Financial Freedom Fast
Building a $1M/year Business with Radio Ads w/ Jeff Donatello
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what our core values should be. Everyone in our office needs to be inspired. They're the people that you surround yourself with. If you have a small business and there's four, five, six people, do they all get it their job? Do they get what they're doing? Do they want to do their job and do they have the capacity to do that singular job? And if any of those things are not congruent, time them figured out, because they're not gonna be with you. We wanna have everybody paddle in the boat in the same direction, and if they don't GWC it, they can't paddle that boat, which then leads into right person, right seat.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the financial freedom fast podcast, the show that teaches you how to buy back your time and live life on your terms. Learn how to confidently leave your nine to five from guests who've done it themselves. Whether you wanna lay on a beach, travel the world or focus on your passions, this show will give you the tools to do what you want when you want. Now here's your host, Matt Emobile.
Speaker 3:What is up? Financial freedom fast, fam. So excited for you guys to hear my good buddy, jeff Donatello. We met on an awesome cat trip skiing trip which was like a back country all the way through the powder, him and I just hanging out in this little car that literally drives you through the backwoods, and we got to do some amazing backwood snowboarding, had such a good time out there and Jeff is a complete beast. His business is entering into a year where he believes they're going to do eight figures of revenue this year. So excited to show you and tell you what we dove through in the EOS operating system so you guys can learn how to implement some of these things into your life to be able to run a more efficient business if and when you guys start that up. So excited for us to dive in. And, guys, without further ado, let's jump into the pod, dr Jeff Donatello. Welcome to the financial freedom fast podcast. My man, my brother. What is going on, dude?
Speaker 1:Matt, how are you? Great to see you here on the computer. Last time we talked it was probably wherever snowboarding and tile with waist deep powder, as our recall.
Speaker 3:Dude. That's it, man, and we've been meaning to get this podcast on the board and get riffing on this, so I'm really excited to dig in today. We hopped on this call like 10 minutes or so ago and I was like man, I don't know exactly what we're going to talk about today, but I know we're going to have an amazing conversation, so I'm really excited to dig in. You've got a ton of business experience. I know you mentioned me. You've been over 50 countries. Would love to dig into what you have done to allow yourself to be able to go do that. I know digging into EOS and the traction system, so really excited to hear what you've got to bring to the table today. Jeff, for us to start off, why don't we just dig into who you are, what you do and what your story is?
Speaker 1:That's a big present to unwrap here. So if you listen to this almost like over 4,000 podcasts I'm a podcast freak. Right now you're like I do. I want to continue to listen to this crazy man. Hold on, because it's a wild ride.
Speaker 1:That might have started with an immigrant father who came to the country when he was 11. He's speaking Chinese, Russian, Italian and not English, and he was my gym teacher growing up and he's very entrepreneurial and he always said hey, you want to work on things, you want to work with people, and I always knew I wanted to help people. I love being the guy that tells people about the new up and coming things happening in this world. I just like doing that. So I ended up becoming a chiropractor and I had about a 20 year career, but I was really a commodity. Chiropractic has become a commodity, just like cutting hair. You go to the chiropractor, you pay, you get adjusted, you get out the door.
Speaker 1:So after about 10,000 clients, patients later, I decided I really wanted to work as an owner of medical offices and I happened to meet a wonderful woman, my wife Kelly, and we have evolved now into center for wellbeing. We're an hour north of Boston. We have three locations. We have almost 30 employees and we're doing pretty well. We're going to approach eight figures this year in gross income and it's really taken off. And thanks to EOS entrepreneurial operating systems, I'm set up as an owner, where I am the guy that sprinkles the fairy dusts right, so they, as they say, I'm the guy that kind of brings up the new ideas, and I just get to talk to great people like you and explore life and really just do what I want to do, which is awesome Dude.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. I'm really excited to dig a little bit more into EOS with you. First, where I want to hit on, I heard you have a little bit of an emphasis on meeting your wife Kelly, did you say and building out your business. It seemed like she might have been some type of help in building that out, like you guys did that together. Can you talk about the relationship that you had with her and like where you were at before you met her and where you were after you guys possibly started working on this business together? That's what it sounded like from your story. I don't know if you even worked together on the business.
