How Entrepreneurs Can Prioritize Fitness & Boost Business Success with Anthony Ng Monica | Ep.93

Summary

Built Online - Episode 93: How Entrepreneurs Can Prioritize Fitness & Boost Business Success with Anthony Ng Monica

Release Date: March 24, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Built Online, host Cody McGuffey sits down with Anthony Ng Monica, a seasoned entrepreneur and founder of Daily Body Coach (DBC). The conversation delves into the pivotal role of fitness in enhancing business performance, the common pitfalls entrepreneurs face in maintaining their health, and actionable strategies to integrate fitness seamlessly into a demanding entrepreneurial lifestyle.

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Anthony Ng’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Anthony Ng introduces himself as an entrepreneur passionate about building businesses from the ground up. With a background in running a SaaS company and over a decade of experience in various entrepreneurial ventures, Anthony emphasizes his intrinsic drive to create and operate businesses.

Anthony Ng [02:19]: "I consider myself like an operator as well."

His journey began in his early twenties, balancing IT support roles while attending university in London. Anthony's initial foray into entrepreneurship was driven by a desire to simplify consumer decisions, leading him to create solutions that bundled high-margin products for e-commerce retailers.

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The Intersection of Fitness and Business Success

A significant portion of the discussion centers on how physical fitness directly impacts business performance. Anthony shares his personal experience of neglecting fitness during the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to decreased energy levels, increased stress, and diminished confidence—all factors that adversely affected his business operations.

Anthony Ng [03:53]: "Imagine you're feeling like 5 out of 10. You're bringing your 5 out of 10 version to everything that you do. So how can you expect to make the best, optimal decisions if you're just 5 out of 10 version of yourself?"

Cody concurs, highlighting how physical well-being can amplify business success by enhancing energy, focus, and overall productivity.

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Challenges Entrepreneurs Face in Maintaining Fitness

Entrepreneurs often grapple with time constraints, high stress levels, and erratic schedules, making it challenging to prioritize fitness. Anthony identifies the lack of accountability and the influx of distracting obligations (like client meetings, business travel, and social commitments) as primary barriers.

Anthony Ng [05:45]: "So, you need the accountability to balance that out."

He underscores the importance of systems over plans, advocating for adaptable routines that accommodate the fluid nature of entrepreneurial life. This approach ensures that fitness remains a consistent part of daily life, regardless of external disruptions.

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Debunking Nutrition and Fitness Myths

A key segment of the episode addresses common misconceptions about nutrition and exercise, particularly the overemphasis on restrictive diets such as cutting out carbohydrates entirely.

Anthony Ng [06:54]: "It's much easier to actually have a six pack than it is to be a millionaire for sure."

Both Anthony and Cody share their experiences with extreme dietary measures, discussing how such approaches are unsustainable and often lead to burnout and unhealthy binging behaviors.

Anthony highlights that 80% of fitness results stem from nutrition, while only 20% come from exercise. He stresses the need for a balanced approach, emphasizing that sustainable changes are more effective than drastic restrictions.

Anthony Ng [07:36]: "A lot of people index a lot heavier onto, like training, for example. So, like, I think that's an imbalance."

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Building a Supportive Environment

The conversation shifts to the importance of a supportive environment in maintaining fitness goals. Anthony explains how involving family and friends in nutritional consultations can create a conducive atmosphere for healthy habits.

Anthony Ng [24:07]: "I think it's also involving them in the consultation that we have with our nutritionists... understanding what menu selection choices you should be making."

Cody shares his own experience of having a supportive spouse, Christina, who aids in his fitness journey, illustrating how mutual support systems can significantly enhance adherence to health plans.

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Daily Body Coach (DBC): A Unique Approach to Fitness

Anthony Ng elaborates on his venture, Daily Body Coach, a premium online coaching service tailored specifically for entrepreneurs and executives. DBC offers:

1. Customized Training Plans: Adaptable to clients' schedules and locations, ensuring workouts are feasible even during travel or busy workdays.
2. Personalized Nutrition Guidance: Clients send photographs of their meals to nutritionists who provide tailored advice, fostering accountability and informed dietary choices.
3. Concierge Services: Handling logistics such as meal planning for restaurants or providing gym recommendations during travel, minimizing decision fatigue.

Anthony Ng [60:43]: "We're a premium online coaching service to help entrepreneurs get into the best physical shape and perform their best."

This holistic approach ensures that fitness becomes an integrated and sustainable aspect of entrepreneurs' lives, rather than an afterthought.

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Practical Tips for Entrepreneurs

When asked for practical fitness and nutrition tips, Anthony provides actionable advice:

1. Integrate Fitness into Daily Routines:

   • Habit Stacking: Combine fitness activities with existing habits, such as walking while participating in meetings.
   • Utilize Technology: Employ tools like walking treadmills to incorporate movement into sedentary work environments.

2. Simplify Nutrition Choices:

   • Plan Ahead: Identify and approve healthy meal options in advance, especially when relying on services like Uber Eats.
   • Stay Hydrated: Keep water accessible and track intake based on individual needs.

3. Focus on Consistency Over Perfection:

   • Avoid Extreme Measures: Instead of drastic diet cuts, adopt balanced eating habits that can be maintained long-term.
   • Accountability Systems: Use services or partner with others to stay motivated and on track.

Anthony Ng [19:20]: "Good consistently over time equals great results."

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Advice and Lessons Learned

During the Rapid Fire segment, Anthony shares his insights:

• Favorite Business Book: Pitch Anything – for its transformative approach to sales and capital raising.
• Worst Business Advice Received: The necessity of having co-founders. Anthony emphasizes that while partnerships can be beneficial, they are not mandatory and can sometimes lead to complications like equity splits and interpersonal conflicts.

Anthony Ng [81:46]: "That you need co-founders... doesn't mean that you actually do."

He advises aspiring entrepreneurs to identify and leverage their unique strengths and to focus on excellence in specific areas rather than spreading themselves too thin across multiple marketing channels or business strategies.

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Key Takeaways

1. Fitness Enhances Business Performance: Maintaining physical health boosts energy, reduces stress, and improves decision-making capabilities, all of which are crucial for entrepreneurial success.

2. Sustainable Habits Over Extreme Measures: Consistent, manageable fitness and nutrition routines are more effective and sustainable than drastic, short-term changes.

3. Support Systems are Crucial: Involving family, friends, and utilizing accountability tools or services like DBC can significantly aid in maintaining health goals amidst entrepreneurial pressures.

4. Leverage Unique Strengths: Entrepreneurs should identify their competitive advantages and focus on areas where they can excel, rather than conforming to generic business advice.

5. Continuous Learning and Adaptation: Embracing a growth mindset through continuous education via books, podcasts, and practical experience fosters both personal and business development.

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Conclusion

Episode 93 of Built Online offers a compelling exploration of the symbiotic relationship between fitness and business success. Anthony Ng Monica provides valuable insights drawn from his entrepreneurial journey, underscoring the importance of prioritizing health to unlock peak performance in the business realm. The episode serves as an inspiring guide for entrepreneurs seeking to harmonize their personal well-being with their professional ambitions.

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Connect with Anthony Ng Monica:

• Website: DailyBodyCoach.com
• LinkedIn: Anthony Ng Monica

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This summary captures the essence of the conversation between Cody McGuffey and Anthony Ng Monica, providing listeners with a comprehensive overview of the key points discussed in the episode.

Transcript

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. So we helped e commerce retailers to automatically bundle products together that were typically high margin. So, for example, if we were selling, let's say, an iPhone, we'd recommend a case or a screen protector to go alongside.

[Cody McGuffey]

All online.

[Anthony Ng]

All online.

[Cody McGuffey]

Welcome to Built online. I'm Cody McGuffey, and this podcast is all about one thing. Building the business of your dreams. Selling art, teaching classes, starting a blog, launching a brand. Whatever your passion is, we show you how to turn it into real income. I created Everbee to help anyone with a dream start and scale business.

[Anthony Ng]

Ever be, ever be, ever be Ever be, ever be, ever be.

[Cody McGuffey]

We now serve over 800,000 creators all across the globe. On this show, we bring on real entrepreneurs who've done it. They share their secrets. They share their failures. The exact steps that you can take to get started. What if you can get one golden nugget out of today's episode? And it's the breakthrough that takes. Takes you from just dreaming to actually living a life on your terms. At Everbee, we believe that every human is a creator, and every creator should own a business. Anthony made it.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

What's up, man?

[Anthony Ng]

What's up? How's it going?

[Cody McGuffey]

Great. Happy you're here, man.

[Anthony Ng]

You too.

[Cody McGuffey]

Thank you. You have a cool story, a really cool story, and I'm kind of getting a chance to witness your story as it's continuing to unfold. And I really appreciate you coming on.

[Anthony Ng]

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[Cody McGuffey]

How would you describe, like, yourself? Are you a trainer, a nutritionist, entrepreneur, founder, creator, Business owner? Typically, if they ask, yeah, I'm an entrepreneur.

[Anthony Ng]

So I really, really enjoyed building something from the ground up. That's me through and through.

[Cody McGuffey]

Why do you say entrepreneur and not necessarily like founder or, I guess, coach? Because that's kind of what you're doing now. Which one?

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, I mean, I've got a background, like, running a SAS company. Before that I did for 10 years. And I think prior to that, I was always, as a kid running random different businesses. So I think it's really kind of inside my DNA, I guess I identify with just simply creating something from nothing, trying to build it as much as possible. Yeah. And I consider myself like an operator as well.

[Cody McGuffey]

Before we get ever get into, like, all the details of the story and everything like that, I do have a couple questions. Okay. You're primarily based in London right now.

[Anthony Ng]

That's right.

[Cody McGuffey]

Also, Lisbon, you've been doing travel around all the US for the past, I think, multiple weeks. Where have you been? Who have you had with You. Why are you here?

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, of course. So we're part of an entrepreneur community called Hampton. So, like, you and I are basically, it's like a highly vetted community of, like, successful and ambitious founders. As part of that, they were holding a peak performance retreat in Deer Valley in Utah. So we were skiing with them. And basically, like, we took care of, like, all of the nutrition for. For all of the members. So, like, working with a private chef to help them, you know, get the right nutrition to fuel their workouts and. And, like, teach them a few things. And we also ran nutrition consultations with them. So I was with. Our lead nutritionist is Good Barbara. So she came along, and then after that, we went to San Francisco. We met up with a few of our clients out there. So even though we're based in London or In Europe, about 95 of our business actually comes out of the U.S. so we're hanging out with them in San Francisco and for a few days. And then we came out to Austin, actually, to film you in the case study for. For Daily Body Coach and do this podcast.

[Cody McGuffey]

Let's go. Yeah, you said that. You told me this. I don't know if you remember this, but you said that when you are in, like, the. The best physical shape.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Or that when you're in great physical shape, that your business operates better.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

You make more money and you're more successful overall.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Why do you say that?

[Anthony Ng]

I think there's a huge difference in making sure your body has everything it needs in order to function. It's like the vehicle of your life. So I. I can tell you that, like, when I was running my previous company, there were some times that got out of shape. I used to run an e Comm SaaS company, and as you know, like, in that industry, like, when stores closed during COVID online started really booming and my work levels really increased. I was also stuck in another country, so I was in Belgium because I was traveling at the time. So that obviously changed my routine and also did also, like, you know, like, having gyms closed as well. So I found it difficult to, like, work out. And I really saw the difference in terms of, like, getting out of shape. I got again, maybe around, like, £18 at the time. That would wake up a lot more tired. I was more susceptible to stress. I would have less energy, become less confident. Not happy with the way I'd see myself in the mirror when I woke up in the morning. And to be honest, I didn't identify with what I saw in the mirror because most of the time I'd be, you know, pretty fit and like in decent shape. And that was kind of the first time in that 10 year journey that I kind of let myself go.

