High’s & Low’s of Fitness Entrepreneurship | ETP#101

[aaron_straker]: 0:26

and then moving into my updates here the first one is my weight is finally back up to base line and now i'm like hovering in the high two hundred point is so today i was like a two hundred point seven um for any listeners back two weeks ago i was there and then i had two weeks on podcast day on tuesdays where i got sick two weeks in a row and then after last week i was back down in like the one ninety six is again clawing

[bryan_boorstein]: 0:53

hm

[aaron_straker]: 0:53

my way back up but i love i just love seeing the scale qinumit's like the complete opposite of of everyone else like as i'm getting leaner

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:02

in the

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02

hm

[aaron_straker]: 1:03

scales going

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:03

down like i start getting like

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05

uh

[aaron_straker]: 1:05

a little like skin crawly feeling and then like i don't i don't

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08

huh

[aaron_straker]: 1:08

care what i'm doing when i hit that like one eighty nine point something like diets done e're done

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:14

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:14

here but that

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:15

you

[aaron_straker]: 1:15

as

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:15

can't see the one eighties you

[aaron_straker]: 1:17

i

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:17

hate the one

[aaron_straker]: 1:17

hate

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eighties

[aaron_straker]: 1:17

it but then as the scale goes up i like i just

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:20

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:21

i don't know i am like it's just like wishful thinking i'm like i'm getting so jacked like i'm making so much progress i'm going to be so so jack like knowing that's not actually the case i'm probably just putting on some some you know body fat as well but i'm just going let myself keep thinking it

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:36

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:36

but i do enjoy putting on weight for sure

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:39

yeah i mean you can't actually realistically think that you're gaining muscle unless you're gaining weight so

[aaron_straker]: 1:45

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:46

even if like you're not gaining that much muscle at least you're gaining like micrograms or what or to

[aaron_straker]: 1:51

my

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:51

a point that wouldn't be happening if you are losing weight right

[aaron_straker]: 1:55

i would hope it would at least be milligrams or grams not micrograms

[bryan_boorstein]: 2:00

hey man thousands of micrograms equal milligram and thousands of milligrams equal gram so you know we're just working in

[aaron_straker]: 2:07

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 2:07

different quantities

[aaron_straker]: 2:08

yah

[bryan_boorstein]: 2:08

here

[aaron_straker]: 2:09

um

[bryan_boorstein]: 2:09

i

[aaron_straker]: 2:10

and then my next one is the speaking of entrepreneurs write the entrepreneurs are hitting the bally gym scene and we are about to have options here so pretty much since i first started showing up here in twenty nine ten there's only been like one game in town and that's been body factory and it is a really sweet um it's just it's massive it's packed it's so so packed and it's damn expensive right i mean i'm paying i just ran the numbers before the episode but for just gym access itself like none of the sana or recovery center anything like that it's a hundred ven de u s per month that's just for

[bryan_boorstein]: 2:52

wow

[aaron_straker]: 2:52

a gym and then if you want

[bryan_boorstein]: 2:53

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 2:54

to be able to use the pool there or go in

[bryan_boorstein]: 2:56

oh

[aaron_straker]: 2:56

the hot tub or the sana that goes up to two hundred and forty dollars

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:00

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 3:00

per month and this is

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:01

and

[aaron_straker]: 3:02

some

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:02

how much is that money in bally money like what is one seventy like like what's a

[aaron_straker]: 3:06

yes

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:06

minimum wage and bolly or like how much how far does that go for you

[aaron_straker]: 3:11

that is a lot here i believe

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:15

oh

[aaron_straker]: 3:15

that's about that's like two point five million um indonesian rupa which is which is the currency here for me like a meal like a good like a like a let's say i get like chicken breast you know rice vegetables it's about ninety thousand

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:36

okay

[aaron_straker]: 3:37

so

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:37

it thousand

[aaron_straker]: 3:38

ninety thousand yeah and then like

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:40

which

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let's

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:40

is that's one twenty fifth

[aaron_straker]: 3:43

yes

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of your gym membership

[aaron_straker]: 3:45

yeah gas

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:47

so like seven dollars it's like seven dollars american for for that meal that you're

[aaron_straker]: 3:50

for

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:50

talking

[aaron_straker]: 3:51

about

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about

[aaron_straker]: 3:51

that yeah like meals

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yeah

[aaron_straker]: 3:52

like good quality meals even if you want to get

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:54

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 3:54

like an imported like australian like rib or something like that you're at about around like ten eleven dollars

[bryan_boorstein]: 4:01

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 4:01

like us the gym is absurdly expensive comparatively to like every thing else here

[bryan_boorstein]: 4:09

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 4:10

but they've been here for you

[bryan_boorstein]: 4:11

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 4:11

know three plus years literally printing money because it's they're pretty much sold out but other people are getting like wise now there's like two more gyms that have opened waiting on equipment the one gym i kind of feel bad for them because they're like we're going to get the best equipment manufacture you know we're getting fully outfitted with arsenal strength which makes

[bryan_boorstein]: 4:34

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 4:34

sweet equipment the downside of arsenal strength is

[bryan_boorstein]: 4:37

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 4:37

they are notorious for being massively behind delivering equipment

[bryan_boorstein]: 4:42

m

[aaron_straker]: 4:42

and the gym was opening in november right and then they finally did a soft opening and i got some filler equipment and then when we were coming back like oh we're going to have the equipment mid january then that turned into the end of january and now that

[bryan_boorstein]: 4:55

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 4:55

turned into mid february

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yeah

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and then the latest

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ah

[aaron_straker]: 4:59

i heard was mid march and that it hasn't

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:01

m

[aaron_straker]: 5:01

even shipped from the us yet so

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:04

oh man

[aaron_straker]: 5:05

i kind of feel

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:06

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 5:06

bad for them because another gym opened up and went with a different equipment manufacture that they could get much quicker

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:13

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 5:13

still good stuff panada makes from throughout italy

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:15

yep

[aaron_straker]: 5:15

they make some pretty cool stuff

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:16

yep

[aaron_straker]: 5:18

so i'm

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:18

m

[aaron_straker]: 5:18

super super excited about that to have options for jims and they won't be as crowded because now the same you know amount of people can be spread over three gym locations

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:26

yep

[aaron_straker]: 5:28

um ah we covered a little

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:30

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 5:30

bit of the past two tuesdays for me this tuesday we had a six hour power out age and i

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:34

uh

[aaron_straker]: 5:34

was like crossing my fingers was like

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:36

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 5:37

please i cannot cancel another podcast episode

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:39

oh

[aaron_straker]: 5:40

on brian like the power went out

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:43

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 5:43

literally at like noon and then came back on at like six and then i was taking a shower to like you know after the gym

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:50

okay

[aaron_straker]: 5:51

fortunately the gym power like the gym enough way that like they still had power in the i'm literally in a shower and everything just goes dark

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:59

oh

[aaron_straker]: 6:00

i

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:00

man

[aaron_straker]: 6:00

was like no first i was like fuckdude i really don't want have to cancel podcast the second was like what the fuck do i do like it's pitch dark

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:08

right

[aaron_straker]: 6:08

and here our water

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:09

uh

[aaron_straker]: 6:09

pumps off of electric

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:10

h

[aaron_straker]: 6:10

like i didn't

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:11

oh

[aaron_straker]: 6:11

get far enough into the shower

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:12

h

[aaron_straker]: 6:12

that i could be like i'm done

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:14

ah

[aaron_straker]: 6:14

and i'm like what am i really going to do here so i literally just stood the in the shower just waiting and after like twelve minutes the power came back and i was like i'm gonna

