Welcome back to the Strong Life Podcast. This is your host, Zach Evanish, and in this episode, we've got a bonus episode. It's a duo episode where I jump on my buddy's podcast, The Business of Strength, Joe Rijo. Sometimes he's got his partner, Dan Goodman, or their other head of sports performance and education out of men are running their podcast. But the business of strength is all about the business aspect of being a strength coach, whether it's running a gym or becoming a strength coach where you're basically learning to escape the matrix. And what I mean by that is, in this episode, I was kind of heartbroken when I had come across a job posting at one of the major universities, one of probably the most prominent universities out there. And the salary was 45 grand when they're in a weight room that costs tens of millions of dollars in a sports performance building that's probably $100 million. And I say to myself, how can this be the case? And so when that happened, I said, listen, let's crush this podcast. Let's talk about business. Let's talk about why we're bringing back the Underground Strength Conference. And by the way, I've mentioned it many times the past probably six weeks, it is finally live, you could go to undergroundstrengthcon.com. And you could register for the event. If you've gone through my certification or you're a member of any of my membership areas, such as the trainee road teams, we have gladiator strong and dad strong, that has a discount code on the form. Underground Strength Academy has a discount code on the form. And then there's the biggest discount for those that have gone through my certifications. That's on the Facebook group. So in this episode, my buddy Joe Rijini, we talk about why I wanted to bring back Underground StrengthCon, why I partnered with Joe, what is the difference in being kind of this solo purgour, like Rambo, first blood, and what it does to your business and why I wanted to evolve and why I wanted to bring back Underground StrengthCon. Number two, we discuss how money has changed, especially with the economy through the years. The money you made 5, 10, 15 years ago is not the same as the money today. And so Underground StrengthCon is going to be about empowering any kind of strength coach or sports coach to be more successful financially and more successful in personal life. Meaning, you don't need to work these crazy hours that destroy your physical health, destroy your mental health and make you burn out. I mean, the amount of burnout I see in strength coaches is heartbreaking. And the event is really a blend of coaches that either own gyms. One of the coaches is a sports coach and runs sports camps. We're going to have a wealth advisor there to teach you and talk about what are the crucial things you want to do to manage and grow your money, to make your money work for you. So you're not just trading time for dollars. My opening presentation is going to be about lessons learned and things I've changed since the last Underground StrengthCon, which was 2012, I believe. So 12 years ago, 12 years and a few months ago, very excited to share all the lessons learned. Things have certainly changed with business, with life. And there's going to be leadership. There's going to be business lessons from other business owners. And then, of course, there's going to be the energy of the event, the networking of the event, the new friends you're going to make. And I speak about how I've really felt guilty doing live events and just any time away from my family. And here I am, you know, my daughter's a senior, my son's a sophomore. And I talk about why it's important to at least sometimes step away from your day-to-day life, from your normal environment, and how it can positively impact your life. So exciting times, go to undergroundstrengthcon.com, enjoy this episode. And as I always say, even if you are not a business owner, it doesn't matter, because every man should be able to learn and know how to write his own paycheck, how to create and acquire money and wealth outside of your, let's say you have a regular job, normal job, whatever you want to call it. This is crucial, especially since we're seeing that the new norm in today's world is that there are no guarantees, you know. I hope one of my old coaches can make it to the event. He was a strength coach, started as an intern, then he was a head coach at one of my gyms, then he went to a Division I university. And at that Division I university, he had to step down because it was just so much headache and hassle from administration, from people who don't strength train, from people who try to tell you what to do, who don't have really the knowledge of what it takes to be successful in strength training. And so it's a little bit scary doing your own thing. But sometimes you could do it like I do it, which is pretty much always I've had some sort of a full time coaching or teaching position. I've coached at the collegiate level. I've taught in schools. I've been a full time strength coach. I think I'm going on my, it's so confusing. This is my fifth or sixth year here. I think it's my sixth year. It's a full time strength coach and have the business. And this past summer was the first time I stepped off the floor from coaching and really just couldn't get myself on the floor on the regular because of all the travels I was doing for my kids sports and college and just family stuff. And I think I want to say this before I forget it. I think about this a lot. You know, I started coaching at age 19 and I was going to college at the time undergrad and then I would coach several days a week at this hospital fitness center. And then I coached Saturday and Sunday, eight hours each day, eight hours each day. And what's wild is I'm finding that a lot of the younger generation struggles to do more than one thing. So back then, I was in undergrad and I was working many hours. And my weekends, I still went out. I've said this before on the podcast. When we got paid once I turned 21, we would go to New York City and we would work a Saturday or Sunday without sleeping. And I remember if I went out on a Friday night to New York and worked all day Saturday, as soon as I was done with work, I drove to Diamond Gym, which was about 30 minutes away. And I still trained with no sleep. I have no clue how I did it. But to be young again is such a powerful time. And then I looked to early days teaching and going to grad school teaching full time, coaching wrestling in the winter, going to graduate school and started to run my business around my third year. And I was training people out of my parents garage on week nights and weekends while working a full time job with another part time job, which was wrestling coaching. And then many of the early years of running the underground strength gym, I went there directly from my school. So I would get to my school around 830 in the morning. I would leave around 4pm. I'd get to the gym. I would get something to eat. Maybe I would train, but oftentimes I would do some computer work. I would coach from 5pm until 8pm. Clean the gym and train until 930. And you know what? I wasn't in my younger years. I opened the underground in 2007. So in 2007, that first warehouse, I was age 32. And it was just not odd for me to put in 12 hour days. I'm not recommending that. But what I've noticed about a lot of people is they're not willing to fight and put in hours to earn and achieve. It's like as soon as they do more than one thing, they have a breakdown. And if the economy, if your situation requires you to put in more work, don't fear the work. Lean into it. Be tough, okay? Men, you know, I've said this many times, like I am married with kids. It is not my wife's job to go through the struggle. If there's any struggle, I take it on. It is my job to do those things. And so the mental toughness aspect, I don't want to say it's sometimes needed, but it is certainly often needed, not just in business, but in life. And we talk about that in this episode. So I think you're going to enjoy this episode with my buddy Joe. He is the co-owner of Varsity House Jim. That is where the underground strength con will be. And that is in Orangeburg, New York. It's right on the border of New Jersey and New York. And when you go to undergroundstrengthcon.com, you will see the travel, I guess itinerary, recommended hotels, but you could certainly Airbnb. You could find other hotels that are cheaper. You could fly into Newark or LaGuardia. Newark is an international airport. And, you know, you could also go with a friend and