Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2640: Ten Lessons for the Fitness Entrepreneur

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

 Ten Lessons for the Fitness Entrepreneur Ten Lessons for the Fitness Entrepreneur #1 - Embrace Failure as a Teacher. (1:21) #2 - Focus on Customer Needs. (4:52) #3   Start Small, Scale Smart. (7:20) #4 - Build a Strong Team. (11:08) #5 - Cash Flow is King. (14:02) #6 - Adapt to Change. (18:55) #7 - Network Relentlessly. (23:49) #8 - Prioritize Time Management. (28:09) #9 - Stay Resilient. (33:07) #10 - Keep Learning. (37:10) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Code MINDPUMP for 20% off your first order (new customers) and double rewards points for existing customers. ** July Special: MAPS Split or Anabolic Metabolism Bundle 50% off! ** Code JULY50 at checkout ** Mind Pump #1595: Your Ideas Suck… How to be an Entrepreneur With Netflix Co-Founder Marc Randolph Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Marc Randolph (@MarcRandolph)  Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, today's episode 10 lessons for the fitness entrepreneur. We've been doing this for two and a half decades. We've been doing Mind Pump for 10 years. And we have some lessons that we've learned that we'd like to teach you on how you can build

your fitness business. This episode was brought to you by a sponsor, Legion. Legion right now has protein crispy treats. They're delicious, 15 grams of protein each, almost no sugar. They taste amazing, weigh protein. Go check them out, it's at buylegion.com forward slash mind pump, use the code mind pump,

get 20% off your first order. We just have a sale this month. MAPS split and the anabolic metabolism bundle, they're both 50% off. Go check them out, go to MAPSfitnessproducts.com and then use the code July 50 for the discount. Here comes the show. All right, let's talk about being an entrepreneur

in the world of fitness. You're gonna hear from us 10 lessons we learned as fitness entrepreneurs. Let's go. Learned or still learning? Still learning, you know we're learning. I'll start with the first one. Here's the first one, and I think this is just,

I mean this is, by the way, these are true for all entrepreneurs. Embrace failure as a teacher. You are going to, 100%, you're going to fail your way to success, just the way it is with business. You're gonna try ideas, you're gonna try different things, they're not gonna work. And good entrepreneurs are fast on their feet.

They take every failure as a lesson and they continue to move forward. Entrepreneurs that often fail or quit are the ones that can't handle this. They fail once or twice, they give up and they quit. I believe the speed at which you figure this out determines the level of success that you have. Totally. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs that I've met in my life, one of the things that they have in common, they all have this in common, they embrace failure. And the ones that are quick to it and respond, pivot, move on to the next thing, the next idea or get back up and try it again a different way, are the most successful.

And so if you go into it with the mindset that 100% we're going to fail, that we're gonna fail multiple times, it's like, who cares? How fast can I get to that point? How quickly can I learn from the mistake? And then how quickly can I turn it around? Really determines the level of success that you have.

And the ones that are uber successful are the ones that do this really fast. Yeah, couldn't have said it better. I think that where people make a mistake with this is they plan so much to avoid any kind of failure. Totally. They're so afraid of any failure that they plan, plan, plan, plan, plan. And oftentimes in business, the fastest way to get there is to not plan a lot, to try, try, try, try, see what works and then, because you never know, you just don't have a crystal

ball. And I remember years ago I had a client that was extremely successful and I asked him if he could tell me what it was that made you successful. He goes, well you got to ask me the right questions first. I said, well what should I ask you? He said, ask me you gotta ask me the right questions first. I said, well, what should I ask you? He said, ask me how many times I failed. And that was definitely really a good learning lesson

for me as a young kid, because here is this guy with $100 million at the time telling me, and he told me stories of how many times you went bankrupt on this journey. It's also one of the things, sorry Justin, it's one of the things that I attribute, when people ask me how the four of us have figured this out together is our ability to not really dwell on that.

