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Episode 4: Plan Really Well and Just Go Get it Done with Joey Glenn
162 Plays8 years ago
Mentors don’t often walk up to you and offer their time and expertise. Guest Joey Glenn learned early on that when you are passionate about something and find someone who has been on the same path before you – make the ask! For Joey, that meant contacting the authors of a book that changed his life -- which turned into an internship that changed his life even more!
In this episode of The Uncommon Life Project podcast, Joey Glenn talks about entrepreneurship, life/work balance and mentorship. He shares how the listeners can find a mentor and be a mentor. Both roles have been instrumental in Joey’s life and as a result of both, he and his family have reaped rewards many times over.
Hear about how Joey shaped his plan in college, how plans got altered by that book, and how having a plan plus a little bit of flexibility can be just the right combination when opportunity comes knocking. It also pays to do some knocking at opportunity’s door yourself.
Joey is a Sports Chiropractor and Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. After obtaining his Bachelor's Degree in Health Sciences from the University of Iowa, Joey had an opportunity to work with Core Performance/Athlete's Performance™ in Los Angeles, California helping everyday people and professional athletes reach their highest athletic potential.
Joey continued his education at Palmer College of Chiropractic West and earned his Doctor of Chiropractic Degree and Strength and Conditioning Specialist certification. Joey worked for the Martinez Veterans Administration Hospital, treating our nation's heroes and completed his preceptorship treating professional athletes and weekend warriors alike at Water and Sport Physical Therapy in San Diego. After developing a passion for Olympic weightlifting, Joey obtained his USA Weightlifting Sport Performance Coach certification.
Joey is ecstatic to return to the Midwest and share his knowledge of health, movement and athletic development in his home state. Joey is married to his lovely wife, Hannah and is the father of three children under 3 and looking forward to adopting a fourth child from Africa by the end of 2018. What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- When it comes to entrepreneurship, if you’re not scared, you’re not doing it big enough
- Especially at the beginning of a venture, life/work balance is a huge challenge. Don’t let anyone tell you differently
- Finding great mentors does not happen every day – when you find them, don’t be afraid to ask for their help in learning
- Be willing to chase what matters
- Mentors may come and go, but learning and sharing knowledge is a life-long pursuit
- Transfer of wealth is not all about money – wealth is in the drive and knowledge and motivation our parents and others demonstrate for us
- There will be moments when you are awake at 2:00 am wondering “what have I done?” Those moments are not the last word
- Residual income and multiple income streams are the best kinds of portfolio diversity to have.
- How to find and keep good talent in a competitive job market
- There is always room to push the needle, do things a bit differently and differentiate yourself in the marketplace
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Transcript
Introduction to The Uncommon Life Project
00:00:02
Speaker
Everyone dreams about living an uncommon life, but how we define that dream is very different for each of us. And for most, it's a lifelong pursuit. Welcome to the Uncommon Life Project podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living that life or enjoying the journey to get there. We're going to also give you some tools, tricks, and tips for starting or accelerating your own efforts to live an uncommon life.
00:00:27
Speaker
a life worth celebrating and savoring. Please welcome your hosts, Brian Dewhurst and Philip Ramsey.
Meet Joey Glenn: Business Owner and Friend
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Uncommon Life Project. This is your host, Philip Ramsey. And I'm Brian Dewhurst. Thanks for showing up and thanks for listening to our podcast. Guys, we have a fun show for you today. We have
00:00:45
Speaker
one of my close friends and business owner Joey Glenn on the show today.
Balancing Business and Family Life
00:00:49
Speaker
I can't wait to just dive in on what he's done and created and just kind of walk through his challenges and opportunities he's had over the course of the last two and a half years since he's owned a business. One thing that I really want to touch on is just how he's
00:01:04
Speaker
pulled together all these different revenue streams from his main source of engineered performance. And so we'll walk through all that stuff. One thing that we can talk about quickly is he's an owner, sports chiropractor, and then performance coach at Engineered Performance. He's married to a wonderful woman. Her name is Hannah. They have three children as of right now, a three-year-old and then a
00:01:28
Speaker
twins, one-year-olds, and they're all girls. So there's a lot of hormones that are going on in the house. Yeah, a little off-sided. One of the twins is a boy, actually. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, I got my one. I got my one.
00:01:44
Speaker
Yes. We're going backwards. All right, so he has three children. The oldest one is three-year-old. It's a girl. The two others are twins. They're one-year-old. They have a boy and a girl, which is kind of uncommon in and of itself. But yeah, so I'd just like to just jump in if you don't. Yeah, let's get into it. Yeah, so Joey, let's start talking about just welcome to show first of all. Yeah, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
00:02:08
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I'm super excited that you're here and I think our guests are gonna get a lot out of it.
Challenges in Starting a Business
00:02:13
Speaker
Let's start talking about first off, when you first started going after or leaning forward to owning your own business, what were something that you, I guess some obstacles that you had to overcome?
00:02:24
Speaker
Oh man, that's quite a rabbit hole. We ran into all sorts of walls when we first started for sure. The first I'd say would be securing financing. I had a pretty grand idea from some of the internships and jobs that I'd had in the past and exactly what I wanted to do.
00:02:41
Speaker
It was big. And so I had an internship with one mentor of mine and he kept telling me, you know, if you're not scared, then you're not doing it big enough. And so I can't go on until I was pretty scared. And so we ran into quite a few different issues just selling that idea to different financial institutions.
00:03:00
Speaker
So I'd say that was definitely the biggest obstacle to start things because without that, obviously I would have had to start much smaller, which isn't a bad thing at all, but wasn't the idea that I had. So I'd say that was the first holdup. The second would be, like you mentioned, my growing family and the absolute need to
00:03:18
Speaker
make an income pretty quickly. So that was a holdup. Things that we kind of started quite a few different things all at once, had a lot on our plate. So juggling my life and my business, that balance was kind of tough when I wanted to be home for kids that were brand new and I want to be around for them. But at the same time, it'd be easy to spend 16 hours a day here and get things growing. So that was tough too. I'd say those are the two biggest holdups I ran into pretty quickly.