[Cody McGuffey]

And now it's about £18. Like you consider letting yourself go.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Because I know what it's like to feel in peak performance versus, like, when it's not. And I think you kind of, kind of look at, it's like imagine you're, you're feeling like 5 out of 10. You're bringing your 5 out of 10 version to everything that you do. So like to your family, to your, to your business, to absolutely everything. And so like, how can you expect to make the best, optimal decisions if you're just 5 out of 10 version of yourself?

[Cody McGuffey]

It's 50% that's failing. Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

In schools and, and that's just not good. Right. And I think one of the things that I want to do is I want to be sharp, I want to have energy, I want to be able to like, keep plowing through. Like running a business is a journey that takes, you know, everything from you for many, many, many years. So it's like you need to be fit enough to be able to sprint in the marathon that you're running.

[Cody McGuffey]

Why is it that we let ourselves get out of shape? And I come from a place of, it's my experience right where. And most people listening to this right now, they're business creators, they're, they're motivated people, they want to make changes in their lives. And when they set a goal, they go and get that goal.

[Anthony Ng]

Yep.

[Cody McGuffey]

And when they set a fitness goal, I want to lose 20 pounds, I want to be 15 body fat and I'm 30, let's say, or I want to be 10 body fat. When they set that goal, they're serious. They actually mean that.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

But then time slips by maybe a week, two weeks, three weeks, sometimes three months, and they somehow like lose that clarity or something. What is happening, do you think?

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, I think it's actually a really, really complex topic and I think there's many reasons why people actually fail at doing it. So it's actually quite interesting. There's more people walking around with a six pack than there are. Sorry, more people walking around as a millionaire than walking around with a six pack. And interestingly, yeah, it's actually much easier to actually have a six pack. It's a simple. You mean then being a millionaire for sure. Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

It's easier to be a millionaire than it is to have a six pack.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. Without a doubt.

[Cody McGuffey]

Gotcha.

[Anthony Ng]

No, wait. So, sorry. Sorry. Without another round. So it's easier to have a six pack than it is to be a millionaire.

[Cody McGuffey]

Oh, interesting.

[Anthony Ng]

And I, I believe a lot of the people that become a millionaire have the traits to be able to get a six pack. You've got discipline, naturally, you, you're able to set goals and achieve them, go through, like, maybe hard times to go get to those outcomes, all of that type of stuff. You've got the foundation to be able to succeed at doing it. I also think that when I look at the main reason, so I think there's a lot of misinformation around training and nutrition. So I think a lot of people don't have that then in particular, when we look at Nutrition, it's like 80% of the results come from nutrition. 20% are going to come from working.

[Cody McGuffey]

Out abs you build in the kitchen.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, 100%. And so. But a lot of people index a lot heavier onto, like training, for example. So, like, I think that's an imbalance. Then people believe that they know how to eat because they eat every day. But actually it's incredibly. It's very complex, but it's also quite simple. At the same time, I also find that particularly with, like, the entrepreneurial type of people that are pushing the envelope, they are people that have high levels of stress and, like, demanding schedules. So it really takes more effort to be able to understand how to. Like, a plan is not enough. You need a basic system that you can leverage to be able to, like, adapt to things. So, for example, if you're going to be traveling for work, or you've got less time to sleep, or your baby's crying so you didn't sleep so well, all of these things can influence that change in routine, the plan that you're following. And most of those plans aren't adapted to people that live those types of lifestyles. They adapt. They're created by somebody that lives in the gym, for example, and that's just not reality for the, for those types of people.

[Cody McGuffey]

Why do you think in your experience of building your first company. Which we'll get into in a minute. Yeah. Why did you start to slip, though? I mean, you're like, you're filing, firing on all cylinders. You're, you're fired up, you're probably already in pretty good shape, but somehow you started to kind of slip away. 18 pounds, right? Heavier. Yeah. Why do you think that's happening? And I ask for myself, I also ask for all the people listening to this Right now, who are creators, entrepreneurs, business owners that are. They find that they have challenging the time schedules. Yeah, maybe they have a family, kids, their mom, their dad. The business is sucking so much energy from them and they can't even think about getting the workout in.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, I think we go through like ups and downs in life. Everybody goes through them. I think as entrepreneurs we go through more than the norm because we also have the added pressure from work as well as everything else that we need to deal with. And I think it comes down to often not having simply the accountability that you need to make sure that somebody's always pushing you back in line. And I think if we look at the amount of marketing or like the pull that we're getting from all sorts of other things to go like eat bad or to go do something else, come, let's go get a drink, business lunch, have to go travel. All of these types of things pulling you one way, you need the accountability to balance that out. Um, so I find that even myself, for example, I still use the daily body coach service to make sure that I am also held accountable to stay in shape. And then I think the second thing is that when you've got those high levels of stress or like different things that pop up, they are opportunities to throw you off your routine. And when that happens, it's like that presents a risk. So having somebody that can just adapt everything for you, so which is like what we do. So like if you're going to go to a restaurant, we help you pick off the menu. If you're going to travel, you forward on your flights and we'll take care of like the logistics behind that, what you should take with you on the plane, all of these types of things. Like having an EA, for example, to take care of those things means that you can just do that on autopilot and still live your life. And that's. That's what we basically help to do.

[Cody McGuffey]

It's interesting you mentioned about like founders, entrepreneurs. They. They tend to. I don't even know if you ever said this or I was thinking it when you were saying it is that we tend to. We're motivated people. Right. Like we do our own information or I'm sorry, our own homework, our own research. And we tend to trust ourselves pretty often. Right?

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And great. In a lot of the founder setting, the entrepreneur setting, building a company, you got to trust yourself. It's very important. But it works against. Actually, I'll speak from personal experience. It has worked against me in nutrition game a little bit. Too. Yeah, it's where I have thought I knew certain things that were just fundamental truths about nutrition training. And then when you speak to somebody that this is, they live and breathe this, for example, you or Barbara or your team, like this is all I think about and they see a wide spectrum of people like me and it almost like breaks down these like oh, that's actually was completely false. Can we talk about some of those things that are. Yeah, I guess myths or common beliefs that were just probably. I don't want to say wrong. It's kind of so extreme. But the point is like it we blow them out of proportion.

[Anthony Ng]

100. So I, I think Luke and talk about one that like both you and I went through. So for example, that's like cutting carbohydrates, right? So carbohydrates is a store of basics, like your energy. So as an entrepreneur you have a lot of things to do. You don't want to have a lack of energy because you need to perform and do well. And I can tell you from my own personal experience, I've got into like really lean shape, let's say like sub 10 body fat by cutting out carbohydrates basically completely for 90 days.

[Cody McGuffey]

So you have done that?

[Anthony Ng]

Yep, I have done that. And the problem is it's kind of like a self fulfilling prophecy. So you do that and you say, well it worked when I cut carbohydrates. So therefore that's the answer. But if you're going to eat carbohydrates at some point, you basically learn to do something that wasn't sustainable. So you didn't actually learn anything. And it's kind of like making money. Right. So wealth accumulation is very different to wealth preservation. And so just because it worked in one way to be able to like cut the carbs to go get the body fat that you wanted, it doesn't mean that you're going to be able to have that same plan and continue that for decades to come. Likely as you can't. Your body's not going to be able to function well. You. I also became like very irritable. My moods weren't as good, energy levels were low and then I would also binge eat as well because I had lack of energy. So my body's requesting for me to have either calorically dense foods to compensate for those that lack of energy or to get sweets, which is basically sugar to give me an instant release of energy.

[Cody McGuffey]

It's so contrary to the stuff that we see on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube and you scroll through and literally you can find, like, no carbs. No carbs. I cut carbs. I got a six pack with no carbs. It's so common.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And it is. And I'm not necessarily here to say that's wrong. Like, I'm here to say that in my experience, I did that for ever since I was done playing college football for the past 10 years. And it worked, but then it didn't work. And it was like this pendulum that would swing back so hard after I come off of, like, you know, multiple weeks of doing, like, no carbs or very little carbs. And then for the past, whatever, six months, I've eaten more carbs on a daily basis than I have my, like, entire life, probably.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And then you lose weight and you also put on muscle because you're just doing the right things. It's not about the carbs or not carbs.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

It's about the entire, like, plan, essentially.

[Anthony Ng]

Exactly.

[Cody McGuffey]

And you really comes out to, like, calories in, calories out.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

At the end of the day, it's so interesting because there's probably people right now that are. They're probably just like, I was. They're like, oh, I need to. Intermittent fast. I need to, like, not eat, you know, until like, 12pm every single day. And I need to not eat after 5pm and also, I can't have any carbs. Like, gee whiz. It's so challenging to do that. Yeah. It's not impossible. Just fighting hard.

[Anthony Ng]

I also think, like, if you limit anything or restrict so heavily, you end up not being able to do it for a long period of time. It's as simple as that. Like, so, for example, by cutting out carb, the thing I enjoy eating most is sourdough bread with peanut butter. Now, with. If I'm just, like, cutting out carbohydrates, it means I can't have the thing I enjoy the most. Like, it makes much more sense to build the plan over things that you enjoy to do that you can then maintain doing it, let's say 90% of the time with your eyes closed, versus forcing yourself to do something that, you know, over months or even years as a period, I will for sure have the urge to eat that bread. So it just doesn't make sense to cut it out. And it's actually good for you to have carbohydrates. It's just there's very different sources. Right. You've got French fries and then you can have, like, healthier source of carbohydrates.

[Cody McGuffey]

So brown rice, Very, very oatmeal.

[Anthony Ng]

So very, very different types of carbohydrates you can have. But I think they get just like blacklisted.

[Cody McGuffey]

They do, they absolutely do. And that's why you see like the, I mean, literally everything in the store, like, it's positioned that way too, of like zero carbs or like zero carbs and like all this stuff. Yeah. And.

[Anthony Ng]

And it is funny because it's like, I think then our parents generation, they got told something different, which was like, you should have fat free.

[Cody McGuffey]

That's right.

[Anthony Ng]

And then like our generation got told that we should have no carbs.

[Cody McGuffey]

You need no protein coming next.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. Now it's a high protein thing, but I think like, even then, like some people go way too much on the protein. It's just like you should be getting it from other macronutrients, those calories as well. So. And for the protein to function effectively, you need the carbohydrates to go alongside it. Right. So there's a lot of things there. And I think, honestly, I think the school system does a really poor job at like showing people the importance of having food. And I think, or the right food. Like, I can tell someone if, unless you've actually experienced, I think it's a challenge for our business, is that unless you've actually experienced what it feels like to perform your best, you don't really know what that is.

[Cody McGuffey]

That's true.

[Anthony Ng]

And that's quite hard to then communicate to someone. Like, actually you're missing out on like 50 of your life and your energy that you should be able to have. The closest I can get to explaining that is like, imagine you're eating like McDonald's for like lunch and dinner. You feel slow, heavy, tired. Imagine you had the exact opposite feeling. And like, people just don't even know what that is. But I think for me, when I had it and then got out of shape, that was a huge difference. And I even realized that the way I did it the first time we're cutting carbohydrates was like, felt even better than when I was, when I gained weight. So like. But then when I had like proper plans actually created for me, that was not just around like my body composition, but also my energy levels, my mood and things like that and cognition, all of these types of things then helped me perform much better. And I realized that I was eating way more, I was happier and I performed better and I looked better. So I was like, there was no reason to do what I was Doing right?

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

Work hard or smart.

[Cody McGuffey]

It's interesting. When I started working with you.

[Anthony Ng]

I.

