Jul 23, 2019
Today on the show we have Travis Jones. Travis, is an Australian entrepreneur who's running a ton of different gyms and businesses.
He's a huge influencer and is obsessed with optimizing potential. He has so many different ways to bring out the best in people in fitness, in mindset and in their business and we get to hear a lot of his philosophy on how he is running many different seven figure businesses. How he's gotten his start. It's very inspiring and very energetic interview.
What You Will Learn On This Episode
- Hitting Rock Bottom to Accelerate Upward
- Encouraging Daily Huddles and Weekly Meetings
- Maximizing Productivity and Focus Through Incremental Active Breaks
- Risk Thresholds
Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Instagram @TravisJonesEntrepreneur
Transcription
Kyle Gray:
Hello and welcome to the Story Engine Podcast. Today on the show we have Travis Jones. Travis, is an Australian entrepreneur who's running a ton of different gyms and businesses. He's a huge influencer and is obsessed with optimizing potential. He has so many different ways to bring out the best in people in fitness, in mindset and in their business and we get to hear a lot of his philosophy on how he is running many different seven figure businesses. How he's gotten his start. It's very inspiring and very energetic interview. So without any further ado, let's turn it over to Travis. Travis Jones, welcome to the Story Engine Podcast.
Travis Jones:
Thank you for having me, man. I'm really excited to be on here today.
Kyle Gray:
Yeah, Travis and I want to introduce you properly with the same question I ask all my guests. Tell me about a moment in your life that's defined you to be who you are, serve who you're serving and show up how you're showing up today.
Travis Jones:
I'll take you back to a moment before I got into the fitness industry and I had a splitting headache and I felt like I was literally getting knocked to my feet. I felt nauseous in my stomach. I thought I just had some form of flu or cold. I was sitting at a friend's house and I said, "I just need to have a shower." I walked into the shower and I passed out in the shower. I was there for about 30 minutes and his sister was like, "Get him out of the shower, I need to get ready for work." So they knocked down his door. I was passed out in the shower and they called the ambulance, they called the hospital and the ambulance came and they picked me up and I had about, I would say about 30 to 60 seconds to live.
Travis Jones:
I flatlined four times on the way from the ambulance to the hospital. And then when I got into the hospital, I had kidney failure and I was in intensive care for about three months and I had something called meningococcal. I was trying to play professional rugby league and sort of got ripped away from me in a heartbeat because of sharing water bottles on the field.
Travis Jones:
And from that I tried to come back after this meningococcal where it's like a blood infection and essentially you lose limbs or the rest of it. Luckily I didn't and then the next week I came back. I tried to come back three months later, I broke my neck. And these sort of sum of events that happened over about a six month period of time shifted the direction from trying to be a professional sports player to actually going, "You know what? This is not what you're born for. You're born for something else." And for me it was to serve people, to help them achieve their potential in life.
Kyle Gray:
That is amazing. And yeah, now I'm going to be very careful with who I share water bottles with these days. But yeah, that's amazing. That's come around and I love the way you brought us into that story. And yeah, I think a lot of us have these really defining often dramatic moments that help us change directions in life. And yeah, it's tough sometimes it feels like a lot of times we want to go one direction and we're just banging our head against the wall until we finally like look to our left and our right and see a different path. When you say helping people reach their potential, what does that look like for you and what are some of the favorite ways that you do that these days?
Travis Jones:
The main two businesses that we do is we have about 3000 members across the gyms. And also I help people achieve seven figures plus in business. Now with this, when I said achieve potential, I think most people are running at about 70, 80% of their potential if that, because they don't have the belief, they don't have the clarity, they don't have the plan or the roadmap. They just need someone to one, prod them from behind and give them a carrot from in front. Let them know it's going to be okay along the way.
Travis Jones:
And I love coaching people in any aspect and you just give them a little bit of information and what you'll see, you see this light bulb moment go off and their eyes lighten up and they're like, "Okay, I can do this." And in that moment, they're, "Oh my God, I can do this moment." It's like, "Okay, I got through to them. Now I just have to nurture them from now all the way through," and it's changing their standards. It's changing their beliefs and then it's keeping them accountable on a daily basis all the way through, through the plan to the goal. And you just try to transform this person's life.