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah, and I think you touched on a good vein. I want to dive a little deeper in that. What has owning engineered performance allowed you to do in terms of like structuring your family time and having that work-life balance that we hear from so many entrepreneurs is just really difficult to maintain.
Joey's Passion for Fitness and Chiropractic
00:04:03
Speaker
Yeah it is very difficult but it's also that flexibility that has allowed me has been everything in my life. I talk a lot with my wife recently actually a couple weeks ago there was a pretty big business that was interested in possibly buying us out and doing something along those lines.
00:04:20
Speaker
We talked to them, and I told Hannah, you know, I really don't want to do this. I love what I'm doing. But if the offer is right, what would we think? And she right away said, no, it couldn't be. There's not a number in her mind because right now, I mean, even today, actually, one of the twins is sick, and she was able to take the whole day off, no questions asked, obviously, and just run home. Stuff like that happens all the time. I never miss little dance recitals and practices and stuff like that.
00:04:47
Speaker
and owning the businesses allowed me to do that, which, yeah, I wouldn't trade for anything right now. Totally. So let's go back, I think, for our listeners. Have you always had this passion to be owning something of this caliber in the fitness world? Tell us more about that. Sure. So it evolved, I mean, a lot throughout the year. So I guess when I was in high school, I suffered a pretty severe shoulder injury. I tore my labrum while wrestling, and I found
00:05:15
Speaker
physical therapy was helping a little bit. Uh, and I started shadowing different PTs and then eventually a chiropractor that helped quite a bit. And I just found that their lifestyle was what I wanted to live. These guys were taking like long lunch breaks and working out in the middle of the day. They were eating really well, uh, multiple times throughout the day. They had, I, some of them had great days where they were just people would come in and it'd be like they were hanging out with their good friends and I envied that. And so, um, not only the fact that they helped me out quite a bit over a serious injury in my life, but just their lifestyle was super
00:05:44
Speaker
So I kind of chased that pretty hard. That was when I was still in high school. I decided to go to the University of Iowa and as soon as I got there, I basically told them, I walked into my advisor office and just said, this is the plan, I want to be a chiropractor.
00:06:00
Speaker
Basically, he just gave me a template and said, this is what you want to study. This is how we're going to get you there. And so that kind of played out exactly like I thought it was going to go into until my senior year. I was always kind of, like I said, I was a wrestler. So I was always kind of in and working out and that type of thing. Also at the time, I was very, very undersized as a little guy in the high school wrestling room.
00:06:21
Speaker
And so my dad would always find new ways to be trained and new cutting-edge things like that. And he was always ahead of the game, which was really nice. But my senior year of college, he gave me this book called Core Performance, and it was awesome. It was a new way of training that I thought. I could tell that it was very, very different. So I was in a strength
The Role of Mentorship in Joey's Career
00:06:41
Speaker
and conditioning class at the University of Iowa at the time, and I took that book to my professor, and I was like,
00:06:45
Speaker
This is this is better than what you're teaching us, but pretty blind like this is this is not what you're teaching us and this is how we should be learning and she loved it and she ran with it and she offered me a pretty cool opportunity to stay and get my master's which I eventually turned down but she saw the solid potential too and I respected her a lot so her opinion meant a lot to me too.
00:07:05
Speaker
So as soon as I finished that, I actually called the people that wrote the book and I asked like, how can I pick your rank? What can I do to be around you guys? I looked up their facility and I told them, I'll do anything. I'm off floors, I'll stock Gatorade, I'll fold towels. And you know, she is funny because she goes, that's great, it sounds awesome.
00:07:24
Speaker
you can apply for an internship program and there's currently like 200 applicants. I was like great so I hung up the phone a little bit disappointed but about a month before I graduated she had called me and to my surprise gave me the internship which is huge and so when I went out there that really changed things for me because I started seeing you know I was really passionate about chiropractic and living this lifestyle but then I found another huge passion in training athletes.
00:07:47
Speaker
So yeah that was that changed everything for me again and then you know we had one big change when I was training an athlete at athlete's performance and they were injured and I really wasn't great at changing things up. I didn't understand anatomy physiology enough to really trust myself on that side of things so I applied
00:08:06
Speaker
and got accepted then to Palmer. I decided to then chase the chiropractic career and so I went and got my chiropractic degree and finished up at a few internships with a VA hospital and then finally wanted the water and sport physical therapy down in San Diego again tricking athletes. So it kind of just continuously evolved like every time I found a passion and I found something that would kind of add to that or I found a missing link I just kind of chased that
00:08:32
Speaker
where I'm basically doing what I love to do now. Dude, that's awesome. That's really uncommon, by the way, too. And one thing I want to just point out, and I don't know, maybe you can speak on this a little bit, but what I heard right away is that you found something that you started becoming passionate about, which was that book that made you think a little different than what you were being taught. And what really I respect to the unth degree is that you then reach,
00:08:58
Speaker
actually wrote or like reached out to the owner and the writer and author of the book and you basically ask her to mentor you.
Unique Approach of Engineered Performance
00:09:06
Speaker
Like to have that mentorship in your life as an entrepreneur is priceless, especially when you're going down an uncommon path. That is huge. So tell me about your relationship with that person now and how does she, is she continuing to speak truth into your life and mentoring you? Tell me more about that.
00:09:25
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more that this mentorship process is by far the most important thing that's happened in my career. Starting with her, she eventually left the company, but everybody I worked underneath during that internship has been instrumental in my life. In fact, yesterday, I just talked to one of the guys. Again, we did exactly this. We video chatted.
