Better Your Business in Just 60 Minutes A Day with Jarett "JP" Perelmutter, BRICK

Do you ever feel like you're just spinning your wheels on social media? Do you login to Facebook only to later realize hours have gone by and you've accomplished nothing? If you can relate to this, then this is the episode for YOU.

This week, the gymOS Podcast brings you Jarett "JP" Perelmutter and his vast experience in the fitness industry. Dan and JP sit down to discuss the pitfalls of social media and how you can turn that wasted time into a benefit for your business, your family, and your personal life. Enjoy!

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Transcript

Dan Uyemura  00:00
Welcome to the gymOS podcast. Helping fitness professionals become better business owners one episode at a time. Alright everybody, welcome back to the gymOS podcast Dan Uyemura here CEO of PushPress and in this podcast every episode we're dialed in to trying to make you a better business owner in your gym today on the show, we got Jared Perlmutter. Jared is the co founder of brick CrossFit or out here in LA. They got installations all over the US now at this point, right?

JP  00:37
Yeah, we've got partners across the East Coast or the west coast. Yeah.

Dan Uyemura  00:42
Right. You've been in the game for quite a while, I believe. 10 years or so. As an owner. 

JP  00:47
That's right. Actually, this week marks our official 10 year anniversary.

Dan Uyemura  00:51
Yeah, and for those of you guys who who have been in the SoCal region and watching the SoCal games or regionals for for a while now, brick was the infamous neon orange team that would come out on the field, usually in tutus or something ridiculous. So right you were in the CrossFit scene back in the day through regionals. There's no way you don't know JP and his crew. Anyways, now he's part of the NCFIT crew running licensing program over there. And I brought JP in to talk. I mean, man, this guy's got so much stuff to talk about. And we're just gonna narrow it down to one topic, but I might be able to come back on for a dozen podcasts the way that we've been talking this morning. With that, let me have JP introduce himself. I've already given quite an introduction, but go ahead and drop a little bit on our listeners right now.

JP  01:33
Yeah, right on, I'll make it super quick. JP is generally what I go by full name is Jared Perelmutter on and off brick fitness. Based headquarters out of West Hollywood, California started it as I mentioned, 10 years ago, over time, we've expanded across the US even with several partners overseas in certain selected areas. And in recent years, we've scaled back or growth concept as far as expansion within the licensed partner model and or my own, I guess, headquartered, personally owned and operated facilities just so that I could scale back and focus on other areas of my life that I'm passionate about, and really engaging with other owners and other businesses within the health and wellness industry. That and my 10 year long friendship and relationship with Jason Khalipa, owner of NC fit, has grown itself into taking over their licensed partner program as he starts to focus on his expansion of his brand and their entities that they have. And it's just be been a really great relationship. He and I have known each other for so long, it's been super successful, super healthy, we're also really close friends, we're basically family. And with that, we've seen a lot of ups and downs in the business and the industry in our own personal lives together. And it's just really made for a great partnership in that particular regard. So here I am, hopefully, I can speak from a bunch of different angles to give some insight to give some clarity to give as Daniel, I said it to you and I said it on the podcast, more of a real real approach to anything I give. I'm not here selling anything. So I don't have a catch mark at the end of this. It's just simply like, if someone can take something I've said that's based on an experience of failure or success that I've had. Awesome. I'm here for it. Right on.

Dan Uyemura  03:15
Yeah. So for those of you guys again, who don't know JP too well, he's, I think you've moved to Tennessee, you still own a location, at least out here in Hollywood. Right? That's right, you you figured out enough to run a business from across the nation, correct?

JP  03:30
Yeah, you know, basically, for about the last six years, I haven't really been a active on site owner operator, and probably for seven years haven't really coached on a normal schedule, I pop in on occasion, but I was in New York, opening locations in Chicago, etc, etc. So really been able to dial the systems and processes in where I've been able to step back over those years and the inactive owner, but less of an on site operator.

Dan Uyemura  03:53
That's awesome. I mean, that might be something we talked about in another episode, because that's something huge. Even if you don't want to become an off site owner or an absentee owner, it's great to be able to set up process like this because it gives you that option. And having that options kind of key in it will actually make you run a better business if you have the processes in place to get people to help you do the work. Today, I want to talk about something that's been on my mind for 10 months now.

