Devan Kline (Burn Bootcamp Co-Founder) | From a Gymnastics Parking Lot to 183 Operational Franchises

Audio Transcription

How does the husband and wife team start a business in the parking lot of a gymnastics center and within just six short years, grow that company to have over 183 franchise locations and 176 locations that are currently in the build out process. On today’s show, we interview the cofounder of Burn boot camps, Devin Klein, who shares with us about how to start a business with little or no calf, how to get your first 100 clients. The process of franchising a business, his daily routine, first thing right, proactive in both his business and personal life and much, much more.

Yes, yes, yes. Andy s thrive nation. On today’s show, we are interviewing a former member of the San Francisco Giants Baseball Organization and now he is a giant in the world of fitness. It is the founder of burn bootcamp, Devin Klein. Welcome onto the show. Sir, how are you

Clay did takes her out of me so much. That was, by the way, the dopest intro that I’ve ever heard that was you had me like nod my head to that like Drake remix that you guys did right down. Loved it.

Big shout out. That’s Colton Dixon, a client who I work with WHO’s actually signed to Atlantic records that’s working on some unbelievable music to be released very soon. So Colton Dixon, that’s a big shout out to you and I’m the no 10 I was in the background playing the cow bell going and they just kept fading it out. They said, can we take a little bit less off that track and now I don’t even hear it anymore. It more cal belt, right? In this case less cowbells [inaudible] okay. Now I want to start off at the bottom because you have got to a place of meteoric success and I like to start it. We show at the bottom, but let’s kind of flip it up a little bit today. Let’s talk about the top. How many locations do you have right now of burn boot camp? That are open and operating throughout this continental United States.

Yeah. So I’m Kinda, I know the United States and we actually just awarded, announced last week that we are now ordering franchises in Canada. So now, technically we’re international. I know it’s our brought to the north. So in the United States right now we have, uh, since 2015, we have opened a 183 locations. We also have another hundred and 76 coming online and a, we plan, uh, by 2021 to have a thousand in the United States.

That right there, uh, I think that could count as a win of the week.

He gets it overnight. Success. It’s Devin.

He did it overnight. No, no dad. Devon, you started off at the bottom. Talk to me about you were, you were on the San Francisco giants where you’re good at throwing a ball, hitting a ball. Could you do both? What, what was, what position were you playing?

Uh, so I was a pitcher, right. And I think that, uh, you know, to the overnight success point, you know, a lot of people just think that, oh, you know, 31 years old, you’ve got all these gyms. Like it started when I was just just a kid and my father was an alcoholic and my mother actually fled when I was 13 years old. And so I had this rough upbringing that I needed to escape from. So I used baseball as my outlet. And so what ended up happening is I, through I guess escaping my reality, if you will, I got on the baseball field and you know, it really started to teach me the work ethic needed cause I wasn’t always the most talented person. And so it started there like it’s not overnight. That was when I was 1213 years old. This is, I’m not 31. That’s what, 1617 years. I’m not that great at math, but that’s a long time. Now coming to fruition, could you throw the ball? Uh, I would say said 90 to 93 as a, as a starter house. 89 91 is a closer, which I were, where I really thrive that I was in 92 93. I could, I could bring it hard for one anyway.

Okay. No. So you, you, uh, did you get recruited out of high school to play baseball? Or I’d walk at the listeners through them. I don’t think a lot of listeners are familiar with how professional baseball works. It’s typically a little different than other sports.

Yeah. I was an underdog coming out of high school, uh, you know, made the all state Dream Team, but no college in Michigan, but no colleges. We’re really looking at me. And one college central Michigan University gave me the shot to play. And when I got there, I wasn’t so highly recruited either. And so, uh, when I, when I, I didn’t get drafted. And so what happened is I went to summer baseball and summer baseball. Uh, there’s no really preconceived notions of where you came from. Everyone was on an even playing field. And so I got a chance because I worked my butt off to get a, a great closing role position. And, uh, brought the whole summer and the giants just happened to be at one of my games and they gave me a shot. And so it’s a, it’s a, it’s a tough road. Minor League baseball isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. It’s 142 games in 146 days and you’re living with a duffle bag going from hotel to hotel. It’s the true quote unquote grind life.

Now give us your, uh, one, uh, your eyes know your head exploded. You can’t believe this is happening. Minor League baseball moment. Do you have a bottom of the bottom? You know, when you’re a minor league baseball, I mean, how much are they paying you per day at this point and minor league baseball? What are you making? A couple hundred bucks a day?

Yeah. And then you’re making 1200, 1400 bucks a month and you’re getting some very good and you get some meal money per day. But that’s about it. I mean you, you don’t get paid well at all. It’s literally a pursuit of, of a passion. And I just kept pushing and kept pushing. And it played really, really well. Um, get the chance to get invited to the all star game, my third seat or my second season and I had an injury that essentially in, in my career. I came back to spring training the next year and I got released and I can just remember clay dude, I was sitting in my hotel room after I got released and just like, this is the thing that I worked since I was like every day since I was six years old for it. It’s like everything I connected my identity to was throwing a white ball across this green grass and being really, really good at it.

And the day that I got released, I remember my literal, my world was just shattered. I was so heartbroken and I’ve sat there and I cried my eyes out for two hours. My wife now, who was my girlfriend at the time had really been the only one we met when we were 12 years old, by the way. And she’s been there with me throughout the entire process and she’s the only one that I ever could really lean on for advice. And so I just, I just got released. Uh, what do I do? I was like, I’m so nervous to go backwards. I’m so nervous to end up where my parents ended up in their lives, but I refused to do that. What do I do? And like, she was like, and I can remember it so clearly, she’s like, Devan Kline, you’ve done what 0.0001% of baseball players ever get to do that’s already success, which you have to do is build on that and you’ve got to keep moving.

