Transforming Lives with Europe’s #1 Fitness coach | Charlie Johnson

 

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Justin: What’s up? Entrepreneur DNA, as always, I am here with an incredible guest, Mr. Charlie Johnson, the number one fitness coach in Europe, flew all the way to Miami just to see me and be on this podcast. Kind of joking. What’s up brother? How are you?

Charlie: Very good, very good. I’m very grateful for the kind intro.

Justin: Yeah, excited to have you. Dude, you’ve built an incredible platform, and if anyone’s doing their research on you, they will see who you are today and what you look like today was not always the case. Let’s jump right into what you’ve been able to develop today, who you are? The man sitting in front of me, the success you’ve had in the fitness industry and your body transformation relative to how that all got started. What was that bridge? What had to happen for you to get and become the person you are today?

Charlie: The beauty of what you just said is the most congruent things who I am and what we do. The one thing that completely changed my life is coaching. And now that’s the thing I do, is coach other people to build the business. And I have a fitness business has helped people in great shape, and I struggled for a long period of time in terms of, like, self confidence, the way I look, the way I felt. Just felt crap about myself because of the way my external vehicle looked, and that affected my internal vehicle in mind. And the secret I found in terms of changing that was I’d been going to the gym, eating the right stuff for years, nothing changed. I hired a coach, and then I realized, okay, I’m actually seeing results. And then for me, that’s quite everything my life changed was like, this is the hack of life. It’s literally like, you just hire someone who can tell you what to do, and you just execute. (That’s right). And like, anyone who knows me, like I’m obsessed with implementation. And even if you if you look in like LinkedIn, for example, interesting stat like, top three LinkedIn is strategy, but not on top thousand is implementation, because no one actually wants to do the thing. People want to talk about doing a thing. And for me, that’s when I found out, like, Okay, this is the secret success in life, is who, not how. But with an Sullivan, it’s like, find the person who can solve your problem and just do what they tell you to do. Just repeat that. And through that cycle, I transformed my own fitness life. I went from being a real estate agent in the UK to set up the biggest online fitness business in Europe. I then sat another business called seven figure scaling systems, where we help other people scale the businesses online, and we’ve generated just under ten million in income so far over the last few years. So, I’ve moved to Dubai in that period of time, and my big mission is to help other people believe in themselves and see what’s possible. Because as soon as I, it’s like a flywheel approaches, as I start to get a bit of momentum. I was like I can actually do this. (Yeah). Because my like, left when I was about 21 I first went into a stage in real estate. I felt like it failed at life, because all my friends had degrees, came out at University College, and I didn’t, I was like, I’ve really screwed this up. And that’s my mission now, is to empower people to see what they can achieve.

Justin: Yeah. So, I think one of the things you just hit on is a big thing. People don’t talk about momentum. I just had this conversation with an entrepreneur this morning, as a matter of fact, about momentum starts to kick in, and you no longer have to push this boulder up the mountain. But people don’t push the boulder long. Attempt to actually take over. They quit. They give up. They get tired. They don’t want to keep pushing the very next day. It’s this funny line of like, if, if someone a coach like yourself or I’m a coach for real estate investors, if we could guarantee, and I don’t put any guarantees in my coaching, and I’m sure you don’t yours, that at some point that boulder is going to catch momentum and it will start to push without you having to push it. Would you keep pushing? What would your audience say?

Charlie: A 100% they would do it. But most of them, they struggle at the beginning the implementation. The number one thing I get is, I don’t have time. That’s a fucking lie, because I did it (Yeah) and that’s why like and you did it so, like yes, it takes time. And yes, it’s hard. If it wasn’t hard, then everyone would do it. That’s right. That’s the value of why you becoming successful makes you feel so good, because not many people can do it.

Justin: Yeah, time is crap, in my opinion. I mean, we all have the same, the age old saying of, you know, we all have 24 hours, right? Fine, you got to prioritize the actual activities over time management. You don’t manage time. You manage your priorities, right? So in your case, your priority was to become the man physically that you wanted to become, but then also actually succeed in business and not be your realtor, probably making a couple bucks, probably eating fucking pizza and donuts all the time, right? Whatever, and working out, I’m guessing. But you know, you can’t, you can’t out work out a bad diet, right? So, it goes back to this idea of like, how are you gonna not don’t try to manage the time you need to be effective at managing the priorities? What are the priorities that you would tell entrepreneurs that they should be focusing on?

Charlie: First themselves. Because if you’re not the greatest version of you, then you can’t be helping other people from the greatest versions of themselves, so like physically, mentally, so you have to put yourself first. And the way I. Really look at that is you have to be selfish to be selfless. That includes you being like a father, husband, partner, like that’s the only way to do it. And in my opinion, that comes down to you being organized and fitness was the greatest gift that ever happened to me, because for you to be in great physical shape, those attributes and character traits carry over perfectly, like business, because if you look at it, you’ve got being disciplined, you’ve got being consistent, you’ve got being patient. None of this crap happens. Get in shape overnight, right? You don’t go to the gym today and tomorrow you look great. And the same thing with business, it’s like consistency, discipline, patience. Like, if you can learn those character traits and become that type of person, and you start to get momentum, and you get the like, little dopamine hits, you start to see little probits progress. That’s when you start to chase it more. For like, for me, at the moments I feel not sad, but maybe like slightly less happy, is when I feel stagnated. And when you start to get like, the wins, you start to want to chase the winds more, and the momentum comes easier. And I think most people don’t look at the outputs that drive the inputs. And I’ll give a correlation back to when I was an estate agent, research agent. I realized that for me to be the most successful in our business, I needed to basically just get all the leads and book them in and sell them for like, viewings and sell them all properties, right? So I was like, what I did? I ended up becoming the manager of the branch within like 24 months. I was like, 24 just retarded. I was managing people like 20-30 years old at the end point.

