not going to annoy me, you're going to show up and you these things that I worked hard to achieve. So instead I'm like,

I train at this time. If you're not going to annoy me, you're going to show up and you're going to add to the environment. I'm not going to charge you. But I, if I take your money, I'm actually taking steps backwards in my life, which is what would happen for you if you would have, you know, started training all those collegiate athletes is it feels fun, but now you just gave up a ton of freedom components that you worked hard to achieve. Um, and I think that's a really hard thing to do as an entrepreneur is you're going to have to learn to say no. And just because you can, doesn't mean you should. And that's something I've been really trying to drive home to our students is, yeah, you can do that. But what is the cost of that? Yeah. Cause it inherently has a cost.

Every decision has a cost. I want to go back. You're talking and last night you laid out and we talked before the show about the the, the marketing model between your sales team and your service team and, and how you envision marketing of your company and how other coaches can start to implement that and kind of shift the focus. Just as some backdrop, we were discussing the flywheel model and a piece of that being marketing and onboarding new clients and how do we get their attention. And I was talking about how it's very easy for me to even go back and play some of the old tapes and the old systems that I have run many times of what's my cost per lead? What's the email sequence that I blast them with? Making sure that I have a really cool headline in the subject so that they open the email. What's my open rate? How am I converting all those people into paying clients, getting them on calls. And the model you laid out last night was fantastic. It super hit because that old funnel and then just models is really challenging. And then moving that into the flywheel, but specifically talking about the marketing,

because there's really these like big channels. It's like YouTube, podcast, email, social media, and then take your pick of social medias that you'd like to do. But one thing that I really enjoyed about the talk was I don't want to spend my time doing many of those things. A lot of those channels don't align with who I want to be, the coach I want to be, the message I want to get out. Um, and how you kind of are thinking about solving that, that problem now. Yeah, it, it, it comes from, this is probably a, it goes back to solving a problem where I don't want to be the person

that's on social media. What I find is that the more my phone is in my hand, the more I'm like stressed out. Like I don't love having a cell phone. How far away from you getting a flip phone are you? Have you thought about it? So CJ Martin actually bought me one and sent me it. I have not activated it yet. I've been talking for three years about having a private flip phone that only family and close friends have the number to. So I actually have a second iPhone right now that has got a new number that nobody actually has.

And I've toyed with the idea of going that route. I'm like exceptionally, the fact that I bought the phone and have the number, I just haven't fully committed. But one of the things that I realized is that in the old model, the marketing department, it's very disjointed from the rest of the business. And so they're left to study the data and there's nothing wrong with it. Study the headline, you know, the button color, all this crap, right? The, the formatting of the copy. And when you move back into the flywheel model, what happens is the marketing department is much more of a content distribution department. They're the, the, the headlines are actually written by the student or the prospect. Um,

and so your sales department, what they are is the vehicle of false belief collection. And so what we do is we teach our students how, when they get on a call, how to document that call to actually pull out what the false beliefs were. And then what we do is we have that part of the company, bring it forward so that the marketing department can see all the false beliefs. The false beliefs are the obstacle that is stopping the individual, your ideal client, from taking action because they believe something that isn't necessarily true. Now, at the same time, your service department is catching people who are having emotional and logical breakthroughs. Logical breakthrough could be

they lost 20 pounds, but the emotional breakthrough is, dude, I have so much energy to play. I played catch with my son for the first time. He said, dad, I just love the way you are now, or whatever they say. That's an emotional. And so they're kind of primed for what I would call a hot seat. So what we have done is we built a system out where when people have those breakthroughs, we're able to schedule schedule and we create the content around the interview. And what that does is that that creates our testimonial. It allows us to create a status upgrade for that individual. They share it, they promote it. I think I'm really, well, I don't think we're about to roll out something that I think from a marketing side is, is really unique in the sense of you don't sit down there and be like, let's create a 30 day marketing schedule. No, the actual machine actually spits out what needs to get created each week. And then really your marketing team just does the

distribution of it. And so you don't have to worry about Instagram and Facebook and all those things. Your team will just produce the content out. You actually, as the, if you wanted to have that role would be the person that teaches just like last night, I, you know, got on camera and film the 25 minute I'm teaching, I'm i'm in my happy spot yeah and my team takes all of that and what their job is how do we get eyes on what john just taught and the reason why i taught that is it came from our our our uh sales department it was a false belief that i was actually teaching the flywheel method um and so anyways that our system. It's if you didn't watch yesterday's training, it's hard because you got to, I basically draw out how this thing functions,

but my vision is, you know, 10 years, 15 years of a marketing person that I think we can actually get rid of the marketing department in the essence of like, they got to create the content, but rather they're just a distribution channel. And then you pick your platforms. Like yesterday's video, I was joking with you. That could easily be a podcast, but it also could be a YouTube video. And now you're starting to see that the machine, the company of sales and delivery is really kicking out what needs to be talked about. Not the marketing department being like, I got an idea. We're going to talk about this.