And she told me that word, keep moving. And that’s like, that’s my mantra. That’s throughout everything that I do. It’s kind of my tagline, if you will. So that’s, and that’s, that’s Morgan, your wife Morgan. Yeah. Morgan. She’s my wife. She’s been my rock since we were just little kids. I’ve ever standing. Uh, at sixth grade I was standing in line to walk into school and she pulls up on a bus. I have a broken arm with a purple cast from playing football. And, uh, I look up, I see this beautiful girl. I remember it like it’s yesterday. And, uh, I looked at her right away and I’d like, you know, it kind of felt like it puppy love, you get the little butterflies but you’re like 12, so you don’t know what it is. And uh, long story short, we ended up connecting and throughout junior high, throughout high school we are off and on and throughout college we were together.

And then when I got, when I got the chance, the opportunity to play with the giants, she was there supporting me every step of the way. Uh, you know, flying out to my games, I would come back and stay with her in the off season and she’s been my rock. She’s been like the only consistent thing in my life all the way up until we started burn boot camp together. What, what was your injury? So I tore some a forearm muscle fibers, so it was a really weird injury. It’s nothing you could have surgery on. But what happened? I had a, I had a hard sharp slider and I would strike guys out, uh, with my slider. Uh, and what would happen is I would start to snap it. And when I snapped into that motion, I would get this like almost like a lock and froze to feeling and then I get the ball back and I couldn’t throw again. Uh, cause my body just wouldn’t let me release. And so what I needed was like months off at a time to rehab to strengthen, to lengthen. And it was just like this reoccurring thing. And it started like in high school and it became progressively worse and worse and worse as I, you know, played more through more practice, more et cetera. So, um,

I uh, uh, you know, your whole career is amazing, uh, spent way too much time trying to research you. So I apologize for the cyber stalking, but you’re out there staying with host families in the minor leagues. And my understanding is you first got a chance to interact with the average American family and see how they approach or their approach to nutrition or their lack thereof of a proactive plan. You know, you got a chance to see how the average American family approaches nutrition by staying with host families. Can you explain what a host family is for a minor league player and then what kinds of things you began to observe as you stayed in these homes?

Yeah, absolutely. So I’m a host family is basically a generous family who usually has the, usually have, typically they don’t have to, but they usually have children and they’ll take, and they’ll take a player and that’s a college player that’s traveling or a professional player that’s traveling that doesn’t have a home. And maybe the team doesn’t have a budget to put them in hotel rooms. So they, they coupled them with host families. So it’s basically a interim family for the summer, uh, that usually has children. And a lot of times they’ll want to bring you in because they’re children will look up to you and you can teach them and play with them, et cetera. And so what uh, what I, what I thought living in my little hole of Battle Creek Michigan, as I was growing up, you know, two blocks from the projects, living on food stamps, watching my father put the bottle to his lips, watching him and my mother, you know, go at it on a weekly basis.

I thought those problems were the problem. I didn’t know those problems were rare or, or more rare than the normal quote unquote average American problem. And so when I went out and I stopped, I got the opportunity to travel to these host families and to stay with them. I saw the problems that people were having that caused the unhappiness. And it was, I linked it because it was the same type of unhappiness that my family had only different problems. And so what I started to realize is that I had this natural gift to inspire people because I mentioned I was never the most talented. Like I worked I only through 82 miles an hour as a sophomore. And I worked my butt off to be able to get over 90. And what I noticed was their problems were lethargy, their problems were lack of energy, lack of knowledge, not eating healthy, not that they didn’t care, they just didn’t know how.

And so I needed to do those things if I was going to compete at the level that I was at. And so I remember distinctly one time, uh, uh, and Lit Fort Laramie, Wyoming, uh, my host mother and Nicole, the hope was like feeding her kids cheerios and thought that she was going to feed us cheerios and like fruity pebbles for breakfast. And I’m like, all right, Nicole, let me teach you how to make egg white omelets with like peppers, let me chop these peppers up for you. It’s like, let me show you how to meal prep. Right. And it, and it changed her, it changed her and she, she was thankful for it and she would watch me run to the gym and back and I would write little workouts out for and you know, she dropped a, I can’t remember the exact amount of weight, but it’s not about weight. It’s about the, it’s about the shift that you could see in people when they find something that they can link to being a happier person.

Have you ever googled yourself? Um, yes I have googled myself. Uh, definitely. Dan, do you have any cardboard cutouts of yourself available? Do you have any of those nails?

I’ve actually, I got a, I got a on my office right now. I’ve got a plaque of my debut self published book called stop starting over. So

that was the deal. Here’s my commitment. We have conferences at our, at our, uh, we have an office. It’s 20,000 square foot to a facility where we host a conference every two month for, uh, the members of the thrive community because we have about a half million downloads a month. You know, we’re right down the street from you. So here’s what my commitment to you. If you ever come to jinx to check on your a franchisee there and a, you ever want to attend a conference, uh, we’d love to have you. Also, if you will send me a cardboard cutout of yourself. I will put it up in the office and I will never take it down. I W we had David Robinson, he’s up there right now, you know, Nba Hall of Famer and one of our partners. You could be next to David Robinson and we’ll just put what would Devan Kline do

you know what? I’m writing that down right now and I’m writing David Robinson cause that’s really cool. I’m a huge fan. Great Leader.