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:23

oh my god

[aaron_straker]: 6:24

finish up and get out but the last thing i have is just like adding one to two reps per week on on a lot of exercises and i'm really excited about that and it's funny like that's that's the re lity at this point like if i can squeeze out one rep on my anterior delt press over last

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:46

ye

[aaron_straker]: 6:46

week and then eventually

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:47

yep

[aaron_straker]: 6:47

hit the top end of the rep range next week and then go up five he loads and then like i might over a training block i may only increase load like once or twice and then i end up with like three or four attempts at each of those weights and that's just the kind of the nature of the beast and that's ould be disheartening depending on how you look at it or it could be like hey this is what i these are the rules the game now that i've been fortunate enough to make all of those gains over all

[bryan_boorstein]: 7:19

hm

[aaron_straker]: 7:19

of those years sort of thing

[bryan_boorstein]: 7:21

yeah no i totally

[aaron_straker]: 7:23

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 7:23

resonate with that and i think

[aaron_straker]: 7:24

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 7:24

that the way that i tend to do things makes it a little bit more ambiguous because i tend to get closer to fail you're week to week with things and so there's this inevitable like small victory as i call it that occurs but it isn't really like necessarily progress just because i add a rep move one rep closer to failure you can't really call that progress so so i feel you as well one of the best ways that i assess progress now at least on my short overload movements since i don't really use partials on lengthened movements but like all on my lengthened sets when i get to like week three of my cycles in my hypo cycles at least you know i'll do a set that a lengthened set where i can't really get more than maybe one or zero full reps and then the range emotion falls off but what i'll see happen is you know i'm getting one full rep in week three and then by week six or seven before de load i might get two or three full reps which feels like a really really significant increase because it's yes it's only one or two rebs increase but it's like a hundred per cent increase it's like you're taking a one at max and now you're turning it into a two retmaxumtype thing so definitely different different ways skinning that cat there but i think to your point like the reality is that yeah we can both go an entire six to eight weeks cycle and basically make a wreck to improvement and that is a victory like that is like hey i'm still making progress at this point so that's cool you know um

[aaron_straker]: 9:01

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 9:02

yeah so moving on to my final two updates here my finally i get excited about my new cycles like in the middle of the current cycles that i'm doing so i'm in this string cycle now i'm already excited about my next typortrophy cycle so i wrote a draft of that that i'm intending on starting on february thirteenth so if anyone's listening want to jump on the new hypertrophy cycle that i'm doing february thirteenth is the tentative start date there and i have a five way split that is going to be trained over eight calendar days you know favorite thing to do stay off the calendar as much as possible and it is a shoulder and quad specialization cycle so i'm literally taking a lot of that stuff that we discussed in our prior episode where we kind of went into that rabbit hole of always specializing being like the future always having something that you're putting extra focus on and so i spent like a year prioritizing my ham strings and i think subjectively they improved i certainly have gotten stronger at the hamstring specific movements and when i when i look at them there's this one pose that you in the shower where i can kind of turn my legs sideways and look at my ham string from like this like forty five degree angle and it hangs more than it did prior so i'm looking at that as progress saying that it was a successful cycle the new one focusing on quads and shoulders the split is pretty unique so what i'm going to do is on day one i'm going to do torso push pull so that's basically shoulders chest and back torso ush poll then the next day is going to be quads and biceps then the next day is torso push pull again and then we're gonna do hams and triceps then the fifth day is the quads and shoulder specifically so i have an entire day dedicated just to quads and shoulders and then it would circle back through and start with torso push el again so i think this is going to be a super cool unique way of approaching it um the day that's just quads and shoulders is going to be circuits of same muscle group super sets which i love to throw in once a year for for a cycle so we'll have like a try set where i have like some reade some front dealt in some lateral dealt stuff all kind of in succession with maybe like thirty to sixty seconds rest in between and then for the quad circuit i think it what did i decide on i think i'm going leg extensions super seated with sissy squats um so so that should be about as awful as the face arangust made he knows how that's going to feel but i think focusing specifically on a short length and super set there i think i'll get pretty sore the first week or two but i think once my body adapts to that and the repeated bout effect kicks in i don't think that that soreness is going to be extremely daunting just because it doesn't have any of those really big compound movements that tend to lead to a lot of that lingering soreness so i'm super excited about this new cycle the one thing i'm not the most excited about is that it's starting four days before we leave for san diego so we're gonna leave for san diego february seventeenth cycle starts february thirteenth i'm probably going to have to just be ready to be creative with swaps and things like that along the way so yeah moving on my final up date here is you know you guys have heard me talk throughout the course of last few months about vio to max and zone two cardio and stuff like that and i have just been going deeper and deeper down this rabbit hole of call it i think the term is health span i don't have i brought that up before on the podcast it's basically like a bit of a difference than the just life span is life span doesn't entail health span as well like essentially the idea being that your eighty five or ninety and you can still get up off the ground with three points of contact so you don't need to use both your hands you can use your two legs plus one hand to get up off the ground and

[aaron_straker]: 13:18

i need to do

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:19

to

[aaron_straker]: 13:19

that

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:19

be able

[aaron_straker]: 13:19

now can you get

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:23

you

[aaron_straker]: 13:23

up

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:23

can

[aaron_straker]: 13:23

off

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:23

get up

[aaron_straker]: 13:23

the

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:24

with

[aaron_straker]: 13:24

ground with the

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:25

you can

[aaron_straker]: 13:25

two

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:25

get

[aaron_straker]: 13:25

point

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:25

up off the ground with with no hands yeah you can do it with just legs you just do a deck squat you know roll back you roll forward you pop

[aaron_straker]: 13:31

okay

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:31

up on your legs

[aaron_straker]: 13:32

okay yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:33

type thing i mean when you're ninety if

[aaron_straker]: 13:35

yah

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:35

you can get up off the ground with three

[aaron_straker]: 13:36

uh

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:37

points of contact i think that's a that's a huge victory

[aaron_straker]: 13:39

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:40

i want to be able to like you know see my grand kids running at me and be able to pick them up and whatever in my eighties like i think that those are kind of important markers of health span but along the same lines of health span are these these metabolic pieces that tend to decline with age and so you have things like obviously you and i have discussed diabetes where like glucose tolerance goes down and um you know vot max is something that decreases with age much like muscle mass decreases with age and there's so much correlation the most correlated thing with longevity is vio to max so those with a top twenty fifth per cent ile vio to max compared to the bottom twenty fifth percentile vo two max have a five times less likely more morbidity less less likely chance of dying basically those with more muscle mass in the top twenty five percent to those with the least muscle mass in the bottom twenty five percent have a three times more likely chance of surviving so vio to max is correlated higher than muscle mass is obviously muscle mass is extremely important to and then both of those things regulate glucose and metabolic function super well and so both of those being super important as we age and given that viotumax decreases decade to decade as we get older and my vio to max has always been ubiquitously low compared to my peers in cross fit or in other sport it's something that i'm trying to cus on

