← Mondays with Matt
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- [00:02]
A
You're listening to the Build you'd business podcast, powered by Turnkey Coach, where we help business owners find freedom over fear. I'm Matt Reynolds and I'm his brother, Chris Reynolds.
- [00:12]
B
Join us as we help build your business and move from fear to freedom together. You're listening to the build you'd business podcast. I'm your co host, Matt Reynolds, here with my brother, Chris Reynolds. Welcome to the show, sir. Hey.
- [00:34]
A
Hey.
- [00:35]
B
And we are here to help you build your business and move from fear to freedom. So we are always tackling the topics, really, that we've worked through over the past 20 years for each of us, somewhere in that ballpark. And then you've got a little over 20 years of business experience. I got a little under 20 years of business ownership. And we're gonna dive in today. We've talked a lot about some of these very early sort of challenges that you might have or some fears that you might have in business ownership. And one of the things that is a great learning lesson, has been a great learning lesson to both of us is that when work is your passion, when you follow your passion, the work feels like play. And so I'll turn it over to you and let you kind of intro that topic for us today.
- [01:24]
A
Yeah. So I want to preface this with. I am probably a little bit of an outlier of an outlier here. So there are some aspects of the things that I'm going to say as we're sort of talking about how to set up your own life in a way where the work that you're doing is the work that you're passionate about and that aligns nicely with your business goals so that at the end of the day, so that you feel. You feel like you're playing all the time. But I want to mention that I think there's sort of an aspect of this that you may not have and that that's okay. And that is that I am extremely obsessive. I am an obsessive personality, which works really, really well in this context, but is not necessarily something that you can't manufacture. This.
- [02:17]
B
Sure.
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A
So I just want to make sure that as I describe some of the things that. That I do and some of the. The ways that I see this, I want to be sure that everybody doesn't hold this as, like, a standard. I need to be obsessive if I'm going to be successful. You don't. There is probably an aspect of that that is super helpful in certain contexts. So just be aware.
- [02:39]
B
Well, often you're. You know, you've heard everyone's heard the saying that often your greatest skill. Skill is your greatest detriment. Right. No, greatest attribute is your greatest detriment. And so I have seen in my own life and people that I know that are very successful business owners, that were they not successful business owners, they would be drug addicts or alcoholics or gambling addicts. And there are actually still a lot of business owners, successful business owners that are those things as well. And so that takes often an addictive and obsessive personality. I saw the same thing with me being in the fitness industry when I opened Strong Gym that really passionate CrossFitters. And this could be the same thing for bodybuilding or powerlifting or whatever. But you saw that often the joke about how kind of culty CrossFit was, our CrossFit members were full of ex addicts and they just transitioned their addiction or their obsession from something that was wildly unhealthy to something that was healthier.
- [03:42]
A
Right.
- [03:43]
B
So not necessarily healthy, certainly obsession on any. There can always be too much of a good thing. We're always trying to make this podcast for the demographic, the intended demographic. Right. So someone who is in a never ending pursuit of knowledge, who is a business owner, who is trying to do the absolute best they can, who's trying to be a world beater, those sort of things. But I don't. Do you remember Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs has a great talk where he literally says not to follow your passion. And he's often talking about the point he's making there, which I think is kind of the opposite side of the coin, but is also very valid, is that I think he even used the example on the video of if you've ever watched like an American Idol or a talent show, they often will show in the first several episodes the people who are really terrible.
- [04:28]
A
Yeah.
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B
And they think they can sing and their passion is singing, but in fact they have no skill at singing and therefore they shouldn't follow their passion because they're never. So if your passion is to be an NFL football player or an NBA basketball player, but you're 5 foot 7, there is zero chance you're going to play in the NBA. And so there has to be some reality here about what you're pursuing. Likewise, he often told stories, and this is really what the whole premise of Dirty Jobs, the TV show was about was he would find people who were multimillionaires and their job was cleaning out Porta Potties. And he found that if you. It was amazing. Nobody grows up in junior high and early high school thinks to themselves, my passion is other people's poo in a porta Potty. And yet, as you do the thing and get good at the thing and are successful at the thing, it's amazing that often that thing that did not start as your passion becomes your passion.
