Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur

 Hey guys, Ryan Alford here host of Right About Now. On today's episode, we bring together really
 a masterclass in entrepreneurship. We've had over 500 episodes at this stage and we really
 have started to aggregate some of the best business knowledge in the industry. And, you know,
 you can read books, you can listen to shows, but we want to aggregate what we think is some of
 the best advice, whether you're an entrepreneur that's just started out or you're in the business
 for 10 plus years. These are tactics, techniques, actionable advice from some of the best.
 We've got five of my favorites here, Jasmine Star, Jeff Duden from Homefront Brands, Sean
 Whalen from Lion's Not Cheap, Josh Snow from Snow Teeth Whitening and Devon Klein from Bern
 Boot Camp. These are some of my favorite entrepreneurs giving the best advice. That's what we do here.
 We take the BS out of business in this masterclass series on entrepreneurship on Right About Now.
 This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production.
 We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month.
 Taking the BS out of business for over six years in over 400 episodes. You ready to start
 snapping necks and caching checks? Well, it starts right about now.
 What's up guys? Welcome to right about now. Hey, we're always getting right. It's always about now.
 What makes you keep pushing forward? What got you? Something impacted you? Something made you
 that was a nature nurture. What was it? Uh, perhaps mix of both. My father is from Mexico. My
 mom is from Puerto Rico. My dad came over. I was like 13, 14 and then in listed the United
 States Marine Corps and earned his citizenship. So I think that growing up with that perspective,
 as a first generation, like, you know, you see your dad being given the golden ticket.
 And I think that, you know, I won the genetic lottery by being born in this country.
 But having a father who is drilled into us like, we are so incredibly fortunate to live in a country
 where you don't have barriers to do the thing that you want. It is on the back end of people
 who have the huts butt and the audacity to do something that they are unqualified to do. And so
 having that growing up, but then also realizing you're owed nothing. Getting into the country
 congrats. Being born into this country, congrats. You're old jack squat. Everything that you have is
 on the back of your willingness to do the damn work. And so what it made me gritty knowing I'm
 I'm owed nothing. I don't just because I start a business doesn't mean my business should be
 successful. Just because I start a business and it's successful doesn't mean I'm going to be the
 top one percent. If I go in in my my perspective, just like Simon Sinek says that this is an infinite
 game. There's no such thing as winning in business. You can win your own game, but many of us don't
 even define what the game we're playing is. And so all of a sudden, we play a game in our own
 mind where we move the goalpost. And so it's just like all this year, you know, it's like I'm
 going to do my 10 million. And the minute we get to 9.5, it's like, no, no, no, I see what I need,
 what I really meant was 11. And then we beat ourselves up one of the year because we didn't do
 the thing that we wanted to do. What game are you actually playing? Because the minute that we define
 our rubric of success, because sometimes money isn't always the goal. Sometimes the goal is do I
 have more time to do the things I want to do with the people I want to do with? It's like what is
 the point of having a 11 million dollar a year if on the back of it, you miss the people and the
 things that were the most important to you. You didn't win. You lost. You just didn't know what game
 you were playing. So for us to actually have a conversation of like, what makes you greedy? Well,
 first and foremost, let's talk about what we're owed. Nothing. Let's talk about how we win
 setting some goals and then working like hell to get them, but not at the cost of compromising
 the thing that's the most important to you. So what makes me greedy? The fact that I have simply
 chosen, this is the game I want to play. And every time I get punched in the gut because we always do
 that's the sport. We're literally playing emotional rugby all day every day. We play rugby in our
 sleep. I don't know about you. I play rugby music. I wake up and I'm like, oh my god. Oh my god.
 This is the game we're voluntarily playing. We signed up for it. We can't complain about the thing
 that we want to do to get us to where we want to go. So I just think, what a privilege. What a
 privilege that I get to wake up, go on a walk in Newport Beach, have breakfast with my daughter,
 have a conversation with somebody I find intellectually stimulating where we get to help
 and empower other people. And then I get to go in and do coaching on the inside of social
 period. And then I get to create content. I get to do podcast. What an honor and what a luxury.
 So if I want both sides of it, the lifestyle, the luxury, I better be able to wake up after
 my teeth have been knocked out and say, okay, this is the game I'm playing. I'm chosen this. What an
 honor and what a privilege. I better show up that way. Man, I love it. I like you. Yeah. Why,
 why does some people always think they're owed something? Why are we that way? And I'm going to say
 me. They always be shit. But like what, what makes is it just Americans being spoiled? And I'm not
 saying everybody's that way. But we know for being real, a lot of people feel that way, which is why
 you stand out. Like others stand out because you don't, you don't, you work for it. You just keep
 going, no matter what it looks like. But I don't understand what, but what gets people, I don't know
 what something, a lot of people that way, though, they just they throw it. And I want to be very clear.
 I don't want to pretend like I haven't struggled with that or I'm above that. There are times,
 for instance, I look at business a lot, very similar to parallel lines of working out and going to
 the gym. There are just some human composition that no matter what I do, I can work equally as hard
 as somebody else. I might not have the body type, the metabolism, I might not have the genes
 to ever look or be like somebody else, right? But we're doing the same work. And so it's natural.
 It is human condition to say, I'm doing that level of work. Why am I not getting the same results?
 But the minute you dwell in the land of unknowns, like you ask a dead end question, right? Like,
 why is my business not working? That's not really a question that we're really going to quantify
 right now. But if you ask yourself, how might I get 1% better in this? Now we have a clear path
 to getting a result, regardless of if it's a result that you want, at least you can take the next
 step. And so I don't know if it's as much as an entitlement, as in like I deserve to be successful.
 As much as I see a lot more in the entrepreneurial realm is I'm doing the work, but I'm not getting
 the results. But the problem with that, and it is a problem, the pandemic of emotions that we
 and go through is we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. We have no idea. So when we say
 I'm doing the same work as that person, you, you know, Jack squat about that other person's
 business. Like let's just take down all the curtains that people used to hide behind because
 I see a lot of people being like, oh, I just did a million dollar launch. And that's amazing. I
 clap it up. But what a lot of people don't know is you ran $750,000 and adds to get that number.
 So it's like, you know, oh, I did 10 million in business. Great. And a lot of your business,
 the majority of it is done on affiliates and JVs. So your revenue is not what you're proposing
 at. You know, we don't know. We have no idea if somebody's business was inherited. We have no
 idea how much debt somebody has. We have no idea. The byline of the revenue on their profit and
 law statement is taking up 82% of what they're bringing in. We know nothing about other people's
 businesses. So again, instead of saying, why don't I have if I'm doing the same, I want you to,
 I want you to come back and say, I don't know how they got there. I applaud the work they've done
 because they're proving that it is possible to get there. But I'm going to continue to run my own
 race because even if at the end of the day, my business is smaller than somebody else's, but my
 profitability is higher and my working cash, my operating revenue is right where I needed to be.
 I've won. But the only reason why I can say I've won is because I've already defined it as my
 personal win. So I get to play my own damn game. I get to find some deep satisfaction. What is
 I'm doing? But then also put some benchmarks on myself and the team big. How are we going to get
 to the next level? That's the game for us. We clearly define it. We know we're owed nothing.
