Dr. Sean Pastuch - Gaining Influence When You Don't Have Influence

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I'm happy to be back in the future. Yeah.

That's kind of funny. Man, it's always great to have you here for uh you know people who haven't heard of you yet. I I really suggest that they go back and listen to the last two or three episodes that you've been on this show because you've been a kind of a perennial return guest and uh for good reason because you always great, you know, you always provide great value from a standpoint of you know a very clear mission that you have, uh, as well as your openness to talk about the challenges and the opportunities. And you know, it's it's uh and you're you're an entrepreneur through and through, man. You take risks, you push hard, um, you know when to pull back, and it's you know, it it's just a great, great conversation. So maybe we could start with this, Dr. Sean. Um, give us a little recap of 2021, how it was for Active Life, um, how things may have changed within your business, and uh yeah, how how it turned out during a pandemic.

You want to just sit back and I'll talk for an hour and then sure and then we can yeah, I'm gonna go grab some coffee.

I'll be back.

How did 2021 go? Well, um, yeah. So 2021 was a really uh intense learning year for me. And it's one of those years that when you're when you're trying to sound really mature about it, you say, I'm really happy for all the lessons that I learned in 2021. You know, it was great. We learned about how to do this, we learned about how to do that. Uh the truth is 2021 sucked. I didn't enjoy learning the lessons that I learned in 2021. In 2021, uh we had no consistency of whether we were gonna be up from a client satisfaction revenue perspective uh or down. We spent uh insane amounts of money on things that didn't work and I had to uh let some people who I really care about go from the company because I felt like two things needed to be true about everybody in their job at all times, which are they need to at minimum like the job that they are in, and we as a company need to be able to help them do their job better at all times, no matter who it is in what position. That includes my position as CEO. I need to like it and the company needs to be able to make me better at it. And while I feel like for um maybe all the people who we had to let go, I think that they uh did like the position, but I think that we ran to a point where we could no longer we didn't have the skill set to make them better. And so we needed more production and and and we couldn't uh keep going the way that we were going. The hardest thing for me in business is letting people go. I hate it, especially people who uh demonstrate that they're loyal, demonstrate that they're interested, demonstrate that they will work hard. Um letting somebody go in that capacity burns. It sucks. And one of the most important things I learned about myself in 2021 is that I need to avoid allowing the company to suffer so that I can you know kind of take it easy street a little bit and not have to have those difficult conversations with people who I care about and respect. So that was a really big lesson that I I'm glad I learned and hated learning in 2021. Um you asked about some of the shift and some of the things that we changed. You know, we I wrote a culture code between Christmas and New Year's. So last year in 2020, I wrote Turn Pro, the book on you know the eth the the fitness professionals guides, ethical sales, and career fulfillment. And this year I planned to write another book, which was gonna be about how to get a personal training business started. And instead I decided to write a culture code for active life. The idea that we have a culture that I I feel myself uh was in was not necessarily the experience that everybody else in the company was having. And it could have been, but it might not have been. The truth is I I hadn't asked. And so I went on an interview spree, interviewed everybody in the company one-on-one. Uh, and then I sent out a list of questions to everybody based on the interviews that I had. And then I sent out a list of questions based on the answers to the first questions that I got. And then based on that, I wrote a a hundred and uh hundred and fifteen, hundred and eighteen. We're not done yet, I'm I'm editing, but uh slide culture code so that everybody knows who we are, who we aspire to be, which parts of those we do really well right now, which parts of those we don't do well yet and will, and how you grow within the company and how you end up leaving the company. So those are those are huge shifts that happened last year. We created new positions, uh, we we ascended people from within the ranks to leadership positions, and I think for the first time ever when they came into the leadership positions, I did a really good job of explaining the difference between being in charge and being a leader.

That's powerful stuff, man. I uh I remember when uh my dad was a dentist, had his own practice, and when I was young, I I distinctly remember times when he had to let someone go because everyone in the house was on edge for four days before Friday, because he always did it on a Friday, and then three days after when he was just miserable. And he carried such a heavy weight when he did it. And I didn't really understand until I became a business owner and I had to let go of people or had really hard conversations. There was one um where I realized at one point, and you'll probably understand this very well, is like I was just giving too much away uh percentage-wise for personal training. Um, and I had to make the correction, right? And it's a hard thing to do to go to people who have been training at your gym for a very long time and say, hey, we're actually going from 70% down to 44%, and this is gonna happen. Sorry, but this is what the business needs to do. Uh and it those types of conversations as a leader, a lot of people may just bury their head in the sand for a while because it's easier, right? In the short term. But in the long term, it just creates these big problems. And uh, so it's it's it's a tough thing to do, man. And anyone who's been in a leadership position understands that, you know, it's not just uh having CEO on your LinkedIn profile, right? It's actually having hard conversations.

