0:00 [Music] welcome back to just kidding news out the closet we got Nick and here I am the bread consistency he can't you can't hide his pride man that's right you shouldn't hide that's a new one and today Nick is going to talk about the third most pival moment in his life this is you going solo starting your own personal training business nte damn let's go n when are we going to get to the point we talk about jacking off but let's go I'll talk about it right now I can start that's the everyday thing I could be a testimonial nte it works it works nice no we just I just like training with people but um the story kind of went where I was at this gym fight Academy for like pretty much like nine years that's in pad unit yeah that was like
0:50 the first gym I started at and you know I was there for so long and I built so many relationships there that was my home base they gave me so many opportunities to even coach and you know compete for him and and my eyes like that was kind of my world was like it just became that gym because it came I started teaching classes there I was teaching most of the classes there at a certain point um and I was just training all my clients over there so like I was all in at this spot and we're were you know running the fight team and you know running the kids programs and so I was there most of the time I was there from like 6:00 a.m. to like 10: p.m. every night when I go home um that was just kind of like the life I lived for a while I just teaching teaching teaching tons of volume so it got to a point where um it wasn't like we had like a riff with like the the owners or anything like that but
1:40 it was just like I realized we came to a point where I was like I don't think I could um continue to grow here the way I want to like I felt like the ceiling was a little low you know cuz I was trying to get clients in and coming to a fight gym is kind of like intimidating like a lot of people come in and be like what the ████ is this place you guys are SP there a bunch of sweaty dudes everywhere blood everywhere sometimes and it was just like man like and and the more clients I was training I I realized I needed more knowledge like were you training more uh for personal fitness yeah so I started training a lot more um like initially when I started coaching people it was all skills training like kickboxing Jiu-Jitsu Muay Thai whatever MMA stuff and then I started get any more regular clients and just like hey I just want to learn just to be fit how to lose weight and I was like oh ████ like this is a whole different ball game like
2:31 learning nutrition learning strength conditioning and eventually when we started working with more of the fighters we realized that like a big lagging point for them was their inability to like get strong and be conditioned and that was like a whole another side of the game of like the fight the fight game were a lot more science and the strength conditioning was going into the sport because it became like a real business like the UFC was like okay it's here there's a whole industry now that we got a chance to take a part of and kind of grow with because as the sport gets bigger more people wanted to oh I want to bring my kids toi Jitsu I want to try kickboxing so we just got a bigger market so I was like oh ████ this is the time to go and I realized I was kind of lagging and I was like man I got to make some changes and the money I was making there was okay but I needed to make more money right cuz I knew I was like me and Tiff are getting to that age where we at the
3:21 time we were probably it was around like nine 10 years at that point I was with Tiff wow so I was like all right well we're we're we're starting getting towards that place where I need to start being more financially imp I need to make more money cuz we're going to move out we're going to get married we're going have to prepare for like way bigger like you got to start planning for that house the imaginary house you can never buy in California exactly exactly exactly still can't yeah still can't never I get that 5.5 mil dude I'll be able to buy a home all you got to do is save up $300,000 maybe you can go cheap in Vegas 7% baby that's not bad you could buy that 5 million $5 million two-bedroom house in California all right dude stop dunking on California okay like it here sorry nice out of the cloud sorry so yeah anyway so I real I realized I needed to to go right and it was like it was really hard for me because so much of my identity and selfworth was in this
4:11 gym like as weird as it sounds when you're saying that like we were having a rift with the owners who's the Wii and who's the owners like I'm not going to really dis well it's like hey out the closet Nick out the CL I know step out but it was uh so but like you you're talking about it like as if it's a group of you it was a couple it was a couple of us like but it was mostly like it was like my jit's coach and and the owners had kind of had a rift and they had left so that was like kind of like a weird empty spot where like man like those are my guys and there's a lot of different coaches that were there I see okay and then you know like there was there was a couple weird things that happened where I realized a man I don't know if my growth my ceiling is going to be as high here like you know there was an issue with like making videos and marketing and so you were trying to do
5:01 more and they were kind of holding you down not even holding it down I think they just didn't understand at the time cuz this when Instagram started popping off and like videos were coming out and like oh like they weren't willing to like take chances yeah and they just had a a pretty crazy they had a they were upset with some of the stuff that we were doing like just making like marketing videos right using the gym and it was like it was kind of like a thing right is it are they traditional like that kind of yeah kind or I just think they didn't realize like what we were trying to do and it was is one of those things where like they didn't realize it as Nick's training grows through social media marketing that will also boost fight Academy but they didn't realize maybe they're old school so they just think wait what's what's this Nick doing using our place to grow but not knowing that everything kind of comes up together exactly yeah that's actually oh ████ it's like you knew exactly what