 We don't compare ourselves to somebody else because we don't know what's going on behind the scenes
 and we show up and we do the damn work. I think the biggest takeaway right there is you got to play
 your own game. Like it's like, I like to listen to people talking like clients come to me. They,
 I'm like a counselor even I'm a marketer. You know, I listen to them talk and then that's like,
 I boil it down for him. Like, okay, here's let's just get the brass text. You got to play your
 own damn game. And you know, it's hard because social, the irony of this and the irony what I'm
 going to say is social media amplifies everything that puts everyone else's game full force in your
 face. Whether it's fake or real or you know, who knows? Like you said, you don't know all the details
 there's a lot of show business going on. But the irony of it is the social media amplifies it
 when you really need to tune it out when it comes down to what you want to do. And I love
 what you're saying. I have people all time social media is not working. You know, like I'm not,
 it's not doing this and I'm not going to look at it. And I'm like, you've posted four times
 in four months. What do you mean it's not working? It's like, you know, how many times are you
 see this? You have people come to you and like they go this or that or tactic or these things
 aren't working. And you just you don't have to get under the hood. You like, you like lifted up
 one inch and there's like oil spilled everywhere. You know, and it's like, come on, man. You know,
 are you serious? It's like, but you have to play your own game, but you've got to make it,
 you got to make it tangible. You have to set, oh, it's not working. Okay, well, what's not working?
 You know, like you got to have seven things that ladder up to one thing. You know, like,
 but and you got to measure the seven things. But I don't know what I still comes back to the
 the reflection of what you get to play your own game and learn and absorb from others.
 But you just can't get into the comparison game at all times. It's just it's just is a road to
 nowhere. You know, I often discuss that the thing, the sneaky thing that stops most entrepreneurs
 from getting their business in front of others is comparison. And once we start understanding
 comparison, so oftentimes whenever I give a presentation or whenever I do a coaching session or
 consulting session, I am literally starting there because if I tell you this is on the horizon,
 when it slaps you across the face, it's not so much a shock. So let me anybody who's listening
 right now, let me predict your future. The thing that will stop you from doing the thing that you
 know you have been called to do is not lack of money, resources or education. It is simply the fact
 of comparison. But let's break down comparison because of the way I see it. Is it takes on three
 manifestations? It takes on a mental manifestation. I am not. I am not that person. I am not
 Ryan. Therefore, I can't get that success. I am too old, too young, too fat, too skinny, too black,
 too white, too old, too young. We'll say I'm to this. Therefore, I can't do that. So that's an
 easy way out. The second one is emotional. And this one's very, very hard to identify because most
 of the time people don't wake up and say, I'm not worthy. They don't say I'm not worthy, but it
 takes on an uglier form. It will say, I'm just not sure I'm capable of that big dream.
 I don't think that that's really going to happen. So we low key keep a subversive thought
 in our mind that's actually stopping us from doing that thing. And then the third one is going to be
 visual, right? I'm not on the Omafi coast this summer. I don't have a Ferrari. I'm not at that
 resort. I don't have that perfect house with those perfect kids in that perfect kitchen to do
 the perfect real that I need. And so we have these visual, intellectual, emotional things that stop us.
 But if we were to turn it on its side and simply say, you might be too old and you might be too white
 and you might be, but there is somebody out there who is just as white and just as old who needs
 to hear it your way. And in fact, if even if even if you were to say that person does it their own
 way, guess what? You might be saying the same message, but you're a different messenger.
 Beyond that, even if you are the same, they're in the same message and you have a twin brother or
 a triplet. Guess what? The mechanism. You might be a great podcast host, writer, speaker. You might
 be great on social. We all do things different ways. And we need to do it in our own way. So the
 person who needs what we do the way we do it can get it. And for the other thing is I think that
 this dream might be too big and I am not sure. Listen, you wouldn't have got the dream if it wasn't
 in you to succeed. You didn't wake up this morning being like, you want to know what? I'm the next
 NBA star. No, you're not. Not if you 510 and you're 37. Chances start. It's not there, right?
 So we don't get dreams. We have desires. I love, we love to be an NBA player, but we don't get
 the dream. You got the dream because something in you deeply believes that you could do it. But if
 you talk yourself out of it, the only person who's stopping your success is you. And then we go
 back to the physical things. Well, I don't have that. Guess what? The vast majority of people don't.
 And just because you're at that resort or you're on that vacation or you drive that car doesn't
 mean that everybody wants to be coached by a service or by a product from that type of person.
 So we have to say that your Honda Accord living in the Midwest with three kids who are just doing
 the dang thing in your own way with your $100,000 job and your side hustle of Etsy. Somebody's
 like, that's what I want. So it's far be it from you to say that the way that you see the desires
 of the world is how other people do it. And so we can come here and talk all about comparison.
 So when you're ready to get your business in front of other people, I want you to say, am I emotionally
 comparing? Am I physically comparing? What kind of comparison is it? Stop it in its tracks and tell
 yourself a different story. You get to choose your story. If you would like to fight for your limitations,
 go right ahead. But if you would like to fight for empowering statements of why somebody needs
 what it is, I'll clap your head up. When I talk to entrepreneurs and business owners and people
 like, dude, you're a better father when you feel better. You're a better mother when you feel
 better. You're a better everything when you feel better. Lying doesn't feel good. Lying is
 scary. It's, do they know? Do they know? Do they know? Where you just fucking tell the truth?
 And you got nothing to worry about. So it was like, if this is the recipe for me connecting with
 people and me feeling better, that I'm just going to keep doing it. And at the time, five years ago,
 and not that I was the only guy sharing shit on social media, but very few people are talking about
 real raw shit. And it's just airy, fairy, political things, reshairs of this. And so I just want
 an admission like, I'm going to share me. And since then, I literally have almost a billion views
 of my videos, millions of followers. I mean, literally hundreds of millions of engagements on my
 posts from Instagram to Facebook. I mean, still on my videos have reached 150, 160, 170 million views
 of one video, which is just mind bending to me, right? But that's, that's what I found is my own
 little kind of recipe. And I felt better. The marketplace plays resonated with it. And I just
 kept fucking running it. I love it. I want to get into some nuts and bolts on the back half year
 on the e-commerce. But I do have one follow up because I feel like no matter how I lost,
 you may have felt, you know, kind of being what you categorized as a man that everybody wanted
 you to be and not the real maybe you. Something has shaped Sean Whalen. It's some point in life.
 Well, well before you got lost or you got found or anything like that, I feel like there has to be
 these shit, these opinions and these beliefs that kind of formed all of this. Something shaped
 that either early, whenever I would think. I don't know what he's ever asking that. Thinking
 back and on life like my parents split up when I was an early teenager, I was actually a really
 quiet kid. I was really reserved. I was a chubby little kid. I was a pretty good baseball player,
 but like I wasn't popular. I wasn't the class valedictorian. I was really, really quiet,
 really reserved. And I think for me when looking back at it, when I went on a more
 man mission, I went on a two year more man mission. That was where I really started to kind of find
 my voice. I mean, you're out basically selling God. We're going door to door, pitching God to people.