No, they should just distribute what was created. It's exactly, it's funny just following the trainings and everything we're building in the mentorship and knowing that you were a gym owner, that's why it aligned so well because I feel like as gym owners, and that's how you guys originally started this out was just for gym owners to help them build an online business and um those gym owners started selling their gyms running online businesses only i i have now sold i have sold six gyms and, uh, helped liquidate like a, another handful.

I have like a full system to help gym owners do it. And, uh, and it's not one of those things where we really talk about, but they start to get to a spot where they're making good money. Their coaching program is actually getting better results and they have the freedom to pick their kids up from school. And they kind of get to a spot where they're like you know what the gym got me here but I think I'm ready for my next stage of my life and it's you know I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the gym I think being a gym owner serves a very specific purpose and if that's

what you want then you should completely do it but I think there's a lot of other gym owners that they have a unique skill set but they don't know how it would transition to any other thing in life. So they feel a little bit stuck. Dude, I think there's such an identity crisis almost that all gym owners or entrepreneurs go through. Opening a gym is one of the easiest things in the world. Running a good one's really hard, but you go buy some bumper plates. How about this? Find $60,000, slap down a deposit and five kettlebells, five barbells, some bumper plates, and half of a room filled with mats. That was my initial gym. It didn't even have fully matted everything. And we turned it into a very successful gym. The identity piece becomes like, how do I grow out of this

realizing that it doesn't, it doesn't, shouldn't say it doesn't work. It's very hard to make gym ownership work because your working hours are the hours that you should be home with your family, that you should be getting your kids to school. Like If you're in the gym industry, you work from 6 to 9, 6 to 10, and then you work from 4 to 9. In the middle of the day when nobody else is doing anything, that beats you down. One of the biggest things for me and why we joined the program, well, one, we wanted to create significantly more impact,

which we covered in the first episode of this, but I like, I really needed a way to figure out how to create the impact and shift the identity away for it to like, feel like it was more professional than just running volume games to programs. In building this and getting people to believe that they're, you know, those case studies make a huge difference. Once you start to see people getting the actual results and seeing how happy they are, seeing their behaviors change, a lot of that mindset shift, like that's the stuff that really impacts you as a coach to

believe that this is possible and that you can produce the results you're talking about. But how much of like the identity shift from like, oh, I'm a gym owner and people lumping themselves in there to like, how do you become a professional? I've seen your case studies of people that have had that transformation of like, oh, wow, I'm like a real coach now. And the process that they go through in just a short four to five months of working with you. So I don't think I've ever really told people how we even got in this spot, like publicly. But if you study St. Cloud, Minnesota right now, it's going through a pretty strong

dynamic shift from an economic level, right? And so you've been to FAST, our gym. I think we had built, I mean, even Jason Kalipa said he was blown away at how nice our gym was. Yeah. I thought we built probably a 1% gym and I would stand toe to toe with almost anybody in the world and say, our gym belongs in the top 1%. Coaching was excellent, is excellent. Facility was amazing, great community. And what I looked at is I'd put my heart and soul into this business. And if something happened at an economic level locally, the company was gone. And it stemmed from this book I read. And the book basically talked about when we go through economic downturns, the only class that

gets affected is the middle class. The rich are always rich, the poor are always poor. It's the middle class that rides the roller coaster. And most CrossFit gyms or my gym, you know, was selling $300 memberships to $200 memberships. We were servicing the middle class, truthfully. And so I was like, you know what? I want to build another revenue stream that is not local economic dependent. I want to diversify with the current skill sets we have. So we went online and, you know, we hired a bunch of coaches. They told us to do webinars, do this, do that.