- [05:25]
A
And that's the story. That's actually the whole thing. Because I agree with Mike Rowe completely on that point, Especially if you're young, you're coming out of high school or something, and you're like, I just can't imagine a world where I do this. So enter the anecdote. So I'll give you a little background here. So I was told my entire life, up until the point that I went to college, that the greatest gift that I could bestow upon the world was the gift of music. I was a musician.
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B
Yeah.
- [05:56]
A
I was good at the piano. I was good at the guitar, and.
- [06:01]
B
I was excellent singer.
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A
I was top some percent singer. Maybe some of you listening to my voice will go, oh, that makes some sense.
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B
I, on the other hand, not any of those things.
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A
You're good at those things.
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B
I've got a good ear, but I'm in a musical family where everyone is excellent. And so I stand out as the middle of the bell curve and a whole bunch of people who are way down the right end of the bell curve. Musical ability.
- [06:27]
A
Now, I liked music. I don't think I loved music. And there I was good at it. I had definitely, definitely had natural talent for this thing, but it certainly wasn't a passion of mine. And I think one of the things that's really important about this, I remember saying in high school, I cannot envision a world where I would enjoy working at a desk all day. I sit down and work at a desk literally all day, or I sit in chairs with a laptop on my lap literally for 17 hours a day, very, very frequently, and love every second of everything that I do. So I was just wrong about it. And I think it's an important thing to understand about yourself, that you have no idea what things you love that you've never been exposed to.
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B
Sure.
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A
No idea. You have no clue. It's always going to be a sad thing. I was thinking about this the other day. It's a sad thing to me that many people, maybe all of us, will die not knowing some of the things that we could have been insanely good at.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Because we were never great at. Right. Like, that's crazy. So anyway, there's a giant world of those things. For you. Giant world of those things. For me, a few weeks ago, before, literally right before Christmas, my wife was having, like, really, really intense stomach pains. And we. We actually shot a podcast on. On that day, one of the more recent ones. And it was around the holidays. And anyway, I took her into the emergency room.
- [08:02]
B
That was literally the week before Christmas. I believe it was.
- [08:04]
A
I guess it was a week before Christmas. You're right. It was that Wednesday or Thursday. So Christmas on Wednesday, I think. And then this was on the Thursday before. So this was six days before Christmas. Take her into the emergency room. She's got what is essentially a combination of really horrible, like, appendicitis combined with some other stuff, and she's going to have to have emergency surgery. Okay. So it's around Christmas time. That sucks, because I got to get her home, and she wants to do all kinds of things. Our kids are interested in Christmas presents and all the things that are going on. But beyond all of that, what happened in the series of things that occurred afterwards are where I want to dig into this story. So just. I'll give those of you who are deep empaths, I'll give you some quick relief. My wife is fine. She went through the surgery fine. Everything is okay. But there was a long period of time around Christmas where I was sitting in a hospital for hours and hours and hours and hours on end in almost total blackness because my wife was sleeping and the nurses were tending to her, and I just needed to be there in case there was, you know, a problem.
- [09:14]
B
Yeah, you're just in the chair. Couch in. In her hospital room.
- [09:17]
A
In her hospital room. Right. And we're there for days. So a lot of people would look at that as a miserable experience. I had a blast. I had an absolute blast. I know, I know, I know that sounds bad. Like, I. Now, was I worried for my wife? Sure. That's why I was there. Right. I was there. My kids are old enough that they were fine. They're like three blocks away at our house. Our house is literally three blocks from the hospital. So why is that the case? Right. Because a lot of people would not have that experience. I could sit there and do nothing and worry. I could do that. That was an option.
- [09:48]
B
That would have been miserable.
