Ted Talk 128: The Mindset Shift You Need Before You Can Be Successful

Podcast Transcription: The Mindset Shift You Need Before You Can Be Successful  

Ted Ryce: Today, I want to talk about a question that we ask ourselves, and that you might be asking yourself. And this question, it’s crushing your results, it is literally stopping you from achieving the types of results you want in your life. And this could be with your relationships, with your business, or finances. And, of course, what we talk about here, what our focus is, health and fitness.

So, if you’re not getting the results that you want, you might be guilty of having this mindset and asking this question. And if you want to learn what to do differently, you’re going to want to listen to this episode.

What is up, my friend? Welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Ted Ryce, coach to entrepreneurs, executives, creating magic for high-performers with their health and their fitness. And I want to talk to you about this question. And I’ll tell you straight off what it is: “how can I figure this out?” If you’re asking, how can I figure this out? This is the question that is holding you back. And I’ll tell you how I know this, because I used to ask this question.

I remember when I was in my 20s growing my personal training business, I used to ask this all the time: how can I figure this out? How can I figure out how to build my business? How do I figure out how to get more clients? How to get my clients better results so they tell other people? How do I create a successful business? How can I figure this out?

And so, I read and I read and I read books, and I read articles, I read the E-Myth by Michael Gerber. I’ve read all the books and all the suggestions from blogs, and podcasts weren’t quite a thing yet. But I invested in all this information, invested time learning all this information and the reading books. And what were the results? Not great, to be honest.

And that’s when I happened upon in my early 30s, someone, a personal trainer who is a lot more successful than me. He worked out in New York, a very competitive market. And to trainers are quite good in New York, by the way. In Miami Beach there, it’s mostly matching shoes and a nice smile, lots of charisma and a hot body, probably with some drug use.

But in New York, people know their stuff, very competitive. And so I joined this guy’s business coaching group, and even gave me a break. I think it was maybe a couple 100 bucks, and you only charged me 100. I don’t know why he did that, but really grateful, because for me 100 bucks, it was like, “Man…” it felt like a lot of money to invest at that time. Now, did I have $200 shirts and $200 pairs of jeans? Yes, I did. But to invest in myself, that felt like a lot of money.

And in my defense, I was in a tight spot. In my early 30s, I had dropped out of school for the second time after my step mother died. My dad just was in a really bad state. And without going into the full drama, I dropped out and I spent time taking care of him. And I helped him get his health back. My sister and I both did it, we both helped him get his health back.

So, he took a nosedive after she died. And I don’t regret doing it. But man, I was back in the personal training game after being in school, getting my pre-med requisites done, so I could potentially go to medical school.

And now here I am with student debt. Not too many clients, only a couple clients because I gave most of them up and I needed results. That was the point of desperation where I said, “I can no longer afford the time to try to figure this out on my own. I’ve got to get someone to help me.”

And as soon as I joined in the first call, I think, he said, “Ted, you’re a personal trainer, you need money right now. You’ve been a personal trainer for—I forget how long, maybe 10 years at the time, or 12 years, something like that—And you probably have a bunch of old client contacts in your phone.” I said, “Yeah, I do.”

He said, “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to reach out to them and you’re going to say, hey, it’s been a long time. I was thinking about you. I’ve learned a lot of new workout techniques, and I really think you did enjoy them. You want to set up something?” or words to that effect. And you know what people got back to me, and I reactivated all clients, and I was showing them new techniques.

So, I was struggling to make money, struggling to get new clients. But that wasn’t what I needed to be doing. I could just go back to some of my old clients. I just didn’t have that mindset. I didn’t have that idea. And that changed everything for me. And that was the point where I was like, “I’m never going to try to figure this out on my own again.” And that was my first business coaching experience.

My second was I joined a group, I don’t remember what the name was. They were decent, but not so great, but they were decent. Because I used to sell packages of one session, or five sessions or 10 or 20 sessions or something like that. But what they said was stop selling sessions, instead of selling sessions, which you’re always hustling to sell sessions.

By the way, if you’re working with a personal trainer, this is what they’re struggling with. This is why personal trainers don’t get clients great results, they spend too much time stressing out about getting paid, wondering when that next session is going to come. It is such a hustle.