split up hotel and do all those things. And speaking of travels, it always reminds me of this story. I remember calling out sick from work on a Friday, waking up early and driving to Florida in one day to attend a seminar. I can't even remember if this was a perform better seminar or what it was, but I remember I wanted to learn from Juan Carlos Santana. And so I called out sick on Friday, attended the seminar Saturday, Sunday, Sunday, I left the seminar like an hour or two early. And I drove all the way through the night, got to Edison something like 3.34 AM, slept for two and a half hours, had a protein shake and went to work. But that was driving something like 14, 15 hours nonstop. Today, I have been to places like Texas, Florida, California. And people will be 45 minutes away by car and will say, let me know when you're coming in my neck of the woods. And it was like, yeah, I just flew here and you got a 45 minute drive. Is that not close enough for you? Do you need it? And I've had guys say, hey, I only do seminars when they're hosted at my gym so I could do them for free. Well, my friend, without skin in the game, you will never succeed. You won't. That's why when people who pay, comma pay attention, repeat people who pay, comma pay attention. So skin in the game is a life changer. Anyway team, check it out, undergroundstrengthcom.com and enjoy this episode bonus strong life podcast and the business of strength. Enjoy. Welcome to the strong life podcast where we talk about dominating in strength, health, business and life. And by the way, if you're a parent out there and you've got a teenager, get over there and see Zach talk about being jacked up his place and jacked up and ready to go. There's no better program than here. I pushed myself beyond the levels that I can go in here. Got it. It's on the ground. Have you ever seen Zach Evanesh? No, what's that? Oh, he's a he's a trainer out of New Jersey. First of all, let me let me just congratulate him on his badass name. That's a great name. What's his name again? Zach Evanesh? Evanesh. Evan, that's a pretty nice name. I had a girlfriend years ago. Her name was Christie. Right? And she was not a great girlfriend, but I learned an important business lesson from her dad. Her dad was a crazy coot, right? Wild dude. Liked his wine a lot and like a lot a lot. But every night, every day that I would go to their house, I would go like to hang out with Christie. I'd go pick up Christie. I'm like 21, 22 or something like that. I'm young, right? And her dad had a yellow notepad just like this. And he had a list of names on it. And every day, he would write the list of names and he'd just repeat the people. And he had about maybe about 50 or so names on this list of call an angel list now, whatever. There's all these fancy marketing terms right? He had a list of all his top like contract. He was in construction. So all his top contractors, builders, suppliers and things like that and people that were had connections to jobs, other other potential, you know, partnerships, whatever it was, right? If it was his main lumber guy, he was calling him. He called these people. He made sure that out of those people, he called every single one of those people at least once a month without fail for a decade more. Just do what check in. Just to shoot the shit, just to stay friendships with them, just to keep those friendships high. So his top contractors, what jobs you got going on, you need anything from me, you need to borrow a piece of equipment, you need any laborers. And he would always try to help people because if like, let's say he was slowing a job or he had a, he was mostly an excavating, right? So he's like, let's say he had an excavating job that only required one person. He had three dudes that didn't have a lot of work. He's like, okay, you need any extra hands and stuff like that. So he was always trying to help people out. So like, you know, we started yesterday, Dan's like talking to me. And he's like, you know, I just, I just decided like, I don't know, I was looking at our private Facebook group. And there's all these names in there and all these heads in there, people that were just members for a million years, you know. And he's like, so I just started, I just hit every, I just, you know, I was finding one Gary, pick up his phone, hey, gee, where you been? Dan, what's going on yesterday? Yeah. Gene. Gene, where you been? You know, what's going on? How you doing? Right? Stuff like that. Got three people back in the gym in 20 minutes, right? Calling people is very rare. In fact, a lot of people, they don't, they don't want to be on the phone. So they want you to text them. But the outreach blows them away. I kind of did similar after listening to one of our mutual friends, he's going to be a speaker at your retreat. He's going to be speaker at Underground Strength Con, Devin Gage. He spoke about him and one other employee took, I think, two days and called 500 people. I think if they were inactives, maybe some of them were actives, but just constantly calling people. It's like that movie, you ever see the movie, The Pursuit of Happiness? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was just like, instead of hanging up the phone, he would just like press it down, boom, next one. But that human interaction is getting lost because people are just scrolling. It's crazy, man. And so they guessed it out last night. And it's like, you think about like even your friends and people like close relationships, your friends, your family. And it's like, man, like if you just pick up the phone and had a five to 10 minute conversation with everybody, like, you know, once a month, once a week, whoever it is, I talk to my mom every day, stuff like that. But like, there's so much gain out of that. And when people's perception, I think of friendships over time, especially when you get a little older like us, right? Like, we're all super busy with business, with families, you know, I mean, you've been literally driving in the car for a week since every day, every day, every day, every two weeks I've talked to you, you were out of five hour, 10 hour road trips. I had a state visiting a college going to reality. So the reality is like, you know, speaking to friends on the phone, I think like, like what I was saying, like our perception is like, oh, man, like, you know, Zach, take the time to reach out. There's not a lot of people or Joe takes the time to reach out, see what's going on. There's not a lot of people these days at 48 years old, our circle of friends, who take the time to reach out and say what's up, right? And it's like, that's why like the circle as you age gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And if you extrapolate the same thing on the business perspective, especially when it's more transactional with a client who's paying for money, like, you know, the mean that's going around like, you know, six hours after you die, everybody stops crying six months later, most people don't even remember who you are. It's a heartbreaking reality. It is right. So but in business, six minutes after they pull out of the parking lot, they don't fucking remember you, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, you know, so the reality is, is like, if you don't stay top of mind all the time, you know, you're probably leaving a lot of money on the table. Now we do it with social, we do it with call, we do it with emails and things like that. But there's a, there's a group of clients, like I think our age, especially those 40 plus guys, we're like, you know, if you picked up the phone, you know, once every couple of weeks and just checked in, or maybe I always talked to Jim was about, and I've never done it, and I won't always want to. I've done it a few times with like smaller groups, but like putting together like your own small business, like constantly airy kind of mastermind group within your gym. Like, I mean, there's, there's, I have billionaires in this, you know, there's billionaires, mega millionaires, and super, super smart, great business people. And it's like, man, I should have my own mastermind for members. I started doing a little bit of it at the underground and just talking about like, how busy people are. I sent out an email with a Google Doc, put your name, what is the business that you own, or the service you provide? Because they may not own a business, but they might work for some sort of investment banking or consulting. And then how can people get in touch with you? And I sent it out several times and only a few people filled it out. And that's why like, it brought me to this point, and I learned it 20 plus years ago at a Tony Robbins event. That was thousands upon thousands of people. And he said this then, and he's still doing live events. He's like, nothing heightens the response like in your life, then human interaction. He's like, nothing is more powerful. And that was early days of the internet. That may have been 2001 or 2002. And he's still doing live events. In our industry, fitness, strength, and conditioning. It's got so digital. A lot of stuff moved to zoom. COVID inspired everybody to feel good about zoom. But we all know, like if you're on zoom, there's just not, I'm not walking away fired up and inspired. And so the human interaction engaging with others is like it lights your soul on fire. I mean, that's why I mean, look, I mean, we go right to it. I mean, that's why when you called me that, I don't know, for whatever reason that day, you must have had a fire up your ass or something. But like, you called me like, I want to bring back the underground strength con. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. I was like, dude, I'm doing it. Let's do it. Because I hate virtual events. I hate them. Like, I do, like, you know, friends with Scott Carpenter, you know, Scott Scott's a really great business to a sharp, sharp guy, right? And he's got a conference tomorrow. And he's like, dude, get on the zoom call, blah, blah. I was like, man, I love you, Scott, but I fucking hate zoom calls from like, I hate that shit. Like, yeah, I have a very hard time. Maybe it's just me, my ADD. I have a very tough time paying attention. If I'm not in a room, like, I feel, if I'm sitting at a desk, if Matt's up their lecture or you're up their election and I'm sitting in the front row, I'm paying attention, taking notes and I'm dialed in. But if I'm sitting here in my office and you're japping away on zoom, I'm like, I hear my camera conversation out in the hallway. I hear somebody firing up the microwave. I'm like, who's he? If you, by the way, if you look at, I don't look at it, but sometimes I'll check the, it's an Instagram, you could see like, I don't know what it's called. Somewhere in your settings. But it shows how many views your video got, but it also shows how many seconds they watch. Oh, wow. And most people is five seconds. So what, what is going on in this world is I'm just swiping. I'm swiping. But when I'm here at an event, I'm not on my phone. I'm engaged. I'm not home or in my office where people could grab me. And so why, you know, why did underground strength con have to come back? I was thinking about it probably for two years. But I said, I can't do it alone. The first time I did it, I can't believe six weeks out, I came up with the idea one night, I wrote the whole sales page. And then we sold it out within a matter of days. But today it's different. You know, the truth is there's a lot of competition for events. If you're a gym owner, there's many gyms within one town. There's Jim Conner, Jim Conner. I think in this, I see Jim, Jim Sales, Summit, Jim Grove, Mark Workshop, is it? Yeah, I can't even keep up with all of it. But what I did know is that the circle that we run in is as real as it gets, meaning we know coaches that are building, you know, champions in sport, whether it's the state level, the national level, Olympic, you know, world level, we know guys that are not talking about what they did 10 years ago. We know guys that own gyms that are pulling in, you know, multiple five figures from one gym, meaning they're making 20, 30, 50. One guy told me, you know, each of his gyms is grossing close to 80 grand a month. And it's like, nobody even knows. He's got, I don't know, several hundred followers on Instagram. Nobody knows about him. And I said, we need a real event with real people, whether it's business, training, and kind of blending life, the whole strong life principles together, that are sharing it with other real coaches who are dying for something that's not full of shit is really the reality of it. And I'll tell you, listen, it's great if you could do everything online. One of our speakers is pretty much all online. But he was also setting world records in his training. And through his online, he's building other world record holders. But for the most part, people are doing, they're engaging. And you not had the conversation when I think when we were in New York about gyms is like, everything's moving online. You know, your buddy Johnny works in the city, but from home as well. But we were like, man, will gyms ever disappear? The answer is, eventually, you want to be around people. You want to train around other people. I want to engage with like, can Joe Descentum make Spartan race digital? Yeah. I mean, look, here's the reality, like nobody needs to sit in a coffee shop and all day and have coffee, right? Like Starbucks doesn't need to have these like cafes. You can literally just have a pickup window, right? Like the reality is why do people hang out in Starbucks? It's like, you know, they kind of coined the phrase your third place. Gym for a lot of people is their third place, especially for like the people that we've associated us with. The athletes, athletes live a majority of their lives in a gym, right? So they're, I think part of their identity, identity, their legacy. A lot of them wind up doing something within the fitness and training space as they progress through their athletic careers and so forth. And like, I look at like a lot of our gen pop clients here, like the regular, you know, moms and dads and business people that that train here at Varsity House, it's like a lot of them, they come here, you know, they check the box on their fitness, but they come here because they've made friends here. Some of their friends work out here. Maybe their husband, we have multiple like dozens of mom, dad, kids, all trained here. So they're setting examples as a family together and doing some of that stuff together. So, you know, I think the gym is one of those unique spaces. It is a unique thing. Fitness is a unique thing that's very emotional to people, right? So performance is emotional. When you, you know, I mean, look at the, I mean, anybody who just watched the Olympics, every single day somebody was crying. Every time I turn on the TV, somebody was crying, whether they went, if they're winning, they're crying, right? If they're losing, they're crying, right? The training is emotional, winning, being a champion at anything is emotional. There's the, like, you know, it's the humans, when you're watching, it's the human spirit. And, you know, me coming up here seeing the adult trained girl, what's your name? I mean, she's from North Jersey somewhere. Yeah. Unbelievable. That's what a story. Yes. Or there's a local kid near me. How do you not cry your ass? I mean, look, I'm a nobody in the world of Athens, but could you imagine sitting in the middle of the wrestling mat at the end of the final day? I mean, I'm getting chills thinking about it. Like literally the crowds going nuts, that one light shot, and you just want to freaking gold medal in the Olympics, you literally the best wrestler in the world. It is a, like, it's still so surreal. It's crazy. And so there's that, like, level of changing people's lives, but then there's the daily changing people's lives of, you know, I walk in here and you have a lot of adults. I see some athletes going through training. This is their Olympics. This is what, you know, that this is what lights their inner fire. And I got to tell you, like, I will, when I speak at Underground Strandcon, I'm going to talk about how I leverage technology, how I utilize, you know, my online programming. But the fact of the matter is none of that, in my opinion, I don't think anything would have happened. If I wasn't showcasing what we did at the Underground Strand gym from those early days of YouTube, showing me actually trained people. You know how many people are, like, joined our recent group, Dad Strong, that were following me from 15 plus years ago? And these are the things I want to, you know, share from Underground Strandcon is, like, what has changed from 12 years ago when I first did it in my business, in my life, mistakes I've made, what I should have done back then to change the business. And then all of our speakers, you know, and obviously, you know, why, by the way, why did I partner with Joe? Well, we partnered on some other things in the past, but the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. I'm pretty much always working alone. And