- [09:49]
A
That would have been horrible. I would have had a horrible time during that timeframe. Or I have a list, a laundry list that is so long, I cannot. Even if I started reading it now, we wouldn't get to the end of it in an hour. Of all the things I want to Learn all the things I want to do, all the things I wanted to apply knowledge to. And most of them include tasks that I'm trying to get done as well. So I like to learn things and then apply them to tasks that I currently have that need to get done. And I had this unique pocket of time where there was nothing else to do. So I put my headphones on, I cracked open my laptop. It's in many cases, like two in the morning or something. Right. It's like a bizarre time. And I did what most people call work. And I have always had a hard time calling it that. My wife and kids call it that. Daddy, are you working? And it's like, no. Well, why you have your laptop out? Like, I'm having a blast over here. Having the most fun you've ever imagined someone having. There is not a world that I could have. Like, you all want to go to a theme park. I can't imagine a worse thing than me to go to a theme park, pull out a laptop and learn the newest AI technology, figure out how to apply it to some problem. Like that is I'm living in, you know, in a dream. And so this is just an example of a place where when we talk about, like, when work is your passion, work feels like play. Work feels like play to me all the time. All the time. There are moments that are hard. I'm not saying that there aren't moments that are hard. There are hard moments. I will definitely say that not every moment feels like play. Some of those hard moments are hard enough that they cross out of the play moment. But the ability to solve problems with technology, which is the world that I surround myself with, is an absolutely deeply enjoyable and fulfilling thing that I get to spend my life doing. And when some of the harder problems, which tend to be people problems, when those emerge, I'm interested in solving those too. Those are also very interesting problems to me. And if I just reframe them as a problem that needs to be solved, it becomes really interesting. And I can think through like, well, I need to research this and, you know, all the various things that come out of it. So the concept that we're aiming at here is to whatever degree in your life, you can make your work a thing that you are actually passionate about, it will change so many things about your life that it will truly improve the quality of your overall life. Right? Because what comes of this is a. A really interesting, virtuous cycle that we'll get to in the end, which is when you really, really enjoy Something, you'll do it more. The more you do it, the more you enjoy it. And we sort of keep going. But what's key here is that success in business is not really normal. Like it's rare. You all know the statistics. Like, yeah, it's like super rare. Like at the end of the day I think I can't remember exactly what the newest percentages are on this, but roughly 5% of businesses are successful past some 5 to 10 years or something like that. It's a really, really small number. And so you have to ask yourself like, if that's normal, if failure is normal, then what does it mean to be successful? And to be successful you have to be an outlier. To be an outlier, almost certainly you're going to work a ton of hours. Now there is a narrative going around in social media that I think is hilarious and it is ultimately just being played upon people that don't know better. And that is that there are all these people that are out there that are making tons of money enjoying, you know, all the great things that life has to offer as entrepreneurs. And they work, you know, two to three hours a day. That's not real.
- [13:37]
B
The work life balance people.
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The work life balance people. That's, that's just not four Hour Workweek.
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B
I remember going to a big tech conference and, and somebody talked about the four Hour Workweek, which was Tim Ferriss first book. And they said, how many of you have read that book? And like almost every hand goes up and many of you are working more than four hours a week and every hand goes up. Yeah, right. And so, and again, it's a great catchy title. It's a little bit clickbaity for a quote unquote for a title. And yet the real concept of the book was to be able to work more efficiently, not to actually only work four hours a week.
- [14:11]
A
That's right.
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B
And so if you are going to be successful in business, it's going to require an enormous quantity of work.
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A
Right.
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B
In order to make the quality phenomenal. It often needs to be, or I would argue it should be. And I think you are arguing too. It should be a passion, it should be something that you really enjoy. Otherwise like it's not sustainable to work 70 or 80 hours a week on something that you hate. Right. But 70, 80 hours a week on something that you love is really, really fun.
