In this episode of the Tactical Empire podcast, host Sean Ryder interviews Peter Brasovan, a successful entrepreneur who transitioned from running a million-dollar gym in Indianapolis to moving to a small town in Alabama. Peter shares his journey of building a fitness business, navigating challenges during the pandemic, and ultimately deciding to sell his shares to prioritize family. He emphasizes the importance of mentorship, patience in negotiations, and maintaining an abundance mindset in business. The conversation highlights the balance between personal and professional life, and Peter's aspirations for future ventures.
Chapters
00:00 From Big City to Small Town: Peter's Journey
02:59 Building a Million-Dollar Gym: The Early Years
05:55 Navigating Challenges and Opportunities in Business
08:52 The Impact of the Pandemic on Business
12:03 Family First: The Decision to Move to Alabama
14:47 Selling the Gym: A Business Decision
18:09 Lessons Learned: Patience and Negotiation in Business
20:53 The Importance of Mentorship and Mindset
24:11 Looking Ahead: Future Plans and Aspirations
EPISODE 174 final
[00:00:00] How do you find the will to fight back against the world that wants to keep you sedated, averaging, stuck in place? Join us for the tools and strategies you need to create a life of abundance, discipline, and high achievement. This is the Tactical Empire with Jeff Smith.
Shawn: What's up ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Tactical Empire podcast. I am Sean Ryder and I am bringing on a Tactical Empire Inner Circle member. Peter Brosevin. That last name's kind of tough to say. I should have practiced it before you came on. I think I might have nailed it. But Peter, man, I appreciate you being here.
I'm gonna pontificate for a second. You have a very unique situation on how you've got where you are, okay? Peter built A pretty nice business in a big city out there in [00:01:00] Indianapolis, uh, with a business partner. Um, it was a fitness based business and they hit the million dollar revenue mark. Then Peter and his wife decided to sell the shares of that business.
I'll let him disclose what he wants to disclose with that. And they went from big city to small town USA into a town in Alabama and basically are raising their family and building a nice little homestead. I saw pictures of them building out their garden. Maybe last year, two summers ago. Uh, but Peter, I know you are a wealth of knowledge.
I know that you mentor a lot of business owners. A lot of people in your space particular have a lot of respect for you. So I'm going to try to do my best to just shut the hell up and let you run with this. Why don't you tell the people how you got where you got right now?
Peter: Well, thanks a lot, Sean. And, uh, thanks a lot to, uh, de facto Jeff, who is not on the call today.
Uh, a lot of great opportunities came my way because of knowing you two guys. And. Um, real estate before any of us really knew is real estate was a big part of this as well. So we'll talk about it. One of the things that was unique [00:02:00] about my gym from the very beginning, and we did start back in officially 2011, but my fitness journey started way before then is myself and my 50 percent business partner were 50 50 from the very beginning.
And from day one, his name is Jared Biscoe, still a great friend of mine. We looked at our gym as a business, which a lot of people didn't do. And our very first mentor, I was actually a CrossFit gym owner out of CrossFit Chicago. I'll give him a shout out, Rudy Topala. He was one of the first, I think a hundred CrossFit gyms or 200 CrossFit gyms ever.
And he pushed us very, from the beginning, he told us to read E Myth before I even knew E Myth was a book. And he was like, you guys need to set up as a business before you guys start as a CrossFit gym. Because that's where I made a mistake. And he kind of said that for himself. We also went to business school.
We both have Kelly School of Business degrees from Indiana University. Shout out because they're doing well at football right now. Signetti came
Shawn: from, you listen, sorry to get sidetracked, but Signetti was at JMU. My wife, a graduate from JMU, one of my best [00:03:00] friends here is a big JMU fan. So I went to the App State JMU game last year.
App State beat them in overtime. And, and then the next week, right? Like, uh, Signetti takes it. And I told her, I remember texting him and I said, what a waste of a career. He's going out to Indiana. I guess he's going to take his money. He's going to get his ass kicked. And I do, I apologize for saying that I'm eating my words.
I watched the Indiana game yesterday. They're fucking crushing it. Much respect, much respect.