Speaker 1:No, it's very intuitive. She is everything to my business. And what if, for Kelly, we wouldn't be at the level we're at? She has a marketing sales background. She's my second wife. An amazing transition happened. I was with the first lady for over 24, 25 years, two wonderful kids. But we move on and I will say if you're listening to this and you're a young whippersnapper, make sure that person you sign on with. If you do decide to get married, make sure you know that person's awesome with you and you spend some time, because that's your number one decision you will make in your entire life. So I hit the jackpot with Kelly and we've been able to really grow center for wellbeing in a way that has just exploded.
Speaker 1:And really what happened was post COVID. We were able to take our skill sets. She's marketing on sales and she's a health coach. She's a rakey master. My background is in chiropractic, so we're able to take all this and we discovered a metabolic reset weight loss program. That occurred after COVID Because, as you might say, everyone stayed home and they ate during COVID and they gained about 30 to 40 pounds. Everyone in the US, they're all looking to lose weight. So we have this reset program now where we have 10 health coaches, we have nurse practitioners, we have all sorts of medical people that help establish a proper way of eating real food to stabilize insulin and people lose 20 to 40 pounds in about 90 days and it's a great program.
Speaker 1:But to your original question you brought EOS into it. We can go that direction if you want, because a lot of business guys out there. You have to have procedures, you have to have structure, you have to make sure that all of your team members they get it, they want it, they have the capacity to do the job and it's everybody in the right seat and the right person in that right seat. So those are the tenants of EOS. So if you're out there and you're like growing let's say you're half a million to a million dollars a year or even less, and you have three, four, five employees, that's the time to lock into some type of operating system. And EOS is just one of many. But I know a lot of guys in GoBuddy are using it and for us it's been everything, because my EOS instructor actually a year ago, same as Dan Hillel, he was one of the early on people in GoBuddy he said to me you need to be in GoBuddy. So it's because of Dan at EOS that we're talking here.
Speaker 3:Amazing, amazing. That's what put us together. And, yeah, we'll dig into GoBuddy and we'll dig into EOS. I honestly want to stay on the track where I'm at right now with the previous question that I asked you. So you had said 20, 24 years prior to that, you were with another woman, I don't know. Do you mind me asking how old are you right now? I'm 55, coming up 55 and how old were you when you first got married to that first woman?
Speaker 1:19 9 income, sorry, I met around 19. I got married when I was 25 25.
Speaker 3:So that Ended when you were how old? At 45, right around there 45. So this new business that you had Really didn't start booming and taking off until a little bit later on in your life. What? What was the business like before that? Was it just kind of like you were a regular old guy like building out businesses, like your chiropractor Business, or what did it look like before that?
Speaker 1:the whole practitioner chiropractor. I studied functional medicine, I'm certified in clinical nutrition and I helped a lot of people with thyroid disease and diabetes. So I was always on that edge of cutting. Helping people metabolically yeah, I want the end show a couple of employees. Kelly came on and moved to New Hampshire. We grew the business and but the we had the gasoline right, we had all the parts, but, like I said, with COVID and weight issues and even stem cell therapy, we can get that to it. A lot of stem cell therapy, the stem cells of the weight, that just was a spark that ignited the gasoline so it blew up. So that's how the practice blew up, with Kelly and so you said that she's marketing your sales.
Speaker 3:What is the actual product? It's like a metabolic system that people follow, a way of eating, a way of dieting. What is the actual thing that you're marketing and selling?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so our about 80% of what we do is a 90-day metabolic reset weight loss program where we balance insulin, we Look at the different habits that people might have. If you're not sleeping well, you're gonna have a lot of cortisol, it's elevated and you can have weight issues just from sleep. So we try to discover different stressors, whether they're physical, chemical and emotional, and get teach people to eat real food and they tend to drop weight really quickly. So that's what we do and how do we sell it? How do we market it? That's another thing. We have DJs this jockeys and the radio stations that lose weight. They have big followings and it's a very unique niche and people say radio is dead. It's far from dead and if you have, especially we're in different markets in Boston and that DJ loses 20, 30, 40 pounds and he talks about it. I have one, one area where we have more five or six DJs and we get about four to six hundred leads a month. Now we have the process through a funnel and then we, the leads, come in, we sell them the product and Then we promise and we on the product and we build our brand after that, because it's everything in this world.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of weight loss places. That Kind of all they want people to do is either take injections, which are is mpik, or they want to have people eat free package meals Long term. That's their market and not us. We want to make sure that we. It's all education and that takes time. We have a lot to unravel here by marketing sales and then actually getting people better. There's a lot to that and that takes structure and then that's again back to EOS, not the hot party. Oh yes, this isn't any sad, I promise, but it's so great for us. It's the reason we're growing and it just goes so well with our model.
