Hello and welcome to the RevoPT High Performance Podcast. My name is Jane Urbacher and I’m your host. RevoPT is a personal training, strength and conditioning and functional fitness gym in South Melbourne and our goal is to inspire ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Every week here on the podcast we’re going to have a different episode for you and we cover all things health and fitness from training to nutrition to mindset to recovery to training after having a baby to training support with this podcast.

We’ve had an unbelievable amount of downloads and it’s really taking off all around the world now, which is just so exciting that something that started off as kind of an idea from Luke and as a hobby for me has really, it’s really having an impact on the world. And that’s what my purpose in life is, is to have an impact on the world. And it’s really, really cool that this podcast seems to be doing that right now.

So thank you so much for listening. I do also just want to give a little bit of an intro to the episode that’s about to come up. So this is today’s episode is with a really good friend of mine and one of my mentors and his name is Joe Vigio and he’s one of the owners of the absolute best performance, strength and fitness facilities in the entire world.

And if you don’t know who they are, I really urge you to have a look them up right now because they’re absolutely next level. And it’s, I feel really, really grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to train there a number of times, including the Urban Heartbeat that I recently took there. And I really want to talk about why I chose Joe to have on this podcast.

And there are a couple of reasons. And one of the main reasons is his real enthusiasm for life. And I learned this the very first time I met him. He’s such an enthusiastic and passionate and driven and hardworking person. And he’s the kind of person that you just, you want to know what their secret is. You want to know what they’re doing and how they’re doing it because you want to do the same thing.

And so that was one of the main reasons I got him on the podcast because I wanted to expose all the listeners to people like this because this is how our lives can all be. And you’ll hear it in Joe’s voice, how passionate he is to improve people’s lives and have an impact on people’s lives and better people’s lives. And he’s just so dedicated to it and I love it.

And the other reason I’d really love people to listen to this episode is it really demonstrates what can be done with your life, how far you can actually take your life with the right steps and the right steps are pretty much hard work and passion and it’s so exciting to hear someone who’s really, really killing it in their life and it’s because of that.

So that’s really what I want you guys to get out of today’s podcast. I hope you enjoy it. Please do. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me and thank you so much for your support. Bye. Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the Revo PT High Performance podcast. My name is Jane Eyebacher and I’m your host. I am so excited today because I’m speaking to, I actually talk about you all the time, just so you know.

So not only you, my my friend you’re like my idol and I just absolutely adore you this is Joe Riggio coach Joe Strong thank you thank you how are you I’m doing fantastic thank you awesome so I am I don’t know if you can hear from those couple of words that came out of his mouth but I am here on the border of New Jersey and this is a Jersey man yeah I’m’m Jersey throne throne.

Yes. Born in Red. We are in his gym varsity house which I absolutely love and I think I’ve been here four times now. I think so yeah I think it’s a bit more true. I’m probably the furthest visitor. Yeah I think so. I don’t think we’ve had anybody. One person come from Hong Kong so I don’t think that’s further. That’s totally closer because the only reason I know that is because I once caught a flight that went via Hong Kong and that was a really long way.

But yeah, I’m here in his amazing amazing amazing facility which is up in Orangeburg which is only about 20 minutes out of New York City. So if you are ever visiting New York City, you have to get in contact with Joe. You can get in contact with him via Instagram, you can follow their page varsity house because I have never been anywhere like this place.

Oh, thank you. No, I actually haven’t. It is like not only is it huge and it looks awesome. It’s like got an Astro to football field inside and outside and a huge big weights area and it’s like a big, a big shed basically that’s been like jacked up. Yeah. I mean, it was really a dream come true to be able to build our own facility from the ground up kind of the way we want to go on our own custom design playpad.

Totally. You can feel it’s yours. Everything is where you guys wanted it to be. It’s not just that what I actually like even more than the actual facility is the energy in this place and that’s why I keep coming back. Because you come in here, it’s community, and it’s actually a group of people who are doing their best. And you doing your best doesn’t mean that they’re doing any worse.

Everyone just wants everyone to do their best. It’s not like it’s competitive in a really great way. Correct. Yeah. We try. I mean, we want people to compete and I want people to push themselves to their own physical limits. But I mean, I don’t have to tell you, but you know, I’m trying to get people to break out of their mental limits more than their physical limits.

And I think that, you know, pushing your physicality is a great way to push those mental limits too. So I can’t say I won’t, so I can’t do that. Well, if you push yourself a little harder, then eventually those barriers start to break down. Completely and it’s transferable to the rest of your life. Correct. Yeah, which is what we’re both completely aligned on.

So I do want to kick off this podcast with a quote which I always do and what I actually read the first time I ever walked into Varsity House is on the door on the wall just as you walk in is this message and it says, “Welcome to Varsity House, Jim. We are a group of dedicated coaches and like-minded individuals who live and embrace hard work and discipline to stand out in a world of mediocrity.

And I stood there and read it the very first time I walked in and I was like, I’m not surprised, of course. Like I’m working into Joe and Dan’s gym and of course it says that. And that sets the standard when you walk in the door. We pride ourselves on all gyms, I think, especially nowadays, right? Community is such a big word in the gym industry as a whole, right?

And so when you ask any gym owner, what sets you apart? It’s community, right? What sets us apart is our want to be better, personally. I push myself physically, mentally, professionally, personally, my relationships, everything, every day to be better be better you know I spend a lot of time and effort reading and learning and bettering myself and that flows over to my team and that vibe that energy I think flows over to the people in the gym and it’s like you know you can you know you can be stagnant through life or you can push yourself forward so and that doesn’t mean that you have to be a world-class athlete to train here.

It just means that you have to have a good state of mind. You have to bring positive energy. You have to work hard. You have to add value to the gym exactly. I love it. And you really do walk that talk. I think that a lot of people in this kind of industry will say a lot of things and boss the people around. But then they’re not actually leading by example example and a really great example of this right now was I just ran a rowing workshop here it was amazing and I’m actually pretty like puffed and tired from this because I also had to do Joe’s class right before which it was really really good and I will talk about it in a second but it was so good in this rowing workshop because Joe jumped in so So there was such a, there were brand new people in the room, there were athletes and everybody was in on it and Joe jumped in and did everything that I asked.

So listened, learned, improved and gave it his all. And as soon as they see the, for the people in the room, see their leader behaving like that, it makes them stand up a little bit straight or two. – 100. I’ve never done anything in the gym that I haven’t done myself a dozen times before I break out a new circuit, a new exercise, a new training template.

Every summer we kind of redesign our college training program, our biggest program every year, 50, 60 college athletes, home training. We do it. Me and the entire gym crew of trainers do the program 16 weeks prior to the start of the program to test it all out and, you know, and put ourselves to it. So that’s a big part of what we try to do and just, you know, walk in the walk, living it, learning it.