- [14:43]
A
It's great. And here's the thing, like zoom out for a second look at your whole life, like get really high on this thing. Like way you know, 50,000 foot view. You're going to spend a lot of life on this. Sure you are. Like I, we've talked about like our business background. Like if you go 20 years of your life, like, how much is that? Right. It's a quarter, probably, or maybe, hopefully it's, you know, less, but less, but like, who knows? And so the thing is, you're going to spend a lot of life on this. If you're going to spend a lot of life on it, make it something you love. Now here's the hard part, and I think this is where we can kind of almost cross over into this conversation around the way that people talk about, like, I don't pursue my passion. The thing that you love, you may not know what that thing is yet. And so I think it's really, really important to understand that that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be something that you love at the outset.
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B
Sure.
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Hopefully you have some experience in life where you have poured a lot of time and energy into something, a lot of practice, and you've learned that you come to love things that you practice a lot.
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B
Yep.
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A
Right. Like if you do that, if you have that, then you will understand that it. This is a malleable thing. This is very malleable. And we've talked a lot on the podcast about. I probably have a whole list of things I don't think are all that malleable, particularly about things about our personality. I don't think we can really change and all those types of things. This is different than that. This is one of those things that the more you get into something, the more you read about it, the more you study, the more you learn about the complex problems that are under the hood on this whole thing, the more and more and more you tend to love it.
- [16:21]
B
And especially when it's unique. And so when it becomes a thing that is unique to you or at least has a very small amount of competition, then you are one of the few people in the world that is so passionate about this thing that you can really, truly change that industry, that world, that thing that you're so passionate about, which is an incredible feeling to have that level of control or agency in a thing that you're not just passionate about it, but you can actually change the world's view of that thing. And so, you know, for me, I was a very smart but lazy kid growing up. So I was always one of the highest scoring, you know, test takers, act, things like that in, in my class, always did very well at tests and was smart, but I just didn't, I wasn't really into work. Homework, manual labor, housework. Yeah, housework you would joke about. Every time we would go grocery shopping and come in with all the groceries, it was time for me to go to the bathroom, everything and I'd go sit down on the toilet for 10 minutes until all the groceries were brought in. And you know, I'm sort of, obviously I'm kind of embarrassed about that. And so. And then I got to college and same thing. And I just floundered in college and I went to college, I didn't know what I was going to do. Had been passionate about architecture growing up and some of that passion changed. And then my wife was a kindergarten teacher and I thought, well, if I go into a public school system and I teach, that'll be a great because we're both teachers, we'll get the summers off together, things like that. And so the reality was at 19, 20, 21 years old, I really didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. However, at the same time, really Starting at about 17 or so, I became wildly obsessed, obsessed with strength training with just the basic barbell lifts, with squatting and deadlifting and bench pressing and pressing and doing those sorts of things and went to some kind of non sanctioned competitions in high school and did very well at them. Am a super competitive person, got into college, wasn't good enough to play college sports. So I discovered the sport of powerlifting. You and I both got into that and got really fully into it and, and into that culture and that lifestyle. Now I never thought that that could be a business. It never occurred to me that my passion could be a business. And so went on to become a successful powerlifter and four different weight classes and then won my pro card in strongman. So I'm super, super obsessed and passionate about strength training and getting stronger. And then I started to notice that as I'm going to college for education, I'm going to the library and I'm checking out books written by Soviet sports coaches and professors before the Soviet Union had fallen. I'm reading about strength training and what they were doing in the Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s and I just can't read enough, I can't get enough information. So the passion is there for me. And then I started to really enjoy coaching. So now I'm coaching other people, I'm coaching friends and family members and then start and then open The Gym in 2008, Strong Gym. While I still was Teaching while I was finishing my master's to be a high school principal again, thinking that that was going to be the thing that paid the bills. And something switched in me that you saw in 2008, somewhere in that ballpark where all of the sudden I started to realize that my passion could actually be a business. And I can remember that our family in general, not just mom and dad, but other members of the family, some that were some of the early successful people in our family in business, sort of, you know, sort of made light of my like, oh, this guy. And he's going to have a gym and it's just going to be this little crappy nothing gym. And it was a crappy little nothing gym. But it allowed me to be, I was so passionate about it. It allowed me to start to read every business book I could get my hands on and apply those business lessons to, to the fitness world, to the gym world, and eventually to the online coaching world. And so what started as a passion for me to lift and then became a passion to coach turned into a passion for business in the fitness industry. Starting in a brick and mortar location and moving on to the online business. So I had the passion, I just didn't have the wherewithal to understand that that could be a successful business. Now it's grown into an eight figure plus business business. And now the family is all obviously very supportive of what I'm able to do, but I would have never been able TO in those 17 years of business ownership. Now, there were lots of hard times. And I will say I love my job, I love what I do, most of it, I absolutely love it. It does feel like play, but there are definitely times that don't feel like play. And there's definitely hard times and there's definitely, there's been lawsuits and there's, you know, there's people issues and sometimes you have to fire people or, or you know, walk through very tough things and have crucial conversations and awkward conversations. And I would not call those things play. But had I not been doing the thing that I was super passionate about, I would have quit a long time ago.