Peter: Yeah. And so we actually went to IUPUI, which doesn't even exist anymore. It's now Indiana, it's now Indiana university, Indianapolis, but it's still a Kelley school of business. So it's, it's a whole nother, well, two hours later, we'll talk about different podcasts.
But, uh, we played college sports, division one soccer, great background, business background, athletic background. We were very strategic about our gym from the beginning. So we went to Indianapolis to open a gym specifically because we knew the network. We knew the market and we got our first taste into business from trying to find a space.
So there's a couple other podcasts I'm on about that whole story. It's a whole awesome story [00:04:00] about business from the beginning. We wrote a business plan with 0 in our bank account, but it got us a phenomenal location because the broker was like, Whoa, start up business with a business plan. I'll give you two knuckleheads a shot at this before we had any, any backing.
And because of that, we got a phenomenal space in downtown Indianapolis. That really was a big catalyst to where we went, um, from the beginning. So we opened a gym does really well from the beginning, mostly because of our location, but also because we have a business plan and we knew our numbers are metrics we needed to get to in order to push our gym forward.
Now, like many people, especially in the competitive CrossFit world. Uh, we got caught up in that hoopla for a while. We did go to the CrossFit games, which was really cool as a team in 2014. So I get to pat myself on the back and tell that story because we made it to the pinnacle. I can be like, wow, what a waste of time.
Um, and so we look at it and I'll, but it's, it's easier for me to say that because I made it and I'm like, well, we did it and I [00:05:00] also got to pivot. So up through the first three and a half, four years of our gym. It was really fun. It was really cool. We did a lot of just working out and throwing together as bros and some amazing women in our gym, and we did awesome, cool stuff, but all of a sudden we came home from the CrossFit games and we were like, well, we have a business to run that we neglected for four years,
Shawn: did not increase the revenue and you didn't get this awesome, uh, certificate in the mail.
Most likely,
Peter: you know, for your family, you got bills to pay. Exactly. Exactly. Now we did have a great community and they backed us going to the games and it was cool, right? All that fun stuff. But we looked, we got done and we were like, Whoa. And actually I was just expecting my first child. Um, we were just planning for that.
So a lot of these things, these real life things were happening. Uh, but we did through all that get our first opportunity to buy a building. A really cool story. That first broker that believed in us, he saw us grow. And over the four years we were open, we wanted to find a new space. And this building in downtown Indianapolis that we thought was way out of our league came available.
And he's like, yeah, but it's going to auction next Friday. So we had 10 [00:06:00] days, Sean, we had 10 days to buy this building. And we were like, yeah, we have nothing lined up to buy a building. He's like, I'll do you guys a big favor. I'm going to buy the building from auction. Cause it was such a good deal. We're going to sign up by a two year lease, but the expectation is in the next three months, you guys will have your stuff together to buy the building.
But worst case scenario, he has a two year lease with us and he trusted our business. So he made a quick 30, 000 on buying it and flipping it to us. Literally in like 60 days, he made less than that. He made 30 K, but this guy believed us because again, our, our business savviness from the beginning. And you had an acquired
Shawn: relationship with this guy besides the initial being the broker and seeing the business plan, right?
Peter: Correct. Yeah. Over four years, we built a relationship with him, but we just, we just did what I think is one of the most important things in the tactical empire that we talked about, built a network.
Shawn: We,
Peter: we sent this guy a thank you card a couple of times. I think we went and bought him coffee a few times.
You know, this guy's a hundred thousandaire at that time. To me, a very wealthy guy. I didn't need to buy this guy coffee, but I knew how important it was to building [00:07:00] that relationship. So he helps us buy a building in downtown Indianapolis, which was massive. Uh, and we'll talk about that in a moment. So our gym, gym keeps growing.
We find an amazing mentorship for us. Uh, another shout out to Brian Alexander. He's in this group. He was our first mentor. Uh, he looks at us and he kind of laughs at us, like, guys, you're doing awesome. But when are you going to actually turn this business on? We're like, what do you mean? We're doing everything.