00:09:45
Speaker
just consulting about different ways to use a VO2 machine and how they want to use it at their facility out there. And it's just, we're constantly in contact and just kind of, we both share the same vision of just pushing the needle in the industry a little bit further. We're not, I don't know, like in many things,
00:10:01
Speaker
in Iowa, strength and conditioning is very far behind unfortunately and so it's kind of it's kind of fun to not play into that dogma at all we actually get to just I feel like we get to push the boundary continuously and so having people like that they get to call us and talk to us and you know play with that stuff especially when they're on the west coast and doing
00:10:22
Speaker
their brains quite a bit. And even past then, after I, you know, I tell people this all the time, that I feel like what I use 90% of my day is stuff I learned from mentors, just from shadowing and picking other people's brains. I think school gave me a pretty good foundation and taught me how to pass boards. I do think the majority of the stuff I use on a daily basis, I've learned from mentors. I have to shout out a couple of my mentors. One of them, Dr. Ed La Cara, when I was a,
00:10:50
Speaker
When I was probably my last trimester in school, I worked for him at the VA hospital. That's a funny story in and of itself. I heard about this guy and he was just doing things differently. I really liked what he was doing. He was working with athletes and vets. He was changing things. He wasn't just doing the same kind of pattern that we were learning in school. I did the smart thing and I sent my wife some massage therapists. I sent her to get a job with him.
00:11:13
Speaker
She was asking all my undercover questions and just kind of figuring it out. Eventually, I got the courage to actually call him and just say, hey, what can I do? I worked for him under him at the VA hospital for a while and learned an astronomical amount of information and ways to practically use it in daily life. Then right after that, I did a preceptorship at Water and Sport Physical Therapy in San Diego and working under Dr. Jen Rainer. She, again, changed everything on me.
00:11:43
Speaker
I would just follow her around in just amazement and just kind of, this is how I want to practice. So I just, like you kind of touched on, I think mentorships are everything, especially in my life. I couldn't credit those three people more anymore than how I got here, for sure.
00:11:58
Speaker
I'm like geeking out right now. Like I'm so pumped. Mentorship. Yeah. Okay. So I want to pull back a little bit. What
Joey's Entrepreneurial Journey
00:12:06
Speaker
makes engineered performance different? Like in the 30 seconds, give us your elevator speech of like, why are you different than all the other 95 workout facilities or chiropractors?
00:12:17
Speaker
So we kind of take an all-encompassing approach. I remember very specifically one time I was at this lecture, and they put on the board this kind of a timeline of an athlete's injury. So if somebody gets injured on the field, who's taking care of them? It's an athlete, an athletic trainer. And then through possible surgery, then possible physical therapy, and then back to a strength coach and returning to play. I was looking at that timeline. I was thinking, where am I missing? Because at the time, I was working as a trainer. I was becoming a chiropractor. I had been a strength coach. And I was just thinking, I want to cover this entire continuum.
00:12:47
Speaker
And so when I came back to Iowa, that's exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to build a facility that was all encompassing for the athlete, whether they're suffering an injury or just trying to improve performance. I really think we've nailed that. Engineer performance, we spell a little bit goofy with the number four.
00:13:03
Speaker
I regret it every day and tell you the truth. I'm going to spell it to everyone, but it does explain the four pillars that we're trying to hit on, and that's sports medicine, sports science, movement, and nutrition. We think all four of those truly encompass a person's, not only just their health and wellness, but also sports performance if you're still looking at that avenue too. I'd say that is
00:13:25
Speaker
Just being all-encompassing is pretty much the biggest thing that makes us different. For sure, for sure. So I want to touch on one thing. You're talking about mentors, but we talked about this a little bit before we jumped on and we started recording, but your dad gave you a book and your dad was in a position in your life where that book meant something and you were looking at it like, hey, I need to read this.
00:13:46
Speaker
A lot of the people and this is my own personal story you know we work for somebody for several years and then we you know hey i gotta cross over and own our own business or do our own thing you can i didn't have that trajectory you want to be an entrepreneur to get talk about your parents as mentors as champions and friends.
00:14:03
Speaker
Yeah, my parents are so, so important to me, not only my career choice, but everything that I've done, I credit to them. They were working jobs that they hated when I was in high school, and we were getting by, and my mom, she was working hard, really hard, and was very underappreciated, and I saw that constantly.
00:14:23
Speaker
She really grew a business to an exceptional level and was not getting accredited for it. So that was frustrating to me. I was a kid, I didn't know how to change anything. My dad, again, he was working at a large bank and just kind of struggling. I remember every day watching him try to get out of bed.
00:14:39
Speaker
he hated it. And I remember thinking like, man, that sucks. I was really appreciative of what he was doing for me. And you know, at the same time, he'd also in the morning, he'd deliver newspapers when he needed to use cleaning, he was mopping the childcare center at the time and that and the evenings to that man worked really, really hard. And I definitely appreciated that. And
00:14:57
Speaker
gathered that out of it, but I also knew right from the beginning, I'm not doing that. There's got to be another way to make money without killing yourself and feeling miserable in the mornings. Later on, they've discovered that. My mom knew that she was building a business and she could have done it on her own. She got lucky enough that a person that wanted to invest found her and said,
00:15:18
Speaker
I see talent and I want to make this happen." She went off and did her own thing. I remember watching my parents write up the business plan in their bedroom and I was so giddy. I was excited because I knew they were going to be successful. Whether it was actually financially successful or not, I knew they were actually taking that leap and that was important to me. That really gave me the courage later on in my life when I was trying to make different leaps too.
00:15:40
Speaker
No, but now they are entrepreneurs and they own that business and it's massively successful, which has been great for me too because in chiropractic school, most of us go into business for ourselves afterwards, but our business education is awful. But to tell you the truth, they did like two different classes and they were terrible. So I got very lucky in the sense that I came out and I had some really good mentors again. I could go to them with questions again. They had started business a few years ago, so the landscape has changed quite a bit, but it was really nice to come to them with very
00:16:10
Speaker
basic questions that I think a lot of my peers really didn't have answers to at the beginning. For sure. Yeah, you know, we talk about just the transfer of wealth. I mean, obviously, that's what we do, right? Brian and I get to talk to people every day about their wealth. And one thing that we get to talk to them about is about transferring wealth. And one thing that we talk about is wealth is not your money.