Justin: And may have been doing the business 20 or 30 years. Who’s this kid?

Charlie: Yeah, but I, I thought around the system, and I realized, okay, all the leads came into the business into one central computer and then got distributed from there. So what I did is I came into the business like early, before anyone else took all the good leads, called more and booked them all in. I was like, said I was always up to win.

Justin: Doesn’t that seem obvious?

Charlie: But no one thinks like that straight line approach, right?

Justin: Like our whole business again, realtor, real estate, investor, coach, marketer, it’s leads. It is the only thing that really matters and it’s funny. So, I was interviewing Grant Cardone, and we kind of went back and forth between marketing and sales. What’s the senior? What’s the junior? We agrees. It’s marketing, right? (no one sell a lies). That’s it, because there’s nothing else to sell. If you don’t have the lead, you don’t have something to sell. But what you just did in the realtor space, that’s the obvious thing, like bring in all the leads and be the first to the lead.

Charlie: And even I was the first pickup phone. So where I looked at it was like, if I pick up the phone for anyone else, I take all the leads, I’m gonna be the highest performed by a mile, which I was, (Yeah), someone became the manager. Got paid more than anyone else.

Justin: Yeah, and you were still self producing. So when you were managing, were you also self producing? (Yeah). I feel like that is one of the top five drawbacks of entrepreneurs is they get into a place of leadership. They stop self producing. Their income goes down. They start to psychologically push themselves because they’re freaking out about income. They become bad leaders and managers, and the cycle rinses and repeats because those people quit and leave, or you have to fire them because they suck, because you suck as a leader, and now you’re back into the rabbit wheel, right? Let’s speak to the importance of actually becoming a leader, but also continuing to self produce, right? Like I’ll give you a great example in my coaching business, when I want to fire up my sales team? I’ll get on the phone start closing people say, “Guys, I took two calls and have two closes. I have 100% close ratio today. You’ve had 22 calls in the last seven days. You have zero closes”.

Charlie: And it’s for me, like we spoke all this off camera, but it’s like, the highest level authority person who does the thing and teach the thing, and that’s the same examples, like, I do our business as, like, okay, we’re slow. Like, I’ll get on my phone, start booking sales schools and like closing them. And this is where people over complicate them, particularly if you’re running an online education program, what, pretty much any business. The two things that people don’t understand you need to do to scale it is book sales, call close sales. Yeah, you can do that to, like, 10 million, 100 million, 100 million, whatever you want. That’s the simplicity of it. But people over complicate this process, and the better you get at those two things. And then, more importantly is you as a leader and growing a business, the better you get your team at doing those two things by like, teaching them, showing them and doing it with them. You can then scale, because one of the things I really like is that you want to find a lazy person to do a job. I say I’m actually quite lazy in some regards. I don’t want to do crap myself. (For sure). You will because, like, lazy people will be efficient, like taking all the leads computer because I don’t want to do a donkey work or slightly straight line approach, right? So the same thing for me. Now it’s like, okay, what are the core important things I need to do is training and managing ourselves to make sure we’re booking calls and closing calls outside of that’s not really anything that’s that important, because we do that. Because we do that really well, yeah, we’re going to print money. And that’s where most people, they worry too much about things that don’t make a big difference, rather than, like, follow the money. Where’s the lead flow coming through? Where’s the like, the hole in the system. And a lot of people don’t look at the numbers enough. And I think one of the big skills entrepreneurs will realize. The more experience they have is pattern recognition. You could just look at numbers like, that’s not right, and I look at more, I’ll give an example. And we run a lot of Facebook ads, and we had 4x amount of leads come through on like, a report. And I was like, that’s really weird. I was like, that doesn’t make sense. And I open up ads manager looked, I was like, someone messed up the budget and put too many zeros. And I was like, and that’s where, like, you being on the board, and just looking at the numbers, you can see, okay, that doesn’t correlate. Like, what’s going on here? Investigate, if I let that go, they were spending like  I think $5,000 a day, more than they’re supposed to being on one ad.

Justin: That would have been really costly. And by the way, that happened to me. I wasn’t paying attention. We have a normal kind of budget. I was asking him to increase the budget. I didn’t realize he made a mistake. All sudden, your Amex charges charging every day, and our Amex charges charges like every three days, because I have a high limit. Yeah, I’m like, wait a minute. What is going on? Why are we because I wasn’t paying attention, and it happens, right? So, keeping your eye on the ball is super important. You have a phrase that I don’t know if I’ve ever heard it. You say, the person that does the thing and then teaches the thing? Yeah, what is that?