It's a little bit more than just having CEO. It's a little bit more than having it on the profile. I I would ask you, in in the specific case that you just gave, um did you consider other other ways to compensate the staff member besides 44%?

Yes. Yes, yeah, I uh I offered ways. Um I was very creative with it. Go ahead.

Yeah, the only reason why I ask is because I know gym owners listen to this, and especially um in the commercial fitness space, there's there's a lot of pay percentages that that get thrown out there. And I often find that those create adversarial relationships between owner and staff because when the question's about why does the ownership need X percent, whatever it is, it could be 20%, which I would say is far too low. Whatever the percentage is, um there's always a question of how do you justify that percentage. And I think that it runs into uh whether the staff believes the ownership or not, whether the ownership is is has truly thought it through because I find that percentages typically are less valuable than the number of dollars that the owner actually needs to bring into the business for the service rendered. You know, if they were charging $300 a session, they probably could have gotten away with more than 44%.

Yeah, yeah. Well, that was uh, you know, ironic, and I'm not saying I did it well. I'm sure there is still bad blood to this for that conversation that I had. Yeah. Oh, I'm not, I yeah, I'm just saying for people out there listening, like you're chances are you're probably not gonna get it right. Um, you may get it better, but it's not gonna be perfect, and you have to be okay with that too, uh, because ultimately it's it's just human relationships and it's business, and we're all figuring it out as we go. Uh but it is, it is the percentage thing is tough. I think I used um back then I was I was working with Chris Cooper and he had the uh you know the model of like, well, you know, you have to have thir 33% profit, um, you know, 22%, whatever. It was the Knights model, basically. Um, and it was it was good because it made sense and it was easy to to articulate to people uh as of like, hey, here's what the business needs. And you know, it was one of those moments too where I actually looked at my numbers of the business, I was like, whoa, dude, my profit margin is at like 13% right now. That's not good. Like, especially being in Santa Barbara, California, rent is monstrous, uh, so I had to make sure.

I think having in any business, having having metrics to guide you is is really valuable. And I think that what Chris Cooper did, a two-brain that was really that was really innovative that I hadn't seen before they came out and did it. Uh, and frankly, I didn't even know it was them when I first learned about the the four ninths model was they said, here's a North Star, chase this. And and nobody had ever done that before, to my knowledge. And so that was valuable. And then it needs to be innovated on. You know, the idea that um it would be like saying we know that water freezes at zero degrees Celsius, 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Amazing. That's amazing. Then why isn't that river frozen? It's 20 out. Why isn't that ocean frozen? It's zero out. Well, there's salt in the got it, so it's not exactly the same. And oh, that river is moving. Got it, so it's not a it it there are things that change the the dynamic here, and those things need to be considered. But we do know that in all other in a vacuum, 32 and zero freezes water. Great. Now we can now we can learn from there.

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What you're describing that I'm sorry, I think the reason I keep talking over you a little bit is there's a bit of a cutout. You're you're you're dropping in and out a little bit on our talk. So I apologize if I talk over you, that's that's the reason. It's not because I'm looking to interrupt. Um yeah, what what you're speaking to is people who during COVID ran into what if my brick and mortar isn't an option that um I can go to? Or what if I never really wanted to be in brick and mortar, and it's the only way I thought I could do things, and now I realize I have another option. And then what what they do is they look at um established businesses like mine, uh like Joel's, like um Lori Christine King at Paragon, right? Like Miranda and Julian Alcaraz at Street Parking, and they say, I could build my own version of that. And you can. For anybody listening, you can. None of us did anything uh so groundbreaking and so special and so unique that the lift was so heavy that you couldn't do it. You could do exactly what we all did. The mistake people make is they try to launch what we have now. Instead of looking at what did we do to go from our brick and mortar experience to our digital experience? What were the steps from launch date to or from conception of career to today? And instead they look at, well, this company has this many service offerings, so I need to have this many service offerings. This company does this many videos a week, they have a podcast, they do a blog, and they just try to be that. That's not the way to do it. So do you have another question, or would you like me to keep rambling on how they can actually No, keep going, keep going.