I've hit a wall a long time ago, and it hasn't changed. So partners with Joe and the Underground Strandcon, partners with Mike Leacy with the marketing behind it, Ignite Marketing. Mike is a partner of mine in Dad Strong, and I'm learning, like, what I want people to get out of Underground Strandcon is not just the lessons from all the speakers. And we'll, you know, obviously Joe is speaking, his partner, Danny Goodman, Danny Goodes, myself, Joe Desena will be speaking. Joe will be talking about massive, but Joe also owns a bunch of small businesses in many different states. And he's very good at the blue collar, non-tech side of growing businesses. And here's what else I want to have, relationships. In here, I want people to leave having not just made new friends, but somebody that they could team up with the way we team up to succeed. And I actually feel like, you know, the timing is like I'm at such a place with, I always say, I'm not part of the fitness industry. I'm in the strength industry. But there's so much fakeness out there. I just can't bullshit people. This is who I am, t-shirt, short guy. And I'm not faking the success of anything, or I'm not trying to ride the coattails of somebody else. Joe and I partner because it's complimentary. I'm not partnering with somebody who's trying to save me or I'm trying to save them. And I want people to get that coming here. There's a lot of strength coaches out there that are awesome, but they're struggling. They're struggling with business. They're struggling with, you know, and when you struggle in business, that leads to struggles in life and relationships. So I basically want to help with, you know, what are the mistakes to avoid that I've made? You're, you have business of strength consulting. It's going to be so powerful for people here. It's going to be awesome. And the live events are the way. I mean, look, here's the reality. Like a virtual event, if you're just looking at like pure education, you want to learn a marketing tactic, right? Yeah, there's lots of courses you could take, right? I love, I've talked about it many times under my podcast, we've talked about it. I love Donald Miller stuff. He puts out all his business made simple and marketing made simple. Like, he's got a whole online suite. It's a couple hundred bucks a year. If you just want marketing tactics and tools, by all means, you know, just go to Don and take his stuff. He's fantastic. You got to read those books. You can get a lot out of that. But business is business. If you're looking to scale and you're looking at business as a grand scale and I'm looking at this as like, Hey, we did, we did the first 20 and we did pretty good doing it. OG style, like boots on the ground, like lots of grind, lots of grit. Where does the legacy of RC house 20 years from now? Is there like 20 gyms? Do we have, you know, am I out of the business completely, right? The only way to go from, you know, half a million to a million, million to two million to four million, four to eight, eight to 16, right? To keep doubling the business and the growth and so forth is really to double your network, right? Because it's not, it's not, it's not another email. I'm doing that. It's not another, it's not another, look, you can get a great tactic. Okay, great. It's another new year, new, you polished up a little differently. It's another cool thing that we can add to our six-week transformation that's going to get 10 more clients to pay early, right? Like those are all great things. But the big jumps in the business, when I look back and it's funny because Dan and I were sitting and talking a lot about this on our last trip together when we went out to, we were with Devin, actually, and we were out in, in Auburn, Michigan, no Michigan, right, which is super cool trip. And we're out at Zingerman's, which was awesome. And, and, and I think like all the steps that we've had over the years, we look about, like, like, I literally, I can go back to the day and kind of think of everything. You know, it was a connection to a person that led me to taking the chance to open up my first gym. I was training the guy who knew a guy who wanted to open up a little basketball place. Mutually, those two guys had a friend who owned a building that had an empty space. We got together, we shared the space. The first Barn City house was born. In comes Danny Goodes. 19 year old Danny Goodes wants to, well, I want to get in shape for football, right? Fast forward three years. Me and him, we, like big brother, little brother had a really great relationship. wound up getting really close with his mom and dad. Next thing you know, we're, we're, you know, we're running the flag down the road. We're going to be team varsity house together, right? First business workshop I really ever did was with Pat Rigsby in 2009, right? That full, full 2009, we almost go out of business, right? That, that year we ran out of cash by like October after, so everybody we trained was football players. So like everybody left, you know, August 15th by like October 15th. I'm like, oh god, we're done for it, right? Yeah, we're done. That happened to me with wrestling training old wrestlers in the winter. Oh, where is everybody? Yeah, yeah, until 7 p.m. 20, you know, we meet, I mean, Pat changes the course. The business took a giant jump because that opened my eyes like, like nothing ever did before, because I was like, holy shit, like training is just like this piece of it, right? And I did that, and then I could go down the line. I mean, we're, we're sitting here in a building that was built because of a relationship with a family that we trained for the better part now of 18 years, and then their, the kids got, the kid got a scholarship, changed their entire family dynamic of health and how they view health, and they became close personal friends. And when we were looking to go to the next level business wise, you know, that guy Pete, Peter Skay, Pete's our partner and close friend here in the building and properties that we own. And he was just like guys, you know, you're so, you've done so good to me. And I've gotten to know you from a character and work ethic perspective that I'll, I'll go to war with you guys. And we make this happen together, right? It's a big way how Joe DeSenna does. But he knows that you mentioned something or a place. He knows somebody there. And my friend Ryan Robin says collaboration, not competition. So when you're in a group, and you mentioned like the doubling of the business, I know you got the book here. Yeah. Dan Sullivan said that at strategic coach, it didn't sink in enough until I'd say the past year with me, where he said the way to grow your business is not what. It's not the tactic or the strategy. It's who. So he said to double or 10 X your business, the answer is in the who, not the what. So you have a certain skill set. You partner with somebody who has a complimentary skill set. And you're in your, he calls it your unique abilities, where you are able to 10 X a business. And also, you know, coming to a live event job. It's like going to strategic coach. Strategic coach for a very long time did not want to be in New York City and Philly because they felt like there was too many entrepreneurs there. And if they were close enough to home, they could be distracted. So you had to go to Chicago, you had to go to Toronto, you had to get away from your business four times a year, one day at a time and just lock in and be around like minded people because the reality is, especially if you train athletes, you know this, if the athletes are in an environment where everybody satisfied with good enough, that's your ceiling. And it's the same thing at home. A lot of times, Dan Kennedy said this, you're a business person, you're an entrepreneur, you own the business, you're kind of have the superhero cape on. But when you go home, you're still normal Joe and normal Zach, you're still taking out the garbage, you're doing like these quote unquote normal things, but you got to come here to elevate mindset, to elevate us thinking. One of the biggest things that I get like for our retreats, and we've run a bunch of retreats in the last few years, and we've done like our, we do our annual retreat and we do our workshops here, but we've done them off site, we've done workshops in Scotland, London, Amsterdam, stuff like that, right? And you know what's, and I'm always nervous when we pull the trigger and say, yes, right, we're going to do this. Like when we pull the trigger to you, I think it was two falls ago, you know, be two years