Kyle Gray:
Is there something you're doing or is there a specific question that you're usually asking? Is there any kind of pattern that's happening before when you give them a prod or something and then they light up in a new way?
Travis Jones:
I'm probably normally swearing at them, but to be honest, I think everyone's slightly different, because [bctt tweet="Everyone's in a different version of pain. I think other people have to hit some version of rock bottom to go up - Travis Jones" username="kylethegray"]. But sometimes you just have to remind people they're tolerating a life of mediocrity and you get in life what you tolerate. So are you ready to stop tolerating the life that you're living? And you have to essentially kill the person you are to become the person you were meant to be.
Travis Jones:
So if you are ready to cross the threshold and make that moment and choose that new identity that you need to become, it's the hero's version of yourself. And if they can identify the standards that have brought them until today, up until this point right now, and I'm talking to them, you don't want to be that person anymore because that's why we're having a conversation. So what are the standards you must leave and what are the standards you must adopt? And that is the new you. And I think sometimes unconsciously people walk through life and what I try and do is consciously let them know and help them understand the choices that they're making that they don't even realize they are making.
Kyle Gray:
I love that so much. That really resonates with me when you say you've got to kill the person that you were. And I would add to that and say, if you don't, that person will kill you. I say this with experience. I mean that was probably what was happening to you in the shower right there. A big turning point in my life was realizing I had an autoimmune disease, which was slowly sapping a lot of joy and energy from my life as well. And once I figured that out, it really did provide the catalyst, which has made a big change in direction for me personally.
Kyle Gray:
I want to give you full credit because you're very, very impressive and you've mentioned a couple of these businesses but you're running a lot of different things right now and can you just share everything that's going on? Everything that you're in charge of right now when we're talking about what is the 100% potential look like for you in your own life?
Travis Jones:
Yeah, man. Like I try to evolve every couple of years. I was like, "Okay, who am I now and is that going to take me to where I need to be over the next two years?" And then I said, "Look at my standards and my habits and see where I need to drop back and lift up." And definitely the person I was eight years ago, I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now and I want to be able to do where I want to do in eight years if I stay who I am right now as well.
Travis Jones:
At the moment we have 15 gyms, about 3000 members, about 80 employees across the country and for that like we manage the 15 managers and everyone below them. It's 7AM now here to jump up and do a podcast. The podcast's at 7:45. I think there's these two paradigms of people. One that's like the hustle, hustle, hustle and then there's also the people who like, "Don't work too hard. Life is precious."
Travis Jones:
I sort of sit in the middle of those two camps. I have two kids, which are my life and also my wife. I make sure I don't miss them whatsoever. I leave work at 3:00 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays we have gymnastics and we have Taekwondo and I make sure I put them to bed every single night. I'm there for them. I dropped them off to school every single morning. My family's everything. I don't compromise for that. But the gym is the main thing that we start or main thing I started eight years ago and it was out of a want to try and change the fitness industry and we're slowly doing that. And the goal is to continue to 50 gyms.
Travis Jones:
No other marketing company could essentially get us to the lead generation that we were getting. So we continue to grow our own marketing company and people like, "Can you do marketing for us and can you do your marketing for us?" And we heavily rely on Facebook ads and Instagram advertising to grow our businesses.
Travis Jones:
So from that aside there is another company. We have account managers and campaign managers and strategists and copywriters. They're essentially doing a lead generation for brick and mortar businesses. Then they're like, "Wow, you grow your business’s." And people will say, "Can we start to consult and coach me in business?" Well, I go, "Okay." And then they're like, "Let's do it."
