[Transcript starts at 1:18]
Hello, hello, hello, my podcast people. And thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite podcast. If you were listening, watching, tuning in on the date that this dropped, it is Monday, September 9th. Happy September. If you were on the wait list, we're going to hop right into the announcements.
Actually, as I'm looking at the camera, we've got a little bit of a fun sun here. So we'll see how the lighting changes as we go. Uh, but if you are on the wait list for round 16 of my Instagram intensive, please make sure that you check your inboxes because registration for y'all early adopters is open.
Uh, today we are, uh, talking about, uh, My thoughts that have been inspired by a question that my brother's girlfriend recently asked which was so what's next very benign question I'm, actually okay with this question. You all know that I hate the question of what's your biggest? Failure, and I don't want the question of where do you see yourself in five years?
But this question of what's next I actually don't mind it because of the answer that it allows me to give Uh, it's an answer that I think that People don't know they can give or they're scared to give and so was sitting here thinking about today's episode and I was like, you know what? I have thoughts about this.
I have things to say. So let's make it a full episode. So, uh, This is a somewhat good segue for the life updates, and then we'll hop into the full episodes. I am actually very excited about this one. So, life updates. We only got two of those. Like I was saying, Justin's girlfriend, Carly, asked me this question when she was here last week.
It was great having them. Like, it was great. Actually, at the time I'm recording this, Justin is still here. He'll be here till Thursday, and it's just, it was great to have them here, right? We got to show them and say, we, you know, Lex and myself, uh, Lex and I got to show them how we live. And I, that gets, this reminds me of how good life is.
Like we weren't going and doing things outside of our norm, except for the farmer's market. I really love going to the farmer's market, but Justin does, Carly does. So that's the first thing we did with them. Um, I took them to two of them and they're right down the street though. Like they're not like far or anything like that.
And it was just like, This is how we live. This is where we live and these walks and these views and the beach and the weather and the food and the ease, the access to food and things like that. Good food. And Carly's a vegan. So it's just like, This is great. I actually wrote a, wow, I actually wrote a note to Lex.
Uh, we write notes back and forth and one of them that I, the most reason why I wrote was just that I'm really grateful to be doing life with her and living life in a way that we can actually tangibly You know, physically show people that they don't have to wait to be happy. You know, people, one of the things that I always wanted when I was growing up was to live in a place where people vacation, not to show off and be like, ah, I live here, but just cause I'm like, that means that there's happiness.
When people go on vacation, they feel better. Their back feels better. Their knees feel better. Their life feels better because they're on vacation. And that's what I wanted all the time. So, you know, to live in a place like this and to live a life like this and show people, like, You don't have to wait to be happy.
I don't know what your happiness looks like. Maybe it looks like living on a mountain. Looks like living somewhere cold. That's fine. But you can do that now. You can start working towards that now. This whole concept is something that was actually first put on my radar by the four hour work week. And like, yeah, I have some qualms with that book and some qualms with Tim Ferriss.
In general, but that book really showed me like, Hey, you don't have to wait to be happy. And that's, I think something that we kind of get taught in the United States and it's like work, work, work, work, work. And then when you're 65 and like you're all busted, then maybe you can go on a trip, but like you don't have the strength to actually lift your luggage.
And I was like, this seems kind of like a bad choice. So to me, it's great to feel like I'm living a life that can show people like, Hey, you don't have to wait. So, you know, I've been saying this in some of the past few episodes that I'm just really grateful to have a space, like physical space, our, our house.
Um, yes, we rent. I have no problem with renting. Um, but really grateful to have a space where we can host people. Um, you know, my other brother, Dan, he came as well and, uh, Sorry, my lost the outline there. I got a little nervous that it wasn't going to Courtney, leave it in. Uh, for those of you that don't know, I read an outline, I do an outline and I read an outline as I'm going through, just kind of keep me on track, but sometimes the screen gets a little stuck and I was like, Oh God, we're going to be frozen here, but it's not.
We got it all fixed. Uh, but my brother Dan, my youngest brother, so Justin is eight years younger than me. Dan, my other brother, is 18 years younger than me. He's in the Marines. He actually came by and stopped by, uh, on Saturday night, so it was cool to have both of them here. And, you know, Carly, and we just had the space for everybody.
And when Carly and Justin are staying here, they have their own room and they have their own bathroom. And it's just like, you amazing to be able to host and to, to like be able to share the, the, the space in that way. And also to have a life and excuse me, a job, a career that allows me to, you know, be in control of my schedule, like, so that I can spend time with them.