Speaker 3:It really helps us out a lot. Yeah, so ten million dollars, and so you mentioned you coming up on eight figures this year most likely, and for our listeners that's ten million dollars or more. What. How much of that contributes to this 90-day program that you have?
Speaker 1:85%. Yeah, you're set. Yeah, we're approaching that. I don't know if we'll get it We'll get through in a year but we're on our way, so what and what is the average cost per unit on that? It's $2595 for our basic program and it goes all the way up to $6,000 for our premium metabolic program. Whether we do blood testing and food allergies and genetics and you work with a nurse practitioner stuff you can't get through your regular doctor and is that all Local like you would have a your team?
Speaker 3:I imagine, with the amount of sales that you have coming in, that's not all, just local people coming to your team and getting the nurse, your nurse practitioner. Do you partner with other nurses and send people to different places to get their blood Tested and do all that type of work all over the country?
Speaker 1:If you're listening to this, we work. About 70% of our programs are virtual. So if you're in Kansas City, missouri, if you have a lab core, you can go there and then you can work with us virtually. I've had probably 25 go bros go through care in our office, so it's something that we lot of people we never see and then they go through the health coaching every week, virtually just like we're talking now. And but the technology post COVID, people are just used to using zoom and and all these other. What's this called Playground? Is that what this is called? All these different ways to talk, and it's just natural for people to do that nowadays, so they're up from face to face and is this program?
Speaker 3:is this one-on-one With? I know you mentioned your EOS now, so I would imagine it's not you just going one-on-one with them. Is it an online pre-recorded coaching system? Is it one-on-one with someone on your team? What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the metabolic program is initially you work with a nurse practitioner and they look at all your blood work. They look at your food sensitivities, look at your genetics, and then you're released to our health coaches one day a week. You got about a half an hour time with them one-on-one. You get your homework, you come back that next week and that that's about ten visits over 90 days. So it's all personalized, so it has to happen. The reason you don't see many programs like this are because all you have to find health coaches that are certified. Do you have to train them? There's, and you constantly have to make sure that they're playing by the rules and that they're. They're teaching people what Kelly and I want People to be taught, and that takes education and that takes meetings and that takes training. And there's a lot that goes into Setting up this structure, this organizational chart that we have to give people a good end product, which is losing weight or stem cell therapy, regenerating cartilage in their knees, whatever it is. We have to do it properly.
Speaker 3:There's a lot to it and is this payable by insurance?
Speaker 1:No, no, but that's the other thing, right. So in the United States we have a very unhealthy country and it's because it's run by not so much pharmaceutical industries people think that it's run by insurance companies. That's, who runs our healthcare in the US is insurance companies, and the insurance companies are not gonna pay for the proper testing, unless you're a very sick person. So the blood test we do, for example, matt, would be over four thousand dollars if you did it on your own, by yourself. You should never cover that, unless you have a cancer or something like that. But these are just tests that we look at, that are super important. But you, the doctors, are trained. Medical doctors, typically, are trained in it, and that's part of the challenge. We have to train our people. We have to send them off for seminars, what?
Speaker 3:and now this is a ninety day program. What happens after the ninety days?
Speaker 1:At the end of that time frame, the majority of people have lost their weight and they're on a maintenance program. They can choose to stay with us once a month. There's a certain Make way of doing that this lower cost. Most people are on their own and the majority keep the weight off because they're taught what it takes to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it really is all about education at that point. There is so many different programs out there that are just food programs. Right, they'll send you the boxes of food. You could eat the powdered meals for two months and yet you could lose forty pounds, but you're going to gain that back right away because you haven't built any habits for yourself. You haven't learned anything new, you just been eating what they've been giving you and that doesn't end up good for you. You lose the weight, but then you go back to your old habits. So the main thing here is really changing the habits.
Speaker 3:Jen, jeff, the reason that I wanted to dig so far into the business there is to show the listeners whenever your expertise is. There are different ways of structuring things. We just went through almost your entire business structure and how you were able to create this business almost out of nothing, just out of Hope and a want and they want to help other people and just the knowledge that you have. So everybody has their own special specialization. You can go out there and create a business where you can offer these high ticket services twenty five hundred to six grand that if you are providing the value for it. People pay and I love the different marketing schemes. That schemes marketing tactic that you use there with reaching out to the DJ and I'm sure Coming in on the sales side is a person thing and you get that deal closed up. So I love that and we've had tons of sales experts come on the podcast before and dig into that.