00:16:30
Speaker
You can transfer what your key experiences are to your children. They won't need your money, right? And so what your parents did there is they transferred that understanding of I don't want to hate my life and hate my job, but I want to instill in my son something that so he'll never have to worry about this again and maybe he'll even just start his company right out of the gate like you've done. That is true transfer of wealth.
00:16:57
Speaker
I couldn't agree more. Yeah, no, I always do. I couldn't agree more. I don't know if they did it on purpose. They just, they truly saw a need and they said, I'm going to make this leap. And I watched the whole time because I was, you know, I was later on in high school at this point and watching. I was thinking this is the way to do it. Even before they started, I mean, the day they weren't working anymore, they were happier. So it was different. I loved that. We need to get them on the show. Come on now. They're great. Yeah. I'm sure. I'm sure they come.
00:17:25
Speaker
Nice. Okay, so let's talk about you decide to open up engineered performance, right? You decide the land, you decide the business bottle, you get all going. Hannah's finally probably chewing her fingernails because she's scared out of her mind. Yeah, I was too.
00:17:40
Speaker
Yeah, both of you probably were. So at what point did you, obviously you talked about going to the banks and trying to get the proposals. How was that? How was that whole process? Was it a good one? Was it a bad one? Okay, great. Talk about that.
00:17:57
Speaker
It was an awful experience. But again, with my parents, I was relatively prepared because they had gone through something kind of similar before this investor found them.
Entrepreneurial Challenges and Sacrifices
00:18:06
Speaker
So when I first came back, I had this grand plan. I had it on paper and I was like, we're going to be great. This is going to be successful year one. And I was a little bit naive, right? So I came out and I was going to the banks and initially getting turned down and
00:18:19
Speaker
they knew who my parents were at this point knew their business too and so i remember taking meeting after meeting and soon as i come in i'd say my parents and their business has nothing to do with this please don't even bring it up and you know we waste 30 minutes and they say yeah it worked if you bring in your parents
00:18:35
Speaker
No. Yeah, exactly. So then that happened over and over again. But every time I leave a little bit disheartened, but my parents would keep continue to tell me, you know, this is going to happen. They're going to deny, deny, deny, you're going to find somebody will take it or work out. And so that never happened. The Bex continuously said no. And I walked out just thinking fools like
00:18:53
Speaker
Like he'll be back. And so eventually what had happened was we found an investor. My parents actually had a friend who heard about what we were trying to do and that we're about to move back to Iowa and he reached out. We had a meeting. I pitched the idea and this guy is just, he's just like my mom. I always tell people, if you have a crazy, crazy idea, you go to my mom and she'll just, she'll support you. Not, not just financially, but she'll, she will continue. She'll like convince you to do it. And so this guy was the same. I pitched him the idea. He's like, yeah, let's go start tomorrow. And so, um,
00:19:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's what we did. He actually owns the building here, it's the least over the situation. He bankrolled the whole thing at the beginning. He's been fantastic. That's where it started.
00:19:35
Speaker
Okay. And looking at that, I know for me personally, when I started my own business, I had that moment about 2am where you're about ready to throw up and like, what have I done? Yes. For sure. So in that I've now hit the point, you know, there's things to the amazing partnership I have with Philip, but it's not a question of if you're going to make it, but how big you're going to make it. Have you had that moment?
00:19:59
Speaker
Yeah, and that happened quite a few times, actually. I remember multiple times throughout that first year thinking, why isn't this where I thought it was going to be already? And obviously, the landscape in California is quite a bit different than Iowa, and I had gotten used to that. So when I came back, I was a little bit confused, and I remember multiple times going over to my parents' business and just telling them I messed up, like, what are we going to do?
00:20:23
Speaker
My mom wasn't playing around, she'd always just be like, stop, go back, go back to work, get it done. I mean, I needed that. Your mom is amazing. She's awesome. So she would kick me back out of her office and send me back here to get it done. And those moments of panic, I think, are so instrumental in being an entrepreneur. And when you're starting out,
00:20:43
Speaker
You kind of need it. You need that gut check a little bit because it keeps you on your toes. It keeps you moving forward and I think it's important. You know, as a side note, there was a physical therapist in the area in Des Moines and he was an old family friend of mine and he decided to kind of make this leave. He quit his job and started up a physical therapy clinic and he was a little bit unsure and invested a lot of money into it. And after, I remember he came into my office, they had been open for one week and he was sitting across
00:21:09
Speaker
so frustrated with how it wasn't off the ground and where it's at. I was like, dude, it's been a week. You got to plan well and just stick to it. He's like, I'm up all night. I can't sleep. I'm like, yeah, welcome to being an entrepreneur. This stuff sucks a lot of the time. It hurts, but it's totally worth it. I think everybody goes through it. Every entrepreneur, business owner goes through some sacrifices, right? What are some sacrifices that you've had to go through?
00:21:38
Speaker
I said at the beginning, it was kind of what I touched on at the beginning of this podcast, but at the beginning it was not being home as much as I'd like to have been home. I mean, when I first started, it was a skinny operation. It was everything you see, but it was just me running it. It was me and my wife Hannah.
00:21:54
Speaker
And so she kind of always took care of the books and all the stuff that goes right over my head. But I was coaching the morning class at 5.30 in the morning, then I'd see, I'd coach a few more classes, I'd see patients whenever they would come in, and then I'd see, I'd coach the classes in the evening. So I was here all day long. And when I'd come home, I mean, I was exhausted and Hannah was pregnant at the time, then she had a baby soon after.
