(5) Luke Kayyem and The Fittest Tribe Alive

Hey cats and kittens, this is Eric with the Future of Fitness Podcast and the Fitness Marketing Alliance. And in this episode, episode number five, I get the pleasure of talking to Luke Kayan. Now I've known Luke for a long time. I've known him uh probably since circa 2009, 2008, and uh I've seen a lot of evolutions of what Luke is, but there's one thing that's consistent is this guy is tenacious. He is a uh definitely a serial entrepreneur. Uh he's not scared to stand up against the big guys, uh, and I truly admire him for that. He's gone from fitness professional, competitor, to facility owner to multiple facilities, and now he's come uh kind of full circle, and he's really honing in on his focus, uh, which is now the fittest tribe alive and lukeim.com. So he's going worldwide with uh his talents and skills, primarily focusing on helping men. And it's really interesting the way he's doing it. Uh his his words and his his actions are evident of what kind of passion he brings towards this. And you know, he's a stout family man as well. So uh this is very much worth a listen, and there's a lot of tidbits in here, especially identifying who your ideal client is and how important that is, and speaking to that person. And uh I hope you enjoy it. This is Luke Kayam. Hey everybody, it's Eric with the Fitness Marketing Alliance, and this morning or today, I have the pleasure of sitting with Luke Kayam. So I've known Luke um for a long time. I guess we're both OGs in the CrossFit world. And uh, if I could best describe Luke, he is a uh a fellow recovering gym owner. Um he owned CrossFit Scottsdale in Arizona. He was also um uh part of SickFit, which was a big brand um in the CrossFit world. And now he is the CEO and founder of Fittest Tribe Alive. And uh Luke, welcome. Thank you for being on. It's great to have you.

Yeah.

I think uh the question I always like to pose to people, because everyone's got a story, is uh what is your fitness story? Tell us about your personal fitness story. I know it's a big one.

So let's let me how about how about let's start with what my my fitness journey was this morning. Okay. My wife got up at 445 to work with uh a trainer who was a coach of mine at SeekFit for a few years. And you know, I can't train my wife, uh obviously. If you're a husband and you're in fitness, you should know that. Agreed. So uh my boy Jesse comes over to the house. They got up at 4:45 to rise and grind, and then I I joined the space that we've now created uh in the studio uh about 45 minutes later with six guys who are training for this year's world's toughest mutter. So my my next endeavor is uh, you know, I've progressed from CrossFit and weighing about 204, 205 to now being closer to 40 years old and training for endurance and long events. So it's a 24-hour obstacle course race and it's a third year doing it. Uh we did 55 miles last year, 50 the year before. So this year the goal is 75 miles in 24 hours. So just excited about that. And uh again, it's just a fun time to be in the desert in Vegas, uh going mad for a full day.

Awesome. Awesome. Uh that's a lot of mileage. That's a lot of mileage, that's a lot of mileage. Um Luke, tell tell me about what you're doing now. What is what is the fittest tribe alive? Um, what does it mean to you and and why are you doing it?