You know, and there’s always something I can learn. Your, your verbiage, your spin on things, you know, yes, I. Yes, I’ve had people teach me how to row, and I’ve seen and heard lots of the things that we talked about today. But your spin on it has its own little take on things. It’s like you can pick, yeah, you can get a little, and the Australian twang does it hurt, but you pick up, you know, you pick up one or two words that make it stick a little different.

And it’s like, oh, that was a great way to put it, like a great way to think about it, you know? And even some of the people I’m My people it’s like all right. They’ve been hearing my voice. It’s like dad’s yelling at him all the time And then so to have somebody come in they perk up they thought this they brought her in from Australia. She must know what she’s talking about I’ve never had people listen to me I absolutely loved it But as you can tell Joe and I are great friends and we actually do just want to sit here and chat So it going to be really hard for me to keep this conversation on track because there are two really clear things that I want to talk about today.

And one is I want to talk about Jo, I want everybody to know who Jo is and where he’s come from and what he’s built. And I also really want to talk about Varsity House. And I want to talk about those things together and separately. So the way I’m going to introduce you is my relationship with you. So I met Joe just over a year ago now at Jim Jones and I was there doing level two.

I’m pretty sure we met at anyway. I met this guy and I’d never met anybody from New Jersey before. And I was like, immediately, I just loved the way you talked. That was the first thing. And then I loved the way you interacted with people and you coached. And I was like, immediately, it’s interesting what you just said about my rowing. What everything you said to me stuck.

And it’s not that I’ve never been coached before, anything I’ve been coached a lot, but everything you said to me, because you had a really good balance of science. So actually understanding biomechanics, anatomy, strength and conditioning, everything, movement, and then a really, really great balance that perfectly with mindset and emotion and psychology.

And somehow it wasn’t like you were doing either. You were doing the both at the exact same time. And anything you asked me to do, it became my mission to do that. And that’s all that I wanted to actually do was to keep you happy because you were someone who’s so much knowledge. So after meeting you with Jim Jones, I made an absolute priority of mine to when I was in New York, come up here and I remember I caught two buses because I’m a complete idiot, I’m a public transport and then I realized how actually close it was.

Came up here and you organized an awesome workout for me with one of your two of your absolute superstars. Yeah, Mike and Snaad. Mike and Snaad and Olympian. She’s going to go to the Olympics for a pop set. Yeah, next year. Next year for the week, in 2018, in South Korea. Unbelievable. This girl is unbelievable. You need to follow her on Instagram.

It’s S-I-N-E-A-i-d-e Correct. I just ID ID. I know you’re the end amazing and then Mike Riley Mike Riley is an animal and animal and he’s NFL he’s in a pro football and he both of these guys I actually got to train with with then Joe as well and it took me to the next level immediately and so from that point we had a really really great connection and in the last month I’ve actually brought a group of Australians on my fitness holiday my urban heartbeat and stop number one of course where was it?

And I brought these group of Australians to New York I dazzled them with every shiny thing the New York has to offer and their absolute favourite thing in the entire today, we had, I have 20 year olds, I got 60 year olds, I have everything in between. I got super gym diehards that come five, six days a week and I have people, we have a six week lifestyle transformation going on right now.

So there’s a lot of new people in the gym and I told them all, you know, come to the rowing seminar, come to the rowing seminar. It’s a great way to start off, you know, your, let’s say your gym career with good habits instead of, you know, like some of the people that have been coming, they might have some bad habits already built in. So, you know, just a lot of some experience.

– I thought it was amazing when I came here and I was training with an NFL player and a little bit in. I was like, ah, no, it’s meditating. Everybody is so nice. I think because we come from, you know, before we started training adults, we were only training athletes. And then, you know, we started integrating the adults into the schedule. And so no matter how you sliced it, if you were an adult, you were here training and there were definitely some athletes in the gym training.

So I think the people who’ve come through our gym have really gotten used to that environment of having the music, the loud music playing, the weights banging. There might be a whole team of athletes training on one side of the gym and I might have a group of 10 to 15 adults doing rowing circuit type stuff on their general fitness training on the other side of the gym.

And everybody works together. And the athletes high-fiving the adults for working hard and the adults are admiring the kids for pushing themselves at 15, 16, 17 years old. So I think that that environment is unique. There’s not a lot of gyms that are as diverse as we are with both a really high level of athletic training and a really great general fitness program And now I think now we have just over 150 members for our adult program.

And we have about roughly about 550 athletes a week come through the gym. So how does Varsity House work and where did it come from? I mean, so I’ll give you the quick, quick background. So I mean, I was an athlete my whole, right? And I did every sport. Football martial arts, my father was a big swimmer. Swam in college and was on like on the national team.

So I swam a lot and was that was my primary sport when I was literally from the time I was born till the time I was about 12, 13 years old. I played some baseball. I did a lot of martial arts. And then when I got to high school I played football and I was pretty good and then went to college. And I was never going to be an NFL player. I wasn’t at that level like a Mike Riley.

He just has that natural athletic ability. I was strong and explosive and powerful. In the weight room I was an animal, but there was just guys on the field who were freaks, you know, they’re just like subhuman, they’re barely, you know. Exactly. So that was my kind of journey. He went through college college and that was one of the reasons how I got into strength and conditioning was that I just loved the science behind that I start I took anatomy and physiology in high school and I was enamored by the body and I was like wow that’s amazing you know it’s unbelievable and I’ve been into training been kind of like the Arnold Schwarzenegger books and things like that you know of course and You know when I went to college and I wasn’t able to play at the level of some of those athletes and some of them, and I’ve been training really hard for years.

And then I go there and there’s kids that have never touched the weight in their life and they can jump higher, run faster and they just literally pick up 300 pounds like it’s nothing on a power plane. They’re like, I’ve never done that before. And I was like, what do you mean you’ve never done that before? I was like, I’ve been lifting my whole life and I could barely do that, right?

And so I just worked on my father’s farm, you know, and they’re like, you know, and I’m like, oh my God, you know, I’m out in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia. So that really sparked like, man, there must be more to it than just go to the way room and lift weights and crush yourself. So I started really getting into the science behind it. And I had an extra neighborhood as a physical therapist.

I was home my first summer. I was 19. She said, “Oh, you love training. My friend, Ken, is looking for someone to help him train some people over the summer. He’s got a couple of young athletes that it doesn’t have the time for. One of those young athletes happened to be an ex-girlfriend’s little brother. ” So they’re like, “Oh, can you train hockey players?

” I was like, “Oh yeah, I can train hockey players. I was like I knew nothing about training I just thought of reading some books and things like that and And made it happen when we were done was trained them in the backyard You know when a med ball and a couple bands and we do push-ups and squats and we’d run around the backyard and stuff like that And they were like eighth graders, so it was fine, you know, no big deal and I really liked it and I was like, oh, that’s awesome.

