What's going on guys? Welcome back to Eat Train Prosper. This is episode two hundred and thirty, and we are speaking about the decisions that shaped our careers in fitness. So before we dive into this, Brian, can you kick us off with some updates, please? Yeah, I have four of them. I'll be super quick here. But the first one I want to talk about is just that I got recognized in public the other day. And it was the third time that that's happened in the last call it year and a half or two years in Boulder. And uh it's really cool. I am I it used to happen all the time in San Diego because we owned the gym and we were in this little like small Pacific Beach community. So everywhere I'd go, the grocery store, the beach, wherever it was like, there's always people that I knew. And in some ways I didn't love that because I felt like I never had my own private moments. There was always somebody there that I could be talking to. Um, but this in Boulder is way different because obviously I don't have a gym and and my public presence is only through my online presence. So um most recently we were out to dinner with uh Kim and the kids on uh Friday last week, I think. And uh this really fit Blonde girl walked in and she was right behind me in line to check into the hostess stand. And she goes, Are you, are you Brian from Eat Train Prosper? And I was like, No way, Eat Train Prosper. That's amazing. She was like, I was just listening to you and Aaron on the way over here. And and she she noted that she's like a trainer at the gym in in Longmont that you and I have have been to and and frequented. So she's she's super fit. She's a trainer there. She was there with her husband and It's just it's just feels so good. And she initially was like, I'm sorry to like, you know, call you out in public while you're with your family. And I was like, No, this is great. Like I love I love to hear that. And I love that you recognize me from Eat Train Prosper as opposed to like from Instagram or from Paragon or like some other way. Um, so that was really cool. And she noted that she's like friends with Austin Current and stuff like that. So she's part of kind of the same community here in Boulder. And then uh about a year ago, I was out at a show at a concert. And a girl came up to me and said she does the Paragon program. So that was pretty cool. And then uh about uh six months before that, I was out to a bro night with some of my buddies at a a local kind of bar restaurant here. And the waiter, I guess, didn't recognize me initially, but when he took my credit card, he was like, You're Brian Borstein? I I follow your programs on Instagram and stuff. This is awesome! Like blah, blah, blah. And all my boys were like, Oh, dude is famous. Um, anyway. Those are just the the three times this happened in Boulder and it's been I I love it every time. So if you ever see me out and you're hesitant to say something, please come up and and say hi. Okay. Second update. I had jury duty on Tuesday. It was actually my first time ever actually showing up to jury duty. When I was in San Diego, I was able to get out of it every time because they have more lenient hardship criteria than in Boulder. So hardship would be like, I'm self employed, I won't make money if I go, or like I'm a single parent or whatever, like any number of reasons. None of those reasons apply in Boulder. There was one guy there who tried to claim hardship and his hardship was, I have six kids between the ages of three and thirteen, and we homeschool them and my wife is out of town for the week. And I was like, for sure that guy's gonna get let go and they didn't let him go. Um so uh I found that just insane what they what they put people through here and how many hardships people must endure. To simply do their civic duty, so to speak. so that was wild to me. I thought I was gonna get picked. I was one of the last 22 left to fill 13 spots, and they let me go right toward the end of the day. So I was really happy about that. Um, okay, other updates. Paragon has two new things happening starting October 26th. All of the programs for the most part are jumping into a metabolic cycle, and we're doing it a little bit differently this year, where we're actually gonna have uh a sequence pairings. kind of work on systemic conditioning where we have one really gnarly movement and one really easy movement. So like one of the sequences is like rear foot elevated split squats supersetted with like plate or dumbbell good mornings. So even after you're crushed from the split squat, you then just go do like 20 or 25 light reps of good morning and then you kind of get to recover a little before you go back to the split squat. So we have a number of kind of sequences like that. And I think it's gonna be a fun, unique cycle from the way that we've done metabolic cycles in the past. and then the last one is the Brian's program, Bro Split, is also starting 1026. I've been teasing this a little bit. I've been doing it myself now for about three weeks. So I like to kind of jump ahead and test these programs out before I post them for you guys. the new cycle, Bro Split, is five days a week. We have a chest day, a back lat day, a quad day. there's also abs on chest day and then and on another day as well. And then we have a shoulder and arm day. And a hamstring and ab day. And the reason I decided to put shoulders and arms together this year, which I didn't do last year, was because toward the end of the the winter, uh three months in or so, I started getting some elbow tendinitis. And I think it's because uh having four upper body days with chest back, shoulders and arms was just too much on my elbow. But I think that combining shoulders and arms together into one day uh saves me a day of burden on my elbow. And also I feel like personally and In general, people don't need as much volume for the shoulders and arms since they tend to get auxiliary work through the chest and back stuff. So anyway, I think this cycle's gonna be great. I've really enjoyed the first three weeks of it. And if anyone's interested, that program is available on the Train Heroic app under Brian's program with Paragon uh on October twenty-sixth. So that's all I got. What is going on with you, Aaron? Yesterday I was the heaviest I've ever been in my life. I hold on, correct. I was the biggest I've ever been in my life, right? Uh two thirty eight point eight. Um So the goal for for the build before baby gets here is to get up into 240, um, have like at least a a week of averages at a 240, and that's about as big as I think I should ever really need to be. Um, and it was it was a a grind for some time, but finally like appetite has kind of caught up. Combination of appetite catching up to just getting used to the the food caloric contents and and volume. And I've gotten a little, I don't know what I would call not lazy, but lowered my food quality. I've basically brought in like a cereal for pre and post workout, just like a right, like a chocolate rice crisps. And that's really helped to drive my food volume down, um which I think is has really helped me there. So that's exciting. what what uh how many calories are you eating to to during this build to continue gaining weight? Like forty four, forty five hundred. Cool. How would that compare to what you were eating when you were in a gaining phase when you were natty? Thirty sixishish, I think. Maybe thirty seven. And do you think most of that is a factor of just simply weighing more and therefore needing more food? Or do you think there was some of the uh hormone aspects of it that are changing that need as well? I mean I I think it's predom so I mean the I think the answer is first yes hormones because hormones then allow the secondary which is even at two thirty eight I'm leaner than I was at two fifteen as a natural. So it it's just the the hormones allow the extra muscle tissue, which then is creates that additional caloric demand and just the costs of running a higher body, heavier body. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I mean that would be my assumption uh of it. What do you think? Yeah, I think that's probably right. I I was just curious what the what the numbers would be and I'm also like obviously you're not two fifteen now and obviously if you were two fifteen that would be a very different two fifteen than the two fifteen natty. So you wouldn't even really to be able to compare the calories equally from from that perspective. I I remember I think it was about the same, honestly, but but you know, when I started, this was actually my well, it was a hundred and fifty milligrams, let's put it that way, which is very prescribable TRT by many, many standards. I was up to two fifteen pretty quickly and I think of calories were right around like thirty five hundred again. But y I don't think it it's never a true one to one because your partitioning rates change. Mm-hmm. you you're your partitioning of carbohydrate is just significantly more favorable once testosterone is above a certain threshold. Like once you're supraphysiological, let's let's put it that way. Yeah. Training's going v my body feels great. Let's put it that way, which has been really, really fun. Uh yesterday I had my first little like elbow like tri triceps tendonitis or triceps tendon bothering me during pressing. Uh but my body's felt great for quite some time, which has been really, really cool. And actually it reminded me when it when it was bothering me like My b my body hasn't hurt me at all for so long. This is and I'm the biggest I've ever been. Technically, you know, the strongest, I guess, on average or across things. Um so and there should be a a fair degree of inflammation in the body from just being this big, the training, all the food. So so that was pretty cool. And I think a lot of that has overwhelming majority is just my my training execution has never been this good and I'm not really attached to like the the weights as I as I used to be. So I'm not I'm I'm being very, very honest with my progressions, my cadence, my pauses and those sorts of things. And I truly think that that has just been so favorable for my body feeling so good. Yeah, for sure. I think one of the things that we've realized as we've gotten further along in this journey is that the actual amount of weight you use is sort of irrelevant. and it really is about like how much stimulus you're creating. And if you can create more stimulus with less weight, that's probably overall a an advantage given that you're gonna have less systemic fatigue. Yeah, agreed. I think that's it. There was yeah, well I I'm I'm good I'm good with that. So with today's episode, right, and it the the the episode kind of stems from when I was first considering making the jump of leaving my software job uh into the the fitness space, a question that I asked myself and was this was ultimately my defining question is if it takes me ten years to make it Is it worth it? Is it worth that investment of those 10 years? That knowing that I'll be effectively 40, 41, before I'm like really stable and and you know, uh very, very comfortable in everything. And the answer that I found at 30 years old was yes, I'm I am okay with that. It is worth it. fortunately, uh thankful, it has not taken me that that 10 years that I had given myself, but the concept of the episode comes back to. What are like the decisions that have really shaped our our careers in this space? Um the space is very interesting in that it has a high desirability of working in the fitness space, and there's obviously various degrees of what you do in the space and stuff, but it also has an incredibly high churn rate. and a lot of people fail to make it. And I think Brian and I are fortunate that that that that that did not happen to either of us. So I think the first question that we have here is what what does make Or what did and obviously it it changes now. What did making it actually mean to you in the beginning, Brian? And now that you've been established for so long, what how does that how has that shifted? Yeah, so I think in the beginning making it would have simply meant being able to quit whatever miserable day job I was doing for someone else and have enough money enough, not not a ton, but enough to be able to do what I wanted to do, which was fitness-based stuff full-time. And so this was like 2009, 2010 when we first began thinking about starting the gym. This was before anything online was even on my mind at all. Um and so yeah, our goal in the beginning when we started the gym in kind of early mid-2010. was to reach a point where we had enough uh sufficient members that we could both leave our day jobs and be able to commit ourselves fully to building this thing and seeing where it could go. Yeah, I agree. In the beginning, just being able to pay my bills, which was a a very reduced amount of bills by design, because you know, I I knew that that would be the the first and easiest way to make it, uh, was what it meant to me in the beginning. Now, how has that shifted? Because there's kind of three phases that I want to speak about that I think are helpful here. We have the initial of I'm not drowning, right? I am head above water, let's call it that. And then I'm head above water, comfortable, maybe, uh, head above water plus comfortable. So let's call that you know, maybe on a boat or something like that. And it's just you. And now as a a father of two, you know, being married, having a home, having a mortgage, all these things, like how how has that shifted for you over time? Yeah, I mean, I don't think that just being able to pay my bills like I did when I was twenty five or twenty six starting the gym uh is sufficient when you have a mortgage and a family and all of these other responsibilities that you need to to take care of. So, you know, in a hypothetical world, if I was still running the gym and we were just kind of scraping by as we were in the first year with Call it, I don't know, Anders and I were each making maybe $30,000 to $40,000 that first year after we quit our day jobs. Um, that obviously would not be sufficient for me in this current state of my life. But to be fair, I also probably wouldn't have ended up in Boulder in this house, living the lifestyle that I live. So it's a little bit of like a chicken and the egg thing here. But um, but for sure, if that had been the route that I went and I was to make the decision that I was going to prioritize. the enjoyment of my job and such over a more extravagant lifestyle, then that would have been a decision that had to be made and kind of dealt with at that time and obviously going forward. How about you? Yeah, I in the beginning it was just survive. I was and because it's the allure of being self-employed when you I mean by the time I was like I said, I was 30, 31 effectively, by the time that I really made the jump. Just being able to provide for myself and and pay my own bills and generate my own income and be in control was v a huge accomplishment for me personally. And then as you The way that I like to describe it is as you gain more skills, because that's effectively what it is, right? Everyone thinks like, I'm just a I'm this fitness