Well, one of the big reasons I I fell in love with uh functional fitness and creating gyms like we did for so many years was the community. And you know, selling my my brick and mortar and moving on into uh high performance coaching. It was uh a natural progression because obviously, you know, from being a coach for so long, you do more than just teach people about exercise. There is a life coaching component that's built into what it is we do. We work with people, we spend time with people, and during that time you get to know them. So my mom was a psychotherapist. I grew up. Uh my fitness story goes way back to being an only child with a single parent who was much older than me. She had me at 43 years old, and learning to just play uh by myself, play sports, learning to throw a curveball, learning to play baseball, learning to play football, a little chip on my shoulder because I didn't have anybody around. So training and coaching was a natural progression for an only child growing up without a dad who loved sports because I would coach and train myself. And doing that for so many years, that next evolution was okay, right? I want to continue coaching and training people, but with more, with more than just their overall physical aspect. I want to coach them on being uh physically and emotionally stronger. I want them to be more fit in everything they do, in their relationships, and in their business, and in the time that they spend. I want to give them all the tools that I've used over the years personally for my own personal development and then share that with that, and then throw in the community aspect. So that's really what the big thing was was having a community and having a group of people. I'm now focused on coaching and training specifically men, husbands and fathers, because we struggle more than we ever get an opportunity to show. It's it's our job to just handle things and keep our chin up. But really, deep down inside, we all struggle with what everyone struggles with in life. Am I good enough? Am I great enough? Am I doing enough? Am I making enough money? Am I getting enough sleep? Am I am I telling my kids I love them enough? It's it's that ultimate question is what is my purpose? And I've I've been fortunate enough to find my purpose after 38 years in life and been doing it for most of our adult life. You and I have been coaching for 10, 15, 17 years. But being able to give our demographic, you and I, the 29 to 45-year-old male who wants to be healthier, who wants to be happier, who wants to make more money, who wants to not chase finances, but wants to chase more and that constant challenge to become better and improve every single day. So the Fittest Tribe Alive was really just a collaboration of that. It was a community. But ultimately, what I'm doing now is working one-on-one or even in small groups, got a bunch of really successful men's mastermind groups. So groups of five or six guys that are working together 90 days at a time, and we're getting on this platform Zoom and we're having these coaching calls and we're telling our story. And what you're seeing is you're seeing these guys, myself included, because I'm I'm I'm part of it. There's nothing I've ever programmed for anybody from a 24-hour World's Toughest Mudder to a 55-hour Kokoro to a thousand burpees to a thousand pull-ups and a thousand push-ups that I don't do myself, right? You know about those coaches. The coaches that tell you to go run 18 miles and then they Yeah, yeah, go warm up with 18 miles. Right? We we we we know about those guys. Oh, yeah. I never wanted to be one of those coaches. I'm not one of those guys. So anything that I program for somebody, whether it's physical or it's emotional or it's mental or it's spiritual, I also am doing it myself. And and that's it, that's a key takeaway to hiring or even finding the right coach for you is is he doing the work too? Or is he just telling you what to do? I gotta have a coach who does the work. I gotta have respect for that person because I know he's gone through what I'm about to go to. He's experienced it himself. So that's what we're doing. We're making people better like we always have been, Eric, like you have been. We're just doing it in a different way. We're doing it now globally. It's really, really awesome that we can, you know, be this close to each other, even though we're miles away. I've I've got a client I'm working with in South Korea, again, a former gym owner who wants more, wants more from himself, wants more from his business. Been in uh the uh uh functional fitness space for over 10 years, and finally realized this was a dead end road. Where was he going with all this? He can't compete with the you know 100 million Instagram followers of girls in G strings doing air squats. So, so I mean it's a it's a it's a challenge that all of us coaches, especially the male ones, have faced. Like, how do I compete with that? How do I compete with the new shiny box that just opened up across the street? How do I compete with Globo Gyms now putting in the same kind of programs that I'm running? How do I compete with no such thing as a non-compete, no, no, no territory rights? How do I compete with any of that stuff? And instead of trying to fight it, which I did for a long time, and if you you know my story, you know I I stood up to some of the monsters who who stand over the community, and I said, you know what, dude, this isn't right. Like it's not right. But instead of trying to fight that, because what I saw was there was so much negativity, is I said, you know what, I'm gonna sort of rebrand myself. It's always who I've been, but I'm gonna rebrand myself. I'm gonna say goodbye to the things that I was doing for a long time that I that I truly loved, and I'm gonna just shift. I'm gonna pivot, I'm gonna redirect, and I'm gonna reinvent myself with the same mindset of coaching and teaching people, but I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna do it completely different. I'm gonna do it globally because I want to train people all over the world now, and that's the great part about you know having a business in 2017, is you can do it from anywhere. And uh my first South Korean client who's in this mastermind group, he's a great guy, you know, he's from New Zealand. So I now have a global contact that I'm working with to where next year we're gonna go to New Zealand and we're gonna put on a two-day seminar. And instead of it being just about the air squat, the press, and the deadlift, now we're gonna talk about okay, how do you live a healthy lifestyle? Great, check that box. How do you leave a lasting legacy? What? I'm sorry. What did what what did you say? Yeah. Can we talk about those two things in the same day, in the same sentence? We can't. Because we're all gone in a hundred years. Like that's just that's how it rolls. Yeah. Let's be real. I'm not gonna get deep on this, but let's be real. So, what we do today is for today, but it's also for tomorrow. And hopefully, if we're doing it really well, it's for a hundred years from now. Because we want to be able to leave. I want to be able to leave a legacy that not only my kids and my grandkids are proud of, but future generations. We're talking three, four, five generations down the line are proud of.