Travis Jones:
There's a story about the real reason of why we did that. And I will get back to that bit. It was pretty crazy story. But over the span of about 12 weeks, we started this eight week accelerator program and we launched this consulting company to just over seven figures in eight weeks. It went really crazy. And then from that one into this mastermind that we sort of have and I've gone up and down with the consulting over the years, because you start to sort of shift your identity. But we have a good group of consulting clients from North America to Australia, to Europe now. So we do that and I'm heavily in the fitness space. So we then go, "Okay, what's a gap in the marketplace and what do I want?" And there's this app and software that we created.
Travis Jones:
So when I look at doing a lot of the time as I look at who my surroundings are, what do people like that want to achieve and can I help facilitate them and can I help facilitate me. There's some form of reciprocity and one of the clients at one of our gyms, he was a fantastic developer and I was like, "This is my idea." And he's like, "I wanted to do something very similar." And since then we've got him full time. Two people they grew up with in Russia have moved to Australia, we've got another couple of Russians who are working for us over in Russia developing a software, an app. We have only about a hundred coaches on it now and about six, five, 6,000 end users on it. We haven't started marketing yet. I'll just put it out to my social profile a little bit for Beta testers over the last year and we'll start marketing over the next month.
Travis Jones:
But what have we done, we've created this app and portal where health and fitness professionals can coach the end user or their clients through an app. And it's essentially they're tracking their training and tracking their body, their feelings, their stress, their sleep, they're tracking, like I said, their volume, their ribs, their sets, their cardio, their conditioning and there's a two way interface. They're tracking everything that you can add as far as metrics, as pushing straight into a portal where you can look at all your clients at once, you can send out your reminders, you can create meal plans, you can push out your programs. And for me, it wasn't really out there to the degree that we're doing it and what we're building in at the moment as well.
Travis Jones:
So I think everything sort of spun off the gym to be honest at the start and they just kept evolving. There's always going to be a couple of other evolutions. But I try not to commit to too much because then I'll start to fall away with everything. So for me that's like the businesses that we look at and then it's making sure that I can sort of run a productive life so I can be across all the businesses from the daily huddles across the different businesses to the weekly meetings to understand what my focus points are on each of the businesses to make sure that we can keep driving the business school of the engine.
Kyle Gray:
Absolutely. There's so much good stuff in there and I'm so curious on your style of management. This is a two sided question. First, I'd love to know how you manage yourself? How do you keep your energy up? How do you know when to draw boundaries and say, "Okay, this is too much work. I'm going to put this away?" And also how do you keep your energy high and your mind strong and sharp so that you can work on all these things? And then on the other side, I'd love to know if you have systems to manage all of these different teams. What's working really well to keep all of these different projects organized and running smoothly and under your purview?
Travis Jones:
Yeah, man, I think it's two things we can really control in life, which is effort and attitude or attention and attitude. So many of us take care of tension and we stopped focusing on negative states or negative stories that we tell ourselves and this can take us down to these spiral of I don't have enough time or I feel tired or anything like that. You're giving your attention to the wrong stuff. You should be giving your attention to how lucky you are. You should be giving your attention to, for us, we're talking first world countries right now, we really don't have problems. For me, I've got two legs, two arms, two eyes and I'm talking to you through the internet. My problems are okay, I'm eating today.
Travis Jones:
So when I get down on myself I'm like, "Why is my attention on this and how can I shift my attention back to that of gratitude?" Because I think that's one of the most crucial things. I think so many of us aren't living with enough gratitude and we need to increase that. So what I do in the mornings and what I do at nights is I write down the three things I'm grateful for today. And then I talk to my wife and we connect and I was like, "What were the three things that are great that happened in your day?" So is essentially just generalizing in the morning and then a lot of times what three things actually happened that are great today.
Travis Jones:
What I believe this does is when you think about it, you start to see more of in your life. You buy that car and all of a sudden you see that car everywhere on the street and it's like, "Wow, I didn't know there was that many Range Rovers on the street." But then all of a sudden, the same [bctt tweet="With gratitude, all of a sudden if you start talking about it and the more you start talking about it at night, you start seeing more gratitude. You see grace throughout your life and you become actually more happy because it's how you have a higher win as a high consciousness for everything that is great. - Travis Jones" username="kylethegray"]
Travis Jones:
But for those people who wake up in the morning that go, "I don't want to wake up, why me? I don't want to go to work. This is a crappy day. I'm so tired." All of a sudden they start seeing negativity everywhere. And that is literally what makes you tired because you start pushing yourself into a negative state. Then nothing positive can happen from that. And all of a sudden then your life starts to suck. So I think one thing is energy management. That is such a crucial thing for me. And that's your conscious energy management. It's not doing anything. It's literally, it's like right now you're stupid, you're being stupid to me.