coach or whatever. I know you guys started through the gym and eventually you after the gym transitioned over to this side of the space a bit more. You don't realize that you it's not just the skill of being a coach. You need all these other skills. You need to be able to sell, you need to be able to communicate, you need to be able to market, right? And as you start to accumulate these skills, you're what making it what how you define it starts to change a little bit. So then at this time we're, you know, my wife and I are comfortably uh settled in Bali, so it was a little bit different because the cost of living and stuff was was a lot less, but I was able to save a lot of money, which was cool, which provided new opportunities like investing into the gym undefeated. Um and then kind of as your skills continue to improve and increase. And if your ambition also increases, new opportunities kind of uh unlock. And then eventually for me it became The goal that we talked about was long-term, we would move back to the states. Moving back to the states was a lot different from a cost of living than than being in Bali. Um, and because I want to be comfortable, I didn't want to move to like a neighborhood, I didn't want to be in or anything like that. So it was another level of like, I need to escalate my my skills and and abilities to another degree. And that's kind of how I have experienced it. As you gain some skills and confidence in yourself, you kind of start looking at the next level or what's the next like step up the mountain and then you're like okay I've done this and then and you're looking down the mountain behind you and here all here is all my history of the things that I've been able to accomplish in all the next levels. Now then the the one that's above you starts to feel much more achievable. And that's in in full transparency like the one that I'm in now. We sat down you know and for any listener who's who's not uh aware like my wife and I are both self-employed. And what that means is now that she's about to be uh, you know, babies due in in December, she's gonna be out of work. And when she's out of work, that means money doesn't come in. Like there's no paternity leave when you're self-employed or maternity leave or whatever. So it became like, okay, well, now I'm going to cover everything myself, and I want to put away all this money for her so that she's comfortable for for whatever she needs, like, but I don't want to touch any of our savings. and then the thing that I I guess I'll I'll wrap up on from my side here is which was a this was a note that I wanted to talk about in the episode is like you you eventually realize that you you become unemployable because you know too much. Is the way that I like to describe it. Because now when there's something like, okay, I need to put away X amount of money for for um for Jenny, or for us, I should say, while she's gonna be out of work. If I'm a a a W-2 employee and I make whatever, like $90,000 per year, if I need to put away $20,000 in the next like two months, like you you can't because your your income is is effectively fixed. Whereas being self-employed, it just now becomes this problem. problem that I get to reverse engineer. Um and that's what's really cool and what I would say becomes like dangerous being but positively framed dangerous, being self-employed. It's like, okay, I have this new problem, monetary problem, let me reverse engineer this and and figure it out. And then once you do that a couple times, you start to really believe in yourself and those sorts of things. And now I look back at, you know, thirty-one year old, thirty-two year old, thirty-three year old Aaron who is paying my bills but not thriving by any stretch of the imagination. And it's really wild how how far you realize you can come when you see your history of successes, but mostly the things that you've learned over that time. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of momentum that comes um through that process. But then kinda to your point about, you know, needing to put away money and uh budget for the future and things like that, it also adds a lot of pressure on yourself where when you have a fixed income and you work for somebody, you know that you get your vacation time and you get your sick days and you kind of have your four one K. And I mean you have like a lot of these things. working in the background for you. Uh, whereas when you're self employed, uh th all of that kind of disappears. And you have to be you know, you have to take your own responsibility to plan for your future. Yeah. One of the things before we move on that I think is is really helpful, there's often times I don't want to do the things that I have to do. Right. So f so for example, um there might be times where I told a client, like the most the most recent really hard one was there was like two Saturdays ago. I told a client, a new client, I'd ha I'll have everything ready for you by by end of day. And something happened. We ended up being home away from home for like seven hours that was completely unplanned, and I didn't get home till literal ten PM. And and this was something that I could not have of of planned for, knew it was gonna happen. And they come home at 10 p.m. and I'm like, I really don't want to do this new client onboard. It's Saturday night, it's 10 p.m. I just had a really stressful afternoon. But I came down here and worked until midnight and got that new that new program out. and I didn't enjoy it. Obviously, that's not very enjoyable, but you really learn to bet on yourself in those sorts of things, and that becomes very, very powerful for you. So One of the things that I I say is when I don't want to do the things that I have to do, the the reassuring thing that I tell myself is these are the costs that I must pay to be the person that I chose to be. And that I'm a very not in a in a bad way, like I'm just a control freak. But when I'm in control, it means that like I dictate the outcomes both positively and negatively. But the fact that it's on me gives me a level of like sovereignty over it that I find is is really helpful because now when it is something like, you know, baby's coming, Jenny's gonna be out of work, and those sorts of things, like it's all on me, which gives me obvious obviously you said that's a lot of pressure, but I do well with the pressure. I want the pressure because it forces me in to to be to like reach a new level. level that I haven't before. And I think that's very positive. Yeah. It's kind of like a double edged sword in some ways because of the fact that when you are self employed doing something like this, you are in a sense like always working. Um, and so I remember, you know, like Kim and I are both self employed now, so we're both kind of on the same page. She has uh her company because she works with big corporate companies, she does get weekends pretty much off. Like she doesn't get a lot of emails or things to do. Sometimes she'll have some some work she has to do, but nothing that she Well work she wants to do to get ahead, but nothing she has to do. Whereas for me and for you in our situation, it is kind of like a no days off thing. You like you could plan your week around and be like, you know, Sunday's my day off, and you have your like hike with Jenny and you're like, you know, I'm just not gonna work today type thing. but for me, what I've found is I would much rather work less time seven days a week than work a ton of time just to take a day or two off. And so it does give you some freedom in the way that you make your