[aaron_straker]: 15:16

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 15:17

and i think it's important and i hate it like i absolutely hate doing cardio still but i think it's really important and it's something i'm prioritizing so um the goal is three to four times a week for forty five to seventy five minutes which is a ship ton of cardio but essentially the research on this is showing that four to six times a week for sixty to ninety minutes is kind of what you want to maximize vio to output and i just do not have four to six times a week for sixty to ninety minutes so i'm start with three times a week for forty five to sixty minutes is kind of going to be my starting point and then try to progress up from there and then i'm also going to try and do more of that as the weather warms because i talked about last week how much i hated sitting on the peloton for an hour um i couldn't imagine doing that or sitting on a rower for an hour or like any of these super monotonous cardiofascular approaches but getting outside on my bike um definitely something i enjoy so maybe i can up the dose there as the weather gets nicer or as we're in san diego but at least for right now i think my goal is going to be three times a week for forty five to sixty minutes and it actually works really well with the strength cycle that i'm doing because i have three days of training and then i can throw three days of cardio in there and still have a rest day so anyways just kind of some of the things that are on my mind think that crossing that barrier of turning forty just kind of it's weird because it's like i don't think i'm actually on the back half of my life like i think i'm going to live more than eighty years but you don't know that like you i could die to morrow like you just don't know how long you're going to live but there is a really weird perspective shift that occurs when you start looking at life on the back side instead of being on the front side and i didn't know how to really verbalize that until recently but it really has had a huge impact on just the way i live my life in general and so i wanted to share that with you guys

[aaron_straker]: 17:26

yeah i had never really thought about it from

[bryan_boorstein]: 17:28

m

[aaron_straker]: 17:28

that perspective of being on like you're on the back half now like that has never really even crossed my mind but it is

[bryan_boorstein]: 17:36

it's kind of wild right

[aaron_straker]: 17:38

it really really is and i would say like i've had you know and i'm sure the conversations

[bryan_boorstein]: 17:42

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 17:43

i ad with you and then i mean honestly just a lot of clientele work with i get a lot more sorry there's a fucking will not stop landing

[bryan_boorstein]: 17:51

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 17:52

on me they're just older now i have you know numerous clients who are you know guys in their fifties guys in their forties

[bryan_boorstein]: 18:00

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 18:00

we look at labs and stuff and some of these clients have to start having that conversation like okay like we have a high stress life style you haven't prioritized it for a long time like we got to look at lipids from a pure numbers standpoint like cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of americans

[bryan_boorstein]: 18:15

yep

[aaron_straker]: 18:16

we need to know you just need to look you know things could be great you know but things could also be bad and then we need to be like you you need to go talk to your doctor sort of thing um and that's just like seeing more that's just kind of all right aaron you know gonna be thirty five here in a month and a half we're not twenty seven any more sort of thing so that's been it's been weighing on me more and knowing that i would say one thing that is weighing on me like i'm going to be an older dad you know like i'm going to have my first child probably at like thirty eight ish so i'm like i got to be good for years and years after that so like even even at that when they're twelve i still need to be able to like play basketball

[bryan_boorstein]: 18:57

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 18:58

or football whatever and like i'm goin to be fucking in my mid fifties damer at that point sort of thing

[bryan_boorstein]: 19:03

i

[aaron_straker]: 19:03

so

[bryan_boorstein]: 19:03

know yeah

[aaron_straker]: 19:04

m that's been like a big one for me and with me current protocol like i have cardio in that i've actually been following now and like you said it sucks like

[bryan_boorstein]: 19:13

yeh

[aaron_straker]: 19:13

i am a mess doing it like it's not a lot so we're doing hitcardio it's eight rounds it takes me like twenty minutes total to complete

[bryan_boorstein]: 19:23

ah

[aaron_straker]: 19:24

but my god i get like the same anxiety i get when i have to go like my top hack squat set because i know it's

[bryan_boorstein]: 19:30

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 19:30

just like it just hurts and it does not feel

[bryan_boorstein]: 19:32

ah

[aaron_straker]: 19:32

good whatsoever

[bryan_boorstein]: 19:35

i mean no cardio feels good but that one specifically is really awful and it's kind of the same energy system as weight training i mean not exactly because it's it's like short rest periods harder burst but it is similar energy system so i'm

[aaron_straker]: 19:49

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 19:49

actually i'm pretty good at doing that sort of stuff

[aaron_straker]: 19:52

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 19:53

just because i think of all the years of lifting and playing basketball and stuff but taking me out to that like forty five to nine minute domain of just steady state oh man i just i just am awful at clearing lack date and so it's really something that that i need to become more efficient at as as time goes on to but on the positive side like i've heard a number of stories too of like there's one specific

[aaron_straker]: 20:15

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 20:16

outlier a guy who was a smoker and sedentary never even worked out until he was in his forties and then in his forties he had some bad blood work and decided to make a drastic chan and he stopped smoking started exercising became a competitive cyclist and now he's seventy and his his metabolic function is that of a four year old so like you just you know i mean there are there's a lot of opportunity later in life to really hammer this stuff and i think that one thing that doesn't get mentioned a lot is that once you retire and you no longer have the stresses of life and work and family and all this stuff that you have the opportunity to commit more time to these things that do improve longevity and so i don't think that it's something that you necessarily have to start hammering full full force et forward years old when you're in the middle of some of the most stressful times of your life in general but i think it's good to be prudent and start as early as you can

[aaron_straker]: 21:16

very very well put would

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:19

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 21:19

you say it's time to finally get into our episode

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:21

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 21:21

today

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:22

yeah let's do it

[aaron_straker]: 21:24

cool so like we talked about in

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:26

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 21:26

the beginning so we're going to talk about some of the high highs and the

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:29

ah

[aaron_straker]: 21:29

low lows of being an entrepreneur

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:31

m

[aaron_straker]: 21:31

in the health in fitness industry

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:34

oh

[aaron_straker]: 21:34

so i mean i think what we should do brian is like let's kind

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:37

m

[aaron_straker]: 21:37

of quickly walk back to what

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:39

oh

[aaron_straker]: 21:39

the early days kind of looked like for you

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:42

h

[aaron_straker]: 21:42

because i think your journey has been a little bit

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:44

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 21:44

more complex than mine and just have a lot more years under your belt so for some of the newer listeners or we may even older listeners who don't really know the beginning of your entreprenerrship journey yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:58

yeah so after graduating college in two thousand six with exercise science i really wanted to go into a field where my passion was like i was born to be in the exercise field is the way i felt about it and yet in two thousand six i had been true and now for nine years i had been coaching friends in college and family members virtually like i've been doing the whole thing like this was where i was supposed to go then all my friends graduated with business and finance degrees and they were making a ton of money out of college and the opportunity for me the exercise field was basically be a glorified personal trainer or got a job as like an assistant strength coach at you know a d two d three type school something like i try to work my way up any of those jobs are basically like low thirty thousand dollar jobs at that point and with my friends making double that i didn't want to feel like i was financially limited that i couldn't take trips with them or go out to the bars with them and things like that and so i put the exercise thing on the back burner i was not happy about that at all i had a lot of hesitation but ended up getting a job that i didn't exactly enjoy and did that grind all the way until late two thousand nine so in two thousand nine i'm living in san diego i had moved out here to moved out there i guess is the way to say that to to be with kim and anders who was my college roommate just broken up with his long time girl friend and decided he was going to come out to san diego and just spend six months there just to kind of have a change and then his plan was always to move back to the east oast and continue living life but we had a bachelor party in vegas in march of two thousand ten and we were absolutely smash she and we decided in that moment that we were going to start a cross fit gym together i had been doing cross fit only for about four months but andrews had been doing it for i think for our years at that point because he started right when i moved out to san diego in two thousand seven so he was maybe three years in a cross fit and so we decided to start this cross fit jim in two thousand ten got back from vague yes and literally the process was let's go walk up and down garnett half which was the main drag in pacific beach san diego let's go walk up and down garnet and see what kind of list s are available and literally the first place we saw was the place that aaron was a member of for a number of years right on the corner of garnett and fanual it was an old record store and we gutted the thing turned it into a gym wrote a business plan we had no money saved so we a business plan that allowed us to essentially start this gym for seventy thousand dollars it was fifty thousand dollar build out and then we had twenty thousand dollars in the bank and that is how we began our gym one of the coolest parts was we knew we had to get members but we also knew that people weren't going to pay for something that was so new without trying at first so we wrote in soap all over the side of the building you know come try for free six weeks until what was it until we opened in april unto we were like until july first you can just train for free just come come one come all come train and over the course of six weeks we put over two hundred unique people through the gym and then july first came and it was like hey either sign up get out and thirty five of you guys signed up out of that two hundred and that was enough for us to be profitable which is kind of wild looking back in retrospect that we i have thirty five members and we weren't paying ourselves but but we were you know meeting our costs and our overhead and stuff like that so that's how it all started and then you know i'm sure we'll we'll go deeper and deeper into this rabbit hole of the cross fit journey and coming out of cross fit and starting online businesses and all that but that is kind of where it all began and to this day just super thankful that andrews came out and that we started that gym because may not be here with you talking right now if it wasn't for that