 And it was something I was really passionate about. It was something that like I didn't grow up in
 the Mormon church. I grew up Catholic and so I was kind of a recent convert to the church. And
 I just started realizing that people love to connect. People love to talk. And I was really
 good at it. I was good at just talking to people. And I know that sounds really weird, but like
 there really is an art form of communication. There's an art form being able to not just
 tell us, so hey, how's your water? Like, why do you like that water? Okay, great. You know,
 what are like really fucking listening to people and hearing them and knowing what's driving them.
 And something that I've always been fascinated about and with is what's behind it? You know,
 this is why headlights and shit. I'm not like bouncing around like every other freaking
 bulls-o or like, oh my God, oh my God, I'm like, you know, let's talk about this. I like to
 critically sake. And for me, being able to be in a place where I can ask deeper questions,
 it's fun for me. And I found, you know, on my mission is always talking about God.
 Me, God's such a crazy topic for so many people because you have people that are way over here
 and that people away over here and people have no clue. And so it kind of forced me to really
 number one, find my foundation like what I really believed and how I really
 felt about life and who I was and purpose and the entire thing. And I found out like people
 just love to connect. And so it just become almost a skill set in art form that I've just gotten
 better and better and better at is communicating with human beings, but you know, it definitely does
 it come from my youth. I mean, I was a quiet freaking kid, man. Well, I've shared some of your stuff
 with people and they go, oh, man, he's pretty hard core on this and the other. And you know,
 they care. He's a great community. I said it as a I call you're a great communicator period.
 I mean, that's talking. I mean, when you when you really give a shit about people,
 like when you really care, like I think it's it's something that I mean, we're not we're just so
 busy trying to get believe me, hear me. This is me. And it's like, I really, it sounds funny,
 but if it can't be explained on a whiteboard or like with crayons, it's too complicated.
 We should not have a tax policy in America that can't be explained on a fucking whiteboard,
 right? We should not have foreign policies and that it takes 30,000 page freaking manuals to
 fucking explain, right? No one's interested in that really. And so we could tie this into the
 marketing and the business and the whole thing like copy is really important. You know what I mean?
 Like, what are you telling me? Everybody knows they're being sold something. So we've already got
 that out of the way. But what are you trying to tell me? What are you trying to communicate with me?
 Yeah, yeah, yeah, like if the answer is simple, no, they just fucking say no, right? But I love
 being able to look at complex things and I break it down in my brain to just like coloring book
 kind of conversations like, yeah, this is what this really is. And it's just more to me. It's
 more fun that way. I have more connection to stuff that way. You know what I mean? Absolutely. And
 so let's talk about liasnotsheet.com. I mean, you know, we work, you know, we're at digital
 agency here and we work a lot of brands and they come to us and they have great products but they
 have no story, right? And yeah, I will take a company that has a purpose and a story all day
 because that's it's organic. You know, again, it just becomes about blocking and tackling.
 It's real hard to figure out the Hill Mary, you know, the message, you know, the blocking
 attack, like you can do. But let's get to some of that blocking attack. Like what have been some
 of those mechanics of, you know, because I've heard you talk about it, you're like, you know,
 you started the company, you do your cell and t-shirts, you had a message, you had a plan,
 but something poured gas on the fire, you know, for the for for the tactics and the in some of the
 ways with which you sing growth. He's talking about some of that. Yeah, for sure. I first of all,
 you know, there's two philosophies, in my opinion, like anybody who's a really, really,
 really good ad guy or copy guy or whatever, I mean, you can take any product and figure out a way
 to sell it, right? And there's a lot of people that do that. They take, you know, products from
 China, they're really good. They figured out the game, the algorithm, so they can do that.
 And then there's people that have passion behind something, they live it, they breathe it,
 they sleep it. It's it's it's being to them because their kid has cancer and they want this
 product out there and they want this thing or that thing and there's a story and a connection
 behind it. And either either one of those is phenomenal, right? But I think the people that struggle
 the most are the ones that they they feel like they have that passion and they feel like everybody's
 supposed to have that passion. I had to this shirt is so badass and the saying everybody's going to
 buy the saying and this entire thing, but like I've found for me that I embodied why it's not
 cheap. It literally was for me. You know what I mean? Like when I wrote my book, which is sold
 over a half a million copies completely organically. I mean, I didn't even put page numbers in there.
 We forgot it was so basic and just put out there the marketplace. I wrote a book that I wanted
 to read like that I would want to read. And I think a lot of people need to realize like,
 what do you want to wear? Right? It's easy to come up with slick marketing and slick products and
 whatever, whatever. But if there's no marketplace where it does a fucking matter after each
 landing pages are this at the other. So we're trying to tie in that story. You know, like,
 why is this relevant to you? Like, why do you believe in this? And then I've literally for the
 last couple of years I've been talking about why is not cheap? It's become me and people have watched
 my journey as a father, as a business owner, as a man, as a divorced guy, as a dating guy,
 like all of these things have been really transparent. And I think people sived with that.
 They would resonate with it, right? And so for me, lion's not a sheep. It
 everybody's been telling me, dude, you're in the perfect storm now with the whole political
 climate and it'll drop because it's like, we're all you're one or the other, right? You're picking
 well, I drew the lion or you're the sheep, which is great. You know, but yeah, there's a hundred and
 seventy-five million people on your side. We're right down the hill. Here it was coolest. Everybody
 now wants to jump on that, right? And they ought to plug into that emotion. They want to plug into
 the political climate, whatever, whatever. And you really don't have a track record. You don't
 have a tribe. You don't have any of that. I didn't set out to do that. And I think that's what really
 makes lions not a sheep unique. And I think a lot of people need to wrap their head around this.
 And it's really difficult to do is having the consistency of delivering content and messaging
 for the long game because now we're in the perfect storm. Now we're crushing because so much
 content has been put out there over the last couple of years. And it wasn't with the objective
 of selling t-shirts or selling hats or selling any of that shit. My mom literally, she retired
 last year and she was bored of shit. I said, Mom, come help me make t-shirts. And so we had one
 heat transfer. She was in the office and we'd sell 20 shirts a month, just people stumbling on
 the website. And she'd run down. She'd get the shirts and she'd make them and she'd write a little
 note, pack them all out. And that was really what the apparel brand was until the beginning of this
 year. But being able to like sit in a story and deliver that to people that they believe without
 trying to sell them anything is massive. And that's a huge tactic that I don't think very many
 people understand is I believe that the very best salespeople on planet earth are never selling
 anything. Like you go to my Instagram or my Facebook, you will never see me selling anything.