schedule. in that you can choose which route you want. But it also is like the double edged sword is that like even when we travel and we go on vacations, we did a 10 day road trip to the Grand Canyon or like we're going to Hawaii for a week and like I still am going to have to sit down and do a couple hours of work every day. And that's fine. Like I've made that decision that that's what I want to do, but it is it can be burdensome for some people. And it's usually one of the things that when people jump into this space, it's one of the things that maybe they're not fully prepared for. Agreed. Yeah. But it all comes back to you and how you decide you want to frame it. So one of the things for me that I like to do is I'll I I I wake up early a anyway, and I think you do as well, Brian. And for me, I'll wake up, I'm gonna make a coffee, and then I'm gonna sit down and like answer clients. And and it might only take me thirty five minutes on on a Saturday morning or something like that. And then I'll generally check again in like the late afternoon to evening or something. But that that's something that I have justified that for me to live the life that I get to live, if I need to work, you know, sixty minutes in in three broken up periods on a Saturday, three hundred and or fifty two weeks a year, like I will take that because of what it of offers me on the back end. Moving moving along a little bit, what does there any kind of tangible turning point that you can remember where it felt like this is this is sustainable, right? I I this may I may be able to make this work for the long for the long term and live a a normal life, not, you know, I don't want to call it at the poverty line, but not being like broke all the time or something like that. Yeah, I mean the turning point for sure was like obviously in the beginning we quit our day jobs eight months into starting the gym and we were, like I said, barely making, you know, thirty grand a piece or something, which was just enough at twenty-five years old to to keep us keep us floating. and and on to be fair, we were spending almost all of our time at the gym. So there wasn't like we had a ton of money being spent outside of that as well. but I think the turning point was once we quit the day jobs and uh the gym really started to kind of blow up from there. So In the first eight months when we started the gym and still had the day jobs, our kind of cutoff point was when we get to a hundred members, that's gonna be enough members where we can quit our job and have enough money. But because we were able to quit our jobs and then commit ourselves full time to being at the gym, it really started to grow at that point. And I think, you know, within a year or less, we had doubled that to 200 and then As you know, we had to get a second location because we couldn't fit everybody in the first one. And I think once we had that second location and we were beginning to pack that one out as well, um, it escalated quickly. And I think I realized at that point that this was something that was special and sustainable. Um and it also wasn't quite as burdensome on lifestyle as it was in the beginning. Like I've talked about on prior episodes, how the first eight months when I was working two jobs I was up at five or five thirty a.m. to coach 6 a.m. classes and 7 a.m. classes. And then I'd go to work all day. And then I'd come home back to the gym and I would coach 5 p.m., 6 p.m., 7 p.m. And then Anders and I would do admin work, clean the gym, get home at like 10, eat dinner, sports center, fall asleep at midnight, and then I'm up again at 5 or 5.30. And I did that for like eight straight months. And so that obviously wasn't sustainable for me. Um, in retrospect, I don't know how I did it. But somehow I did. And uh and so I think reaching that point where it then we had trainers working for us and we weren't running every six AM class and every seven PM class, that really started to make a huge change in our ability to kind of see this as a future. Yeah. Was there anything where you felt uh 'cause I'm sure even like you you guys left your day jobs and stuff, but was I'm sure there was a that little fear in the back of your mind that it's it's all gonna fall apart and I'm gonna have to go back to you know working a nine to five or is there ever is there a a moment that you remember b just saying like this is it, like I'm never going back. I'll never have to go back. Not and that's not purely from a a a n a monetary number perspective, but just a discovery of the skills or a realization or or anything that you remember. Yeah, I think it was sometime in the middle of of that period where we were really excelling and growing, uh, before we kind of started declining, as I've discussed on prior episodes, you know, around two thousand fifteen, I think we started declining a bit. But um, yeah, those years where we were really doing well in like two thousand twelve, thirteen, fourteen. I I Anders and I both had talked about how, you know, if this falls apart, we're definitely not going back to work corporate America. We would, you know. get a small warehouse spot in an industrial district and simply just do like one-on-one coaching or something like that because online wasn't super viable at that point. Actually I did I did start online coaching as we've discussed as well much earlier than many. I think in 2011 I started taking on remote clients in CrossFit competition. Um but I didn't realize the possibilities of how online coaching could extrapolate out to be so much more than simply just working one on one with people and then having your roster essentially capped by by your time. Um and so yeah, it it it definitely oscillated. Like there was certainly periods where the gym was declining and Anders and I were kind of at each other's throats and we began discussing the the sale of the gym and stuff like that, where I really began to question kind of what I was gonna do next and if I was going to have to go back to corporate America because I wasn't sure. Like I had settled into a lifestyle that was making a certain amount of money because the gym was doing well. And it's always really hard to go backwards. Like there's a there's a saying that uh trajectory is more important than state or uh yeah, I guess trajectory is more important than state. Where if you're in a current state where you're making 30 grand, but you were making twenty grand the the prior year, then you're doing awesome. You're like, hell yeah, I'm really crushing it. But if you were making sixty grand a year and then suddenly you're back to thirty, instead of feeling great about that 30, you feel really shitty about it. And so trajectory is much more important than state. Yeah, I I would agree that I can't say that there wasn't like a a bank account number or anything that made me feel like I had made it. I think what it what it for me was is obviously for me like coaching was was always the bread and butter and then some other things came in you know afterwards, but what what it was really for me was when sal sales calls. I always like to, you know, use air quotes. I started going like literally 10 out of 10 on my sales calls. And I th I think 2023 I not a single client, potential client, said no to me on the phone in the entire year. And like I couldn't fucking believe that. Right. And now, knowing what I know now, like working with some some people and stuff in the space, it's like, yeah, that's when your prices are too low. but like it was fascinating because in the beginning The majority were no's. And it I mean it's a real shot to your