Transcript of John Damon: Commit to Your Vision for Your Business on Every Level | E16

I fired more than 50% of the people in the next 2 months.

John Damon grew a gym's personal training revenue tenfold in 2 years.

Your business or your culture will drop to whatever is the lowest standard. I have a black True refrigerator that costs like $40,000.

Take me through building that from scratch. You know, the real estate, the design, the financing, the operations.

What I thought would be like a 4-month process of opening a gym, it was a year process. Income comes from, say I was making you know, well over $200,000 a year at the time to making zero, you know, 'cause I was working these 17-hour days, 7 days a week. I was a nice guy and I thought I was in a win-win situation with the, with the landlord. And I didn't know that he didn't think it was a win-win. He was trying to have it be a win-lose. Years later, when we have to get litigious with the landlord, you know, our lawyer was like, this is the worst deal I've ever seen anyone sign.

My next guest played Division I football at Boston College and has since built, designed, and operated some of the most respected fitness businesses in the country. John Damon grew a gym's personal training revenue tenfold in 2 years. That landed him on the Equinox team that opened their first California location. Then he built his own, Active Fitness, voted the best gym in Los Angeles. Then he did it again with Iron, a boutique gym that's proved what most in the fitness industry can't— longevity. It's still one of the premier facilities in California 17 years later, all after leaving a career on Wall Street. John Damon, welcome to Business MVP.

Well, it's good to be here. I love the, love the intro.

Thank you. So, John, you were working at Putnam Investments after Boston College and training clients on the side, early mornings, evenings, weekends. What was the moment you knew you had to go all in on fitness?

I think the moment I knew I had to go all in on fitness is that it's what I was thinking about when I was at Putnam. It's just what I love to do, helping people made me light up inside. And it was— I love doing it myself. I think it was good for people. I thought it was good for me. It was good for my mind. You know, it's good for my body. It's good for my soul. It was my— you know, back then, I'm so old that people used to say like, that's your therapy. You know, and, and now I don't know if you can even say that or not. But it was, you know, our therapy, you know, and also like when we talk about love and connecting, you have great Workout partners, people you see at the gym, and, you know, it's just a real awesome place to be. As a gym person, I think that the gyms are pretty awesome, and the fact that you can make money at them, or at least try, is a great thing.

Yeah, but still, I mean, leaving a finance career for the gym floor is not a decision most people would make, right? So— Yeah,

well, I think the most people are mediocre.

I love that. You know, they're scared. Right, but what gave you the confidence to take that leap, I guess?

I think that I've always been confident, and I was always taught by my mother to go after what you want, and that life is meant to be enjoyed and to be celebrated, and you should live a life of your dreams. And I just didn't dream of being in an office setting from 9 to 7 and pushing pencils around and really not having a voice. And really not— one of the things I talk about with athletes, is in order to be a great teammate, you got to know how to— you got to know what your job is and you got to do your job. And I don't know if that was being done at Putnam Investments. And I had a great boss. It wasn't that, but it just— I don't know if he had the power to even tell anyone like how to do their job in a great way. And then so you could follow through because as a former athlete, one of the things that I think that I'm really good at is running through a wall for someone that I believe in or a cause that I believe in. And I think that's what I try to inspire in any employees that I've had.

And I think it's a real important part of building a culture or a family.

Yeah, I totally agree. So, at the Mount Auburn Club, you didn't just train clients, you proposed a full redesign of the gym. That redesign grew their personal training revenue more than tenfold in 2 years, which is very impressive. So, walk me through what you saw, what you proposed, how you convinced the owner to let you do that.

Yeah, well, at first I was deathly afraid of Bill Crowley, the owner, because everyone told me I was gonna, get fired as soon as they request— he requested to start training with me. And I was like, again, this is like the big jump. I jumped out of finance, I'm settled in, I've got like a full clientele. And now it's like, oh my God, you're gonna get fired. Like, everyone's like avoiding me like the plague if they work there, you know, because they don't want to be in this guy's eyeshot.

Orbit, right?

Or in his orbit, eyeshot. Like, they don't want— they want him to not know that they exist. You know, which— and I'm like, shoot, I'm screwed. And then after meeting him, I just realized he was super cerebral. He was a 1 million percent winner, and he was not a workout guy. So although he owned one of the best gyms in Boston, he really wasn't a fitness guy. He was a business guy. Mm-hmm. And so at that point in time, the fitness floor was all on the 2nd and 3rd floor. So if you were playing tennis there, or if you were doing water aerobics or playing racquetball,

Mm-hmm.

Or just doing cardio, you would never even know that they had a gym.

Oh, interesting.

Part of my presentation was to take out all the racquetball courts was as you walked up the ramp and put the gym there so people could see people working out. And it was much better. Like, we laid it out so that it was very functional for both the clients and the trainers, but it blew up. It completely did exactly what we wanted it to do. And people actually, you know, started seeing results, telling people, We go from a staff of 4 trainers to a staff of 14 trainers in the next 2 years. And like, it just, it does everything that we want it to do.

Yeah. So that success got you Equinox's attention. You joined their team and helped them.

That got me to become the New England sports, you know, cable news guy. I was writing for the Boston Globe.

Oh, fun.