I can take them to the farmer's market. Like it's just phenomenal. So that's the first life announcement. Second life announcement is that my knee is messed up. Most likely, probably a fat pad impingement from being alive. Like I honestly, I was literally just walking to get a ball. Uh, practice and my knee felt weird.
There was no pop. There was not like a significant pain. It was actually more so like discomfort. It feels like pressure and. I couldn't get it to go away. It is getting better. It's trending positive. I'm doing all the things I took, uh, I stopped, I didn't play the rest of that day, I have, I didn't play on Friday or Saturday or Sunday, and I'm, we're at, we were coming up on almost a week.
So we'll see how it is. If it feels good on Wednesday, I'll try. If not, I'll keep to my rehab stuff, but you know, annoying, but I will die on the Hill that physical therapy is the best first step. On the business side, we're getting into the episode soon, folks. Don't worry on the business side. Again, check your email.
If you are on round, uh, if you're on the wait list for around 16 of the, uh, Instagram intensive, if you're not on the wait list, but you want in on the fun doors will open to you folks, the public next Monday. That's September 16th. Uh, and they will close on September 20th. So. Make some moves, circle the calendar, get ready for that.
For those of you that somehow do not know what my intensive is. If you're brand new to this, welcome, welcome to the show. Uh, the Instagram intensive is my six week online group coaching program that teaches health and fitness pros exactly how to use Instagram for online business. Everything will be in the show notes.
Um, so you can check that out there, but suffice to say it will open to you folks, if you're on in the public next Monday, all right, so let's hop into this episode, cause I'm very excited about everything around it. So. Last week while Carly was here and we were driving around she asked, you know, very benign, so what's next for you in business?
And like I said earlier in the episode, I love this question because it allows me to give an answer that I think isn't often stated. And my answer to that is nothing. I am keeping everything the exact same in my business. If you Hadn't guessed this episode is not about bashing bashing the question, right?
So I hate that question of what's your greatest failure or the question of like, where do you see yourself in five years? I don't like those questions. I've spoken about this in previous episodes, but this question I bit my tongue there this question I do like because of the answer that it allows me to give I think it's a helpful answer And so I like the question the kind of thought around this is the fact that the opposite of scarcity isn't abundance, it's enough.
I am deep, folks, deep, deep, deep in the finance economics tax side of threads. I be loving threads. I love those live links. I can read articles. I watch YouTube videos. I really, really enjoy it. I'm learning a lot of things. Uh, and, uh, Within that finance economics tax side, I just keep coming back to the same cause or identifying the same cause for basically every problem that's discussed.
And that is greed. Inflation, as we know it, as price is rising, it's a product of greed, right? Income inequality. Is a product of greed. Insane prices for housing. That is a product of greed. You want to have the largest profit margins and keep returning a profit on things? It's greed. The worst parts about capitalism.
Right? The parts that make it fucking horrendous. Mainly that it requires constant and continued expansion and growth. It's greed. Right. It is greed underpinning all of this flip side, a quote that I try to share every Canadian Thanksgiving. Not that I'm Canadian, but this is when I found it and I'm going to say that a Canadian person is who said it.
But the quote is when you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher fence. I don't know who said that. I don't know if they're Canadian, but in my mind I associate the two because I know that at some point in time on Instagram, I shared that quote on Canadian Thanksgiving. So. I will just leave it at that, but you know, perhaps that is why I'm really on the gratitude train right now, um, with being able to host because it is, I'm not gonna lie, it is kind of stressful to host.
Like I am deeply rooted in, in, uh, routine. I'm really fond of schedule and keeping my schedule. And so having someone else here, as much as I love them and can love them, it's a departure from that. And it can be unsettling. So I like this quote because it speaks about building a longer table. It's not saying like, give all your food away and then like pledge yourself to a life of, you know, being destitute.
You're still building something that you use and you can enjoy. And so I kind of see like a balancing in this that allows for more of it to happen, right? So within my own life, the balance or the balancing here is that I'm not giving away all of my earthly possessions. Like I do consider myself very, very fortunate.
And. Because of that, what I'm doing with that is I am using my resources in a way that allows me to provide for others or share with others and share my resources. And continue to want to provide, right? So, you know, Lux and I have this big place and the way that we've done it is having four bedrooms here so that we can host people and they can be in their own space and we can still be in our space and they have their own bathroom and it's not like, you know, overlapping and it allows me to want to continue to do this.