ego, because you need that money in the beginning. And when it's just like no after no. It feels like the only way is is that the only way out is that you're gonna fail. and I think that was the r the reason the when I was like, wow, people are quite interested in working with me. And I've always had this kind of uh how do I wanna say it? My perception of myself is different than other people's perception of me. And I think because I I always kind of feel like I'm still that, you know, very trepidatious and and shy child who's who's just trying to like earn his keep sort of thing. But that's not really how other people view me. So it's always like I'm like, wow, it's working. And I'll like go tell Jenny, like, it's working. And she's like, Yeah, of course it's working. so that one what was really positive for me where I really started to like believe in my abilities to be able to do things. and that was right around the time that we launched the first when Jackson and I had the online coaching upgrade what do you call like business Mm-hmm. And when we s we launched the first cohort, it sold out in like 15 hours. And it was like, fuck, go turn it off, turn it off, turn it off. And I was like, okay, things are working. Like this is insane. Um, that was probably the first time where I was like, I'll never have to go back. Like I I have enough skills now where I can go do not anything that I want. I do not believe I can go do anything that I want. But I have enough skills to provide value in certain in aspects to design my life how I want, which was s it's for in full transparency, it's still hard for me to believe. Right? I I every when I when I there's times where I'm maybe not down on myself, but I'm a little bit stressed out, a little bit tired, and I have to go work and I'm like, man, I really like I really don't want to go do this thing and I remind myself, like, Aaron, God forbid you go down to your nice fucking office in your house and you talk to these people about like lifting weights and eating food that they pay you for, like get over yourself. Yeah. I get over myself and I'm like, I've had real jobs. I've I've drove a driven forklift. I've done all these shitty things, like life's really good and I'm very, very grateful. And then I put my smile on and I I go uh do my work, which is not really work s still. So I I'm very, very grateful as I'm as I'm sure you are. Yeah. Was was there any kind of like the the note that I have here that that people ask, like winning the pro car, did that like change anything? And honestly, like no, it really didn't change um anything. But was there anything like that where you like reached an al uh an accolade that you thought would change things that it it really didn't? It's a good question. Um No, I think most of the things that that I did with the assumption that it was gonna be beneficial were beneficial. Um, like we've talked about me taking the OPT C C P course, which I went to for a couple years in Arizona and got that hands-on instruction and and education. And that was extremely helpful and allowed me to really recruit and be a viable and helpful coach for all the athletes like. Comp the really competitive ones. I think I was very capable of helping people that weren't necessarily on the super competitive side for a long time. But being able to help people really with that kind of CrossFit competition goal and understanding energy systems and periodization with energy systems and stuff like that was extremely helpful. And then I in 2015, once I started kind of beginning to move away from competitive CrossFit. I did that uh men's physique competition, which you were at and you know, supported me for, which was great. But I did it as part of kind of promoting our new bodybuilding program at the gym, which we were it's a fledgling program that we were starting. And I wanted to be kind of like the poster boy for that, to be like, look, I'm training for this thing and like this is the programming that uh I'm using and I wanna, you know, be able to give that to you guys as well. And that bodybuilding class actually blew up and became quite popular. And I think that me doing it was part of that process, like having somebody that wasn't simply just going out and continuing to do CrossFit, but then being like, hey, but I want you guys to do this other thing. Um, I think having me switch my focus to do that was was definitely helpful as well. So uh those two kind of stand out in my mind. yeah, I can't really think of any that I really pursued that weren't helpful. But I think also with your pro card situation, like even though you thought maybe it would be helpful for your business, I don't think there was any part of you that was doing it for that reason. Um, and so it wasn't really it didn't really matter whether it helped you or not. I am curious though, it did it in some ways make you more desirable as a coach for people that are competing, or was that unchanged as well? It no, it it definitely did. But if I'm being honest and I I don't want this to come off the wrong way. I am I am very fortunate. I think so like competing is I think it's but but minus the posing, right? Everyone knows my posing is is not great. It's not as hard for me because it doesn't feel like I'm sacrificing to the to the level that people are sacrificing. And I think that is my strength in how I was able to do that is because I was like I sat down and I said, okay, I have whatever. It was uh effectively like April 1st. It was like the final week of March. The pro qualifier is July 15th. So April April, May, June, and July, or I have like four months, no meals out, no nights out. I'm eating the same exact thing every single day and I'm doing my steps in cardio. But for me, I was just like I just like flipped a switch and was just it was very simple for me. Is the answer is the date before July fifteenth? If that answer is yes, then my answer is I cannot. But People really struggle with that because it feels like they're missing out on things and social things and or maybe they don't have a supportive partner or you know, but for me like it wasn't that big of a trade off. I told Jenny, Jenny was like, Yeah, go chase this big thing. So I I think for me or for s for a lot of people, the answer isn't as simple because the trade-off. It feels like they're missing out on so much. And that's one of the things where I said I I think if I was ten years younger and trying to do this at twenty-seven, I think I really would have struggled because you know it feels like you're missing out on on things with friends and stuff, but I was at this phase of my life where I'd already done all that. I've been out with so many nights and stuff, like I'm just over it. I don't want to do those things anymore. So my desires kind of kind of aligned. and one of the things I've I've learned early on is like P a lot of many people can't just flip that switch and and they really struggle with things. Some people can and those are my like most successful clients because I I'm I am we're not building all these like crazy protocols and using all these different drugs and stuff. Like it's really basic and and people don't really want wanna believe that often but the the The superpower is in immense ability to delay gratification and do the same exact thing every single day for months on end. so there was an initial. I will say the thing that the the thing that the the positive that I did get out of the pro card is like and and and I will be very transparent with everyone, I don't like this, that this is the truth. Now the things that I say. kind