Speaker 3:So now where I want to take this We've gone through the business. What I want to dig into now is how you almost removed yourself from the business with this EOS system. For everyone listening, eos means entrepreneurial operating system, if I'm correct, jeff. Why don't we dig into that? What did it look like before you started EOS and how did you integrate it into your business? What has it done to help you take a step back from all the noise in the business?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the big thing is we actually have structured meetings now, with agendas, all right, and EOS is big on using all these funky terms that they came up with and branded. One term is rock, and you're a rock with EOS. Rock, that's a goal. So we have level ten meetings and the level ten meeting is usually we are. Our management meeting is on Monday, that's meeting I have to go to and there's about five managers at that meeting and then they all have their level tens During the week.
Speaker 1:And one of the great things about EOS is that you can't hide. As an employer team member, you are held to a certain standard, right, and, as we know, if you, every business struggles with not the best employees. Sometime people go through different type of stressors in their lives change. You see a great employee that will all of a sudden start going on direction and we can catch that quickly and we can try to elevate them to where we need them to be or there's enough pressure for them to do their job. Do they hit their goals every week? Over time? We don't. You tend not to have to fire people as much with the US because they quit, because they help to a standard. So what is your question?
Speaker 1:Eos has cleaned house for We've had to let go about six or seven people and the people we bat brought back on have been awesome. Jack welch, the CEO, famous CEO of a G E back years ago when I was growing up, he was like the man. I just read his autobiography and the one thing I took away is he says hire slow and fire fast. Now that's what we've done and it does shake the tree and the where the process. Right now have that apple shake in the tree and the bad apples have fallen off and they've been replaced by new growth and we're able to, using that apple tree metaphor, were able to really fertilize the tree well now and cultivate apple growth. Cover you up with some really good people now.
Speaker 3:And but before that we didn't have structure and we didn't really meet regularly and it was like hurting cats, and it's much more structure now so it sounds like what you're saying is the main, the two main tenants of EOS that you brought into your business, where these structured meetings making sure that You're meeting on different levels of the business and what you're talking about you have a structured meeting for each day of the week, whatever you have it set up weekly or however that works. And then Is also hiring the right people so you can have people that are being productive, doing the things that they need to do in these meetings, help it so that nobody can hide from the business, and they Are doing what they say they're going to do and what they're supposed to do. So how can someone, if they've got a small business maybe they don't have the 30 person business that you've built up, maybe they have?
Speaker 3:Let's take my business right now I have I've got a VA in the Philippines that helps me do some of my editing work. I've got an in house assistant, personal assistant, helping me manage my properties, helping me with different work, and then I've just got not employees but partners, which you could look at as almost An employee, but not it's. They're on the same level as you. It's not like organizationally they are under you. My partners are on the same level. How could someone like me that's got two, three employees Bring this type of system into play? Because I have read traction and I do know that they recommended. I think your business should be doing anywhere it's. If you're doing over five million dollars a month, it's good to bring this in. So how would you recommend somebody in my position use that?
Speaker 1:I have million a month. That's way I like. Five million a year are you? Don't need to do that much. I have friends that are doing five hundred thousand. Really, it's on the number of employees you have.
Speaker 1:But what I would start off with is you don't do you ask your question?
Speaker 1:Do you have your core values lined up with those two or three other people they had? You? Have you talked about core values? No, yeah, that's important and you know this right, and it's something that we don't really think about. I didn't think about until it was thrown on me six hours going over what our core values should be.
Speaker 1:Everyone at our office needs to be inspired. They need to be holistic, need to push the status quo, and there's another one that I can't remember right now, but it's written down on the wall. So we want to look at what we talked before about the other people around you. I would say, if you're smaller and you're trying to grow, just know that those people you want to surround yourself with, like minded people that have skill sets, that are Pretty smart than you, ideally, but those people do. They share your core values, and if you don't know where your core values are, it might be time to try to figure out what those core values are, because you want to surround yourself with like minded people. Make sense, right, I would say. If you're sitting there, you don't know the core values of your business, figure that out three or four of them. Brainstorm with the two or three people that you work with.