Charlie: That in my opinion, is when you become the highest level authority. So like saying, my world of people being online fitness businesses. And we had a big event in Dubai last week, like 150 people there. And I even said the stage was like, there’s no physical question you can ask me about building online fitness business. I don’t know the answer to because I’ve done the thing, yeah, we’ve 1300 active clients in our fitness business. So, like, I there’s anything you want to ask. You can ask me, I know all the answers, and at that point it becomes easy for you to become the teacher and the master at helping other people, yeah, and also in terms of you teaching your team. Because if your team also respects you and see you as a leader, as an authority, they’re gonna listen to you. I think the more you can try and build yourself up to be that type of authority externally and also internally in or your organization, people were then going to start to run through walls for you as well.

Justin: Yeah, Dude was this a your event? (Yeah, my event). Is it a fulfillment event? Or was it you’re clien that you’re?

Charlie:  50/50 so, like, a marketing thing. I did sick and I just did off the cuff, and didn’t really think about it, you know, like, sometimes intuitive, you get an idea, like, in the middle of the middle of the event, I’m just gonna do this. (Yeah). We had probably 75 people were sitting in I literally just went around the room. I was, like, calling out people’s name and how much money they were making people. How these people doing this? (Yeah) And then the last one, we got a girl come up, who’s 24 years old. She’s making $170,000 a month and like, gave her this plaque and you can see everyone else’s face in the room dropping, like, this girl’s 24 and there’s guys who are like 35 like, how’s this kid doing it because it’s breaking limiting beliefs. And I get you sit in your face a bit like at selling fitness programs on the internet.

Justin: And she was 24 years old? (Yeah). And I’m just gonna go out on a limb, probably a decently looking girl.

Charlie: Not like you would think she she’s like, nice, yeah, but not to the extent you think. But she’s…

Justin: So not the typical Instagram crap words just it’s an all over.

Charlie: Yeah100%.

Justin:  And I actually say that people like that, and people who are Instagram influencers are the worst people to run businesses. (Sure). Mindsets suck like narcissistic, like everyone who’s successful has that to some degree, but they don’t have the brain to go with it. And I’d actually say to her, she has a lot of masculine energy, which is why she’s very good as an entrepreneur. And she doesn’t over respectfully to female entrepreneurs, they tend to overthink things, get emotional. She just does it, which I think is a gift that people need to understand with being a business owner, you have to expect things not to work all the time, but, like, it’s the analogy in business that you can hit one home run. That’s an equivalent of thousand so you need to take a lot of swings. Yeah

Justin: Hey, by the way, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you do hard things, big things, a friend of mine, Taylor Welch, has one of the best podcasts out, called “Daily Mind Medicine”. If you want to supercharge your thinking, your resilience, your problem solving, everything from how you do more and get more done to how you handle failure. You know this, but your number one asset is your mind, bar none. Nothing else compares. The reason I love this podcast is because it’s only three to four minutes long. So I grab my cup of coffee and I get my mind right every morning, you should absolutely check this out. Go to “dailymindmedicine.tv” or just look on Spotify or Apple podcasts. It’s like a nootropic for your brain. Enjoy. I love that. So you had this event, you highlight her, give her a big plaque. And the 75 by the way, those 75 people were they like seat deposits? Did they pick.

Charlie: Yeah. Probably half of them, and the other half. We invited because we knew they’re a good fit. Yeah, we’ve signed up a lot of people off the back end of that event. Or actually, an interesting thing is cultural differences between the US, say, Canada versus Europe, and Dubai, where I live, if you try and pitch an event like that, and actually saw an American guy come in and do it, it’s like, (Way down) they literally like crickets. It’s terrible. (Oh man) and I did that. And one of our first events last year, I was like, we’re not doing that again. So, we have a process on the back end of how we basically search, (follow all that up). Yeah.

Justin: What you did brilliantly is, so a key component of selling is right, what I call Jones effect. And what that means is keeping up with the Jones. Have you heard that? Right? (Yeah). And so, when you highlight those individuals on stage, you say, look at this incredible woman, crushing life, beating all you men out there who want to try to make 170 grand a year. She does it a month. People like, I need to do whatever she’s doing I need to do. And it is a very powerful push for people, right? So, things a lot of time are external, can be a big push. But whatever can trigger, I would tell all entrepreneurs that are looking to achieve more, whatever can trigger, trigger that thing. So for me, the thing, typically, is a design of lifestyle that I want that will push me harder to continue to work. I was just talking to Drew here earlier about, like, how hard you have to work to catch the momentum we just spoke about. It’s insanity, really, right? We were talking, I’m 42 years old. You were pretty impressed. But trust me, like I’ve worked my face off for the last 16 years, and I’m finally at this place of momentum where things are starting to somewhat come to me. So when I am spending my time, a lot of times, it’s about the design of what I want to create. So for example, people that we probably all look up to of a certain lifestyle, things I do like nice crap. I don’t give a girl out there judging me for it. You think Justin’s all about money and nice shit. I like nice crap. I like our watches, I like my cars, I like the house. I like nice crap. That is a motivator for me and for many people, that would be superficial. I don’t care. The point being is, if you can’t go chase someone who has what you want, then it’s gonna be very hard for you to get there and being able to edify that woman and not make it all about you Charlie, that’s a huge thing is to place other people on a pedestal. I’m willing to bet you made more money doing those things than putting yourself on that same pedestal.