JP  04:18
Oh, man, let's do it. That's a lifetime, man.

Dan Uyemura  04:21
So 2020 has been a crazy year, not only compounding the COVID situation with everyone and all the civil unrest we've had amongst police incidents in the United States, but we've had an election to probably one of the one of the most polarizing years I've ever been a part of as an adult. And what I've come to witness is a large constituency of my Facebook friends, and I guess timeline is gym owners, because I'm in the business of helping gym owners. And one person I haven't seen come up too much on my feed or in any of the forums is JP, why is that? 

JP  04:59
Oh man. Yeah, that's a great question. I appreciate the fact that you've noticed that I appreciate the fact that you notice me, Dan.

Dan Uyemura  05:05
Or the lack thereof of you.

JP  05:10
Yeah, you know, I just feel that over the last 10 months, certainly worse than ever, the distraction of social media politics, exterior distractions has become magnified to like the 1,000th degree. And it's taken people off their normal trajectory, or course for the success that they want to see in their life measuring success in their own way, right. I'm not one to measure your success, where they've become basically fish hooked in to this source of poison, being social media, or even worse, they've been sucked into the poison of caring so much about what your outward beliefs are, or your voice or your message that it drives them into the rabbit hole of darkness, the vortex of just distraction and point of no return. So you say, Well, okay, well, what does that have to do with the question I asked you, JP, is that I'm very clear, Dan, I've been fortunate to have some great clarity in my life to know what is important to me, what moves my needle, what impacts me and my family. And I'll probably a lot of this is for becoming a new dad. Right? In the last year, my daughter will be one at the end of this week. Yeah, thank you. So. And to me, I always put things in perspective, which is like, Hey, is anything that I'm about to spend my time on, going to enhance, distract or take away from the ultimate end goal for myself, and my family. And it's like an easy box to check. And if I look at it and go, nope, then right away, it's just like, I don't need it. Now, I want to be clear, though, it's not that I don't look at social media, because I do have a tendency to go on there when I'm passing time. But usually, it is in selected moments when I've said this is when I'm going to do that. This is when I've opted to choose to bring that into my environment. And I'm going to control it, and then I'm going to opt out of it and move on.

Dan Uyemura  07:04
Right on. Yeah, I mean, it's a hard thing to do to choose to not engage, because I'm the same I consume a lot on social media. But and I have the exact same viewpoint that like, I'm not going to change anyone's mind, and nor should I be so egocentric or think that I should be trying to change someone's mind on how they feel about any topic out there. I'm not so insecure that I need the reassurance from other people about my own feelings about topics. My focus is on helping my clients and bettering my life and my family's life. And that's strictly it right? I see things like you have these outward concentric circles of your spheres of influence and who's gonna win the election and in which general broad topic of political policy is so far out of your realm of influence? It's not worth your time to even deal with, in my opinion, right? So that's why I choose to stay out of all that stuff.

JP  07:53
Yeah. And adding on top of that is, you know, I try to pride myself on being someone who speaks on topics that I have a certain base level of education and knowledge on. And so for me, if I don't have that clear background of research done, why would I go out and promote something that could eventually become pie in my face, right? Unless I were so adamantly in belief of it. But then again, why would I go publicly try to push that, because now I'm just pushing my belief systems on you, which should technically go against my belief system, right.

Dan Uyemura  08:24
And if you want to piggyback on top of that, it's like, let's say you decided, for some reason you were going to become so invested, and you were going to research all of these intricate laws and details over the history and past elections. It's like, you've just wasted weeks of your life, trying to learn something that really, in the big picture doesn't matter for you. Other than I mean, maybe you become an expert at, I don't know, drug laws in Oregon or something, you know, or the history of police brutality, but really, what does that matter?

JP  08:51
Right? Now listen, if your job is that you actually are able to make a living and enhance your lifestyle by triggering people, then also then do your job and be the best at it if you're a triggering host, TV analyst, radio host...

Dan Uyemura  09:05
YouTube channel or TikTok guy making a ton of money on it right? Fine. 