And then, and then again, another crazy move, as I said, you know, it was right after 9/11. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to listen to my mother again, and I'm going to go after my dreams. There's no email, there's no Google, there's no nothing. But you kind of know about some famous gyms in the world, one of which was like Gold's Gym Venice, which when I went there for the first time, I'm like, oh my God, this place is terrible. Not the people. The people were amazing. Like, the people watching was incredible. Amazing. Still some of the best people watching in the world. But it was not about excellence. Like, I mean, they literally had a leaky sewer pipe that you could smell in certain parts of the gym. But there was another club called the Sports Club LA, which was truly like— Oh, yeah, I know it. The best gym in the world for a long period of time. And I applied very shortly after getting to Los Angeles. I picked up and left. I had no job, even though I was, you know, I had gotten a percentage of, you know, the Mount Auburn Club's personal training revenue and all this good stuff.

And I could have rode that out as long as, you know, I wanted to. And I just got up one day and said, like, you know what, life's too short. Let's see what we're made of. And, and I moved to Los Angeles and I applied to the Sports Club LA and I got, I got hired as their assistant fitness manager.

Hmm.

And before I started the job, they called me in on a Sunday. I was supposed to start on Monday and they're like, hey, can you come in and do your paperwork on Sunday? I'm like, yeah, sure. And they're like, oh, and by the way, you already have a promotion. The fitness manager quit. You're now the new fitness manager. And I'm like,

wow,

okay, like, let's do it. Now, this was a kind of a jump up because they had probably 100+ trainers, 14+ Pilates instructors, yoga instructors, Group X. I think there was 10 total front desk people. I had an assistant, like, right? And they were underperforming, you know, they were not doing what the owners or Or I thought that they could do. And I got to work, but I was definitely the hammer at the Sports Club LA, and I brought that athlete mentality of building safety, but at the same time, at the standard that I set. I was coming from a city in Boston where 40 hours was like minimum. It wasn't, you know, that was just what the work week was, was 40 hours was full-time. Mm-hmm. And like, if you were diligent, you worked more than 40 hours. And when I went to LA, 20 hours was full-time and barely anyone was hitting full-time and they weren't monitoring it. Like, they weren't like, okay, Rufus is doing 16 hours, let him slide. You know, he's trying to be an actor. Let's be nice to Rufus. Or, you know, and I came in, I'm like, man, we gotta, we gotta start making some money in here.

Like, we gotta, we gotta. And by the way, we're, we're not doing our job. We're not helping the membership of the Sports Club LA. be the best that they can be. You know, we're not getting to enough people, we're not training enough people, and we're not enthusiastic enough about it. You know, people aren't excited to come in and work here. And this is like Rome to me. This was, oh my God, another 140,000, 150,000 square foot facility that had the best of the best. You had, you know, anyone from, you know, Sofia Vergara to, you know, you name it. And they're all working out there. You know, it's the who's who. It's Plymouth. It's prime 1990s. You have all— every Playmate of the Year, every Playmate, because they had a deal with Playboy, which was down the street. You know, it was a very, very cool environment. But you have pro athletes, ex-pro athletes, CEOs. It was the who's who of Los Angeles. And then they had valet parking. So it was just like the best-case scenario for a gym. And it had the funding to do this, and it had a high standard, right?

It was— the mission statement, I believe, was You know, we are the finest sports and fitness club company in the world dedicated to enhancing our members' lives. I still remember that from, you know, 20-plus years ago. And it's— they— I tried to make sure we live that in the fitness department.

Yeah.

And we did. And so then I fired more than 50% of the people in the next 2 months. And then I just hired— you said how you love athletes and talking about athletes. And as an ex-athlete, I hired almost all exclusively athletes, both male and female. And they became our army and my army, and they ran through people. And then they were the highest-paid trainers there, and they did great work. They were full of enthusiasm, knowledge, and understanding.

Yeah.

And they understood one of my concepts that were, if you want to be a trainer, however many hours you want to train, per week, you have to do double until you get to your number. And that worked. Like, that's, that's, you know, I always tell everyone, I look for Magic Bullet stores every time I go to a new city. I've not found one yet. I don't know where the Magic Bullets are sold. I would 1000% buy them, but I don't know where they're sold. So you know what, we just gotta, we gotta outwork it and have a great plan.

Yeah, that's great advice. So then is that from there is when your success got you?

Then after we did, yep, then we did $3 million over 2 years in a row, which they had never done. And we opened, I want to say, 4 or 5 Sports Club LA's. We opened up Beverly Hills, Miami, Washington, D.C., Boston. That blows through the roof. And then I want to open up my own gym. And so I got the attention of Equinox, but I also was looking to kind of take a step down in a way and turn into their celebrity trainer. So I didn't want to be in charge of their fitness department and build another fitness department. I wanted a place where I could work a lazy 40 hours and help them design it. And then I could leave at 3, 4 o'clock and drive to Rancho Cucamonga and present a business plan to a bank to get a small business loan when that was a thing.

Yeah.

So I would literally pull into a parking lot like one block away, put a suit on, you know, get out of my trainer gear, you know, use a wet nap to like wash my face, then walk in and do like a presentation on why someone should give me, you know, $750,000.

Right. So when you were kind of doing that to build your own, was that when you were at Equinox?

Yes.

And so you were kind of doing them simultaneously?

Yeah, I 1,000% was doing it simultaneously.

Yeah. So then what is— I mean, a lot of us have to do that, right? Like, you can't— it's, it's hard to let go of your day-to-day income, right, if you're building something from scratch. So

yeah,

what did you learn about building a premium brand from the inside of one of, you know, that's another one of the best in the world?