 Yet I'm literally able to make millions of dollars through coaching and consulting and
 and other companies that I have. But I'm not selling anything. So how does that work? It's
 unlimited. I'm breathing it. I'm exuding it, right? And that's, you know, if you're a jeep guy,
 you want to start a brand around jeeps, right? If you're driving a fucking home, a core good lot,
 right? You better know the clicks and the algorithms. But it's like some of those dudes who are like
 hardcore jeep guys, they get it. They know what jeep guys talk about. They know what jeep guys
 want. And they're able to exude that message, right? And people instantly resonate with it. So
 I really do believe that it's you're in a day to age where we're completely bombarded and slutted with
 products and things and ads and messages. And if you want the short game, you better
 freaking figure out how to become a really good marketer, a really good copterator and buy ads
 better than anybody else. But if you want to build a real brand like something that has legs,
 they will be around for a long, fucking time to resonate with people like, why is it important to
 you? And you better be fucking living it. If you're going to live in it and talking about it,
 everybody's like, do I my personal page and my this page that I got I don't even know how many
 hundreds of thousands of followers on my personal page. I've weighed less than my business page
 because I just I'm always living this talking about it, breathing it, eating it and
 be surprised how many people could plug into that. And now that we're turning on ads and running ads
 and doing shit like that, where I have almost a billion views of my videos, I can now target some
 of those videos and you know what I'm saying? So, but I've been playing the long game and consistently
 doing the content consistently talking about it. People just know like some people will see the
 shirts. I get messages really like, dude, that's the that's the bearded guy like that's the bearded
 guy. They don't know my name because they recognize my video or a post like I know that guy. That's
 his thing, right? And it's it's really cool. What's the vision? I mean, where are we going? You know,
 yeah, I know you're you're you're knee deep and a lot of things. I know this is open doors and
 what you know, you're coaching how to make shit happen is the book everyone listening go check
 it out on Amazon. Amazon is just your personal site. Amazon. But what's where we headed? Where are
 you going? Well, right now we're trying to put the wheels back on the bus. We got our asses kicked
 in production. We grew so fast. I turned everything all back in March. What I mean by that is
 I hired a team. We come in and started running ads. I'd never run an ad for I'd never put ads out
 there and we went from that to you know, we were doing two to three thousand dollars a month of
 just a pair of sales. Oh, we did four hundred and sixty three thousand dollars last month. I
 will pair up sales in basically 90 days. A lot of them. It's yours and it and it and it it
 fucked some things up and I learned some very valuable expensive lessons on production and
 being able to keep up and it's kind of a funny story. I mean, I already think it's it's just
 sunshine roses. But all I keep my kids and their friends worked for me and they were all part of
 our production team. And so we were doing heat transfers and the whole thing and I run all the
 numbers and I've got all the production companies and all the big promotional companies. They
 are hitting me up. Let us do your share. Let us do your shit. Long story short, we had 10 of them
 employed as we were just crushing. We went from literally like picking up one box of shirts and
 screen prints to get the pouts delivered. One of the kids apparently got COVID and because they're
 all like my daughter's friends nine out of the 10 kids, their parents made them quit. Their parents
 made them literally self-quarantine. And so we were doing 350 orders a day, which represents about
 six to 700 shirts. And so we're like, oh, no problem. Get a, you know, a 10 page and see and bring
 all these people. Well, they fucking takes forever for them to learn and speed and well, they,
 anyways, we got we got really far behind. We got about 6,000 shirts behind. Wow. And
 team came in and they're like, bro, we got a problem. And I'm over here like, go, go, go,
 let's grow, let's grow. And they're like, hi, I'm proud. We got a fucking problem because even if
 we work 24 hours a day, we can't get the numbers that we needed. So if that wheel on the bike
 isn't working, you can't be afraid of that. Because I've got some guys, some dear friends of mine,
 they're big and e-com space. They do millions of dollars a month. And I've told them this and they
 all laugh and chuckle because they're like, yeah, dude, like you don't even say like every single
 person has this happened to him. We have so many of our business owners that we put in business
 through Evanically and that I'm still connected with that are just doing incredible things out there.
 But the fundamental of what they are doing was all of the things that they learned by being
 operated within our system. I love that. I want to pivot here shortly to some personal things,
 some experiences you've had, the podcast, a little TV show, maybe a few people have heard of. But
 let's last kind of question. You mentioned the trademark thing. It made me think like, would you ever,
 would you ever start a friend? Can you start a franchise if you don't have a trademark on your name?
 Like is that just like, is that like rule one? Like let's say you're someone that's you've
 you've built one or two locations and they're super successful and like, oh, I'm ready to
 franchise. But you just happen to have a name that you didn't trademark or can't trademark. Do
 you need it? You need to trade, get a different name. Yeah, so those are two different things. So
 didn't trademark. Yes, you can start. You would disclose that in your disclosure documents that
 say we have a trademark applied for. Here is the application number. Here's the date that we
 filed for it. And now if you get denied on that, then that requires an additional disclosure
 immediately. So you've got to do that. Now if you went to a trademark attorney and they said,
 you know, no way. Yeah, you're Smith fitness, like Smith fitness. And you know, and it's wonderful.
 You're making millions. You know that it's everything can be, you know, transition to a successful
 franchise. But Smith fitness, what you started out with and what you built with just happens to be
 a non trademark. It's like, well, do I need to change my name? I don't know. You maybe think of that
 when you start out like, now how many people I start on this path and they've got an amazing
 business, but maybe they didn't, you know, think about it or they just pick something too common.
 I learned a long time ago that if I'm going to be broke, I don't want to be tired too.
 Can you imagine, like if I'm going to be broke, like I'm going to be comfortably laid up on,
 you know, catfish and somewhere in a really in a garbage pick lawn lawn chair.
 No, but like, look, I mean, you build this whole brand and then the equity is in the name. I mean,
 when you go to sell your franchise system, a lot of it has to do with what's the equity in the brand,
 the people know the brand. So if you don't own it, I mean, it just, you've just kind of built,
 I'm not going to say you built it for nothing, but it would, that would be a non-starter if you
 can't get a trademark. I don't think anyone would do that. So yes, you would have to go through a
 rebrand and, you know, you would think that in this day and age that every good name's taken,
 but it's not true. There's all kinds of variations of things you can get. You can make up words,
 you know, there's, get a little creative. Google, Google, Google,
 you know, you have 30 years ago, or 25, maybe that long ago, but Jeff, I know you've had some
 incredible experiences, you know, through your success and, and what you've done, let's,
 let's go right ad undercover boss. I know our audience has probably heard of that.
 Maybe you've seen you, I may have gone, I recognize that guy. I, he had to go T and
 they were trying to put it together. Talk about how that came about and just the overall experience.
 Yeah, it's still, you know, we had a really good episode. It still plays a lot. It plays overseas.
 I'll know when it plays in Australia or in Europe somewhere because I'll get a bunch of
 weird Facebook messages. So, no, so in 2016, they were, they were filming season A and they had
 somebody drop out at the last minute. So, one of the things in life is if there's no reason to say
 no, then you say, yes, so they came to us and said, we've got two weeks to do this. We've got seven
 or eight people that we're talking to. We'd have to fly out from California tomorrow or shoot a
 sizzle reel, put it together, pitch it to NBC and they would, there was a CBS. Yeah, I think it was
 a CBS. Pitch it to CBS and they would have to decide. So, we did that and really quick it came
 back that they were interested in having us on. So, then we went through the reams and reams and
 reams of paperwork and it was, we went out on the show, I mean, we went out on the road maybe
 like a month later and it was a surreal experience for those people that haven't been behind the scenes
 in a production like that. It was really cool. I know I signed a bunch of confidentiality stuff
 and I really don't want to do anything to, you know, I don't want to say anything that makes it
 harder for them to do the show, but it just, it seems to me Ryan, like every year the show is cancelled.