And most personal trainers, they just end up giving up and go do something else, because it’s just got such a high burnout rate.

So, what this second business coaching experience—and it was a few $1,000 to join, which was a lot of money, I think it was 2015, 1,897, or whatever it was, it was like a couple $1,000. A lot of money for me, at least at the time. Again, I had $3,000 couch, I had probably at least $1,000 to $1,500 worth of jeans. And I only wear like one or two pair, my favorite pair. A bunch of shoes that cost 300 to $500. But the mindset to pay someone to help me, it was a new thing for me.

But I had that hit of success in the first mastermind and I was like, “I’m all about it.” So what this new mastermind taught me is they taught me, “Hey, listen, your clients they don’t really want a fucking personal training session, they don’t give a shit about that. What they want is results. So, stop selling sessions, sell results.” So, the truth about results with fitness, it takes time to achieve.

So, I started selling one, three and six months. I wouldn’t do one off sessions. Or if I did, it was very expensive. I think it was $200 an hour or something like that. It’s like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll do one personal training session.’ Now, I probably, wield and dealed a little bit there just to make some money, but with clients who were, “Hey, listen, I’m going to be here. I want to train with you.” And I was like, “Good. What are your goals here?”

And I would sit down with them and have like a breakthrough call, like what I do with the breakthrough calls now, except it’s much more in depth what I do today. That is not back then.

And I was like, “Listen, here’s what it’s going to take to achieve your goal, so let’s do this. You know, you can pay up front for one month, three months or six months. And I didn’t give a break. It didn’t matter how many times they trained a week. I gave them a break on whether they did one, three or six months.

And most people, because they wanted to save money, even though they were millionaires. And most my clients were more millionaires in Miami Beach, Ferraris in the garage, you know, multiple Ferraris. It was cool with them. They wanted to save money so they paid for six months in advance. And it was like, “Well, what a game changer.” Because when I had more money, I was able to take the financial stress off and to do other things, and so I could focus on serving my clients better.

Now fast forward to more recent, we’ve just signed up for a year of business coaching. And I paid $18,000 in full for it. And as I’ve invested, the more I’ve invested, as long as it’s been with the right people, the more success, guess what? I just spent 18k for business coaching. And some of you might be thinking—the more, let’s say, a scarcity minded people might be thinking, “That’s crazy, I would never do that.”

But what really happened is, I’m hitting record income with my business, more people are signing up, because we hired them previously for a 12-week, and then we just renewed for a year. And they’re just total rockstars. They’ve helped us with so many—they’ve helped us talk to our ideal client. Our ideal client is people who are entrepreneurs and high performers, executives, people who are doing well in their life, but they know that their health and fitness is not where they want it to be or maybe even needed to be, but they’re crushing it in other ways.

That’s who we serve. That’s who we work best with. And they’ve helped us reach more of those people, with transparency with honesty, no tricks, right? With also having the structure of the business. How do you structure your business so that you can serve your clients the best? How can you optimize their experience? I don’t want to figure that stuff out, because there’s going to be a lot of unhappy clients along the way.

So what we have is we have a team of people who we’ve paid to help us and they’re helping us create better systems, they’re helping us hire the right people, so that Gisele and I are working on what we need to work on, which is, for me, coaching my clients, helping my clients, getting back to my clients, making sure they’re getting results, and all the other things that I do that I shouldn’t be doing, because it’s taking me away from my zone of genius, from what really makes this business work. We’re getting other people to do that.

And hiring, if you’ve run a business, or you’re running a business, you know it’s a pain in the ass. Everybody wants to work at first until they work. And then…you know? You’ve got to find you got to find people with the right mindset and really dedicated to your client’s success or the success of the business. And understanding it’s an investment for them. It’s like, “Hey, listen, we’re going to grow.”

And what’s interesting is, I see a lot of high-performers still making this mistake. And it happens with people who didn’t grow up with money, then make money. And there’s what’s called an identity lag. So, you don’t have money, you’re like, “Shit, hard to pay the bills, oh, I want to buy that car, those clothes” or whatever. And then you get some and then you’ve got Rolex on, you’ve got the i8, or whatever you’re into the AMG, the Ferrari, whatever.