Well, I think that you need to hold people to their standard. What I know, especially from both as a team builder, business builder, and gym builder, is that your lowest standard of— it could be just a screw that you, you know, that you screw behind drywall, that your business or your culture will drop to whatever is the lowest standard. And if you've— which happens in almost every situation— if you get scared because something costs too much, or maybe it will be offensive, or it's maybe not right for this community, or you start doubting your vision, and so you play it safe, your project will never be remembered. It will fall to that lowest standard component, you know? And on one podcast, I was asked, you know, what is something that you bought for your gym or for a gym that was completely, like, unnecessary, but you had to do it? And I'm like, I have a black True refrigerator that costs, like, $40,000. That's beautiful. It's matte black with chrome, and it's absolutely gorgeous, and it holds Fiji water, you know? It's complete overkill. Right. But it was the right refrigerator for the cave. And I think that, you know, whatever it may be, people get scared or they can't afford what is the standard, and they, they don't realize that they have to figure out that problem, how to solve that problem, because it could be the determinant of is their brand a luxury brand or is it a mid-tier brand.

And you also have to have the understanding of what each one is. You need to know, like, in a luxury brand, our towels are Restoration Hardware, like the most soft towels that I found that are the right size for a gym towel. And they're embroidered with people's names, like Oprah or you name it, Tom Brady, Rafa Nadal, Sabalenka, all these names with my logo are on these towels. So it's like people, just something to talk about. It's a conversation piece. Like, oh, I got Tom Brady today. Oh, I got Walter Payton. Oh, cool. I love Walter Payton. Oh, John, give me another one. I don't like this person. It's like just something. But then on top of that, it's not sandpaper because we've all gone to the gym and gotten a sandpaper towel and been like, man, I don't know if this is a good towel for me today.

Right. So then in 2006, I think that's right, you took everything you learned and then you opened Active Fitness in Santa Monica. So that was your first gym, full creative Control. That one got voted the best gym in LA. So take me through building that from scratch, you know, the real estate, the design, the financing, the operations. Give us a— how did that work?

Let me first say one thing about the Equinox thing, which really made me want to open up my own gym, which was,

yeah,

in the design aspect, I recommended that they would go with Woodway, which at the time, and probably still is, considered the best treadmill. And they ended up going with like Life Fitness. So whenever Harvey or the GM or any of the people that were involved at the top would say, like, we're the best gym, and I'd be like, second best, because it would drive them crazy. But I'm like, you are what your standards are. Again, one of my philosophies in life is all you need is love and good information. And if you say you want to be the best and then you on purpose buy the second best treadmill, which, by the way, great treadmill. I've owned Life Fitness treadmills. I don't have any issue with that, but don't say we're gonna be the best and we have an unlimited budget and then talk about budgets. So, like, to me, that's where I would battle with management as a designer. Interesting. Because I'm believing what you tell me. I'm a very literal person. So you're saying we wanna be the best, and I know what the standard is for equipment. I'd gone to URSA for, you know, 30-something years here.

I love equipment, you know, I love the tools that can help a trainer or help a person get better. And so then I went into active fitness. And by the way, I also handled it the right way. I think a lot of trainers and a lot of people with their businesses, they steal clients, so to speak, or they do things a little bit shady where all of a sudden they just leave their 2 weeks notice, and all of a sudden the day after the 2 weeks notice is over, their gym is magically opened. And I didn't do any of that. Right. that I was opening a gym once I signed the small business loan. And I did not take any clients and go to another gym and train them. So what I thought would be like a 4-month process of opening a gym, it was a year process. So I didn't train anyone for a year. Okay. So it was like, shoot, is anyone going to come back? Because I was training now, some of these people for, you know, 5, 6 years. And

yeah,

um, you, you worry about that. And then also your income comes from— say I was making, you know, well over $200,000 a year at the time— to making zero. And

right,

you start after making loan payments, you know, on the equipment that you bought, the, the, the space, the, the all of it. And

yep.

I think that that's where it can get real scary because I think that if you don't have enough financing, that's where most people fail is they don't realize how much upfront money you need. Because I always joke around with people and say, a problem that you can buy your way out of is a great problem as long as you can afford to buy your way out of it. That's right. My flag, it was a little windy in Charlotte today, and my flagpole fell down off of our house. I so happened to be getting a new air conditioner put in, and I just tipped the guy because he had longer screws in his truck to put it in. That's a problem I could just buy my way out of for $20. Well, money well spent. My flag never hit the ground. You know, everything— my wife won't even know that that happened. But, you know, perfect, you know. But at the same time, it is a problem that I just could buy my way out of. That's an easy problem. If you have limited finances, which I had at Active Fitness, the only way to get through it is to outwork it and to continue to have a great plan.

I think that when you open up your own business, you need to really have good information. And when I say you need love and good information, you also need a lot of luck. I think that that gym opened— Yeah. Right as 2008 was looming. and the market just crashed. So I'm opening up a luxury business in Santa Monica, California, as people are losing their lunch, especially like in California with the mortgage market. That company was based out of Los Angeles. It was based out of Calabasas. So it had a tremendous effect on the way people were thinking. The first thing that goes is your personal training, buying new artwork, That kind of thing. And then as someone that's run very successful gym fitness departments, now I'm in pure sales and I'm trying to teach people, the front desk girls, how to sell a membership, you know, not give the museum tour, as they say, you know, like link into what the person is talking about. Like, oh, I want to lose weight, you know, well, let me introduce you to—

Mm-hmm.