I was done. They gave me 50 bucks and I was like, oh, oh, this is how it works. Oh, oh, man, it’s awesome So I could actually get paid too, so it was great, right? So I was like whatever, but I and when I was done they gave me 50 bucks and I was like oh oh this is how it works oh man it’s awesome so I could actually get paid too so it was great right so I was like whatever but I didn’t really give it too much mine I helped him out for summer went back to school came back you know met a girl at the gym she was like you should be a trainer you know so much blah blah blah blah and I was kind of always like the go-to friend it was writing everybody workouts and stuff like that she’s like you can get certified make a lot of money she’s like the people here making like $40 an hour at like this gold gym we were working on it really I was like, “I’m not going to be too friendly.

I was writing to everybody workouts and stuff like that. ” She’s like, “You can get certified and make a lot of money. ” She’s like, “The people here are making like $40 an hour at this Gold’s Gym we were working on. ” I was like, “Really? ” I was like, “Well, so whatever. ” So we went down to take the test. I passed. She failed. We broke up. Oh, no.

And kind of the rest is history. I started training people ever since and I’ve been training people ever since. And when I came back to Jersey to do my masters, I was training people full time. I was working in a bunch of gyms I worked at everything from Chelsea peers in the city to you know, Parisi Speed School to you know all different types of like small like warehouse gyms and And then after I was doing my masters I was I was contemplating doing my PhD my degrees in molecular biology So it’s not it’s related but not quite same human physiology so I did everything all my research was in like like nerve injuries and incursions and stuff like that so I did a lot of clinical research with athletes and then I was gonna go do my PhD and I got accepted to a bunch of programs and I was all set to go and I’m interviewing at Temple University and I’m down I mean all the great professors and it was a beautiful facility.

Nothing wrong with the school, nothing wrong with the people. I just had like a meltdown and I called my mom and I was like, I think I’m gonna open up my own gym. And she lost her mind because she was like, I just spent seven years in college. And then she’s like, “You’re gonna be a doctor! ” And I was like, “Trust me, it’s gonna work, right? ” But I need to borrow 10 grand, right?

And so I borrowed some money from her. I bought some money from a girlfriend. I bought some another girlfriend at the time. I bought some money from my best friend. I put together about $25,000 and opened up what was the first varsity house, which was like a little garage gym, right? Like a little dump. A roll-up door, one power rack, some dumbbells and stuff like that.

I had been training athletes in the area locally for a couple of years at that point while I was doing my masters. I called them all up. We started coming. One of those athletes was Dan. And Dan was my business partner now was an athlete who was just finished his freshman year of college and was kind of discussed with his own play and his own ability and the fact that there were so many guys who were physically more developed than he was One of his friends had been training with me.

They said you got to come see this guy Joe He’s a great coach. Oh, blah. Yeah, Dan came to visit. We fell in love now. He’s a workwife, you know And we had an amazing relationship even though he’s 10 years young and the mean he always seems older like when you I mean you’ve met Dan he’s 30 years old he seems like he’s an old soul and he’s a very smart business oriented.

Very relaxed. His mom and dad are phenomenal people. His little brother will paint. So like, you know, that we started our relationship there. You know, Dan trained with me for a bunch of years as we got towards the end of his college career. He started talking more and more and more about doing something together. The timing just happened to be perfect.

I had to get out of the space that I was in. I shared a space with somebody else. They wanted more space. They wanted to expand their business. There was really no room for me anymore. I was packing the gym with giant meatheads and heavy metal and loud weights clanking. They were like a basketball shooting school. So it was like a totally different vibe.

So I started in a sense like out there are welcome. So me and Dan me and Dan just the timing was right You know we crossed roads were perfect and so meeting you know Dan came in We did the second rendition of our city house, which was about 5,000 square feet, which was a nice sized facility But it was a total piece of crap. Yeah, you know leaky room snow light no windows know nothing Yeah, and we rode that out for five years and we just worked our butts off.

Yeah all day every the seven week, weekends, games, going to all the kids, stuff. And we trained athletes for like three years. And then in the year three, we had so much dead time during the day and so many parents that wanted to train. And we just started training them and that’s kind of what led us here. And we started with one class twice a week with like four women.

And now we have about 150 adult clients and we run two transformations a year which get about 100 people signed up for. We run two three week kind of like nutritional cleanses that I don’t want to call them a cleanse because now it’s like a whole food type of diet. We get them on a real strict like kind of whole food diet reset type of thing and they date meat with our nutritionistsists and we get about 40 50 people for each one of those and it’s just a Segue into a whole nother type of revenue stream and you know from that from those adult clients We met we met a guy who’s now our partner in the building and properties that we own you know we own the property and building that built varsity house and then several others.

And those relationships came from the gym. And like we said, we’ve talked about it before, a lot of people will say that that’s luck. That’s like, oh, you guys are so lucky that you’ve met this. You’re so lucky that you get to do that. Oh, you’re so lucky that you get to have this big gym. I was like, well, this didn’t just come from nowhere. This didn’t come from luck.

I spent my whole life playing sports and being an athlete. I started studying strength and conditioning when I was 14, 15 years old reading books. I went seven years in college to get a master’s degree. Dan’s been a football athlete and has a degree in sports management and business marketing. And we have positioned ourselves to make good decisions on the business side of things and on the personal.

We work really hard. I worked seven days a week for three years straight when I started the first gym. Me and Dan were here six, seven days a week with the second rendition and working 60, 70 hours a week. We really give a crap. I stayed late for kids. I went to games. I’ve been to every birthday party bar mitzvah graduation. You name it. You know, just trying to be there as a coach mentor.

Yeah. And that gets noticed. So the the the the more you do that’s real. You know what I mean? There was never like, Oh, I’ll go to your game. Don’t forget you got to pay your bill. You know what I mean? It was never like, I was just there for the kids. I wanted I wanted to see the athletes and the parents and the people that came to Jim be successful be successful.

And that’s spawned into some great relationships that’s helped us tremendously with business. We have like an advisory board that includes, you know, the management team here at Varsity House, but also includes some of our some of our best gym clients that are in finance and accounting and marketing and stuff like that. And I’m talking some of the I’m talking some world class people.

My finance guy is one of the top financial advisors in the world. And he just happened to live in the area and start coming to general. – It’s so good. – 11 years ago. He’s one of my oldest clients. He’s a really good friend of mine now. I train both his kids and stuff like that. Anytime I have a question, I go to him. We have Top Nudge, our partner Pete, who is our partner in the building and property, has a construction and building and engineering company.

When we were looking for space, we were looking for more space to rent. He’s like, “I think we can build a building. ” And it was like, really? And we started putting a plan together. We went on a business trip together, placed some golf and hang out, do some fishing, solidify the deal, and made it happen. And came back here and made it happen. And that didn’t happen because he was like, “Oh, these are nice guys.