00:22:16
Speaker
It was, man, that was crazy. That sacrifice was tough because I was just tired all the time and I didn't feel like I was giving everything I wanted to give to my family either. But I knew that I had a long-term vision of it, right? So I knew that if I got it out right now and did as much as I could, eventually I'd be able to spend more time with them and do my thing. Not that I wasn't present, but I wasn't as present as I wanted to be. I'd say that was the biggest one, that was the biggest punch of the gun. It really changed things for me.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah,
Daily Routine and Business Strategies
00:22:41
Speaker
great answer. When you look at, you know, I recently went through a pretty big injury in my back and when you're kind of in a unique position, helping people transition out of injury, but also being a business owner, talk to us about like what your daily routine is like just for yourself to stay healthy, you know, mind and body and what that looks like.
00:23:01
Speaker
Sure. And you know what? That's an interesting topic too, because I thought when I was in California, I was going to start a gym. I was going to live there. I was going to be in the best shape of my life. And that all changed on me pretty quick. I realized how much I'm actually working, even though the gym is 10 steps away from my office.
00:23:17
Speaker
rarely got out there at first. Also, I mean, that's important. I need to be doing that stuff because I have to live the lifestyle as well. I can't preach it and not have people not be following it myself, right? So as soon as I could, as soon as that slowed down a little bit, I got back out there. So my routine is I try to also be a really good role model of my kids. So we get up and we eat breakfast every morning. I get up early and
00:23:41
Speaker
We have breakfast, I get it into work. I usually see my patients in the morning three days a week. I see my patients in the morning, then I'll work out in the afternoon. Just like at the beginning when I was talking about those people that I liked that were kind of taking an hour or two hours in the middle of the day to work out and eat, I've completely emulated that. So I'll take that time, I'll work out, I'll eat. Often we have a sauna in here too and I love sitting in that guy before I take a shower and then my patients again in the afternoon or a class.
00:24:07
Speaker
It's just kind of, I mean, it's all the stuff we preach every day. I think you should be working out. I think you should be eating right, and we just kind of follow those exact principles. It's pretty straightforward. We keep it simple, though. Like I said, life is pretty crazy, even if you're working inside a gym. I completely understand when people come to me and say, I can't find time to get to the gym. I'm like, yeah, me either, and it's five minutes, five steps away. I get it. I get it. How many employees do you have talking just about the sustainability of where you're at?
00:24:34
Speaker
Yeah, let's see. So we got, let's see, we got a head strength and conditioning coach, a physical therapist, and then two part-time strength and conditioning coaches as well. We had some people with the cafe, but that has actually changed right now. It's undergoing a little bit of a transformation. Big Asai, a food truck that's pretty popular in Des Moines, they're taking over the cafe. So they're going to be working out of that here just in a week or so.
00:24:57
Speaker
So we're pretty excited about that, but so it's those two, three, four, then Hannah says five of us right now. That's six, I'm sorry. Your wife works with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get laughed at all the time about that, but it's been fantastic. Yeah, so she, like I said, she runs all the books, all the accounting and the stuff that I don't understand. And so she's a lot of the behind the scenes stuff, but super integral to what we're doing.
00:25:21
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Let's switch conversations and start talking about a little bit of cashflow about engineered performance. Sure. Ways that you've plugged in different ways to get that cashflow all hubbing around engineered performance. Because we talk a lot to our clients about having residual income and having multiple sources of residual income because it actually reduces your risk. And so it isn't just
00:25:44
Speaker
I guess diversifying your portfolio of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, like, yeah, that's not really diversified if you really think about it. But so it sounds like you've plugged in with the cafe and other sources. So can you walk us through some of the ways that you have made engineered performance residual?
00:26:02
Speaker
Sure. So my first goal with that was to provide the stability in the business. I wanted to build the membership base because most of our members are the price changes with a leg of commitment. So most of our members are six month or 12 month commitment. So I know I can count on that every month, which is nice. So that's really the stability in the business. So when I first started, I focused in time.
00:26:25
Speaker
adult fitness and sports performance members. Not to stop you but that is a form of residual income that we also see. So one right there. Exactly so as soon as I got that stability right I can count on that because sports medicine chiropractic and physical therapy like
00:26:42
Speaker
My goal, and another way why we're a lot different, is I'm trying to get you out of my office as fast as possible. I think the faster I can get you healed and get you back to the things you're doing, the more people you're gonna tell. It's not necessarily trying to see you every week for the rest of your life. So that's something we're doing differently, and because I'm not doing that, I don't see that number changes every week. So I can't always count on that number staying the same from month to month. So I really try to build the business, the stability about the business with membership base. After that, then I definitely look at sports medicine. So we see as many patients
00:27:11
Speaker
We spend about 30 minutes per patient, an hour with a new patient, and so our time is kind of limited there. As soon as we're full me and the physical therapist, which we're really hitting a point right now, we're looking
Partnerships and Business Growth
00:27:23
Speaker
at hiring another clinician to come on and we'll never sacrifice that value by spending
00:27:31
Speaker
And then we also, like you said, we got a few other funnels. So we started with the cafes. We had a recovery cafe. My time out at Exos and athletes performance, I saw, you know, we were working with professional athletes and celebrities. So after every workout, they would get a protein shake and a Gatorade. And at first I thought that was just kind of like a swanky thing. Like this isn't as nice to do, right? But these guys were always recovered. They're coming back in the next day, ready to go again.