I got a question for you there because I want to dig into something and it's a topic that I've I've used with you know some of my coaching clients and me personally. How do you differentiate the two things, especially for men, between the concept of giving up or letting go? Right? What's the difference to you and uh what's the importance of recognizing the difference?

Ooh, that's good. That's a that's a tough question. I've given up before. Giving up is when you just decide that I'm not gonna do this anymore. Even though in letting go, you're also gonna make that same decision. But it but in giving up, you you almost put your hands up in the air. Whereas letting go might be you putting your hands back behind you and saying, I'm okay with this. Sometimes we we give up because we don't know what's gonna happen. We don't truly know, and that fear or that worry will stop us. So fear is a big piece behind giving up. But letting go, there's no fear in that. You're you're you're deciding to let go. We had a guy yesterday, uh, my friend Cody, who who I'm talking about, who will be great for this show, by the way. And I'm I'm gonna have to introduce you. Uh I told him yesterday, I said, Man, I could just listen to you talk for hours. He's got this strong accent, bulletproof chin, just rock solid guy. He opened up about his childhood for the first time since he was nine years old. And I'm gonna tell the story because he's proud of it. But his dad was a fisherman. And at nine years old, his dad was walking out the house, and him and his brothers stopped him and tried to not let him go out on this fishing trip because the weather was bad. But this is how his dad made money. Long story short, nine years old, his dad never comes home. He never comes back from that fishing trip. He died in the oceans. The first time this grown man at 38 years old had told this story since he was nine years old. And he told it to a group of men like you and me in a room just like this, all of us being in different cities and different states and different locations around the world. He let go for the first time in 35 years, something that's been haunting and tormenting and pulling at him, and that caused him to make bad decisions when he was younger. He let go of that. He didn't give it give up. He may have given up for the last 35 years as to what happened. He was really young when it did, but it affected him. It haunted him. Obviously, it's really hard for boys to grow up without fathers. That's just that's just the pure truth behind it. I grew up without one, so I went wild. I got loose, and most kids do, because there's not somebody there to double triple check on them. So that's been my my mantra in life is to let go. We've got to let go of everything, all baggage, all stress, all pain. Here's the big one: all negativity. When I came back and reinvented and said, okay, we sold the gym in 2016 in June. Here we go. It's 2017. What are we gonna do here? A series of events happened to me that unfolded. Obviously, everybody goes through stressful times, through hard times, but this series of events was like this was my sign. This was my affirmation that I was doing the right thing with selling my business and moving on into a new digital world. Went to Kilimajaro, climbed it 19,341 feet. Again, a series of events unfolded, getting there. The Mac broke, I missed my flight, my bags were lost. Like you name it, these things happened, but I did it. I got to the top, I waved that flag, I had a sign for my wife and my two kids. Came back home. Again, I told that story. A couple days later, my best man, best friend in my wedding dies, 35 years old. He didn't take care of himself the way he should have. 10-year-old daughter, I give the eulogy at his funeral. One dude, me, who obviously has no challenges standing up and talking to people. But when my best man's 10-year-old daughter is in the front row and I have to look at her and give this final story about a human being, it was like, Can I cuss? Fuck. All right. This some somebody or something is challenging you to take this role, to take it even bigger, to do what you've been given, the talents that you have, that you've created to now do it and do it bigger and better than ever. And then my son and I go to the Grand Canyon on the snowy, snowiest, wettest, coldest day, and people say, Don't go, you'll die. He's 10 years old. We survive, we come out. My son is now feeling the energy and the positivity that I have. And all these things have started to happen first week of January. And I'm like, okay, this means it's it's it's time to push full throttle. It's time to put your foot on the gas and not let up until you hit that goal. What is that goal? What is that target? More, right? More love, more life, more public speaking opportunities, more masterminds, more coaching, more teaching, more seminars, more learning. And you and I have always been a student of the game, obviously, going through uh the CFLA, uh the Biz program, going through uh OPEX. Like you and I have always been those guys who are like more, more, more. And there's a lot of us like that out there. But there's also a lot that aren't doing anything except their job. They they are, we'll call them middle-aged now. I know it hurts a little bit, but it this is kind of gray if I let it grow out. We're we're middle-aged men now. That's our demographic. Yeah. Yeah. But uh there's a lot of us who are struggling with life. And that's what we have to become students of more than our fitness, more than our business, more than our even education. We need to become students of life. So that's what I decided to do. I decided to go all in with the support of my wife and my children and my friends and my family and my community. And I said, look, guys, I I I love nutrition, I love fitness, and you know, I love yoga and meditation and breathing. But those are things that you can learn on YouTube. I want to get people to let go. And by letting go, they're gonna look at life a whole new way. New patterns are gonna be created, new systems are gonna be built and designed, and new things are going to happen for the men that decide to change their life, regardless of what it looked like yesterday. There's always ways for us to improve. And too often, too many times, we just say, Hey, look, I'm good. I got a job that's paying me six figures, I'm doing a couple exercise programs, I'm eating, you know, kind of healthy, I'm getting okay sleep. My wife and I go out once a month. I make my kids' games here. But are we doing everything at a high level? Are we overachieving things? And that was my biggest challenge to myself was why not become extraordinary at everything? Why why just be really good at that thing because you like it? Why just do back squats when your front squat sucks? Right? We can we can kind of put it into that same mindset. Why row when we should be running?