Speaker 1:Again, this is just, it's a, it's a group effort. When you come up with your core values, then the top part comes in with the g w, c again, all these acronyms, the people that you surround yourself with. If you have a small business and there's four, five, six people, do they all get it, their job? They get what they're doing? Do they want to do their job? Add, to have the capacity to do that singular job. And if any of those things are not, can grow it on the move on or figured out, because they're not gonna be with you and you gotta be swimming against. The current big thing with us is that we want to have everybody paddle in the boat in the same direction and if they don't g w, c, a, they can't paddle that boat, which then leads into what I mentioned before right person, right seat, okay. So to reiterate, your core values Is everybody, do they all get it? Do they want it and can they do it?
Speaker 3:And that's the start of really blowing up your business, so this system has allowed you to be able to work your way almost out of the business you mentioned in the beginning. You're the guy who throws around fairy dust a little bit, and I'm sure that is a. That's just a nice alliteration for us. I'm sure you do some things, but currently, what are your daily responsibilities in your business?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm the visionary, right that again, if you retraction that, there's a visionary, but then there's an implementer. My daily activities that I do pretty much are I look at marketing and I'm trying to constantly be aware of all that money we're spending to have leads come in. What DJs are working well, which ones are not working well is what is going on with TV, different industries, what's happening with digital? There's lots of ways people come in so I'm out. I oversee the sales and medical side of that, but I tend not, I'm not buried in the business and that's everything. So I just have to go to the level 10 meetings and I oversee our management.
Speaker 1:Now, if my wife is listening to this, she's laughing because right now she's kind of like the CEO. We're trying to pull her out and we have a fractional CEO right now who's doing an amazing job. So my goal right now is to get her out of that business and doing more of what she loves in the business. So she's buried in this business now and it's a lot. If I didn't have her. I don't have the freedom right now to do what I want to do if I didn't have her doing it, and you mentioned you're the visionary, so was she the implementer throughout this entire process by default?
Speaker 1:She is a visionary in her own sense. She's doing a lot of jobs that she is forced to do to keep the wheels going and we are now working. We brought in management that can do a lot of her jobs. Once you go from three to five to six million, you start to need things like fractional CFO maybe. Right, you need HR and HR in the CFO world.
Speaker 1:Those are things a lot of small business owners don't like doing. I don't like doing that stuff, neither does she. So reviews and paid time off and all this stuff we don't want to do that. That's not why we get in the business. So that's where it becomes very much a challenge. We get a you know what PEO is Professional Employment Organization. We're working with one of those right now to bring them on to work with our payroll and our HR. So this is why it's so hard to go from seven to eight figures and go by this. There's a seven to eight thing and I know better than most because I'm in the mix right now. When you go from seven figures to eight, there is a huge middle road where you need C-suite level people to get you there and with that comes a higher payroll, more structure, and if you're going to bring people on for such a high dollar amount, you got to make sure that you're on top of it or your money goes right out the window really quick. So it happens quickly too real quickly Now.
Speaker 3:are you a guy that gets stressed out?
Speaker 1:No, do you think of that? All right, I'm a human being, but this is what happens when it comes to stress. My thing is this two things you need to go to bed at the same time, and anyone who knows me, they know I. So we went up north with 10 go bros. We did all this. I'm in bed at nine o'clock and I'm up at five and my sleep is my thing. So I think that stress is directing. If you don't sleep well, then you're going to read your physiologically respond to stress a lot worse. And also, if you don't exercise, you got big problems. If I didn't exercise or do athletic things, I would be a trainer. So, yeah, I'm able to take that high pressure system and just go like.
Speaker 1:Last night, it was a wild day, crazy. It would have been really easy to have a couple glasses of wine and I'm not saying, don't do that, I love the wine occasionally, but it's easy to have wine at four, five, six o'clock on a Monday, tuesday, wednesday, right. So I went for a mountain bike last night. I was like I'm out of here and I rode for about I don't know 50 minutes out in the mud, came back, it was like the world, nothing happened. I was just like woohoo in Dorfin City, dope a mean hit over and over again in the woods. So I think that my mother always said when I was young Jeff, you never have the type that's going to get an ulcer, but I'm not an idiot. There's a lot of stuff. We're juggling a lot. If it wasn't for sleep and exercise and eating fairly well, I would probably succumb to a lot of that stress too.