of like have they like mean more, they have a a heavier weight because of the accomplishment. But the thing that frustrates me is if you go back and listen to my, you know, nutrition advice or training advice from early 2024, before I was on PEDs, nothing's changed really. It's effectively the exact same thing, but now because I look the way I look And I have that accomplishment when I say it. It lands differently and I hate that. Because the the the information is the same. It's just I now look different because of literally PEDs and it means something different. And and I and I and it bothers me that that's true. Okay, so we covered that. One of the things that I that I think this is a really big one. Biggest mistake or wasted year or wasted money through your like cutting of your teeth, kind of. I know mine. I'm happy to talk about it if you want to think a little bit. So my first 2021 was a year things really picked up for me. Like like 2019 was my first year. It was brutal. I made $17,000 the entire year. 2020 picked up a lot. Uh 2021 things really picked up. And I remember I had changed my business offering a little bit. I think I'd literally doubled my prices and I was able to sell it better at doubling the prices than I was when it was cheaper, which I is f a fascinating, like purely s psychology sort of thing. And it's August of 2021. I had just done like a my my most successful launch in my business. I have over $60,000 cash in my business bank account. And I'm like, fuck, this is crazy. Right? I'm like, this is insane. And then I'm like, well, I I need to double down and and keep this momentum going. So I hired an ads team to sell my check-in system, which I was successfully selling and making money on ads only myself. And I didn't know what the fuck I was doing with with Facebook ads. And I joined this expensive like mentorship. This was in both of these happened in like July, August. So I had $60,000. By the time the the year closed, I had less than five in the account. And it felt like I was just drowning because I I I I told myself, like, I I made it here, like I have this money, like it's I'm cruising, it's all gonna be like fireworks from here on out. It was the complete opposite. I was hemorrhaging money each month. And then after the first two months, I'm like, it's you know, it takes a little bit of time to catch in. And then the delusion kind of picks in or kicks in because you're like, the the last two haven't gone, so this next one it it needs to work. And I just kept hemorrhaging money until the End of the year when I was nearly broke again. And that was a really hard, like six-month realization. but what that ended up doing is I stopped listening to other people or in the this is what you should be doing, or this is what's next, and I changed my business in early uh 2022, so it took me a few more months of of really, you know, gathering myself, licking my licking my wounds per per se, to just go back to what I thought was best with my with my coaching and my service. Said I'm just gonna do what feels right. And it was really slow in the beginning, and I had some really awfully low months and stuff, but that realization and just changing to what I felt was best. and doing what I believed in has ultimately led me to where I am now. Yeah, that makes sense. I also can resonate on ads being a mistake. Uh we've ran them a couple of times with Paragon. We've tried a few different companies and everyone, you know, has these big promises of how you're gonna increase your membership by this much and blah, blah, blah. And what I would say is that what it did is it gave us an influx of members initially, but then it was quickly followed by an influx, a high influx of attrition. where we were losing so many people. It was like it wasn't even making up for the the members that we got. And so even if we were like breaking even on membership, we were paying this company all this money to break even on membership. And so that was for sure a a bad decision on our part. And I don't really know, like obviously some the ads must work for some people because they're obviously out there and they do them and they continue to do them. And I know that like Fisher has talked about how he's had a lot of success with them. Um but yeah, we just did not. And then I would say the other big mistake, which wasn't related to my online coaching, but you know, I've talked about this on this podcast, so I won't belabor it. But once we had those two gyms in 2014, 15 and they were crushing and doing really well, we then consolidated both those two gyms into the one really big gym. And that was, as I've discussed, the kind of beginning of the end for us where We had kind of this monopoly on P B and North P B and we had our members, you know, who really preferred one gym or the other gym. And then we essentially just took both gyms away from people and we were like, Now you all are coming to this gym and it was bigger, of course, but the classes were huge and it was just it just created an environment and an ambiance in the structure of our our gym experience that I think just wasn't as fulfilling. Um For many of the members, and we just started to kind of bleed members at that point. So I would say for sure the biggest mistake we made was that consolidation of the two gyms into one. And I I wonder where we would have been had we not done that, uh like where my life would be now. And to be honest, like where it is now is probably better than where it would have been, but um there's no way of knowing that without having gone through it. Yeah, the I remember the culture kind just didn't really seem to from my perspective, right? And this could obviously just be my own, the culture didn't really seem to transfer when the the two locations went down to one. Which was very interesting because it was the same coaches, all the all the same humans and stuff. It was just a location change, but I remember it felt very different. Yeah. Well I think part of it too was that Anders and I started kinda having different visions of where we wanted things to go. And he started feeling like CrossFit was injuring people or it wasn't like creating sustainable fitness lifestyle for them. And we were maybe indexing too hard on the competitive side of CrossFit and not enough on the like general sustainability of just the person that wants to show up three times a week and get a good workout in. And so I think there was a number of kind of those pitfalls that all coalesced around a similar time. Yeah. There is now this is a a hard question, but looking back, was there anything that you kind of regret um now in in hindsight where you're like, you know, I had these two options, I I went left, I wish I would have went right, um anything like that? No, I'm honestly like thrilled with where I am right now. And I don't think I would be where I am had any of those decisions or those kind of sliding door moments occurred. Um, like I honestly think the best thing I did when I was in that kind of uh flux stage when we were selling the gym and I wasn't sure what I was gonna do next, the the best decision I made was starting Evolved and my online training program and really programming the types of workouts that were speaking to me at that time, which were using some Olympic lifting and some gymnastics from CrossFit because I still had part of my self-definition wrapped up in CrossFit and my ability to do these things. But then beginning to combine that with more like hypertrophy bodybuilding style training. And uh then it sort of pun intended evolved from there into a into what my