Yep.

Right? For any meat heads on the show that don't know what I'm talking about here. Why just bicep curl when I could be reverse curling and brachial training and trapezius building? You know what I'm saying.

I love analogies. Um a couple things. So this is this is I you know highly inspirational and highly motivating, um, especially because I think I would probably fit into your target demographic. Um, I'm gonna talk a little bit about the business side of it because I think there's a lot of really strong lessons in what you're doing right now, especially for a lot of fitness pros who are listening, is that we teach, we do a lot of fancy things at FMA with marketing, a lot of digital marketing, SEO, all these things, but where there's there's nothing that can make up for the fundamentals of marketing or just positioning in business. And number one thing we tell people all the time is you've got to know who your ideal client is, who's that avatar, right? And I think you have explained it in ag nauseum of who exactly you're speaking to. And I'm curious, when you're talking to these people, um, one of the things we tell our clients is like, what is that person's pain? Who is this person a? What do they look like? What is their pain? And and what when you're talking to, you know, let's say I'm the avatar possibly, or someone, you know, in my age group, what's that pain? What what are you what are you helping them with?

So I do things because they've they've somehow improved my own life, right? Like, you know, I was in the coaching field and I found the sport of fitness. So I got into the sport of fitness, but it started through that that coaching realm. So for me, I've been faced with the challenges that most of my clients have been faced with, right? Like, uh, how do I spend more quality time with my wife and kids? Well, we got to find out a way to eliminate some things. We've got to find out a way for you to uh possibly um have somebody else do this. Uh we we can't sacrifice the time with our loved ones for something over here. And and too often, most guys in this demographic with young kids, they graduated from college, they started their career, they got married, they had one, they had two kids, and now they're 35 to 38 to 45 years old, and they've gotten out of shape because they've been so busy working, and any extra time that they had on training their body or even their mind, they're now focusing on their kids and their wife. So their health starts to go. And then what we find out is they start to drink or use some kind of other substance to distract them from this overloaded work that they have, to distract them then from the fact that they're not spending quality time with the ones they they love most. So their body starts to diminish, plus, they start to become an asshole because they're constantly drinking coffee, drinking alcohol, because they're constantly up and down, because they're not sleeping, because they got to go to their kids' soccer practice and they There for 15 minutes, but because of that, they weren't able to do their work, or they're really not present. So they stop doing those things. And maybe they go to church, but they're definitely not focusing their own energy on themselves. They're not meditating, they're not praying, they're not taking quality, quiet, or silence time for themselves every day. They're not moving forward, they're stuck in this place. And what happens is, as you know, life goes by quick. Like our parents were right. My wife and I are celebrating our 20-year high school reunion next month, and you're like, 20 years. Like wow. So 20 years went by like that. That means the next 20 are gonna go by a little bit faster. So again, if we go back to that, what is what is my life's purpose and what is going to be my lasting legacy? These guys, most of them, they're they're serving one thing. They're serving their finances when they go into that. And that's where you see most guys they get burnt out or they decide, look, I'm gonna do something else. I'm gonna risk what I've built in the past moving forward because I don't want to miss any more time with my family. Because I don't