He's like, you guys are doing everything like B minus at best. And, and if you guys know, Brian at all, he's very, the name of the brand here. He's very tactical and he's very like, no, but you actually have to do the work. And he actually helped us go. And at that time we were doing very well, but he helped us grow by about 20 or 30 percent over a two year span.
We kind of soaked up what we thought was the wealth of his knowledge. We said, what's next? And that's when we actually found Jeff. So I'll pat Jeff on his back, cause he took us from what, um, Brian Alexander was pushing us to do. And he's like, alright guys, but like, put on your fucking big boy pants and let's do the real work, cause Brian did some good stuff.
He didn't say it like this. But that's how it felt at the time. And we would get on [00:08:00] calls with Jeff and he would be like, all right, guys, you said you were going to do this. I'm like, yeah, we did it. He's like, no, no, no, no. Call me back next week. Like, seriously, he would not literally hang up the phone, but it felt like that.
Like we'll talk next week and he'll kept pushing us. No, no, not at all. And so we went from, we grew, I think 30%, three years in a row. We went from about a 600, 000 a year, Jim, which was already very large, but we did hit that million dollar threshold. Um, between a few different mentors and push ourselves.
And so we did it for three years in a row. We were a million dollar gym and, uh, it was amazing. It was a really great ride, but it was always about that mentorship. It was about people holding us accountable. See what our potential was and always pushing us that next step and not letting us just settle for what we were.
Shawn: Sure. Um, and so what timeline, what year are we looking at hitting that million dollar revenue mark for the first time?
Peter: So trying to interweave these two situations. We bought the building in 2014 going into 2015. So kind of like Q4 of 2014. Um, we started another brand at [00:09:00] the time 'cause we couldn't have two CrossFit gyms.
Our lease wasn't enough. There was a whole, again, there's a whole story to this for an hour long podcast one day. So we buy the building. We started a yoga brand and a bootcamp brand in 2015. We became a million dollar business in 2018 for the first time. And from there we. We moved our gym finally in 2018 and got two more buildings next to us that we owned that just happened to come up for lease when our final first lease was up.
So it was a whole, whole kind of monopoly situation of moving, moving businesses around. But we ended up with. A main building on a corner that we owned, a parking lot that we didn't, uh, secure and then two other buildings. So literally we owned two of the green spaces in Monopoly, but not the middle one.
And so we become a million dollar gym in 2018. It did it again in 19. We actually did it again during the pandemic year. [00:10:00] Uh, but it's because we had our best months ever. The first two months of the year, 120K, I think, yeah, we did 120K back to back months in January, February. Where it was like, We thought we were going to the fucking moon for sure.
And then, and then the pandemic did a lot to us, but we actually maintained a really good business through the pandemic as well, which was really important to me selling it eventually 2022, because we still maintained a really good level of business, um, during that time.
Shawn: Well, I'm going to come back to that, but I know you weren't in, in Scottsdale.
You got a lot of things going on. Um, but those of you that have been listening to the podcast episodes after Scott, our meetup inner circle meetup in Scottsdale, We had a keynote presenter, Kirk Weissler, uh, and his presentation, I mean, he talked to the men for two and a half hours, which you've been in the room with some of these guys and to keep our attention for two and a half hours is really hard.
And he took us through an emotional rollercoaster ride of his life. And the key phrase that he kept coming back to was like, I keep getting, I only go where I'm invited. And then like over the course of the, uh, uh, presentation, he kind of like, I [00:11:00] just kept getting invited. I keep getting invited. I don't know how I find myself in these rooms.
And when I left the meetup, I was like, the lesson that I took around it. You just said, we talk about building your network. And the point of the network is who's going to bring you to the next room. And I hear that same shit that you're saying right now. Like you might've had a perfect business plan, but you didn't have.
Most likely in the business plan that you're going to buy this exact building at this exact year and have the opportunity to buy two built like you just kept finding yourself in the next room and in this case it was a room to sign paperwork to buy a building you found yourself in a room with a broker you took coffee like you just did the next right thing and it put you in these positions and you took Advantage of these positions.