[aaron_straker]: 26:27

i do have a funny kind of question for you and and i remember hearing this and i can't remember now because it's been so long but was there not i wasn't like one of you guys or maybe both of you guys like still working your corporate jobs like but like really half asking it and showing it in in between

[bryan_boorstein]: 26:45

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 26:45

classes and stuff

[bryan_boorstein]: 26:46

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 26:46

like that while you were like

[bryan_boorstein]: 26:47

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 26:48

running the gym still

[bryan_boorstein]: 26:49

oh

[aaron_straker]: 26:49

had like your real job you know back wasn't wasn't one like back east and the one you gus remotely for like you know

[bryan_boorstein]: 26:57

so yeah so this is actually we both worked our jobs full time like our companies thought we were a full time

[aaron_straker]: 27:05

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 27:06

we worked full

[aaron_straker]: 27:06

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 27:06

time until january thirty first of two thousand eleven so we started the gym in like april may two thousand ten so it was almost eight months of time that we were working both jobs so andrews was working remotely from d c um and he had a conference call at noon pacific time most days but that was also we had a noon class and it would be like hilary and this old guy fred and like one or two other people and so andrews would literally be on his conference call on mute while he's running the twelve pm class um alternatively i on the other hand i woke up every morning at five thirty a m so that i could run the six am class i would run the six a m class the seven a m class and then as soon as the seven am class ended i would shoot off to work as quickly as i could i had to work in person so i would go to curneymasa work from eight to four while andrews ran the midday class i would come back get back at like five i'd run the five p m six pm classes andrews would run seven and then we would sweep mop do add ma work and by the time we would get home it would be ten pm shower watch an hour sport center wouldn't get to sleep till midnight and then back up again at five thirty a m again to do it all over so this s eight months of this and i got myself a nasty adrall habit during that time i was so addicted to aderall every morning it would be like pop that jink like take one at two p m so that i could make it through the evening and get the night classes done and it was one of those things where you look back in retrospect and and you're just kind of like man like how in the hell did i do that because it's not something that seems even reasonable to to work those types of hours and sleep so few hours for so many months in a row but you know just one of those things that as you're trying to get a business started you do what you have to do to survive type thing

[aaron_straker]: 29:16

yeah yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:17

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 29:17

i love that and i mean like

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:19

m

[aaron_straker]: 29:19

with that

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:20

oh

[aaron_straker]: 29:21

time period where would you say

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:23

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 29:23

the were there highs first or where there lows

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:27

oh

[aaron_straker]: 29:27

first in from your

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:29

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 29:29

standpoint in that first like let's say two years of business in that corner location on garnet

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:35

yeah i mean it was mostly high it's like we were just so ecstatic to be part of this thing like you and i have discussed on here the how cross allowed us to kind of feel like an athlete again and we had lost so much of that identity through the first four years of leaving college and working in corporate america that we just weren't athletes anymore like i even wasn't even enjoying training like i remember at my corporate job before

[aaron_straker]: 29:59

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:00

we started to cross fit jim i would leave work go to twenty four hour fitness slam one body part because i was doing a bro bro split i would literally just be like okay back and i'd go and i do like nine sets of back make sure i didn't swear too much because i had to get back to work get back to work and and that was like my training i would do one body part for forty five minutes each each day um and then if i had the energy at the end of the day i'd go to cardio i remember doing that back to twenty five it's to go run on the tread mill um but yeah it was it was definitely mostly hides in the cross fit gym because i looked forward to it so much like i very much didn't look forward to getting up at five thirty a m after sleeping for five hours but i did look forward to what we we're building and when you talk about the highs and the lows the highs were certainly that like it was the being part of something that we're growing that's ours the lows or that it had a massive negative effect on kimandized relationship we she was in grad school at the time too so she was at us d getting her b a and we never saw each other we didn't live together i was extremely busy with the gym she was extremely busy with her m b a i remember one massive fight in early two thousand eleven where we actually broke up the only time we broke up we broke up for one week and we just decided we weren't goin a do this thing any more and we didn't see each other or talk for an entire week and then we we re convened and we came back together and we were like okay like we to make this thing work like we obviously love each other you know i moved out here like let's let's try and re ignite this thing and so so we did but it was a lot of a lot of tears a lot of up and down a mo nelly and so yeah that was certainly the hardest part and then obviously there's there's lows as well and highs and lows in the financial side of things but i think we can get into that here in a second

[aaron_straker]: 32:04

yeah yeah that was a note that i that i had you know down especially because if i remember correctly you guys started the gym when you guys were like twenty

[bryan_boorstein]: 32:13

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 32:13

six twenty seven correct and that is just there's i feel like there's a lot for a majority of us or i would say like my kind

[bryan_boorstein]: 32:22

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 32:22

of pier group that i kind of feel most confidently speaking around like that like that went six versus like thirty it might only seem like four years but there's that's kind of almost like a lifetime in between a progression that kind of goes there

[bryan_boorstein]: 32:37

oh

[aaron_straker]: 32:38

and i i think it for the listeners like i really really started my business right as i was about to turn thirty one um and those years were critical like at twenty six it never would have got off the ground like guaranteed and i just had a lot

[bryan_boorstein]: 32:57

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 32:57

more maturing to do conversations to have you know with people you know mind work maturity you the majority were with jenny um but it was just like that time period is to me it's like a lifetime in between those short you know four years sort of thing