programming looks like more these days. But I think that was for sure, you know, a very important catalyst in the process. And I definitely wouldn't be where I am now had that not occurred. Yeah. One of the things that I've said numerous times on the podcast before, you were always ahead of the curve somehow. through an a number of of things. And one part that I had completely forgot about until you brought it up was that bodybuilding class in the back. That is a that is a a uh market segment that I think is still incredibly underserved and could do quite well. It it would be hard because of the equipment kind of restrictions, but that is it effectively took the best parts of CrossFit, which was uh the camaraderie, the intensity, that sort of thing, and put it into a more Hypertrophy. focused endeavor, right? Whereas if we look at you know a traditional hypertrophy, one of the things that it kind of gets you know boring at times. You're by yourself. Like one of the things that's happening right now is I'm running out of music that I care to listen to. And that's always like, what the fuck am I gonna listen to today? Sort of thing. And um but I can't listen to the gym's music because it's just not not what I want to listen to. But if it was like you and two friends or something like that training and you know the camaraderie is there, the intensity is there, you know like you're not even paying attention to the music because'Cause you're so um what's what's the word? Like you're you're engaged. Yeah, you're so engaged in what's going on. So that that's a that's a model that I would, you know, like to just see someone doing and just like follow along on Instagram or something like that. Cause I think it is very cool. Yeah, group bodybuilding classes are an an interesting idea. And I think that is very feasible if you can program it in the right way. Like you could get ten people. I not in like my my basement gym because it's too crowded and too small, but I think with even the equipment that I have in my gym, had it be in a bigger space where I have like two various squat machines, I have T bar row, I have the full cable machine, I have hamstring curl, leg extension, a squat rack, hip extension, and chest press machine. I mean, even just all of that in a bigger space, I could program it in a manner where I could have, you know, eight or ten people in a class and kind of rotate through each machine. Like actually, the way that um when I was a teenager, one of the philosophies that I was following was this HIT protocol, you know, high-intensity training, not high-intensity interval training. But I went to this guy, this one-on-one coach who was really popular in DC at the time doing HIT, and his gym was literally in an office building. And he just had 10 machines. And the whole workout was you go through and you do like a warm-up round on each exercise, like super easy. Then you do like a second warm-up that's progressive. And then you go through and you do a third set on each machine where everything is to failure plus four streps. And then you're done. And that was literally like the whole workout. One hard work set with four streps on every eight or ten of the machines. And I was through that in like 30 or 40 minutes. So there's no way there's no reason that model couldn't be extrapolated out to like a group at group atmosphere. Yeah, I agree. Looking back, uh any regrets? Uh moving to Asia, incredible decision. I I don't regret that at all. I do regret it's hard to say. Like obviously I made a lot of mistakes, right? Like the ads team, horrible mistake. The the that Like i mentorship thing I did, a big mistake, but these mistakes helped me find what I valued most. Mm-hmm. And I think wit without that, I don't think I would have learned to to bet on myself and double down on the things of like I learned how to do, you know, a a fitness a a like a nutrition fitness coaching model in a way that I it just it felt a little bit dirty bathwater to me. And I'm fortunate that, you know, my own moral compass is strong enough where I'm like, this doesn't feel right. I don't want to do this. I'm gonna go do it this way. And it helped me find like make decisions out of what felt morally, you know, to myself, which ultimately led me here. The other big decision that's that's hard, um as of right now, right? So I'm we're now through three years later. Undefeated is still financially, I still don't have a dime from undefeated back. Um that one but it's hard to separate that from everything in my life that's happened because of going into undefeated. So I definitely do not regret it. Financially, probably not the best move as of right now. Who knows how how things will shape in the future, but all the opportunity that I've been given on the back end of that massively outweighs the financial investment that went in. Like without that, there would have been no no pro card. There would have been no pressure to go get the pro card. I look at so many of these cool things. Like now every gym that opens in Bali, nearly every single one, they put Jim Lecko. in the in the gym. Like We were the first people in that country to put Jim Lecco in there, and now everyone puts it in there. So there's definitely things like that. We get messages all the time that people who who come in and absolutely love it. Um, I get people who message me and say, Hey, I heard you you chose the equipment in Undefeated. I'm opening a gym. Like, can I ask you some questions? I'm like, this is fascinating. Like people are just messaging me and they're like, I'm opening a gym in some like southern part of Australia. Can I ask you some questions? so there's a lot of cool things that that it is provided. Provided me, it's that pressure, right? The pressure of needing the problem solve of all these crazy things that that happened. And I've just learned a lot about myself and my ability to adapt to like stress and pressure that I never would have had these gigantic problems not been in place. So It's it's hard to not like there's sometimes things feel maybe like not the the bet the best move like financially, but there's other, you know, maybe less tangible positives on the back end that that you get out of it. There's Like things that I like, for example, like the podcast, Brian. Like, we don't we don't make any money off of this podcast, right? Fortunately, AI has improved to where we're not like hemorrhaging money to run the podcast, but in like 2023, 2024, you're spending like seven, eight thousand dollars a year to for people to edit the podcast and stuff. But it's it's positive. I get you know a weekly oh nearly weekly conversation with you and in a continued friendship and stuff over the years. We get to help people, you know, all over, which which is really, really cool. Um so there's definitely different ways that you have to invest thinking about uh certain things. I think do you have anything else there? I have one one final part. love the podcast. Like I do I do find it sometimes like a little stressful to to figure out what we're gonna talk about some weeks when you know we've talked about so much over five years and not so much changes all the time in fitness where there is like a need to go like discuss the newest study on hypertrophy or whatever. So I am like sometimes a little struggling with that, but every time that we actually do it, I end up leaving, being like, wow, that was so rewarding and it was so great to connect with Aaron and um I just I just feel overwhelmingly positive every time we do it and I love that it resonates with people and that we still have