Now let's fast forward. The pandemic absolutely decimated a lot of businesses in this country, particularly the gym space. I will never, I will never forgive what happened, uh, for my fitness business. Uh, when McDonald's across the street had people lined up around the [00:12:00] building, Starbucks was right next to it.
People lined up around the building. Home Depot's parking lot was completely filled, yet one person could not step into my fitness business for 72 days. We had our best three months, January, February, and March of 2020. We shut down on March 14th and lost, uh, over 40 percent of our business in 72 days. Um, ultimately, like, an additional 20 percent after that.
So it was just brutal. I Was that an impression that you sold your business? Um, I mean, 2022 was just yesterday. Only two years ago. So what got you to that point? Talk about, I mean, we're really big on the family aspect of this. So go ahead. I know your wife is super, super hardworking, super intelligent woman.
You guys are great parents, um, and, and have a fantastic family. So what led you guys to the point where you at now, where it was like, let me sell my shares and move to small town, Alabama. Go ahead and tell the people.
Peter: Yeah. So again, I think it's a unique story to me, but not unique to the [00:13:00] world by any means.
So my business partner, as I've mentioned a few times, childhood, best friend, we grew up together, still great friends to this day. He's still running the gym to this day. And we talk a lot. Um, it's hard for me to let go of that particular baby of the gym, but it's really cool to see him thriving as part of that as well, but my business partner also was my neighbor.
He was also my wife's good friend. His wife and my wife were good friends. All of it was really good. But at some point for my wife, who's from Alabama, it started to become like too interwoven. She started to miss her family. Uh, we were living in Indianapolis. My family is about two and a half hours North near Chicago.
Her family's seven hours South in Alabama. We had the two kids and the pandemic as it did for many people really started to pull at her heartstrings. We had a phenomenal family. And I use air quotes when I say family, because it was all friends and really close friends. In Indianapolis, but when it came time to really call on somebody, say like, Hey, we need help.
My aunt, who is amazing was there, but outside of that, we didn't have [00:14:00] a true grandma grandparents without going through some hoops and making things happen. So my wife's like, I want to move. I'll make this as fast as possible. I go on a quick vacation with my mom, taking the two kids during the pandemic.
It was like me and our two kids. I go meet my mom. My wife's like, I'm gonna go visit my parents. I I'm getting this cool home. I'm gonna start looking at some houses. I'm like, great, we own the gym, we own the yoga studio, let's make a two year plan, we'll figure this out. Literally, seven days later, she, or five days later, she calls me, she's like, I found it.
I was like, found what? She's like, I found our dream home. I was like, bullshit, you did. We're not pre approved for a loan. I haven't been there. What are you talking about? She's like, well, my friend's a realtor. She showed me a few houses. This house is perfect for us. I was like, cool. Ask them if they'll save it for two years?
Like, not gonna happen. She's like, well, no, I got us pre approved for a loan and I put an offer on it. I swear to you, Sean, this is how it happened. And I was like, WTF, what are you talking about? And she's like, I was like, what are you? She's like, yeah, I used your social security number. I maybe like did a few.
I was like, what is going on here? And [00:15:00] at me, this absolutely true. She went and got a loan. Now I knew a little bit, but I mean, 98 percent of that is an absolute true story. She finds this house for us and I was like, it's perfect. It was everything we wanted. We wanted some acreage. We wanted some land. It hit our bucket list, but it was just two years too early.
So now I have to have this conversation with Jared, my business partner. And I'm like, dude. I think I have to move. My family needs it. My wife needs it. That's ultimately always going to be the most important thing. Like you and I are, are bros, boys, whatever you want to call it. I can't do this gym thing if I don't have her support.
And he's like, man, as a friend and a long time, like brother to you, I get it. As a business owner, this fucking sucks. And like he played, he really threaded that needle so well for me because he could have told me to go kick the curb. And we had a really good contract. We did everything right from the beginning.
Like I said, we had our business contracts, all this stuff. So we had a good buyout agreement. We had all this stuff, but our [00:16:00] gym wasn't doing as good as it was. This is two years after the pandemic. Now we're not at our peak and I'm like, I don't want to sell it right now. It's like selling your house at the bottom of the market, but you don't need to.