Yeah. Or I can put a quote underneath it says keep on moving. Captain Morgan Klein. Can we use Hashtag I’m a social media guy. Can we use Hashtag [inaudible] Hashtag [inaudible] we’ll put it on there. I’m just telling Ya and we’ll go, this will be a thing. Because we had, what happens is a lot of our entrepreneurs, a lot of our listeners, this is our, this is who’s listening right now. There’s somebody who, most of us grew up poor. We’ve started a business where we’re a plumber or a disc jockey where a photographer, we’re a lighting company where a big home builder, we’re, somebody’s doing something right. And we have goals for our faith, our family, our finance, our fitness, our friendship, our fun in what we do is we begin to focus disproportionately on finances for if we think for a limited time, until it becomes a hypnotic rhythm where now we no longer, we neglect our fitness, let’s say, or we neglect our family.

And so we, we, uh, a lot of times they’ll, they’ll ask their, their coach, he’ll say, hey, uh, what do you guys recommend for fitness and where right now it’s just like go down to burn boot camp, get on down there, walked down, you know, but, but, you know, that’s a thing. And I think the bureau all over the country. I mean, so a lot of our out of town guests, most of them are not from Tulsa. We can just say go to that website. So that, that’s my promise to you. If you send me a cardboard cutout of you, I put it up there. So back to my questions I have for you. Burn boot camp. My understanding is you started this in a parking lot, which I don’t think is a typically the best place to start a business, you know, entrepreneurship incubator and incubator’s don’t say step one, start the business in a parking lot across from I think a gymnastics center in North Carolina. Uh, 2012, dateline, 2012, North Carolina, gymnastics studio parking lot. Why did you start the business there?

Well, like you mentioned earlier, minor league baseball players, despite the nostalgia of being a professional athlete, you don’t make any money. And like I mentioned before that I come from a family, uh, that uh, grew up on food stamps. So there was no cash reserves, there’s no capital reserves in my life. Like I was at 20 years old. My girlfriend at the time, Morgan was paying my cell phone bill. And so I did not have the means to like go to, you know, a local landlord, a local retail set, they’re going to get a lease. And so one of my favorite quotes that I live by, and it’s by Tony Robbins, is when you have no resources, get resourceful. And I knew that I had the talent. And so what I went out and did is I went up and down every single, you know, possible sublet business I could and finally landed in this gymnastics center where half the time when the kids were not in there, in the early, early mornings, I can be inside. And the other half when the, in the evenings when the kids were in the gym, then I could be outside in the parking lot. And, uh, I started burn bootcamp with $600. I went up to the local Dick’s sporting goods. I bought all the dumbbells and all the exercise mats that I possibly could. So my clients were scraping their knees on the cement. Yup. And I said, look, there’s, there’s nowhere to go right now but up. So let’s just, let’s go.

Let’s try it. Okay, here we go. Here we go. Your burn boot camps are a magical unfused. Gastic I mean you, you go in there and you leave excited, you leave motivated. It’s a place of encouragement. It’s a Dojo of Mojo show. People love it and you’re on a podcast and I probably not bringing the energy that you would find inside a burn bootcamp. So if you could channel your inner burn boot camper experience, if you could take us inside the burn boot camp and preach the good news of resourcefulness one more time. I give you permission to completely destroy the parameters of the audio. You can pick the microphones, go off if you want to, if you are inside a burn boot camp and an entrepreneur came up to you and said, but I just don’t have the money to open up an office space. What would you say to them?

Okay, here we go. All right. First of all, I’d say,

who’s ready to rock and roll today? Getting some noise.

Everybody get out and say high five, three people getting everybody in a positive state, some positive energy going on, and then once I got them in a positive state, then you ask them the question. If the entrepreneur is asking, Hey, I don’t have the money to start the business, I’m going to say, well, if you ask the question like that from that negative state of mind, then you’re never going to be successful. So I need you to fix your focus. I need you to walk around and you turn around. Think about what you just said. Come back, asked me who said energy with some confidence and let’s make this happen. If I

don’t have enough money to get an office space, what? What are you? What are you? Tell me

you don’t have enough money to get an office space. What you gotta do is look at everything that you have in your house. You gotta you gotta, you gotta take that, that car that you bought, that costs way too much money that she know you don’t need, that you just bought to impress the people that you don’t even give a crap about who to sell that you need to downgrade. You need to use the difference in that money. You need to sell your house. Go get an apartment. You use the money that you used, the square footage you’re not using. Monetize that, liquidate it, throw it into your business. If you really want it, there’s always a win.

Oh, oh, I want to get a fan passing around the church. Right? That was good. Now, now that we’ve got the that we’ve got our listeners paying attention. No, we got some people out there paying attention. Now somebody out there is saying to you, they’re going, I am into fitness. I’m in to fit you. You know, there’s so many peop, Devan, you’ve met so many people that are into fitness and they are jacked. They’re running around the gym. Good. I’m here. I’m just pumped up. I’m taking my be my taking my vitamins, my DCA, my protein, my creatine. I take a dollar, does a pump top, but they’re poor. You know, there are tons of time absolutely jacked. I couldn’t, I couldn’t visit, but they’re poor and they say I want to open the business, but I don’t know why would I want to buy a burn boot camp? I just, I’d rather just fail as a personal trainer and be upsets for 20th who these people are upset. They know the skill. Why should somebody buy a burn boot camp? Cause your, your system is hot sauce. It makes me cry. It’s so good.

By the way, before I answered this question, I, you’re like my favorite person I’ve ever, I’ve ever interviewed by the way. Uh, I, you have me laughing with you the whole time. No wonder, no wonder your podcasts and everything you’re doing is so successful. Uh, it clearly has your energy. But what I would tell somebody, look, here’s what I would tell them. You know, Burn boot camp. It’s just so much more than a gym. And we envision this world where our lifestyle and powers women to and men to love themselves for who they are today, but be inspired at who there’ll be tomorrow because you’d be shocked at how many people are overwhelmingly hopeless there. They’re depressed, they’re anxious, they’re frustrated, they’re unhappy with at least some element of their lives. And the culture of the fitness industry as it stands today, clay, it’s broken.