Travis Jones:
So I will stop at times like snap myself out like that. It's like I don't mind calling myself stupid at times because sometimes if I'm focusing on something that is ridiculous, it's like, "Man, you're being stupid right now, get your shit together." But then at the same time it's like, "Okay cool. I want to look after my health," so I'll make sure I try and probably like five, six times a week, it's important to me, one for my sanity because I just feel like it doesn't matter if I'm going for a run or lifting some weights, if I'm getting my heart moving and my body moving, you just feel better.
Kyle Gray:
You're going crazy. Yeah, you go crazy if you don't get the energy out. That's where a lot of the anxiety comes from for me.
Travis Jones:
It's crazy, man. And then the next thing is with my nutrition and I'm not so much crazy on nutrition, I understand calories and macros and I can transform anyone to get to where they want to be with their body but for me, I sort of hit my calories within 10, 20%. I sort of intuitively eat most of the time, not weighing stuff or anything like that. But I know that I enjoy wine so I'll have a couple of glasses of wine and for me like I hit about I would say about 16,000 calories a week is on my plan. So as long as I'm within like 2000 calories up, 2000 calories down everything is pretty good.
Travis Jones:
I am in good energy state. Now if I overeat, I start to get lethargic. If I undereat, I started to get lethargic. So for me it's just understanding it's like I know what a chicken breast is or I know what that burger is as well. I just understand what the makeup is, an estimate. So I'm like, "Cool, I know what I'm eating today." And from there I can sort of manage my energy and making sure I'm drinking enough water, making sure I'm having better quality conversations. It's making sure I can get rid of the people in my life that are actually taking my energy down as well. And that's such a crucial thing that people don't do. The whole cliche, you are the sum of the five people. It is true but your energy is the sum of the five people.
Travis Jones:
That's what people don't think about. It's like if you're around people who have low states, low energy and they are always talking about what they can achieve and the negativity around it, it's like all of a sudden that will start to creep into your mind where you really, if we want excellence in life, we don't have a place in life for doubt. And I think those three or those three or four things wrapped in together, that's what sort of keeps my energy at a higher level. I work in 90 minute increments so it's like I know that I can't focus for longer than 90 minutes at a time whenever I'm doing something. So instead I start working at 9:00 AM I work from 9:00 AM to 10:30 on a project and then from 10:30 to 10:45 I'll go for a walk, I'll go have a chat with someone.
Travis Jones:
I'll just cheat shift essentially what my focus is because if not my productivity will start to decrease. My decision fatigue will kick in, my creativity will drop down. So what I do is I reset. And there was a study in jail with parolees and the judges and I believe it was before lunch and before the afternoon break. The people who were going out for parole went down to 0% were actually getting parole between the half hour breaks before the judge was eating both times because they have pure decision fatigue. It's like imagine if you were in jail and you knew you had a 0% chance of getting your parole because you just happened to have your parole hearing just before lunch, it's like, "Hey, just put me back in there. I'm not doing it right now." It's crazy.
Travis Jones:
So I think people don't manage that decision fatigue. So it's making sure you're putting your biggest tasks earlier in the morning. It's like eat that frog first. Doing a 90 minute Meridians, go for a walk, get some energy back from the earth and have about five or six days Meridians on a daily basis. And I know what it takes for me to win the game and lose the game on a daily basis.
Travis Jones:
So again, what I look at is if you're just doing work and if you don't know what the score board is for your work, then all of a sudden if you don't know a score board, you're just playing the game and there is no score. If you've ever been to a game, say went to an NFL match or a 40 match or whatever it is, and there was no score board, it would be the most boring game in the world because who's winning and who's losing?