So we came to an agreement. We're like, all right, for a year, I'm going to fly back and forth for a month. Or travel back and forth. The original agreement was I'd come back for five to six days at a time. I told my wife the same thing. She's like, fine, let's do it. We come to the agreement. We ended up moving two and a half months later.
We did buy the house. We did move to Alabama. I somewhat had the blessing of Jared as a friend, but not as a business owner. Had the full bite of my wife. It was crazy. While all that was happening, we had the opportunity to sell our building. So in two seconds or less, Literally a New York company comes knocking on our door.
We're like, we're buying the 400, 000 square feet of land or building next door to you, literally 400, 000 square foot. They own the parking lot on the, on the shadow of us, but we want to buy you. We were like, we have a great business. We don't want to sell. [00:17:00] Knock, knock, knock. Literally four months, five months later, we come to an agreement for selling our building for a nine X multiple of what we bought it for.
And it is public record. If you want to go look it up in the Indiana records of what they bought it for from us. And we ended up negotiating a deal. Where they bought our building. We have free rent. Jared still has free rent for a few years. We're discounted rent. It's not free. It's like very heavily discounted.
We have free rent in our building when he moved out. And it was like, just this crazy deal that really catapulted our business again. But that was a part of my sell of when I stole the Jared later on, because he still had all that locked in, like from that deal. So all this was happening. I'm moving, we're selling our, our, um, building.
I am now commuting back and forth for a year. And, uh, I did it for the first four months. I literally went back and forth between driving, applying. It's like a seven hour drive, but there's no direct flight. It's kind of this mess. And after the fourth trip, my daughter looks at me, she was, [00:18:00] must have been five ish, six at the time.
She looks at me, she's like, dad, why are you, why are you leaving for business all the time? And just the way she said it, and we know as men, especially because it wasn't like I was working for some corporate company. It was like, you need me to travel. I was like, why am I doing this? We had, we had 40 staff members at the time.
Things were going very well. I could do most of it from here. So my next trip, I went back for like three days. And the next trip I went back for three days. And now we're like six or seven months in and Jared's like, Hey man, you said you were going to come for six days each time. I'm working really hard here.
You're not working as hard. And it was kind of diluted and he wasn't being rude about it. My first answer to him truly was, well, stop working so hard. We had a good laugh about that. And he's like, yeah, yeah, I get it. But like, I am still here. And so it was kind of the writing just started getting on the wall.
And after about a year, we had this conversation. He's like, I equate it to this college relationship. You know, you shouldn't be in, but you're just kind of in it. [00:19:00] And Jared looks at me, he's like, I think I need to buy you out. And I was like, dang, I think you do. So I never had full intentions of selling my gym.
It just evolved into that. So we're still selling the building. It hadn't quite got done. It has ended up taking us 16 months from the first time they knocked on our door to selling our building, maybe even 18 months. I'm now thinking about selling the business. I think we must've just sold the building when Jared and I had that relationship, that conversation.
So we knew what we got from that. And now it was opportunity. I was like, I don't need to sell the business for some incredible amount. But we were a million dollar gym and we're still not quite back there. So we actually did pay a professional company to come in and do a valuation, just to make sure neither of us were pulling any strings on each other.
And then we actually, I think we ended up using two or three different sources, resources to get us to the valuation. And I couldn't quite get to my number, but I also knew where he [00:20:00] was. He couldn't quite get down to the number because I was like, I don't need to sell. I didn't need to sell the gym at this point.
I could have kept pushing it, but also I knew I would be kind of being an asshole to him if I didn't. So I ended up selling it on a 10 year note, which was really good for me. Because we did sell the building. My family came into a little bit of a windfall, so I didn't need to force his hand. And because of that, I'm still getting a monthly check until 2030, which is amazing.
Shawn: Um,
Peter: I also built in. Two different kickers are balloon payments. Um, one was just this year, 2024 and other ones in 2026 or 2027, just to give me a little bit more. Um, and Jared and I finally came to terms so that I can be here. So for a year I traveled back and forth, but it was just when my daughter looked at me and said, why are you traveling for your business?