[Cody McGuffey]

Remember this feeling of, oh, this is a lot of food.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Like this is way too much. There's no possible way I'm going to lose weight. Look at all the oatmeal. Like, look at all like the brown rice. Like this is way too many carbs. I was, I was resistant mentally. I don't think I shared it with you, but I was resistant because I'm like, this is so contrary to what I've been doing for the past 10 years. And I've lost weight and I've gained weight and I've gained muscle and lost muscle like in the past 10 years. So like I thought I knew certain things and, and then I'm like, as I'm eating this, I like, I didn't, I didn't feel starving either. That's an interesting thing. I was expecting to feel starving.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

In order to have results. Because that's how founders think we think.

[Anthony Ng]

No pain, no gain.

[Cody McGuffey]

Exactly. No pain, no gain. Like that's our entire life is built around that. Like we have to struggle, we have to sacrifice in order to get the result. And the more that we sacrifice and the better the result typically. And the more that we struggle, like the better the outcome. And a lot of that is true in a lot of ways, but doesn't have to be true all the time.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And so when I wasn't hungry, when I wasn't super hungry, I was hungry, but when I wasn't super hungry, I was, did not think I was losing like for example, a pound. And then I'd be like, oh yeah, that's interesting. That wasn't that hard.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. I mean we get told that a lot of times that people say they're, they're eating way more and how can it possibly be? And I think it's just that a lot of people have been in such extreme deficits, starving themselves, thinking that that's what they need to do, but that's the reason they'll go and binge more after because they're just going to compensate for the deficit that they created.

[Cody McGuffey]

That's exactly right.

[Anthony Ng]

And so they just assume that they were losing weight when they were in such an extreme. It's like that self fulfilling prophecy. When I starve, I lose weight for sure. But what you don't realize that after you just consume more and that's why you keep yo yoing and you don't really make much progress. So the trick is good consistently over time Equals great results.

[Cody McGuffey]

Say that again.

[Anthony Ng]

Good. Consistently over time equals great results.

[Cody McGuffey]

So what you did, what you didn't say was perfect consistently over time equals great results or great consistently over time equals great results? You just said good.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Which is great. Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

It's just.

[Cody McGuffey]

Why what did equal what equals good, for example, in a day?

[Anthony Ng]

I think it depends on the person and the starting point that they've got. So, like, if you're, let's say obese and you're like, really struggling, you don't need to actually make that many tweaks in order to be able to, like, get your body fat down. Whereas I think if you're trying to optimize, let's say going from like 10 down to 8%, you've got to do like some sacrifice to get to that point. And I think a lot of people believe that kind of that no pain, no gain type of scenario is just about making the right tweaks for the person that just continuously makes. Get them to have like, the progress. Right. Like. Like to get your first sale as, like a business owner, you don't have to be the greatest salesman on the planet. You just need to focus on getting that first cell. It's the same thing as, like, you want to drop those first, like five, ten pounds. If you're, like, really overweight, then you don't need to do that much to actually be able to do that. So we believe in just doing it so you can sustainably do it over time and introducing things over time versus doing like a complete overhaul. So you see a lot of people, like, January, New Year's resolutions, they last on average six weeks when they're going at it all guns blazing.

[Cody McGuffey]

So somebody sign up on January 1st. We've heard this before. Yeah, January. January 1st. And then they're done, like midway through February, they're like, completely back to their old self.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, it's gone, like, all gone.

[Cody McGuffey]

Wow.

[Anthony Ng]

And. And it's funny because it's just they went out the gate too excited. It's like you're going to start a marathon and you decided to sprint at the beginning.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

You're not going to have the fastest time.

[Cody McGuffey]

That's very interesting. Many people listening to this right now are. Almost all of them are creators, entrepreneurs, businesses. As I mentioned, they struggle. Just like you struggled with this. I struggled with this. Of balancing, or. I don't want to use the word balancing. Integrating.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Their family.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Their business, their social circle and their health, nutrition, fitness.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

It's such a challenging thing for our society. What are the things that they need to be doing or what mindset shifts should they be having when it comes to the feeling of how do you have the time?

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. So first of all, I think it's understanding that 80% of the results come from nutrition. So in reality it takes you the same amount of time to eat something healthy versus something bad. Right. Or let's say something going against your health goals. So it's kind of like even if you're going to uber eat something, you can still make a healthy option. It doesn't mean we've got to order five guys. Right. So I know it's going to take the same amount of time to get it delivered. So I think that's first of all like really an important thing. It's not really about the time. I think another thing I'd say also it's about the person's environment. So for example, if you work in an office and you work at home, you should have almost two plans that allow you to work, to do, to have your nutrition dialed in if you're at home or if you're at the office because it's a different environment. The other thing you want to also consider is your partner, your family and how that integrates as well. So for example, you'll notice that if you have a healthy partner, you're likely to also exhibit healthy behaviors. Same thing if you've got healthy friends. Like you're the average of the five people around you. Right. Like we've heard that all the time. Similar thing here. So it's really important to obviously look at the behaviors that you have. So for example, like with your wife, it's understanding where does she like to eat normally, where would she ubereats if she doesn't have much time. All of these types of things then understanding what menu selection choices you should be making when she's doing that. So you can basically integrate your life, your nutrition and health within the lifestyle that you actually lead today. And I, I think that's really, really important. So like, rather than trying to do it as an isolated thing alone, because isolation means that you can only do it for a certain period of time.

[Cody McGuffey]

The sustainability aspect is like you need to get your tribe kind of rallying around you.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Is there situations where cuz you have lots of customers and clients from all realms of the world and also cultures and everything.

[Anthony Ng]

For sure.

[Cody McGuffey]

So different marriages are different. Let's say a spouse is supportive and sometimes the spouse is not supportive.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Speak from my experience, like Christina, my wife is extremely Supportive of, like, everything, first of all, but specifically with, like, food and nutrition. And also she's also. Also an influence for me, too, because she happens to be interested in this too. Like, she was a kinesiology major. She was in. In pt. And she is fairly fit. Very fit, actually. My point is, like, even after having three kids, my point is she's like the ideal for me, the supportive wife.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

But I imagine not everybody has a supportive partner without them when it comes to stuff like this. And that makes another big challenge that I've never really experienced. How does somebody deal with this?

[Anthony Ng]

I think it's also involving them in the consultation that we have with our nutritionists, for example, to understand what do they like doing, what's important to them, because everyone's got different, like, goals and things like that.

[Cody McGuffey]

Right.

[Anthony Ng]

So it's really important to understand what that is and how we can integrate it in an easy way. I also think. Let me think. So I also found that. So that's one way, obviously, trying to, like, get them to join. And there's another way that, honestly, if you go it alone sometimes, what I found is that typically after three to four months, their partner usually asked to actually sign on to our service.

[Cody McGuffey]

Oh, interesting.

[Anthony Ng]

So once you've made enough advancement, they start seeing it and think, maybe I should be doing that as well.

[Cody McGuffey]

That's the ideal. Yeah, for everybody. Like, for the partnership for 100.

[Anthony Ng]

And I think. But there's two things, right? Either they just, like, support you, and if they don't actually, you going ahead. Typically, we find a huge proportion of our clients, three to four months later, they'll join on anyway. And then I think they join. And then the kids also later on experience, like, being healthier. They get to build good habits, let's say a younger age versus like, when they're 30, 40, 50. Because that's a lot harder to do.

[Cody McGuffey]

Right.

[Anthony Ng]

Which is the reality of most of our clients today.

[Cody McGuffey]

What is the cost of not being fit? Or maybe not fit? What is the cost of not. Yeah, what does it cost not being fit for a parent.

[Anthony Ng]

I would say it's your health, not being able to play with your children, maybe not being able to play with your grandchildren at a later age, not being able to, like, be mobile as you, like, start to age, shorter lifespan, not bringing your best self to everything that you do. And I think for, like, the audience that you have here is that, like, these are people that want to achieve a lot. They want to do well, and they want to set a good example. And I think being healthy is a big, big part of it. You don't want to be like, remembered as the guy that was like overweight, that lacked energy, that had loads of health issues, especially when a lot of them can be prevented. Like, I can even tell you, with my father, like, he was like, he had like pre diabetes just two months working with us, like, we reversed that all naturally just looking at nutrition and some exercise. So whereas if he was to have gone to a doctor, he'd basically be put on pills straight away.

[Cody McGuffey]

It's very important for, for people like this, listening to this and also myself to remember that there's like these different pillars of wealth. Right. And we think about wealth as like, you know, assets minus liabilities. Right? Yeah. But really it's like, it's for us, the way that I view it is, it's, it's location, freedom, time freedom, financial freedom is like very big pillars of wealth. And there's this other one which was like, your health.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And that comes with two things from in my head. The way, the way that my. I frame it up in my head is like your physical health and then your mental health.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And. And you could throw in like your spiritual health too, depending on who you are. And that kind of, I kind of group this in together. But I agree, it's. It's extremely important to have that pillar because the thing that I've always been wary of as I was building, building our companies is that the last thing I ever want to be is like super, super successful, financially super wealthy.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

But like, ah, I just. My health is just so bad. Right.

[Anthony Ng]

And this quite common. Right.

[Cody McGuffey]

Like very common.

[Anthony Ng]

And I think that's quite sad that a lot of people think they need to sacrifice their health to get the like, financial goal that they might have. And I think that couldn't be further from the truth, actually being in better shape. You show up the best version of yourself.

[Cody McGuffey]

It amplifies it for sure.

[Anthony Ng]

So like, it's actually a trick to be able to do it. And a lot of people, I think they try to wait also for like that right moment. But in reality the right moment is now. Like you never have enough time. Like you're a business owner trying to always grow. So you go from one problem to a bigger problem to another a larger problem as you keep growing. Right. So it's just, you just got to take care of it. The longer you wait, harder it is.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah. I mean, a lot of times people will say, including myself, I've said this multiple times in the Past too of like oh, when I get to this point I'll like I'm going to start to like figure out my, my, my workout plan or my nutrition plan. I'm really going to dial it in. That's what I'm telling myself. I'm really going to dial. And the answer needs to be like not when it's just like now. It needs to be just like it's right now.

[Anthony Ng]

Can I sustain now to do it? Because you can make progress. It's good. Consistently over time. Like Rome wasn't built in a day.

[Cody McGuffey]

Totally. There was this thing where I think it was John Asaroff. No, that is. Anyway he, he mentioned this one thing on social media or and maybe it was one of his books. It. He was like if I like a lot of times we skip a workout.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Um. Because we don't have the time.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Very common. Right. And. Cause I don't have 45 minutes or an hour like to get to full quality workout. And he said that's. I'm going to paraphrase this but my takeaway was that's the most important time to just go in there for five minutes.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Just get the workout in for five minutes. Just get in there. And it's, it's not really about the workout or the pump or the sweat or the calories burned even. It's just the, the idea that you're programming your, your body to just go.

[Anthony Ng]

It's the habit.

[Cody McGuffey]

It's the habits. Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

I mean that, that's like we believe in that a lot. So we've got all the workout plans that we provide. We give like a short on time version for everybody as well. So if you haven't got the time, you just get it done. And I think it's also removing that all the decisions that take place for people that are busy that usually treat it as a, you know, like secondary. So I think that that works really, really well. Like we had one client that said to me it's like are this just like on autopilot when I do this? Right. I just, I didn't have time. I just do this. I'm gonna go travel here. I just do this. So it's like we build out the system that enables the person to do it consistently over time. Like I would say I've been training probably consistently for like 15 years.

[Cody McGuffey]

I would say insane. What do you think the biggest.

[Anthony Ng]

Or.