5:51 happened that was way better I should have wrote that down um just say that yeah just say that one more time but yeah that's exactly what happened um it was uh you said that way more professionally cuz I think I was going to say you think you could repeat it so that you could practice just let Bart say and you wiggle your mouth but anyways that was the point it was it was like they thought I was trying to pull a fast one on them and I understand like now I like I get where they're coming from at the time I I was like really hurt by that cuz my intentions was purely to grow to gym cuz in my head it's like hey man if we get more people to this gym more eyes on us we all win you know there's clients for everybody and we get a bigger Market it just you know we we all do better so that was my intentions people who are leery like that though are typically you know not good people to work with and it it was just one of those things where it's like we have a different point of view on how to do business right and so I was like all right well and it kind of
6:42 broke my ████ heart honestly cuz for you know there was a guy that you know I and I still have love for this dude no matter what and I will never um I'll never be weird with him or think ill of him and at the time he was doing what he thought was best at the time for him and um I just took it kind of personally cuz I was like really young and I just was like well like my intentions are pure in my head but maybe I didn't communicate that so that was kind of a lesson for me of being able to sit down and like have a conversation anyways I need I realized I needed to leave and the big challenge for me was so much of my self worth and my own value was built in from being a coach at this gym like I thought that gym's known throughout town has like Legacy and all that I thought I only got a job cuz they put me here cuz they got love for me and and that was like really scar for me cuz I was like okay what if I leave this gym and I ████ fall flat on my face
7:34 like cuz all My Success all my leads everything came from this community yeah you know so but I realized like during this time I kind of felt my first stint of like being depressed you know like I really couldn't shake this feeling of what the ████ am I going to do I'd wake up with like I never had a what you called panic attack panic attack before I'd wake up in the middle of night just sweating dude like you're ████ you're going to you're going to be living on the streets like that's what I literally thought in my head and all the people that really cared who thought about me were all at this gym so I was like if I leave this gym these guys are going to think like you know I'm going to lose these people in my life essentially you know cuz I built so many your personal identity 100% it was everything like oh Nick works at fight Academy and that's how I thought people saw me and I think that was the case for a lot of the time so
8:26 you know I had to I was just really worried the whole time and I had to start making I had to start thinking about like my own business and thinking about me and that was just like you can't do this why would you ever think you could do this you know like the most crazy uh impostor syndrome that around the time when we all met kind of yeah this was around the time where we all started training with each other and when I met Bart and Joe and David right so this is kind of like and and and David and you guys were really pivotal and like helping me understand like n you'd be fine like just keep doing what you got to do and David was really helpful with this too like he told me like dude you'll be fine just find another spot take your clients you'll be able to build your business and you guys helped me so much with like Social Media stuff and just you guys were awesome so like you guys were definitely a big influence in helping me
9:17 get out of the spot that I've been at for so ████ long and it was so foreign as soon as I stepped to this new gym that I found um it was just a it was a personal training gym where everybody trained it was like like 80 trainers there it was pretty crazy it was between two locations but 80 trainers yeah it had enough space where I could actually train kickboxing people and jiujitsu people and also do like strength conditioning stuff for them right and not a lot of gyms have that it's always like just a Muay Thai gym just a Jitsu gym everything there just a pyro gym it was just all in one so I was like man this is like the perfect place how did you find that place it was just like U I was asking other trainers around the area and I knew a couple friends that were at at the spot and I was like looking into it and I met with the owner and I was like telling him my situation he was like yeah we'll get you
10:07 set up and it was actually really easy and I was like okay cool but then at that time I was really insecure about like my own qualifications to be able to coach anybody and I just didn't think I had ████ I knew anything didn't you already have a cscs so that's when I started to pursue my cscs and that was like you want to stop being a military ████ and tell people what that means it's say a strength and conditioning degree a military ████ The fouryear fouryear Bachelor yeah so because I got my my bachelor degree in college it took me ████ like 8 years to do but until I I got my I got my bachelor's in like I think exercise science it allowed me to sit and take this uh nationally qualified um strength editioning test and I was able to get it cuz I wanted to work with high school athletes and I felt like I wanted to make a marketting trying to help like MMA fighters cuz that was like a niche that nobody was really doing at the time cuz a lot of
10:57 the personal training like acronyms that people have you can get them in like A8 hour seminar wow so a cscs is like a legit one if you ever want to hire a legit like coach to strength and conditioning coach you have to look for someone with the cscs how much harder is it to get what's a four-year degree the test was really hard I took a nap in the middle of my test it was like a you passed the first time I didn't think I was going to pass I was literally like while I was taking the test I was like I have to tell everyone I have to come up with excuses with how I failed why I failed and I I passed and I was like that's like you in the middle of your fights too you just kind of like it's common theme it's a common ████ theme but then he's bad at telling us how we won I'm like wait what do you mean he's like yeah he's like I got hit and then I was blacked out I couldn't see anything he like but I won that fight it only happened a couple times what makes the test so hard like the actual test test well you know was funny was like um so much of you expect a test