So whether I don't, I actually don't care if you think it's bad or good or whatever, uh, I said what I said. Um, but that is kind of the balance that we have. That I, that I feel with this. And so that's also why I really liked that quote. So circling back, how does all this tie into Carly's question of, so, you know, what's next, she was most specifically speaking about, so what's next on the business front, my business provides me with what I need from a financial perspective, from a personal fulfillment perspective, from a social, social, Socializing perspective, right?
I don't need more. I want to point out though, that this is where I'm at now in business. If you had asked me this question or Carly had asked me this question in my twenties or my early thirties. My answer would be different. And I explained this to Carla, I said it, you know, because they're, she's younger than me.
But, you know, during those times I was grinding with rock tape. I was on the road three weeks out of the month. I was teaching their courses. I was teaching my own courses. I was still treating, you know, before that I had four PT jobs at once, right? I was working in two different clinics and I had two different, like, side gigs that I was doing.
Like, one of them being, I was, you know, going to people's homes. I was doing a lot and needing to expand things and needing to grow things and needing more, right? So I just want to make sure that I point out that there's seasonality and phases to everything and my answer now It's different than it would have been however many years ago So as you sit here, maybe ask yourself this question Understand as well where you are in life, and I'm not here to say like any answer is right or wrong I just like Would like for people to ask themselves these questions.
So circling back to the financial side of this and the fact that, you know, personal fulfillment is there and the financial perspective, the financial fulfillment is. When we think of numbers, uh, one of the best thing we look at numbers, one of the best things about online business is that it allows for really good profit margins because the expenses are relatively low, right?
So if you think about revenue minus expenses equals profit. So because your expenses. are low, namely the fact that you don't have a physical space that you're paying for. There's no rent, there's no mortgage, there's no overhead with that. Your highest line items, your highest expenses are typically going to be your staff, including yourself, right?
If you are an S corp, you need to be on payroll. So get your shit together. Don't go to jail. You all know that Sandy York is my favorite resource for this. Uh, she is fit, fit money coach. We will link her stuff and her episodes in the show notes. So, uh, but even when prices do go up or whatever software and things that is that like that, that you're using and folks right now are going crazy over Canada, like they're never that drastic.
The price increases are never that drastic though. I do believe it's a product of greed, but either way, they're never that. drastic where you have to make these radical changes in the business in order to keep these really good margins. So I keep things the same. I can keep my business model the same, even though things go up a little bit.
Like, yes, I do feel like I'm getting an email every day from like, this company went up 3, this one went up a dollar and it's just like, okay, like I get it, inflation is a real thing. And often it's driven by greed, but it is still a thing. So I get that these things, you know, they go up, but even when the price is going up, because I have factored that in with my own pricing, I don't need to change things.
I can keep things the same, especially, you know, including pricing. My mafia has been the same since the beginning. I started it in 20, what, 2020 and it was 27 initially. So it went up 10, but that was actually the founder's rate. Uh, so the 30, it has not changed from that 37 a month price point. My intensive, which is.
497 for early bird, 597 if you are in the public launch, has been the same for like, I don't know, like the last 10 rounds. Like I have no, I have no desire or no need to change it. No plans on changing it. My hourly rate for my coaching calls has stayed the same. It's at 397. It's been there for years. Why?
Because I'm fine with it there. Of note, part of this ability to keep things the same is that when I did initially raise the prices, I factored in not having to want to raise them like ever. So I was like, okay, I'm going to raise these prices. I don't want to do this shit again. What do I need to raise it to that I'm comfortable with that, you know, will allow for that.
So all I have to say, it is okay to keep things like this. The same. A quick interjection for those of you that maybe are thinking, I don't think any of you folks, but who knows who's listening, but if you've ever heard the phrase that if you're not growing, then you're dying, my response to that is that, okay, I think it's a totally viable option to let things run their course and as they start to quote unquote die, consider the fact that that is opening up space for something new and something different.
We see this in all areas of life. Of course, I'm going to use the example of movement because that's just how my brain is. Right. But. You know, my, my guy, Brian Boorstein, he's just put out a post today, how he's switching his, uh, lifting, uh, frequency. And, you know, we've watched his journey go from like all lifting, all bodybuilding to introducing a lot of cardio and like being all about cardio.