Speaker 3:And now the reason I asked that is because you've got a more relaxed vibe to you, a pretty loose and open guy, and you'll be happy. The reason I was late for our podcast today is I was out getting a killer leg workout in this morning. My Tuesdays are my leg workout days, so I man leg workouts kill me. It takes me two hours to run through these things, but yeah. So the reason I was asking is you are a bit more laid back, so building your business, did you ever? You never ran into a moment where you were just like man, this is all too much, I don't want to do this. Did you run into any of those times where you were tested mentally, or were you always kind of on this vision, on this path to build up this successful business?
Speaker 1:Oh, I was tested post-divorce. I have no problem saying this. I had no money Like five or six years ago, like nothing, and I had an ex-wife knocking on the door making big payments to her every month. But I think I'm broken. I think this part of me that's broken.
Speaker 1:I'm always about what am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to sit around and cry, go to a bar and get drunk, I don't know, take illicit drugs? No, I just there's always the next day and it's okay. What can I do today? W-i-n. I came up with this years ago. What's important, right? What's the number one thing I can do now to improve? And there's always self-help. There's always everyone's screaming that.
Speaker 1:But really I think that we get caught up at all this minutia during the day and I have a list in my book of it all right now, all the crap I'm supposed to do that day, and I know there's certain things in there that I better do. There's a book called Eat the Frog. Right, you wake up in the morning. The first thing you do is eat the frog, because you don't wanna eat the frog. So you pick three things in that book. They say the major things, do those things. So you know, as bad as it gets, I'll go and go for a run, a paddle board, a mountain bike, do a hit workout, come home and just get at it again. And I never work late in the afternoon. I never work at night, ever. I always do my morning routine and midday and then I like doing this stuff. Midday it's easy, but I'm not. I'm reading after three, four, five o'clock almost always. I read a lot. I usually have five books going at once, because I'm an idiot that way.
Speaker 3:I got three going right now. The next book is always the best. I can't wait to get to that one. Damn it. I just ordered on Amazon. Now I have it. I don't wanna finish the old book, let me start this new one.
Speaker 1:Matt, there's nothing wrong with that. I just think there was a problem with that. There's nothing wrong with that. Who cares? Whatever, go back to it, finish it later, but I think half my books I get like half with Half with. That's far.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I actually just had a podcast release today. One of the new habits that I've gotten into tactics I do is now I buy the book and I buy the audio book and I listen to the audio book on 2X Speed and I just read along with it and that keeps me like if it was hard for me to motivate myself to read because it's mental tension. Now I can see exactly on the audible all right, at 2X Speed it's gonna take you four hours to finish this book this week, so that means you need to listen to an hour for four days out of the week. So right now I've got three books going. I got Never Split the Difference. I got Skin in the Game and then another book, the Art of Strategy, going, and two of those are on game theory. So, digging into game theory a little bit, I have not. I've had some good recommendations for that in the past but haven't dug into it.
Speaker 3:But, jeff, where I wanna go now is so you built up this business. I need to. I gotta hang out with you a little bit more now too, because I'm on the same vibe, the same wavelength of. I am pretty good at building things, staying lower stress while I'm doing it, but I feel like you. Just you found this one thing and you ran with it and it has just worked so well with you. So you and I both know you hang around with people. Close proximity will create, build you into the people that are around you, the five people that you hang around with, most of the people you've become before we dig into surrounding ourselves with a community of people. What I wanna ask you is why are you doing all of this?
Speaker 1:That's a deep question. Like it, born easy, how's that? I'm always. I'm just a curious person, right? I love to travel. Why am I doing this? I can't work for somebody. There's no way I have to work for myself the freedom that it allows me. I like the fact that I can do whatever I want today, just as long as my wife is happy. So I think, why am I doing this? I just I like to live life and you're right on about the people you hang around with, and that's the thing with GoBundance is, a lot of us are the same, right, we have that same. I would say. Most people in GoBundance have been told their AD. I disagree with that, right. I think that that's a deficit disorder. I just think that I have luck going on and I'm always trying to to try to find that next thing that excites me. That's what it comes down to.
Speaker 3:So, right now, what is the next thing that excites you? Is it building the business, or where do you see yourself on this path right now?