11:48 to be like okay the very basic a b c but it's like one of those tests where all the answers are right you just have to pick the most right one and they're a lot more yeah so it's a lot more conceptual and it's like it's more applied so it's like you have to understand the basic concepts of whatever Theory and you have to be able to apply it to like an actual athlete or whatever whatever um I guess uh whatever case they give you pretty much like this is a are they trying to trick you in the test kind of kind of it's like 140 two pound athlete she's a female athlete blah blah she's in this phase of her training what does she have to do if she wants to lose x amount of weight like there's like those kinds of questions or is it just genuinely like that's the science of like health and fitness like everything kind of works yeah that's that's also too it's like what's the best path what's the most efficient path for this individual right so I was able to get that and I was like ████ stoked and this was as I was training um
12:41 at the gym but throughout this time like the constant theme of my life is I don't think I'm going to do this who the ████ do I think I am I'm going to fail syndrome yeah 100% And even when I was training clients I was like dude why the ████ are these people here like nobody like it was just I'm such a headcase why me I remember during that during that period or maybe a little bit after that is when Co hit um and I remember uh during that time so when I met Nick I think he was just a newly uh minted purple belt in Jiu-Jitsu and I remember his coach was going to give him his a brown belt and his coach was just kind of like driving around town and then giving people their belts and Nick's impostor syndrome like really came out cuz he comes out on the street I remember watching the video and then this coach gave him his brown belt and he's like what I don't I do to deserve this and it's like obviously your coach
13:32 thinks you're at the the level to but it was also like just it was it was multiple things like why me we were in the middle of quarantine right it was like New Year's Eve and then I just see my coach outside my house I'm like what the ████ he's like come outside I'm like what are you mask I come outside and he's just standing there with his wife who like we're all good really good friends with and he just gives me this belt I'm like what the ████ is this like it was just such a like I was about to go to a New Year's party or something during Co did you wear the belt to the New Year's party no I didn't no no um I should have that's why we wouldn't get brown belts I think I'd be cooler you know but like no matter how scar I was and what a what a giant like physiological reaction I had from just torturing myself up here it was just like it just shows you that like ████ dude you really have no excuses and it's
14:23 like you just have to move forward and I think it it gave me once again it just I'm a I have a of confidence just generally and me being able to survive that whole year and saying like oh ████ I was able to make way more money than I did at this gym with somebody else paying me as an employee on top of training right and this is just the only thing I did by myself and I just focused on one thing and I was able to exceed my expectations and like I was like really proud of myself I was like oh ████ like and you know I don't really get those moments for myself that much but during that time because it was it was probably the biggest mount it was bigger than any of my fighting careers it was just like it was a really big test for me that is scary though it is yeah you know I still to this day I'm like how the ████ do I even survive now is fear your motivator I think I think it's one of them yeah it can be good if you can use
15:13 it yeah cuz like once again like I think my We Fear everyone you know what I'm saying I think my default my default is man I want two I want yeah my default is to sit and be like analysis by paralysis that's that's kind of my thing and it was you guys entrepreneurs in it was like anytime and it was like I was in this phase where I was looking for reasons to not do it versus like actual solutions to the problem so I remember like I I was at dinong with with me Joe and David and I was just giving all these reasons why like I was going to fail and then Joe and David were like no just do this instead you ████ ████ and at the time I was like so in my own head and every sometimes I think about this conversation and I just go I just cringe you know I just go what
16:04 a ████ ████ dude and it was just like any any solution they gave me I was like oh that's not for me that's different like that's for a different type of it doesn't apply for me in reality they're just giving me basic business principles but then it wasn't until like two years later after running this business I go they're ████ right what a ████ ████ took you were doing you were doing the girl thing like I just want you to feel with me right now this is what happens when you're raised by women dude and like for me I and I learned a lot about myself is like I have to run my head into the wall like 50 million times to be like oh I think I'm not that smart I think I should try a different path you know that was just and and going through that like you don't learn that stuff about yourself until you just like I guess are forced to throw yourself in a fire picking up a lesson in two years is pretty good though you think so yeah I do I think that's a little long huh n cuz cuz you had to apply it I think it's actually pretty good is there any actual truth to