Charlie: 100% and that’s the congruency in any business. If you do really like do a great job and you help other people succeed, you kill it. Our business from that model, for example, 35- 40% referral based because we’re so good at what we do. And even, like, I’ll be on calls to people and like, I just start laughing, like, when I take sales calls because like, this is so easy. Because I’ve done it so many times, I see the same traits and the type of person things they’re not doing that. I’m like, There’s no way your business is not going to 3x in 90 days. Because, like, and actually will say to them, it’s like, what you’re doing right now is the equivalent of, like, what I would do if I didn’t want to make money. It’s like, sometimes people but they don’t know, and I did that at the beginning, like when I first started as a real estate agent, that I was selling $40 a month programs or like word PDF documents. (Okay) Because I didn’t know any better, and no one taught me (Right). Which is why, like for me is, if I did it and no one showed me the way, then it’s much easier if someone’s like, carved the path for you before and just like yeah you just need to do this.

Justin: It is everything. Right? If I were going to get in the fitness industry, I would call you to Charlie Brown. I got to build this out, right? Why? Even though I know internet marketing, even though I know funnels, the tactical what you do? Why wouldn’t I go after the best? Right? I think the other component of this is you running these events are really meaningful for other people in a bigger way than probably you would even recognize, which would be, people are always looking for a tribe. But I’ll always promise you this, I’ve made more money, and I’m guessing you’d be the same. I’d love to hear from you. I made more money by the people I know by sitting on interviews like this. This is why I have part of this is why I have these interviews is because there’s a day maybe, or maybe not, that Charlie and Justin Colby go make money together. And because of that, we will be further down the line of where we want to get in life, and it’s all because the relationship that started from a podcast episode like this. What do you agree about the power of the people?

Charlie: I probably write this down every day. At the moment, it’s like life is a people game, and the more experience I get, and the further up the ladder I get, the more I see all the time. A great example. We spoke about Eric Spofford. I mentioned him on Saturday that I’m looking to do some stuff with go high level. He’s like, oh don’t worry, don’t introduce you to the affiliate manager of go high level. I met him yesterday, and I got called him later today. (Yeah). So, it’s like, life becomes easy when you know the right people. And that’s the game. I even remember an example. I was getting really stressed for a while. Our fitness business was struggling, maybe like two years ago, I was like, slow, having a downturn, you know, in your head, where you like, you blow it out.

Justin: Oh, of course, it’s always worse in your head. It is in real life, no doubt.

Charlie: And a mentor to me at the time, a guy called Greg Ballantyne. He said, like, yeah, no, Greg. He said, like, what are you worried about? Like, you’re like, a made man fitness industry, like, you know me. You know him. You know him. You know him. Is like, you fucking know all the best people. All the network. You’re like, what are you worried about? And as soon as I listen to that, I was like, That’s really interesting. (Yeah) That’s also the value of mentors, because they can reframe a perspective and completely change your outlook on a situation.

Justin: I think it’s you should always be seeking mentors because, well, you should always be seeking mentors paid or not. I would always tell everyone, pay to play, get to the table, be there, right? Because the next component is what you just talked about. Then you have a phone call you can make, because there was eight people at a table, and you connected with one person, and you said whatever you needed, right? But you paid to get to the table. I do this all the time. It is quite literally something I live by. Every year, I have a very substantial six figure number that I’m willing to pay into masterminds, I’m willing to pay coaches, I’m willing to invest in my own self, because I realize I’m nowhere near where I want to be, and I’m sure you’re not near where you want to be. And we’re going to continue to push, and we’re going to continue to drive. But it goes back to this, what you just said about hanging out with Eric, and you mentioned one thing to him, and he immediately made a connection. Now you’re going to go have another conversation to get to where you want to go. It’s also about talking about what you’re trying to do. It’s one thing to want it. It’s another thing to put it on a vision board. The next phase of this iteration is talking about it, because when you talk about it, it can turn into actual reality. And Eric then took what you wanted. He had a connection. He made the connection. You now have someone that’s going to set you up to go high level, right?

Charlie: And just go into what you spoke early about. There about like thoughts become things, and speaking things out loud, not this event when we had maybe six months ago. I stood on stage and I said, like, our vision, our mission, what we do is build the biggest and best fitness mastermind in the world in front of like 80 people, like vocally, but out there, like this is happening like, and you could hear the conviction my voice, the way of talking about now that this is going to happen. We went from one event of like 80 and then doubled it the next event. It’s just like, I looked at the photo and I was like, the photo, compare them to with like, holy crap. Like, till you see the difference amount of people. You’re like, that’s wild.

Justin: Yeah. Well, it is very real. So here’s another component. You literally flew from Dubai (17 hours) to my 17 hours to get to Miami. I thought was a lot closer. I was thinking, like, eight, nine to 19 hours. That’s an ass beating. Did you fly Emirates? (Yeah). Okay, so I’ve heard everything great about Emirates. I’ve just never needed to take a European flight. I don’t think they really fly too much within the US?

Charlie: Yeah, they only fly to Dubai.