this year, we went to Amsterdam to see our friend, Noel, who was a young daughter, they got an amazing gym, Brader strength, he did amazing. It's literally one of the most, what's it called? Brader strength and conditioning, one of the most beautiful gyms on planet earth, right? Really, really nice, and two amazing coaches. And like, you know, when we say yes to something, it's like, oh, shit, this works, you know what I mean? There's a little bit of that, but like, always a little bit. But like, the reality is, is that I grew and me, Dan and Adam went, we grew just as much as everybody else, because the second I said yes, and we sign that deal, we go back to the lab, and like, we have to level up everything. Right. Nothing's good enough. Your preparation. Nothing's good. Signing it. That's why Joe Descenta says, you need something on the calendar. Yes, I'm not signing, I'm not, I'm not putting my name on stuff. And having somebody fly all the way to Amsterdam, we had, we had friends that we knew from London and Scotland and, and, and Germany, like fly down to meet us, right? And take the trains or fly to meet us. And I'm like, you know, I, it would be a complete disgrace and embarrassment if when they show up, they were like, guys, this is the best goddamn one you've done yet. And so, so again, like, I, I know you have that same mindset. So I know, like the second that we said, yes, this is like, we started working on it right away. We have made all the calls and connections and like, we get the back end of the process going and we started putting some stuff out there. And I wouldn't do it if I didn't think we were going to do it 110%. You know, it's like, it's not worth to be bothered. It's a good thing. We just push it down. We'll do it a different time. And we said, we may not do it for another 12 years. I'm like 12 years goes fast. I'll be 16. It's crazy. 12 years. So I want to like, we're mentioning kind of money and business and networking. Some of the speakers, one of the speakers is a, I think, one of your first clients where I'm going to mention his name. But what he's like an a well management, wealth management, companies in the country. So I want somebody, I said, we got to get him to speak where he starts saying, guys, this is what you should be doing with your money. If you fall into this age category, you know, 20s, early 30s, here's what you do next. Here's places and things to invest in. That's something that strength coaches don't do. What strength coaches are busy either on the floor or they're on Instagram, or they're studying. And one of the things I like about this person is that he understands that he's an entrepreneur. It's not just what he has a wealth management company. He's got a team. He's got a, he's got, you know, he's got marketing. He's got business. Not just like, he's just like an advisor working for a big bank, right? And he just sits in his office and just sells, you know, wealth plans. He running a small business. I love it. I can't wait to be. And I will say, and, you know, again, we're trying to keep some of the speakers under wraps and he's one of my favorite humans. And, and, you know, he, like I said, he's like family. My, my, our family's hanging out together and my son loves him. And, and what I like the most is that he's made my financial investing, simple, easy to understand, and, and, and very comforting in terms of you're doing the right thing. It's not, it doesn't have to be complicated. He set up any understand. And he's one of the first guys that he's the, he bought me the, I was trained in his daughter before I actually opened the first VH. And then I was training them at like tennis court and her, his daughter was also a tennis player. So I was training them like at tennis clubs and stuff like that. When he came over, he brought me, um, thinking Grow Rich. Oh, wow. I didn't read it for like three years. Right. It sat on the desk and he's like collecting dust. And one day he yelled at me. I read it and I was like, fuck, should have read this. I mean, the Bible, of, of mastermind, right? So thinking, but, but this person also, what kind of inspired me to get a lot more coaching than the business I would every time I talk to him, he's my marketing coach, my business coach. I just hired this PR team to help us, you know, get our message and our brand out there. And I was like, man, how much does that cost? 20 grand. How much does that cost? 15. I'm like, fuck, I can't afford any of that shit. But I was like, you know, and again, it's like, what can I afford? All right. I started looking online. Pat Riggs will be running this two day or three day sales workshop, right? And I, so that was like, that was like 600 bucks a person. So me and Dan went and 12 hundred bucks had to put it on my mom's credit card because he didn't have any fucking money, right? And, and, and we go out there and I email Pat before we come. And I think he felt bad for us because he spent a lot of time with me and Dan. And we he's like, I think you guys got a great brand. You got a good day. I love what you guys going on. He's like, you just, you just, you're just all over the place. He got too much. You know, you had no idea what we're doing. So, you know, those things, those types of people, I don't know if how many strength coaches have gone to like a strength workshop that brought in a world class finance guy from other industry who say, hey, hey, dipshit. Right. What happens at a lot of these places is we learn training, we lift weights, we train. Maybe somebody's telling you about their marketing method, but that person is, I always say, like, I cannot compete with the 20 something year old who's ripped and has time all day. I've got two kids in sports, one getting ready to go to college, married, coaching full time at a high school. Plus, I got the gym and the online business. We want the real people, not somebody who is single or maybe they're married and there's no kids. There's no, you know, responsibility to anything. We want people that you're busy with life and you need to get that edge. The private sector gym world is a funny place, right? Because people put like influencers and private sector gym owners kind of like in one lump, right? So you get like, you know, and I'm not saying that any of these people are bad. The wheelers, the swole guys and all these dudes, right? And someone had millions of followers and maybe they figured out ways to monetize. That's great. It's just not what we do. There's a, you know, being a social media influencer. A different business than being a brick and mortar small business owner, right? And just like it's a completely different thing than being a collegiate or professional strength conditioning coach. Those are kind of three separate and by the way, you know, having two experiences at the division one level and seeing, you know, I just saw a major university, Big Ten, offering a salary of like 45 to 50 grand. It is, that's insane. It is one of the biggest universities for athletics. It's in the Big Ten. And so even collegiate strength coaches should be coming here. I have always said, you must always learn how to write your own paycheck. You can't just get a paycheck from, you know, for example, I just hired my first full time guy. I'm going to teach him how to who wrote the book strength coach CEO. Ron McKee, we wouldn't. I would love to get Ron here, but it's, he's at Alabama and that's the middle. But when I speak with Ron, Ron talks about maybe what we'll do is as a bonus is we'll do a interview with Ron that we send. Yeah. I think every collegiate strength and conditioning coach says it all. It does. You must be your own CEO because he knows he has said he goes, Zach, it's only a matter of time before I am the lowest paid guy in the weight room. Yes. Because of NIL and sponsorship and just the way things are moving. It's, yeah, I mean, college transition can be a little heartbreak. Yes, it is. And we have, we have two employees here right now that went to collegiate route for several years. You know, they were looking at those 40 to $55,000 salaries and no guarantee on longevity. My guy. Moving all over the country. So they're back here. The guy we just hired. 