This trainer, they're great at helping people lose, like whatever it may be, you know, to teach this all from the start. And because our building, which I didn't know, like if anyone is out there and a new business owner, my advice also would be get litigious early. I was a nice guy and I thought I was in a win-win situation with the landlord. Right. And I didn't know that he didn't think it was a win-win. He was trying to have it be a win-lose. which I still to this day don't understand, but his building did not have a certificate of occupancy. So that's what delayed me from getting my certificate of occupancy. But I didn't know that, and I was paying rent, and I should have sued him for all of that back rent. 'Cause it was also $33,000 a month in whatever year that was, you know, 2006, '07, '08. It still to this day would be a lot of money for 5,000 square feet. square feet.

Yeah.

You know, and I learned some great lessons because I did have a real estate attorney review the document and all that kind of stuff, but they weren't looking to see if it was egregious. And then years later, when we have to get litigious with, with the landlord, you know, our lawyer was like, this is the worst deal I've ever seen anyone sign. Like, this might literally be the worst lease I've ever seen. I'm like, oh, this is wonderful. This is What a nice thing to hear, you know? And yeah, it just shows you how valuable it is to have great people across the board for whatever it is that you may need. I don't care if it's a dietitian, a lawyer, uh, you know, Uber Black driver, 100%, as opposed to just a regular Uber driver that's selling drugs out of their car.

Yeah, no, I mean, we, we talk about that all the time, like surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you, that you can trust, that you can get true feedback from all the things.

Yeah.

So yeah, great advice.

And the thing that, that I will say that even led to the next gym was that no one knew that we were in trouble. You know, like, I went from making great money to making no money. And I got paid— and I kid around— I get paid an iced coffee from Starbucks, you know, because I was working 17-hour days, 7 days a week. I was going home and, you know, washing the top, the the gym did not have a washer and dryer, so I was washing and drying all the towels at my apartment, my condo in Brentwood. Wow. And so, I would literally wake up at 1:00 in the morning to put the towels in the dryer and then go to the gym by 5:00 and start training people. The front desk would fold the towels between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. And then, sometimes as the gym got busier, I would even have to drive home if I had a break in the afternoon. and put like a load of towels in or send a front desk person to the laundromat.

Right. You have to have it. Yeah.

You have to have these skills to solve problems. I think the number one thing as an entrepreneur or as a successful person is that you have to be a great problem solver. That's the only commonality I believe in anyone that has excelled at life.

Good advice. So how did you make the transition from active fitness to then you later co-founded Iron? So like, what made you do it again? How'd you make that transition? And did you do anything different the second time?

No, it's the exact same business plan. It was the exact same business plan. It was really, um, what's the best way to say it? It was, it was so happened to happen where, um, myself and the other co-founder, he never knew we were in trouble. So he's like, if you can handle that and no one even knows that you're in trouble, like, I'll back it because I looked at your plan. Like, I loved the place. I just think you didn't have enough funding. I have the ability to do the funding. And so like, let's do this. And we did it.

Love that.

And it was profitable. But that one also with luck, he was extremely good at what he did. He signed an incredible lease. One of the big issues with active fitness that if you're opening a gym that people don't think about is that really your membership is going to be within like a 2 to 2.5-mile radius of the gym, especially in Los Angeles, because Of traffic.

Traffic.

And half of my base was the ocean. And so on the next one, we went more inland by like 9 blocks, but it helped.

Made a difference.

It made a difference.

Interesting.

And we also now went to that new gym with— because we were a very good gym, I think 90-something percent of the people immediately joined that gym.

Oh, okay. So you moved over your client roster, which makes sense.

You know, because it was my client roster. Right. So it wasn't— I wasn't stealing from myself, you know? And so, and because I had done the right thing with everyone, everyone moved over. Every one of my clients that I personally trained, like 100% of them moved over. And then we really, um, built the brand where, you know, we were on the Hills, we're on Entertainment Tonight, we're in Us Weekly. All things are firing. Like, luck is such a component. And that gym literally had every good thing that could happen happen in a good way. Like, when Arnold wanted to be on the COVID of Muscle and Fitness, he picked our gym to do his photo shoot at.

Nice. So you were getting lots of good publicity. You brought over lots of your clients.

It also won Gym of the Year.

But how do you keep it going?

Well, then it was interesting that as I was also becoming a bigger trainer or a trainer that was training more successful people, more successful athletes, more successful celebrities, actors and actresses, and Victoria's Secret models, and whatever it may be, that I was noticing that the next evolution, I could see it on the wall, would be going completely the opposite. Instead of having 150 employees at Sports Club LA, having 25 at Active Fitness, That the next move was to go to zero or one and to open up my own private studio where I was just training people one-on-one. And then that would give me the opportunities to do some media stuff and just really give me the ability to just focus on my clientele and give them the privacy that they craved.

Got it.

Because I think when someone is high-end athlete, high-end CEO, high-end actor or actress, as soon as there's like— someone always says like, I know I'm not supposed to do this, but is there any way we can take a picture? That person immediately becomes like, yeah. And it's just not the same. They're not telling you the story about how they were fighting with their boyfriend or like, oh my God, you wouldn't believe it when I was at Prince's house last night and he took out a guitar and started playing. It's just a different vibe. And so, that's when I opened up or I bought out a gym called The Bunker in Beverly Hills. And, it was me and one other trainer that trained people out of this incredible private gym that looked kind of like a nightclub. I made it look like a nightclub. It was an excellent design and people loved it. And, the thing that was great about that gym is, A, it was in the center of Beverly Hills, But paparazzi was not allowed in a building, and we had a parking garage, so they were not allowed in the parking garage. Like, this is literally the gym.