00:27:55
Speaker
and I found there's something to that and so I think I tell people all the time if I can control one meal of yours a day I'm doing you big service and I always want to make that meal your post-workout meal so we we added the cafe and we had post-workout smoothies and nutrition and that type of thing we thought that was super important and we loved it that was fun but that quickly became a full-time job for us and and to grow it any more than it already is we needed more people to
00:28:20
Speaker
work over there and I just didn't have the time to do that so what we decided to do like I touched on is as we lease it out now to a food company that has like a cult like following they're awesome they're really healthy food and we'll have that in all day long they're also able to be open way more time than we were so we'll serve way more of our members way more of the community so that was nice and that's like I said
00:28:41
Speaker
they're just paying at least at this point. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I'd say the last one is we also have a massage therapist who's an independent contractor. Um, so again, she kind of just leases a room essentially. And then we, we sent her patients when we think the new massage and she runs her own, basically a massage business out of our facility, which just goes hand in hand really well. And so that'd be the, that'd be the last way. I guess there are a couple other ones that are small, but it's been, it's been good. We do different things like different consulting. Um, we help,
00:29:11
Speaker
their coaches learn how to deal with acute little injuries, that type of thing. We do like different workshops and seminars. And then we have a sports nutritionist as well, who is kind of another independent contractor, essentially. Sure. And you kind of mentioned Joey, I think previously, you're in a lease to own on the building side.
00:29:30
Speaker
Correct. Yep. Yep. So that's kind of the retirement plan, if you will. So yeah, I'm sure the lead is at least to own and I would love to own the building at some point. I don't know. That's Hannah's that's Hannah's realm. But at some point we'd like to own the building. That would be sure we retire on for sure.
00:29:45
Speaker
Yeah, real estate's a key part of what we talk to our clients about. So I think that's just another stream as well. I want to pivot just a touch, but stay in the cashflow realm. We talk to our clients a lot about health insurance and we're getting people calling us really like in a panic. Hey, I'm supposed to, my rates just when I was supposed to be paying 12, 14, 15. Great point.
00:30:04
Speaker
We just heard $1,900 a month for health insurance. When you look at true health, you know, health, mind, and body, and the services you're providing, and then you're encountering people that are paying cash versus insurance, just kind of walk us through what you see as like a business owner and as a health practitioner in that space. And yeah, just
Future Plans for Engineered Performance
00:30:25
Speaker
shed light on that.
00:30:25
Speaker
Sure. So it's interesting. When I first started, I wanted, I was a cash only practice. So we weren't taking insurance at all. And the reason I did that was a mentor that I was working with previously and they were, they were great. And she kind of, she showed me that people that are more willing to pay out of pocket right now are typically really high level clients. They want to get better immediately. And that was nice. And then I don't have to fight the insurance companies. Insurance companies are notoriously different.
00:30:58
Speaker
realm is diminishing every year so that's difficult. So I started all cash based and it was you know people just pay a certain fee to see me the first time and then a lower fee every time I'd have to see them afterwards and it was awesome but it just wasn't enough people to sustain what I was trying to do and people want to use their insurance and I totally understand that you're paying your premium you want to use it I get
00:31:22
Speaker
I'd say a year ago or so about a year and a half probably no a year ago we changed to start accepting insurance and that's been
00:31:37
Speaker
that's kind of Hannah's other full-time job is chasing those things down. So it's been tough. I think the realm that I'm in, the industry I'm in, is really shifting towards a cash-based practice. A lot of my mentors are now moving to that, and you just have to build a name, essentially, so people will follow you and do things like that. But I think it's a good model, because you're able to do exactly what you need to do, what the patient wants, as opposed to what insurance
00:32:06
Speaker
Sure. So yeah, that's been difficult. You know, that, that same person that Brian mentioned of $1,900 a month, we talked to him and I mean, he was just, he was just going to do it, right? I mean, what else could I have to do? That's not really my job. I don't have time to go research. Right. If you think about that, that's $24,000 per year for him and his family. And that's, if he's, if he never goes, if he's healthy and never goes to the doctor, right?
00:32:33
Speaker
These are these companies are so easy to take your money But when you want to get money out and they want to actually pay you the benefit It seems like it's like they've got it lock and key locked up and so working with that individual It's been such a freeing thing for him just to have options. What are my options? And obviously we deal with every day and so man I really want to commend you for for even entering into that but then maybe later even pulling that back out once you have a name and
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree. People are confused by insurance all the time. I think they intentionally make it as confusing as possible. And it's true. And I remember a few times we got a lot of denials one month for some reason.
00:33:13
Speaker
and like we weren't getting paid from a certain insurer and I reached out to them and they said, oh yeah, it was a paperwork error. I'm going to need you to submit these papers. So I looked at it and it was like four or five sheets of paperwork for every patient. So I mean that took hours upon hours. I imagine a busier person at that time wouldn't have been able to do it and they would have just lost quite a bit of money. And so I'm frustrated by it, but at the same time it's allowed us to help a lot more people and yeah, it is important.
00:33:38
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, if you're a business owner and you're kind of that same, if you're listening and you're in that same vein, you get, you've got to reach out to us because there's options for you and you need to know that. So for sure. Okay. So where, what's next? What's next for Joey engineer performance? What's, what's going next?
00:33:53
Speaker
Uh, so we're really diving heavily over the last few months into sports performance. We've gotten, it's fun because early adopters into anything are usually pretty awesome people to work with. And, uh, we got some early adopters, some athletes that jumped into the program, just said, let's go. They saw, they saw the benefit and they're ready to, they're ready to roll. And those guys are typically really good already. And so we make them, you know, that 1% better. And now they're making big scholarship deals and they're, and they're possibly going professional.
00:34:21
Speaker
we love working with that population. So we've really chased that down. So right now our alpha athlete class, our sports performance class, I think it
00:34:31
Speaker
and it's been massively successful. But now we're looking at even individualizing into different sports. So over the summer, we did an elite basketball group and that was with a high level D1 athletes and then a professional athlete or a couple of professional basketball players. And you get to treat those guys a little bit differently when they're all in one sport. We talk a lot here about just training for general athleticism, but when you're able to really focus on one sport, even just treating them a little bit differently is super cool. And so we're kind of diving into that. We're talking about having a volleyball specific program
00:35:01
Speaker
with Ankeny Volleyball being so successful and everybody loving it around here. Things like that seems to be next. So we're loving that, but then the next, I think after that kind of does its thing, we would love to expand facilities. We looked at trying to expand this building because we're kind of running out of space, but the lot we're on just isn't big enough.