16:55 your joke when when you always say that like being heavily outnumbered by women growing up has like shaped you oh yeah is that but is that like for real for real I think so cuz I think growing up I was very like and I still am like this but I was just most of my friends until I was in like high school were like ladies like like my close friends you just got along with them better I got along with ladies way better it wasn't until I joined a fighting gym and had to be around a bunch of ████ Burly manly men where I learned how to like riff with buddies and not take things personally like people like cuz yeah with ladies like you know at least my sisters they'd always like ████ throw Jabs at me and be like yeah whatever you know laugh off it be like oh ████ is that true you know like so you kind of feel like hurt a little bit right but then when you do it with the boys it's just like yeah just ████ clowning like everybody gets it you realize still
17:45 hurts in here a little bit not for not for us not for us love this place it's the best now I seem like I need to I crave it you know if I don't have it I'm like oh this is not right you know but um yeah it wasn't until like I got to a gym like that where I learned how to like be with boys and like it was to the point where like I didn't really like hanging out with guys that much like that was just it now I only hang out with the boys I don't really this really is out the closet for real I'm 180 dude there's a there's a correlation with that where guys grow up with a lot of females like and then they get into the most Macho ████ ████ well cuz like they thirst for it you're so sensitive like I I really do do feel like I just was such a I was so like I was too in tune with my emotions you know what I mean cuz it's like yeah you could have emotions but
18:35 you can't like you can't lead with that all the time cuz then it forces you to make really bad decisions with how you is that why you stew longer was your pop not around he was but he kind of like traditional Chinese dad it wasn't until you said it was just unplugs from the ████ living room he's like imaginary blinds go down and like okay Dad's here but not really like we would spend time with each other but it wasn't like I was a lot closer with my mom I see you know but that just like a gay guy like a gay guy can I get the nick uh Cinematic Universe timeline correct in my head when you went to uh take your cscs test um when was that in your journey like relative to like your fighting versus coaching versus so this is like 2019 2019 so I left the gym at
19:25 2018 December 2018 2019 I started at the new gym January 2nd I got engaged to Tiff and we had moved out earlier that year so we all moved out I moved out started a new gym and I got engaged the Tiff within like the first like three months of that year like q1 of 2019 2019 oh ████ yeah and um and then we I ran the business through the gym there we did better than way better than I thought I was going to do and then the next year Co hit and then like I had to like res scramble just reshuffle the deck again cuz it was just like oh ████ like what's going to happen now cuz I I had all these inperson clients and then they're like you can't do that anymore and then you know we're locked in the gym we're locked at home for like 3 weeks and then we're like okay we'll be back in 3 weeks no big deal this be over
20:16 damn fast forward to I drive by the gym they're clearing the gym out so one of my clients at the time had owned the gym that we were training people at and he had sold the building he had sold the building and it so it's it was kind of crazy if Co didn't happen we just would have been without a gym well he sold it without letting anyone know so so so the owner of the building was different than the owner of the gym does that make sense the landlord yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah pre he he he sold it in like February and my client was like hey man I don't know if you noticed but like the gym got sold did you guys have any plans on where you guys are going to go next and I was like huh what are you talking about and then April happens Jim is gone right so then we're like okay what the ████ so then we had like kind of train
21:06 clients at a park and like when it was okay cuz everybody was like you shouldn't be outside you shouldn't be meeting with people you shouldn't be doing this can't even be outside so like you know the business like my my business took a hit in the inperson side so then it was like ████ what do I do and everybody was doing the online training and at the time I was like this is not who told you to do online a year ago before that you guys did yeah David David was like see this is the guy this is my buddy who I helped build his onl business and I was like yeah that's not for me I can't do that cuz at the time I didn't think I earned my right to be able to do that and that's just kind of how I felt like and I and I kind of stand behind that honestly like I shouldn't be training people online until I have like certain amount of hours of working with people in person like that's just what it is right cuz online it's a whole different ball game but anyway yeah so after Co that's when that ████ happened it popped off and I was like oh c ████ like this is the new this is the new age and now it's everywhere it's just like online
21:56 coaching is just like it's normal you're ████ behind if you don't have something like that yeah so um so yeah it was just like tons of running my head into the wall panicking constantly like what the ████ am I going to do but you know thankful to to all these other entrepreneurs at the time and you guys cuz the guys that I was training with they weren't really entrepreneurs a lot of those guys had day jobs and they were just like yeah well it's like a good luck you know got of figure it out and I was the one kind of on an island like all right what do I do so I had to find other people who were in this this gym and that's when I met Jeremy the owner of linhardt uh jits Academy I met him at this gym and he was with his business partners at the time um and they had their own kind of like falling out and split and it was like a whole I'll talk about that in a later video cuz we'll
22:46 talk about that um but you guys were each other's rebounds kind of but but if I didn't go to that gym I wouldn't have found Jeremy and we wouldn't have what we have today so it's it's pretty crazy how this all kind of fell out for a guy so afraid of failure you done pretty good thank you man all right that's it for this episode we'll be back with Nick Mar and Tiff and then uh the medical Journey that also went with that
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