My friend I did it is nearly 70% of people, this isn’t my opinion, this is statistic. They were like 70% of people are overweight or obese and nearly 20% of our children. But you see a gym, you see a trainer, you see an influencer, you see, you see it everywhere. They’re literally everywhere. And you have to intentionally avoid the marketing message, right? So, so here’s what I would say it clearly the message that we’re sending as an industry, is it resonating deep into our society of fitnesses everywhere. Yet no one’s taking advantage of it. Look, fitness is focused on lose weight fast or the next a flat. Yeah,

him die with you. Can I argue with you? Can we have a debate real quick? Let’s go. This is my argument for you. I would say the excellence that you put out at burn boot camp on a daily basis, you have a plan and you have a process, which is very rare. I have met, I get tell you how many personal trainers I’ve met that get a client and they make it up as they go. You know, they’re like, we’re on. What we’re going to do now is we’re going to do a watt couple curls on and we’re going to do some squats. And you’re like, do you have a plan? Uh, you know, it’s clear. You know what I mean? It’s clear that Moses doesn’t know where he’s going. You know that Moses of tray and you guys didn’t burn burn boot camp. Have you have an in house daycare or childcare?

You know, during certain hours you have child care. So if I’m a working dad or mom, I can take my kid there. I don’t have to abandoned my kid and leave him with a stranger or something. You guys have music that makes sense. You have locations that make sense. You have a program that makes sense. You have a plan. It’s not random, but I think a lot of people have gone to Jim’s, uh, that are just, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s jackass, jackass, hurry and entropy are the two principles that most gyms, they say, ah, well we are, we are, we are founded on Jack Sre and entropy. Uh, we are planets and not have a plan. You know what I’m saying though? Some people feel like they’re being led by the blind. Talk to me about your plan that you have because it burned bootcamp. You come in, it’s not Rancho baby. You have a plan.

No, no, no. Yeah. It’s not random for sure. We don’t follow the trends out there. We set the trends and in the future of fitness, here’s what’s going to happen. People aren’t going to care as much about the way they look. They’re going to care about the way they feel they’re going to carry about, uh, the energy that they have for themselves so that they can, you know, give to their work. Like you’re talking about earlier, the thrive, the thrive philosophy, give to your work, give to you all of the other buckets and you’re like there’s financial freedom, your spirituality, all these things. You need energy yourself if you’re going to do that. And so what we did at bird is we programmed from a national standpoint, a standpoint here at our headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, we have a fitness programming team that a blast out to the entire nation and soon to be Canada.

Our fitness programming, uh, months in advance we have one on one what we call focus meeting. So our clients can like sit down one on one with their trainer and get like specific customized advice for them. Like you mentioned the Child Watch, you mentioned we have a supplement line that’s clean, that’s not like most supplement companies you’re going to, you’re going to find at GNC it’s clean, no toxic toxins or additives. We have retail line, we’re like a team. We’re like, we’re like the best thing I could compare us to, it’s kind of weird that we’re coming full circle is we are like a professional sports team. You are. We try to take care of every element of our clients’ lives to maximize their gain, but their game is it sports? It’s happiness.

You need a mascot? The mascot should be a giant because you are the fitness giant. Have you ever thought about it? Right? You are the fitness giant and I want to ask is because you work with your wife. I work with my wife. You started, uh, you know, hitting on your wife and kind of a weird, not understandable way at the age of what, 12, 12. You kind of puppy looks super early. Yeah. I was at college at Oral Roberts University. I met my wife when she was 18. We got married 20. We’ve been married 18 years. I have five kids. How many kids do you have right now?

Uh, so I have two kids, a camera Elisabeth’s she’ll be one in March, uh, two and Mara, wait, hold on. Here we go. Don’t worry about it. This is, this happens to the best beans and read March. She’s confusing me. I said, how will the baby, one, two, three, now she’s three in March. And my son Maxwell just heard one. So three, two, one. Okay. So now what role does your wife play in the business? Cause I feel like her imprints are all over this business. What is she? Oh yeah, I mean she’s, she’s the, she’s the detailed to the vision. Yeah, she shares the vision, but she probably very much like you and your wife, your, your ying and Yang and, and that’s, that’s a lot of times the only way husband and wife power couple teams can make the business happen is when they’re kind of the internal relationship checks and balances. So we’d like to call it, think a Jeff Bezos calls it a work life harmony. I like work life harmony and a mortgage division to my detail. But listen, let me just give her credit where credit’s due. This brand would not even be remotely close to where it would be. Wildlife. It might be big, but it’d be wild, wild west without her,

which is why I hope you’re not offended when I hang up on you in a minute. And I called Morgan and ask her for the real questions. You know the rest of the real information there. Just kidding. She would love to come talk to you sometime. I would love to. I would love to have her on because I think my wife, uh, uh, frankly, um, I’m like the office I did the marketing, the vision, the salesman, I said does that, my wife does the accounting, the administration, the legal, the things that will keep you out of jail. Now what I’m going to do is I’m going to cue up an audio clip here real quick and I think you’re going to know this audio and just try, try to not freak out and how excited you are when I cue up this audio. Okay. I’m going to cue it up and then we’ll just play name that tune. Here we go. Just just let it happen and let it, let it, let it flow. Here we go. This is the story. Third upside down and I’m like to take a manager. Sit right there. I’ll tell you how about became the prince of a town called Bel. How excited are you about the show? Fresh Prince and will Smith.