Travis Jones:
And I think all of a sudden the way they're playing will start to become mediocre because they don't care. Now for you, if you can start to gamify your day and gamify your week, now all of a sudden you will care about being productive because you know you need to do these three tasks on a daily basis. And if you just do these three fundamental tasks, you win the day.
Travis Jones:
All of a sudden you get your stuff together and you actually start winning the day because you're like, "I know the scoreboard. I know what it takes to win now." And you're not going to win every day. But I think if you look at the whole Seinfeld strategy, he sort of wrote a joke. Every single day was trying not to break the chain. And that's how he became essentially one of the world's greatest comedians. He just had this big calendar up on the board. He put an X, every day he wrote a joke or did these 30 minutes of writing jokes and his whole goal was to not break the chain. But his rule was if I do break the chain, I can only do it for one day and then I go straight back into it.
Travis Jones:
So if you do lose the day, just make sure you never lose two days in a row. And I think again, if you look at that, if you're winning, winning creates momentum. If you go into the footy field or you're looking at change rooms of someone who just played a sporting match, the change rooms of losing people, the change rooms over the winning people, winning people, and then don't even look like they just played the game.
Travis Jones:
They look like they can go and play another game again because it has such high energy and momentum because they won. They look at the losing team, it looks like they played like three games already and they're literally down and out and they have no energy left. So what you have to look at is how can you take this into your life. [bctt tweet="If you're not winning on a daily basis or not losing on a daily basis, well, you're losing because you have no fulfillment. - Travis Jones" username="kylethegray"]
Travis Jones:
And if you're losing, it's like what do you have to do to turn the lever to start winning. And if you're actually striking the scoreboard and you start winning, all of a sudden you have high energy and you look forward to that. It's because I know what it takes to win. I'm going to make sure I do it every day and I've done it for the last seven days in a row. I think those key points I was talking about, I think that's energy management. I believe that.
Kyle Gray:
That is incredible. So much detail and I feel the sharpness and the energy coming across right now. It's so much fun exploring with you. And now tell me about your teams and working with your teams. How do you make sure that everybody is on the same par as you are across the board?
Travis Jones:
It's interesting like I'm not a really good manager I believe and it's still something I really feel like I want to work on. That's just me. But I think there's different skill sets of managers and leadership. I think I'm a good leader. I'm willing to move. John Maxwell talks about the five levels of leadership and I liked the book because it's a very easy framework for you to go, "I'm this level of leader and I need to do this to get through it."
Travis Jones:
So it's like positional based leadership. It's like I'm your boss. Do what I say. There's people development and to get through that you actually have to have the ability for crucial conversations and give feedback. And then there's this production where you're doing it with them and you're pace setting for them and they call this trust and credibility and buying and then you sort of remove yourself above that and you create another leader below you and they have production without you.
Travis Jones:
And I think that's where I'm at and I think that that's where I believe I'm at and that's where I need to try and be for my teams. So if I can try and lead my teams and have actual connections with them where I know the first thing I do, and this is for all our employees across all the companies, it's like where are you? Where do you want to be in the next 12 months? If you could transport your life 12 months from today and right now it's like June 14 for me, and it's essentially 2019, if you were standing here, June 14, 2020, we looked back over the last year, what would have had to happen for your life to be a success professionally and personally? Let's write it all down and with that said, I want to know what I need to do to help them.
Travis Jones:
So it's like what can I do and make sure I can play a part in achieving this success for you and your life over the next year? And because all of a sudden I'm getting bind to their life, they stuck in buying to me. And I ask them, I was like, "What exactly do you need from me? What tasks, what skills, what accountability do you need for me and my teams and my businesses for us to get you the way you want to be?" And they let me know, I [inaudible 00:25:00] great, fantastic. And then we can talk about their standards, like what standards you need to live by. And I talk about these two other things as well. It's like there's a hero's version of yourself and there's a villain's version of yourself. And I normally get these people to write these two sort of pages down.