80 to 90 hours a week. Yes. Not a month in a week. Yes. That ain't good for your physical health, mental health. There's no way to have a healthy relationship, personal life, family life doing that. And guess what? If you want to be a great strength coach, you need downtime. Yeah. You need time to chill out and engage in hobbies. Otherwise you become, all you know how to do is do percents and right exercises. Well, it's kind of like what we talked about about the training seminars. A lot of guys get together, they go to training seminar. They learn some new training. We work out, we talk about training, we learn more training, when we leave, we just became better trainers. And most of the guys who come to training seminars are already pretty decent trainers. Right. So it's like, like, you know, I'm going to use Ron or I'll use you as an example. Like if you come, you might, if you come to a training seminar, yeah, it's cool to learn, see some new like forced velocity, like date ends, things like that. But it's like, it's not going to make, it's not changing your life to learn that new thing. But learning business, marketing, sales, finance, will can, can. And I think like a lot of people put that off because people like to stay in their comfort zone. So if you're a collegiate strength and conditioning coach, which I've heard many, many, many of them tell me and say, I don't need to know that shit. And they're like, Oh, I don't need to know that. All I got to do is focus on the exits. And I was like, well, you do until you do, you do until you don't, right? Because one day you might get sick of getting shoveled, shuttled around the country. One day you might want to make more than, you know, 75 to 100 grand, you might want to go off on that, or maybe you just inspired to do you, or maybe you want more work life balance, you're going to move to a different place. And your wife's like, Hey, like, you got three kids, like, and you're never home. What are we doing? So like, in our world, in the private sector world, what's funny is, is that, you know, the average income, I think dance posted a million times, I think the average gym owner in America right now is making about $36,000 a year, right? Which is, you know, which is terrible. Yesterday, I was telling you Forbes magazine posted something. This is an important 1994 to 2024. If you were making 80 grand in 94, that's the equivalent of 254 grand today, right? A three X change in income, right? You can't wipe your ass in New Jersey, making 75 grand. The cost of living, and I see it being somebody who's 48 with kids that are, my daughter's almost 18, my son just turned 16. I've seen the changes. And so exactly what I did 10 years ago, 12 years ago, even what I did two to three years ago, it must evolve. And, you know, we have your guy coming in with wealth management. We have another coach coming. That's a sport coach. And I think it's going to be real interesting to hear from a successful sport coach who's leveraging his skills and running camps. But I also want to hear like, what does he look for in partnering with a strength coach? Because a lot of strength coaches do a lot of outreach. So I think that that's going to be great. That's a great one. You know, we've been lucky to work with him for a long time and we're rebuilding that process of helping him and his team on the strength and conditioning side. It's always hard. There's always a balance between, you know, in the sport coaches, especially in areas like here in New Jersey, where not all teams have like an intrinsic strength coach, you know, in states like Texas or Alabama, it might be like, it's normal. Everybody's got the normal thing. But here it's not normal. So there's always a little bit of like a rub in a sense of, do you go to the facility and train them? Do they come here? How do we get them here? Do the kids have to pay? Like what are the friction points that make him say no? I want to hear. I'm excited to hear from him. Who's, you know, really one of them. I mean, he's a storied story. I mean, he's a legend in New Jersey. I mean, he's one of the best. That's something that like a lot of coaches are always they don't know. And by the way, you know, we're talking about being a great tactician. When we were doing the Spartan race, I was hanging out at your house and we were talking about like people we know who've got, you know, 300, 400, 500 members. And they're not, you know, I'm not saying this is right because I'm a type A. I want us to have be great coaches, great technique, but they're a lot less worried about the power clean and sets and reps and the velocity and all this stuff. What are they doing is great community building and great service. So, this is why, you know, Bert Sorin said it to me. He's like, man, a lot of the best strength coaches. We don't even know them. They're kind of training people out of a little garage because they don't know the business building and the community aspect. One of the guys, you know, mentioning sport coaches that's going to be a speaker is he's about to open either, I think, his eighth or ninth facility. And thank you, brother. And what they do, he's going to be talking about obviously how he grows it, how he partners with people, the relationship aspect, the financial aspect. But what they also do is you spoke about helping this sport coach. They do consulting for other school districts. And then they turn it into programming for them and doing zooms. So, they leverage technology if the people are not near their gym. But what I don't want is for people to leave confused. So, we're going to have breakout sessions. We're also going to have expert panel at the end of each day Q&A so that at the end of each day, you go back to your hotel room, you get out your notepad and you're like, all right, this is the action I'm going to take. I remember Alan Cosgrove telling me he was at a seminar and he saw this guy like leave, you know, I don't know, within the first speaker. And then he sees the guy the next day, he's like, where did you go? You know, we spent all this money. He's like, I was just here to get one idea. And as soon as I got that idea, I went back to my room and I started implementing. And that's why Alan said things to me. He's like, that guy's probably super successful. Yep. And you know, Alan Cosgrove also crazy successful him and his wife. He's like, Zach, sometimes you just need to put a book on your desk that has like a great title, you know, like Steven Pressfield. I keep turning pro on there. I think on your computer, once I saw like a sticker, no fake work, right? Yep. Yep. And so coming here is going to be, I'll tell you what really is the deal, you know, looking at these Louis Simmons quotes. I'm a strength coach. It's not my job. It's my calling. If I was to win the lottery or if I make a million dollars, I'm going to find a way to still train athletes. I'm going to do something. I love to train athletes and get them strong. Ryan Lee told me, he's like, I think you were put on this earth to make people strong. There's a lot of passionate strength coaches out there and it breaks my heart that some or many are struggling financially. And it bothers me. It actually pisses me off. And so I want underground strength con to bring in a lot of these under the radar coaches. People don't even know about them. Some of them are on your mastermind. Some of them started off as underground strength coaches and just grew and have one gym, multiple gyms. Some have eight, 10, almost 20 gyms. I can't wait for them to share so we can all get better. And so I'm going to have my speaking kind of like, you know, things I've learned and changed and mistakes made in the past 12 years, you're speaking, damn good to speaking. And then I'm going to basically kind of like MC the event and make sure it's interactive and not just somebody speaks and we're out here sleeping. You got a question? We're going to do it. Break out sessions, actions, every speaker is going to give. Hey guys, take out your notebook. This is my question for you. This is what I want you to think about, write this down. So it's, I don't know, my, my fear and concern is every time I go to events, you know, too many people leave overwhelmed. And they're like, well, now what? That's not happening at underground strength con. You're going to learn communication skills, actionable business skills. What's one powerful thing? Relationships. You'll build relationships here. What are you supposed to start doing with your money, even if it's just a hundred bucks a month? And we've specifically told people to keep it simple, tactical and fun. Yeah, we don't want, you're going to have your best stuff, you know, no theory, no bullshit. Yes. So I'm going to talk about, you know, the moves we made this year to double our net income. And so in this year, we've, as a 20 years in business, we've nearly doubled net revenue in the last 18 months, right? Or Mosey likes to