 Yeah, and then somehow it comes back for another, so, but I mean to pull this, it's such a well-known show,
 but I will tell you, the way that this is done, there is, it is so, it is done so well and so
 over the top that you would not think, like, people do, like, is this undercover boss and then
 as this is going on, they're like, no, it's not, it's clearly not, but it really is. So,
 so yeah, it was great. We ended up being on the road for, we had a couple of little hiccups with
 a couple of things that were going on politically where they, we shot some stuff in North Carolina
 and then they're like, oh, well, we don't want to shoot North Korea to reshoot stuff. So,
 I had to fly my family, we did all the family stuff, right? We went, we did the office stuff,
 we did the b-roll at the office and then we went to the house and, you know, I'm cooking hot dogs
 on the grill, dogs are swimming in the pool, all that and they're like, we can't use any of that
 because there was some political thing going on. So, and it was a, yeah, one of those things.
 And so then they, you know, we go on on the road for a week, we film two or three segments,
 we fly my family to this wonderful resort somewhere in Georgia and we reshoot all of the family
 stuff and then we go on the road. So, I was on the road for a total of like 16 days and it was a
 great experience and I will tell you that we had five episodes that we had to cut one that many
 shows would have killed to have. I mean, our franchisees were absolutely amazing, they lived the
 values of our company, they were out there trying to do the best thing for the customer, they were
 highly empathetic. I mean, you know, I could have picked it a few things here and there, but at the
 end of the day, we had, we ended up with four great segments, I got busted twice, they showed one
 of them and but it was really, I think, I think what's interesting about the process is so,
 you know, we have a, you haven't been here yet, I think you're coming, but I don't think you've
 been here yet, but, you know, we have a 22,000 square foot building on a five-acre campus,
 it's kind of got broad shoulders and, you know, we would, I would, I coached over 30 seasons of my
 kids sports and we would do, you know, the, my daughter's basketball team of practice in our
 warehouse, we, I lined the side yard as a football field and that's where I coached our P.E. football
 teams when the kids, the kids were growing up and people didn't even know I own the business,
 like that's kind of how we rolls, like we were, we never, we didn't, you know, people had no idea
 really what we did, the scale of the enterprise, they didn't know that, oh, it's nice, they let
 you practice here, type stuff and, and so like we, we were pretty under the radar and I sat my kids
 down on the couch in our, in our bonus room and above it is a quote on the wall we put and it has
 kids pictures of, you know, them doing whatever it is they did that, you know, we wanted them to think
 we were proud of them for and then it had this quote from Jerry Moore, the football coach at
 Appalachian State, it's had always do more than is expected and then we had our family values up
 on our, on our little plaque there and stuff and one of the family values is trust yourself to take
 chances, fail fast and move forward, always do more than is expected, you know, and all of that and
 it's like, and I said, well, I say guys, this is going to change things and this is, I mean,
 it's got, it might change things at your school, I mean, we're given, we're going to be giving away
 a quarter million dollars worth of stuff, I mean, people are clearly going to know that, you know,
 that, that, you know, whatever it is that makes the show, but when you looked at our values,
 it's like we couldn't say no and they're just like, okay, well, we're willing to take the consequences
 of it and, and we did and, and we ended up having a great show and they all got a little bit of time
 on it, you know, so that was cool. They got, they got like a flash across the screen. Yeah,
 they're, they're, they're 50 seconds of fame, yeah, 15 seconds of fame and then we have, when it,
 when it showed, with the night that it showed in, in January of 17, we rented out an entire bar,
 there was 250, oh, and I had my little football, the little football team was coaching at the time,
 like they were on it. So that was cool. So we had about 250 people came, kids that I've coached,
 their families, all the employees, their families, the local news and we saw it for the first time,
 along with 7.1 million other people and I'm telling you it was a great show and it did so much for
 the, for the business and the brand and the franchisees, really just confirming like, you know,
 really living the values that we had that we knew that we lived within the four walls of the
 business, but, you know, being able to display it to the world and put the franchisees front and
 center was just an incredible opportunity. So I always encourage people to say yes and there's
 risk because if you watch that show, some of them go very poorly and you have no control and I will
 tell you, man, they tried to wear me out like early, late, three times a day, an hour in front of the
 camera, asking me probing, you know, you know, kind of questions that would be incendiary, you know,
 trying to get me to break and I just said, I took the whole position that said, if I don't,
 they can't, they can't use anything that I don't say. Yeah, that's smart. I've got media training
 before. That sounds like you did. No, I didn't, but I knew, I knew that I had a irresponsibly quick
 mouth and I needed to put a, you know, clap a, clap a lock on it. But we did do two questions on that
 for transition. Like first, and you mentioned it, it was good for the business. I tell people
 that they don't completely recognize like when, which things like Shark Tank and things like
 these things where you can get your company like out there, like the monetary and brand impact of
 that awareness that you can't buy. By the way, or you can or it's just way more than you'd ever
 spend, I'm assuming there was some, some rebound. I mean, I'm like some upshot from that on some level.
 It was immediate. You know, we ran a call center. We answered 250,000 inbound phone calls for
 our franchisees. And we did it very well. And I mean, there was many, many jobs that said,
 I saw, I saw your company on undercover boss and I'm giving you this job for, you know,
 that they were touched by the episode and franchisees directly got work attributed to it.
 There wasn't, there was a spike in franchise sales. So, but it wasn't, I mean, it wasn't,
 it wasn't massive. It was, but also, but being able to use that episode kind of as a,
 as a piece of content during the process to really exemplify what we stood for, you know,
 how we rolled. It tells, I mean, my gosh, it tells the story of our brand. They did,
 obviously, a great job with it and little graphics and little trucks and a map. And like,
 so you could watch the first four or five minutes of that thing and you get our whole company
 history and in a high production quality. So just that, what, you know, was worth, you know,
 $250,000. The first 100 million in sales that we generated were entirely bootstrapped. So,
 the first, the first trance of our lifetime sales came from big chunk of it was Facebook advertising.
 So, 2016, 2017, 2018, even 2019. When it was working. When it worked. Yeah,
 when it was, yeah, exactly. And even before then, right, but if so, it started even earlier,
 there were Moizzale from native. He talks about generating a dollar, $1.50 subscription
 signups for $12 a month, the order and just like infinite demand. And he sold that business for
 a hundred billion cash in like two years from started. Very successful. It's still very around
 everywhere. And so in the beginning, it was, I need to create a product that is different
 enough that would capture the attention to create a Shopify, Joe Shopify, and you Shopify is going
 to be the platform we're going to build on. I started developing the product by talking to my
 dentist, my orthodontist, my oral surgeon. What do you sell in office? What products? I went and
 bought as many products as I could. I analyzed all of the Amazon reviews, negative reviews,
 focusing on that area so that you can find some pockets. Then I saw that you have sensitivities,
 importance. The whitening formula had some opportunity to be improved upon the delivery method
 of being able to plug it into their phone, which we invented that ability to power it by the phone.
 Because the very first vision version of snow was 95 bucks and it was a battery powered light.