I don't really care if Justin came up with the idea or Doug came up with the idea or Sal did. And I don't even care if they came up with the idea and it fails. None of us do. None of us held that over each other's head. It's like- No, it's our idea. It is.

We just agree, we go. And if it fails, it fails. And then we're on to the next thing. And I think the fact that all four of us were on the same page when it came to that, that's why it works. It's like we don't dwell on the fact that it failed and we're on to the next thing. Well, because there's so many unforeseen factors,

and I think as much planning as you want to put in towards this venture. It's just never, you're never gonna know all the variables that are gonna get thrown at you. And so you might as well get going as soon as possible. And too, there's a lot of times when somebody's first starting out, you gotta realize that this is the time to take the most risks.

Yes. When you don't have all the responsibilities, when you don't have a lot of excess safety that you have to be concerned about, this is really where you want to dive full in. 100%. Next is to focus on your customer's needs. Now, to put it differently,

I think sometimes entrepreneurs focus on getting new customers, which is not a bad thing to focus on, but over-servicing the customers that they have. The customers that you have will tell you exactly what you need to do based off of what they want and their needs. That is a smarter approach.

It's a more profitable approach and you're more likely to succeed by focusing on the customers you have and what they want versus how can I keep getting new, again, it's important to get new customers, but not over the ones you currently have. So another way to say this, and also attached to the most successful entrepreneurs that I've ever met or read, is customer or product obsessed. The most successful people in business are either one of those. They are either obsessed with their product, meaning that they are obsessed with making it perfectly better constantly, or completely customer obsessed.

How can we make this better for the customer? The customer is already buying from us. How can we make improvement even more? How can we over deliver? How can we create even more value? They become so obsessed with that, that it results in an incredible business. And so whether you're creating a product or servicing people, becoming obsessed about that process. Again, I do like to talk about a lot of the things we did wrong and what we learned from, but one of the things that we did really well early on was even when there was only a handful of people listening to the podcast and that bought our programs, which was not enough to provide a livelihood for any of us, we were obsessed with those customers

and providing as much value and over-delivering as possible to the point where there's been periods of time in this decade that we've been doing this where we've lost sight of that and that we've got together and said, oh my God, we've gotten this business has grown beyond us and we lost sight of the mission of being customer obsessed. Let's get back to what we prided ourselves on, on servicing our people, our current customers versus a lot of times what happens to a lot of people is they get, they get focused on acquisition, right?

Trying to get more leads, trying to get more people versus taking care of the people that they currently have. That will serve you far better in business. Yeah, next is to start small and then scale smart, right? So you want to start with a product or service that doesn't require a ton of money or investment that you can then test and see if there's traction. Once there's traction, scale it in a way that's smart. So what would be the opposite of a smart way to scale something?

If you scale something that requires more and more of your time in order to continue to scale, because now what you're doing is you're limited on your time and your ability. Smart scaling is like I got this service and this product and it's doing well, it's got traction, how can I grow this? By the way, this isn't always possible, so I know that,

but one of the smartest ways to scale is say, how can I grow this without needing to devote much more of my time and energy into this? Because now I can scale it, and if it doesn't take more of your time, well now the sky's the limit, right? Now the limits are not just your time. 24 hours a day is no longer the limit to how big you can make something.

And a lot of times, like as you go through this process, you're gonna figure out too, like you need to throw this idea away. Maybe it is something that you can through this process, you're gonna figure out too, like you need to throw this idea away. Maybe it is something that you can't easily scale, you can't do that at a reasonable cost, you'd be able to accomplish that. And so, going through that process and really evaluating, can I actually produce this, does this work,

and is there potential for me to scale it, or is this like something that it will be too difficult? One of my favorite interviews that we ever did was the co-founder of Netflix. Oh, I remember that. Mark Randolph. Yeah, Mark Randolph and he tells a story and again, he's also, this guy's got obviously