I thought you owned a gym. I was like, yeah, I don't need to keep doing this.
Shawn: People are going to have to listen to this, uh, podcast back. And when I brought people on, I try and extract the lessons. Uh, but the more you can talk, the more lessons there are. [00:21:00] And I just don't want to talk for 10 minutes straight on those lessons out.
So ladies and gentlemen, I need you to like, go back and listen. This episode is not done. We're not getting off. Uh, but you need to go back and listen to some of these things. But one lesson that I just heard there was like. As a man, you worked your ass off to build a business and at the end of the day, you took less than you probably could have because a little human that means more than anything said one thing to you.
And isn't that crazy as a man? Like we work so hard to build something of value. And at the end of the day, like you're getting something like, dude, I closed my gym down because I was on the brink of like falling apart mentally because I just wasn't like, you know, Um, it wasn't like my daughter didn't look at me, but like, I could tell it was pulling me in a direction I didn't want to go, and I didn't want it to negatively affect things at home.
And, uh, so we will, we will build, you know, [00:22:00] an empire, and I think it's a very powerful thing that you're willing to actually, you're not, you didn't tear it down, but I use this as just the storytelling. I like. We build an empire, we're actually willing to tear it down when we recognize that, like, at the end of the day, the money is the easiest part, and we'll do it again, but we're gonna do it differently in order to maintain the things that's most important to us in our life, and that's our family, so kudos to you on that.
Is there anything you wanna kinda say about what I just said?
Peter: I will add, yeah, for sure, I mean, our gym, like many gyms, was a family, and we used to use that phrase, family, for a long time. But as it grew bigger and bigger, it just was more apparent how much of a business it was. And there's no doubt in my mind.
Shawn: You have to be very careful labeling these things. When you label something and people as family and friends, and that puts your, you now put them in a box. And an expectation of how family members act, and how friends act. And not everyone has the same box [00:23:00] on how family members and friends act. And so it's a, that's actually, I love that you said that because that label, labeling people, it's a very dangerous thing to do as a small business
Peter: owner.
Uh, yeah, yeah, for sure. So we thought it was a family, and it was, like I'm not discrediting that phrase, but we also started to recognize it more and more as a business. And I always use that word, we, because I want to be very clear. I would never be where I am today without Jared. Uh, and sometimes it's like, Oh, you sold your business.
It's like, yeah, I did. But I was also in a very particular situation where 50, 50 partners, he knew the gym had the means to pay him and he is doing very well right now. Um, he regrowed it, regrew the gym and retooled it, but because of the way everything lined up as a business. And that's what I'm getting at.
We started as a business. We made decisions as a business. We had a business contract that even our friendship. Which did stall out for like three to six months. And we even kind of knew that we're like, Hey, the next three to six months, like let's not push anything from friendship. Let's just the business stuff run out.
And now we've been on ski trips together and everything's great. Like he just, he blew [00:24:00] down. Like, but we let the business be a business in the end of the day. And because we made decisions under that mindset, it made it easier for me to sell it because exactly what you just said, I knew I'd have another business.
I'd have another opportunity. And I'm not making my businesses, my lifestyle, and it's not who I am. It doesn't define me. Now I own another commercial real estate building. I own an Airbnb. Now I work full time as a, as a mentor coach. Um, I have other business going that I'm very proud of, but because I'd never said that this part of my life was what defined me.
And even now, if you like, do you miss your gym? Yeah. I miss some of the people in the gym, but I'm very proud of what we built. And I'm really proud that I was able to sell it and move on. And that's just where I'm at today.
Shawn: And I think, I think, uh, just from like an outsider's perspective and someone that's, you know, leading the tattoo empire is like, I like when I see the men respect their past, glean lessons from their past, but they're living in [00:25:00] the here and now, and they're pushing forward for the future.
Like we're, we're not going to go back in time and change anything. Um, and so I really respect that about you. And one thing that I want to acknowledge publicly, cause we, we talked a little bit in, in, um, Birmingham meetup. Um, and you told me a little bit more details about the, the sale and, and. The one thing that stood out to me, I didn't tell it to you then at dinner, but now that you're on the podcast and you've told more of the insights of, of that story is like the big lesson that I can take from you and that I think I respect about you at most as a business owner from what you've told, you know, Is like, it seems like you've been so patient in all of your businesses.