say, at each stage of your business growth, you have to, you have to kill your old self and you have to transform yourself. You seem to subscribe. I don't even know. Well, somebody purchased his business, Russell Brunson. But Dan Kennedy had these newsletters that was monthly and it had a monthly CD. And I remember purchasing like one of his most expensive programs called Renegade Millionaire. And what he said in the Renegade Millionaire interview, to Lee Miltier, he said, all of the best businessmen, they move, they make this move from the doer of the thing to the marketer of the thing. So what does that mean? You are a strength coach, you're on the floor, you're coaching athletes, then eventually to grow it, you must get off the floor and move into a position where your marketing, sharing the message and you're putting out the message that brings in new clients or we will keep making the same money. And that money is not the same. So for example, I've always spoken about, you know, making 10 grand a month from a gym, 10 grand a month from a gym was very good in the early days. That's not enough anymore, unless you are a single man or single woman and you're going to have no family, you're just going to own a dog, well then you'll be fine and you could do it. But the world, the finances of the world, the dollar is just depreciating and inflation is going through the roof. The biggest mistake I made in the realm of marketing just to hit it kind of on your topic there was like the biggest mistake that I made is that I thought if I just kept doing more of the things that I was doing, that we would just continue to grow linearly, that if we when we went from 100 to 200 to 300 clients or whatever that just doing what we were doing was going to continue to scale, scale linearly. What a lot of people don't realize is that the word of mouth thing, which is how most gym owners will say, like, that's how they get the majority of their business. And that's still very true. We still get a lot of people by referrals, right? That will, at some point, you'll get to a certain number of clients and you will not be able to outpace attrition by referrals, right? And so, by referrals alone, right? So like, if you look at the math statistically data-wise, you know, nationally right now, attrition is 6% in the gym industry, right? That's a national average for being a decent, that's average, that's decent, okay? So 6%, that means for every 100 clients, you're losing 6 clients a month, right? To attrition, right? We have 400 members here. That means I'm losing, you know, 6 times 4, it's 24, right? So I'm losing 24 people a month, which is right out about average of where we're at, right? It would be, you it would take a full-time referral like manager to manage to try and close 24 referral memberships a month. By the way, a lot of speaking about the BS that's out there, I can't, you know, when somebody says, "We'll get you 30 to 50 a week," I could never handle 30 new members. No, that's such bullshit. It is, unless I had a brand new class and they were all going to be in groups and they didn't require me to speak to them. We had one of our busiest months ever in June. And it wouldn't be quality? No, 30 to 50 would not get good quality. We had one of our, I have 15 employees here, right? I got 12, I got 11 full-time trainers here in one building, right? And so we got 15 trainers here, I got 11 full-time trainers, we got, yeah, I got 18 employees overall that run through here, right? And we had 50, we closed 57 memberships in June, right? As a totality of all marketing sales pipelines, right? It was an enormous amount of work, enormous, right? And the team was feverishly working hard because we were trying to finish up the quarter and everybody wanted their quarterly bonus, right? So we were trying to finish the sales route hard, right? So, but the reality is, is that most small business, that was just Joe and Dan back in the day. I mean, if you gave me 10 clients right there that week, I'd have a tough time serving them, right? So, so there's that. So, those are some of the things that I think what the biggest thing for me was learning that the marketing you're doing now isn't going to work when you get to 500k a million, you're going to have to change it. It has to get weight. It's not, and it's not just about getting more volume, it has to get better, but it has to get way more precise. You have to really scot me up. Yep, there has to be a system. You got to have your brand script, you got to really, you got to really speak to the right people consistently too. I think, again, we start off like a lot of business owners kind of just shotgun the information. I'll say yes to anybody and everything. And then as we get a little bit better, we laser beam, we get a little bit more focus. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm going to share how I've changed that at the underground. And, you know, a couple of years ago, I had multiple locations. I want to share the mistakes that happened with those locations. I want to share the positives that happened with the other locations. And just thinking, like thinking of all these speakers, I think the key is what's your one big takeaway from each speaker, and it's going to be different for everybody. And then at the end of the underground strength con, you've made new friends who you can now connect with. And by the way, you know, we might be harping a little bit on some of like technology, but why did I enter the Spartan race? We are in a group chat called shit talkers. And I was they shit talked to me so much. I signed up for the race. And so having kind of another group that will inspire you need some other you need some other D bags in your life to get to talk shit. And we laugh at it, but it like pushed my training. It pushed my business because there's this part of you. Zach's taken hill shots, like running hills, like, you know, badger and poor Dan about his parking lot shots. I was running hills and only sending them messages talking smack. But if you can't do it, if you can't meet the people in person on the regular, then you have that quarterly or buying meeting. But you're definitely whoever comes here is going to meet new friends and have new partnerships that can either inspire, keep you accountable, partner up in business. And I've seen it before. It's happened before at the events I've put on. And why did I step also away from events? Because I always felt bad leaving my wife and leaving my kids. And then the reality is sometimes they need a break for me. It's a good break for them. It's probably swaying out the door. The family sometimes needs a break from you. If you want to be a better family man, family woman, better coach, better fill in the blank, you need to get away from your normal environment. For sure. Because you're just going to get comfortable. And Colonel and I said it on the Spartan podcast I did with him. He goes comfort is a cage. We just start to feel comfortable in our own cage. And so as much as we're going to talk business, there will be training. There will be a hands-on session with a very high level coach. We'll also do open gym so you can get your training. I was just going to kind of give a layout. So obviously it's two days. So we'll have the gym open the night before. So if people are in early and they want to come by the gym, the program is going to be Friday, Saturday. So Thursday night, people want to come by, stuff like that. We'll do a little open gym Thursday night. Get the pump. We'll have open gym in the morning for people that want to come in early and get a workout. We do have showers and stuff like that here so you can come and shower and kind of get ready for the seven honest stuff like that. But it'll be two full days. You know, open gym aside, but it'll be full two full days of you know, lectures, workshops, hands-on, you know, training, these workshops and so forth, business development workshops. We're going to create some marketing, create some sales. We're going to have an experts panel. I'm putting together an expert panel of, I mean, heavy hater gym owners. I would be surprised if anybody who's here knows any one of them and all of them make over a million dollars a year in personal income. So you know, these guys, these guys have multiple gyms. They're absolute killers. They're under the radar. They got 1200 followers, like 2200 followers, you know, it's not nobody gives a shit about followers. No real brick and mortar business person gives a shit about followers. Right. That's not what's growing your business. I