00:35:23
Speaker
is very particular about having enough parking. So we can't expend this specific building, but we're talking to different groups of people that are doing basketball facilities or soccer facilities and putting up satellite sports medicine clinics in there. And we can even run speed agility camps or increase your vertical camps and stuff like that. So the possibilities are endless right now. I'm
Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
00:35:46
Speaker
super excited in time because Ankeny loves their sports. And so it's been fun.
00:35:50
Speaker
They absolutely do. They absolutely do. Yeah. We meet with a lot of business owners. I want to touch on that vein you just kind of mentioned is a lot of our business owners are experiencing. It's hard to find good talent. They're excited about the economy. Could you just give us like a general where you view the economy at and are you excited about, you know, when you look out two to three years?
00:36:09
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely am excited about it. And it's interesting, like, in my industry, it's a little bit tough, because when you when you're really excelling at this stuff, you usually go to the coast. And so a lot of really great strength conditioning coaches that are coming out of Iowa are leaving. A lot of really great clinicians that are coming out of Iowa are leaving. And so it's tough, because we'll get some really cool applicants. And as soon as we decide this is my guy, he's gone. And in
00:36:34
Speaker
And you know, he'll get an offer from somewhere on the coast and where they're excelling. So that's been really tough. At the same time, it's exciting because this industry is really blowing up. And so I'm seeing more and more guys coming out of the University of Iowa and out of Des Moines University. All these schools are doing a great job. And so there's a ton of talent. Eventually, they're going to realize that Iowa is the place to be, right? And on top of that, it just comes to the name. We've gotten a lot of looks from some really successful people on the coast.
00:37:03
Speaker
we're actually willing to come to Iowa to work with us. So they just see what we're doing, see what we're doing things a little bit differently. And I think that's, that's appealing to them. Like I said, strength conditioning and sports performance in Iowa being 10 years behind, that's not appealing to somebody that knows what they're doing. They don't, they don't want to just do bodybuilding splits and kickboxing and that type of stuff for somebody that's
00:37:20
Speaker
trying to play basketball or volleyball or any other sports. So pushing the needle, like I said, really doing things a little bit differently, starting to attract some attention. So I'm
Achievements and Community Impact
00:37:30
Speaker
very excited about where the economy's at and all these new people coming out with fantastic resumes that are looking for jobs.
00:37:36
Speaker
Sure. You know what? Something I was just thinking for you just because you're so knowledgeable and you have such a different approach in an uncommon way is royalties. We talk about royalties as one of the seven sources of residual income. We're writing a book almost and getting royalties off of that. It seems like you're really close to that. Obviously, we don't talk about that with every one of our clients. In fact, we don't talk a lot about some of the residual incomes at first for most of our clients, but it's fun just hearing you and the knowledge that you have. I definitely think you would
00:38:03
Speaker
you do well in the royalties. Yeah, I appreciate hearing that. And that's definitely something like we, something I'd love to do in the future and something I've explored. We actually, I wrote like this little ebook basically on fat loss, like how to just lose fat. I did that and put it on our website and you know, it's free. As long as I gather your email information, I'll hit you with a bunch of stuff later.
00:38:23
Speaker
Yeah, I would love to do that in the future. And then on top of that, I would really love to speak on this stuff. I really like teaching this. And so I reached out to a previous mentor of mine who speaks around the country, actually around the world.
00:38:36
Speaker
off-tissue mobilization things. It's basically some manual therapies, and it looks like me and our physical therapist will be teaching that stuff over the next year or so, too. So, again, kind of just a passion. I like to travel a lot, and so I think they'll be able to afford another pass of income, but then also the ability to kind of get out outside of this building every now and then and see some other stuff.
00:38:59
Speaker
That's right, man. That's right. So what advice, being a business owner in the throws of it, but obviously now successful, what advice would you have for our listeners and other people who are maybe on the front end of this journey, of this uncommon journey? What advice would you have for them?
00:39:17
Speaker
I'd say number one, and this is interesting, but I'd say plan really, really well. My wife, she was a business major at the University of Iowa and she put together a business plan over the last like six months that I was in school and she knew what we wanted to do and she really took the time. She read a bunch of books, she took some classes and put together this beautiful business plan.
00:39:39
Speaker
When i was so i knew exactly where we were going we really had it on a perfect blueprint and it made sense and so we were going to those initial banks and investors and you know one of the we continuously got denied but one of the comments we always got was this is a beautiful business plan nobody does this anymore and i liked hearing that because at the same time too we were very young i still we're still young and so
00:40:00
Speaker
When we first walked into the meetings, I felt like we were losing respect right away a lot of the time. Having that to handle right away was, I think it initially garnered us a little more respect, which was really important to me. Obviously, it never worked out, but having that business plan was huge. I'd say plan really well and be prepared for what's going to happen. What I mean by that is be prepared like we
00:40:22
Speaker
talked about to not sleep at night quite a few times and be a little bit scared. Sacrifice. Sacrifice, exactly. Know that going in and keep your foot on the gas pedal. I had another, I wouldn't call it a mentor of mine, but an idol of mine. A really good friend of mine went and met with him and he owns a very successful
00:40:41
Speaker
gym and sports performance facility on the East Coast. And he met with him and said, you know, I have this wife, I'm thinking about having a baby over the next year, but I really want to pivot and open up this facility. And the mentor, I grew in 99% of what he said, but this time he said, don't do it. He's like, you're not prepared because you have to sacrifice all these things. And he somehow picked up
00:41:02
Speaker
in their conversation that he wasn't prepared to sacrifice like a little bit of time and maybe putting off having the kid another year or something like that. And I thought that was interesting advice to me because although it takes a special person, I think the person that's willing to make that leap is a special person. And so I didn't say, you know, know what you're getting into and then keep your foot on the gas pedal for sure. Absolutely. That's awesome.