I’m so glad you displayed that. I was, I was actually nervous. The transition for more, I thought was going to be like an old audio clip of myself talking to Morgan or something then that’s great. That’s awesome. Thanks for playing. That brings back great memories. I grew up on, I grew up on hip hop. You know, like I’m a, I’m a, I’m a hip hop guy. I love the whole rap culture. I loved the whole, you know, just the aura of like, of like grinding of like coming from the hood or coming from nothing in, in, in making something out of yourself. And that’s really the foundation of that whole generation. And so I grew up on fresh prince of Bel Air and then, and then, uh, those are my two biggest influences in that genre. And, uh, particularly will Smith is, you know, since then he’s, so, I’m so a, and they hammered by him and he’s probably, if I could meet one person, it would probably be him because he didn’t stop because once, once he, once he made it in music and then made it fresh prince and then, you know, and then went and Hollywood and then he, then he graduated into like radically adding value to the world and telling people how he did it.

He didn’t get, he didn’t get content again. Stop. And I really admired that about him and uh, I can just remember reading his story and listening to his story at a very young age and relating to that, the end, like, I don’t, I’m probably not that talented, but I’m going to be something, whatever I do just like will Smith, I’m going to, I’m going to have at least the opportunity and the ability to be the best in the world at it. And A, I won’t pursue it if that’s not the case.

What I’m gonna do is I’m going to, during this little brown, we’ll call this the will Smith lightening round. Okay? And you have an opportunity to earn a 3000 mega points or to lose all the points. I’m gonna read a notable quotable from will Smith and I, you are one of the most motivational people on the planet and I don’t want to take away your super power. You’re such a great verbal communicator and people out there deserve to feel what it’s like to be in a burn boot camp. So I want to tee up the quote and you kind of teach us what it means. Okay? So here we go. First notable quotable from will Smith. He says, the first step is you have to say that you can. What does that mean?

That means if you don’t believe in yourself, how has, how has anyone else gonna believe in you? If you don’t think you’re awesome, how can other people gravitate towards you?

That’s a, you get 100 mega points. Okay? What to the next one? Here we go. This is, by the way, these, these mega points are redeemable at truck stops everywhere. Just knock on the shower door and asked for a guy named Bernie. He’s got to take your advice on that one. I’ll just tell you, they said for a good time, call Bernie and I, you know, just say it just I’ll give you the number later. Okay, here we go. Here’s the next and notable quotable. So here’s an extendable quotable will Smith says, I’ve always considered myself to be just average talent. What I have is a ridiculous, insane obsessive obsessiveness for practice and preparation. What does that mean?

That means it doesn’t matter your level of talent, that’s only going to get you so far. And I think most of your listeners understand that. But what he’s really meaning, what are the two words? I liked R r a radical and so like sickening work ethic, meaning like you have to be so laser focused on being the hardest worker in the room and taking that a layer deeper, you have to, you have to take audit of every single minute that you spend every single day and ask yourself the question, how can this minute best be spent? How can I best spend this minute right now today to get me to my goal? So it’s not just like sickening work ethic, like don’t mistake Movement for progress, you know, don’t, don’t just like do things to do or answer, you know, 45 emails that you don’t need to answer, right? But, but, but focus on how can I spend this minute the best possible and in every waking minute that you have, you literally, and you do this, I do this work until you Ooh, you’re metaphorically, your eyes bleed like I’m 15 to 18 hours a day, every single day. That’s no joke. And I’m not saying that to sound cool. I’m saying that because it’s true.

Oh, thrive nation. Just let that soak in for a second here. Could you repeat? How many hours a day did you say?

15. 15.

Picky. That is unbelievable now. Okay, so you get, you get one more. Uh, you’re a thousand points there. Okay. So my final willsmith annetable quarters I like to read to you is will Smith says whatever your dream is, every extra penny you have needs to be going to that. What is will Smith talking about?

He’s saying don’t get fancy. It’s like I said earlier, you’re like, don’t try to impress the people. You don’t care about it. You know you’re going to invest into a Mercedes Benz just to get the girl, well that’s not the girl that you should be trying to impress anyways. Take tape. Yeah, keep it 94 Honda accord and take the extra 500 bucks a month and stack that up. Save it, put it aside and open that business that you’re talking about. He’s saying, he’s saying like if your identity is, is correlated with material things, then you’re ultimately going to lose the game. And if you are humble enough and you are self aware enough to be able to not care about the material things but care about what’s really the most important thing and that’s building a legacy. You need money to build your legacy. And uh, I think that’s what he’s saying there.

You get another thousand mega points. You my friend, get a 300 mega points total. I just can go see Bernie truck. Stop. Knock on the door. It is Bernie. Uh, and then we’ll work it out. So now we move on to franchising. 2015. It’s February 19th, 2015. Ah, you decided to franchise the business. Why did you decide to franchise the business in? What has been the most difficult aspect of Franchising your company?

The most difficult aspect, let me go, I’ll do the first one first. Oh, we, we decided to franchise their business because when Morgan and I were packing up that parking lot with 150 people on a Saturday, and other people were asking me like, where’s your next location going to be in people from other spots at North Carolina where like, can I bring one of these to my city? And we started looking at each other like, Babe, yeah, we, you know, we have something, we’re not quite sure what it is. We’re still a little bit immature. Uh, entrepreneurs at this point. We aren’t quite sure what it is, but very always been very intuitive. And we felt it. Like we felt that we had something big. And, uh, we said, I mean, we millionaires at 26 years old. And like I said, I was paying, she was paying my cell phone bill when I was 20 my life financially, the financial freedom that I needed to be, uh, to, to, to live the life I wanted to provide for the family that I wanted to build.