[bryan_boorstein]: 33:14

yeah i i mean andrews and i both were quite immature when we both started it to like i know i didn't have even the ability to the self awareness um or even the understanding of improvement of self like like i remember anders in the early years of the gym so in his late twenties he really got into a lot of the kind of self improvement stuff like he started reading books about it and really trying to like learn business but learn about himself as well and i didn't do any of that until out into my thirties like that was for me it was like the gym was a social scene it was like an extension of college it was a social scene where i was just hanging out with my friends and partying and we were drinking still and like i mean it was it was really just like a club cross fit sort of m so yeah that was definitely the the immature side of us kind of kind of poking through but the gym took off so quickly so the talking about the hives man in two thousand twelve we grew so quickly that we had to expand and get a second location and so we opened up the cash street location in north p b and now we had two locations and the gym just continued growing so by two thousand late two thousand twelve early two thousand thirteen yeah andrews and i went from basically barely making enough money to pay our bills like i remember when we first quit our jobs in two thousand eleven when we decided to do the gym full time after those eight months we were each making about thirty grand a year that was where we started we were like okay you know thirty grandier is enough that we can quit our day jobs and just put all of our eggs into this this cross fit basket well fast four two years later to like early two thousand thirteen we were net profiting fifty grand a month and so anders and i literally were taking in fifteen to twenty grand a piece for a short period of time and it happened rapidly i mean so fast it was amazing and so then we were like we'll ship now we need to grow even more because the gym is so successful and then this is where things kind of started going bad because we hired a bunch of trainers we had like cohan and rosetti and pits and loading and lindsey and so we had like five basically full time trainers andrews and i were doing much i started doing remote coaching in two thousand twelve so i started moving on line and that's where most of my time was spent anders was focusing on building and growing the business so neither of us we're super involved in the day to day of the gym as much which probably wasn't felt a ton by the members but it was definitely happening and then in two thousand fourteen or fifteen two thousand fifteen we decided to open that one massive location on garnett so we close down the other two locations and open this one really big location and that's where everything started sliding like that's where all the bad things began happening so we were in this like super elated space of oh my god we're making so much money and this gym is growing so fast and we sort of had a monopoly on p b because we had central p b and then we had north p b but then we shut down those two locations and only had the one central p b location and so all of that occurred at the same time other gyms began opening up so you're talking about that competition in bolly that's happening now it literally was happening at the same time in p b so we we now go from having two five thousand dollar rent lok tions to one fifteen thousand dollar rent location so we increase our overhead by fifty percent and we decrease our monopoly because we no longer have north p b unlock down and p three six he started coming in and movement warehouse and all the big box gems like crunch and twenty four fitness and they crunch started selling memberships for ten dollars a month and they offered functional fitness classes too so it was like this whole confluence of events and the business just started depleting at that point and so that was sort of the beginning of the end for us in two thousand fifteen which feels like it happened kind of rapidly

[aaron_straker]: 37:42

yeah it's it's interesting hearing like the business side of things because i was you know just a member at that at that point um and it's hard my memory is kind of ship now looking back on it but like you could you could there was from my perspective there was something special about that garnet location and it was almost like from the flip of a switch like that that location you know i do you know what to call that the really big one it just

[bryan_boorstein]: 38:13

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 38:13

never had that like spark that the other

[bryan_boorstein]: 38:15

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 38:15

one did it was almost

[bryan_boorstein]: 38:17

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 38:17

like i remember kind of just like feeling deflated about it and wishing we could just go back to to garnet even though the gym was smaller wasn't as much space it just there was you could feel that a little bit

[bryan_boorstein]: 38:30

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 38:31

and then from that like you said you you were actually very early into like the remote kind of coaching space when did you kind of start putting the rest of these pieces together and please correct me if i'm wrong here brian isn't this around the same time that your wife kim also started her own business went

[bryan_boorstein]: 38:51

yea

[aaron_straker]: 38:51

like full time into that

[bryan_boorstein]: 38:53

yeah so she was working at qual com and moving up the chain there all the way up

[aaron_straker]: 38:59

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 38:59

from when she got her b a paid for by qual com so she was part of qual com from like two thousand eight thousand fourteen and then right around two thousand fourteen she left qual command started her own business as well so she started her own business at about the time that the gym was doing its best but directly before the gym started to decline and so that was certainly like like as we kind of fast forward a couple of years here to call it two thousand sixteen when andrews and i realized that we probably like our future probably wasn't in cross fit he started becoming a bit demoralized i guess by the number of injuries that occurring with with members so he remember when teresa larson from movement r x moved into our building and rented space from us and so andrews started getting pretty into this idea of fixing people where he said what we were doing was hurting people and he and i had a bit of of a disagreement there because i didn't really feel like we were hurting people per se i just felt there was a culture that was way to focused on cross fit for competition and so what i felt like was that the culture needed to shift to be less of this focus on cross fit competition and more on cross fit for the general population but he saw these people coming in like he had a client sam who's back was super messed up from from prior years of things that he did and so he realized that there were a whole sect of people that couldn't do cross it like people with pre existing conditions or with mobility restrictions and so he wanted to start working on that side business and i wanted to just kind of keep doing what we were doing but with like a slight difference in approach and he and i just budded heads about that and so once we kind of made the ultimate decision that we were done with this and it was time for us to move on that was really really tough time for us because kim was you know a year or two into her business and i didn't know what i was going to do next i had my remote clients and so i knew that that was the easiest thing to lean on like i started remote coaching in two thousand eleven i reached point where i had over thirty clients which was great money um but it was very time consuming too and so i felt a little bit restricted by saying okay i'm going to put all my eggs into this basket of remote coaching because it takes all my time i can't actually anything else on top of that and so i didn't exactly know what to do there and the business was a dwindling we had over three hundred members when we moved to that really palatial location and by the time andrews and i split in two thousand sixteen two thousand seventeen we were down to a hundred and fifty members and so our membership literally was cut in half and we couldn't even afford to really pay ourselves at all i remember when we split we were both taking in i think two grand month each so it's crazy this this elevation we went from like okay we're paying ourselves three grand month we can quit our jobs and then it was like now we're making so much fucking money like three years later and we're back to making no money and so it just felt like i was going backwards and i was i was lost man i didn't know what i was going to do and how i was going to get back to being successful again

[aaron_straker]: 42:39

yeah and would do you say some of those and what's interesting and for the listeners like i'm getting a lot of these things for the first time from brian as well like i saw the outside perspective of this literal it's just a member at the gym but this is you know kind of the first time hearing hearing these parts

[bryan_boorstein]: 42:57

ah

[aaron_straker]: 42:57

what sort of things like and this is obviously a low what we're touching on now and and i can relate to this

[bryan_boorstein]: 43:04

oh

[aaron_straker]: 43:04

you know all too well and you start to question and ask yourself like was

[bryan_boorstein]: 43:08

oh

[aaron_straker]: 43:08

that a flue did

[bryan_boorstein]: 43:09

oh

[aaron_straker]: 43:09

i just get lucky am i ever going to be able to get back to that and i like you said it it ends up being a lot of like personal development and like finding the confidence in yourself especially on the back end of this because when you guys were building the gym it was like you you guys said there's two of you you know the bolts idea is off but now when it's like okay that it's myself and what am i going to do that that like negative loop of self talk can

[bryan_boorstein]: 43:40

ah

[aaron_straker]: 43:41

much much more easily like turn into a loud voice and then like a shouting voice and it becomes like you know kind of overwhelming to be complete honest