I’ll just think I’ll just do this for a minute. ” Because he saw a business opportunity himself, not only are they great guys that I’d like to align myself with, but I know they’re going to kill it. I know that I’m not going to lose money on this. – People like that don’t align themselves with people that like, they can take their interest. – Right, there was no reason to.

– Even with that, exactly, like that there’s no reason to that. – There’s no reason. You already had a successful business. You already had money. You already had a million. You already had his hands in a million other things. Why put yourself out there for a chance to lose money if you think, you know, if it’s not the right fit? So, you know, when a lot of people come to me, like I met somebody at the Jim Jones seminar who was like, would you guys win the lottery?

I said, no, we just really worked our ass up and mates, but look, I’m not gonna lie and say we didn’t screw a lot of things up. I mean, there was definitely a lot of mistakes. You know, for the first three years, we had no point of sales, I mean, no computers, I wrote everything down in the book. I probably lost 10, 15, 20,000 dollars in just lost sessions a year.

You know, had no sales system the marketing systems know nothing, you know, and that’s really been the biggest change Going from you know, you know guys who just want to be awesome coaches and trainers to business entrepreneurs, you know and really really seeing the gym as a business number one, you know, we’re in the business of helping people and bettering people.

– Totally. – So it was like, yeah. – It’s really interesting. There’s two things I wanna touch on about what you’ve just talked about. The first one is that I love what you’ve just said about hard work versus luck. ‘Cause last week’s podcast was about there’s no such thing as luck. – Really? – And I really do honestly believe that. And it is like to create something like this, it doesn’t just sprout up out of the ground.

It’s years of hard work and I get it. I’ve had my own gym and stuff as well and I know how much it’s 24 hours a day. Your on call. You’re ready. Your every ounce of your energy and being is going into making this a success. The second thing I really want to talk to you about is the business side of this because I think that what we see there is a huge need in the fitness industry for business guidance and coaching because a lot of people get into the fitness industry from the view that they do want to help people.

They love training, they’ve either got an athletic background or they’ve lost weight and they’ve transformed their body and they do want to bring people the same kind of joy that they’ve felt. So the majority of people coming into the fitness industry genuinely do have this drive to have an impact on the world. The disconnect then occurs with that and then creating a successful business.

– Correct. – Because that doesn’t come naturally for a lot of these people. And I think it’s really interesting that you talked about first what we did was we became awesome coaches. Okay, so we became we were in the training side of things. Then what you did was you studied the hell out of everything to do with anatomy, physiology, biomechanics. I would have to say you’re a pretty big training geek.

And I learned that one day when we did a workout with chains back spots and you were explaining to me all these things I’d’d never known and I’ve been working in this industry for a very long time. And I started to realise how important the science behind strength and conditioning and movement and training and nutrition and weight loss and weight gain and every single element that makes up the training side of things here, you are constantly researching and making sure that that is your foundation.

Next level from that is connection. You are great at networking, you’re great at building a community, you’re great at connecting with people, you’re great at building people up. Next level from that is the business side of things. And I think that people don’t realize that each one of those is equally important. And within the absence of any of those, Varsity House wouldn’t be what it is right now.

So what do you recommend I would say to like people who are focused on being a great trainer, being a great athlete themselves who want to who think it’s luck that Varsity House came out like what would you say to them is kind of what theyoring and stuff like that and we’re actually going to host a business workshop this winter. We’re having set a definitive date yet, but we have all the material and stuff ready and we’re going to break it down for everyone to show them how to create a varsity house of your own.

You know what I mean? And how we did it and kind of some of the things that we go back and we were calling that the business of strength and we have a you know like a website I’m going to call strength on. So it’s going to be really cool and I’m really excited about that. That’s kind of you’re the first people to hear it. Nobody else knows about it really.

But what I tell people and like if you came to me for business coaching and you said, “Joe, I see you run a successful business, I want to open up my own gym. ” What do I do? – Totally. – I said, “Well, number one is you. ” So at first, like, “Jane, you were going to open up your own gym. You’re going to be the leader. You’re going to be the focal point at that gym for a period of time, whether that be a year, two years, whatever it is, I’m going to be the coach, kind of finance, accounting, you know, point of sale person, I’m going to be everything.

And you maybe start that gym with yourself and maybe one little part timer or something like that. So it really has to come down to, you know, building yourself up from an educational standpoint. And you don’t have to have a master’s degree in physiology like myself. But you have to become a master of your craft. You have to immerse yourself in training.

You got to go to other places. You got to get outside of your comfort zone. Go train at other gyms. Go train with other people. Have somebody else kick your ass a few times and teach you their secret sauce. Go to mentorship programs. It’s great ones. I’ve been like athletes, performance, Mike Boyle, Jim Jones, obviously, West Side Barbell. I’ve had more certifications and forgot about more certifications over the 20 years, you know, than I can even remember, you know, everything from kettlebells to everything.

I’ve tried it all and done it all, right? And that was my third, I’ve read hundreds of training books because I want it to be the best at training, right? So you have to have that base and you want to be good. You want people to, at the end of the day, you still have to get people results. Community is great, facility is great, but we had a dump of facility, but we had awesome coaching and great people.

So it didn’t matter. I had very wealthy clientele rolling up in Bentley’s coming to a place that had water stains on the roof and leafy, no lights, no nothing because they didn’t care because they liked us. So that’s number one is get yourself right too. You must plan it out ahead of time. Do not spend a cent on a business that you haven’t written everything about the business on paper.

You have to write out a business plan and the business plan needs to include everything. Who’s doing the finances? How you doing them? What type of class schedule you’re going to run with? What’s your training philosophy? We’re a soup to nuts equipment budget and that equipment has to include not only the gym equipment, but like pencils, pens, toilet paper, you name it.

Batteries. Batteries. Yeah. You know, ’cause that’s, we spend $2,000 a month on electric, on the electric bill. We spend $1,000 a month on just regular stationary and gym supplies. And people don’t account for that. And all of a sudden, you start building up these expenses, you know? So it’s playing it all out. How are you gonna get clients? Who’s your ideal client?

I think the biggest thing for most people is they haven’t defined themselves Who am I who do we train? Where do and what’s our what’s our mantra? Yeah, what are our core values? What’s our core focus? What’s a 10-year target? What’s a three-year target? You have to have some idea of where you’re trying to get to so you can plan backwards and get there You know and I think a lot of guys of guys, they just, they’re just really excited.

They want to open up a gym. They want to train people. So they, they, they scramble, right? And I’m not knocking CrossFit at all. It’s great. But I can, I can take a weekend certification. I can pay my franchise fee and I can go open up a box. We can, you know, pay the franchise fee on Monday and I’m, I’m setting ready to go. I’m, you know, I’m Joe CrossFitbit trainer and now I got a gym But I really don’t know how to run that type of a business right so You’ve always thought I just have to be bright training people right and then it’ll be successful Look we were really great at training people yeah our gym grew exponentially and then the back end fell apart Yes, and we didn’t know how to keep track of anything.