Is that our fuse to be like my upbringing or have my children feel like I did? That’s all the money I needed. And so we decided that impact was the goal was the mission. And at that time we didn’t really, we just thought we were going to do maybe a couple of locations in North Carolina, a conglomerate of in North Charlotte and you know, you know, rock and roll and it’d be the dominant location, a fitness club and Charlotte and uh, uh, so we franchise, we franchise, we invested all the money we had. We literally went to zero again. And it costs you to franchise in terms of legal fees, building your franchise disclosure, document building. Yeah. For foremost. But in the financial models, getting all the print pieces standardized, your logo, your website, your signs, your decor, your buildouts, your, all of the things that go into franchising.

I have helped multiple companies franchise it can be expensive. How much do you think you spend on franchising the company over the first year I would say we spent about 150,000. We spent 35,000 in a day. Uh, and then over the first year I spent about 150,000 and a then the next year, you know, we, we, we got started on the resources that we had. Uh, we, we were resourceful. Let me just put it that way in context of the way that we started up. And so each year from there, we’ve kind of a amateurize that cost over the last six years and now we have this, this very tight system that has the best attorneys in the world and you know, the the best, uh, the best leadership and all those things. But we started just like her and I in our house just got the legal documents, you know, got the LLCs made, got that.

Like you said, the marketing materials. So yeah, about that word on the street is you’ve got the best cardboard cutouts on the way to Tulsa, so pretty excited about that. Hopefully that didn’t set you back too much. But now we talk about the burn boot camp experience. There are many, many people that are raving fans of the burn boot camp and a, we’re on a podcast. It’s about 45 minutes and your workouts are about 45 minutes. However, on our podcast, I mean I know some of our listeners are pretty excited, but I don’t know that any of our listeners have burned 700 calories while listening to today’s show. Maybe some of our listeners on a stationary bike or really getting after it, but talk to us about the burn boot camp experience. What’s that like? So when you come in, it’s different than in any other gym because when you, when you come in, we welcome like I was always an underdog and so that, that like it bleeds throughout our system.

Like we are the company that will message to the people that other people will message to the ones who do have the anxiety, the ones that are fearful to come into a gym and we provide this, this comfortable atmosphere. Now don’t mix that with not working hard because when you come in the door and that what we call our burden Basadur is around the front of that desk, not sitting behind it and she high fives you and she asks you your name, she calls your trainer or trainers, shakes your hand, smiles and says, welcome to the gym. You walk in and all the smiling faces are in. They’re welcomed me with opening arms, you know, building you up, not looking at you all funny, trying to tear you down and we give you our, our tour. Uh, it’s, it’s a very welcoming and comforting vibe. We’d go right away when somebody comes in and couple them with a person who has been here before, done that before, had the transformation so that they can make a connection right away. And that’s so subtle, but it’s so important. And, uh, I think that just most gyms don’t care that much. Not all of them, but most of them just don’t care enough to go that extra little mile of having the discipline to just high five somebody every time they walk in the door, smile. And just say their name.

Having worked with many gyms as a business coach and consultant, I can confirm what you’re saying. I think, I think very few, uh, Jim’s go that extra mile to make that, make that connection. A of objectively speaking, how big is the box? How big is the footprint of the real estate needed to open up once someone up, there’s listening right now and thinking about wanting to reach out to you to, to maybe buy one or to learn more about it. And what, how much of a uh, real estate do you need?

So, yeah, a so anywhere from about 3000 square foot to about 7,000 square foot, depending on the market, right? In New York City, in Manhattan, you’re going to go a little small. Our facility that footprints more expensive. And Iowa City, Iowa, you might go a little bit bigger because the footprint is less expensive. And so we have a model and uh, equipment that up. Then we up at the facility with that, uh, you know, expands and contracts with the size of it.

No, I’m going right now. I’m going to go to burn boot camp. I’m going to just Google. I know that a Pod, a podcast, it’s audio only is really exciting when someone takes the time to do Google searches. Um, you know what, during a podcast where they can’t see what’s going on, but I have done that for the entertainment value of our listeners know I’m there. I’m at burn boot camp.com. I’m checking it out. He got the video showing people getting in shape. You’ve got the uh, talk to me about that. The, that the trial period. If I’m out there wanting to dip my toe in the water, maybe I’m listening in Tulsa. Our show is aired on in Tulsa on an am radio opposite rush Limbaugh 12 to two every day. If I’m thinking about, you know, getting maybe checking out the jinx location or one of your locations throughout the country, what is your first month look like? Do you have like kind of a special or is there a first time thing? How does it work?

Yeah, we have a complimentary 14 day test drive where you get to have full access to the facility. When you come in, you’re a member right away. So you, you get all of the focus meetings. We set up a nutrition plan for you, uh, within, you know, the first couple of days of you coming to kind of help guide you through those first 14 days. And look are we never put people in a, in a high pressure situation. What we want to do is help you reach your goals. And so that those first, first 14 days we are pouring into new members and we are really uh, uh, constructing a game plan for them. Whether they choose to stay or they choose to take the plan and go somewhere else. We are indifferent. We’re not going anywhere. We’re always going to be there when, uh, when they want to come back.

And so those 14 days, our internal term for that, uh, you may have heard this before, but it’s called results in advanced, showing people the value that you bring before asking them to make a financial transaction with you. What kind of a monthly call, this podcast, we’ve been doing this for years, you know, so this, this will change from time to time, but approximately what does it cost to, to join your tribe, to pay, you know, to be in your program? Yeah, to average price across the country is about $150 and that’s unlimited access to everything. Also, just to note a, and not a lot of gyms, I don’t think many all do this without charging, but we have a one 50 buys you also a universal membership so you could literally travel to any burn boot camp across the, uh, across the country and eventually the world.