You're on the right track. Yeah.

So there there's an old adage of give without the expectation of getting anything in return. And the more you do that, the more you will get. I like that. And I remember being in the early phases of my career where I I couldn't rub two, you know, two dollars together because I didn't have both of them, I couldn't have both at the same time. Uh the dollars, that is. And I was like, well, this is great. Give to everybody from an empty cup and don't expect anything in return, and that that that's how you build. Great, this is great. How am I going to give what I don't have and not expect anything back? I need to make a living. What are these people talking about? And I didn't really understand how to do it until retrospectively looking at what I actually did. And what I understand now is that the way that you give without the expectation of getting anything in return is when the give is actually everything that you need. And so I'll give you an example. When I started to try to expand myself from being guy in a clinic to being brand, the first thing I did was look at who around me locally is influential, has a problem that I can solve. So for me it was okay, well, I own a CrossFit gym, I own a rehab and soft tissue clinic. And I know CrossFit and Fitness really well. So let me look for the best CrossFitter with the most acclaim local to me to see if they want help. And it was a guy named Daniel Taminsky. He owned a CrossFit gym called CrossFit Lindy, he was a CrossFit Games athlete perennially from Long Island. He had a social media following of what, ten thousand people because no one was really on Instagram yet. I don't know what it was. Um and I reached out to Dan and basically just asked him if I could help if he needed any help. And of course, he wanted to know what was, you know. What was in it for me? What did he have to do to give the help? Which is a reasonable question. And I told him nothing. You don't have to do anything. I just want the experience of working with the best. I want to understand what the best need. I want to understand how the best work. I want to understand how to communicate with the best. I want to understand how to treat the best. That's it. That's that's what I want. And he's like, yeah, okay, great. Let's do it. So giving Dan the free service got me the experience that I was looking for to be able to have the confidence that I can work with the best in the world. I'm providing this guy value that no one's ever provided him before. And he's telling me this. And so I can do this. That was the give. I didn't need him to give me anything in return. I got everything I needed in return because I gave it to him. When people started to ask me, um, you know, who do you who do you work with? I could say I work with everyday people, I work with professional athletes. Because Dan was a professional athlete. And now when people start hearing that you work with professional athletes without having a testimonial on the website, without asking him if I can share his name because it wasn't about that, without recording the video and sharing it to Instagram, because it didn't do that. You can just tell people the truth. And it elevated my credibility. And I kept doing that for Dan and then for Dan's girlfriend, and then for Dan's girlfriend's boss, who turned out to be Chrissy Mae Cagney, who owned um at the time Donuts and Deadlifts. Uh, you know, I started working with her. And then she started saying, you should work with my boyfriend, who at the time was um Drew Canavero, a new coach at a new company called Brute Strength. Started working with Drew. And then Drew was saying, You need to figure out how you can do this for people who are not local to you. Drew did that. It wasn't like in the plan. I said, Well, why? He said, Because I could send you so many people who aren't local, but when they leave, what are you gonna do? So we developed a plan to help people who weren't local. And all of this was like, I just I'm gathering expertise by working with these people. And I'm taking their thoughts, I'm taking their feedback and improving what I do. And we came up with a plan for how to help somebody remotely. And then the next thing that happened was I was on the phone call with my now good friend Michael Cashew. I remember the shirt he was wearing. Um, and I'm trying to put him through a movement screen online. I've never done this before. And it was it was weird as hell. But in the end, he was like, All right, I I see the merit behind all of this for the athletes at Brute. And then he promptly sent Jared Stevens. No, you know what? Before that, he sent Brennan Fiord, who was on the Brute games team. And Brennan couldn't couldn't sleep, he had neck pain, he had our shoulder pain, and the games were coming up, and it was like, well, we kind of need Brennan to go. And so it was my job to make Brennan healthy from across the country. No one's paying me for this. There's no post about me on social media, none of that. It was just I'm learning how to do these things by working with all these different people. That team ends up making it to the games. I think they took third that year. It was Adrian Conway. I don't remember, doesn't matter. To make this long story short, all of this service that I was doing selfishly, because I wanted to learn, I wanted to be able to build my contact list. I wanted to be able to tell people, yeah, I work with professional athletes, yeah, I work with people at the CrossFit games, yeah, I work with people who are in the Olympics, yeah, all of those yes, yes, yes, I do that, yes, I do that. That's how you give without the expectation of getting anything in return. And we built the online brand out of necessity, not out of interest, not out of plan, it was necessity. There were too many people who were not local who wanted help that we needed to provide them a way to get help remotely. Now, if you're in the same shoes as me, how do you do that without taking three years to have your first online client? You work with people in person, you do such a good job for them that you get the confidence from them that they can refer their friends to you who are not local. Start there. You don't need to spend a dollar on a Facebook ad. Think about it this way: you work with a man, a woman, and six of their friends. Start conversations with them around do you have any friends who are not local to here who you've talked to about the way that we train, who would be interested in training this way if I was near them? They're gonna tell you yes. Ask them, do you think those people would be interested in talking with me about working together remotely? Over the computer. I would provide the workouts, I would provide the accountability, I would provide the nutrition support, all the things that they need just remotely. Yeah, I didn't I didn't know you did that. Well, I didn't do that, but I've been thinking about doing it, and I like you so much, I only want to work with people like you. So I figure if you have friends, that's where I should start. That's how you start an online business. Not by getting a cool logo and a catchy Instagram account, posting inflammatory stuff and butt shots, and hoping that people find you and say, I want to look like that, or work with someone who looks like that.