far more experience than we have in entrepreneurship and helping others with entrepreneurship and he talks about some of the most successful entrepreneurs are the people that have the ability to test their hypothesis as fast and as cheap as possible to find out whether their theory or idea that they think is so brilliant is that brilliant. And he tells a story about a girl in college who has this idea of creating an app that is basically going to allow people to share clothes. Like I don't know what an example of this would be, what other apps that exist like this. I know there's other products that are like this where basically I have

this expensive high heels and shoes or in purses and belts and they sit up in my closet, they cost me thousands of dollars And I wear them once a year Why not make some money off of that off of people that can borrow it from me really an idea, right? And she's asking him, you know how much for an app developer and should I do you know? How much I spent on the staffing and what should do and he's like whoa Whoa, he's like and she's in college dorm room at this time and he's like Do you have a piece of paper and a black marker? And she's like, yeah, I'm in college. Of course I have that. He's like, go grab it. And he's like,

I want you to write on this white piece of paper. Do you want to borrow my shoes and stick it on your dorm room door? And he goes, and then let's see if anybody knocks and let's see if lots of people knock and then let's let some people borrow some of your clothes. And then let's see how many people return them and let's see how many people return them destroyed and let's see how many people steal. And he's like, you will learn so much in that short period of time about the future or potential future of this business by testing that hypothesis for free and as fast as you possibly can. That ability is such a strength in successful entrepreneurs.

We all think we have brilliant ideas. That's all of us are guilty of this. It's the ones that can distill it down to the simplest way to test it as cheap and as fast as possible to prove their theory or idea is a good one or not. That is an incredible strength. That's a good one.

My next one is one of my favorites, which is to build a strong team. You want people who are passionate and talented. Those I think are given. I think when you hire somebody or build a team around you, you automatically are going to think they need to be talented and passionate. But here's the other two that I think we tend to forget. Do they compliment your skills, and do they share your vision?

Let's start with vision first. Vision lasts longer and is more powerful than money. It just is. What do I mean by that? I'll give an example. Volunteers are often the hardest working people. They will volunteer for a cause and it's not that they're not getting paid but they have a vision of the cause. It's got meaning for them right so if you have people around

you when you're starting a business who share your vision they're gonna stick around in the beginning when money isn't that great and then you also want people that complement your skills. Like maybe you are charismatic, outgoing, great at sales. Do you need to hire somebody, but you're terrible at organization and administration, right? Maybe you need somebody that works with you that doesn't have your skills, because that's you, but who has the other skills that you need help with.

The organization, the administration. When you find people like that that compliment you, you can do what you do best, they do what they do best, now you've got yourself an incredible team. So this one is an interesting one to talk about because it's paramount to scale. It's not necessary for someone to build a small business or livelihood for just you and your family.

And so this is where a lot of people get hung up. Maybe you have an incredible talent or skill and you've learned to go to market and you've proven that because a lot of people have paid you to do whatever talent or skill that you have and you make a pretty good livelihood. But if you wanna go beyond yourself and you want to build something bigger than just yourself,

it is impossible to do this alone. You have to build a team with people around you. And a lot of people get stuck here. In fact, we have a lot of friends, I've got family that have built good businesses. They have a very good business, they provide for their family, they make good money, but it's pretty much them. And maybe they have a few people or assistant that works for them, but for the most part, the business goes and dies with them and it's not anything bigger than that. There's nothing wrong with that. Maybe that's all you want.

Maybe you just want a livelihood for yourself and then maybe it's not that important that you learn to work with others or have vision or learn to motivate others or work with others. But if you want to grow anything bigger than yourself or more than just a livelihood for you and your family, then your ability to get others to move in the same direction and work for you is a skill that you want to invest in learning how to do that or hiring somebody that is really good at that. Otherwise you'll never break through that first plateau. Yep. 100%. Next is cashflow. Cash flow is king. So there's so many good ideas and good businesses or business ideas that fail because they can't survive those times when

you need to be lean and they're having difficulty because they're in debt. Like what you don't want to do is be buried in debt before you can really get your business off the ground. So in the beginning, you've got to be real smart and understand that real money, cash, not debt, but cash, this is what you want. This is what's going to help you survive in those early stages when things get really challenging. Later on, you can leverage yourself.