None of it worked. And so we went back to like kind of our old school marketing of how we built the Granite Games. And I still remember we made our first sale ever, Jess did, her first ever sale of somebody that wasn't a gym member in this new like high ticket system. We were in Arizona and she looked at me and she's like, this is crazy. Like I just signed this person up and I'm sitting at the pool right now.

Like just crazy. Cause typically you're in the gym, right? Yeah. And so the first month we hit 30 K I'm like, Whoa, like that's 30 K take home. That's, you know, we stack two or three months like this and that's, we're making more money doing this than we could owning the gym altogether. And all of a sudden it got, it picked up momentum, right? Cause we, we kept learning and we kept growing and we were using our flywheel. And then all of a sudden it just hit a spot where I was like, this doesn't make sense to own the gym anymore. Like we have, we're actually getting our clients better results online. We make way more profit and we have the freedom to go pick up the kids from school whenever there's no, Oh, a coach calls in uh sick and we got to go coach for them or cover um and we had a deep team but it just the risk versus reward of owning the gym just no longer made sense because we had

a new opportunity and so that is that is how we went through our transformation um one of our students i won't say his name, but I remember him calling me and he's like, dude, he didn't tell me this at the time. He was a very high level athlete in the CrossFit space, extremely high level. And he wanted to do our program, but he couldn't afford it. And eventually he figured out a way to get into the program.

And it came out 60 days later that he was getting evicted out of his gym. Like the gym just had completely failed. What was crazy is on his 72nd day in our program, he had done over 100K. And now this guy, you know, he's got actresses reaching out to him to coach him. He's just in a completely different spot. So he went from, and I told him, I said, the same person exists the whole time. I said, you just weren't in right spot the right model yeah you had

taken the wrong advice because I didn't change him at a DNA level but he's now extrapolated best version of himself and it's crazy because he's able to take vacations he's able to stay at whatever nice hotel I mean he was talking about how the other day he took his nephew to a water park and this is where people were at. He goes, they had raised the prices because of COVID. They can't have as many people there. So they doubled the price. And he goes, a year ago, I would have left with my nephew and not took him to the water park and made up some extreme reason why we couldn't get in. He goes, I had him swipe my credit card and I didn't care.

That is the level of freedom. We're not talking about flying private jet freedom. We're talking about being able to take care of the ones we love. And I was like, that's like one of the most heartwarming stories ever. It's like he no longer has to worry about when he swipes his debit card, if he can pay the bill. Yeah. It's really interesting because I, just over the years being in this industry, I still meet people to this day. They go,

how do you do fitness? You have a podcast? How do you actually pay the bills? And what I want to say to them, and it's still very, very hard, but what I want to say to them and it's still very very hard but what i want to say to him is like man you got to ride this roller coaster and figure out where you fit in and i can honestly say this is the first time since maybe opening the gym where the the business that we run the results that we get the results that we get, the impact that we make, um, aligns with who I want to be as a coach. Um, the, the model of pumping as many people to a landing page and getting them to buy my program doesn't align. I have to be a social media superstar to do that. That doesn't align with my family. It doesn't align with my kids. It doesn't align with who I want to be. I don't want to be playing with my neighbors and watching

the kids play and think, oh man, this is on brand. I need to go take a video. I don't want that. I don't want that at all. I don't want to be the, I don't need to be the company that's running $75,000 in ads to, to landing pages and hoping people stick around for six months. That's a great model if that's what you want to run, but it's very hard. This is truly the first time I've, since, like I said, opening the gym. And that was because I was starving and broke and hated my job. And the next step was I need to open a gym because the gym's the only thing that loves me back. So I'm going to go to that place and just, I'll just be broke forever. That's fine. I don't care. But this is the, this is truly the first time that like I'm connecting with the people that I want to connect with. Dads, we all, we all get it. Like you want to, that like lifting

weights. I like lifting weights. We can talk about that. We have this thing in common and you've got a big problem to solve. Like you're not being the leader in your household that you want to be. So how do we fix that? It starts typically with the person that they wake up. What happens to their mindset? What's their first thought when they get out of bed, they go to the bathroom,

what do they look at and how does that affect the rest of their day? I, if you are a coach that is looking to make an impact and be very specific about the people that you want to spend your time around, I just think that this course is like a no-brainer. It's radically shifted my view of where we can go as a company as it aligns to the people I want to work with, the results we want to get, the impact we get to make, and the lifestyle I want to live with my family. And that's, it's really cool to be able to project out where we want to go and how we can do it, knowing that there's a model that, I don't want to say lucky, took a lot of work to find it and to go through all the ups and downs, but to find something that allows us to have life and business

and family and fitness and all of it aligned in the same direction. A lot of fun. I think one of the coolest parts is as you grow as a father, as a leader, you know, like I watched one of our students do this right now. He started with ex-athletes and because he did his job so well that these high performing CEOs are starting to reach out to him. And so he's starting to say, oh, like, I really, I really enjoy this conversation over here. I really like to work with this type of student, but he took it where he was at initially and he crushed it. And because of that, it attracted the next layer of people. He reached out to me in July. He basically shut his entire company off.