[bryan_boorstein]: 43:50

yeah no you're you're totally right an i remember having many nights like i'm not like a sleepless night the person but i remember laying in bed at all hours of the night and just feeling my heart racing because there's like so much anxiety in me of not knowing the unknown i mean i say this all the time there's a ton of anxiety in the unknown and so it's like i correlate it to this of like when you when you're you're in a relationship with a with a girl and you're younger and you can tell that it's just not like it used to be like you can feel it starting to deteriorate and you kind of just want it to either be over or you want it to be okay you don't want to be stuck in this like unknown zone where you don't know what going to happen but you'd rather like like honestly i would rather just be done because then i can you know understand okay it's done and now i can move on type thing but i was stuck in this unknown and i was stuck in it for like a year like i couldn't get out of it i just didn't know what to do um and yeah that was just it was just an awful and awful time and so at that point i decided to start evolved training systems which was my group program and oh i should actually back track for a second because kim and i started a failed business togete and two thousand fifteen we started a business called active traveler network and our idea was to do a subscription fitness program much like i did with evolved and we had four different paths there was a body weight only path targeted at people that are traveling or vacationing you know so we had a boy only path we had a dumb bell only path we had a rings only path we called it the gymnastics jet setter and so be for people that just want to grab a thirty dollar pair of rings and you know you can tie them to trees you can do all sorts of stuff whatever she and i spent hours hours and hours making videos in the park of all these movement demos and so we literally created our first subscription program back in two thousand fifteen but we just didn't do it right like it wasn't very professionally done and we were charged we charged five dollars a month that was price point because our idea was that we would get thousands of people like if it's only five dollars a month you know thousands of people will buy this because why wouldn't you it's only five dollars a month you know but what we didn't account for is that here's a buying decision that has to be made so yeah if we can get you to make a buying decision it's probably unlikely you're going to cancel your membership because it's five dollars a month but on the other side like people still have to make that buying des and that just wasn't happening um so we did that business for like a year year and a half and then we shut it down but what it did is it taught me so much that i was able to take into starting evolve training systems and at that point i raised the price point i did it much more professionally i had an entire website built by a professional team started my group program and that was what i ended up doing as kind of my next step like in that unknown space of what am i going to do next i was just like well i have to do something so i'm just going to do something actionable i'm gon start this program and that was kind of the beginning of everything back in two thousand seventeen

[aaron_straker]: 47:11

yeah and and one thing i wanted to touch to touch on really quickly when you were using that that that example of like when you're younger and you have like a relationship that you know is pretty much about to fail and you just want to jump to the other side of it

[bryan_boorstein]: 47:26

oh

[aaron_straker]: 47:26

where it's either like good again and miraculously good again

[bryan_boorstein]: 47:30

um

[aaron_straker]: 47:30

or it's like done and done and there's no screaming

[bryan_boorstein]: 47:32

m

[aaron_straker]: 47:32

match and

[bryan_boorstein]: 47:33

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 47:33

whatever you guys are over each other and move on like

[bryan_boorstein]: 47:38

oh

[aaron_straker]: 47:39

what i really thought in that is like entropreneurship is having that really uncomfortable conversation that neither of you guys want to have in having

[bryan_boorstein]: 47:48

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 47:49

it in like a civil adult manner like there is

[bryan_boorstein]: 47:54

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 47:54

so much of that and in the beginning you're just like i wouldn't even say in the beginning for a long while you're like funk i don't want to do this but that is exactly what you need to do and get good

[bryan_boorstein]: 48:07

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 48:07

at and now it's like i feel comfortable saying like i have finally emerged on to the other part where i'm like bo there's god damn it i'm here

[bryan_boorstein]: 48:17

oh

[aaron_straker]: 48:17

but i know it's like i just have to do it and and i don't

[bryan_boorstein]: 48:20

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 48:20

want to but i know i've had like you know i'm on like round five now i know i need to have this conversation you know and that's whether that's about sales planning finances or whatever areas like maybe it's just about you know con and in yourself sort of thing but that's one when you were describing like that's exactly

[bryan_boorstein]: 48:38

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 48:38

what that is and a lot of it is like you just unfortunately

[bryan_boorstein]: 48:42

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 48:43

you learn a lot of those lessons the hard way or by going

[bryan_boorstein]: 48:47

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 48:47

through them

[bryan_boorstein]: 48:49

well you have to be in that uncomfortable state to be able to come out of it with like a different perspective and like what you said just now really resonated

[aaron_straker]: 48:56

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 48:56

with me where it's like the confidence that i'm successful type thing because throughout the years there's so much doubt like even when i started evolved in two thousand seventeen i quickly shot up to like two hundred members within the matter of the first six months i think of starting that evolved program i had two hundred members basically and i just felt like a facade it was like oh my god like this is insane but also like what if these people decide they don't want to stay with me like what if they all leave like like all this stuff and it took so many years it probably even took until two years ago before i was like okay like i think i think i'm successful now like you know like you see the money coming in but you don't really believe that it's going to stay and so i see that a lot in you tube and that's where i'm trying to tie this in is like i a lot of that doubt a couple of years ago and now i feel like you're in a place where you believe in your success and you're confident in its staying power as well is that accurate

[aaron_straker]: 49:59

it is there is the fear is always there you know and

[bryan_boorstein]: 50:04

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 50:04

something that i realize like it's not going to go away unfortunately because um

[bryan_boorstein]: 50:11

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 50:11

m i just so so upgrade the launch of upgrade was really what kind of kick started the idea of this episode and you know for a little bit of back story is a collaboration project between me and jackson pos and we just launched the first cohort you know like probably back about three weeks ago by the time this episode comes out

[bryan_boorstein]: 50:31

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 50:31

and i really remember like the night before him and i were messaging were like see what's going to happen like i literally went to bed and

[bryan_boorstein]: 50:37

ah

[aaron_straker]: 50:37

was like i hope

[bryan_boorstein]: 50:38

oh

[aaron_straker]: 50:38

i had three i had three goals three three tiers of goals the first tier was like i'm not a fucking failure that was like if we can l this many spots like i'm not a failure and haven't wasted the last six months of my life like busting as on this thing the next tier was like i'm over the moon right like wow this this is okay like well i'm not a failure and i hit this like real goal i set and then our third tear

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:04

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 51:05

goal was like our impossible goal like pin the sky number where we we and i shut it down and cap it within thirty hours we hit that third to your goal and i was like holy

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:14

amazing

[aaron_straker]: 51:14

shit like i had all this launch plan written out i wrote out all these emails and stuff i only had to send one email we

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:22

uh

[aaron_straker]: 51:23

literally had to close it i had to go in there and close it

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:25

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 51:25

and turn people away so that was like a high holy ship the people actually this resonated really really well and then the fear after set in was like okay and now is it good enough for me even having jackson on the project right who's a who's a big name in the space you know super super intelligent um still didn't make me feel any better and that's when

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:51

huh

[aaron_straker]: 51:51

i realize like it's that just a character trait i am always going

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:54

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 51:54

to have that it's never going to be good enough sort of thing and just

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:57

m

[aaron_straker]: 51:58

fear of that

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:59

well fear drives you forward right i mean fear is it's motivating in some ways it's unfortunate though that like you always feel that because there's always like that lingering doubt in the back of your mind which ken it's kind of like the the comparison is the thief of joy thing or like it's really hard to be content and happy with your success if you're comparing yourself to someone else and it kind of has that same sense of kind

[aaron_straker]: 52:26

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 52:26

of having that in the back of your mind it's like a similar sense of oh i just don't know

[aaron_straker]: 52:33

yeah and the one thing in kind of what prompted the title of this is this is the second time where i've had like a really really high in the business and i won't let myself like enjoy it because i know the lows are going to come and it's like if i really feel those highs and i allow myself to like you know triumph and pump my fist in the air and be like yeah those lows are going feel so much worse so if i just you know pair back my enjoyment of the highest the lows won't be as like damning person and

[bryan_boorstein]: 53:09

hm

[aaron_straker]: 53:09

that's kind of just like a like a fear mechanism really or like a coping mechanism

[bryan_boorstein]: 53:15

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 53:16

it's something like i'm hoping that once i get into like my fifth sixth like real high i'll let it go a little bit