people that are listening to it and sharing it and stuff like that. Yeah, agreed. Final question. Is there one piece of advice you give your younger self that can be the episode's like closing message? For the per for the person who's either in like year one, year two into their career in in the fitness space, or really considering quitting their day job to go uh into the fitness space? I would say my advice is probably related, two two separate pieces that are kind related. One would be that you just have to accept that the first bit of time, call it six to twelve plus months, you're going to be insanely time restricted. And or or d maybe time poor would be the way of saying that. Like there just isn't enough time in the day for everything that you're gonna have to do, especially if you open a physical location. If you are online, maybe you can create your schedule a little bit more in in line with kind of the way that you want to in some ways. Um, but either way, that first year is going to be extremely time expensive and effort expensive. And like I was saying, you just maybe have to be prepared to have minimal sleep, like I did for eight months, where you're sleeping five or six hours a night because you just have to grind and put that time in. But luckily when you're young, you can do that. and then I would say the second piece of advice, which is related to that. Is that I'm a huge fan of people keeping their prior job when they start a new venture. Um, because it just it gives you an off ramp. And and I I don't think that having an off-ramp is is always a good thing because sometimes pressure is the thing that is the catalyst to to actually succeed. But there's nothing more stressful than than than not having something to fall back on. And going into something that you're not sure is gonna succeed and not having like another option. And so I think for me and and other people, like my wife as well, who started her own business, doing it while you still have an income and a solid professional path um takes enough pressure off that you don't go to bed every night toiling in your brain and unable to sleep because you're so worried about whether you're gonna be able to succeed doing this or not. Yeah, that's really really helpful. I have two. One is something that I I I I didn't think about it when I was younger, but it's become increasingly more important to me now. Protect your brand and your name. And be very weary with who you associate yourself with, whether that's companies and those sorts of things, especially the way that the market is moving. There's things that are very common now. It's called like whitelisting brand deals. So where a company will run an an ad under your like Instagram account or something like that, with you speaking about their their product or whatever. And it it can be beneficial, but sometimes these are like, we'll give you fifty bucks to run an ad under your Instagram. And I'm like, are you fucking crazy? No. Like, no, you're not even in the ballpark of me a pr of of considering to say yes. Because there's like who knows? They might triple down on it and just pump your face everywhere and people get sick of you. Yeah. are the same people that you want to sell your coaching or something like that to, and now they're sick of seeing and hearing your voice because of some for fifty dollars that you made, like y there's so much lost opportunity cost on the back and so that I don't promote anything that I don't use myself. And so Legion has been one that I've been, you know, I'm a believer in Legion. I think they have great products and they're uh, you know, the h highest quality that's out there for the most part. Like they're at least they're up there with some of the other, you know, Thorn and some of those other big ones. But um, but yeah, definitely like your integrity is so important and it's a It defines kind of how other people see you as well. And so you don't want to be promoting something that you don't actually believe in and use yourself. Yeah. And it even if it is something that you believe in and use yourself, like it has to be worth your time. Like I have I have three three things that I'm associated with. One is my my HRT. Sorry, it is not my HRT. It is an HRT company that provides my HRT vitality here here in Utah. And then I have metabolic, which makes literal specific supplement formulations for people on TRT and PEDs to keep organs, organ markers happy. So that literally my TRT, the PED, or sorry, the the metabolic, which helps keep things in range, and then Good Labs, which is where I get my my blood work and I build panels for my clients. So all three of those play into each other and they are things that I literally use. Well I don't use good labs every single day because I don't get labs that much. But the other two are literally daily uses and they're things that I would spend my money on if I was not affiliated. Um so protect your your name and your brand. I think that's becoming ever more important than ever. Um and then the final piece was except that there are sacrifices that come with this space that are very different for like normal people. So one of the things that I think I did very well early on was make this uh agreement with myself is now that food and nutrition is my livelihood, my personal relationship with food and nutrition, sorry, nutrition, food, nutrition and exercise or food nutrition lifting. Ch needs to change because I am financially incentivized to have a different relationship. So when people say, sometimes I get people say, like Aaron, I don't know how you're so regimented, like I could never do it. And I say, I feed my family on this. So if you fed your family on this, it would be easier to say no to things because there's a direct correlate. Like let's face it, if I was 200 and four I'm whatever two hundred and thirty-eight pounds, but I was twenty-five percent body fat, my coaching business would look significantly different. As much as I hate that that is the truth, because it doesn't change the the information and things that I have. But the fact that when push comes to shove at 365 days per year, I can take my shirt off and I'm 10% body fat or less, even though that I don't use that as a lever. If I needed to, I could and people know that it's there. So and one of the questions I sometimes get about, well, what happens in your 40s? Like, well, what happens in my forties? I don't I don't want yeah, I don't want to be 240 pounds in my forties, but I can sit at 215 like very comfortably and still be lean. Yeah. So I think that is something that people struggle with. And that's where you you get people in this space who have kind of binges and stuff, or they they can't keep it together. But I think for me it was a if this is the change that I'm gonna make, like I need to one day, and now that day is I'm about to cash in on that day very soon. Like I'm going to need to be a provider. And unfortunately the way that I look is directly tied to that. So I changed my relationship with it. It's maybe when I'm 55, I can have like pizza and shit and burgers, but probably have After 30, 25 years of not eating it, I'm probably not gonna have a renowned uh interest in it, but we'll see. Yeah, you just gotta do it more so your body can handle it. So you gotta get through like the first week of sickness and then your body will be like, I can do this and then you can you can start eating crap after that. All right. Sounds good, dude. Thanks for running this episode. This was great. Of of course, hopefully this was helpful for you guys. We'll be back in two weeks.