And, you know, I am someone that says like someone's strength can also be simultaneously the weakness. So for me, like, I think a strength for me is like, I move very quickly and I know it, sometimes it does put me in very unique and weird and particular situations. Um, but I think one thing I can learn from you is the patience [00:26:00] side of building a business or making changes in businesses or hell, even trying to sell a business and just being more patient in that, or, you know, someone coming and offering a dollar amount for a building and, you know, maybe it was a two or three X offer and you guys were like, no, and then months later, they come back with a nine X offer.
Like, I don't know how I would have responded in that, um, in that situation. And so where do you. Like, did you recognize that about yourself? Like, does, do people tell you you're super patient in all areas of life? Or do you, do you recognize that you're a patient business owner? Cause I see
Peter: it. Hmm. I think there's a, there's two sides of what you're saying there for myself.
I, I do get told I'm a very good negotiator often. And so if you're a good negotiator, you have to be willing to be patient and you have to be willing to be told no. But I definitely could be short temp, I wouldn't say short temper cause I don't get mad, but I could snap some, some staff decisions sometimes that are not always high quality.
So. I would say in the moment I could have some staff decisions, especially as like, you know, when I step on [00:27:00] a Lego that my kids were supposed to put away six, six hours ago, but as a person, he just happened this morning. Um, so as a person, I could definitely make staff decisions. I wish I was more patient as a everyday person, but yeah, when it comes to business, I'm a big believer that like every deal has so many ways to look at it.
And that creates patience out of me because I don't, it's not just what it is. My business, like, right, I sold it on a 10 year no with three balloon payments in it. I don't know if anyone else has built in balloon payments in the, I know of the end of the, um, balloon payments for things, but I don't know anyone that's done it that way.
And just taking bits and pieces from different people I learned, we did that. Selling our building. We not only built in rent reductions on the back end, we got money to help build out the new space that Jared's still operating in. We even rented our other two spaces, if you remember back to the Monopoly game that I was referring to, And when those two buildings sell, we have a commission built in [00:28:00] because we signed the first lease for that.
And so we're expecting in the next one to three years to get a 13 percent commission kickback, whatever those sell for. So, because I'm looking at every, even my last car I bought, like, don't go to a car place with me, cause it's going to take you six hours. I've always. I'm always looking at every single angle and because I'm looking at so many angles, it creates patience out of me because I'm not in a rush to make a deal.
Shawn: Well, I will say that my dad will one up you on the car negotiations. I have core memories as a child of going back to the same car dealership multiple weeks on end and literally I'm sitting in the corner of this place. It's like for the third or fourth time and my dad just stands up and walks out and I'm just like looking at him like what are we doing here we've been looking at the same car for weeks and he if he if they didn't get it down to the number that he wanted he was done so I maybe I need to talk to my dad more when I'm negotiating things because I just moved too quick.
Peter, look, I know that you've helped a ton of business owners, [00:29:00] um, you know, because, because you do work for the largest, uh, business, uh, gym business mentorship company in the world. I want you to throw out there, like, what is the number one thing that you see from small business owners, uh, not just in the gym space, fitness space, but like, what do you, what do you think they need to make the most improvement on, or what do you help people with the most?
Peter: One answer for that, what I help the most with, I would say is switching from scarcity to abundance mindset is probably the number one. We all, I'm guilty of it still too, we all fall into scarcity at some point no matter how well we're doing, but I help people with that really often. And I think it probably happens on one out of three to five calls where someone's just stuck a little bit, they're either stalled or flat or whatever it is.
And it's because they've become scarce in their mindset. And I think I'm really good at helping people see the abundance again. And it's something I work through with people often.
Shawn: You have a go to strategy or comment that [00:30:00] kind of helps them. I know each particular situation is contextual and dependent upon itself, but how do you help them do that?