 It did not like it very much, but we needed some delivery system for the serum to be able to test it
 on the customers. So I started running ads and it was pretty quickly a success. I set up the first
 version of the website and I had an agency come in and publish it. So we got it up on Shopify very
 quickly. And then those after about six to nine months of talking to my dentist, reaching out to
 suppliers, searching who makes toothpaste, who makes this, who makes gel and then getting samples
 and then tweaking those formulas and then getting some testing. So that took you know six to nine
 months, at least, going back and forth, maybe 50 to 100,000 bucks to buy the first order of the
 system that I had created for snow 1.0, I guess. That was 95 bucks. So we started running ads on
 there, gave free shipping and the focus was professional level whitening at home without the
 sensitivity of other systems. So you know, really designing around the sensitive tooth customer,
 but also the one who wants to max out whitening. So it's like, you want to cake and you want to
 eat it to you want to preserve your NAML, but you also have a wedding next week. And it's like,
 boom, boom, boom. So we just kept tweaking that formula percentages, the whitening agents.
 What can we do to help a sensitivity? And so continuing to tweak that then it became a device
 business as well with our LED technology, which we now have multiple versions that have we have a
 wireless version, colors, lilac, special edition, we have a black one limited at Best Buy. I mean,
 just all kinds of colors and types. And so at the very beginning, it was one product, which was
 really a couple products in one. And that's what we now have sold nearly two million times of
 that system, which was evolved now to wireless our current wired system today, which is the number
 one made in America teeth whitening system in the world. And so that's still our most known product
 was that original teeth whitening kit all in one at home. We invented the verbiage teeth whitening
 wands, the teeth whitening system. Just a lot of these verbiages that were a little more seen
 and professional, but that people could die of free shipping two days, three days. It's in your
 hands. So that was a very, very start. And the goal was if that works out, then if you walked
 down the oral car aisle, couldn't snow have a version of everything in their flossers, toothpaste,
 mouthwash, a toothbrush, a water flosser, aligners, all kinds of these products, mints, gums,
 breath sprays. All those products couldn't snow have a version of that if this is successful.
 And now today our product portfolio represents an oral care and personal care portfolio of 30 plus
 individual skews multiple award winners, award winners with multiple of them winning multiple
 awards across the board. We have the best best whitening strips, best toothbrush. All of these
 awards that are decorated on the site. And so now that has expanded, but that's about seven years
 later. So in the very beginning, it was Facebook ads, $95 system that we put together or that I put
 together with help. And then push that out. Once that sold, upgraded every single time that we
 reordered, the goal was how do we upgrade the formula, take the feedback. I was calling customers
 myself. And now I had builds and sold many companies beforehand. I was, you know, independently,
 you know, wealthy. I could have poured a lot more money into the business, but I was still
 ruminating on, is this something that has legs? Is this something that I think it is? Like,
 am I crazy? And once I started to see that, then it became hiring more products, different
 versions of the products, more channels to acquire customers. Now we're in CVS, Walgreens,
 Best Buy, Neiman Marcus, Sachs, Macy's. So now we're in, you know, about a dozen premier top retail
 partners today, when the very beginning, it's Facebook ads, Shopify, one system, one person,
 or two to help on customer support and shipping it out. And I shipped it from my spare bedroom
 of the house because the inventory, I didn't want to get an office yet. I wasn't sure, right?
 And I was investing at the time and just sold a couple of companies. So I want to see kind of,
 if this could be my, my next thing, you know, and sure enough, it, uh, it certainly did.
 Is, uh, you know, as you expanded past Facebook and started to get the broader, I mean,
 it's, Facebook has, people I don't really realize how many billion people were on Facebook and how
 broad, you know, the awareness is, but what was the, the, uh, percentage of like US first non US,
 and was it, we talking pretty much 95, not, I mean, majorly US based. And what were the channels that
 kind of, what were the awareness channels that, they kind of flowed after Facebook, other than
 just distribution itself? Yeah. So it was, uh, you know, uh, Google, YouTube, so the whole Google
 suite, the whole meta suite, uh, Amazon, uh, advertising, that whole suite, um, actually retail media
 networks. So, um, also Spotify, uh, audio, right? So there's every, so retail media is, if we're
 in Best Buy, we want to buy, uh, Web banner ads and we want to be the sponsored on Best Buy for
 anything teeth related. And so we are, we're, we're spending inside of the trade marketing to push
 those things, but they drive awareness top of funnels while on those platforms. And then we're
 doing everything from YouTube. We're doing a relaunch of TikTok. We've been hiring. We're still
 are hiring like crazy for TikTok on the snow side. So TikTok is top of funnel. We're really excited
 about relaunching that Instagram, Facebook are still very heavy on the front end. We do a lot of
 affiliate marketing as well. Um, I actually acquired the affiliate marketing.com domain name about a
 year ago to build more, uh, reach in that space because it's, uh, it's a big portion across all of
 our brand, all the brands of my portfolio and all the brands that I've invested in affiliate
 marketing is a very profitable channel across the board. So, affiliate marketing is another area
 because a lot of these bloggers, vloggers, Amazon editorial affiliates, they're putting us in
 front of an audience for the very first time, listicles, things like that. So, you know, about
 maybe 15% of our sales, uh, online come from our online affiliates and that's 100% non-Facebook
 and Instagram because we don't allow it in the program since we run that internally.
 So it diversifies it forces the diversification of that traffic. So that's kind of the stack from
 the top level and then that of course, as you mentioned, distribution, funnels to marketplace,
 first right marketplace, then to, um, retail, uh, actual locations, then we also sell to
 professional dermatology dentists, uh, kind of local clinic, kind of style stuff. So they kind of
 whittles all the way down and it repeats from the top. But let's say before you went into retail,
 what was your mix? Like, you know, because everybody hears Amazon, they get scared like margins and
 all that stuff. How did you tackle? I mean, you obviously started D to see, which is the smartest
 place, best margins, all that. What was your balance with taking on Amazon and what's your
 perspective there with just overall mix and things? So I'll give you a good scare to that.
 But it's such a big hit. It's hard to ignore. I was the same way, man. I, I like 10 years ago,
 told two of my best friends on, um, tough to need of the mattress company. They have the number one
 most loved and most popular on, on Amazon mattress. And, um, and they had a very successful exit
 and huge success. They bootstrapped it, but they leaned into Amazon back then. I was anti-Amazon.
 You don't know the data. You got to pay them 15, 20%. Uh, you know, did everyone gets refunds?
 No, no, no, no, no. You got to lean into Amazon over 50% of retail searches online start on Amazon
 and they end there because people go straight there to search for shoes, white sneakers,
 like they're going directly to search. They're buying there. The conversion rates always
 going to be higher than your website. It is what it is. I mean, they've invested tens of billions
 of dollars into infrastructure because Justin genius and they know that if they can outsmart
 logistics and get the customers hooked on two hour delivery, that that's going to put a lot of
 pressure on merchants. But I know that Amazon's a public company because they're a public company
 in the US, there are antitrust laws, which means that Amazon cannot get more than 51% of its revenue
 or 50% of its revenue from its own products. So all the private label they do, all the kind of
 things that they're doing, they cannot. I think it's like 47% 46. You can google it. It's like
 someone on 47. So they can't scale it much higher. They just keep it go and they got to keep that
 51% marketplace revenue, which allows people like us to take advantage of what Amazon built.