And now he's experimenting with the ratio of lifting versus cardio. All right. Of note, his gains aren't dying, but his excitement in interest is waning, right? So we're not going to say that, okay, like. If you're not lifting your gains or dying, right now we're really talking about what's dying, quote unquote, is the interest that he has in this thing and how it, you know, waxes and wanes.
That's normal. My girl is Meredith. My girl is Meredith and Alex, right? They went from CrossFit, Meredith went from CrossFit, and then was like, I don't know, it's kind of like this, I don't want to do it anymore, I'm not doing it anymore, I'm not doing it as much. And then picked up cycling, picked up all the storytelling she's doing with social media and content creation.
Right, we saw Alex. Her wife go from CrossFit to running and now she's bringing in cycling because she wants to do triathlon, triathlons, right? Things don't need to keep growing and expanding, nor can they forever, right? That is fucking at the heart of capitalism. Shit does not grow. And scale infinitely, indefinitely, right?
It is okay to be like, yeah, this thing isn't growing anymore. Okay, cool. I mean, if you really want it to, yeah, you can go ahead and look to squeeze all the juice out of it, but also understanding that you'll hit that cap. And then when that does like, cool, we'll keep it the same. And if it starts to decrease, okay, that's space for something else to fill in.
So circling back into the numbers real quick, is that when it comes to pricing, because you know, when I was looking at. setting my prices at a level where I was like, I'm not going to change them. Understand the pricing is all made up, right? What introduces objectivity to pricing is your other products, your other offers and services.
So to me, it's ultimately about determining the amount of money that allows you to sell with full confidence and that you won't get salty about the compensation you're receiving for the effort that you're giving, right? That fake it till you make it phrase. That is a bullshit, right? Don't lean into that.
Don't do that. I am not salty about the effort that I put in and the compensation I receive. I can absolutely say, you know, and speak about my prices with full confidence. And I have no problem sticking to the number and losing a potential customer. If they're like, that's just too expensive. I'm like, okay, that's cool.
Of note, this is why I teach about and talk about diversifying your value ladder and offering things at different price points, right? So I'm going to use this. Two things here. One, if you want more about, uh, the value ladder, I have a free ebook about that. We will link that in the show notes. So you can understand about how you can diversify your offers, right?
Because I don't like sliding scales. I don't like you discounting services for, and then, you know, feeling salty about it. So this is why we create a different service with different access to you, different amounts of effort from you that the person still benefits from, but it's at a price point that they can, can manage, right?
As opposed to taking this big offer and being like, okay, I'll just increase it. You're going to get salty. Don't do that. I'm going to use this concept here to close the loop and then wrap up this episode. So closing the loop here again, doors open next week for my Instagram intensive. And one of the reasons why we got the intensive now, one of the reasons that I do not offer a payment plan for my intensive is that I simply, I don't simply want more people in it.
I want the people who are the best fit. All right. And this isn't about having enough money. This is that I don't want you going into debt for this thing. Right. Danny Matei, I don't give him necessarily everything he does a good friend of mine though, but. He has, you know, by one of his masterminds, he was just like, Hey, the payment plan is your credit card.
And I was like, you know what? You're not wrong. You're not wrong. Right. If you don't have a credit card, that's fine too. Why? Because my intensive isn't going anywhere. And I put the price on everything. It's 4. 97 for the early birds, 5. 97 if you were with the public launch. You can use all of my free resources and the other price point resources that I have to move yourself very much forward and save up so that when it comes back around, cause it's not going anywhere, then you can afford it.
Of note, I do offer payment plans for the longer, more expensive programs that I run like Legacy and ElectraMine, because those are six and nine month programs, respectively, right? Offering a payment plan for a six week program, which is how long the intensive is. That means that I'd be chasing people down every day.
After the course ended and that would be, or I could be chasing people down after the course ended, and that would be more work for me, which I would be salty about. The response then that folks would typically give is okay, well then raise the price and now we see how inflation and greed can absolutely be besties.
This is not to say that you are greedy if you are raising the price. There's so many factors that go into it, but you see that example, how it can happen, right? My point here simply is ask yourself the question, what So what's next? And then really sit with your answer, right? I'm not here to say that there is a right or wrong answer.
Simply, merely suggesting that thinking about your answer, just merely thinking about the answer, can be incredibly, incredibly helpful, all right? And don't forget, saying I'm keeping things absolutely the same or I'm keeping things exactly the same Is absolutely an acceptable answer. All right, looking at the time, we're going to wrap this up.
As always, endlessly, endlessly, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you. Until next time, friends, Maestro out.
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