But you’re still trying to figure things out on your own when it comes to your health and fitness. You feel like I should be able to figure this out, because I’m so successful. I’ve closed millions of dollars of business. I should be able to figure out how to lose 20 pounds or just not be obese.

But the reality is, when you have a situation when you’re working so hard in your business, it’s a whole nother job to figure out this health and fitness stuff. Or in relationships, to figure out relationships.

And so now I look, who can I hire to help me with this? Even in health and fitness, I consider myself…I don’t feel shy at all about saying I’m world class at what I do. But what I do is very specific, right? I help people who try keto, tried intermittent fasting, tried a bunch of things, try tracking on My Fitness Pal, but still haven’t gotten the results they want. I help those people change their body, way faster than what they’ve been able to do on their own.

I say three times faster, but the reality is most people will hit a wall and never get beyond it. And even so, I’m looking at who can I hire to help me with my health? How can I take my health to the next level? Who can I hire to help me with my relationships? I just started working with a therapist, she charges $195 an hour, I don’t know why it’s 195. And not 200. It’s funny, right? But $195 an hour.

I’m not paying her for the time; I’m paying her for the results. Because an hour conversation with her, it’s a very different conversation than I would have with someone with less experience, or who doesn’t have their shit together because they’re too busy trying to pay their rent. But I can only see her twice a month because she’s booked.

So, this mindset, who can I hire to help me figure this out? That’s changed everything. I have better relationships now. I have great relationships. The people who I’m meeting, it’s way better than it ever has. And it’s not because I read some book. Now books are great. But books are a distillation of someone’s life experience. And it’s incredible that we have them available to us. But the implementation strategy, especially for the specifics of your life, isn’t there.

And that’s where the experience comes in, and it can change everything for you. It’s changed everything for me. My business is making…This going to be a record year, financially. And when I say that, I don’t mean like we found a way to swindle more people. No, we’re giving people better results and we’re making more money doing it. And working—I don’t want to say less, but working more on the things that we’re great at versus the other areas that we should really be hiring people for. So, we’ve started doing that.

And we’ve also learned how to invest in our team so that our team is successful, not just paying them for work, but investing in them and looking for the right people to invest in. And so, this switch, it changes everything.

And I’ll tell you the reason: Life is short. I just turned 45. I feel like I was just in my 30s, now I’m halfway through my 40s, five years away from 50. I don’t have time to figure out, like, to fumble and bubble to get myself into a relationship. I want to get married again.

You don’t have time. And the reality is you can live that life that you want faster when you invest. And a lot of us we invest in crypto and real estate, stock market, sometimes in a bunch of stuff we don’t really need, trying to impress people we don’t really care about, or maybe just trying to get things that we think will make us happy. But they don’t really— they only make us happy for a few seconds until the dopamine high wears off and it just changed our mood for a little bit, but didn’t really change us as a person.

But when we invest in the things that challenge us to become better people, that’s when we have that experience of life, that is worth living.

One more thing I want to add here is we’re at a weird time, where there’s a lot of people in their 20s, who are making money that they would have never been able to make in the past. And for example, in crypto.

And so, when you make that shift from, “Hey, how do I pay my bills every month?” to like, “Oh my gosh, my bills are paid for the rest of my life. What do I do with myself now?”

It’s a tough place to be. Now some people in our society will be, “Oh, you’re so privileged.” And they’ll tell you that to suck it up cupcake and that your feelings aren’t worth anything and that you should be grateful. But the reality is, the truth about success, financial success in particular, is that there’s a lot of comfort in the struggle of trying to pay your bills and trying to achieve you know, trying to buy what you want.

And then when you can afford everything, it’s like, “Well, what’s the new goal here?” And some people they just go for more money and more money and more money and more money and it becomes like an addiction, at worse, or stuck in a cycle of comfort, at best.

But the key is once you do that, once you tackle those basic needs in the in Maslow’s Hierarchy, time for self-actualization. And there’s no better way to achieve that than by seeking out the best and working with them.

That’s what I want to leave you with. Hope you have an amazing weekend. Speak to you on Monday.