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A
Oh yeah.
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B
Because it was way too many hours and way too much work. But instead, here I am in my mid-40s and I'm just as passionate, if not more so, than I ever was about continuing to grow this business. Because it's a business that I very much believe in, that I'm very passionate about that. I believe we get to change people's lives on a daily basis, not just our clients. But our staff, our coaches, our executives, et cetera, and our investors. This is a very true story about. I did know what my passion was, and I figured out how to turn it into a business. And it's been very successful, just like you said. For some people, they won't know what their passion is until they get the experience to find a thing that they get really good at and then they find that it turns into their passion.
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A
Yeah. Sometimes you see it looking back and it just wasn't obvious whenever you first started. So, like, there's a trigger point in this, and I'd say there's actually a few that are. That are really good, telltale signs. One of them is I couldn't read enough.
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B
Yep.
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Like, that's probably it. Honestly, like, if you ever find yourself in the library constantly looking for the same types of books, probably it's good chance.
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B
Yeah.
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Right. And. And, you know, not all of these are going to be things that at the outset look like really good, profitable businesses. You know, Matt, yours is a really good example of one that I think at the outset I would have been like. I probably was like, I don't know how you're going to make money at this.
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B
Yeah.
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When it started. But then as it started getting a little further along, it starts getting clearer. Right. And that's the. That's the journey of the entrepreneur anyway.
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B
Right.
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A
It's also one of the reasons you want to be passionate about it, because you're going to need to believe it before anyone else does.
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B
And you'll also recognize where the challenges are in that industry. You know, where the problems are that need to be solved because you are so passionate about the thing. So you're thinking to yourself, I love this thing. I'm passionate about this thing. But I also recognize, here are the problems, here are the challenges, here are the speed bumps, here are the roadblocks. And because there are so few people that are as passionate about it as you are, then you can set yourself very focused on solving those problems. And so in the vast majority of industries, if you can be the true problem solver for people, there will be a big enough niche of those types of people who need that problem solved that you can have a successful business in this.
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A
That's right. I mean, I actually think one of the targets that you want to make is in order for. In order for it to be the thing that I feel like you could say, like, this is definitely my passion. This is like the thing that I'm actually working on to make the world a better place you should aim to become the world's leading expert.
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B
That's right.
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A
In that thing. The world's leading expert. Now that means that you're going to need to niche it down to something that's narrower than a big broad field type. And there's probably people listening to this right now who say, I can't imagine anything in the whole world that I could be the world's leading expert in. And I would just say of all the people that are the world's leading experts in a thing, all of those people just spent like it's doable, they just spent a lifetime doing it. But this is where you don't want to fight the tide. Spend a lifetime doing things that are easy to do for you that look like work to everybody else.
- [24:41]
B
That's right, yeah. I mean, the guy that is the world's greatest, most knowledgeable, experienced Porta Potty guy is a very successful businessman. Yep, that is a weird niche, but it's still a niche that is still got a tremendous amount of potential income and success attached to that business. And so, yes, that again, if you continue, if you continue to be in a never ending pursuit of knowledge and you continue to study a broad spectrum of things, you'll start to really see some of the cream rise to the top of the things that you really enjoy studying. As you hone in more on those things, eventually I think you will find your passion. I think what's often sad is when people live their whole life and really never discover a thing that they're passionate about at all. They live an entire life, you know, clocking in, clocking out their job. They're not super passionate about their family, they're not super passionate about their community, religion, job, you know, health, fitness, any of those things. And to me, that's, that's really sad because the thing that brings about some of the greatest joys in my life and improve my quality of life are doing the things that I'm passionate and love doing. And so in order to do that, you have to discover what that is.