We had to go backwards to go forwards. So, number one, get yourself in order. Get your, get your, get your, I don’t know, you don’t have to be built like Bobby Maximus. You know what I mean? You don’t have to be a six foot three, you know, freakusoid. You don’t have to be an NFL player. But you need to be in shape. You need to walk the walk. You need to be knowledgeable.

You need to be able to help a variety of people. If you want to train athletes like me, it definitely helps that you’ve trained some athletes and that you’ve immersed yourself, volunteer coach. Go volunteer coach for a local football baseball soccer team. Something, get involved with what you want to do. You have to be around those people. Number two, plan it out in detail as much detail as possible.

I have a lot of information about this that I could give to people. I could put some post on them. I could send you some stuff to post on them. But it’s really like a sample business plan, everything. One of my strengths, weaknesses, let me do a swa-kin out, strength, weakness, opportunities, and cost. How much is it gonna cost? What’s it gonna do?

How is it gonna do? Where’s my growth potential? When I get to 100,000, I’m gonna hire another coach. When I get to 200,000, I’m going to hire a front desk person, whatever, try and have a plan. Even though the plan’s most likely going to go to shit at some times, right? As low as you have something to follow, set up your core values, right? Our core values are on the roll right here, right?

Hungry, humble, consistent and committed to excellence, right? You got to be hungry, you got to work hard, you got to be committed be committed, and you gotta be better in yourself. We wanna give our clients the best hour of their day when they come to the door, over delivering every way, so you shape and form. And the last thing that you need to do, and I don’t say this lightly, is grow slow and give a shit about every single person that walks in the door.

Take it slow. It’s better to be overflowing and have too much business in a small space than to go too big too fast and then have an oh shit moment because you can’t pay your bills. I’ve seen a lot of gyms open and close. We’ve had 10 gyms open in the area in the 10 years we’ve been here and 10 of them have closed and I just made somebody just made me aware of another gym that’s been in business for quite some time that’s closed enough closing doors they expand it they put in a big area you know so now you take on more overhead more rent higher more coaches and then your business can’t support it you know so you have to have the business systems in place grow slow we did things step by step by step by step by step.

I’m so happy to hear that you’re going into this more business mentorship coaching because you do set a really great example and what you are is you’re very real about the work that goes into work and the steps that are taken and I really it’s interesting because it’s the same philosophy and it’s the same work ethic that you apply to your training methodology.

It’s just different content. I’m really happy to hear that because there are a lot of people who are great trainers and don’t know how to run a business and you guys are the kinds of people that the information that you can provide is very digestible too. I’m a product and kind of operations guy. I’m a detail-oriented guy. I could write up a system.

Okay, great. Here’s the sales system. Here’s how it goes step by step. Client A walks through the door and wants to talk about training themselves. Client B walks through the door and wants to talk about training their kids. I could set up a system and I know the training product inside and out. Dan was more of the business marketing and business. He’s got a great handle on marketing and sales.

He’s a really good people person and he he’s opened my eyes a lot in that area. And we’ve kind of like, you know, jostled back and forth together. He’s become, we were just the position. And now he’s an amazing coach who’s amazingly knowledgeable. And I’ve learned more of the business, the marketing sales and stuff like that. And it’s now like, now it’s kind of like 50/50.

Like I know Dan can train anybody doing and still comes to me like kind of like big brother for like training advice and then you know and I do all the sales marketing and stuff too but like there’s definitely times where I walk in and then I saw I got a client that wants to do this like what should I really tell like what should we do you know and he’s got some insight on the sales so we’ve made a great partnership you know in that respect but the we try to run our business just like that like a like like you know a fortune 500 company you know the more you can systemize the more you can standardize the easier it is to teach people now you know you can’t devoid that of personality I think our gym has a lot of our personality yeah but you see me I mean you’ve been here a bunch of times, you see me on the floor coaching, training, yelling at people.

I’m training, I’m in there. I still train with the athletes, I’m running here, I’m still here, I’m still here 60 hours a week. It’s not like, oh now I got this big awesome gym and I could just take my foot off the gas and I’m taking vacations. A lot of our clients are our clients like oh you guys travel like yeah I mean we’re traveling because we’re learning and we’re doing it.

I’m very very I of course I take a you know a holiday every year with my wife or you know me and Dan will go away for a weekend just for like vacation but if I’m with him it’s always business you know it’s like when we go to Utah yeah it’s 24/7 talking about how we’re going to do this, how we’re going to do that. That’s really it. And you just work hard.

Don’t expect anything to be easy. And even if you’re thinking about owning a gym and not being the head coach, you’re going to be the business behind it, you’re going to be there all day, every day. You’ve got to have your thumb on the pulse all the time. And you’ve got to want it. And I think that this is one one of the questions I always ask people is what do you feel is your purpose in life?

And I’m going to ask you that. But with this kind of thing, you’ve got to want it to like for your entire life. If you’re a business owner, you’re fully immersed in it. It’s your whole life. Like I was saying exactly that because I’ve been away for eight weeks now from home and I was talking to somebody last night saying how this entire trip as much as I’ve had the best time ever, I have been working all the time.

I’ve been meeting people, connecting, I’ve taken the people on the trip of running this growing workshop, I’ve been doing my podcast, but every single time I walk into a store, I was in Nike the other night and I was really tired and I was just standing there being anti-social and this guy just started chatting to me and it turns out that you know now he’s listening to my podcast and it was it was a great connection to make and I was like I realized then that I am my business and you’re the exact same and so you are ready to go.

You gotta be on all the time. Yeah That’s kind of the hard thing talking about coaching. numbers and stuff like that, you know, and so, you know, and you always have to be on and you got to realize too that people are coming here for one to two hours of their day. So just because I’ve been here for 10 hours, that doesn’t, to them, they want their best hour of the day, right?

So you have to think about that, especially me, the owner, right? It’s me and Dan. If me and Dan moped around here with pissy attitudes all the time and the coaches then followed suit, the environment here would be toxic, right? It would be toxic, right? So you gotta be, I have to be the example all the time. So don’t tell me, it’s draining. There’s definitely like on Sunday, Sunday, I’m like, oh, I’m just like, yeah, I’m just gonna last it out my backyard and stare at the freaking, you know, at the grass, you know, and relaxed, you know, but that is definitely one of the key components.

And I think a lot of why there’s a lot of dropout for coaches is because they don’t realize how much energy that takes. So we’re like, “If you’re in corporate and I’m sitting in my cubicle and I’m typing away, at five o’clock when I check I check out I go home I don’t even think about that place where I go home and I don’t stop thinking about it. I think about more when I’m out of the gym because here I’m busy doing stuff I’m task managing and training people whatever and then when I go home I’m like I should have done this I need to do that.