[Cody McGuffey]

I guess number one mistake that founders, creators, business owners make when it comes to the nutrition and their training plan?

[Anthony Ng]

Neglecting it. I think Simply not taking action to go do. To just take care of themselves. Yeah, definitely that. I mean, the longer you wait, the harder it is. And you want to start building the habits as early as possible because. Just easier. I look at a kid learning a language. It's much easier than like you or I trying to learn that now. So the earlier you start, the better.

[Cody McGuffey]

Is how does it look when someone's neglecting like this? Does it mean just like, I'm just not thinking about it every day? Or maybe I think about it once in a while. I know that I should do that, but I'm not like, is that neglecting? Like, what is neglecting?

[Anthony Ng]

I think your health and your body is like the bank account that everyone can visibly see. They know exactly what you're consuming, what you're doing, and the lifestyle that you lead just by looking at you. And that's open for everyone. So you just know when you see an unfit guy that, you know, you, you don't, you don't assume that that unfit guy is doing particularly well. It doesn't carry himself in the same way. You know that he's got less energy, he gets more tired, he's got less control over things that are going on. And I think that's a temporary state. Doesn't mean that it's got to always be like that. And we've got countless people that have, like, changed that. But what I do know is.

[Cody McGuffey]

But that's the reality. Is that it. That is the appearance that you're giving out.

[Anthony Ng]

Yes.

[Cody McGuffey]

Whether that's true or not, that's. That's the next level.

[Anthony Ng]

Exactly.

[Cody McGuffey]

Next layer. But that is the appearance that you're putting out. It's like, just because you drive a bad car doesn't mean you're a bad person.

[Anthony Ng]

No.

[Cody McGuffey]

But you look like, okay, you're not taking care of your car.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Like, it looks like you just don't give a shit about washing your car.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And. And the paint job. And it's not that you're bad. It's more like I have to figure out now if you're actually, you know.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

You care about things inside of that car 100%.

[Anthony Ng]

And I do also believe a lot of the time it's like you gives it an impression. If you don't take care of yourself, how are you going to take care of other people? Like, I can even talk about that from a personal perspective. Like, I was really anxious to try and make money when I was like, in my 20s. And it was only until my business started, like, Growing that I started thinking actually about other people, to be honest, at the age of 21, I was just. That it was a selfish endeavor to just try and make money for myself. Then I started realizing you got to, like, say 10 employees, and I'm like, oh, wow. Were actually paying for, like, their mortgage, them to, like, buy a house, like, to rent something, to get married, all of these types of things. And you're like, this is the vehicle that our company is enabled to actually happen. And so I think you've got to look after yourself first. Right. If you're on a plane and the mask drops down, they tell you to put the mask on you first, not to put it on someone else, because you can't look after other people if you haven't looked after yourself.

[Cody McGuffey]

And so true.

[Anthony Ng]

It's step one.

[Cody McGuffey]

I love that idea. I. It's a difficult thing because many people listening to this are so selfless. Like, they consider them selfless. And so therefore, they will always sacrifice themselves first.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Their health first. They'll. They'll sacrifice their workout to go and, like, do this. They'll sacrifice, like, they're eating clean to do this.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And for their family, for their. For their friends and all this stuff. But in reality, it needs to be flipped around a little bit, and someone needs to say, okay, by taking care of myself right now, I'm actually taking care of them.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And that's a challenging thing. It took me a while to grasp that. Because you're pushed back a little bit too, like.

[Anthony Ng]

But how do you feel now? Obviously, having, like, changed a lot, dropped, like, 20, 30 pounds to. Versus, like, what you were like before. When we started, like, working together, how's the feeling changed in the way you portray yourself?

[Cody McGuffey]

I believe in momentum. I believe in momentum. And so when I think about momentum, like, when I'm. As I was in my 20s or maybe teens, I had momentum to go. Like, I was getting in better shape. I was playing football.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

College football. I was very motivated to do that. And then when I got into my 20s, I very motivated to, like, start my family, build a career. Started to do that. I was also fit at that time, too. I would consider myself fit. And as soon as you start to, like, life kind of throws things at you, you know, maybe you have a parent that, like, dies, and maybe you have, like, a business that's, like, it fails and you start another one that fails again. Like, you have these stressors in life that kind of kill some certain momentum, and pretty soon you start to, like, have these Crutches, I guess you could say. And so it kind of like chips away at your confidence a little bit. Like, I'm, I say that I'm this person, I say that I'm doing these things. I say that I'm motivated and I care and I care about all these people and I care about how I show up every day, but my behavior is not reflecting that care. And for me, the momentum shift. When it was going, I would say health was kind of. I wouldn't say it was going down. I was like, wasn't unhealthy person. I don't think anyone would say that. I felt like I wasn't doing my highest potential self type of behavior. And so for me, I felt like the momentum was going down. And so when, like, for example, when we started working together, the momentum started to shift from that perspective. And when you have momentum shift from a health perspective, it bleeds into everything else.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Which is very nice. It bleeds into your relationship. It bleeds into the. With my wife, it bleeds into my, my relationship with my, my son, who's 6, my daughter who's 4. And they're seeing me in the gym. It, it's. They're seeing me. It's clean. They're seeing my wife and I meal prep, you know, eat stuff that's clean. It starts all of a sudden. My sisters are talking to me about health and wellness and like, they're talking about their workouts. They're sending me screenshots of them working out. Right. So it's, it's so much bigger. It ripples like your momentum is rippling constantly. And it also is the contrary. If you are not eating clean and if you're, if you're not taking care of yourself, if you're not really the type of person to work out, that will ripple too.

[Anthony Ng]

100.

[Cody McGuffey]

Your kids will see that. And they, they will. Absolutely.

[Anthony Ng]

And you're building their habits in that way. So you lead by example. I mean, everyone knows kids copy, right. So everything you do, they're copy.

[Cody McGuffey]

They won't tell you. They won't do what they say. Yeah. What you say too. They're going to do exactly what mom and dad did.

[Anthony Ng]

And you can tell them not to swear, but if you're swearing all the time, they're going to swear too.

[Cody McGuffey]

70 and they might even be working out with you, for example. Like, my kids will see me in the gym and they'll like go in there and they'll mess around and stuff and we'll do like a little Fun thing. And then they're gone. But the point is, they saw me in there. Yeah, that's the key. They just saw me in there. Where's that? Oh, he's probably in the gym.

[Anthony Ng]

In the same way, you want them to know that hard work is important. You've got to put the f. And you display that. You also need to do the same thing for your health. You want your kids to be healthy, right? Everybody does. Not one parent, I don't think wants that. So, yeah, I lead by example, right? Anything. Even for your team. Like, the way you simply convey yourself is so different. Like, you're more confident when you walk into a room. Like, that feeling is insane. I think we had like, one client that said to me, I didn't see myself as that gym guy. And he's like, a year later, he's like, I am now that gym guy, right? Which is kind of like, even had like, an identity shift that, like, really change. And when I look at the photos of, like, their progression, like, each week we ask you to send photos of your, like, front, side, and back so we can look at progress. You see the posture change, even the way they're standing. Like, when I just. If I was just to cut their body out and just look at their face, I can see that they're more confident from it.

[Cody McGuffey]

I say, very interesting. I completely understand that.

[Anthony Ng]

That's really nice to see. Like, you'll even notice that, like, then they take care of their hair more. Like, they're like. You see a lot of the photos, you know, like before after type thing, you look online, you go, that looks like a bit weird. Doesn't look right. But maybe it's fake and whatnot. But when I look at them, like, week on week, I see that they start taking care of certain things. And like, even now we see some people that have literally gone, like, they like, hey, do you know a stylist that can help me, like, buy new clothes? Because none of them fit anymore, right? Which is. That's actually one of the coolest things that, like, we get asked. And I had like, one client of ours that, like, he got put on the board of like, a NASDAQ listed company after exiting his business. And he went and bought a suit. He went and got a haircut, like a tailored suit, got a haircut, and then even bought a watch to go alongside and celebrate it. And it's kind of like it's the image that he's been able to like, now create and like, change things. Like, he's leading by example, with his, like, his son and like, all this type of stuff. And it's amazing to see that now he, like, cares about those things, whereas before, I think it's maybe like a neglect thing.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah. I want to ask you a question here that I have from the community, actually. So what I did is I posted on our ever be community and I just asked, hey, I'm talking to Anthony today. And we're gonna be talking about, like, these type of problems. Okay. What kind of questions do you have? And I got a really good question I wanted to call out. And it's a more practical question.

[Anthony Ng]

Okay.

[Cody McGuffey]

For founders, for entrepreneurs, for builders, for creators. What are the top three tips? I guess you could say practical tips because we're talking like theory a lot today right now. But like the practical stuff that somebody can take away with right now when it comes to steps, number of steps. Nutrition, nutritious meals. Like just an example of a meal, how much water intake on days when someone's like, it's a productive day. It's a work day today. Like, I have to be on it today. And they're working for the entire day. An example of this person would be like, hey, maybe they're on camera all day.

[Anthony Ng]

Sure.

[Cody McGuffey]

They're just, it's, you know, you don't have a lot of breaks. Like, whatever it is. Or maybe they're literally designing in front of a computer. They're designing their business or designing designs for their products today. Or phone calls back to back to back.

[Anthony Ng]

Sure.

[Cody McGuffey]

What can that person be doing when it comes steps, water intake, what should they be eating on that day?

[Anthony Ng]

Cool. So I would say, first of all, let's just assume you don't have any time whatsoever. So what you can do is habit stack things to other things that you do. So, for example, let's say if we're looking at steps, you're. If you, you brush your teeth two times a day, most people told brush your teeth two times. Sorry, two times per day for two minutes each time. That's four minutes. Um, if you walk, when you're brushing your teeth, you've walked 28 minutes extra per week. That's half an hour a week, which is actually quite a lot of time. Right. Whereas maybe you'd be unable to carve out 30 minutes of walking, but you're going to brush your teeth anyway, or you should. So I think that's, that's one thing. Um, the other thing you can do is like. And what I do is like, if I look at, I find, I try to find recurring meetings that I've got. So imagine like a one on one with your team or something like this that you, you look to do that maybe you're not going to be, let's say client facing. You can then go for a walk while doing that meeting at the same time. So you can do 30 minutes, one hour and that will just add up those steps you're trying to do. So I would say like you should really be getting for like health benefits anywhere between like about 8,000 plus, 10,000 plus if we want to start like trying to like drop body fat. But again I think it starts from like whatever your baseline is also. So it's just if you're doing like 2000, just try go like 3000. Right. So just build that up over time. You don't have to go for like the perfect scenario immediately. I mean, no, I know even you and I, like when we want to like catch up and we're walking around us, maybe we'll call each other and we both go for a walk at the same time. Right. So trying to do those things and like integrating those healthy habits within your life.

[Cody McGuffey]

And sometimes I'll call like for example, I'll call my mom.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

When I'm walking.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Versus in the past I would probably just call my mom when I'm on the couch.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. And you know what, the conversation is probably going to be better.

[Cody McGuffey]

Way better.

[Anthony Ng]

You have, you have more creativity when you're walking out, especially if like you're outdoors as well. So I think that's really good. I also have like a walking treadmill as well that I just stick under my like standing desk and I'll typically like force myself to do that. Don't really enjoy doing it that much, but I'll get them in anyway. And I think in London where I live, like sometimes the weather isn't so great so you don't want to go outside to do it. So that's the alternative that I'll do if not.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah. So I think so 7, 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day would be ideal. But yeah, an improvement of where you are today is great as long as it's consistent over time.