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A
Yeah, that's right. This is a good opportunity. We say this in most of the podcasts, we'll say it in this one too. Being an entrepreneur, being a founder, is not for everybody. No, let's just get really clear on the fact that there are a lot of people on the planet who are super or have the ability to be super happy not pursuing this kind of chaos that we all pursue here. And they're okay just coaching the kids, team and, you know, working the Nine to five. And like, those things make them super happy. I don't know what's broken in all the rest of us. It is probably pathological.
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B
Right.
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A
But if that's not you and that's not me, then there is another route to it. And the route is through this sort of extreme obsessive, deep work into these areas that are. That. That you find interesting. Using your Porta Potty example is actually a really interesting one to just, to just go down for a second. For many people looking at that from the outside, you would say, what would you even read about? I don't even understand what. What could possibly be interesting about this. Well, these are going to be people probably that come out of the plumbing profession.
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B
Sure.
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A
And they're going to be people who might, over time, become almost completely obsessed with the chemistry of what has to happen in order for a Porta Potty to break down all the waste that's going to be inside of it.
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B
Sure.
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A
And what are the systems that can move that stuff from one place to another and as quickly as possible?
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B
Systems, Standard operating procedures. How many can we get? Instead of getting 10 or 20 or 25 porta potties set up and taken down today, can we do 200?
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A
And how can we take this from being a. An unpleasant experience that people dread.
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B
That's right.
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A
To being a super pleasant experience that people don't dread at all and maybe even are excited about. That's a crazy world. Right. Like, people are like, who gets excited about going to a porta Potty? Somebody out there is going to figure that out. And when they do, it's broken for.
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B
The rest of the world. Well, you have such a low standard of. In a Porta Potty is, you know, if you're at a ball game or a concert or something and. And you have to go to a porta Potty. Ah, I've got, you know, I'll hold it in as long as I can. But, you know, and certainly, you know, God bless the women out there that actually have to try to sit on those things or hover. And so at least as guys, for the most part, we can stand up. And so. But what's interesting is because you have such a low standard of what the Porta Potty is and what that whole system is, when you go into one that's actually really nice and clean and doesn't smell terrible, it immediately you go, wow, that was actually really. That was a really nice porta Potty. And then you look on the side of the porta Potty and it says, you know, whatever the name of the business is and the number. And you think to yourself, like, man, if I ever have to rent a Porta Potty for some reason, for some, for some event that I'm putting on, that's the company I'm going.
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A
That's the one. That's right.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So Cinera says this on. On the founders podcast, and I think it's just a really good statement. It's belief precedes ability. And that is in all founders, that is true. Your Porta Potty, the king of Porta Potties in whatever the Midwest or whoever this is going to be, is somebody who believes ahead of time that a Porta Potty experience can be an extremely pleasant experience. And maybe one people even look forward to. And the rest of the world looks at that and says, that's not possible. That's crazy. That's not possible. So anything can be this thing. I. I think that's part of. Part of the exploration. Part of the fun, I guess, is the exploration into areas that you didn't even realize that you would be excited about.
- [29:35]
B
Sure.
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A
For me, I was very early in life, I got my hands on the first computer. We were very fortunate to have these early, like, 286, 386 computers in the house. And looking back, I can now see that I was obsessive about this thing. I loved it. I read the DOS manual and it was. It was fantastic. But then that kind of died out a little bit over, you know, in my early teen years. And it wasn't until I was in college and I went through my very first programming class that I was like, this is it. This thing I'll do for the rest of my life. I'm addicted to this. This is crazy.