[bryan_boorstein]: 53:23

ah

[aaron_straker]: 53:23

and there's that thing like success leaves leaves clues

[bryan_boorstein]: 53:27

clues

[aaron_straker]: 53:27

like i have

[bryan_boorstein]: 53:27

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 53:27

a six essful coaching business this has been my guess second kind of you know i guess technically third like like the checking system and stuff which is kind of fuel part of upgrade like that that is successful i have enough validation of that to wear i'm like okay this is a good product people people are super pumped

[bryan_boorstein]: 53:46

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 53:46

about that i guess to upgrade would be number three but kind of once i get more you know more confidence built but

[bryan_boorstein]: 53:54

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 53:55

it is something that like the lows were los feel awful and you just question

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:01

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 54:01

yourself and there was a lot of that in twenty twenty two for me it was a lot of like finding my own way you know i made a lot of twenty twenty one was like my first year where i'm like

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:14

oh

[aaron_straker]: 54:14

wow i'm making link i'm doing i'm doing making more money than i made in my software career like i'm doing well and then i made some i wouldn't even call them bad decisions i learned some lessons some very very costly lessons on trying to grow um investing money in places to realize like i don't really morally agree with some of these things and i'm going to bet on myself sort of thing and do what i feel is right but that cost me a lot of money of that

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:46

m

[aaron_straker]: 54:46

seemingly successful year to learn those lessons and that was last winter was a lot of like los um

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:54

m can

[aaron_straker]: 54:55

but

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:56

you expand on any of that or do you want to keep that a little closer to the

[aaron_straker]: 54:58

no

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:58

best

[aaron_straker]: 54:58

no i am i am a super open book i feel like it helps people in positions

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:05

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 55:05

you know especially around things so the checking system was really really successful early on the other note i had down here was twenty twenty one of february was my first like twenty thousand dollar month like money in the bank twenty thousand dollars that month and i was like this is fucking insane you

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:25

oh

[aaron_straker]: 55:25

know and it was the first time i raised my prices for my i till provide my coaching i would open it in like cohorts like groups you know and then i would take on

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:36

i remember that yeah

[aaron_straker]: 55:36

like twenty clients for like six months you know and there was like a paid in full

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:40

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 55:40

option and everyone started paying in full um so i raised my rates and everyone paid in full and then i launched the checking system right like i sold it to a number of people that were super pump and ike you know i'm going to run some facebook adds to this like i'm a resourceful person i can figure this out i set it up it was like thirty dollars i think and i just turned it on turned on the ads you know built the targeting myself off of what i thought might work

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:07

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 56:07

and we went to

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:09

m

[aaron_straker]: 56:09

it was my birthday coming up because it was the end of february in my birthday's in early march we went to a little island in mexico because we re living in mexico at the time the checking system was just selling and i fully automated all of it and i'm like holy ship i'm sitting here on the beach but i would get like email pigs and i was selling

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:28

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 56:28

like

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:28

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 56:28

ten a day there were

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:30

wow

[aaron_straker]: 56:30

thirty dollars a pop and i'm like i'm literally doing fucking

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:33

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 56:34

nothing and this

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:35

right

[aaron_straker]: 56:35

money is just rolling in like three

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:37

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 56:37

hundred dollars a day um and then i just came off that big you know great month but the only thing that i could think of is like this isn't going to last in that like i was terrified terrified and i was like i'm going to have a low and then i don't want to bask in this high because i know that low is going to feel so much worse and that was the first time i was fuck this like i wanted to celebrate this like when but i was scared too because i didn't want i was like emotionally preparing for when things weren't going going to go

[bryan_boorstein]: 57:12

and

[aaron_straker]: 57:13

well

[bryan_boorstein]: 57:13

did the low com or no

[aaron_straker]: 57:14

yeah so i

[bryan_boorstein]: 57:16

oh

[aaron_straker]: 57:17

checking system was selling it was profitable from january through lie on the check and system just running facebook adds myself like on the side in term in addition to my full time coaching thing in august i made two changes hired a business coach which was expensive was two thousand dollars a month and i also brought a team on to run my facebookats and that was um i was paying them like three thousand dollars a month and then also my ad spend went up to like four thousand dollars a month so like

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:01

help

[aaron_straker]: 58:02

from july august i just added nine thousand dollars a month of expenses on to straighter nutrition on the top of like the

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:11

right

[aaron_straker]: 58:11

probably like four

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:12

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 58:13

i already had

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:13

oh

[aaron_straker]: 58:14

for just like my normal you know

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:15

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 58:15

month to month thanks and the reality is is they weren't really able to do any better then i was

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:23

yeah that's what

[aaron_straker]: 58:23

on

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:23

i was

[aaron_straker]: 58:24

my

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:24

going to

[aaron_straker]: 58:24

own

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:24

say is that seems like a lot of money for considering you are successful in creating the adds yourself that seems like a huge investment yeah

[aaron_straker]: 58:34

it was and what it ended up being into is like i just started like the last and with how my coaching worked is i had my fourth launch of the year in august and then i wasn't going to take on any new clients again until like the beginning of the year when i would launch again and i was burning like at the worst part i was literally just in the red like six six and a half per month flight month after month

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:03

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 59:03

and the fears were just like what was like this fascinating you know miraculous year in the beginning

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:09

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 59:09

turned into a failure you know i fucked this whole thing up at the end and that really really weighed on me and through last winter was really really rough and then a couple of like we were in phoenix or scott's day and i really didn't like it there that much um which

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:27

oh

[aaron_straker]: 59:27

i think was we had shittyarbanbs which was was a big part of that and then

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:31

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 59:32

with some of the things with the business coaching i didn't i just didn't le agree with a lot of it and it was like a room that i kind of realized i didn't want to be in it really

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:43

the

[aaron_straker]: 59:43

had

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:43

kind

[aaron_straker]: 59:43

been

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:44

of like is it orry is already interrupt but is it the kind of fake marketing like

[aaron_straker]: 59:48

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:49

fake persona type piece

[aaron_straker]: 59:51

i mean kind of it wasn't it wasn't like malicious by any stretch of the imagination it just

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:58

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 59:58

wasn't for me

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:59

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:00

know

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:01

yep

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:01

and i realize like this isn't what how i feel that i want to run you know my business and something that you know for any coaches out there listening i would not recommend naming your business after yourself like that's one

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:12

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:12

of my biggest

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:13

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:13

it's right there

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:14

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:14

it's something i will eventually fix at some point it's just too it's too deeply imbedded on a one man show and if that is a non revenue generating activity that i do

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:26

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:26

not need to focus on but because like it's hard one year

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:32

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:32

you have a hard time detaching

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:33

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:33

your business from your personal self especially when it's your name sort of thing and i realized like i just want to be really really good at coaching i want my success rate to be really really high and when i ran those at the end of last year like i didn't feel od about it and that was one of the things like i'm going to take or sorry at the end of twenty twenty one so i guess

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:55

right

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:55

you know two

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:55

right

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:55

years ago i was like i'm gonna take a reload hear

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:58

eh

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:58

and do what i

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:59

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:59

think is best how feel like really really good with my moral compass and just focus on being really really good at coaching and i turned off all the youknowfacebook adds and stuff like that i was like i'm going

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:01:14

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:01:14

to let this thing grow you know or just sell organically um or some small small instagram marketing type stuff and really just focus on