Speaker 1:In life. I always like to have three trips lined up and go to Iceland in three weeks and I'm going to, hopefully, bali in the spring there's a few Goat Bunnings events coming up. I always like to have short-term, long-term trips. That's important. A lot of our trips are based on because we're a well-being center. We tend to do wellness-based trips the business pleasure, so that's important. My thing right now, though, is really to get our business where it's where the we don't have as much turnover. How's that? Where our employees are with us longer and we're just there. We just turn that knob up where we're just starting to see it happen, and it's been a long road. So I would love to see that happen in the next six months and have some stability in our team members, just to make life easier, because we're tired of having to fire people and quitting new people. It's just a very stressful thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel you, man, but it doesn't seem like you take too much stress from it, so that's good, and let's take the podcast now to how surrounding yourself with a community of like-minded people has been able to create, mold, shift your identity, help create and build out your business and turn you into the person that you are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, back to Gobundance. I want to make this all about Gobundance, but when I was in the room in Tahoe, I walked in. I had only been in Gobundance for two weeks. I walked in there's 500 guys in this room and I'm like, what around? What is this all about?
Speaker 1:And I started listening to people on stage that were kind of like me, but a lot of they were in different businesses, a lot of real estate businesses but they were business people and I've never taken a business course in my life. All my business is from podcasts and books. And just by not saying no to some of those opportunities and to listen to what they had to say and to really interact and not be scared to go up and talk to people and meet people and have conversations. And you never know. We were in a snowcat dude. You and I were in a snowcat I remember this and I had heard about you and you were sitting across from me and we were taking that snowcat up to one of the mount tops to snowboard and powder and we were talking and it's like just being open to those around you but, more importantly, put yourself in the right room and that's very difficult when you live in a small town in New Hampshire there's a lot of small thinking, really nice people.
Speaker 1:But my friends that I have here are very different than my Gobundance friends and, to be honest with you, I have a family. I have four kids. Kelly and I have, we have step kids and my kids and my parents and our business. We're so busy here that it's great with Gobundance to go off and do stuff with those guys like every couple of three months, because it really balances it out. But, yeah, the biggest thing is getting in the room with like-minded people that think they're probably smarter than you. A lot of those Gobundance guys are smarter than me and I love it. So that's what I want. I want to be around people smarter than me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the small town mindset really can set in and it can push you to be complacent with where you're at and what you're doing right now and that may not be your highest and greatest calling, the thing that your heart is really pulling you to do. You can do so much more, you can do bigger. And I always felt that pull, but I was never really motivated by the people that were around me because everybody was just doing the same exact thing. The podcast, the books that's what opened me up to this new world and obviously the podcasting is actually where I heard about Gobundance and I just heard man, all the guys in this group are millionaires. I need to get into this group because I'm sure if I just surrounded myself with these people, they're doing, saying, thinking, believing different things that have been able to get them to where they're at in life. So if I can get around these people, it's going to create a big change in my life and, man, it has shifted my mindset, it's shifted my identity to be able to surround myself with guys like you and it is just getting around them as often as possible.
Speaker 3:And some people would say, oh, I don't want to pay for my friends, sometimes you need to pay to be in the room, to surround yourself with great people and everybody else there everybody else that's in that room is paying as well. So it's just paying to be able to have this community of people doing big things. It's not like you're paying to get a friend, like you have to go and make your friends and be open to the experience there, but you just have to pay to be able to get an opportunity to be in the room with this many like-minded people. So I think that is an amazing opportunity for people to go through so much growth and have so much, so much else to offer in the world. Where else do you think people can do that? If somebody doesn't have 10 grand right or whatever it is to shell out right now, how else can people get connected with other like-minded people?
Speaker 1:I was just thinking when you were saying that you don't need 10 grand. I went to a Rette syndicate at my lab was speaking in Nashville, tennessee. It was like $400, $500, $600. And I flew into Nashville my wife and I last year and there was probably 2,000 people that were part of that group and it wasn't a lot of money. It was a whole day and it was a great way to network and there's so many things online now that you have to listen.
Speaker 1:You're going to get on a plane or drive. For the most part, if you live in small town USA you're going to. But every area, I think Boston, there's meetups, there's whatever floats you boat, just get in the room. You don't have to spend a lot of money and even try even the I was going to say try out a millionaires, the Go Abundance group. There's a group called the Merge, a lot less money to get into the Jamie Gruber has put together. There's so many opportunities out there. You just have to.
Speaker 1:Again, you're talking about podcasts, right? If you're listening to a podcast over and over again and you jive with that person, I guarantee you that podcaster is somewhere standing in front of a group of people and it's going to ask for your money somewhere, whether it's a book or they're standing on stage. So if you jive with that person and you're listening to a lot of podcasts not everyone's Joe Rogan right, but Joe Rogan blew up as a comedian because of his podcasts Please tell him out arenas, and he never did that before. So I think, to answer your question, if podcasts is a way to go and if you listen to someone over and over again, try to meet them face to face and see where that leads.