So I know there is a slight delay here because I have it on my end too, but I want to get to this question because I I I'm reflecting on when I sold my my gyms in 2017 and I didn't really know what I was gonna do yet, right? Like, well, so I'll start this little podcast. Like, whatever. I'll just start interviewing people I know. Um, I got some earbuds and a MacBook, and I can do that as we travel. And uh, you know, when you we talk about giving, expecting nothing in return, um, you know, I I think that has to be shifted a little bit because you are getting so much in return. So I just started interviewing people to a couple things, learn from them and see what was going on in the industry, build my network, right? And form relationships with people. And after most interviews that I did, I asked people, stop record, hey Sean, how can I help you, man? What do you need help with right now? And that is a shocking question for most people, right? It's it's like, wait, what? And every once in a while, someone would take it, take me up on it. Loop Armstrong from F-45 is like, you know what? I mate, he's Australian, I do need some help, actually. Uh, you know, let's let's talk next week, right? And you know, I would do some work for him. Occasionally I get paid. And next thing you know, it's like one after another. Uh, I got some consulting clients, I have some, you know, uh some sponsors of the podcast. Like it just took a while, but it took, well, it's four and a half years now, right? It's funny how those numbers work. So I guess the question is when you say people want to do without waiting three years, isn't that three years part of the process? Like, isn't that almost mandatory?

Yes, it is. But what I'm speaking about is you can have your first online client tomorrow. It doesn't mean you have an online service company tomorrow. There's there's this misconception in business that everything needs to be built for scale. And and it's glamorous to have a team. Let me tell you something. When it was me, the only thing that kept me up at night was can I make enough money to make sure that um I can still sleep in this bed tomorrow? That's it. Once you make enough money that you don't have to worry about sleeping in this bed tomorrow anymore, now you're worrying about everybody else whose beds the company that you own is paying for. And that's much harder to sleep with. I have a lot more sleepless nights now than I did when I was by myself. Because now I feel a responsibility to other people, and now I have to learn how to do a lot of things that I didn't need to do when it was just me. We're now beyond the point of making money, and it's obvious to anybody paying attention that ever all of the struggle, all of the fucking all of it, all the angst, it's all in pursuit of a mission. Like you most people who start their personal business are starting it because they want to be able to make money on their own terms. That is totally reasonable. There's nothing wrong with that. If you I believe the only way that you're going to grow something bigger than a personal business is if you have a really intense belief in an idea that is bigger than you. If you don't have that, run a great personal business. One is no more virtuous than the other. If I promise you, if every day I was thinking to myself, how rich can I get doing this, I'd be fucked. We'd be out of business right now. We'd have made decisions to chase money instead of culture that would have led us down the wrong path. And I can give you perfect examples along the way. Before any of this started, I was offered a job in finance. I could have moved to Hong Kong. I was already there on vacation with my girlfriend at the time, now wife. And my uncle was the CEO of an investment bank in Hong Kong. And one of his managing directors told me it was my God-given right to make millions of dollars in finance because of who my uncle was and where I'm from. Which I thought was ridiculous. But he said to me, I know that you're planning to open a gym in six and a half months. Don't open your gym. Don't even go home. You'll be making millions of dollars doing this by next year. Just move here. Bring your wife or girlfriend, or don't. That's your own prerogative. I don't care. And I passed that up. Because that that that wasn't in line with my values. Do I want to make a lot of money? Yeah, of course I do. Did I want to make it like that? No. So what's more important to me than the money is the mission. And I believe that the pursuit of the mission will drive the money. Eventually.