Justin: Yeah, but it’s the best airline in the world, in my opinion. That’s what I’ve heard. Yeah, I’ve literally heard phenomenal stuff, but still, an ass beating. I don’t care, 17 hours of anything. (Yeah) Is a lot. You talked about what you wanted. You want to be the biggest fitness brand the entire world. You come down to Miami, you set up certain meetings with myself and others. Your actions alone, tell everyone you’re serious about it. You’re not going to be on a top ring ranked podcast. You’re not going to have reach out to me to be here if you weren’t serious about building that brand. And what that starts with is a step before that, which is going to be talking about it. You just talked about at one year on vents. You said, I’m going to be the top ranked fitness brand of the world. Your commitment behind that is not just talking about but being about it. You fly all the way out to the US Miami 17 hours, to have sit downs with me and others, to continue the momentum of what you’re doing. And I think it just highlights, you know, really, what all entrepreneurship is is an unrelentingness, being unrelenting on the push that has to happen. I’m sure you’re liking it here Miami. (I’m saying). But if all things were equal, and I was in, you know, Dubai, you would rather me come to buy and sit down have a cup of coffee.

Charlie: Yeah, it saves a 17-hour flight. And yeah, right. But I’m a big believer that life becomes easy when you put yourself the right circumstances, like if you hang around in the right environments, and you’re going to meet the right people. So you start flying business for start flying business class, first class, you go to nice restaurants, you go to the right places, you talk to the right people, and it’s life becomes easier for them. Like, come with people. Games, like, how do you meet all these people? Was I go to a lot of events. I do a lot of podcasts, my own podcast, yeah, and I invite people on who I want to talk to, and then you create a relationship. And that’s the compound effect of that over time is wild. I think too many people aren’t willing to put themselves out there. They say they want to do something, but the actions don’t align with what they say they really want.

Justin: They won’t do it right. And it’s funny, I smiled really big right there, because you said something I firmly believe in I think I’ve said it on this podcast. I only fly first class or whatever vert, you know? If it’s business or first or whatever, because of what you were saying is you put yourself in scenarios that you have at least a chance to win, right? And very funny story about, I live here in Miami, flying from, I think it was Phoenix or San Diego, back to Miami. I’m in first class. I sit down first. The guy sits down next to me says something about political something or another. I hate politics, so I kind of smirk at him, and I’m like, “Hey dude, poli, you’re terrible”. And he smirks back at me, and I’m like, You’re in politics, aren’t you? And he smiles as He is like, I’m the new incumbent Speaker of the House in Florida. So basically, there’s the governor, and then there’s a speaker of the house. They run the entire state. So he’s like, the second in charge of the whole state. And I just said politics is terrible, but now I consider him a friend, and he’s talking to me about, like, Man, I love real estate. What do I need to be doing? You know, I’m in politics, and my life is crazy, and I do not have, how can I right? But now I have a friend, literally, that’s second in charge of running the whole state of Florida. Do you think somewhere down the line, sometime ever there’s gonna be a chance for him, and I didn’t do some business together, probably. And do you think he knows some people that I don’t know? Probably right? It’s all because of this whole put yourself in a position to at least try to win in first class. Some people love, I love golf, joining golf memberships. Fitness, great example, Lifetime Fitness. Do you guys have? (Yeah Lifetime). So, they just built this five diamond resort, lifetime there’s literally a water park in the back of this thing, like full blown, five different water slides, everything. This thing has a bar, it has a cafe, coffee shop, nails, hair salon. It’s wild, right? But it’s 250 bucks a month. And for some people, that is just outrageous. For me, I’m, like, you could double it. And I’m, you know, you could triple I’ll pay thousand dollar a month to be in this place.

Charlie: What people don’t understand is that more expensive it is the other person who goes, they paid that as well. (That’s right). So that’s the value is, you know, the quality of the person there is higher because of the price they paid. They’re saying that mastermind events is like, if the ticket price is high, what everyone else paid it, and that’s high value person. It’s worth noting.

Justin: That’s right and going back to masterminds or coaching. You know, a lot of people want to get into the space of like coaching masterminds, but they want to make money fast. They do out of desperation. The reality is, if you really do the thing and then teach the thing, your price should be pretty damn high, right? Like, there’s no doubt about it, that you need to show the value of what you’ve done? What you’ve produced in the history? In your resume. But if there’s other people that pay that price, you’re in the right room. And it goes back to putting yourself in an opportunity to ask, and that’s why I say this. I’m kind of harping on this because I’m literally doing a keynote speech at an event here shortly, about the power of people and going from good to great. What makes you good is you produce and you do the thing and you’re good. What takes you to the greatness is actually connecting with the other people to get to the next level, right? And asking for what you want ask. So when you’re in do you run a mastermind or is it all? So, when you run the mastermind, when people are in your mastermind, they better be asking other people in that mastermind for the things that they don’t do very well, right? Not to mention you. They should be hounding you. I mean, you should be annoyed. Like everyone want great.

Charlie: And it’s good, but one of my favorite sayings is, a genius doesn’t have great answers. He asks great questions. And I always ask people a lot of questions. I’m very inquisitive. And even people who work for me, I’ll give an example our email copywriters, like, Do you think there’s anything we can do in terms like improving our emails? Improve our emails and what we’re doing to, like, generate more leads, like, I don’t know. Like, you’re like, millionaire, millionaire. You tell me. Like, I don’t Yeah, but I want your perspective. Like, (Yeah), because I’m curious. Not sometimes I won’t agree, but I want to hear the other side of the coin sometimes.