Travis Jones:
And to the hero version of yourself, when you wake up in the morning, what would they do when they wake up at 5:00 AM would they not press snooze? Would they go and work out, what would they eat? How would they interact with their partner? Would they read in the morning? Would they get through the 20 pages of education? Would they share and serve the world with some form of communication and growth? What would they do then? How would they greet people in the street? What would they eat then? How would their day go? And you're literally writing down what the hero's version of yourself is and then we look at, "Okay, what about the villain? What about the worst case version of you? What would they do? How many times did they press snooze? What do they eat? How quickly do they snap at their partner?
Travis Jones:
But we have these two versions of themselves and it's like to do what you want to do over the next year to make this a success, do you consciously need to choose to be the hero on a daily basis? And again, I think so many things we do is sort of unconscious or subconscious choices. So what I try and do is to make them consciously become aware that they must choose the hero on a daily basis. And now because this is step one you can't manage or lead someone if they don't believe in you, you don't inspire them in some way, whether it be your education, your knowledge or what you've done for them or whatever it is. We inspired them. We give them a very clear navigation so they know what it's like to win and what it's like to not win as well.
Travis Jones:
So now they have clarity and they know that I will bleed for them, if they bleed for me. I'll make sure that we take them as far as they want to go. They just have to put in the time as well. So we have this sort of mutual understanding. I think this comes before and it's built over time, but I think if you need to have these to grow a company, if you don't have this, you'll have poor culture and you have to set your cultural standards. For us and with RBT for example, you know, we have inspired, we have educating and power, we're result driven and we're community driven. So that is our teams and our company and also from our teams with clients. So we need to understand what it is to live the values and not live the values. So we're very clear on that as well.
Travis Jones:
And then from that I can lead them, I can make sure they're on the right path, roll on the right track, and then I can start managing them. So I think management comes after leadership. So with management we have a daily huddle. So me to my leadership team, our management team, we have a daily huddle at 10:21 every single day where we go through the key numbers of the business. It's like what's the sales, what's the cancellations, what's the suspensions, all that sort of stuff. And I can see a great business with me and my region managers who look after multiple gyms and they have a daily huddle before that with their managers and those managers have a daily huddle before that with their staff. So all of a sudden this sort of wave of huddles comes through the business where we can get these key numbers that actually start to transport and drive the business forward.
Travis Jones:
And what happens is every single number in a business tells a story. If a number is off, I can sort of understand what it is and I can go, "Hey, let's take this offline off this huddle and let's have a conversation about it." And really I find the underlying cause for this number being off, the suspension being high or whatever it is that's going on. And because we have these daily, these numbers before 10:21, what I can do is I have a certain time throughout my day where I can have these conversations and I can help move the needle forward for my managers on a day to day basis.
Travis Jones:
So that's like essentially the rhythm of the business. And that's what every one of the businesses. So I have a 10 minute huddle with one business. I have 10 minute huddles with another business and the app and software, we just had a 60 minute meeting once a week because it's not as full on at the moment. And I sort of have maybe like more some ad hoc meetings with the main developer there to make sure everything's going in the right direction throughout the week. And we have a daily huddle and a weekly meeting as well.
Travis Jones:
So we have one main weekly meeting with the leadership team. We have daily huddles on a daily basis and we have quarterly development meetings to make sure that we're actually utilizing projects and driving it forward. I'll have one on ones with the key staff on a weekly basis with our people development time and also what I'll do is in the main company, which is RBT, I will sit down with a staff member or two staff members every single way who is not my direct report, I have a coffee with them and just see where they're at and see how they are going and connect with them. And I think that's such a crucial thing as well.
Travis Jones:
And that's it, man. For me, I start with the education in the morning. I grow my brain and I contribute and I start writing and start serving and I have my huddles, then I focus on my projects that I need to move forward after that and then all the distraction, whether it be the emails or I'm getting back to phone calls. That all happens in the afternoon when I literally my decision fatigue has kicked in and I don't have any creative thought processes left.