- [30:08]
B
I actually remember you taking that class and how passionate you were about.
- [30:12]
A
It was wild. And then the world opened up after that. It was just an amazing thing. So, again, you may not have been exposed to the thing that this is going to be. I think that's an important piece of this puzzle as you sort of think through what it is. But there is a very. There are. These indicators are really clear. What is the thing that you do that is play for you, that is work for everyone else? Yep, that's one of them. You cannot satiate yourself on enough reading or learning or videos about the thing, whatever that thing is. Yeah, there's just like, if you just keep doing it for 24 hours a day, it wouldn't be enough. Like, you. You wake up wanting more like, what is that? So the more that you can turn that thing into your life's work, the better. Now, how ultimately do you make this fun? So there's a couple of things that I think that are just like, little tricks that. That are really useful. One of them is to pair. Start pairing things that you already love with a thing that you would like to love or that you think you might. It might be on that spectrum of things that are possible for me on the computer stuff that I do and sort of the learning and all that. I always have a cup of coffee with it. I love a cup of coffee. Over time, it seems like a small thing, but it's not a small thing. Over time, my brain is associated a lot of pleasant feelings, a lot of valuable insights, and all those things with this moment where I'm sitting in a very particular chair. Over 20 years, I can probably tell you the chair across all of those years. It's always one chair in the house that I sit in. My feet are up. There's like this setup. That's the one. I'm drinking coffee, I have my headphones on, and the world is changing under my fingertips. Lightning is coming out of the ceiling. It's just crazy. I can't explain it in any other way than to just say it's this. It's a wild. It can become this wild experience over enough time. You build up this expertise and you imagine, like, if that's the experience regularly enough, of course you become the world's expert. Of course you do.
- [32:23]
B
James Clear talks a lot about this in Atomic Habits, about pairing these things that you love. And so it's not just that you love the work that you're doing, but also all of the things are sort of part of that. That work process. So the. The atmosphere, the comfortable chair, the coffee, the whatever those things are, all of them add up to be a greater and greater and more enjoyable and more enjoyable experience. So that, again, this is why I look forward to waking up early in the morning, because it's completely undistracted time. The house is very quiet. My phone's not going off, my email's not going off. And so I get to just do undistracted work that I love while also drinking great coffee. You know, I. Popping a Zen in, right? Getting a little nicotine, getting a little caffeine. You know, you do your alcohol swabs on your nose, you know, earbuds in, but you've got that routine that you're doing that makes it so that it is as Enjoyable as possible. You do that over and over and over again. And you do that 4x5x10x more than anybody else is doing it because you love it. You're not grinding, you're not rising grind. You wake up and you're excited to do the thing. The more you do that, the more you just build the moat away from everyone else and become an expert and then one of the best experts and then the best expert and then someone who can actually probably never catch up with your expertise like that is. That's the goal.
- [33:45]
A
You are so far ahead of everyone else, no one will ever get there. I think that's exactly what it is. And I think in the long run, I think this is why as you look at different people in different areas, and certainly if you're the kind of person who studies founders, like, again, we've said this many times. I've quoted him twice. I think in this one, you should listen to David Sinra's founders podcast. It's incredible. If you listen to that stuff and you're confused how, like, these are superhumans. These are gods among men. They aren't. They are not that. They are just obsessed people that allowed their obsession to continue down the line of the thing that they love the most. They spent their life doing a thing that they loved.
- [34:27]
B
Yep, that's right.
- [34:27]
A
And it was easy and it was play for them. So what that creates at the end of the day is a virtuous cycle. And the virtuous cycle is this. The more you enjoy something, the more time you spend on it. The more time you spend on it, the more mastery you're going to get. The more mastery you gain, the more fulfillment you feel. And the more fulfillment you feel, the more you enjoy something. And now we're back to the beginning, repeat forever, and you just become the world's expert in the thing.
- [34:57]
B
Yeah. Yeah. That's excellent. So that's the argument for following your passion or finding your passion and turning your passion into your business. There certainly we've all heard the conversation about when you. When your passion becomes your job, it's no longer your passion. I disagree with that.