Now I know there's stories out there, success stories of people that leverage themselves right out the gates, but I think those are the, not the norm. Those are the exceptions. Those are the exceptions. Most, the vast majority of businesses that start out and then take off and succeed,

they're able to do this because they start off lean and they know that cash flow is everything. I mean, we didn't get, we didn't put ourselves in debt for, I don't know, in fact the debt that we did was all about investments, actually had nothing to do with the business. And that allowed us to scale appropriately, and we stayed very smart, we could've taken money on,

I think we would've wasted a lot of it, because we wouldn't have known where to put it. We wouldn't know where to go, you're not getting the right signals that you need to get if you're already funded and you're running your own ideas, you're not actually getting that type of feedback from your customer base, which actually is gonna determine the growth of your own company

and the product you're providing. So to be able to kind of run lean and really see what is working, cash is what's gonna give you that answer. So this is a really old adage that I would consider a lot in business if it wasn't for the current what, two, three, maybe decades. And we live in the place for the Silicon Valley. Where they start out debt and they go dead for a while. Yeah. And so before that time, right before this ability to

leverage other people's money like this. Uh, and there was, I guess there's examples of this. If you go way back of like borrowing maybe from your family or friends and where this happened, but this became really popular and Silken Valley is really the, the place that popularized this and normalized it. And, and, and it really, for people like us who lived in this area, personally, it distorted my vision for that. I really thought like, oh, this is how you do it. You take on all this money. And one of the lucky lessons that we've learned

and realized is what the point you made, Sal, that I think is so important is that even, and I remember saying this to us at one point, like, you know, even if someone dropped $10 million on us back in year one and year two, like, would we be any better off to, yeah, I don't think so. No, we wouldn't know where to go. No, we would have spent it in all the wrong places. Part of having to run lean and focus on cashflow forced us to make really smart strategic decisions

and go slower at the process. And that has served us so much. And one of the things I see being around a lot of VC people, I'm a part of a group where I'm the minority in that group as a bootstrap founder, is man, taking on all that money is an unbelievable pressure to know the right answers and know the right plays. And you don't get a lot of chance to figure it out. You are on the hook. You're on the hook for paying back potentially millions of dollars to investors and you have to answer to a board. And the truth is you're probably trying to figure this out along the way, and you don't know for sure the answer. And so I'm such a fan of operating from this place of cash flow and not taking on debt and money

because of the risk that comes with that. Yeah, a good example of this would be like, you're trying to build a fitness brand, and part of your business is posting, let's say on social media, clips and videos. And so you might think to yourself like, I'm gonna invest in a $5,000 camera to make it as high quality as possible.

No, no, use your phone. Use your phone and start there. See what works before you take your money and invest it in something big like a camera because, and by the way, I don't think I need to say this that much today. I think these days people understand that when it comes to content creating.

At least you should understand this. This has now been hammered. But people do this in many different ways. Like, oh, I wanna open up a personal training studio. So let me go find a studio, sign a five year lease. I'm on the hook for $4,000 a month. I don't have any clients yet. This is how I'm, like, no, no, no.

Go build your business. Go find someone's, you know. Hustle out of a garage. Yeah, a chiropractic office that lets you train out of there or pay rent somewhere where you could build a little clinic. 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. 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 is 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. This was during the, this was a long time ago, but he was using Facebook 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 gotta 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. 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 you know 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 You can you can connect with them. Obviously email's a great valuable resource to do that as well and really build that up.

But yeah, things are gonna change and you're gonna have to adapt and you're gonna have to do it on the fly a lot of times and it's hard, but that's what you gotta do. 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 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. 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 and 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 kinda right, but there's a better way. 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 advantage when you're small. When you are just trying to start, some of the things that you think is this disadvantage,

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. Well, yeah, 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. 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. You realize like, oh, nobody wants to hear that from you. Nobody gives a shit

when I talk about sports performance. Yeah, nobody thinks I'm a great sports trainer. Like, I guess I'm not gonna 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 maybe that's and I know so many successful stories of trainers that Talk about oh man when I first started I thought I was gonna be this or I was gonna do this thing and they're doing Something totally different that's it strengthen 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 step.