The guy that bought it from me, this is where like Travis Kelce was running up the incline, you know, a couple years ago when he first started training or dating Taylor Swift. Like, that's my old— like, that was at my old gym.

Nice.

You know, so,

so I guess like, what are you still involved with? Like, have you— so you've exited a number of these, and you know, how did that work?

I have a daughter and we are brand new parents. My wife and I have been together since the first— oh no, this is like now 15 years ago.

Okay.

Well, still congrats. Yeah, no, it was worth the congratulations. But we thought we could be this modern-day nuclear family. My wife got a huge job offer to go to Silicon Valley. Part of her deal was we would get unlimited flights from Los Angeles to Silicon Valley. I owned my own business. I was again doing very well. But what was nice is when I shut the doors down, I could even just say work 6:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and that's 10 hours, and I could leave. And literally, I shut the lights off at 4:00, except for the cleaning people. Like, I didn't have to worry about anyone. There was no, like, oh my God, you wouldn't believe it. The computer system broke. I couldn't sign this person up for a membership. And it was just like, I could go home and spend time with my daughter. I could— it was just such a better quality of life and doing what I love to do. It was more of just dealing and pouring into my my clients as opposed to wondering about like, oh, someone has a complaint because they didn't, you know, fill the bathroom with toilet paper.

Yep. Or, you know, like the suggestion box says we should change all of our towels to yellow because that way that's their favorite color. Like, it just, you know, things that people say that have no idea what they're doing is, you know, that's what has created the internet problem. That people just want to just say things and they think they're now an expert because they wrote it on the internet or in a suggestion box. I will say—

Yeah, go ahead. I was

just going to say, as a manager, that was always my least favorite component of meeting with a GM. It's like, let's go through the suggestion box. They're like, they want us to redesign the entire gym. I'm like, we just spent $7 million on a renovation. That we finished 3 weeks ago. Thank you. So do you think we should do it? I go, no, I don't. I'm like, why are we going through these kind of questions? It would drive me bananas as a high-level manager at a gym. It would always— because for whatever reason, general managers love, and as they should, listen to the membership. But I'm like, I actually speak to the members 17 hours a day. So I know what the vibe is, and this is an outlier, you know? And now we live in a world where the outliers get all the voice and we cater to them. Back then, I'm just not in favor of catering to the 1% of what people are thinking.

Yep. And there's always a naysayer too.

Oh, yeah. Well, people hate change.

Sometimes it's just noise.

Yeah, it's noise. And people that don't like change and people that like uncertainty more than others. You know, as a human need, I'm, I like certainty and safety. You know, I think that like, it's nice to know that I'm going to be there at 6 AM if you sign up for a 6 AM appointment. Like, I like that certainty. I don't like it.

Yeah, when people appreciate that. Yeah. So what's the hardest business decision you've had to make? And then how did you handle it?

Gosh, the hardest business decision I've had to make was probably selling the bunker to move to Silicon Valley and just train in LA at the bunker a couple days a week, and then maybe 3 days every 2 weeks, and kind of change because my wife was having a very hard time at a new job. And then we had a less than 1-year-old daughter. Oh, wow. And so as I was working, I was working 50, 60 hours a week too. And although I was going up there middle of the afternoon on Thursday, and then I would take the last flight home on Sunday, I think Monday through Thursday morning, she felt like a single mother. And as someone that was raised by a single mother, I didn't want her to feel that way. I didn't want her to feel that pressure. You know, our daughter was the last one being picked up at daycare. You know, she's the first one getting dropped off at daycare. I

understand. Yeah.

It was just because I'm going to transition to a less full-time job doing what I really love and doing it with the people that I love doing it with. I also had an amazing workout partner that we worked out 7 days a week. We had a great life in Los Angeles. And to say we're going to kind of still have the place in LA, we'll have the place in Silicon Valley for a little while, but I can see the writing on the wall that she needs help and I can actually provide that help. And because of the flexibility in my job, I could make it work where I could still make some level of good money, but at the same time, I could be a great dad and a great husband. And to me, that was a very hard decision. Yeah. Because to tell all my clients that I'm not going to be there in 2 weeks, by the way, I literally finished out everyone's package. Mm-hmm. And then I'm like, hey, we'll just go session by session. And now we're dealing with what we talked about a little bit earlier. They don't have the certainty.

I had been in their life now, some of them for well over 10+ years, and I was there Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, or Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. You know, like, I, I had seen these people. I'd seen them grow. I could see them become more successful and their kids grow. And some of them had children, you know, like, right, the Kristen Cavallaris and things. Like, it's like I had a child during that period, and they were all super, you know, pumped for me for that and for our family. They supported me as I went from gym to gym. And I have nothing but incredible respect and love for all of those former clients that are still friends of mine. I still talk to most of them, just not as regularly as I'd probably like to.

Yeah.

Because now we've been in Charlotte for about 10 years. But it would gut me because I knew the right thing is very clear, that the right thing is to, is to go help my wife and obviously help out with my daughter. But at the same time, I can't, you know, look in the mirror and say, like, I didn't love what I did. You know, I loved every day. I just didn't love doing it without the love and connection of my family, you know?

Yeah, well, I mean, it's— you're keeping your priorities in focus, right? And that's hard for people when they're building businesses. So I think that's interesting to know that.