JP  09:09
That is awesome, then keep doing you but if you're just somebody who's bored and needs to go on there and tell someone else that their beliefs are garbage and that they're an idiot and right away you go into the world of insulting that's what always catches me by surprise these people go on there you're like you understand that you're that there's people watching you, your business your members, your family and here you are, you've refused resulted to just insults you don't know somebody you haven't seek to understand before you're understood. You don't know what they're going through. You've literally gone on a digital platform, right algorithm created humanly manipulated at times, and you've been caught, you're caught in the fish trap or the mouse trap or whatever on the fish hook, right? You've just been hooked in and now it's just like everything else that should ultimately matter in your life has become like darkness. And you can't see it anymore. You've lost focus and, and likes, people get dragged into like dark rage. And I'm not even talking about what the topic is.

Dan Uyemura  10:08
Yeah. And so, I mean, the way I view things is like, in society, we have certain responsibilities that we take upon ourselves based on the role we decide we want to take. And as a business owner, you have stepped up a notch from a layman or a W2 employee, you have chosen to take more responsibility, which means your actions and your words matter a little different than if you were just someone hiding behind the corporate wall of America, right. So in that regard, like you've taken the responsibility of not only owning a business, which is tied to your family, and how your family does, but you have clients that you're responsible to, right?

JP  10:47
That's right. And I'm put a little more on that, if you accept that responsibility, right, if you choose like, its like a cheesy like a Mission Impossible, if you choose said mission, right? If you choose that mission, you're choosing, because you are going to gain all the fruits of the supposed success of whatever that is, right? That entity you choose to elevate yourself to go achieve well with that are the same repercussions on the flip side, and so when you choose that responsibility, you are going to be held by certain bylaws conscious subconscious, known or unknown, right? Like I used to say this about I say this a lot about celebrities, right? Like you, when you put yourself on a platform and a pedestal you've chosen, I want to be a celebrity, I want to be a famous musician, right? And I'm going to reap all the rewards, the finances, the fame, the power, with all of that will come the flip side, right? You don't have ultimate freedom anymore. Because you've put yourself under controlling circumstances, by being an entity, you're attracting these rewards, right? Well, now you have to be careful, because the minute that DNA of that entity changes that could trigger certain people negatively, you're going to lose some of that you can't sit there and be upset about it, and then make it their fault. It's your responsibility. And so it's like with that success comes great responsibility, I believe.

Dan Uyemura  12:12
Absolutely. So that's why like, I think a lot of people in social media land who own gyms just have not been able to come to the the concept that they need to separate their own personal feelings from what they outwardly put out there. Because that ends up becoming a reflection your gym, whether you know it or not, people who don't agree with your opinion, are judging you for it and making choices accordingly.

JP  12:36
Right. And everybody all of a sudden thinks that if they're in my social media, that they're in it my actual friendly social circle. And that's, it's two totally different environments, right? Like, I might have people that I'm friends with on Facebook, but they're not actually my friends, right? Like, I don't socially engage with them regularly, they're not coming over to my house for dinner. They're not interacting with my family, they don't impact that tomorrow for me. So why would I engage with them in a way that's emotional when they don't mean anything to me? Right? And why would I try to promote my beliefs, and my perspectives to them, when they don't mean anything to me. So they've actually just taken the greatest resource, the greatest thing I have, in my physical being, they've just taken this, I've allowed them to take it, right. They didn't steal it, I've allowed them to take it from me, which is what? Time...

Dan Uyemura  13:33
Your attention really...

JP  13:33
You've literally snatched time and attention from me, which will not move the needle. Now, if I have people in my family and in my social circle, who I feel like their actions, their beliefs, their behaviors impact directly my life and my family's life, then I it's my social within this social connection responsibility to say, Hey, I don't like XYZ, Let's have a talk about it. But it's because I care about you. The time I give you, yeah, the connection we have. It's just crazy to me.