I keep my book goes everywhere with me and my my get shit done no fucking you know what I mean? All my to-dos and things like that all stuff my gratitude journal all my It just shows then how driven you are to make this a success. So where did that come from like what is your core like what’s your purpose? What’s where you drive? Well, I mean look so if you asked me this question 15 years ago it probably would have been different but you know I absolutely believe that my purpose now is to lead people to be better in all aspects to lead my to lead my business partner to be the best gym owner co-owner that he could be to bring my wife to another level to improve the quality of my mother’s And those are all different ways to help my gym and all the hundreds of people that come here.

For whatever reason, some people’s personality are more, let’s say, I guess more well-designed to be leaders, to not, I don’t have a filter as you can, you know, no. – You have to be the director. – Right. When people ask, oh, you know, you’d show up for class and they’d be like, oh, who wants to, who wants to come up on the board and do a question?

I’d be the first one to raise my hand. I don’t care. I don’t mind self-deprecating myself for the betterment of learning, you know. I’d rather make mistakes. I’d rather have a life checkered with failures to get to a goal than to not have ever tried before. So I think that when I was the kid in school and they said, “Okay guys, we’re gonna make kickball team, “all right, I’m team captain.

” I’d be the first guy, like, “Come on, I’m par–” You know what I mean? And I would just take over and not in a bad, like a moxious kind of way, but I just wasn’t afraid to speak up and be there. And I’m still not to this day. So I think that leadership quality, the want to help people. I see people doing something. I see a coach of mine that’s doing something on the floor that needs some help or whatever it is.

I’m not afraid. I’ll spend hours a week going over coaching. I’m great at picking out people’s like, there’s some guys that are awesome technicians, there’s some guys that are great people persons but need help on the technical side. There’s some people that are shy and we’re amazing athletes maybe, but they’re a little shy when it comes to coaching.

And whatever it is, I help them pick apart whatever their mental roadblock is and fix it. And just kind of that’s always been my thing. And so now as a, let’s say the leader of this spaceship, you know, and a mentor to a lot of kids and to a lot of people and at the end of the day the buck stops with me as the head of the operation. And so anything that happens here winds up coming to me.

I feel a very indebted personal responsibility to make sure that this business who is the sole income and livelihood for over a dozen people, we have 20 employees, but over 13 full-timers. This is all they do. This is it. They’re expecting Varsity house to be their career for the next 15 to 20 years. So when I started thinking about that more often when we hired our first real full timer and when me and Dan, let’s call it turned pro and became like, this is what we are.

This is what we’re going to do. My legacy is going to be defined by varsity house and being a great coach. My life changed. I started seeing other people as I had to take care of this guy. This guy is my friend. He’s dedicated himself to us. Big Mike being a perfect example. He was the first full time guy to be hired. Big Mike’s been with me for eight, nine years now, right?

I care more. I would, I would stop paying myself long before I stopped paying Mike, you know what I mean? So, so him mentoring him bettering him. That’s really been my purpose. That’s my secrets. My secret sauce is that I really want This business to be a refuge for not only the employees but all the people that come here, you know like man I’m so thankful that I work in a place like this or I’m so thankful that I found a gym like this that helps me better myself physically, mentally, nutritionally, whatever it might be.

Made friends. There’s so many great friendships made in the gym too. Like best friends. People that are now like, they met here and now they’re golfing buddies or they go out to dinner with their families and stuff like that and they become good friends and that’s awesome. – Yeah, I love it. It’s so… You can’t say Joe, but I can say him, yeah. But you can hear it in his voice in the way that he’s talking that he has so much passion and conviction in what he talks about.

And it’s like, it’s just such a great experience to actually hear that and to see that and to witness it in action. Like, it’s not just words either because you can see him actually living that. And I talked to a lot of people about what they feel like their purposes and if they feel like they have passion and stuff and a lot of people aren’t as sure.

Okay, they don’t know, they’re not sure. They’re not sure. And I think that something that’s really, really interesting in listening to Joe’s answer is how much he has allowed his passion to actually surface. I think a lot of people kind of silence that for fear of failure and embarrassment and something he’s so clear on without even realizing that he was saying it to me was he’s never been afraid to fail because basically one of his core needs is to learn, is to keep learning and the reason that your whole purpose of betterment for other people came about is because you are so focused on betterment for you.

And learning is a great example of that. And I think that this is such a great thing for everybody to actually listen to and take so much from. Because the reason Joe has so much conviction in his purpose and he’s living and he his able to take action and he’s successful is because he’s not afraid of that. Yeah I mean like you know I’m gonna read it here this is my favorite this is my all-time favorite quote other than the one on the wall you know what I mean and this was by Theodore Roosevelt great American president and and and you know it’s written in a verbiage that would not be used anymore But it says far better is to dare mighty things to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure then to rank with those poor spirits who neither Enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the great twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

That’s put me in a position to be a leader. Yeah, and so why not make the most of it? Why not be the best that I can be? Why not push myself? You know, it’s easy to be it’s a way easier to climb down a ladder than it is to climb up So I try to keep putting one foot you know when I read a book I make everybody read the book And it becomes like no, this is not optional like everybody on the advisory board has to read this book and we’re gonna go over it on our next meeting You know stuff like that, you know, so so I take notes give them like a cheat sheet, like you know blah blah blah blah.

You know like you know so things like that you know and it’s just my personality. If I wasn’t the head of varsity house you know I like to cook so I’d probably be the head chef at a restaurant or all my own restaurant or something like that. So I think I didn’t realize it when I was young that I had that entrepreneurial spirit and and the walk to be I didn’t want anybody telling me what to do Yeah, I want to tell people what to do in a good way I want to leave from the front and be my own kind of beacon of You know I guess success and so forth and you know But I had my I had a paper route when I was a little kid that I thought was cool because it was like my paper route like I was like, you know, Joe’s paper delivery service, you know, I mean I created the first rendition of varsity house Was called a sport dynamics.

That’s what I called it and I was 19 years old when I started training those kids in the backyard I made up little business cards and I made up like a little brochure and I did it all on like word by myself and there was hair I like 14 spelling mistakes in it, you know, it was like but some of the parents were like, you know, this is spelled wrong and I was like, oh, oh, yeah, I was like Stupid editors.

I can’t believe they would print something like that. You know, I go home and fix it, you know what I mean? So so I just think like, you know, I learned by doing I learned by trial and error I screwed up a lot of things we did terrible You know, we had camps that had one person in them. I have had camps that had had 250 people in them. So everything in between.

So I think that is, and you’ve seen it going around where there’s a major, people have a major roadblock about failure and standing out in the crowd are looking like, you know, not fit in the norm. I’m there to meet people so why would you sit there and be quiet I never understood that but I get I get that people just like oh no what if they don’t like me what if people don’t like me and my mentality is well well nobody’s gonna like me anyway you say that because you are so you’re so not intimidating and welcoming to people who feel like that, who feel like they’re out of their comfort zone.