Do you ever uh have flash-ins of moments where you're like, man, millions of dollars sounds really good? Maybe I should have done it.

Of course. Of course. That's a human thing. You know, like there, there, we've uh it used to be more frequent, it's less frequent now. Uh there were years in my gym business and in my clinic business where I was working 16, 17 hour days and I was making less than $30,000 a year. And I remember the guy's name. His name was Kyle Wool. And I remember the last thing he said to me. He gave me his business card. And he said, Never let your best year in business be my worst year in business. Or excuse me, my worst month in business. He said, Never let your best year be my worst month in business. My immediate like I I for a moment didn't understand what he meant. Then I wanted to kick him in the dick and punch him in the face because of I knew immediately that that that was that that was a like that he was an earner that was gonna be haunting me for a long time, and here I am 15 years later talking about it, uh, or 12 years later talking about it. But um guy was making $700,000 a month, $800,000 a month. And I haven't had a year where I make seven, eight hundred thousand dollars. So my best year has not yet been his worst month, 12 years later. Uh does that haunt me today? No. Did that haunt me when I was working 17-hour days making less than $30,000 a year without an idea of how I was gonna change anything? Yeah, it did. Uh but fuck that guy. Doesn't haunt me anymore.

Yeah. Yeah, it's good. It makes me reflect too. I I have a lot of friends that I've known for a long time, either through uh, you know, growing up together, high school or college, and you know, every once in a while you get together with these friends, right? And uh a lot of them immediately after school got into a corporate track or into finance or something like that. Man, they make a butt ton of money, right? Tons. But I've known them so long that we can have very honest conversations, and you know, there would be times like we'd be splitting the bill of the restaurant, and I'd be like, oh, geez, this is gonna hurt. Like we just gotta, you know, throw it out. But all these other guys, like, they got plenty of money and they're like, hey, let's do another round of you know hundred dollar margaritas. And uh, you know, it it hurt, but uh, many, you know, there was a couple conversations I've had with people where they're like, man, I envy you. And I was like, really? In what way? Right? Like, you're making at least half a million dollars a year, right? You get flown around on private jets by your consulting company, and you're telling me, he's like, Yeah, but you did it. You did it your way. I was like, Well, who says my way was good, first of all. Like, you know, I stumbled constantly. Uh, but I the point of that is that there's always cliches are cliches because they're oftentimes true. Things look greener on the other side, right? No matter what. People may look in my lifestyle, they may look at how I've done things, and they're like, yeah, but I'll may look at what they have as far as finances or authority or whatever it may be, whatever metrics we look at that we think are signs of success. And ultimately, and I guess here's a question that I don't know if I've ever asked you, but do you have a personal definition of success? Like when you look back, you know, or whatever you're striving for on a daily basis, right? That kind of is that guiding light for you, that is that North Star as you're going through life. What is that if you got one?

Yeah, it's the same definition that I give for health in a different context. And it's just the ability to decide yes. You know, the the more things, and by things I don't mean material things. I I'm including in that experiences, time, relationships, you know, all of those things. The more of those that you have the freedom to say yes to when you want. And the power to say no to when you want, the more successful you are. And what that means is the the person who right now I can't say yes to flying on a private jet. That means I'm less financially successful than somebody who can. If I don't care to fly on a financial on a private jet, then it means I'm no less personally successful than somebody who can. It's not an interest. Now it just so happens that for me, it is an interest. But you you you follow what I'm describing, I hope. The idea that it's easy for people who have money to tell people who don't have money that money isn't the thing. I remember when I was broke and listening to uh millionaires and billionaires talk about how money isn't isn't important, and I would be like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, give yours away then.