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:01:24

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:01:24

creating a really really

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:01:25

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:01:25

knife in terms of my coaching skills

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:01:27

hm

[aaron_straker]: 1:01:28

and if i just focus on being a really really damn good coach my clients will do my marketing for me and that turned out to be a very good double down of betting on yourself and i didn't do much marketing last year at all and all my clients referred to me

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:01:45

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:01:45

the rest of my clients

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:01:48

it's awesome dude yeah that's really great i feel like we didn't actually get to delve into a lot of your kind of beginnings of moving into the online space we kind of spent to this time talking about my journey so maybe we can touch on that a little in the next episode to but one of the things that i i'm really kind of n vs might be the word or whatever but you have a product and that is something that kim and i both have been for the last like three years we've just been talking about what is the product that we and i create because both of us she and i are both in service industries right

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:25

hm

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:25

like like yes i have a product

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:27

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:27

in that i write group programs and people buy the group programs but it's not like a hands off thing

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:33

you

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:33

like with ou sell your check

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:34

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:34

in system and it's it's all automated and you don't really have to touch it aside from you know once a year if you do some upgrades to it or something like that but in my business i am the roduct i sell the programs but then there's this attached side of now there's the service that goes into that there's the questions and the answers and the form videos and the the blog posts that go along with the new cycles and like it's this constant recurring pattern of every six weeks when there's a new cycle or twelve weeks or whatever it is there's

[aaron_straker]: 1:03:06

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03:06

this whole process that has to go through there's new members constantly coming in to have the same questions that the members had and so there's there's never a point where i am able to disconnect and take time away

[aaron_straker]: 1:03:19

h

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03:19

um

[aaron_straker]: 1:03:20

m oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03:20

so that's one of the things that i want to work on over this next decade is figuring out a way where i don't have you be there all the time like i fucking love it i love the ability to connect with the members and watch

[aaron_straker]: 1:03:36

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03:36

them week to week improve their form improve their understanding

[aaron_straker]: 1:03:39

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03:39

of methodologies and stuff like that but it is a bit of a burden when kim and i want to go take a vacation together or something and every morning i'm up at six a m spending an hour and a half on my computer checking in or you know i get an email that something is wrong and i need

[aaron_straker]: 1:03:55

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03:56

to drop what i'm doing and run back to the room and do that or you know whatever it is it's just i can't actually take a week or two off and just go somewhere and not think about work and my friends that were corporate jobs we have this conversation a lot because they're like oh i'm so envious that like you know you work on your own time and you can do whatever you want and you're impassioned about what you do and all this stuff and i'm like yeah but when you tell your work that you're taking two weeks vacation with your wife like they don't bother you you know

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:26

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:26

so there's certainly like the pros and the cons to entrepreneurship in that way too

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:32

yeah that's a

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:32

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:32

that's a that's a big one i in four years

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:37

i

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:38

i'm coming up on i got to make

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:40

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:40

sure i'm getting my it's four or five i can't remember i've taken there's been one week i've not completed checking in either four years or five years i can't i can't remember but since since i started in that

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:52

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:53

especially with the travel stuff i mean it's a lot of like planning okay i

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:56

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:56

need monday tuesday so i can get

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:59

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:59

all of my ship done and then we well well when we when we travel back to the states okay we're going to leave on wednesday wednesday and thursday are spent in airports and stuff traveling i'm a zombi when i get to wherever on friday i get like a saturday a sunday

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:16

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:16

to prepare and i'm right

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:17

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:17

back into chickens and

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:19

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:20

but don't get me wrong i do love it and i guess the one note that this is as a bit of a joke that we'll wrap up on because this one is getting a little bit long is when i was still in my software engineer job and you guys were running the gym and stuff i was so jealous that you guys got to work out in the middle of the day

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:41

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:41

because it's either like when you're working at nine to five you're relegated to six in the morning or six

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:47

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:47

p m and it seems like you get up early and it still i

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:50

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:50

remember there was a month or two where

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:51

okay

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:51

i was like working out in the morning and it was still dark

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:53

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:53

out when i was driving to the jam and i was like

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:55

yep

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:56

i just i was like i feel terrible i can't do this it's after the day where like you're if it's a bad day like it sucks up your energy don't really

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:02

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:03

want to go and then like i

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:04

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:04

got to go squad eighty five percent now at six thirty p m you know i was so so envious

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:10

yah

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:11

of that and then when i that was like the thing i was most excited about you know when i started my my business full time is like i can go work out in the middle of the day like this is it's a it's like a ten year dream come true and then of course like covid happens and work from home happens and now the gems are full of mother suckers

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:30

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:30

that work are about and can train in the middle ay and i'm like no

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:33

i know

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:34

i took

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:34

i

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:34

all

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:35

know

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:35

the risk coming by going out

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:37

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:37

on my own to come here

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:38

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:38

during the middle of the day like you go back to your six p m or six a m and you leave the middle me because i took the risk

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:47

yeah dude one of the things that bothered me

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:49

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:49

the most is that like literally what you said i thought i was so special given that

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:53

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:53

i created this cozy little lot for i can work from anywhere type thing and then as soon as all these mother suckers started working from home to from covid it's like i'm not special anymore everyone works from home you know i just want to go back to being special

[aaron_straker]: 1:07:07

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:07:07

um but yeah i mean i guess ultimately you know there are certainly highs and lows of entrepreneur ship and i think for the most part the highs outweigh the lows like i'll take the autonomy that i have with my career and the time at which i decided i want to work and when i work out and stuff like that like i would take that over the ability to take vacations rent free like to me that it's a small cost to pay to be able to have this autonomy and the privilege of doing things the way that we want to do them without like a boss overlooking our older and stuff like that

[aaron_straker]: 1:07:48

i feel like the term purpose comes in a bit more like as someone i worked in like startups and stuff you know i had very little experience or time

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:07:59

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:07:59

i would say in like a true

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:00

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:00

corporate america setting i was fortunate that i learned very early on the like air does not do corporate

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:06

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:06

america so i worked in like startups and small businesses and the owners were always

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:11

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:11

like sue verse it

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:13

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:13

was like their baby and i never really got it like especially at the last one the owner of the co would always be like trying to have us go get like tacoswitham

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:21

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:21

and stuff after the end of the day and like you know

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:23

okay

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:23

talk about more business no dude have been here for like nine hours i don't want to fucking

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:27

right

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:27

be here any

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:27

let

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:27

more

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:28

me go

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:28

like yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:28

god

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:29

and i just never got it but now it's like t's fucking ten twenty four p m you know on a tuesday night and i'm sitting here recording this pods s with you and i still have check ins to complete after it and i'm still

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:40

m m

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:41

i'm not stoked doing checking at ten twenty four at night but i'm stoked about the environment that allows me to do that in the people that put their trust

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:49

yep

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:49

in me and i would

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:51

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:51

say the name so far that i've built for myself in the space

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:54

ah

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:55

i am proud about that

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:57

absolutely dude i mean i'm really glad to hear that throughout the trials and tribulations and the self doubt that you've had over the two thousand twenty one year that it's all kind of come back around and to see the success of upgrade and have it sell out in the first thirty hours or whatever that is is is just insane and a huge testament to everything that you've put into this so

[aaron_straker]: 1:09:18

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:09:18

well deserved man

[aaron_straker]: 1:09:19

preciate that brian all right guys so apologize this one's a little bit longer but i think it's full of some some good nuggets especially

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:09:26

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:09:27

for some of the newer coaches or people thinking about entering the space as well um brian and i will talk to you next week

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:09:36

okay