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, 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. 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 how I was going to market myself. Just observing all the top trainers and what they were doing, I would ask questions. It was not a scarcity-minded thing. I see what they're doing well. I see also doing, I would ask questions. And it was not a scarcity-minded thing. I see what they're doing well. I see also, too, what I would do differently, but that's a strength of mine that I could promote. And so this is something that led me towards a strategy

I wouldn't have normally done, but I saw that as being successful, and I could do just my own spin on it instead of being like, ah, screw this guy, and be negative about what they're doing. 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 30s. 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 we're already going 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.

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 gonna 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.

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 is 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 gonna go do one or two things for somebody, and then all of a sudden you have this massive network. No, it's a lifetime. It's a lifetime.

A lot of give and not a lot of take. 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.

Totally, next up is to prioritize time management. You wanna focus on things that give you a big return right out the gates and delegate or say no to distractions that don't align 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 use his social media more effectively to get more leads and more clients. And I told him, go outside and talk to people. 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 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 student back when I had my studio social media wasn't a big thing But we did have the internet and they would come and talk all about their website. How can I optimize my website? 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 will turn into probably one or two clients. 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 spend some time doing the stuff that gives you return right off the gates. Let's not waste our time on things that take too much time to give you very little return. I did this immediately with anything administration related. I would pay for that and it was investing in that because I knew that was something I was like so uninterested in doing and this 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 like for me to operate and to get out there and market myself and also service everybody I could service like effectively and even at a greater pace, like I needed to really account for that piece. And so investing in that was huge for me. 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. 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% of goal and I was celebrating with my team and 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. 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 gonna 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 goal 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, we were all, 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. And they just tore me apart., 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, 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 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 mid- mid prime hours in the gym, which is like five, six PM when the most people are in our gym that I could be talking to about, but I'm back there getting organized. And my buddy comes walking back, who wasn't my buddy at the time,

he was just a general manager. And he goes, what the fuck are you doing? And I'm like, oh, the other team, the boss came in and he said this about it 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 great. And he starts to listen 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 it was like, it's like epiphany and that permission to like stop hanging on to all. And I think entrepreneurs do this a lot to like stop hanging on to all and I think entrepreneurs do this a lot is that we compare ourselves to others and we go like, oh man, Justin,

he's so much more organized than me 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. 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. Yeah, next is to stay resilient, be resilient. You know, 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 you know, 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 this social media page in six months and it's gonna crush. No, business doesn't work that way, 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. This is, it would be like somebody who's like, oh man, I'm gonna get jacked,

and I'm gonna get jacked in six months. It takes five years, 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. Failure in this situation is quitting altogether so make sure you stay resilient. 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? 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 entrepreneur is jumping out of an airplane and building your parachute on the way down. 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 gotta 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 of times and that's enough and they're like, 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 out themselves or takes longer.

Again, one of the things that I found most attractive about my partners was this mentality. Was that when we came into this business, 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 and become an expert at something is to get reps and practice in. And so let's go, let's go get it. Now I hope it only takes us a few hundred and we're good, but no, it took a few thousand and that's it. Let's go get beat. Now I hope it only takes us a few hundred and we're good, but no, it took a few thousand. And that's it. But everybody, 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 a success overnight? 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. We're on top of work. Before we even tried to make any money. The other saying 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. 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. 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 gonna keep this exciting, that's what's gonna 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 just don't. 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 in the, within the business. 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. 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 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, I didn't luckily have a partner who knows that this is important to me. And so we always have these kind of check-ins or it's just like, you know, what are we doing currently right now to grow? Like, 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. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind Pump to Stefan out. Adam is at Mind Pump out. 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. With 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.