You’re like, it’s really nice because people then don’t feel embarrassed around you. You’re so easy for you. As a coach, I think it’s important to not be so like, I don’t know, like all about the numbers or all about improving. It’s just about having fun. For most people It’s about fun at the end of the day people don’t want to be yelling screen that right so I mean yes There’s a time to get on the gas a little bit Maybe gas people up a little bit and push them and encourage them especially with the like the higher level athletes and stuff like that But for the most part they’re looking for a fun awesome workout.

They’re looking for great energy That’s really what it comes down to looking for great energy looking to feel good They’re looking to be told that they’re doing great. They’re looking for great energy. That’s really what it comes down to. They’re looking for great energy. They’re looking to feel good. They’re looking to be told that they’re doing great.

They’re looking for instruction and stuff like that. But most people come here, you know, to have fun. You know, so if it’s not fun at the end of the day, it’s, and that’s for everything too. Like, you know, that’s for everything we do. It’s like, you know, if it’s not fun, you know, there’s a great, you know, like Tim Ferriss, you know, you know, hells, yes or fuck no, you know So so I mean and that’s kind of that’s the mentality so people don’t have to train here.

Varsity house is exclusive. It’s expensive. Yeah, right. It’s a private gym. Yeah, right You can go join retro fitness for 20 bucks a month Why would I come here and pay $250 a month for a but you know to pay to train here? Why would I pay a hundred dollars an hour for private trainings when I can go to another gym and maybe pay $50 an hour? You know what I mean?

And there’s so many gyms in New Jersey this East Coast area. Yeah, you can go train anywhere. So so Yeah, yeah, exactly what sets us apart is is I think really is the give a shit factor from me and Dan and then our coaches and Saf you met Leslie and Susan today, you know, how enthusiastic they are. have meetings and I don’t have to tell anybody that’s on my that’s on my staff The meeting sometimes are redundant, but I have systems in place specifically for you know greeting people, you know, how how we have a coat of conduct just like you know Jim Jones, right?

Here’s went out spec Here’s how you act. It’s genuine But but but people need that like sometimes if but well, here’s what happens in business, right? If you don’t talk about it. Yeah, it’s sometimes it gets forgotten and it’s like Remember the number one thing that we’re trying to do we’re trying to be the absolute best I want in five years our five-year goal is for varsity house to be recognized as one of the world leaders in strength and conditioning.

And by the term recognize, I’m meaning I want other people from around the world like yourself to see us as a beacon of excellence, you know what I mean? So that means you have to carry yourself inside and outside the gym in a certain way. When I’m out, you know, driving my truck, I can’t be screaming and yelling and flipping the old lady off at the light, ’cause she might be the mayor’s wife or something like that.

When I’m at the Starbucks, I’m Coach Joe. When I’m at the local town game, I’m Coach Joe. You gotta be on, I own Varsity House, I’m a business owner and entrepreneur in town. You gotta be nice to everybody, you gotta be on, You gotta remember that your actions have repercussions all the time. And that even goes from my guy. You work the front desk girl here.

When you’re out, if you’re wearing a varsity house, sure, right? You gotta conduct yourself in a certain fashion. So those things are important too. And that starts with me and Dan obviously. – Yeah, completely. I to know you touched on basically in your get-shit-down book. I want to know what else you do in terms of like daily kind of like rituals or non-negotiables.

I’m a very old school. I come from an old Italian-German family, my mother’s parents immigrated here, my grandmother from Italy who’s 4’igrated here my grandmother from Italy who’s four foot eleven. Yeah, my grandfather from Germany who’s six foot eight Massive guy, right so they like to odd couple you know, you know, they they met on the boat coming here to Ellis Island She spoke Italian.

He spoke Germany. They German. They fell in love somehow. She was like 14. He was like 17 They wouldn’t let her marry him until she was 16, right? And so they’re very old school. My father’s parents were Italian. You know, my father was a old school 100% Sicilian so I Just come from a mentality that like hard work effort and consistent my father believed in getting up early my father got up at 4.

You know, my mom owned a bakery, got up at 2 in the morning, you know what I mean? Stuff like that. So I’m up at 6 every day. I make coffee and I get my wife off to work and we spend a few minutes with her. She goes to work. She goes and works out in the morning on her own. And we spend a few minutes having coffee together and just, you know, talking about everything other than work talk about nice stuff and not stress yourself out.

I usually spend a couple minutes each morning going over my to-do list and just kind of like outlining some of the things to get my day started. I usually like to do a brain dump at night before I go to bed and that’s again back to the get shit done book here, my to do book. And I’ll write a couple things that I know are upcoming for the day. In the morning, I’ll outline them, I’ll send out a couple texts to like the team like Dan and or Trevor, our general manager, Mike, our head coach.

Hey guys, here’s some of the stuff that needs to get taken care of today. And right, just set your day up for success. After that, I always, I don’t meditate per se. I did martial arts my whole life. So I usually do some breathing techniques and spend a couple of minutes just trying to move a little bit. I like to ride my bike. It’s kind of just like a feeling of freedom.

So I might go for like a 15 to 30 minute bike ride and write in my gratitude journal. You know, I’ll, one or two things down in the gratitude journal every day. Things that I can do better, like, you know, a core focus. I think people, let’s say you have a to do list of 50 things. It’s easy to get lost in that. So like for each day, I try to do two or three, I might have it to do this 50 things long.

But like what is my prime objective for today? And I’ll circle the three things that must get done today, you know what I mean? And those have become the core focus for that day. You know, for the day I work out every day, I set the whole gym trains from 12 to two every day. We don’t take clients, we don’t take e-vals, I don’t even take phone calls during that time.

Meetings are set in stone every Wednesday at two. That’s locked down Friday at 10. That’s locked down. Nothing interferes with that schedule. Consistency is the key. And you know, I’m here usually from seven a. m. to about seven, seven 30 p. m. Most days, Fridays, I leave a little bit early Saturdays. I’m here early morning to mid afternoon. And then I come home and my ritual I usually beat my wife home.

Unfortunately she works very hard as well. Has a pretty high power corporate job. So she’s usually stuck working a lot of miserable hours as well. I come home. I cook as dinner. You know, I love cooking. Thankfully, and I cook as dinner and or I dinner. Or I heat up leftovers because I usually do a lot of cooking on the weekends. And on our way for her to come home with camels, we have a nice dinner together.

We watch TV, we relax, we put the phones away for the night. And we just try to support each other and be there. And on the weekends family guy. I, you know, I really try to spend as much time as I can with the Dell and my mom and my sister and my niece who are like the core group of my close knit family. I mean, that’s really it. I mean, consistency is the key.