Peter: I'm a big analogy person. So depending on the situation, I'll bring in comparisons. I love a few very kind of go to business quotes, like the rising tide rises all ships together. Or when was the last time to plant or best time to plant a tree? 10 years ago. When's the next best time today? So I give a lot of those analogies just because I think people just forget where they're at.
That's one. But the other one is I'm a big hard string puller. So I really like to emotionally connect with my clients and people I'm working with. And if I know something about them, like they want to get married and they're trying to pay for their wedding or they're trying to buy their first house or they're trying to pay off some debt.
I'll say things directly like you don't want to be having the same conversation with me in three months. You told me you wanted to buy that new car. I didn't tell that to you. And so when I try to connect to their emotional heartstrings and then say things that are very [00:31:00] obvious, it usually helps people like with that wake up moment to say, like, I am being scarce and I don't want to be in the same place in three months.
So those are some of my strategies. It's things I'll
Shawn: say that's, I think that's a key to why, as you said at the beginning, like people need to have a guidance and mentor, because even though it's obvious to you as the mentor, it wasn't obvious to them because they're in the dirt every single day. They're juggling all the shit.
Whereas you. Yes, you know about their family, whatever their goals are there, their businesses, but you're, you're unbiased and you're unconnected to that. So what's obvious to you isn't obvious to them until you shine light on it. So I appreciate you helping all those people out. I'm going to end it with this is I like to bring the guys off from the other empire and I want them to put the things out into the universe.
This does not have to be business related unless that's top of mind because that's been mainly the topic today. What does Peter Brosteven, what is he most excited about right now? What is he working on? What does he want to put out there in the universe that he's just super, super pumped about to improve upon in his life in the [00:32:00] next six months?
Well,
Peter: right now I have a, so I have three kids. We have a six year old and eight year old and I have a five month old. So that's a big portion right now. I'm pouring heavily into my wife. She just got a really cool kind of dream job situation. Where it fits all of her buckets and really fills her. So I'm trying to give space for her to grow in that I, it is more of a nine to five type of job, but it's really cool.
And it's connected to our kids school and the daycare, just a super neat family thing. So I'll put in a lot of time to that next six months to let her grow into what she needs to. Um, and then for my own personal standing, I definitely need probably one more business in my life in the next six to 12 months.
And that might be another Airbnb. It might be a flip type of project. It might be actually, we're looking at buying a yoga studio right now. That's got good potential. So I want to find one more revenue stream and that's something that we already have in the works, uh, but I don't need to rush it. I've already pushed it back a month because I don't need it to happen for me.
I know it needs to happen, but I don't need it to happen.
Shawn: Yeah. There there's that patience [00:33:00] again, ladies and gentlemen, but, uh, not to disclose too much, but you know, Peter came into the inner circle and, you know, asked about that situation and he got feedback, you So as he said earlier, like he asked a group of men and I'm sure he asked other mentors in his life outside of the inner circle for their input on this and, and as an entrepreneur, like you want to take input from others, but ultimately it's about putting the ingredients into your own melting pot.
And you said that earlier about the balloon payments throughout. Like, I like that because I, I, that I tell people that all the time, I'm like, you shouldn't take all your answers from the same person in perpetuity on all situations, get a few opinions on people that you respect, that you feel have insight and experience on these things, and then take, take the ingredients you like.
Put it into your melting pot and make your own damn soup. And that's how you build a dinner that you want to eat for the rest of your life. Uh, so Peter, man, um, I think there's so much more to learn from you. So I look forward to having you back. On the podcast in the future. Um, you know, as I will say this, and we take this as a [00:34:00] compliment, you are probably one of the nicest guys in the group.
I think people can hear that just from your voice. Your tone of voice is nice and not aggressive, but just by you telling us more of those details today, I, uh, uh, uh, one thing I have learned is I, you are a ruthless business owner, and that is not a bad word. I think you. Uh, are very intelligent, uh, when it comes to business.
And I appreciate you being in the group and adding value to the other men. And thank you for being
Peter: on the podcast today. Absolutely. Hopefully this spurs another man to join our group because there's so much happening every time. I learned from everyone every time I'm on a call and we learn from you, man.
I appreciate your time today. Thank you. Thank you.