[Anthony Ng]

That's all you got to do. Yeah. Just slightly increase that. So I think that's quite important. So habit stack, I would say in terms of food, I would say one of the most important things to do is to try and think about the backup. So think about like, so a lot of people, they'll get a plan and it's simply just like Follow this plan, they go from plan A to plan F. So they're doing really great, and then they do really bad. Right. And unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good. Like, we've all tried to eat good five days a week during the weekday, and then the weekend go off track, and then we look for the week's progress and go, like, where did that go? So you know that the poor choices outweigh the good ones, unfortunately. So what we want to do is think about how we can turn that F into even a B or a C. Doesn't have to be A, just B or C. And when we're doing A, we just have A and B and C mixed together versus A and F, A and F, which you're going to get really not much progress on. So, for example, like, know when you're in the office or like, or if you're at home, wherever you're working, that you know, what are, like, say, 3, 4, 5 good UberEats options that you could get when you don't have time, you just simply have that ordered. Absolutely zero effort to do. I think that's something I would recommend. Another thing is just simply have, like, water bottles around you and just get, like, an idea of, like, how much you're, like, basically drinking. You can work with the nutritionist to even find out exactly how much you basically should be consuming as well, per day, depending on, like, the lifestyle that you lead. Right. So if you're larger, you should consume more. If you're, like, sedentary, you don't need as much, that type of thing. Right.

[Cody McGuffey]

What would you say for, like, the bingers out there asking for a friend? Yeah, People that they go hard, and then they, like, go hard the other way, too. Right. There's like, I'm gonna be extreme. I'm gonna be, like, perfect. Yeah, I'm gonna be perfect. Meals.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

This entire week, and it is perfect. And then all of a sudden they fall off and then binge the other way, and then they. All of a sudden they, like, squander all the results.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. So I think I was one of those people before. I would say the time. It's about understanding, like, why you binge and what. Yeah. Why you're doing that. So, for example, one of the things that we do at Daily Body Coach is we ask you to send photographs of all the food you're eating directly to a nutritionist so they can educate, guide, and hold you accountable. But at the same time, they build a food log and a diary of what you're doing. And when you go off track, we try to understand like why you've done that. Whereas a lot of, a lot of people in the fitness industry just tell you try harder. But motivation is something that goes up and down over time. I can tell you, for me, sometimes I don't want to work out or like more tired a particular day. So it's a normal thing for you to go through. So you don't want to depend on motivation. You want to depend on like making it really easy for you to follow. And for me, for example, what I would do is I would stress eat. So typically stress was driven by work. So what I would do is simply like I would order in like let's say McDonald's, five guys, things like that. And I would eat that in front of the computer at the same time while working because I was stressed and I was like, I need to get this done. What I found out was that I went back on my health goals while eating alone and not even eating like the best quality food in terms of like taste. And so what I learned was basically it's okay to go off track, but you need to like consciously do it and get. You need to consciously do it and actually enjoy it in another way. So like it doesn't make sense to go back on your health goals to eat plain food when you don't enjoy it. But it does. If you're going to go to like a fancy restaurant and celebrate something, then why not? Your body's supposed to help you live a good life, not limit your life.

[Cody McGuffey]

I love that.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, so I think it's like that's a, that was a big mindset shift for me. I think everyone's an individual basis, but that's the one that I had to work through. So I will still eat five guys, but I'll do it consciously and I'll do it with people and I won't do that alone.

[Cody McGuffey]

What is bogo? So what was it about that?

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, so we helped E commerce retailers to automatically bundle products together that were typically high margin. So for example, if we were selling thing, let's say an iPhone, we'd recommend a case or a screen protector to go alongside online. All online. We actually started moving into physical store as well. So we had a few customers before I sold that company.

[Cody McGuffey]

What's an example of a store that you customer.

[Anthony Ng]

So let's say for example, in a consumer. Sorry, in a consumer electronics store, you would have like people that were specialized in certain areas. So like this would be the guy that sells like Laptops. This would be the girl that would be like focused on like smartphones or cell phones. And they would have their own like categories that they would look after. Sometimes you go in the store and you would. There'll be like no one there available. You would have to wait. And what we would do is put like tablets in the physical store. So like right by the laptop it would say these are the exact bags that fit that particular product. So you can just go and get it based on the stock level of.

[Cody McGuffey]

That complementary products or.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Okay.

[Anthony Ng]

And those items typically have high margin, so they can have like, you know, even like 70 gross margins or plus.

[Cody McGuffey]

Actually you have to acquire the customer. Like the customer's already there. It's like you're just literally increasing AOV average order value.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. And the margin in that order. And so that would be like products, services and warranties.

[Cody McGuffey]

Interesting. That's. That was. Let's, let's talk about that journey. Yeah, A little bit. First of all, why did you even start that company? And then what age were you around that and how long ago? Yeah, so try to go back in history.

[Anthony Ng]

I was working like part time doing IT support, like while at university, like just during my summer holidays. I worked every single summer that I was legally allowed to.

[Cody McGuffey]

Okay. In London.

[Anthony Ng]

In London. Yeah. Okay. And people would basically ask me questions about what product, device. So like, hey, can you recommend me a laptop? What phone should I get? Or cell phone, as you guys say, like all of this type of stuff. So I would find that it took me a long time to find the. Find the right product for someone if I really wanted to care and give them the right recommendation. So you read reviews, understand their requirements, go watch YouTube videos and like, or maybe even go into the physical store and all of these types of things then say, go buy this product. And I thought there should be an easier way for people to be able to do that. So I started out with like a B2C product, which I think honestly a lot of like first time entrepreneurs start out with like, just because it's a personal experience that you encounter and that's where you start. Especially if you hadn't had any professional experience, which was like me, I was pretty much like, I'd never had a real job until I sold my company and I was employed by the company that bought mine. Right. So I. So we started with that and basically what we would do is you'd ask a series of questions about a particular product when you logged on our website. So what do you want to Use that laptop for. What's your budget, any specific brands, any features that you like. And based on those responses, we'd say go buy this laptop from these stores that are available around. So that was a B2C product. I was at the age around 21 and then what I noticed was that it took a, it was really difficult to get that to turn into like actually cash and monetize it.

[Cody McGuffey]

So why did you even start the business? You think? Like, why did you go. Because entrepreneurship is the heart is a hard path, right? Yeah. Sometimes it's the path that's only, it's the only option for, for a lot of people. But why did you choose this path first at an early age?

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, so I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur since the age of around like 10 to 12. And the reason was like my parents put a lot of money for me to go to like to be privately educated, but they couldn't afford to keep me there. So like after two years I was pulled out. And my best friend at time, at the time at school, he, his father was an entrepreneur and I would see that he would copy, come to school and like cool cars. He had like the best cell phone and mine wasn't as good. He had a jog proof walkman and mine would skip when I'd run with it. So all of these kind of things, it wasn't like I lived like a tough life, but there was a comparison that was there and I thought why does he have this and I don't and why do I need to get pulled out of school? And so after finding out that his father owned like five glass factories and he, he made like good, good amounts of money, it started really there, like actually mainly financially driven.

[Cody McGuffey]

You're inspired. Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

100. And I want, I wanted to be like, that is going to be me one day and if I want to send my kids to wherever they want to go, I don't want to be able have to pull them out. In hindsight, I think it was one of the greatest things, me actually getting pulled out. So of course it allowed me to work with a wide spectrum of people from all different backgrounds, which I thought was really, really good. It got me to see what that could be and being taken out gave me the hunger. So yeah, honestly, like I would say it was driven financially, like.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah. Do you still, are you still in touch with that, that friend at all or that friend?

[Anthony Ng]

No, not really.

[Cody McGuffey]

No, not really. Interesting. I wonder if he knows that father knows the impact that you have.

[Anthony Ng]

I'm Gonna tell him.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah, that'd be interesting because we always have these, these people that inspire us, but we don't really share with them eventually. And you're probably inspiring somebody right now.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And a kid or maybe a young person, or maybe someone's listening to this podcast and people don't send the message, but they should send the message and say, hey. Yeah, like that one episode when you said that one thing that, like, changed my trajectory.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. 100%.

[Cody McGuffey]

I do this occasionally with, with people that took a meeting with me when they had no business meeting with them and no business meeting with them. And I send a message on LinkedIn. I think about this one guy, Ken, his name was, and I sent him a message just the other day on LinkedIn. Wasn't sure if he was still alive. He was an older gentleman. I think he had some. A little bit of health issues at the time too. And sent him a message and just like, hey, man, like, just want to let you know, like, 10 years ago, I don't if you remember, remember me, but like, you took a meeting with me in your office and you gave me, like, life advice and also business advice.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And you didn't have to take that meeting literally. Was no upside for him, but he literally changed. Like, there's a piece of my life that changed from that conversation, and I just want to share that with him. No idea if he. How much he appreciated that. I think that he did that. He responded back. He's still around.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And I just know that I would appreciate that if some. Some person sent me a message.

[Anthony Ng]

100%. I actually had a conversation with someone. I think it's like you start giving back. I think that's one of the interesting things is like, some, especially in Europe, as a lot of people would see, like, if you have money, maybe you're not as good personal. You've done something maybe like perhaps wrong. Right. And that can be further from the truth. What I've noticed is that people typically that, like, get to achieve what they need. They can be more selfless because they don't need to look after themselves anymore so much. Like they. Or there's not so much of a need. Right. It's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Just like taking care of each of the pillars that you have so you can help a lot of other people. Like, I spend quite a bit of time, like, if somebody writes me, like a good cold email or something like that, and I see they've put effort into it, I'll usually take it Even if there's nothing really to gain from it for me. Right. But I think actually. Well, actually there is like actually helping somebody, you feel good by that. And I had a conversation where a guy reached out to me is called Luke. And he was like, he's working a job, a young guy, like in his young 20s, and he wants to start a company. But he wasn't kind of like ready to. To do it. He wasn't sure. And I said to him, kind of like tough love. I said to him, like, I'll never take a meeting with you again until you start your business. When you do, call me. Probably about six months went by, he calls me and said, I've done it. And then now, like I'm helping him, like with his business and things like that. And I think, you know, you change the trajectory of someone's life and like his business actually is doing pretty well. So that's quite nice to see.

[Cody McGuffey]

Amazing man. When. When do you think that you like on. On this journey that you had.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And you're inspired by this, this dad.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And you grow up and you're building this business. Did you ever have any hesitancy that you might not make it or I wonder if I'm going to make it. And then what is make it really? What did make it mean to you? Was it a millionaire? Was it a net worth amount? Was it a dollar amount in your bank account? Was it cash flow? What was important to you? You think at that time? I know it changes and this evolves over time. What was it at that time?

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, I mean, I would say, honestly I believed that I would always make it. I was so driven, slash delusional, whatever you want to call it. But like, I felt like I had no option but to make it. And no matter what, I've got to do it. Like, I think I had a fear of failing.

[Cody McGuffey]

You did have a fear of feeling.

[Anthony Ng]

I did have a fear of failing, yeah, definitely. But so much so that it was just overcompensated. I can't. This is not even an option. Like, this is not going to happen to me. And if they say like 9 out of 10 of businesses fell, I was like, I'm. What's to stop me being that one? So I actually got asked by one of my angel investors, the last company, he said to me at the age of 22, he said to me, what happens if you fail? And I responded, you know, young guy, really quickly back and said, I'm never going to fail. And I actually believe that you you don't really fail. You learn. And over time, you just keep going. Right. So you didn't fail at becoming a millionaire. If you've like, if you had to close down three businesses, it's like you. In the end, you got there. So congratulations. Right? I think it really. It's just keep going and like learning every time you get better and stronger. Like, I can see the traction in my last company that I was running versus now doing it the second time with the learnings I've got, it's a hundred times easier, you know, more what you're doing, you can work a lot smarter versus just like crazy hard. So, yeah, I think I. I spent. I think I was inspired actually a lot by podcasts. So being really young, like as a teenager, every single day, and even like to this day, I listen to an hour podcast every single day, seven days a week, no matter what. So even like going out to college and you know, like going out partying or something like that, it became such a habit that when I'd come back home, like even at 3, 4am I would put on a podcast. Couldn't hear anything, but I would still have that on.