Dan Uyemura  14:01
I'm gonna make a slight pivot. It's, it's on a tangent to this. And I mean, the word emotion has come up maybe 20 times in this in this discussion. And my belief is people let their emotions get the best of them on social media. And that's where they get hooked into, like on the fishhook, like you said, for a lot of these arguments, debates and whatnot. But on the flip side of that, you have to realize like those same emotions are running course in your clients. And like I said, they're judging you and feeling emotions to based on things you say, things you do. And what my advice to owners is, you stay away from social media, and you invest time into your gym. And for that reason, you want to do things, like my whole thing is about engineering experience, because all that does is hook into the emotion of clients. And I'm curious, like, I did the math today. And I did some real simple math. And I said, If every day you got on social media, and you fought for 10 minutes, which if you're a social media warrior, you're fighting for hours, probably but let's just say 10 minutes. Over the course of a year. That's I think it was 60 hours of time that you've wasted on social media. Only 10 minutes a day. If, right now, a gym owner is listening and decides, Okay, I'm gonna stop, I'm gonna take those 60 hours and put them into my gym, what do you think that they can do in today's world, that would make a great impact, to hook the emotion of a potential client or a client to keep them a member of the gym longer.

JP  15:17
Oh my, I mean, that's like that, that math is so simple, which is just the initial engagement with either new leads existing leads previously, it's like, imagine what you can accomplish in 60 hours of picking up the phone and calling previous leads who didn't sign up, or members who have canceled members who haven't seen in a while. I mean, in 60 hours, you're talking about triple digit numbers of touch points that you can engage in. And if you want to talk about lifetime value of members, or recurring costs, try to attract new members, but using your time to recoup old members. I mean, the math will always play in favor of those 60 hours and what you could have done if you got them back.

Dan Uyemura  15:56
Right. I mean, another simple thing I'm thinking of is just like, put a cleaning policy in place for this whole COVID experience. I do notice like we're in California, like maybe in the last three months become a little bit more comfortable, like going out to dinner. And if you're listening from the Midwest, this might sound ridiculous. I've been doing this in like April or something, but every time we go out to dinner, my wife will know will make a comment like this place made me feel safe. This place seemed really clean. The the waiters had face shields this time and gloves that felt really good. Like I'm noticing she she, she will mention all the feelings that she had about the safety of the restaurant experience. Right? And that has to play the same for gyms for like people who are like, maybe I should try a gym again, just like we're thinking maybe we should try restaurants, right? What if you took those 60 hours and put them into a cleanliness policy and making sure your gym was clean, and then taking photos of it and putting it on social media?

JP  16:44
Oh, my gosh, I've been with 60 hours, you could do all that. And then some I mean, think about all of the new systems and policies you could have put in place in the last, let's just say you were even close for four or five months, with even 30 hours of time back to yourself, you know, or a recent distraction of staring. You know, what we call the map shows, you know, the last two weeks of map shows that everybody's been watching where they just stared a guy at a map, a guy or a map telling you red and blue, blue stuff where nothing is actually changing and you have zero control over it, you're dead set on it waiting for a number to change. Imagine what you could have done it if you were proactively doing things to enhance your business, your own personal wellness and wealth for your family, your you know, what could have been accomplished and achieved, you know, but in steady, you get you get distracted in the things that are out of your control.

Dan Uyemura  17:31
Yeah, and honestly, that 60 hours number is super simple math. The reality of it is is like people who are in this heightened state of arguing on the internet are just generally completely distracted. So not only might they be spending, I mean, honestly, really, if they spent 30 minutes a day, that's 180 hours a year, right? Not only are they wasting like 180 hours a year on like engaged fighting, but they're probably distracted their entire waking hours thinking about things worrying about things. Oh, I should check Facebook, because did that guy reply to me about that incendiary thing I posted to him. You know, like, if you're acting completely distracted, you're doing nothing at 100%.

JP  18:06
That's 100% you're not doing anything yet. 100%. Right. And then you wonder why when all this passes, and I know that's we're not gonna focus on this particular podcast. With all these potential opportunities, you've missed 99% of them because when that train was coming through, you were looking left and it was blowing its horn as loud as possible. But you were actually speaking louder than the train was blowing the horn right. Busy arguing at the top of your lungs on things that were completely out of your control?

Dan Uyemura  18:35
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that this might be a topic for another show. Actually, it might have been a topic for six months ago, but whenever the biggest changes come to society is when the biggest opportunities come for people who are willing to not fall into the trap of worrying about the change and just embracing it. Right.

JP  18:51
Yeah. And hey, Dan, if you don't mind, I want to just throw something that was just on my mind that keeps a word that keeps coming up. And this might be any tangential position as well. 