want to get a divorce and live in the apartments behind my complex while my kids are in their home and my wife and I aren't talking. So we sacrifice things for ourselves for other people, but really it starts with us. It starts with you. We have to continue working on ourselves and finding ways to improve in everything we do, or else we're gonna slowly die. And if you're not growing, you're dying. So these guys they don't take care of their bodies, they don't take care of their health, they are not taking care of their minds, they're not getting up early because they've had to work late. Whatever the case may be, most guys are not living this completely holistic life. So that's what I try to do is show them, hey guys, look, you can get up early, and I'm gonna teach you how. We call these health hacks. And these health hacks will eventually convert into health habits, but in the beginning it's a hack, right? Well, how do I get more time? There's no such thing as more time. But what we can do is we can find ways to eliminate the time sucks and the time vampires, and we can fill those with things that serve you. We can find ways for you to spend time with your kids and not miss work. So maybe you handle business calls one day a week after school from the park. Maybe you're walking around with your kids. Maybe on Fridays from three till eight, your phone, which is one of the greatest distractions we have, is put in a box. And that box you and your kid design together. And it's called the lockbox or the life box or the canon's box or the Camille's box, whatever your kids' names may be. And during that time, you don't go in there. So these little tools that I've used over the last 12 or so years of being a husband and a father have now given me content. And as we know in in the marketing business world, content is king. So I double down on that. I I continue to push content even when my marketing is not on point. And I I know that it's it's it's a topic of discussion often when I meet with people who are like, my God, I love what you're doing. How are you gonna scale it? And I even had this conversation yesterday, and I'm like, well, I scaled a 750 square foot box into six sick fit gyms, and it didn't it didn't work out the way I wanted it to. So instead of trying to scale it, I'm gonna take the greatest possible clientele, my clientele, your clientele, you and I, the the the top one percenters, because most of them are making really good money. They're they're in business for themselves, or they're an attorney, or they're a financial advisor. They have the ones who have all that extra stress on them, anyways. Right? So we take that 1% group, we take the top clients, and we now give them everything. We give them every tool on top of what we call extreme accountability, right? You you you were part of the crew, missing student phone calls. Hey Eric, it's Tuesday morning. I haven't seen you in class for a week, bro. Where have you been? Oh, thanks for the call, man. I truly appreciate it. I've been busy. Thanks for getting on my ass, right? Right. We did that with somebody's fitness, and because of that, we had better gyms than the guy next door or down the street. We've taken that same proven model of extreme accountability and applied it to people's lives. Are you eating and drinking water and training? Check, check, check. Are you reading and writing and journaling and meditating? Check, check, check, check, check. Are you spending quality time with your wife and your kids? Check, check. Are you serving yourself? Because if we don't work on us, nobody else is gonna work on us for us. So now the one or two check boxes on the weekly phone calls is now 10 or 15. Nice. And it's a constant push, it's a constant nudge, it's relentless follow-up and follow through, although the marketing is not completely there. And it may not be for a long time, but I would rather go into a new business and a new venture and put my name on the line with what I know I can deliver and how people can improve versus how nice my logo is or how pretty and shiny my marketing is, because that will come later. I'd hate to have it be the other way around.