got to get people from across the street to get out off their fucking couch and walk down the road, you know what I mean? And that's that's harder than any digital bullshit or whatever. Right. And again, there's a place for that. But this is just, you know, for the brick and mortar guys. And then we're going to have a nice, we're going to have a, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we have the outdoor area, we have it tempted out, we're going to have a nice little cookout dinner. We're still planning that kind of figuring out what we want to do there. But we'll have a great, like, let's call it networking event. Yep. After day one, we'll have some fun. We'll be back in the seats, day two, learn it out. And then we're going to do like a great little expert panel kind of little, let's call it a mini Q&A mastermind at the end to make sure that everybody gets their questions answered, that you could speak to some of the people on a more intimate level about your specific, your business, your role, your job, your career path, or whatever it is that you want to talk about. And then, you know, obviously as a group, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll, everybody at that point, we'll have, you know, shaking hands, kiss babies hugged and high-fived a lot. So like Zach said a million times, it's the connection. It's being able to then pick up the phone. Hey, Joe, I was, you know, at Underground Strength Con 2, and you were talking about this and this, how do I get more information about that? It's the connection to the Rolodex that Zach and I have spent, you know, 60 combined years putting together. Tim Ferris said it. Your network is your net worth. And I've been to some live events and I'm leaving early because I'm ready to fall asleep. We're going to make it interactive. They don't be falling asleep here. Yeah, it's just made me crazy. And so going to those events, that's why I said to myself, I got to bring back up the ground. I'm going to fly Zach in from the rafters. Like old school sting. He's just going to come down at the rafters. We're going to have a great time. And we're right here on the border of New Jersey. It's called Orangeburg, New York. Oh, the hotel, how far is that? It's pretty close, right? Hotels less than a quarter mile down the road. The hotel that we recommend for this is the Pearl River Hilton. It's where it's, you don't need a shovel. They have bikes that you could rent if you want it to, but you could, you know, it's a one minute uber or a drive or a five minute walk made to the gym. Love it. And we're going to have an amazing two days of learning and growth and connection for sure. I cannot wait November 15 16th. That's a Friday Saturday Saturday. We're going to do a hard stop at five p.m. for people that need to fly out. I got Newark airport, LaGuardia airport. Yeah. And we're going to make sure everybody has this is going to be the best experience. Oh, yeah. Everybody's going to get, we're going to have swag bags. We're going to have cool stuff. Obviously for those, those of us, we're going to have cool discounts from people that are there. We got a lot of sponsors that got, there's some great product sponsors that are signing up for us. Yeah, let's talk about, they're going to have some really good discounts and things for people. Yep. And we're going to have sponsors that are basically our partners, companies that we legitimately use and believe in, have been brought on board. And it's going to be an amazing event. Underground Strencon, only the second one. First one was 12 years ago. And it's going to be an amazing, I'm excited to do this. Would you bro? Amazing experience. Yep. Cannot wait. So we'll see you guys in the middle of November. Boom. Varsity House Jim. There you have it. Hope you enjoyed that bonus episode of the Strong Light podcast with my buddy Joe, also my partner at the Underground Strencon. He is the co-owner of Varsity House Jim. Lots of powerful information there. I know this when, I think back to when I had a little bit more free time. I think this is important that when you listen to a business podcast that sometimes you don't want to do it while you're driving. You want to go to a coffee shop, put on your headphones, get out a notepad or a journal and just write down your big takeaways, your ideas. Then from there, strategize with one thing. What are you going to implement as a takeaway and put into action? Otherwise, it's kind of no different than scrolling through social media. You're just consuming, but you're not doing anything with that information. And that's another big reason why we want the Underground Strencon to happen. It needs to be done in person. We can only learn so much from YouTube, Instagram and Zoom calls. And granted, there's a lot of great stuff online. I, you know, took my certifications and put them online because I had just countless requests about people not wanting to travel. And I said to myself, they're right. I don't want to travel either. I don't want to be away from my wife and kids. I don't feel good about it. But every now and again, you got to get on that airplane. You got to get in the car and drive. You need to make that trip because there are certain experiences that are simply going to pay you back for a lifetime. There are still people talking to me 12, 13 years later now about the first Underground Stren Conference, about the lessons they learned from Quattro Deuce, who will be speaking again, lessons and inspiration from the Ultimate Warrior. And when you go to undergroundstrengthcon.com, you're going to see the speakers, some of their names, you don't even know. Some of them, or most of them, don't have a big following on social. But they own a gym that is pumping with people all day, all night, and they're changing lives and making a lot of money doing it. Other friends have multiple gyms. One of the guys is trying to open up about 10 gyms every year. He's on pace to open up 100 gyms within 10 years. It's amazing. And the other part of this is it's crucial to be around big thinkers because you start to realize, "Oh damn, I am playing it small. I need to absorb that mindset and that energy and apply it to life." And so underground strengthcon is going to be powerful. Remember the discount codes are posted to those of you that are on my trainee road teams. That's all linked below the underground strength academy. And then the Facebook group, if you are in any of, if you've gone through any of the certifications. So that's it team. Any questions? Respond and reply to my newsletter, which you could get for free at zackstrength.com. That's it team. I'm out of here. We'll talk to you next week. And I hope to see you in the middle of November at the underground strengthcon. Here we go baby. Make sure to head on over to zackstrength.com and get exclusive content, a badass, free training course, along with a special discount code for any of our training courses. Thanks to everyone for leaving five star reviews. People ask me, "What warrior, what are you passionate about?" It finally came to me years ago. You know what I'm passionate about? I'm passionate about fucking passion. I'm passionate about intensity. All the self-help books, all the motivational books, the inspirational tools that you can buy, the bottom line in them is do the work. Once you get through all the pages and all the rules and all the principles and all the formats and all the plans and all the templates comes down to that. Do the fucking work. And sometimes the only way to go about doing the work is get fucking raw and get fucking intense. Get angry and aggressive and make it fucking happy. The experts, the gurus and health and fitness, they will tell you that rest and recovery eight to ten hours sleep a night is what you need. Let me speak blunt with you. None of those fucking triple-gen, punchy belly, pasting face, motherfuckers can broom the groin hairs on a warrior. What is that for you? Is it gets you? What is it gets you? Is your fucking enemy and you need to kill it? Your fears, your doubts, you're like a confidence, you're like a belief in a certain absolute destiny you have to do something unique and great on this planet. Start today at 6.15 a.m. and you're already up and you're already dragging ass by 6.16. You can change your fucking perspective of the world and of your life. My advice? Fucking do it. Dig fucking deep and get it done. Life is not worth living without passion, without intensity. Boy or man, what's your passion? My passion is fucking passion, intensity for life, whatever you do. [BLANK_AUDIO]