Dan Uyemura  19:01
What a word.

JP  19:05
Yeah. You don't want it to be your 10 generals. That's weird. So which is this idea of someone or some thing owing you? Right? Well, they owe it, government owes it, local owes, this person owes it. It's something I want to be clear on. This is a lesson that I have learned not just as being a new dad or a business owner during trying times. But the combination of all these things right, having to furlough, rehire, fire, submit for loans, all of these experiences in the last nine months, maybe eight and nine, however long it's been at this point, have really reminded me the greater lessons learned, which is that nobody owes anybody anything. Right? Like nobody owes any. I can't say that more clearly. No matter what the situation is. Take a half step back and just remind yourself, that person doesn't owe me Anything, which in return, I don't owe them anything, we are all where we're at by our own doing, right? Like, yes, there are things that were out of our control that got us here. But ultimately, we're here with us. And that this, I know, this is a little bit spiritual kind of may sound kooky. But like, ultimately, this is where my responsibility has to lie. And from here is where I can make impact forward. And then now we go to what you and I were talking about, that's where the decision is made. Where do I want that time? And or distractions to be, right, where do I want those areas of focus to be.

Dan Uyemura  20:38
Even as aware of it as I am, I find myself obviously, like thinking to myself, like, well, they made me do this. They made me think this or you know, like, but but then I have to correct myself and say, like, no, I chose to I chose to feel that way. Even my own feelings. Like I chose to feel that way I chose interpret things that way and feel that way. That's my choice. It's just a really hard thing to do. And it's pretty powerful when you actually can get a control of it. Right.

JP  20:56
Yeah. And go back to social media. I mean, think about how you know, how many of us are on social media, and we're seeing people thriving right now. Right? They're on there with their best snapshot, their dislike, life's killer, they're flying, right? Meanwhile, you're in full quarantine, they're on the beach, and you're at the office, or their business is crushing. And you're in a mandated closure. So right, like we're in one of the businesses, one of the last remaining industries, that's enforced closure in many states, right? My LA locations in LA County, in California, and we're still operating in a parking lot, like, have just chew on that I'm not even allowed inside at 25%. Like I'm in a parking lot. You know, the gyms in LA don't even have parking lots. So they had no choice. They literally, were just like, Oh, I have to go out of business. I literally had a business. Now I have no business. So you could sit around being you know, pointing fingers and being mad, or you can strap you know, strap it on tight and just be like, well, what am I gonna do right now? I need to do something now. Because this isn't going to change. And no matter how much I yell at them, that ain't gonna fix it.

Dan Uyemura  21:59
Yeah, the world keeps moving, whether you're on board or not, you know? All right, well, cool. We're gonna stop it there. I think we covered some good stuff. I mean, take away from this get, you might have to be on social media for business reasons. But take your emotions out of it. Right? If anything, leverage social media and other people's emotions to help you as opposed to playing into the game. And I don't know, it really helps no one to fight over politics or anything like that.

JP  22:23
Yeah. And ask yourself if you are on it, and just constantly ask yourself, why am I on it? What good? Is this serving me and my family and my business? You know, and what is the positive potential outcome of this? Yeah.

Dan Uyemura  22:36
Yeah, I mean, by and large, in a nutshell, all social media is it's a platform that amplifies your voice. So what are you going to amplify? What do you choose to amplify? Are you going to do amplify a message that can improve your life, your the people you love life, your clients life? Are you going to choose to amplify something that is hurtful to other people or brings other people down or creates animosity.

JP  22:58
And by design, by design of people way smarter than us and mega computers. By design, it's meant to distract you. That's what it is. It is a built distraction tool. It's meant to try to keep you engaged as long as possible. So it's running algorithms in micro nanoseconds to keep you there. And meanwhile, you're like, I'm not gonna let it do that. While it's doing that. You know, like, I'm not gonna let you punch me in the face punch. I'm not gonna let you punch me in the face punch. It's like, dude, just just slip.

Dan Uyemura  23:30
Yep. Alright, man, thank you for your time. I appreciate it so much. We probably have to catch back up on some of these other topics we can fully jam out on but we've reached our limit for the day. I want to thank JP for coming through. And that's it for today, guys. We'll see you later.