[Cody McGuffey]

Basically, what you're doing is you're surrounding yourselves. You're surrounding yourself with people you want to be like. And the podcast, for example, they're probably around money and wealth and business success and. Yeah, yeah. So naturally, it's almost like you're emulating those. Those guys being your friends.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. 100. I felt that.

[Cody McGuffey]

I think that's what. We get that once in a while from people listening to this. It's like, oh, I just feel like I'm just. I'm there with you guys and. And I remember the same exact impact that those podcasts had on me, and they still do to this day. Yeah, I'm just like, that influenced me.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. Like, for me, I think podcasts was one of the ways that I could learn reactively. So it's kind of like I could just consume information. I think that was really, really important. And then I would leverage books to learn specific things that I needed, go deeper. Yeah. So, for example, like, I had one issue where I lost a third of my business in the last company. And so I went to study customer success and about like, the retention. And over a weekend, I read like two books, studied all of them, and I would had a notebook by that, but by the. The book, and just wrote down everything on how that applies directly to me. The Monday came round, I restructured basically the entire company, like, cleared out Roughly around a third changed the processes, did things and then the following year we had 100 customer retention.

[Cody McGuffey]

So interesting.

[Anthony Ng]

It's kind. So I would use that for acquiring knowledge and I think books it's. Or even like podcasts and things like that. It's kind of like they condense years of knowledge into really short time frame. And podcasts are pretty much free. Right. Generally. So there's no reason why you can't get access to. And I just spend the time to listen to it. And in dead time like I would always listen to it like going to bed. So no matter what I would still hear it.

[Cody McGuffey]

Totally. And now you can do it when you do your steps.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, exactly.

[Cody McGuffey]

When did you hit make your first million? At what age?

[Anthony Ng]

So like in cash I would. I was 31 years old so I only really managed to get that when I sold my company. Up until then it's like everything went back into the business.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah, like the company was worth probably. Yeah it was worth more than that. Millions for, for a significant amount of time. But like you didn't actually liquidate any of it until you sell like probably.

[Anthony Ng]

Like in the millions like with like on paper, let's say like sure, seven years, eight years before that. But it wasn't real sure until I could like really get it out. And I mean I think it's interesting because I think one of the things that I learned from what I did is that I had that same belief that you have to suffer to get results. Same thing like with the health. But I did that with money. So I kind of like starved myself and think I didn't deserve to have that money. But a lot of the times, especially when I think like when I first started the company, quite honestly it was to make money the first time. But I wasn't drawing out money so that doesn't really make that much sense. So like now when I look at it, I think you should draw out money. At least it's something that I'm trying to like work on. Like even today for example, I put all the money straight back in again. But I'm also in a very different financial situation than I was before.

[Cody McGuffey]

So yeah, I think a lot of people. It's just interesting to talk about it because there's people right now, they're starting their business and they. Well at least I grew up in blue collar type of businesses and a lot of my family, my friends and friends, parents, they all owned like blue collar type of businesses. Talk H Vac contracting, like that type of work. Right. And they pulled money out too soon. So it's. It's an interesting thing. It like they milked to the business way too early and they were trying to live off of revenue, the company's revenue and not the company's profits even. Yeah, it's even worse. And it's a. But it's just lack of knowledge, lack of understanding, and probably a lack of discipline too. All those things. And it turns into a bunch of a big, massive stress and it gets labeled. Business is hard. Businesses. Like it's. It's impossible. Like it's stressful and actually turned me away from entrepreneurship for many years.

[Anthony Ng]

Okay.

[Cody McGuffey]

Because I saw that all the downside to, to entrepreneurship.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

We didn't call it entrepreneurship. They just called it like owning your own business. You're a business owner. Small business owner.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And I saw like all of the. The downsides with it. I saw the upsides. In hindsight, I see the upsides now of like they had the flexibility to go to like school events, to a game. Very appreciative for all those things. It did unlock those things. But there was lots of financial downsides to it. But it's interesting because I look back at like these, these business owners and I still look at them today. The ones that I see, they have a great business.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

They're just. The finances aren't managed properly. And if they just manage the finances properly, they. It's a great life all of a sudden. Yeah, it's a great life.

[Anthony Ng]

They just need to go find someone that understands it and ask for help. Right. And what's crazy?

[Cody McGuffey]

And then do it. And they do not only ask and then do it help.

[Anthony Ng]

I think what's crazy is that a lot of successful people, like we've said, they want to help other people. They generally do. And they get kind of a feeling from that. Like when you're running a business, generally speaking, I would say a lot of people, you want to help your employees, you want them to grow, at least you should. So ask enough people and someone's gonna like reach out and actually help you. So you had that, I had that. Everybody's had somebody that's just helped them. So. But if you don't ask, you don't get.

[Cody McGuffey]

I love that. I'm gonna switch back to DBC a little bit on from more from. Not necessarily the service perspective, but actually the. The business perspective. And feel free to share what you comfortable sharing. Just explain what DBC actually is. Dbc Daily Body Coach.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Well, how do you describe it when somebody asks about what it is.

[Anthony Ng]

Sure. So we're a premium online coaching service to help entrepreneurs get into the best physical shape and perform their best.

[Cody McGuffey]

So you only focus on entrepreneurs in this case?

[Anthony Ng]

Entrepreneurs and executives. Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Okay, so executives meaning like a VP or a director level person who. High performers, High performance.

[Anthony Ng]

Yes, exactly. So those are the people that we help. The reason we do that is they typically have less time, more stress, and we look to help those people.

[Cody McGuffey]

Because you're just good at that.

[Anthony Ng]

Because we're good at that. And I think, like, with running my previous company, I learned that it wasn't plans that worked, it was systems that worked. And I think there aren't many, honestly, I would say, like good entrepreneurs that have gone through the actual journey that know how to do that. And that's kind of the unique angle that I can help with. And then applying expert knowledge across training and nutrition to help them within that system deliver for that type of target audience.

[Cody McGuffey]

How do you describe an entrepreneur? And like, how would you describe it.

[Anthony Ng]

Right now to fit into a business owner? I mean, generally because of a higher price point, like, we work typically with like more successful entrepreneurs.

[Cody McGuffey]

Define success.

[Anthony Ng]

Define success. Well, it'd be more like financial because you have to be.

[Cody McGuffey]

As long as they can afford it. Yeah, yeah. Because they're very white club. It's a very white glove service. Like, you literally have a team.

[Anthony Ng]

Correct.

[Cody McGuffey]

You have people that you can text and they don't text you back. It's not like this portal where you log in and you have to do this stuff and it's like an empty thing. It's like you literally get interaction multiple times per day.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, exactly. So I think, like, when I look at it, it's like we've got three pillars to what we do. So you've got training plans that adapt your available time and location. So for example, if you're going to, let's say, travel somewhere, we'll check what's in the gym at the hotel or where's the gym nearby to where you're going to go if you don't have time to make it to the gym, what can you do at home instead? And so like making that thing. Kind of what we were saying is that like that the habit always takes place. No matter what you're going to do. The workout just depends how long, but we're always getting in. So I think that there's that. And really on the high end, to be honest, like, our clients at Max really train four hours a week, which is a couple of percent of your Entire week. So it's really not much of a time commitment given the feeling that you get and the output that you're going to get. Like, imagine it's 2% of your working week or your week. Sorry, you don't think by being fit that you can get 2% more? It's nothing. 2%.

[Cody McGuffey]

Why in kind of going back to the business model, I guess, and all this stuff is, is what's the game plan? Like, inspire the, the other business owner. Right now listening to this, like, oh, it's an online business. That's. That's very interesting. I never thought about like bringing the physical training plus nutrition stuff online. There's probably other things that they can do right now. What is attractive to this type of business model that you've chosen?

[Anthony Ng]

I think for me this time, so the other business, I kind of fell into it. I just saw an opportunity and then I decided to just take one because I wanted to start a business. This time I was much more intentional about what I was going to start.

[Cody McGuffey]

So what went into that framework of thinking?

[Anthony Ng]

Who do I want to spend time with? Who do I resonate most with? And then what's important to me? The previous company, what was important to me was purely financial. So that was like, I actually was willing to crawl over glass to get whatever I need.

[Cody McGuffey]

As long as you saw the opportunity for money, then you're okay.

[Anthony Ng]

It didn't matter. And in hindsight, there were easier things to do to make money. But, you know, like, sure, of course, hindsight, but that's what I, what I thought at the time. This time I thought the people I really enjoy spending time with are high performers. I resonate with them, I like them. And I also have a competitive advantage having done what I've done to be able to access that community as well. So that's also.

[Cody McGuffey]

You have a little moat for yourself.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, exactly.

[Cody McGuffey]

You card out. Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

That a normal trainer or a normal nutritionist, they can't get into that like.

[Cody McGuffey]

Quote unquote, like, because they haven't necessarily sold a company. They haven't built a company that's, you know, worth millions. And yeah, that does make you unique. Right. Because you understand that high performer on a deeper level than just the financial. I'm sorry, just the, the health and wellness aspect of things like, which are important.

[Anthony Ng]

Live their life. Right.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

So you, they know, you know what you're doing. And there's many like touch points as you go through, like our service that people go, oh, wow, you really know what you're doing. Right. So I'm not just like a trainer or a coach.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah. It's very interesting. I agree with that. Like, that's something that actually attracted. I know we were friends before I, I, you know, I signed up for dbc. But I was an attractive thing of like, at least they get it, at least they get kind of how I operate. And they don't just get it from like a. They read the book and they read the, you know, like they actually live that life. Living that life.

[Anthony Ng]

I know. The playbook. Right.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

And I think that helped us like from the beginning to kind of start knowing what we're doing. And I kind of guess that's like similar to somebody starting with like industry expertise, having worked in the industry first, then doing it. Whereas my previous company, I was just at college and then I just started something. Right. So I didn't really have any. Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

When I built prior experience. Exactly. I mean when we started ever beginning, like I lived that E commerce life. Like, yes, we targeted E commerce. I sold on Shopify, I sold an Amazon fba. I sold on, on, on ebay and then I sold a lot on Etsy. Not only sold like, not only sold a little bit, but actually sold a lot on. Across those platforms, relatively speaking. And so. And I understood all the pain points which gave me that unique competitive advantage.

[Anthony Ng]

You're going to get traction faster.

[Cody McGuffey]

Traction faster. I should understand the problem. The main problems versus like, I think we need to do this feature and this feature. This feature. A lot of stuff is noise.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Let's get down to the main thing that our customers care about and, and that's what you're doing with, with.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

With ABC it seems like 100.

[Anthony Ng]

And I, I think I want people.

[Cody McGuffey]

To learn that because a lot of times everyone has a competitive advantage in something. You just have to look for it, develop it and think about it. I think it takes a lot of.

[Anthony Ng]

Time to get there like 100. And I think that's really interesting because it's like we all have it. You just need to like really think about what it is.

[Cody McGuffey]

That's the muscle. You have to engage the muscle.