- [35:14]
A
Agreed.
- [35:14]
B
I think where that comes from, from previous conversations we had on the podcast, is if your passion is to be the technician in the business, in the job, and all you ever do is be the technician, then eventually you just get overwhelmed with work. In the technical aspect, if your passion is sort of everything having to do with this industry or this thing, then what will end up happening is you'll spend your time Learning, as I did for a long time on how to get strong and how to actually exercise and how to do the thing. But then that knowledge pursuit became how to get other people strong, and then that knowledge became and that pursuit of knowledge became how to run a gym or how to be a business owner to how to do this in the online sphere, how to actually provide a level of coaching that no one else has been able to provide in the online sphere. All of the good things about the in person coaching with none of the bad things, without being in bondage to the schedule or the location or the price is much better, all of those sorts of things, and then you become passionate about being the best leader you can, the best CEO you can, you know, all of those things. So I'm no longer as passionate as I was about learning how to get strong. Now I'm very passionate about how to be as successful of a leader, owner, founder, CEO, president of the company as I can possibly be in that same industry that I've been passionate about since I was 17. What you choose to learn about continues to expand as you continue to grow in your expertise in your business. Right. So this is where the, this is where really being able to niche down and become an incredible expert in a specific niche becomes wildly successful. The potential for success there. You know, I could be just the greatest coach in the world across many different avenues and I would argue that that probably doesn't exist, but eventually what I've been able to do is continue to niche down. Strength athlete, strength coach, gym owner, founder, owner of online coaching business, CEO, leader. And so it continues to niche down and as you do, the business becomes more and more successful because we continue to pursue our, our passion.
- [37:30]
A
Yep, that's right. And I mean you niche down and then you. And then it can expand later. So the niching down, part of the niching down is it makes the expertise easier to get. You can get it in a more narrower ban, but the longer you run at it, it makes sense that that kind of starts spreading out over time. You need to learn tangential concepts. You know, one of the reasons I think that you expanded what you did into a business was because you were so passionate about training people. It's funny, I worked out with you for a very, very long time and you seemed more passionate about training me than you did about training yourself.
- [38:06]
B
Right, sure.
- [38:07]
A
You could see minute things in what I was doing that were not quite right more easily than. Because I mean, you're not outside yourself, you can't see your own motion Right, Sure. And I think part of the business was I can just do this, I can affect more change across, you know, the, the world. If, if I do this with a business, that's the vehicle, that's the right vehicle to get this thing done. Correct. So that's it. That's the game. As much as you can make this part of your life, it will make your life so much better, so much easier if you have the ability to turn the thing that you do that ultimately does make money and is valuable is also something that you love.
- [38:42]
B
Yep. Absolutely.
- [38:43]
A
Awesome.
- [38:43]
B
That's another episode of the build you'd business podcast with Matt and Chris Reynolds. Again, would always love a honest review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast of course on YouTube as well. Probably don't mention that enough, but we've got this on video. I think it's much more enjoyable to watch on video and not just listen on podcasts and so would love a review from you. Share it please with a friend or family member, business coworker, anyone that you know that is in this world and certainly could benefit from the value that we bring on the podcast. We'll continue to try to bring high value content podcast every single week. We've got a big long list of things to talk about, but we are always open to hearing suggestions if there are things that you want to learn about or things you're nervous about or anxious about, that's the point of the podcast, to help remove that anxiety and sort of walk through it with you from a couple guys who've done it before. And so that is, that's our goal. Like that's our passion now. I think as we get deeper in our in business experience is now helping others to be able to do the same thing that we've done and hopefully learn a lot of these life's lessons and business lessons from us so that they don't have to go through all of the hardships that we went through. There's still going to be hardships, but if we can take all the things that we've Learned in nearly 40 years of business ownership collectively and you can learn lessons from that man you are. I would love to have had something like this when I was just getting started. So that's why we do it. So thank you so much for listening. Thanks for giving us your time and we'll see you guys next Friday.