00:41:22
Speaker
I want to tuck in one more question here, because we've kind of bounced around it, but I want to zero in on it. You kind of mentioned high school athletes getting a full ride scholarship. You obviously indicate you had a pretty strong vision and trajectory headed into college. I imagine you didn't graduate with much student loan debt. We haven't really talked about it. And you came out with a really nice business plan. Talk to us about what you're seeing with these high school students and a plan for college and all the student loan debt.
00:41:52
Speaker
What would be your advice to, you know, the students that you're getting applications from to stay out of debt? Yeah, so I'd say our high school athletes start training. It's interesting that we trained a lot or we have in the past trained a lot of inner-city kids. We did a promotion once that, you know, with our adult fitness, if you buy one, we give one. And so every time an adult fitness member signed up, we gave an inner-city kid and athlete a membership.
00:42:15
Speaker
And that was really fun. It was an interesting dynamic because some of those guys are fighting literally for their college education if they don't get that scholarship and not going to college. And that was interesting and you never see determination until you work with some of those kids. So that was fun and I think it's cool because a lot of these kids are in that specific scenario and they do have
00:42:35
Speaker
the ability to go to college otherwise, but they really fight for it. And seeing their parents backing has been important, and I love it. And I love seeing that kid get that call and getting the scholarship and knowing that he's going to be able to address his academic needs and what he wants to do in the future while playing, and I swear he loves it.
00:42:58
Speaker
I went to Iowa and my parents helped me tremendously when I was going through there. I never had to work a full-time job when I was at Iowa, which I'm very grateful for and I can really concentrate on my studies. But when I went to Palmer,
00:43:12
Speaker
it accumulated fast. I got a ton of debt from from Palmer Chiropractic College. The cool thing about it and one of the big reasons I went there though was they have a zero default rate from their from their students in the past so everybody's making enough money to pay to pay their student loans and that was important to me and I looked at that when I when I was picking a school that was one of the few that were in that certain scenario so I decided to go there figuring that they would prepare me enough to help stay out of massive or to at least pay my debt.
00:43:40
Speaker
And we are doing that, which I'm grateful for. Yeah. Awesome. I wanted to make this quick point when you were talking about the students. I am, I, not, this isn't me, but I am a happy member of Engineered Performance about two weeks in and I will just have a shameless plug. I'm a pretty sore guy. I work out and I just absolutely dropped it sore, but I haven't been with Engineered Performance.
00:44:05
Speaker
Really I think a plus on that and then I wanted to touch on the students in the back room your performance What do you call it a performance lab? It's amazing you guys got to go online and see this but it's this really nice area they have flags of college Universities all around this nice facility and they have signatures on these flags and and that's for every student that comes through your program that ends up getting a scholarship or a
00:44:32
Speaker
Or what does it talk you know about it more than I do? No, that's exactly right as soon as they get a scholarship to play at the next level Then we get a flag we have them sign it. So I mean we've got yeah It's lining the place right now and we have multiple signatures on multiple flags and it's it's been fun We just like you know, we I really like giving the kids the credit when they when they do this They're really excited. So we take a picture of it. We put it on social media. They share it around They're pumped to show their friends what they've accomplished because I see these kids wearing
00:44:57
Speaker
It's just another way to commemorate what they've done and really congratulate them. So we
Podcast Conclusion and Follow-up
00:45:01
Speaker
love that idea. It's worked out really well. Yeah, that's a really cool idea. Okay. So how do our listeners know more about you, Joey, about engineer performance? Talk to us about that. Sure. Yeah. So our website is pretty all encompassing. I tell most people that they live anywhere in the area, uh, you know, engineerperformance.com. And like I said, we spell that with the four. So it's P E R the number four M A N C E.com. And, um, that's pretty all encompassing. We got a lot of information on there.
00:45:26
Speaker
videos describing kind of who we are, where we're from, and what we're doing on every page describes the different programs that we offer and all of that. But we also have a podcast as well, so the Engineered Performance Podcast you can find on iTunes, and in that one we just talk about sports, you know, sports medicine, sports science, movement
00:45:43
Speaker
nutrition are four pillars and we kind of hit all that just talking about what's going on in the neck and the sports scene as well so that's the best place but otherwise if you're anywhere in the area stop in anytime we we've always got somebody that's available to give you a tour and talk to you we always talk to people we say you know come in tell us about your goals we'll make sure that this is the perfect place for you first
00:46:01
Speaker
before anything else happens. So yeah, I appreciate all the kind words though. Yeah, absolutely. I love that you're so uncommon. I love being a part of your journey. Thanks, man. Thanks for kind of opening up a little bit for us. You know, I, I think maybe the biggest thing that I learned is just having that encourager, that mentor to work through things. And like, I mean, we make it in Jess, but having parents that you have is such a blessing and to have your mom say, Nope, Joey, go back.
00:46:28
Speaker
You know, yeah, no, she's been everything for me, seeing them do it themselves. And then, yeah, the constant sometimes encouragement, sometimes just go get it done. Somehow she always knows exactly when that's supposed to be. So yes, I'm fantastic. I'd say it's big. Well, thank you so much, Joy, for being on the podcast today. Just tons of valuable information. And I just always appreciate just your candor and just laying it out there. So thank you so much.
00:46:56
Speaker
Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. It's fun. Yeah. So if you guys enjoyed this podcast, just give us a great rating so we can get to more and more people and help them have an uncommon life. Because as you heard from Joey, it's worth it. And man, there are people to walk through some of the hardest things that you're going to be keeping you up at night, man. And that mentor will be the one to do that. So guys, thanks for listening. Join us in two weeks and we'll have another one out. So thanks again. Thank you very much. Bye.
00:47:25
Speaker
That's all for this episode of The Uncommon Life Project, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.