[Anthony Ng]

So I mean one part was that obviously like that that was important that people I would surround myself with, like you're the average of the five people you surround yourself with. Right. I want to be around high performers, people that are doing well, that care. Care about what they're doing and they also care about themselves. I like that. I have the most fun with those types of people and I resonate with them. The other side of it is honestly like, what's the point in having money if you don't have health? So even running a business in this area, I must lead by example. There is no option. So even on a selfish level, I really like that. And so I need to set an example to my client so they can live that way so other people can also like their family, their employees and their children can all like also followed by that as well. So I really, really like that. And this time it doesn't just have to be the Anthony show anymore. Right. Like, so I made my money. Like, I kind of like got a certain level of comfort in my life that now I can really kind of like give back and do things. But interestingly, by actually like thinking about that, it made me get traction like much faster anyway. So yeah, I mean I can tell you that like last month we added a quarter million ARR to our business.

[Cody McGuffey]

So what is ARR for people that.

[Anthony Ng]

Don'T listen and you're recurring revenue. So basically like your monthly subscriptions times.

[Cody McGuffey]

By 12, let's say. So you pay 100amonth, for example.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

100 times 12 is $1200.

[Anthony Ng]

Correct.

[Cody McGuffey]

Okay. Quarter million.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Congrats.

[Anthony Ng]

Thank you, man.

[Cody McGuffey]

Is that your biggest month?

[Anthony Ng]

Sorry?

[Cody McGuffey]

Is that your biggest month?

[Anthony Ng]

Is our biggest month, yeah. Obviously January is like a, it's a pretty big month. Right.

[Cody McGuffey]

But February right now.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. But really we're starting to get like the marketing motion done well. So like it's interesting because if I look back, my previous company, I grew exclusively using outbound sales. Like everything. Doing outbound sales and referrals was actually a small part of our business because we largely worked with like mid market and enterprise retailers that they didn't want their competitors to know what their advantage was so they didn't want to share it. So the referral that we would kind of get would be somebody would leave after on average two years one company to go work at another and then bring us across. But that takes a really long time to be able to like grow in that way. I know that if I was to do a company growing, doing like sales again, like outbound sales, that that would be the fastest way of doing it because that's my skill set. This time we're growing through like marketing, so it's a very different thing. But I just enjoy the challenge. So that was a conscious decision that I made knowing that I'd probably get slower traction at the beginning because I've got to learn a new skill set. But I just wanted to Learn something new as well.

[Cody McGuffey]

Interesting. Do you find that maybe I'll frame this question first. A lot of times early, early stage companies, they, they have a product, they have a service.

[Anthony Ng]

Yep.

[Cody McGuffey]

For example, in you, your case, and what they say is, I'm gonna do a marketing plan. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go after your tick tock and I'm gonna go after Instagram and also LinkedIn. I'm also gonna do outbound sales and then I'm also gonna do this like referral program too. How do you view this and what mistakes do you think that person right there that I just framed up for you is making?

[Anthony Ng]

I think never spread yourself too thin. Never. Just think about everything, starting from the customer of like where they are and how you help them. That's the first thing. And then double down on basically like what works. Don't spread yourself too thin because you can't be an expert absolutely everything until you've got like the resources over time to hire experts in each of those areas. So I would say don't spread yourself too thin.

[Cody McGuffey]

So almost like, hey, Anthony, my plan is to post on TikTok, Instagram, social, YouTube and also like this other thing.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

You would tell me, hey, you need to like stop doing all those things probably and just pick one. Probably.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. Delay, pick one, move to the next one, learn how to test different things. But you know, just really think about it. Where are they? What do they do? Really understand them. Like for example, for me it was really easy to understand my client base because I was one of them or I am one of them. Right. So kind of same. Yeah, that makes it a hundred times easier, honestly. So, yeah, think about what your competitive advantages and everything from then will like, lead on. Like I was even helping like my younger cousin, like he was starting like a tech company and then like doing like loads of different things and he was struggling to find like traction and he didn't, he never really worked anywhere. So if you ask him like, so what's your competitive advantage? He was like, I don't really know. He doesn't, he doesn't believe he had one.

[Cody McGuffey]

I think many people probably would answer the same exact way. Yeah, I would have probably years ago.

[Anthony Ng]

But you still have one. So for him, for example, there's like, there's a lot of. So he's like, he comes from like a, from Macau, which is like a small place next to Hong Kong. And so I said to him, like, okay, cool, so you've gone through university, you're happen to be Born as somebody from like Macau, but you live in London. So what's your competitive advantage even with that? Right, so it's like, what about if you created a business that served wealthy students that come from internationally, like from let's say like China and other places like that you made a concierge service for them. That's a huge advantage because if you speak their language and other people don't, that's a massive moat. And so being able to actually like, without having any experience just by like the life that you led, you've got an advantage that other people can't replicate. So like now he's seeing like very quick traction on it. You know, like within like a week of work he's already like, wow, making like I'm actually making more money than what I was doing before and I've been doing this for like years. So I think that's if you dig deep in deep, deep enough, you'll find what that is and you can even just ask other people, like, what do you think I'm good at? If you're maybe not so good at, you know, reflecting yourself. Because that's a lot harder than someone else commenting on it.

[Cody McGuffey]

I love it.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

What advice would you give to someone trying to start a remote like service based online business? Because a lot of times people listen to this right now.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

They are mostly product based.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

I would say if I were to say 80 of them. Meaning that they sell physical products or they do print on demand, if you're familiar. On demand model. Yep. Which is product based, right?

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Or they'll sell digital product, but it's still product. Right. Like they sell a template of some sort or a group of templates, but not a lot of service. Online service based companies.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

So what advice would you give to them to like, is that even a good model for somebody to even consider?

[Anthony Ng]

I would say service based businesses are something that you can get your revenue up like pretty quick.

[Cody McGuffey]

What's an example of a service business? Let's start there.

[Anthony Ng]

So, so let's say like, I mean even daily body coach providing like an online trainer and online nutritionist for somebody selling your, in effect selling your time to be able to like serve somebody. I would say like a lot of time, especially me coming from like software as a service, you'd look at service business and people look down on them. Right. So like you're like, oh, you can't make as much money with them.

[Cody McGuffey]

I actually, because of scalability and there's challenges.

[Anthony Ng]

Exactly.

[Cody McGuffey]

Challenges.

[Anthony Ng]

But nowadays you've got a lot of technology that can help you and things like that. That I don't believe that that's really the case. So there's actually like a bit of an opportunity there. I noticed that a lot of the an investors and people that had money to like help me fund my last company, a lot of them were making money in like service based businesses that I would like.

[Cody McGuffey]

Like what's an example?

[Anthony Ng]

Discount. Like even like a marketing agency or like something like this.

[Cody McGuffey]

Marketing agency?

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

So a lot of video editing agencies. Yeah, yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

And so like those types, things you can like usually get like a few clients especially if it's in like your area of expertise. Like you used to do marketing before you start consulting, doing it, then you get more clients and you have like now an agency. Right.

[Cody McGuffey]

Or a design agency. I'm thinking of like a designer's like a lot of people listening to this are like designers. Yeah, they're really good at like designing products or designing designs. Some of them are a design editing. I'm sorry, design creation service. Anyway, yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

So I would say like try and like use your service I think is probably the best one. Like for me personally I use Daily Body Coach and that's. And another thing was like really thinking about every single question someone has. You want to remove the friction. That's a, that's a friction point. You want to always remove all of those to keep like providing a better service. So don't think like that's not such a big deal. Focus on, I believe in actually that if you do like enough of the details and take care of them that overall the experience is going to be much better. Like what we do in the fitness nutrition space. There's no one that can compare to us. I didn't mention before but we had like kind of the training plans. Then we do a nutritionist that you send photographs of every meal that you're eating so they educate, guide and hold you accountable. And then we have a concierge service that adapts everything to whatever life throws in your way. So like if you're going to travel, you go to a restaurant, what to pick off the menu, we'll take care of all of those logistics for you.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah. And the point is you're just working, you're starting with the ideal, the platonic version of, of the service. Like what would be the best version of this service? And then you're working backwards from there and you're just designing it.

[Anthony Ng]

Exactly, yeah. And some things are reasonable. Right. Like you can't do that now, but that's fine. Like, just put that on hold and do that after. But like, if I look at what, like, in my industry, let's say imagine like a lot of people, they'll buy a workout plan, but then the nutritionist doesn't talk to the person doing the workouts. And 80% of the thing comes from workouts. Like, sorry, 80% of the results come from nutrition. So. But most people go to a trainer first. So you've gone to the wrong person always. First of all. Then I think, like, I noticed that the fixed plans don't help that individual. So, like, they go off track. They go from plan A where they're following the plan perfectly, they go to plan F when they're not, and then they don't get results. So people then get demotivated and they drop off. So I was like, that doesn't make sense. Because in the lifestyle of the people that we work with, their routines change all the time. And then I thought, like, because I come from an E commerce background, like with my last company, is that, you know, that the less steps that somebody has to go through, the less friction that they have, the more likely they are to convert to the outcome that you want. So I've applied that same philosophy to health and fitness. So knowing, for example, that if you're going to travel, like January before COVID for my last company, I was on a plane for 50 hours, right. Which meant it's very difficult to control nutrition and like exercise and things like that. It becomes like an afterthought. But I had like an ea, for example, right. That would take care of certain things for me at certain times. So I was like, okay, let's work together on how we can optimize this a bit better. Make sure I've got a gym when I go, like traveling, you know, these types of things that you can do that then even when it's an afterthought, you have them taken care of because you've got a system that you just simply follow a process. And we take care of that for our clients basically by having experts that do it, which obviously leads to better results.

[Cody McGuffey]

I love it. I want to. I think it's a good time to go into our rapid fire questions.

[Anthony Ng]

All right, let's do it. Yeah, go for it.

[Cody McGuffey]

Cool. What's your favorite business book?

[Anthony Ng]

I would say there was a book that I read called Pitch Anything and it reframed my mindset on understanding, like, when you're like, raising capital or like you're selling a service or Selling a product. There's only one of you. You're unique, but there's an abundance of capital out there. That for me was just a really good mindset set shift to basically have at a young age around like 20, 21. I would say that was probably like, one of the best books. I really enjoyed reading a book called, like, Predictable Revenue, which was around, like, processes of building, like a sales engine. I've read like countless books. It's quite hard to, like, pick one that I really love.

[Cody McGuffey]

But yeah, it's not always the favorite book. It's usually like the one that comes off to your top of your head right now.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

What's one thing that you wish that you knew before starting your business?

[Anthony Ng]

There's people out there that will help you. So you feel that you're like a lone ranger going at it alone. But there's. When you, like, how are you saying, like, some people just, like, willing to help you. I think the trick is just like showing you've done the research on them. Be thoughtful in the way that you've written it and have a very clear ask of what you would want to get out of them. So, like. Or what you want them to help you with. Because I found that a lot of people say, like, be great to get your advice. Let's catch up for coffee. The number of requests you get for that, it's a lot. And so you need to decide, like, what you filter and where you want to give people your time. If somebody says, like, they ask something very specific. If I can't help them, I'll tell them I can't and maybe I'll refer them to someone else. But if I can, then I'll. I'll look to help them. I want to make sure that they also get the value out of meeting me too. So I think that's really, really important.

[Cody McGuffey]

I think that's super important. I completely agree with that. And I don't think we've ever had anyone answer that. As soon as you've done anything fairly rare or remarkable, sure. You will get people to ask your advice on things. Right. Which is a beautiful thing.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Something we actually wanted to be in that position. I always dreamed of being in that position of. Of service and can help somebody, especially someone like me. Yeah. Ten years ago. Right.