 If they weren't frantic trust, they'd kick us all off. So that'd be my guess. They'd go
 on Amazon. They just make all the products and copy everybody and they'd be a lot of
 patent trademark lawsuits, but they'd manage those with all the lawyers, but they'd get it done,
 right? And I think it's like, look at it. It goes, you know, last year was our biggest
 year on Amazon. Every year's our biggest year on Amazon. But last year was a significantly
 good year for Amazon. So we go, wow, we need to really hire in that direction. We need to really
 double down our partnerships in that direction. We need to really tweak our affiliate marketing
 efforts net direction. So we went through it and said we want to double down on Amazon and
 utilize our strengths, utilize our thousands of reviews, utilize our millions on our email and
 SMS list, like utilize our assets and our retail placements that are very unique to us in our
 industry to be able to show off on Amazon and build that business. So we have a goal for Amazon
 on its own to be a nine-figure business for us in the next three years from an Amazon
 very focused scale plan, hiring plan, partnership plan that allows us to take advantage of the
 Amazon platform and marketplaces, Walmart.com, etc. Because what happens in a recession and this
 is a fact proven, I read this, they said during COVID people went back to what they
 felt most comfortable and safe and secure with. So they went back to Walmart or Walmart. They went
 back to Target. They stopped venturing out so much onto all these D to see websites and all these
 unknown things, all these unknown subscriptions, recession hits or money gets tight inflation.
 People are more likely to just, I'm just going to go to targeting it everything. I'm going to go
 to Walmart and get everything. I'm going to go to this website, Amazon. Let me just, it's convenient,
 it's cheaper. I'm just going to do an Amazon. So you got to now play in that direction five,
 10 years ago, you could get away without having to leave into it. Although I wish I could go back
 five and 10 years and I would have built an army of team members and partners on our Amazon channel
 and we would have been totally dominating that channel. So I love it. You do get access to
 email your customers. Now they've got some new things. There's all kinds of stuff, but it's the only
 platform that's driven by sales. So you can become the number one in your category, even above
 the big companies by sales volume. So you can drive, you direct your sales, like if snow directed
 all of our sales to Amazon today, which is maybe 15 to 20% of our US digital revenue. So let's say we
 put all of our US digital revenue into Amazon. We would be the number one in every single category
 above all of the incumbent brands, just because of velocity. But we would give up 15% of these
 margin based off versus our own. You give up some data. But I got to tell you there are days where I
 go, that's not the worst idea, but you know, there's a better way to go about it, you know, build up
 the Amazon Presidents and build up the traffic and build up the list. So I lost sort of short
 for anyone listening. I would like triple down and look up a company called Hero Cosmetics.
 Look up a company called Zesty Paws by one of my good friends. They're a half a billion dollar
 pet supplement brand. The 100% of their sales pretty much for from Amazon. Look up Hero Cosmetics.
 They have a miracle patch for an acne 20 bucks. They sold for 630 million. I think the beginning
 of this year, January 40 million in profit just through Amazon. It was an Amazon driven business.
 So these Amazon businesses are getting very strong multiples. They're raising money. They're
 TikTok friendly. So I would say lean into Amazon harder than you ever have and really figure out
 how to dominate that platform in your category because it's the only place you can see sales as well.
 You can literally see an estimate of what everyone's selling. You can go look at snow stuff and make,
 oh, they're selling an estimate of this much from this skew. It's a great platform to build on.
 You take pitching specifically and there's a lot of recovery nuances, a lot of longevity nuances,
 a lot of we really care about that stuff, right? Because we couldn't be, we couldn't have our product
 be our differentiator if we weren't focused on longevity, right? We tell people like this is going
 to be long hard and difficult and you're going to take consistency and discipline and dedication.
 You're not going to do it in 30, 60, 90 days. Likely, you're not going to wake up one day and
 be strong as an ox. It's going to take five years and are you in for this ride?
 Are you believe that you're worth it? We have that recovery element built in because what we're
 telling people is that it's the opposite of what everyone else is saying really in the macro sense
 of like, hey, come do this fast. You're not okay. That's okay. Just come in anyway, do it fast,
 jointing membership. You can lose 30 pounds real quick. It's like, hey, well, that's flat,
 you know, you get companies that say one day it says they're signed on their building,
 the next day it says for lease and you're like, why is that happening? So yeah, I think that's,
 yeah, that's a combination of sounds like a little bit of bigger. You do sprinkle a little bit of
 bigger, faster, stronger in there from my high school days too. If anybody's ever heard of that
 program, oh yeah, I'm rare. I was sitting here thinking as you were talking, ICR, Intensity,
 Community Recovery. That is right. That's, that's in a nutshell. My answer was real long-winded.
 I simplify for my, for a bit in marketing blogs. I like acronyms and simplicity. Yeah, but it's
 great. I mean, but that sounds like the building blocks of a long-term program and not like you
 said, a gimmick because everybody gets that fire, you know, when they're ready to, okay,
 I need to lose some weight. I've got an event coming up, whatever.
 They get fired in their belly, but then it dies if you don't have the building blocks
 of something broader. You need the community to kind of keep you in it. You need to recovery
 because if you're chilling yourself and not recovering at all, then they get down and out like you
 said. So I can see and I, all I know is a periphery, you know, I've heard, I've had people
 me times need to do burn, whatever, whatever. So I'm gonna make a promise to you that I'll go,
 I'm gonna go hit burn up here at Grigville eventually. But what's it been like growing the business
 man? I mean, go, I mean, just that kind of scale, you know, is incredible. What's that roadcoaster
 been like? Definitely one, right? You went at 2015 when we announced that we were going to
 franchise in all 50 states. You know, we thought hitting all run might be awarding 10 units in our
 first year and really getting those stood up and you were always concerned with unit economics.
 I'll talk about that in a minute, but I had no idea that we would do 200 in the first 18 months
 and, you know, frame data did this article out of franchise and magazine. It was like one of our first,
 it was one of our first like earn media pieces that was talking about business that I was super
 proud of. And it said that we're that in the 99th percent of all growth from all franchises of
 any franchise that entered the market since 2010. And this was like 18 months in and I'm like,
 okay, well, we better not screw this up then. So how do we get all of these gyms open, right?
 We got to focus on we call it ULE's unit level economics. It's you had a guest on Jeff
 Dudent who is from this area. He taught me this actually. He's been a good friend and mentor of mine
 throughout the years. He taught me validation in franchising and that's in validation really in
 any business. It's a sort of franchise particular concept, but it's the stakeholders of your business
 being happy. It's your network promoter score. How likely are they to recommend this business or
 doing business with you to somebody else? And number one, number one thing is to
 number one box the check if you will is are they making money? And what type of money are they making?
 So I'm always looking for a this might be this might be something people want to write down
 because I'll give you like a strategy. What I'm looking for in any business I grow is an investment.