I think that also would be something I would really talk to business owners about, is that, you know, out of our human needs, I think the one that drives some business owners is significance, which is like, you know, I want to be the best. I want the, you know, I want the big Mercedes. I want the gold Rolex. I want all the things that— The fame. The fame, the Forbes list. And that none of that matters. Like, you know, even back then I knew that. Now I know it well more after studying, you know, this kind of stuff. But like, if you're chasing significance, it is okay to want to be the best. Like, we all do need to know that we're enough. But if you fixate too much on the significance aspect, you know, whether it's, you know, social media likes, you know, whatever it may be on TikTok or any of that stuff, but like, if that's what you're focusing on, you know, there's a great documentary right now on Chris Everett and Martina Navratilova. And I encourage everyone to watch it because Chris Evert talks about winning Wimbledon. And then because she only craves significance, and she might even use those words, not in that exact order, but that she went to her hotel room and just laid down on the floor because she had no one to celebrate winning Wimbledon with because she had no friends.

She had no one but her agent and coach.

Right. It's lonely at the top.

And it's only lonely at the top, though, because you choose it to be because you're craving significance than more than you are love and connection. And I think the one thing, even though you're trying to build the business, is you always have to love and connect with friends and family and, you know, hopefully employees and, and your mentorees, whatever, whatever it may be. You should be pouring into everybody. Yeah, I'm very— Because just like the gym, when you pour into people, you get out exactly what you put in. You know, it's one of the only things that's a 1-to-1 ratio, and people don't realize how important it is to pour into people because you don't know how bad of a day they're having, how good of a day. Maybe you're going to celebrate with them. But, you know, right. And I think that when you're only just, you know, trying to check the box of success, like, oh, joined 4 members, trained 10 people, got on the COVID of Us Weekly, you know, it's like you, as a competitive person, People are then looking like, what's next? I made $1 million. How do I make $2 million?

That's where Alex Hormozi just was on, interviewed Tony Robbins, and he took it down off of his website because Tony Robbins is like, you have it all wrong, dude. You're super successful and you can't even enjoy a date night with your wife. You're screwed up. Yeah. And he was like, Like, he didn't know what to do. Yeah. And it was so raw, and it was such a great thing to watch because you were thinking that he was getting it, and then he realized, like, shoot, if I listen to this guy, I don't have a business because I'm telling everyone just significance, significance, significance. And Tony Robbins was like, you got it all wrong, dude. Like, you know, like, you're a good guy, and I believe that that's true, but like, you have it all wrong. And he got the light, but I think he's like, shoot, I'm too far in. You know, I've made the deal with the devil. I can't change my business model.

Right.

You know?

Right.

And I just think that, you know, where I've been lucky is that I've always known what the right thing to do. I was taught the right thing to do is always the right thing to do, and the wrong thing to do is always nothing. I think that's the other component. Like, people like to do what I call ostriching. They put the head in the sand and pretend they didn't see something. And it's like, that's only gonna blow up. Like, the more you ignore something, you know, that damn hole is only gonna, you know, it's gonna go to the next finger. It's, it's gonna go, you know. So like, you, like, to me, I've just realized, especially as a business owner, you got to address these problems immediately because they're not going to just magically get better. Like, your air conditioner is not going to self-regenerate.

Yeah, no, good advice. So I want to ask you kind of what we've already been talking about, but Just to kind of hit this harder, but what do the most successful people you've worked with have in common? So I know, you know, Hollywood actors, CEOs, elite performers. So what are the most successful people you've worked with have in common? And what can entrepreneurs learn from how they operate?

I think that they're all ultra competitive, hyper competitive. I think they all are level 10 confident-wise. I think they also all listen to their gut incredibly well. Like they're very in tune with what their vision is and how to achieve that vision. They have a great plan. And then the other thing that I think that, for lack of a better word, like normal people, what they don't have, like once they determine that like this is the way to do it, you know, I'm gonna talk to Sammy, Sammy's gonna be my business coach, and we're just gonna, we're gonna do whatever our plan is. The Tom Bradys of the world, once you say like, okay, I want you to work out 4 days a week, I want you to jump in the cold tub afterwards, I want you to do red light after that. I want you to get 12 hours of sleep, and I want you to get, you know, this many macros of protein, carbs, and fats, and I'll see you tomorrow. Like, they just do that. I'm not saying that they don't ever have a moment where maybe they don't, but they do it every time.

Like, when I—

Like a cheat day.

Train— yeah, some people, I'm like, you should get in the red light after today. Like, oh, I don't have time today, or You know what? Oh, man, like, I just don't feel like it. I'll do it the next time. But every pro athlete or CEO or Hollywood actor, when you say, like, you need to do these kind of things, they just adopt it. Like, that's like them, the Bible, and they just do it, you know? Like, it's—

Yeah. So a high work ethic, right? Like, a lot of discipline.

You know, like, when I deal with a— right now I have a, I have a high-level high school athlete right now, a son of an NBA guy. And before that, I had a kid that was the number one athlete in the country for football that now is at Tennessee.

Nice.

And the number one thing that we worked on for both of them is having the habit of an all-star 5-year veteran. And they both continued to make it look easy because they both Do that. And I even get comments from my guy at Tennessee that says, like, the coach wants to know why I do this. And I'm like, just tell him, like, this is what you do. He goes as an 18-year-old, 19-year-old kid, he goes to the hyperbaric chamber 3 days a week. He understands the value of the recovery. You know, and I think the normal person's like, you know what, I'm gonna binge watch one more episode of Off Campus. And other people are just saying like, I've had my blue blocking glasses on since 7 PM and I'm gonna go to bed at 10 so that I can, you know, sleep until 8 AM and I'm gonna get 10 hours of, of at least bed rest. Um, and that's just what I'm gonna do. You know, like Roger Federer just gave an interview and he said, what's the Only thing that was like the whole only thing in common with your whole career?