Justin: I A lot of times, when people come to me with questions, I’ll ask them the question back. And what do you think? You come up with some creative ideas. Think, because I have an answer for you, but I also want this to be a symbiotic like relationship. So in that example, I’d say, Well, what do you think would be more intriguing? Or what would you know what I mean? Because a lot of times, people just want confirmation what they already know to do again. They’re scared to do it. (They lack certainty) That’s right. They lack the confidence to do the thing right? And this goes back to do the thing, teach the thing, but like, people don’t take action because they don’t have certainty. They don’t know that their result will work or not. They’re fearful, and this is going to go into the real depths of it. They’re feel fearful of what happens if it doesn’t work? What if this idea of an email copy doesn’t pan out? I didn’t ask Charlie. It sucked. Now, do I get fired? Then they freeze. They just say, I don’t know the answer. I’m not going to bring up any ideas. I’m just going to do what Charlie tells me. And that’s where it all trickles down to is the fear of failure, missing a step, you know? Dropping the ball, whatever it is, it’s nonsense, right?

Charlie: I think what’s interesting you said there as well, is, which is why I think old school management techniques don’t work in terms of having to go at people and like berating people if they make a mistake, because then they do that, they won’t think for themselves. They’ll always want. Ask like you for approval everything. I think also people now have more options to go and work for someone else. And I think that’s why I see some businesses churn a lot of staff, whereas great businesses keep the right people in them. So I think if you can learn to man manage people and then get them to think themselves like you said, life becomes easier for you then as well, because the time for you to onboard and train someone who’s good again, is huge.

Justin: It’s a waste of time, right? (To get back to where you were before). Right and then again, going back to you’re not producing anymore now, because you’re focused on trying to hire someone, train someone, get it, just to kind of get back to even, not even excel yet, right? And so you said it again, but good to great. The great is, when you’re around the people, right? You bring people around you. You have a community, culture leaders. That is where good to great goes, right? Because you can be very good. You could be a good fitness coach, making quarter million, half a million dollars a year. Good everyone in the world to say, good for you. You’ve done very good for yourself. But Charlie doesn’t want to be good. Charlie wants to be great, exceptional, amazing, right? So that takes a level of people to your point, even hiring, right? You need to go out and hire the best. I firmly have come to this realization that, like I don’t want to hire from the bottom down. I want to hire from the top or I don’t want to hire bottom up. I want to hire from the top down. I want great people around me so I don’t have to spend the time, you know, teaching them and educating. I have to be the leader all the time. I would rather say, hey, partly. How do we Hey, Charlie, how do we partner? Because I know you’re the expert. You’re the great one in your industry. How do we do something together, where I don’t have to be the leader to teach you how to do the thing, you can go do the thing, and then I can go run with you. I think it’s a big thing of hiring training the Do you ever feel like there’s a revolving door?

Charlie: A 100%. I can give you good stories. Go into this. We hire a lot of like remote workers, like virtual assistants, and this is widespread thing in people, the online fitness industry and online businesses. And one of the big mistakes we went down, which now, knowing in hindsight, I wouldn’t do, is hiring a lot of people in like Philippines, Pakistan, third world countries. Now the problem with this is it’s very difficult to build a team culture. (Sure). It’s very difficult to get, like, the right cultural fit across, and then, I don’t know if you ever try to have a joke with like, the Filipinos on a zoom call, Hey they don’t understand, actually. So what we do now is we hire everyone who’s first World English speaking. We hire a lot of people from South Africa because, yeah, they’re very driven and great work ethic. You don’t have to pay them a lot because maybe less, and they understand the cultural fit. So, we’re now thriving so much team culture, where everyone wants to help each other.

Justin: Where do you find South African VAs?

Charlie: We have a recruitment company we work with, and then we also use a lot of like digital nomad groups. So, it’s in like Facebook group, digital nomad Cape Town, come up Facebook groups and post job ads and there (Yeah) we get a lot through referrals from a network, and that’s really been one of the big things. I’ve seen a big shift in terms of, okay, if we just bring everyone in who speaks perfect English there is like Westerner, (Yeah) it’s so much easier. And also it’s easy to manage and the point you’re micromanaging everyone, (Yeah). And then you don’t need to have as many managers in the business, because people are more autonomous.

Justin: Yeah. So, being that you’re in the fitness industry, let’s jump to the commitment it takes to personally change your body. I really do believe body, mind, spirit, right? Meaning I don’t have the energy to go do what I need to do if I don’t get my body right. And what I mean by that is, I’m not as jacked as you, but I still work out as much as I can. I don’t even want to say every day, but four to five times a week, I’m working out not because I’m going to get as jacked as Charlie and chase Charlie, but it’s for me. It’s it gets my mind right, dude. If nothing else, I get this thing working the right way, right? I don’t get as irritated as fast. I have a lot more patience. I have creative juices. Talk to me about the commitment level to change your body, which in my mind, changes how you think, what you do, your capabilities.