 Hey, let's say the investment is at $500,000. I need to make a million dollars in year one
 in order for that investment to be considered a plus investment for me, right? So it's a two to
 one investment cash to year one revenue ratio. And that's how we that's the how we want to get every
 location out of the gate. Do all of them do that? No. But what that's really done having that
 expectation is we've aligned clearly and early with our franchise partners who are really
 driving the unit level economics. We learned that when we have that expectation they start higher,
 you know they start with more members. They start better off and you know getting getting to that
 place of having world-class economics and boutique fitness was there's a long road but definitely
 a doable one. That was our focus the whole time from the very beginning. So the big what the
 hell are we going to do moment was when we had 200 and we had like 10 open you know like in
 franchising it's the similar it's kind of similar to fitness where we're just talking about like
 everyone wants to just go fast fast scale scale scale it is a vehicle for scale and I love the
 vehicle for scale but you can also scale yourself right into the ground and you see that happen
 all the time in this industry particularly the industry that I'm in the boutique fitness
 franchising industry. So yeah it's a I mean think about it's logical right right I mean like
 I care about my people so much like this isn't about money for me this is about my franchise
 partners who invested their 401k who invested their life savings who you know
 eliquidated their stocks 10 years before they wanted to sold their house and moved across the state
 who left their family in North Carolina and moved to Missouri and stayed in a hotel room for
 three months away from their children so they can go chase their dream. This is all about returning
 an ROI for them and so you know with that type of mindset that real people first core value
 you know we're able to take what's in the gym translate that up to a franchise partner network
 translate that into an HQ culture you know now we're on the east coast so we're on the west coast
 by coastal headquarters operating the business that way and we're economics have a better
 than they've ever been we use annual unit volumes as a measure in franchising how much each
 individual gym makes on average and we'll be up near the 600s at the end of the year which is
 you know talk three in our space so people first like people first and I'm going to preach that
 for the day that Morgan and I hang them up which we're in the big leagues now so I'm going to stay
 as long as you take care of people that take care of you that's how that's usually
 that's right reciprocation is powerful just when you're trying to do the right thing you said
 to start a lot I heard licensing in there I'm talking Jeff about this a little bit like licensing
 versus franchising versus you know like the thought process there and you know you you mentioned it
 if you aren't serving your franchisees you know then what are you doing you know as hard as
 going to business because again if you're serving them they're making money they're happy
 you get more franchisees and you grow um but what's it in life like truly what's been some of
 the secret sauce to scaling like that like like now that you've done it was there stuff that you
 would have gone damn I wish I'd done that sooner or you know like what are some of those learning
 lessons like definitely the number one thing is if you're going to scale your business fast you
 want to invest ahead of that growth curve you've got to anticipate that you know I heard 20
 robins once say that the anticipation is the ultimate power for any entrepreneur and you're
 able to see over the hill before anyone else can you can see the horizon when you're over the
 horizon when no one else can while your your your ability to navigate your way there you know is
 geometrically advanced and so what I always try to do is set big goals for the system starting with
 economic unit economic goals and then set more broad range targets so I step on the stage
 at our summit in 2021 and I said we're going to build 10,000 units to the mood and and half my
 system was like you know because we're a competitive culture they were like let's go they're all
 pumped up and the other half was like I don't know who we can do that like I don't know I got trust
 you but you know that's a lot of units right it's like how are we going to do that the beauty is
 like I don't need to know how we're going to do it I just need to know that's our big enough
 wide it's big enough purpose because the people you're impacting in your community are also
 in other countries and they deserve the same thing they deserve of people first business product
 and so you know um but we're only going to do that through you guys right that how we're going to
 do that is focus all of our energy on putting more money into your pockets so that as a franchisee
 you're able to get those AUVs up and then reinvest into the brand so for us just to give you a
 lay of the landscape like bird brands is like that's bird boot camp and that's the run it that's
 the front runner that's the spearhead franchising really is about distribution right so now
 we come in and we have a nutrition business underneath an activeware business underneath a real
 estate business underneath an investment company underneath that takes non passive non-controlling
 states and companies that we're partnered with and you know you start to you know think about
 secular franchises and other opportunities now that you have the infrastructure in the distribution
 and it's like that makes the return on investment for the franchisees even more important
 right and putting more chips or baskets or opportunities get bigger as we go forward yeah
 I mean because that's what it is like just for the way listening
 bird boot camp as a brand or bird as a brand the way you grow brand awareness isn't always
 just advertising when you have 200 400 500 1000 locations and the signage and thus in market marketing
 and word of mouth it grows the brand it's reaching frequency at the highest level with that
 distribution there's a lot of way to grow brand recognition and brand awareness that's not always
 just advertising in its truest sense because every new location that throws up a sign and you
 know community for bird builds the bird brand right yeah you know I love I love your marketing mind
 and you know if I had to pick if I had to I'm an entrepreneur right but if I had to pick a vertical
 that I'm most confident and definitely the branding I think as a as a more specific term than
 marketing and what what I say branding what I really mean is measuring things like brand equity
 uh tier one imports is a good example here when imports went out of business and then their logo
 sold for 50 million and they were they were I mean they were just burning cash right if you're
 real estate portfolio is burning cash unless you have some brand equity is some recognizable logo
 or something that's going to sustain it it just crashes there's nothing there's no recovery element
 there so when I think of being you know what I think of the people that are listening to this and
 they're all entrepreneurs I mean you know it's obvious that holding your own business right number one
 of brand or number two real estate portfolio arguably or the one of the two best ways to build the
 wealth initially and I always put brand equity just slightly ahead because I've got something I've
 got a logo that means something to people even though the brick and mortars aren't there anymore
 and you know so for me it's always been about the you know in marketers try to they try to measure
 this but I think it's just them trying to be smart it's like smoking mirrors and I said try to
 measure like brand lip it's like well okay yes what you're talking about right is okay all the
 impressions from the signage all the impressions from social media all the impressions from word of
 mouth or one time in the mountains when Aunt Susie said something to Uncle Tim and Uncle Tim
 then takes his family and Seattle Washington like you can't really measure a brand lift unless
 you isolate variables so so finitely that it disregards all the things that actually create the
 brand lift so I don't know if anybody has ever confused by brand lift I love the branding expert
 and I still don't get it but that's what you're talking about is how does the collective touch point
 so the collective eyeballs and your brand Gary Vee says attention is currency right and he's so
 right when he's really saying is that brand awareness is your currency and once I got once I got
 all of the different units of rocking and rolling you'd be surprised you comes out of the woodwork
 my buddies from like my junior high baseball team text me a picture of that you know logo it's in
 my wife just joined so yeah and then you layer the digital paid advertising and organic social
 media and all the contemporary marketing stuff up of that like we did and I think that's the recipe
 so you got to have a player over the top you've got to have the the brand lift elements and then
 the hyper local community where you're in the field our fp's are in the field with their team
 shaken hands kissing babies running from air like just making sure that they're
 vell conversation when it comes to fitness in the town yep we call it you got to drive brand
 and demand it's Brandon it's those two things that's what we three stood clients and
 sometimes all clients they just want to drive the demand I'm like you got to invest in the brand
 baby you know that's what's going to pay over time everybody wants sales overnight but brands
 built over time for taking the BS out of business baby we'll see you next time right about now
 this has been right about now with Ryan Alfred a Radcast Network production visit Ryan is
 rake.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities
 thanks for listening