I think, you know, one of the things that is my routine is who I associate with. I don’t make time for people who are negative. I don’t make, make and I don’t want to sound negative I don’t want to sound like I’m being like I’m being an asset anyway like I’m not mean to anybody I try never to come off as being like I would get rude right now I try to be very respectful everybody you know what I mean but but I don’t I don’t I don’t I don’t I don’t have time for negativity Yeah, I don’t have time for winers and like the I cans and I won’t type of people.

I have a small group of friends that are all really great people. I have a great network of people like yourself who are my extended network of friends who I believe just bring a ton of positive energy work ethic things like that. And you become who you surround yourself with. And you know that’s like a catchphrase nowadays like the sum of the five people you hang out with I really feel it’s like the sum of like probably like the 50 to 100 people you communicate with on a weekly basis you know you know obviously my family my close friends and my coaches are probably the people I spend the most time with but there’s a lot of people in the gym that influence me greatly and who I respect greatly and bring tons of energy and enthusiasm to my life not just the gym I’m a big believer in writing things down.

When you write it down it makes it true. Yeah, you know, so like that’s why like everywhere you go in the gym There’s a whiteboard room in the gym. Yeah, my office. I have another giant whiteboard with other stuff right and at the top says get shit done I love it at the top of this one it says the only thing you take with you when you are gone is what you leave behind and then under that is the core values of team varsity has the core focus and also the tenure target and I love it I love that it’s written up there.

It’s so accountable. Right this is like the coaching room. This is our like what’s called the war room. So a lot of code like big Mike’s desk and some of the guys that have a lot of influence here in the gym. So when they’re in here meet with clients and they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like they’re like.

This is our, like, let’s call the war room. You know, so a lot of code, like big Mike’s desk, maybe some of the guys that have a lot of influence here in the gym. So when they’re in here meet with clients or whatever, everybody sees that. Everybody looks at it every day. When I start off every team meeting on Wednesday, I read it every single time, you know, and we reiterated together.

And we really try to like hammer at home, you know, consistency, commitment, and humble and hungry is really, you know, nobody’s too big, nobody’s too small, nobody’s better than anybody else, just because I can row a sub seven minute 2K. That doesn’t mean squat, okay, I don’t care about that. – Totally. So what’s next for you and Balsi house? – So the business thing is something I’m really excited about.

So we got a couple cool stuff, you know. I never considered myself to be like an online entrepreneur, right? And I still don’t. But so I’m much better of a people person. I’d rather face people. Then like just write programs online and like, you know, put up stuff. But we do have a lot of free programs on our website. We do put a lot of free content out there.

So two big things that we’ve got. We have training mentorship coming and a business mentorship coming. We have a three stage training mentorship for sports performance coaching. And you will basically get a three part series in developing an athlete. So if your sports, the sports performance industry is the fastest growing segment of the fitness industry, youth sports performance in general, and it’s a great compliment to any bak who’s Jim who’s got a great adult contingency.

Well, if you have 100 adult members, I mean, probably half of them have kids, right? So you’re missing out on a huge revenue stream, but there are some rules and you have to do it properly because training kids is not like training many adults. And it’s not like training many pro athletes with a lot of people can like take a, you maybe you see something in a magazine, you see a workout in even in like the NSCA journal, like the National Strength and Conditioning Journal, that was designed for high-level college and/or pro athletes, I see that workout, and now I have 10-year-olds doing box jumps and dead links.

So there are some rules and guidelines to youth athletic development. So we have a three-part series that basically brings you from a basic instruction and learning to intermediate to what we call a master of physical preparedness. And then the business thing. The business is going to be called the business of strength, strengthonentrepreneurs. com.

And it’s going to be again same thing, like a three phase process. It’ll be a two day workshop. And then there’ll be some type of mastermind for people who want a little bit more personal engagement. Let’s say like yourself, Jane, if you said, Hey, Joe, you know, I’m going to, I’m going to open up my own gym. I’d like to come sit and meet with you.

Maybe, maybe we Skype, maybe we actually come and meet together or whatever. Maybe I get to Australia, right? And, and, and we sit down and we down the business plan the front end the back end of product How you’re gonna put it all together into a system and really help people like and look my always not gonna be a hundred percent perfect for everybody?

But it’s like correct, but right I’m gonna look this is what worked for us. Yeah, these are definitely some starting points If you’re if you’re here’s a here’s some process So there’d be a lot of like a lot of done for you processes and a lot of like real life situations in that. And that’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m really excited. You me. I like to teach.

I’m still a college professor part time. You know, I still teach at the university here. And so I think that education is something that I could see myself really doing a lot more of in the next year. So our goal is to have, you know, the three training seminars this coming year and three business entrepreneur weekends for people. And obviously we’re going to start doing some stuff with Jim Jones too, which is awesome.

So I’m really excited to see where it starts with coaching some level one Jim Jones seminar here at varsity House and helping them with their brand too. I think Varsity House and Jim Jones together can make a real powerful impact on a lot of people. Right, Jim Jones and Rob and Lisa and Lisa, the two leases, Lisa, his wife and Lisa Bouchard have done have an amazing philosophy training methodology and just another awesome community and then we have a real gym that’s a seven figure business that you know has hundreds of clients, dozens of employees and I think the combination of two can really help a lot.

Yeah, exactly can really help a lot of people you know bridge the gap between being like just a good coach would you be a lot of coaching at Jim Jones and being a good successful being a business I I’m too much of a control freak. I have to fly there every weekend. We’ve scoped out three areas and we’re in the process of locking down another piece of property and getting that process going.

That’ll probably be, I’m gonna go out on the limb and say spring to winter, either it’ll be the spring or the following fall winner of 18. – Yep. – You know what I love so much about this conversation is I love that you are constantly improving. – Yeah. – Everything you are constantly working towards, everything getting better. And it’s never that you are just happy to roll through, and be know, and be the same every single day and in every single area of your life.

It’s so important to you to constantly improve and I absolutely love that and I feel really, really excited even just sitting in the room and talking to you, but also to watch your progress and also to apply your passion and all of that, that drive that you’ve got to my life. I want to be like that. Like I want to, yeah. – I think you’re doing a pretty good job.

– Yeah, thanks. But no, I really do. Thank you so much today. – Oh, you’re welcome so much. – This is really fun. I’m gonna have to do part two in six months ’cause I want to know how your business seven hours go and you’re pretty relaxed. – Definitely, yeah, we’re really excited. So that’s probably gonna be like mid FebruaryFebruary early March. Obviously the weather here in New Jersey is a little bit of issue.

So we were, you know, like January, February, you know, it could be, could be nice. It could be two feet of snow. It’s definitely gonna be cold. So we might push it back to March a little bit just to make sure that like, you know, I don’t book 15 people to come here and then the weather is terrible. So something like that. So we’re really excited about that.

I’m really excited to have you here as always. I know. We’re coming back in May for the second over and a half day. So we stopped at number one, obviously. Thank you. Thank you so much. You’re welcome. And thank you everyone for listening. Bye. Thank you. Thank you Australia.