He said, I got 10 to 12 hours of sleep every night. And it's like people don't realize, can you imagine how awesome that is? Where every day of your life and you're a busy guy, you were never in bed for less than 10 to 12 hours a night. And it carries over everything. I mean, like, because he had children during that time. He— I mean, this includes cross-country flights, you know, all of this kind of stuff. And like,

yep.

But that was just—

Yeah, he like scheduled his travel around it even, right? Like I was reading, I saw that.

Yeah, that's what's really interesting. So best—

I guess what I'm hearing you say is like, it's habits, principles, consistency that the best just prioritize and they don't ever—

they don't waver from it, right? So same in business. The most impressive part.

Yeah, I mean, same in business, right? Like your work ethic, your habits, your principles, to do the right thing, like you said, like, if you just stay consistent, you don't waver, like—

Yeah, 80% of the people are gonna stay employed, bottom 20 are going, like, it's just, it's just the way, the way it is. You know, Jack Welch was a stud.

Yeah, the GE method. Yep. Yeah, the GE method, I call it.

Yeah. You know, this is some of the best lessons that I learned, you know, this was, Understanding all the people that you're trying to work with, you have to be— it's like dating. You have to be up to the quality. If you want to date whoever it may be, you have to be someone that they would be interested in. When I give dating advice to any of my friends that are single back in the day, it'd be like, why would that girl like you? What are you bringing to the table? And that really is, and it's the same thing as a trainer. You want to train Kendall Jenner? What are you bringing to the table? Have you ever trained a model before? Do you live within— do you train within 2 miles of where she lives? The reason one of my good friends would always say he was lucky, and he was being very kind and not self-effacing, but he would say the reason why he trained a lot of celebrities— was that he lived in Beverly Hills. It was just moss to a flame. But there is part of that that's true. He kept them because he was the best in the business.

But—

Right. But he was convenient to start.

And then he had parking. You know, like, to me, I always— yeah, you know, I always say, as someone that has owned businesses, you got to have parking. But not only do you need to have parking, you need to have space wide enough where people can park easily. You know, because you don't want to have these spots that are a little too tight, a little too narrow, because no one wants to get their car dinged or, you know, have a hard time getting in or out of a spot, or, you know, you want to have everything be easy.

So I want to go back to something, and I think we'll, we'll probably have to edit this into a different spot because we got talking lots about, like, mindset. But what I wanted— one thing I wanted to ask you that I think would be really beneficial to our listeners is, you know, we've talked, we talk a lot about, you know, building businesses on here and entrepreneurship and all of that stuff. And we haven't had somebody, you know, such as yourself that really understands like how important physical space is to the success of a business. Like we haven't really talked about that. So I love that you have that. So I really want to, I want to ask one more question about that. So, you know, how much does the physical space actually matter to the success of the business? You know, whether it's a gym or restaurant or retail store or an office, you know, whatever. And, you know, how do you do that? Like, what's the advice for building a place that people want to go?

I think the space is everything. I think, you know, in my opinion, any place that I've opened, I had a vision for what it would be inside within 10 minutes. I think the hardest one that I have, which is probably the best looking one, is the gym I have now. But that's based on experience. It's based on that I lived in the space for a little bit and let it tell me what it wanted to be. But in general, I think energy is where— what your space is. And so whether it's a restaurant or a recovery center or an art gallery, whatever is the business, I think that it has to have the energy, the cleanliness, and the vibe of what the customer— what the customer, that person is looking to attract, that they would want to be in that space. And then B, that it's, it's such an inviting space that, that those people want to come back to it, you know, and it's a safe space. I think the number one thing also— Yeah. In any successful business that is a retail space is that it has to be safe. You know, I think that, you know, people are like, oh, well, this is an up-and-coming part of the town.

I mean, a lot of times that means that it's not as safe as the established Beverly Hills part of town.

Interesting.

And I think that's a huge component because what people don't realize is you can't build on a culture if people don't feel safe. If you're going to an art gallery and you love it, or a restaurant and you love it, but every time you leave, there's shots going off in the parking lot, you're never going to go back there. Even though it's a 5 Michelin star, you're

not going to go.

Only 5-star Michelin star restaurant in the world.

Right.

You know, because— Yeah, I've never thought about that, but that's totally true. But people don't ever— I think, like, when I design a space, that's the first thing that I think about. Like, at our house now, we have 8-foot fences, not 6-foot fences. We have fences that are vertical, uh, planked, because that way they can be stacked over as opposed to horizontal, so that no one could peek through a fence. So no one, even people that are 7'2 when they come in, no one knows they're here. You know, they park in my driveway or on my carport, they walk down a driveway and they disappear. Mm-hmm. And someone would literally have to trespass on my property in order to accost or ask for an autograph or something of one of my clients. And it still has happened, by the way. It's funny. It happened with my workout partner, right? You know, like 2 years ago, like, someone's like, hey, I know I'm not supposed to do this, but blah, blah, blah. Like, can I— you know, like, I just wanted to say hello and that I love you.

And— Right.