He was getting no leads. He was basically trying to just coach anybody in the online space. And so they bought a, uh, a trailer, an RV and drove up to Portland, uh, up the coast. And basically he just stopped his company and we're very close friends. I reached out to him and I said, Hey man, like, how are things going? Like, how are you doing as a, as a person? And we have a, you know, 10 year friendship and he's like, I just, I don't get it. Like, I don't get the online space. Like I just, he was, you get to see, he was kind of frustrated. And I think ultimately he wasn't hurt that his business wasn't like crushing. Cause I, number one, he's such a brilliant coach, but number two, I think he felt that he was just letting his family and

his, his, his daughter down. And that was really hard for him. And so he comes in and he pivots and I'm like, well, you know, we, we go through GWC and he's like, I really connect with ex-athletes. Like, those are my people. Like, yeah, I can help a mom and yeah, I can help this person over here. But like, I was an ex-athlete and the struggles and the things that you have to go through and the psychological like strain of like having a tribe and then it's gone. I'm like, awesome, let's launch with ex-athletes. And so we kind of walked and we built that pathway and built the coaching program around it. And because he's done so well, he, and, and, and part of it is actually even through the growth of Wendell,

people ask me, like, who's your personal coach? I'm like, why work with this guy? He's starting to get a lot of like actual CEOs or like really, really high power people. So it's kind of interesting that he has his, like his course, his middle ticket is actually ex athletes, but he's starting to really attract like the next echelon. And it's opening up our opportunity where, you know, he's selling 20K packages for online coaching and people are happy to pay it because the impact he's able to create, like to get a CEO's mind and body right so they can do their job. The amount of millions of dollars that creates for that company is astronomical. So anyways, what I was saying

with Diesel Dad is like, you guys are just getting through launch and you're crushing already. And you'll, you have some really interesting decisions to make in the next 24 months, really, of where you guys want to take it. And you can take it in so many directions. That's the really the fun part of all this is you're never pigeonholed to like one thing. Like as you grow and like as your passion changes, it may be dads right now because you're, you know, a young dad, but it might switch and it might be something else someday. And the cool part is you can, you can make the decision to shift that if you want.

And it's not a massively hard pivot. It's not like uprooting your gym and moving it to a different city and starting all over. Um, where can people find you, my man? Head over to Instagram, John W. Swanson. Just shoot me a message, connect. Let me know that you basically listened to one of these podcasts. And honestly, it'll be one of the most relaxed conversations you ever have had. And it's actually me on my Instagram. You're talking with me. It's not my assistant. And we'll just kind of figure out where you're at and where you want to go. And honestly, I'll point you in the right direction. We most likely aren't a good fit to help you. And if we are, we'll let you know. But either way, I think the most important thing

people can do out there right now is hopefully use all of this information and just go take action, whether it's with us or without us. Just look, if you're not happy with where things are going, make the decision to change and change is hard and it's scary, but there's people in the world that will support you and encourage you and help you get through it. You just got to ask for help. Um, yeah, it's any coaches just if, if my voice matters at all to you, go bet on yourself, go bet on the fact that you can be great at your job and, find a coach that can allow you and provide like a, a framework that allows you to be great and, um, create something great that makes an impact on people's lives.

That's, that's truly been the coolest part about the diesel dad mentorship program so far is, is actually meeting the people, getting to know their lives and, and watching the transformation happen. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at barbell-shrugged.

Make sure you get over to dieseldadmentorship.com. That is where you can apply to be in the Diesel Dad Mentorship for Busy Dads. I want to lose 20 to 40 pounds without restrictive diets and spending 60 to 90 minutes in the gym. And if you are in San Diego, LA, Vegas, or Palm Springs, get over to Walmart. Three programs on the shelf and the pharmacy. See you guys next week.