And you don’t, you don’t have to pay a drop in fee or pay a, you know, a global membership, a premium for your membership. So I think that was pretty cool for people to come to. Different classes are different times or is it unlimited times? How many times can I come? What Times can I come to? Yeah, for sure. There’s a seven camps a day at some locations that are newer. And at our headquarters here at Lake Norman, which is a mega facility like Norman, North Carolina, we have fifth 14 camp’s a day and you get to pick and choose any camp time you want to go to a, some clients maybe on a Wednesday, once a week we’ll do a 5:00 AM and they’ll eat healthy nutrition all day long and they’ll come back for one more at 5:30 PM to take the next day off, something like that. And I love that it’s enclosed.

It’s inside. All of these bootcamps are outside. If it rains, run around on wet grass, you’re getting all soggy. You don’t get soggy. I mean you’re out. The whole business model makes a lot of sense. And then now that you’re just dominated, the business is doing great. I think you have 44,000 members. Am I making that up? Uh, we said I’d probably say probably the last that you checked it and probably that’s what our website says right now. But we have as of today, 65,000 ah, and how many locations? You got to update the website we got, we have an update every month that just shows you how fast we’re growing. How many locations do we have? Again, now the 183 open, 176 that are unlined. Meaning they’re, they’re in the leasing process and the build out process and a look, our plans this year we got, we got the 300, 300, 300.

That’s the vision. We want three. We would award a 300 new territory’s to passionate people. Like we don’t use a broker networks. We want to make sure that, you know, everything is raw and real and passionate. If you’re going to partner with us, you need to love it. You need to be hands on, you need to be there. We’re going to have an average of 300, uh, at least 300 members that every single facility, which we’re very, very close and a, we’ll also, uh, surpass our 300th location. Do you like the movie 300. I mean, it says that a big thing for you. Is that a big movie for you? That’s funny you say that. We, we, we made a logo internally at HQ and uh, on when we gave the presentation, we had the guy from 300 with the rip, you know, six back in the sword. And this is spot on.

Well, I have Russian spies that I’ve had a discipline on your business for several years now. So now you wrote a book here called starting over a transform your fitness by mastering your psychology and a, and a respect for your time. I have one final question, two final questions for you. Um, what inspired you to write this book? It will you do really well what it was, what does this book all about?

So a stop starting over is the title, transform your fitness by mastering your psychology. And uh, when I started writing it, I started writing it in a long time ago. Uh, because of what I wanted to do was create a manifesto for our organization, right. To, to be able to read through how I’ve built the business, how I tell I’ve helped over 20,000 clients personally, um, through through 20,000 different individual sessions over the last six years that I’ve personally trained to like talk about like, I don’t know if you believe in the 10,000 hour rule by the Malcolm Gladwell or not, but I’ve doubled that.

You see, the thing is you, you and I are the same person and kind of, and a certain kind of way. The 10,000 hour rule throughout there listening and you don’t know what this is. You and I probably read all the same books by the way. Malcolm Gladwell wrote this book called the outliers. And uh, Robert Greene wrote a book called mastery and they’re kind of the same book, but basically there are neural pathways that are built in your cranium, in your head and your brain. And when you do something through repetition, eventually it becomes automatic. So an example is what we’re talking today. I don’t have to think about, I need to move my tongue and I begin to say what I want to. You’ve got on, it says it’s not a foreign language to me. And for a lot of people, they, they, they don’t know a new language, right? So when I tried to learn Spanish, it’s like very hard to do it. You have to think about it. But after about 10,000 hours of it, it becomes mastery. It becomes automatic. You have made you become a master of fitness, right? You’re, you’re the master 10,000 hours.

Yeah. I believe that in terms of my craft, I believe truly that I’m the best in the world at it. And that was what I set out to do a in being 31 and being super young, I’m, I’m ready and motivated to keep doing it and keep repeating it because you can always get better. And all of the principals, all the tactics, all of the emotional struggles that the underdogs of the world that came to see me for help from all over North Carolina, over the, all over the country, really, uh, they came to see me because they knew I could help them. And so I was forced to grow, uh, out of my desired, my in my burning, like need to help these people achieve not fitness, cause that doesn’t make you happy but fulfillment. And so stop starting over talks. Uh, it transcends fitness, right?

Uh, transcends the physical aspect. And it talks about physicality, but that’s just a byproduct of focusing on the mental and emotional fitness that we need. And also spiritual but not spiritual in the sense of religion, spiritual in the sense of blind faith and belief that even though you don’t think you can, you can’t. And so this whole book was, uh, geared to, for somebody to read it, whether they were one of my franchise partners, uh, one of our trainers who are the top percent of trainers in the country or one of my clients that they could read it in, in their own context, walk through a complete strategy to create fulfillment in their lives. So my final questions here for you, it would be you’re a very intentional person and a, you’re a very proactive person, but yet you’re growing something and it’s easy to become reactive if you don’t have a routine or a rock in your schedule.

And I love to ask that because a lot of our listeners, they ask all the time, they say, what are the routines of these people? What, what do the first four hours of a typical day look like to you? What, what, what, what are the first four hours look like? So before I answer that, I just want to say what I do is as, as, as for me, and what the listeners do is, is for them. So what I do might not work for you, but I hope that you can be inspired by what I do. So I, I, uh, one, I always want to be the hardest worker in the room. Like I refused for anybody out work me. So I know, uh, and I use getting up at 4:00 AM every morning, three 45 to 4:00 AM I use the app called sleep cycle. By the way to do that, it’s a really soft, nice awakening by the way, for those out there that, that, that, that I phone rings and he pisses you off.