[Anthony Ng]

That's. That. That's a really interesting thing, is that people resonate with that. So, like, they look and they know the hardship that they went through. So they look at you and they just think, let me. I want to help you. Because they're helping the younger version of themselves a lot of the time. Right. So I think that's really important. There's actually one thing I want to add here is that a lot of the time some people go to the person that's like, say, super successful. So let's say imagine like Bill Gates, sure, obviously he's a smart guy, he's achieved a lot. But if you're asking him about, let's say, finding product market fit, he did that decades ago. So that information isn't so fresh. And so he might not be the best person to help you with that. What I find to be really helpful is to go and ask for advice from somebody that's like, maybe two years ahead of you. They're going to be one, more accessible. But two, all the information that they've learned is super fresh. So what I found is that over time, what I started doing when I was more conscious about is I found someone two years ahead and then eventually I would catch up to them and I'd go to the next one and, like, kind of doing that. And that helped expedite my learning a lot more.

[Cody McGuffey]

I've also noticed, it's very interesting you say that because I've also noticed something with lots of people that we. I ask for advice from and also the way I answer advice sometimes that I noticed. The more further ahead that you get on. I'm talking only strictly finances here. Further ahead that you get from the other people, you tend to get more and more theoretical. Like, you don't get so much in the weeds.

[Anthony Ng]

Why do you think that?

[Cody McGuffey]

Because it's so hard to answer. Okay, like, like, you tell me, like, you, you asked me right now, hey, what's the best, like, marketing channel for a dbc? Like, I can't tell you that. I haven't done any research on your company, your service. I don't even. I'm not even your customer. You know, I, I would be like, I'd be thinking this way, you know.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

I can't really help you, but I can help you with a framework of thinking about it. Yeah, I could. Like, this is how I would tell you. Okay, well, first you have to figure out where what is your ideal customer.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Then you have to ask yourself, where do they hang out? And then you have to, like, figure out positioning inside of that market. Yeah, that's theoretical, I would say, versus, like, the answer of, hey, what marketing channel am I looking for? Or should I be doing? Like, what's. What's working? Yeah. Oh, they all Work. Yeah, they all. It's. It's the wrong question.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

To be asking. And, and I'm not mad at anybody asking that. I ask those questions too. It's just, it's interesting. I, I find that if you ask Bill Gates questions, he's not going to answer with tactical advice. It's. He's going to ask. Answer with questions almost with questions.

[Anthony Ng]

You think it through, right?

[Cody McGuffey]

Absolutely.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

And it's not a bad thing. It's actually the, the best way to answer it 100%. It's just very interesting. Next question. What's the worst advice on business that you've ever received.

[Anthony Ng]

That you need co founders? I mean, I can see yourself, for example, your solo, solo founder. It definitely helps to have a really good like co founder if you've got one. But if you don't just go at it alone just because like YC will say you need two or three founders or something, that doesn't mean that you actually do.

[Cody McGuffey]

That's so, so true.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. And that's a way you split obviously the equity like really quickly. Right. And I can tell you for myself is that I started out with several co founders in my last business. In the end I ended up being the only one in the business. Right. So that left a lot of money on the table. It left friction. It caused a loss of friendship as well in certain, certain. For certain people. And this business, I'm doing more like a loan. Right side. But I look now more at doing. Having like my founding team in place.

[Cody McGuffey]

Sure, absolutely. You need the team, of course, very different. They don't have to be necessarily a founder. A co founder.

[Anthony Ng]

Correct.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah. So I think that it's really big, but I think if you've got the right person, sure. Then I think, yeah, it could help you go further.

[Cody McGuffey]

It's interesting. I completely. I would actually answer probably something very similar. I was, when starting various tech projects, I would call them in the past, I was consuming very similar information that you were.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Y Combinator. You're reading all the, all the blogs, software blogs and everything. All of the knowledge is, hey, you need it, you need a, you need a co founder, you need a co founder, you need three co founders, you need four sometimes depending on the product, which are not necessarily wrong, but it almost like gives you this belief that, oh, it's impossible to go alone.

[Anthony Ng]

It's almost like you can't start unless you have that it's not true. You just get out there and basically in the end you'll realize that you can Hire a lot of it, bring them in, you can still give them equity if you want and things like that. But for me personally, like I started at the age of 21, right. So none of us ever really worked before. So how do I know what they're like at working? You know, like we were like good friends and we like to hang out, but that doesn't mean that we're great at working with each other. Right. So you know, it's like a lot of people say you don't know if relationship's gonna work out if you haven't even lived together. So it's kind of, it's a similar thing. Right. So I think we go in always with you know like rose colored glasses going in. Right. And the truth is that a lot of them like fall apart, these kind of like co founder relationships. So yeah, like look at getting it in other ways. Basically you can have like the right advisors, you can have like good founding team. Maybe it's going to take you longer to do it at the beginning because you don't have like, let's say like free engineering resources like quote unquote, if you've got a CTO that can just do it for you. But there are other ways around it.

[Cody McGuffey]

How would you define a creator? Who is a creator in your mind?

[Anthony Ng]

Everyone. We can all create something and we all to some degree create something. So I would say we all are. And if we think deep enough, we're all creating something.

[Cody McGuffey]

Do you think that everyone should be a business owner?

[Anthony Ng]

No.

[Cody McGuffey]

Why so quickly?

[Anthony Ng]

I think obviously like I believe in being a business owner. I believe in the freedom. I believe like, you know, the wealth that you can have could be like it's more, you can get more. But I think everything comes down to like what your personal goals are. So I think it's. And I never really did this until I sold my company to understand what my goal was apart from simply being like quote unquote a millionaire.

[Cody McGuffey]

But doesn't everybody want the goal of like financial freedom? Time. Time freedom and location freedom.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah, but at the expense of what. So I think it's really like getting a list of the things that's important to you and then deciding like the trade off game I want to play. Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Oh. Like if I am I for these three things that I want, let's say the freedoms, freedom, optionality. Am I willing to make this trade off over here of like going through some of the challenges of starting a business?

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

To do it. Okay.

[Anthony Ng]

100. I think like, and then that's funny, because in businesses, like, no right answer. Right. Like, you can start a business as a side hustle. I'm sure, like a lot of your customers do.

[Cody McGuffey]

Many, many. Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

You can also just, like, say, I'm going all in. Right. I've only ever done all in. And like, if you ask, then you ask someone like me, they'll tell you that all in is the way, because that's what worked for me. But there's plenty of people that did side hustles that moved across, and it worked for them as well. Right. So there is no right answer. And I would say based on your, like, tolerance of risk and also just simply the finances you've got behind you. Right. So even me now, after having sold one company, I don't have to go to work for anyone else ever again. I can just do my own thing and I can take the time that I need to do. So it wouldn't make sense for me to do a side hustle technically. Right.

[Cody McGuffey]

But the fact that there are side hustles as an option, wouldn't you now change your answer to everyone should be a business owner because they all want freedom and there is option of side hustles.

[Anthony Ng]

Still. No.

[Cody McGuffey]

Because why you're so you're trying to gatekeep business ownership.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

All for yourself. No, give me all the businesses. Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

Because there'd be more competition for me. No, I think. I think it's really around. It's not for everyone. Sometimes it creates more stress, things like that. But I mean, the upsides are stress, stress, bad. You know, these are, like, really good questions, quite honestly. Like, I think I. I look at things like this, right? It's can I live with the downside of what that will be? So, for example, starting a side hustle, let's say, like, you may want to have, like, something come to life, like, build a product, get something out there, and what's the worst that could happen? If you ask yourself that, okay, maybe I lose 100 bucks, 500 bucks, whatever that may be, can I live with the outcome? If the answer is yes, there's not really much downside. The other thing I ask myself is, can I reverse that decision afterwards? Right? So is it just gonna, like, blow back up on me if this is to go wrong? The answer is most of the time, like, not really. And actually, the skills that you build can even help your career even if it goes all wrong. Right? So there's also, like, I don't really lose.

[Cody McGuffey]

There's a way to. There's a way to Position the chessboard where you don't necessarily have to lose completely. Like you just.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

If anything you learn.

[Anthony Ng]

I think a lot of it's your career. 100. I think a lot of people position entrepreneurs as like risk takers.

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

Honestly, I think like a good entrepreneur knows how to like mitigate risk.

[Cody McGuffey]

That's it.

[Anthony Ng]

So like, for example, I see like I'm betting on myself. I have more information on me than I have on anyone else. So I'm betting on my own ability.

[Cody McGuffey]

And you're always trying to protect downside, like at every b. I'm always trying.

[Anthony Ng]

To always downside, Always, always like. And so by protecting downside, you can often get like a better outcome anyways. You have to be conscious of doing that. So I wouldn't even say that consider myself necessarily like such a risk taker. I would more consider myself as like, I take calculated risks, I protect my downside. And I put, I play the cards that I've been dealt in the most effective way. Like I was saying about like my cousin for example, just happened to be like, of a certain background. And then like it's like that's the card that you adult play it. If you're going to start a business targeting women and you're a man, it's going to be a lot harder for you. Play the cards that you were dealt. Like I always tell people, like, I'm not the tallest guy. I'm not gonna like try and become an NBA player. It just doesn't make sense.

[Cody McGuffey]

Sure.

[Anthony Ng]

So play the cards that you're dealt.

[Cody McGuffey]

Play to your strengths.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Very interesting. I, I do believe I've gone back and forth on the business ownership thing. That's why I like to ask it from high performing people, because it's an interesting question. My answer was no for so long. Like, oh no, entrepreneurship is just too hard. Not everybody should be a business owner. And it's shifted now to I do think everybody should be a business owner. Okay. But it depends on how you define a business owner. Now. Like it comes down to side hustle versus full time, like full time entrepreneurship, how big of a business types of business. Now those are the qu. Those are different questions, I think. But I think anybody should own a business for the sake of learning. Minimum. You learn so much more about yourself when you own a business versus just working for someone else.

[Anthony Ng]

Yeah.

[Cody McGuffey]

Now I'm not saying that you should make a decision necessarily between quitting your job and starting your side hustle business. Right now I'm saying start the side hustle. With the business, with the career, you will be more effective in your career. You will be more of a value asset to your boss, to your manager, to. To the CEO, because you just think like an entrepreneur. It's just going to be different.

[Anthony Ng]

I mean, I do definitely notice that the best people on my team in the past as well is like the people that consider it like their own business.

[Cody McGuffey]

Absolutely.

[Anthony Ng]

So obviously, like having run something yourself, you resonate much more with that. So you're more likely to exhibit those behaviors.

[Cody McGuffey]

And it could be like they generated $5 in the past. It doesn't. Yeah, that's a business. It's a start of a business, at least.

[Anthony Ng]

I'll readjust my answer.

[Cody McGuffey]

You don't have to answer for me.

[Anthony Ng]

And I will readjust because I think it's the degree of what you define as a business and that can be just simply going and like taking the leap to create one product and listing down Etsy. You're a business owner. That's the first step.

[Cody McGuffey]

You're in business.

[Anthony Ng]

And I think it doesn't have to be that you've got like a multinational like empire or something like that. Right. So there's a scale. And every empire started with that one first step as well. Right?

[Cody McGuffey]

Yeah.

[Anthony Ng]

So I would say yeah, everybody can just make sure that you know what your goal is and that aligns with the goals and the values that you've got. And if it does do it, I.

[Cody McGuffey]

Think we should end there.

[Anthony Ng]

Cool.

[Cody McGuffey]

Anthony, where can people find you? Follow dbc, follow you. We can learn more about you, all that good stuff.

[Anthony Ng]

So you can check us out on DailyBodyCoach.com you can also find us on socials as well. So we're across all of those. And me personally, you can catch me on LinkedIn. So it's Anthony Ng, Monica, Go.

[Cody McGuffey]

And we will link to all those things in the show. Notes or the description, depending on where you. Where you watch this. And Anthony, appreciate it, bro.

[Anthony Ng]

Thank you so much, man. Thank you.