Kyle Gray:
Man, I really loved when you said about having the huddles kind of trickle up so everybody is right up to date and so that you know you're getting the freshest, best information and those systems are incredible. I feel intuitively compelled to ask you this question. We'll see where it goes. I'd love to hear about an investment that you made that was a huge leap forward, but probably at first you were like, you kind of had that feeling in your stomach like, "I don't know if this is going to pay off, this is a really big thing." But then it turns around and you were like, "That was one of the best things I've ever done."
Travis Jones:
When we're talking about risk thresholds, I live very far on the risk side of things. I'm making a lot of people uncomfortable. Even when I started RBT, when I started the first gym, I didn't really have the deposit for the first gym. I was like, "I just know I need to help more people. I need to change more lives."
Travis Jones:
So what I did the first couple of months I had some pretty crazy conversations. I'm persuasive and I can influence people at times. So what I did is the guy who had the leasing, I had enough money, I only had enough money because I sold my car to pay the bond but I didn't have enough money for the security deposit as well. So I was like, "Hey, here's the bond for the first two months rent. I've got the security deposit but it's in between bank accounts in the moment. I'll give it to you over the next month, just have to free up some stuff. Can I take it?" And they said yes. I was like, "Fantastic."
Travis Jones:
To me, I actually found this one location within two or three weeks. It was super fast. So I was like, "I need to do something. I'm not going to hit my goal that I wanted to hit by the I was 30." I was 26 I was like, "You need to pull your head out of your butt and you need to start working on your life." So that was it. I was like, "I'm going for it." So I was like, "I know I can help more people. I know I can make more money, I know I can change more lives and I need to start this first gym."
Travis Jones:
Now I didn't have equipment or money for equipment either, so I sort of googled up the new equipment supplies and I found this guy and he actually is going out of business unfortunately, Simon. And I said to him, I was like, "Hey man, I don't have enough money to pay you up front for the equipment but I do have enough money to pay you monthly. And what I'll do is I'll sign a contract with you if I ever miss a payment, you just take the equipment and that's it. You leave me without it." And he agreed to it because he wanted the business. So I didn't get enough equipment for him to fill out the whole gym, just half the gym and the rest of the gym was like coming soon. But now I had a lease and now I had essentially half the equipment filled and I was walking the streets literally walking out to people, grabbing them and bringing them in the gym.
Travis Jones:
I lived in the gym at the time because I couldn't afford to have rent at my house and have the gym at the same time. So I moved in to a three by three meter room upstairs. The first three months rolled around and I didn't actually, I was paying like 12,000 a month rent. I go first three months rent free and then the fourth month I was like, "Crap, I don't have enough money to pay rent." And I was trying to think outside of the box, like what Groupons and deals were bigger back then I was like, "Okay, I'll do a Groupon, but I don't want to sort of discount my service right now. What I'm going to do is what's a like another service that stays in line with my service that I can promote on Groupon." And I was like, "I'm going to do infrared saunas." It's like a detox sauna.
Travis Jones:
So I called up to Groupon. And I was like, "I want to run this promotion. She said, "You don't have a website for this. I don't believe that you have it." I was like, "Give me a second." And when I started the business, it wasn't click funnels and lead pages and all that sort of stuff back then. I was literally creating a website and I was like, "Okay, I'll try to create this website." So I grabbed a couple of images off Google. I was writing this website, I got back to her the next day. It's like 13 days left now and I needed to actually make the money or I've lost the drain. Everyone would have been right and I would've been stupid for starting this business and that's what everyone told me at the start.
Travis Jones:
But I knew that I wanted to do this. I knew that I had a calling. She saw the website and she was like, "Cool, let's do it." She launched the deal, it was like eight sauna sessions for $19. it was crazy. It was like 16 for $35, is a pretty crazy deal, but for me to sort of just sit there now the whole caveat to this is I never actually owned a sauna, so I made this up. I did not own a sauna whatsoever.