So I get up at four out right away. I know that most successful people do this. It’s, it’s one thing that I was grateful for. Just a little thing, wind on your face. You know, the ability that I have a home gym in my, in my house, that I don’t have to drive to the gym in the morning. Uh, and I focus on, uh, one thing that I’m really proud of yesterday. Just a little thing that I was really proud of yesterday. Hit that Copa, mean hit of success right away. And then the third thing that I do is focus on one goal that I visualize that I will achieve in the next six to 12 months. Super Quick, 10 minutes. And then I’m upstairs in the gym about an hour in the morning, hour, 15 minutes in the morning. I got a buddy of mine who I played ball central Michigan went who was also a professional ballplayer, San Diego Padres who now works here named Bryce.

Mario comes over, we get a workout in and then right after that I’m going downstairs, I’m making my meals. I usually do a five whole eggs. I’ll do my afterbirth protein shakes, which is our supplement. And then I’ll do two pieces of Ezekiel bread with a light light, light jelly on it. Cause I don’t want him to pride myself on I’m free range, free range eggs, free range chickens. I do free rob. A organic, yes. Mostly you mostly free range. Yeah. Yeah. Continue. I’m sorry. Yup. No, no worries. And so, oh, that’s my breakfast. And then I also like a company called [inaudible]. Uh, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a cold pressed juice and I’ll, and I’ll slam one of those right in the morning just for health purposes. I also take a vitamin a vitamin called vitalizer. Uh, shackling makes it and can get it online.

And I combine all those things together. That’s my meal for the morning. I pack my meals for the day and then, uh, I do not see my children in the morning. Uh, and then I go, I had a about seven 15, I head out right to work and then when I get to the office, this is the most important thing. I have a dedicated hour right in the morning of, of think time and I forced myself every single day for that hour to come up with at least three new creative and expansive ideas to innovate what we’re trying to accomplish. And I write those out and I spend the entire hour brainstorming on them and then I go to be a servant for the rest of the day before I get home in the evening to spend the evening with my family. That is good that this is good stuff. Now is there a specific book that you would recommend?

I mean I would say, well you probably should check out the book stop starting over by this author a Devan Kline. You should probably check that out, but is there a certain book that you would recommend for all the listeners out there? You said this is a book, these are, these are the books, this is, this is, this is the book you should check out. Yeah. If you couple stuff’s starting over, I think, uh, that will give you more of a holistic approach to fulfillment. Uh, in terms of leadership and management, one of the newest ones that I really like, uh, have you read principles, uh, clay by Ray Dalio? This is a book that we are grinding through the audio version of and John and I, uh, who is kind of my, my partner we worked to and everything. Um, he and I had been talking about it in the mornings, Bro.

It’s fantastic. Like just get all the way through it brainstorm. We had, we’ve got some great takeaways and our organization from a, from a leadership and management perspective, love that book. I would recommend that. And then kind of a old school one, I don’t know how many people bring this up any more, but I know the great influencers do as a man thinketh by Viktor Frankl, I have read that book to completion. Yes. I like those three because they give you, they give you all something a little bit different. And if you take a a few principals away from each one and combine them like everyone, everyone in this, there’s nothing new under the sun. Everyone in this world is a growth progression off of someone else’s ideology in the future or in the past. You’re only just making it better, making your own distinctions, coupling it with your character, with your personality to create your own life and to design your own message that you want to use to change the world.

So I’m a big fan of you guys aren’t, aren’t reinventing the wheel, but what you’re doing is you’re making the wheel significantly better, faster. It works more efficient. Um, I just, I would encourage everybody out there and just check it out. Just try it. It’s an unbelievable program and it will absolutely change your life and it’s just, it’s so neat to see the success of the Tulsa Oklahoma location. You have so many locations. I’m just honored to have you on the show. And, uh, it means the world to us. Like, oh, we like to end every show with a boom there, Devan Kline. So are you, are you prepared to bring the boom? Oh, I’m, I’m, I was born ready to bring the boom. Let’s do it. Are you, where are you bringing the boot from? Where are you located right now? Uh, we’re bringing the boom Huntersville,

North Carolina, just north of Charlotte. Okay, here we go. I’m going to count it down. Here we go. Great. You, if you are out there today and you enjoyed today’s podcast, that is awesome. However, knowledge without application is meaningless. Thomas Edison said, he said, vision without execution is hallucination. So we don’t want this just to be another entertaining, exciting thing that you maybe get some ideas from. We want this to be a, an actionable event in your life who want this to be the catalyst of something great. We want this to be the starting point of that momentum that you need in your career. So I would just ask you this. Are you putting your all into your dreams and your business or are you just sorta, you know, drifting around or you’re really going after it? Like this Guy Devan, or you’re really committing everything you have to growing your business like Devan Kline or are you just, you know, just drifting around because if you are holding back at all, even one degree that they could keep the water from boiling Nica keep your career from going to the next level and you deserve more.

So if you’re listening out there today and you feel stuck in any capacity at all, maybe you need a kick in the pants. Maybe you need some motivation. Maybe you need to, uh, talk to somebody who could coach you through the process of growing a successful company. I would encourage you to take some time today and to go to thrive time show.com that’s thrive time show.com and to book your tickets for our next in person. Thrive time show workshop. Now, if you’re listening today and you’re in, you’re in a tight spot financially, all you have to do is subscribe to the podcast on Itunes at that that’s free. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and leave us an objective review and then you’re sitting as a screenshot of your review to [email protected] again, send us a screenshot of the review you just left to [email protected] and we will send you tickets to our next in person.

Thrive time show workshop for the low low cost of $37 now that includes the workbook and the food for both days and obviously if the fly here you have to get the hotel, but we would love to see you. We’d love to meet you. I know that this conference is going to absolutely impact your life in a positive way. Also, if you learned something today or if you laughed a little bit, if you enjoyed today’s show, share it with somebody on Spotify or, or, or iTunes or email and a a, share it with them today because we know that there’s somebody out there that needs to hear today’s message.