Charlie: In my opinion, the real benefit of exercise and work out is your ability to change your physiological state, the way you think and feel. I inherently lot time wake up the morning in my bad mood. I don’t know why, just the way I’m wired. Sometimes pissed off, sometimes. Hello, (Are you UK?) And yeah, it’s probably because I’m from the UK. Yeah, miserable, right? I now live in Dubai. I’m slightly less miserable, but just working. But I go and work out, I feel great afterwards, and I’m happy. Like doping is going like, you feel late, (Amazing). And it’s, I also think there’s a huge amount, particularly as a man of like, you wake up in the morning, you’re happy with how you look. You’re starting the day stacking winds already. You’ve got self confidence. You also have authority. When you go into a room, you’ve got a presence about you. Whereas if you’re, say, for example, a leader of a business, and I think there’s a lot when people try and sell me stuff, I’m like, Okay, if you’re or 50 pounds overweight you can’t physically look after yourself, then why am I going to trust you to look after my business? Because one of the key character traits of being in reasonable shape is discipline. (Yeah) If you’re not disciplined to look after yourself, then why are you gonna be disciplined work with me in my business. And I think people over complicate the process of getting in shape when you talk about businesses, booking calls, closing calls, if you want to get leaner, you need to be in the calorie deficit. You need to eat slightly more less and move a bit more. If you want to grow muscle, you need to eat a little bit more, then you need to maybe weight train a bit more. Like people will try and over complicate the process because they’re not willing to be patient enough to see it through. People implement a new ad strategy, and it doesn’t make money in the first three days. This doesn’t work. It’s like, it takes a bit of refinement with everything to get to the end of result. And I think when you get into a pattern with being in good shape and seeing progress psychologically, it comes easier. You start to see progress. Like, you want to go to gym more. Yeah, your barista at Starbucks is like, Oh, you’ve lost those weight, we look in good shape. Like, yeah, I want to keep going. I’m not gonna eat the muffins today. Whatever it is

Justin: That’s right. I did that today, by the way, I stopped myself. I was like no I’m not doing it.

Charlie: And base those small choices and it’s the compound effect is huge. Two of the best books I recommend for everyone in terms of weight loss and also for business, are Atomic Habits by James clear, probably everyone’s read. And also The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, which talks about like the small choices you make every day either take you towards your goal away from it. And when you think about it in life, like no choice is ever neutral, it’s either going to take you towards what you want, making more money, being more successful, being in great shape, or it’s going to take you away. And when you start to think about that, you think about all the actions you take every day, like, Is this in alignment with the future Charlie of who I want to be? Or is it taking me away from that?

Justin: Well and then it goes back to, do you even know what you wanna be? That’s a big challenge, I think, in our world period, entrepreneur, not entrepreneur, people don’t even know what they want. They don’t, oh, I want boats and cars and a life. That’s the concept they want. But they don’t really know what they’re trying to do, right? Like, I have five success principles, decide what you want and who you need to be to get it, commit to it, take massive action, be uncomfortable and don’t have time expectation on the result. Fitness is a big part of that. Like time expectation or result is the mental breaker for everybody. They want to have Charlie Six Pack Abs in 30 days? Borderline impossible, sure some crazy, extreme example, someone probably could figure it out. But the reality is, you need to be able to have the fortitude to keep going with this slight edge idea, which is the decisions you make in repetition, even small ones will actually get you to either towards the six pack abs or not, or it’s going the other way.

Charlie: Or even the way I’d frame it, I’d say too, is like, say you want to be walking down miami beach in the summer and you want to have six pack abs. Like, don’t think about the six pack abs. Think about the habits the person who has the six pack abs would have. (That’s right). Or if you want to be an eight figure entrepreneur, like stop thinking about the money. Start thinking about, how would that person? Start to think, what would their day look like? What their schedule looked like? How would they operate in their business? Who would they hire? Who would they train? How would they deal with their staff? (That’s right) And you start to think like that. If you become that person by default, you then get the result eventually anyway.

Justin: Yeah, you know, you brought up something that I find so interesting. I’m in sales. You’re all entrepreneurs are in sales. I don’t give a crap if you’re the tech guy or not. You’re in sales because you’re going to sell your tech right? It is hard for me to look at someone trying to sell me something that’s out of shape (100%) and I’m not saying I am the most in shape. I am in shape, don’t get me wrong. But relative to people like yourselves or others. But when someone’s like, obviously out of shape, like, obvious, it’s hard for me to say, Okay, you want more. You want to go win. You want to go make a lot of money. But you’re you’re mentally so weak, you allow yourself to eat pizza, donuts and whatever junky stuff all the time. That’s hard. It genuinely kind of like repels me.

Charlie: I would say, for anyone listening to who’s in this position, this is the harsh thing to say. So, like you should be shameful and take the comment you say, because I feel the same. Like, I turned up at the airport and I was like, What the heck is wrong with this? Like, what if you where not from the US? You every time I come back, I’m just shocked with like, super obese people. You don’t really see it anywhere else. How the heck does it even happen? Because (It happened in the US), yeah? Because it does not happen overnight, right? Like, you don’t really get it anywhere else.

Justin: So being that, you have, sorry, because you’re from Dubai, coming here, you see a lot more obesity.