Right?

That was the mindset. I'm like, yeah, give it away. It was bitter. I was, you know, busting my ass, making nothing. It's not that money isn't a thing. They and I don't think that they were lying, but I do think that they were misrepresenting it. I think that the better way to describe it is once you have enough money to live a basic life, more money only brings different problems. It doesn't solve your money problems anymore. Once you can go to the restaurant and not look at the price for the thing you're gonna order before you order it, really you have enough money. You know what's what's after that is I want to go on vacation, I want to do it lavishly. Okay. I want to be able to not work forever. Well, that's not a money problem, that's a purpose problem at your work. I want to be able to buy a house with a view, with an office, with a home gym. Okay. That's reasonable. You need to make more money to be able to do that if that's what you want. But once you live in it, how different is your life going to be than it is right now? And it it will be different because I can tell you we just put way too much money into our house to make it a house that um I don't have disdain when I walk down the stairs and look at anymore. And I love my house now, and life is better living in it. So I'm not asking you to suppress those wants. What I'm describing is that my life isn't all that different than it was when I lived in a house that was four hundred thousand dollars less expensive or less built out. You know, having enough money to sleep at night is important in today's modern society. It shouldn't be minimized. Having purpose as you earn it should be just as important and held it just as high a pedestal. And so I like to say to people, you should do something for a living that you love so much you can't imagine doing anything else to make a living, and make sure you make a living.

Nice. I want to go back and I want to cover this before we kind of get into uh what active life is doing in 2022 and and beyond. But you mentioned you wrote a culture code for active life. Uh give us a briefing on that, man. What what was what's the takeaways?

Well, so the thing is, you know, I I think that culture happens, whether whether you plan it or not. Intentional culture, I believe, is rare. And I really want Active Life uh to be a company that has an intentional culture, where everything that you see, feel, experience working in the company, contracting with the company, partnering with the company, being a client of the company uh is predictable. And and maybe to to you, when you come in, you're like, wow, this is this is a totally different experience. And for people within the company, it's it's an obvious and everyday experience. That that's what I want. And so there are 11 key tenants, and they're not our core values, they're different. Our core values, so if people want to know, are how we guide hiring, firing, and the decisions about what we want to pursue in a company and how we want people to um align with us. Those are to be professional, which means to earn people's trust on purpose consistently, to have act with integrity, which means do the right thing because it's the right thing, regardless of personal gain or loss as a result. Of it. To have an active life mindset, which means that you understand you must be a work in progress in order to be a masterpiece. So you're going to make mistakes and we're going to celebrate the process of learning from them. And finally, we are a team first organization. Which means we will put the team above the individual. No matter how much we like the individual. If the individual makes it more difficult for the team to be successful, the individual won't be on the team. And that's the same for our clients coming in. We're going to put our staff first because we believe that our team, when inspired and safe, is going to deliver the best version of service that you could possibly imagine. And so by putting our team first, we ensure your experience. Those are our values. Our culture code is 13, excuse me, 11 core tenants. One, and so the way the code was written, by the way, is I introduced the purpose of the culture code, and then I wrote up the 11 core tenants, and then I went in and defined each of those tenants. So one, we measure all that should be measured and acknowledge what should not. Two, we prioritize simplicity. We use work as a tool to enhance life and life as a tool to enhance work. We protect one another. Eight, we set and respect boundaries. Those are the 11 core culture tenets that exist. And then if you wanted to learn about what any of them mean, you just go into the document and you find out how we would treat a variety of situations according to those.

Nice man. That's uh how'd it feel when you're done writing that? Do you feel like you finally kind of summarized and gave direct like what what yeah? Once that got all out on a paper out of your head, how'd it feel?