Travis Jones:
Now over the next 12 days, they sold over 800 deals and I made $20,000 through these infrared sauna deals. Now they took their card, which was about $5,000 repay back then it was a little bit better for the business owner, so I took 75% .I took $15,000 and I had on the deal that you had to wait two weeks before you could actually use the coupon or use the deal.
Travis Jones:
So I got the money about one to two days before I had to pay my rent. It was crazy. So I paid 12,000 in rent from this deal that I made up. I had $2,000 I called this company Saunas and I said, "I need you to express deliver me a sauna as fast as you possibly can. I got 800 people wanting to use it." So they sent me a sauna and it cost about $2,200 and $1,000 in my pockets to last another day. Now that was my first seven months rent. So you just gotta back yourself. You have to believe in yourself. The next month I didn't have enough money, so I borrowed $12,000 off of May and I guaranteed him I'd pay him back 24,000 in 12 weeks or he could take the equipment. I didn't own it anyway.
Travis Jones:
And then it's six months in, Everything was growing. It's just a little bit slower than what I wanted, but I just kept backing myself and backing myself and had to believe that it's going to work. This is this unwavering belief. Six months in I was like, "I need help with social media marketing. I need to get better at what I'm doing." This person in the states actually was running this competition was fantastic at social media, fantastic at blogging and competition who could rep his mastermind the best and I was like, "Okay, I know this guy. He has a 30 day competition." People were holding up signs for the Eiffel Tower and Empire State Building. I was sitting in Melbourne. I was like, "How do I do this?" And it was the last day of the 30 days I was like, "I need this. I really need to learn how to market because this walking the streets thing is not really working for me as best as it should."
Travis Jones:
So[bctt tweet="I went down to the tattoo shop and I tattooed this website across the back of my shoulder - Travis Jones" username="kylethegray"], took a photo of the website tattooed on my body, centered in and the first thing you say is are you absolutely crazy? But the second thing is like you win a year of coaching and I've got to go to this mastermind in Vegas with Bill Phillips who created a buddy for life. And all these guys doing crazy amounts of money and it sort of sent me on a different altitude because where I'm around the sum of the five people and all of a sudden what I thought was amazing was not actually amazing. So I'm like, "My belief structure must change again and I need to increase my skill set around marketing." And both of those things happened and the rest is history.
Kyle Gray:
Wow, I'm so glad I asked that question. What an incredible story and yeah, I just thought, I love your total courage and backing yourself. That's absolutely inspiring, Travis. It's been so much fun talking to you today and hearing your story. Where can we go to learn more about you to follow you and to connect with you?
Travis Jones:
Probably Instagram is the biggest one I'm planning at the moment, which is a Travis Jones Entrepreneur, so just @TravisJonesEntrepreneur. Follow me if you have a have any questions on marketing or sales or anything like that, just DM me. I always answer people because that's what I do. It's just like trying to serve on a high level. So I might not get back to you within the first 24 hours, but I'll definitely get back to you and definitely help you if I can, however I can as well. So hit me up on Instagram and that's where I'm at right now.
Kyle Gray:
Travis, thank you so much for joining us on the Story Engine Podcast.
Travis Jones:
Thank you so much, man.
Kyle Gray:
Thanks for listening to the Story Engine Podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes and resources mentioned on this episode and every other episode at thestoryengine.co. If you're looking to learn more about how to use storytelling to grow your business, then check out my new book Selling With Story, how to use story telling to become an authority, boost sales, and win the hearts and minds of your audience. This book will equip you with actionable strategies and templates to help you share your unique value and build trust in presentations, sales, and conversations both online and offline. Learn more sellingwithstory.co. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.
Kyle Gray:
Thanks for listening to the Story Engine Podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes and resources mentioned on this episode and every other episode at thestoryengine.co. If you're looking to learn more about how to use storytelling to grow your business, then check out my new book, Selling With Story: How to Use Storytelling to Become an Authority, Boost Sales, and Win the Hearts and Minds of Your Audience. This book will equip you with actionable strategies and templates to help you share your unique value and build trust in presentations, sales, and conversations, both online and offline. Learn more at sellingwithstory.co. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.