And I was like, oh my God, you're like on my front yard. And I'm 6'4.5, you know, 295, £300. And I'm like, you're crazy. Like, what are you doing? You know, and then— but it's always the same thing, right? No, I'm not supposed to do this, but, you know, I just had to say hello. And it's like, no, you didn't. You could have just kept walking. Walk your dog. So, but safety—

Yeah, so safety is the number one thing, though.

It's like on your podcast, you're a very safe vibe. You know, you give off a very welcoming, safe environment. And I think, like, Even at our house, we create a safe environment if we're hosting a party. People know not to have their phones out. You're going to get it taken. Or we've even done parties where people put their phones in manila envelopes. They have access to it. They're in a filing cabinet sitting on a desk in our office, and you can go call your babysitter whenever you want. It's not— You know, we're not trying to, you know, have you not have contact with people you need to have contact with, but people don't want to have their picture taken. They, you know, like, unless you want significance,

right?

And most people that I have in my life that I love to pour into, the commonality that they have is excellence. And excellence does not necessarily mean that they want significance, you know, because everyone that I do have in my life, what they, what they really want is to love and pour into, you know, their children and their, and their family and friends. And they've also done a great job.

Yeah.

Of who they've invited on their bus. You know, it is, but you have to— Surrounding yourself with the right people. Right. Because I think the old Nick Saban thing is mediocrity doesn't like excellence. Excellence doesn't like mediocrity. So let's just get that on the table or get it off the table because You know what? Let's just acknowledge the sun goes up in the east, goes down in the west. It is what it is. And it's why I don't go out in the public that much, because I'm going to interact with mediocre people when I do not have control over who I'm going to interact with. But at my house, when I invite people over for a party or for cigars or for drinks or for a workout. It's only great people. And then when you have that kind of energy, which we talked about is what you're trying to create, you then have a much better chance of that as opposed to when you don't have control over it. And even in the gym space, going from the public gym to the private gym, I had control over the dance, who would interact. Mary J.

Blige, interacting with, you know, an athlete, you know, and it's like, it's just cool because they each want to be like the other person, you know. And I think that's the—

Inspiration.

Component of like whether it's a restaurant or, you know, like I said, an art gallery, whatever business you're in, you know, if you're in the luxury aspect of it, you have to really make your clients safe. And then you got to deliver the service. You got to know what you got to— like, again, we talked about it at the beginning, to be a great teammate, you got to do your job. You got to start with doing your job. If I'm not on time, if I'm not ready, if I haven't written a workout, if I'm not bringing any good energy, I'm not going to keep that person long-term. Because that is their— that's their best hour of the day, is their hour with me.

Consistency.

You know, it's the only hour of the day that they don't have to, you know, go to the grocery store or put dishes away or fire people,

right?

All the other things. It's the only hour of the day that's just for them,

right?

You know, and so if I'm just complaining to them about my life or whatever, you know, and like everything's broken, things are dirty, Like, that's not the environment that my clientele is gonna stick with, you know? And I think that you need to understand that. You need to deliver that level of service, you know? Like, our gym, never mind that it gets cleaned every day, but it gets professionally cleaned twice a week, you know? And for our level, that might be a little overkill, but my clientele likes clean, you know? That's what— that's the level I set. long ago, and that's the level that we're going to keep up with. And people enjoy it, you know? It's like, right, there's never been a day in any of my gyms where there wasn't a towel, you know? It's not like, oh, I didn't, you know, you know what, oh, I didn't do the towels. I'm so sorry, like, there's no towel. Like, that's never happened, you know? Like, if, if as a problem solver, if somehow our internet goes out and I can't play music I could play music through my phone and I have Bluetooth speakers charged just in case that situation happens.

And so for other business owners, preparation of worst-case scenarios and having walked through what, what could be like, you need to know how, what to do when, when, you know, the shit does hit the fan.

Yeah. So, John, last question. What does it mean to you to be a business MVP?

I think it means that you put everyone else before you. I think to be an MVP, you have to be, A, do your job, but you have to be the servant of your team. You have to put the business before you, and whatever that takes to make that business's vision come true, that's what you got to eat, breathe, sleep, and you have to live that. You can't say that someone should be drinking—

Right.

Element Tea, and then they've never had it before. You know, I want the Element Tea person to know what every flavor tastes like. What does it taste like in different— in sparkling water, regular water? You know, like, I want them to be able to— like, one of the things I try to teach business people is that you should always be able to transition talk back to what you want to talk about, you know, which is generally your business if you're an owner of a business, or whatever. And it's like, I could take— you could take anything in the world, and then I can bring it back to talking about the gym or personal training or health or something like that. And so to me, putting the business first and doing it with enthusiasm and doing the job that you're— you are in that business, you'll— that's business MVP.

Thank you so much for your time. This has been great.

It's been awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

And that's how champions think. Here are the key takeaways from my conversation with John today. If you see a better way to run the business, don't just talk about it, build it and prove it works. Anyone can open a business. Keeping it open is the real achievement. And the space you build your business in matters more than most people think. Design it with intention. If you got value from today's episode, share it with someone who's ready to think bigger, compete harder, and win in business. Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. And if you haven't, leaving a 5-star review goes a long way in helping us grow and reach more leaders like you. You can also watch every episode on YouTube and follow along on Instagram and TikTok @thesammypeterson for more behind the scenes and insights. I'm Sammie Peterson. Thanks for being part of the Business MVP Community, and I'll see you next time as we continue building you into an MVP in business and in life.