Right. I agree. And uh like most great conversationalists I've had on this show, I only got through about one question. So I have about six more. So possibly we could check in with you in about six months again.

Dude, let's let's do it. Let's do it. How how do people get a hold of you, Luke? How did people find you? I appreciate that. So uh LukeKyam.com, L-U-K-E-K-A-Y-Y-E-M.com, fittest tribealive.com. If you're in the North Scottsdale area on Friday mornings at 5 15, you can come to the hood or you can come to the studio and we can do a video like this. We can do a Facebook Live. You can see me on my Facebook or my Instagram, my Twitter, but uh I'm really dedicated and committed to doing as many Facebook Lives as possible with that same purpose. Truly about you know teaching more people how to live a higher quality of life through purpose and passion and ultimately positivity, because you and I both know that if I fill your bucket, you're gonna fill my bucket, and if my bucket's full, I'm gonna fill somebody else's bucket. Before you know it, every encounter that I have, and this was this was a big one for me, because you know, I was a competitive functional fitness athlete, right? I was uh the first uh CrossFit gym in Scottsdale. Ego is the enemy. And some of us had to learn the hard way, but after I reinvented and came back and said, okay, how can I serve people at a higher level? I really started to become humble and and vulnerable and say that what if I what if I could go into every conversation, every relationship, every phone call, every Starbucks, you name it, everything with positivity as the focus? What if I could come in with a smile wherever I go? When I walk in a room, when I answer the phone and I'm not even on a video? Like, what if I could do that? What if I could wake up my kids and what if I could tell my wife, what if my life became fucking positive, higher than it's ever been, because I simply applied some tools along the way and I taught more people how to live with positivity. It's the greatest asset we have, but we don't use it. I mean, how how simple is this? Like, we don't use it. And I didn't use it for a long time. I didn't smile in high school. Uh I didn't, I didn't necessarily, you know, live the life that I'm living right now. And we all have to stumble sometimes to get to where we are. But because of stumbling, because of falling down, because of temporary defeats and a few failures along the way, we all have the opportunity to come back and be greater than we ever thought possible, than we ever imagined. And that's really what it's about now is like, hey, man, I haven't seen you in six, seven years. And now we're on a video call together and we're both smiling and we're laughing and we're we're filling each other's bucket, man. And that's what it's all about.

It's awesome, man. Brother, keep it up. And uh, you know, the message everyone out there hey, it is simple, but it's not always easy. And that's why it's nice to have a coach. So keep it up, coach. Do do the work, man. Appreciate you, Eric. Yeah. Nice talking to you, brother. We'll talk to you soon. All right. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Future of Fitness podcast and webinar series. Uh, we're working really hard here to keep great content coming out, and we'd like to express our gratitude by offering you a free seven-day marketing crash course. So here's how you can claim it. If you go to fitnessmarketingalliance.com forward slash free gift, F-R-E-E-G-I-F-T, and you enter the promo code FitMARK F-I-T-M-A-R-K, you can claim it that way. The other way is you can text us. So you can text the phone number 805-619-5550, and you text the word FitMark F-I-T-M-A-R-K. So thank you. Keep listening, go claim that offer. It's a ton of value. And if you ever want to get a hold of me, or if you have suggestions for guests, topics, or anything else, or if you just want to ask me questions, uh, I always respond. You can reach me at Eric E R I C at Fitness MarketingAlliance.com and keep listening. We have a lot more coming down the pipe, and uh, we'll make sure that we're keeping the value great for you guys. And farewell till next time.