Charlie: From Dubai, Europe as soon as you come to US. Like, but the extreme level of, (Yeah), like you might get some people are bit overweight, (Sure), but there’s people who are, like, 300 pounds on what the like, Yeah, you don’t really get that anywhere else. And I think one of the things people should really take from that is like, if you’re in that situation, or you’re going that way, it’s like you should feel shameful of that, and use that shameful to create pain to make you do something about it. And like throughout my career, and me transforming my own body that was built from the stick, not the carrot, of like that I was running away from pain, which then got me to where I wanted to be, rather than, like, chasing the carrot. Because if you’re and I think that’s understanding your own psychology, what motivates you. If you have, like, Tim Grover talked a bullet about the dark side, right? If you have a dark side of like, pain and or insecurity that drives you, which I think most entrepreneurs have, why we’re wired that way. (100%) Use it as a fuel and I understand how to motivate myself as I’ll make myself feel like that, and also in terms of like I’m competitive. So, I’ll give a really good example you like this, a competitor of mine sent me a really shitty, abusive voice note. And I was like, for me, I was like, I  got you. And you know, when you just beaten someone, you broken someone. And then for me, I use that fuel because, like gamifications. I come from sport background as well. I like to compete. I always try and not pick fights with people, but like compete with people waiting true to try and get one up on them. And a really good book I like is choose your enemies wisely. By Patrick Bet David (Sure). And I read the book. I need some bigger enemies now. So I was like, Who else can you target? Because when you start to try and target people ahead of you, your actions then start to increase. Go chase this dude down. So they’re like, you start to think bigger.

Justin: That’s right. No, it’s 100% and I just think whatever carrot or stick whatever can motivate you, you actually have to figure that part out, right? I was very much motivated by what I didn’t want, and I still am to this day, right? But some people get motivated by the carrot, right? And so that goes back to this idea of like, Listen, if you’re gonna just be mediocre and exist through life. I’m just not your tribe. You’re not going to want to listen to this podcast. You’re not going to want to listen to Charlie, trust me, you’re just not because I’m not willing to play small. I’m not willing to just, you know, exist through this life, because it is the only life we have. So, you know, we have to make decisions, and so for those that like can’t put themselves together. I’m not listen. I’m not going to judge people that are are, you know, have physical reasons for being overweight. But what I am going to do is, for those that can’t mentally break themselves from stopping eating a certain way, like you need to find a way to motivate yourself, because you just won’t be here very long. I mean, your body will shut down and just give out at some point.

Charlie: I’ll give a great example. I was on a boat with a guy called Nick on Saturday, who’s one of the best public speaking coaches in the world. He got no arms and legs. And, (Oh yeah) I was actually I sat there. I was like, fuck me. I’m sorry. Like, I got this so easy. And like, people bitch and moan about like, oh I can’t do this. Kind of dude’s got no arms and legs. I say it’s like sitting there drinking with like, respectfully, like one stump to the other try. And I was like, you just watched that me. Like, that’s difficult. (Yeah). And you then start to take context of, like, I have every tool at my disposal. Why can I do it? And for anyone who’s listening to this, he’s not a position you want. Like, there’s people in a lot worse situations than you who are achieving huge amounts of success, like he’s a multi millionaire got no arms and legs.

Justin: I know exactly. I just met him in the airport. He and I were going to speak at the same event. Unbelievable and he’s so happy. I mean, it’s just a choice, right? And you kind of said earlier, you wake up kind of unhappy, but then you immediately can make a choice to say, Alright. That’s, you know, nonsense. Everything is a choice that we have to look in the mirror at and we have to decide do this or don’t do this. It is up to us, and then we have to take ownership for that decision. So, if we want to be cranky all day, then realize your day is going to be crappy. You’re going to make crappy decisions. Those decisions are going to have a ripple effect. It’s going to keep going. Or you can choose to go work out, get the physiology going, get your mind going, get the endorphins going, and make better decisions. I mean, everything comes down to a choice, and I just feel like people don’t want to be responsible for their own choices. They want someone else to tell them what to do.

Charlie: And I think the most important thing for anyone to understand, if you don’t have like control of your own mind the way you think and feel, it looks feather in the wind, like you just blow around depending on who’s pushing you that day. And I think that’s the most powerful thing you can have, because you can control your state. And I mentioned early using exercise to change a physiological state. Sometimes, if something, uh, irritates me in like, a work environment, I’ll go, go work out for a bit. I’ll go on row machine, like, something just to change your state, because that’s the quickest way to reframe it. I think, also one of the most important things everyone should do every day something physically very difficult. (Yeah). Because you do something physically very difficult. Like, well, I’m sitting behind him, cute. Now it’s quite easy or like I look out and my, uh, I live in Dubai, Marina, really really like beautiful skyline, like overlooks of water, and I’ll be like getting stressed or irritated about something, and I look out the window and I’ll see, like construction sites, like Pakistani workers are working all day and it’s like 45 degrees. I’m like context of problems. It’s not that.

Justin: Yeah, it is context of problems. Like real world, first world problem. Are like not problems, right? When you literally have, you know, people trying to drink clean water in Africa, right? Like you just got to put some perspective on all this. This has been a pleasure for this episode, man, you definitely think, right? There’s a reason why you’re running such a successful business. I want everyone to go follow Charlie. But also, where could they go see more videos and what you do?

Charlie: Best place to connect will be on our YouTube channel, so you just type in Charlie Johnson scaling systems. I spoke before this. We’re doing a video a day, which is a huge task, you can ask. So, there’s tons and tons of value on there, some of our own podcasts. And then if you check me on Instagram @charliejohnsonfitness as well.

Justin: Bro, I appreciate you being on.

Charlie: Thank you.

Justin: All right, y’all see y’all next episode, bye.