Trepidation is how I felt. Because um Okay, you know, it's I define the culture the way that I define our values the way I want, the way I want our values to be defined. I defined our culture the way that we want our culture to be defined. The difference is people who come and work at Active Life must share the values that I, the owner, set forth for the company. And now I did have help. I don't want to pretend it was all me. Team members helped me build the values years ago, and they've been edited and they've been improved upon. But they at the end of the day, I need to be happy with them because I gotta be excited to come to work in the morning. Now, what it's like to work towards those values, I need to be inclusive of the way that people on our team want to be treated, want to be led. And so all of that I went to them for help for. I asked them to help me build this culture code. And so when I was done with the interviews with the questionnaires, with the follow-up interviews, where I was gathering the necessary information to write what I felt like was the best reflection of what they described wanting, there's hope that you got it right. And there's some fear that you're going to show it to people on the team who are going to say, Yeah, um, I don't want to work in that company. And and that would be okay. But that's the honest truth of how it feels to have it written down. It felt great to have it written down because I said, you know what? These are things that I I believe, that I believe I execute on, that I believe we try to execute on, and sometimes fall short because people don't necessarily know that we are trying to execute on them. And now that everybody knows these are this is the North Star. Um, I think it will give people more freedom to to be who they think they need to be and how they need to be it within our company without fear that that won't be supported. So that's that's the upside. You know, the the the downside, the fear, the trepidation is just around people reading it and saying, Yeah, that's that's very cool for somebody. It's just not for me. And me thinking that that's a person who would love it and then have them leave.

Hmm. Nice. Nice. So uh gotta respect your time here. I guess the final questions are if if people are listening um and they're interested in what you're saying, active life, who who is active life for and and what can they expect if they go there and start learning more about it and engage in your your your product, service, and brand?

Our whole company evolved because we were helping individuals reclaim their active lives and restore their sense and you know self-autonomy in a way that no one else was actually doing it. So everything goes down to that individual, that that person at the end. If if you find yourself looking into what we do, it should be either because you're somebody who is finding yourself not fitting in in the fitness industry, not in need of the medical industry, and you're like, well, what is there for me? I'm not interested in chasing PRs, getting nice abs and doing cool athletic stuff in the gym. I'm interested in using the gym as a tool to get the best out of life. I'm not into gym culture. Well, that's that's us. Now, the other side of that would be you're the coach who is tired of the people in your gym doing the same modifications and believing that that's the best it's going to get, and not actually having a skill set to help them make it any better. That coach would find themselves coming to active life to learn how to bridge the gap between the edges of what happens in fitness and the edges of what happens in healthcare. And then the gym owner who only wants to solve that high-level problem, who wants to be the place where people who have been failed by fitness and failed by healthcare can come find the solutions that they need. And who understands that they're going to employ people who are going to earn legitimate professional wages because of the work that they put into being the best in the world at what they do. The active life professional, the the former coach who came through the education. That's the gym owner who would find their way to us. And so I put it in three different buckets. The way that I define fitness is fitness is meant, generally speaking, right? The focus of the industry, there are outliers in all cases. Good on them. The focus of the fitness industry is to maximize physical expression.

Right?

Once you can back squat your body weight, when in the real world are you gonna squat more than that? You're not even gonna squat that much in the real world. You can deadlift your body weight. When's the last time you picked up more than your body weight off the ground? It you're just not. It's not a it's not a daily skill that people need. So when you start doing things above that level in a gym, you're looking for surplus. And that's performance. And I'm all for that. You know, the difference is can you throw the ball versus how fast can you throw the ball? I just want you to be able to throw the ball. If you want to be able to throw the ball fast, I want you to be able to throw the ball fast, and someone in the fitness industry can help you. If you're in a position where you're risking permanent loss of your lifestyle, permanent loss of the way that you move, the way that you look, the way that you feel, that's gonna be a medical industry problem. That's the healthcare industry. They are helping you to rescue physical ability before permanent loss. And the degree to which they do that is can you wash your hair? Can you go to work? Can you wipe your ass? Can you go for a walk? Can you sleep through the night? They need to get you to the yes on that. Everything between that and adding 10 miles an hour to the fastball is what active life does.

Beautiful, man. Well said, well articulated. Man, Dr. Sean, I always enjoy these conversations. I learned a little bit. Uh I feel like it's just like two guys having coffee and it's uh it's a lot of fun. Um where do people get a hold of you personally?

Easiest way to do it is at Dr. Sean Pestocci on Instagram or Sean Pestocci on LinkedIn, and everything else is going to be easy to find from there.

Right on. Well, thank you, sir, for spending a uh Thursday morning with me and recording the podcast. It's uh like I said, it's always a lot of fun, man. I always laugh a little bit, uh cry a little bit, and learn a lot. And uh yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Sean Pastucci.

My pleasure, Eric. Thanks for having me on. I didn't see any tears, so next time I'm gonna try to squeeze them out.

I was crying on the inside. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more or get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.