Speaker 3:I love that. And even reading books too. Right, one of my first strategies before I did the whole podcast thing and reaching out to them. I would read books and I would reach out to every single author. I would just Google their contact information. Some authors even just put their contact information in the back of the books. I would, without failure, four out of every five books I would get out of in contact with four out of those five books that I read. So you can reach out to people and you can make that stuff happen. It is definitely a way to go and if you want to reach out to me, feel free.
Speaker 3:One thing I do want to say I went to a small group right, it was, I think I paid $700 or $800. And just from that one group, going out there and meeting up with these guys, I just got two investors from that one group. Somebody gave me $150,000 and somebody gave me $30,000 for two deals so I could go buy two properties. So it's like these small amounts of money that and $700 might be a lot of money to you that can make a big change in your life and make it so $700 in the future is a small amount of money for you, and that's why I like to spend money like that on investments into myself, because I want that little hurt, that little pain that I feel when I spend that money, to be now in the future. I want that to be less of a pain. I want it to be easy for me to spend that money because it's worth it.
Speaker 3:Jeff, I want to start digging in now to my final questions that I've got for you today. Question one what is one actionable step our listeners should take today to start on their path towards financial freedom?
Speaker 1:The first thing. If you're not, again, if you're not exercising or having an outlet for stress, you need to do that. That's numero uno. If you don't have an exercise routine, I think everything falls by the wayside. I'm a huge proponent of that. So if you're not doing something three, four, five days a week actively to take that stress down, you're doing yourself a huge disservice. And again, figure out what you love to do. Right, don't work. Don't if you're in a W-2 job, not to reiterate, but if you're working for someone else, you're making some money.
Speaker 1:Get in a room two, three, four times a year with other like-minded people and you said the guy gave you $150,000 to invest. Right, take massive shit. You just said something I've never heard anybody say ever, and that's you writing to the authors of the books you read. You think a lot of people write to them. That's why you get response back 80% of the time. You're taking massive actions. Just don't sit back and think the world's coming to you, man, and if you're all pissed off, that's the reason Nobody cares. I'll tell you a quick final little story. My wife went to this yoga class. So there was this big lady in front and at the end of the class. She said Namaste. She said I have some advice to you, ladies. Ain't nobody coming, ain't nobody coming, it's you Ficking your shit out and take action on it.
Speaker 3:I love that. Yoga is one of my favorite things to do. I really love it. It's all about showing up and being there for yourself, and that's the thing about one of the things with working out and going to the gym and exercising. The hardest part a lot of times is getting there. The run isn't the hard thing, it's getting up off the couch, putting on the running clothes, putting on the running shoes, getting ready to go and then getting out there. Once you start moving, it's out, you're in flow, you're moving, you're doing it.
Speaker 3:The hard part is getting to the gym. The hard part is getting in the car, taking the pre-workout, going to the gym, going to the yoga studio, whatever it is. Once you're there, all you have to do is do, and that is one of the things I love about activity and being active and keeping yourself active. Jeff, I love the vibe, I love what you're rocking with, I love what we talked about today. Last question I've got for you what is one question that you wish I would have asked or one topic that you wish I would have covered, and how would you have answered that question or how would you have expanded on that topic?
Speaker 1:They didn't talk to me about my triathlons. I've done 120 triathlons. I used to own triathlons. I owned two or three and that was my world for 10 or 15 years and you didn't know about that. Next time, read my bio. Man, I bring VT. Next time we can talk about triathlon.
Speaker 3:Dude, that's pretty impressive, brother. You used to own triathlons, you used to dig into it. So tell me let's talk about it a little bit, though what got you into that? You were big into running, swimming and biking, and you just wanted to buy one of these. How did you buy your first triathlon? I was competitive.
Speaker 1:I played college football. I was a high jumper. And then I got into the real world and I just wanted to compete and I was never in during South that I was more of a fast switch guy and I was able to really work with and I was in a pro but actually like a brag little bit actually won. I made six or seven sprint tries Because I had a coach and the whole thing. It was just a great triathlon. It's a great way to try to. You know, not only do you get fit in all three sports, but there's a lot that goes into staying healthy and getting hurt and the way to tie them all in I just loved. Then we owned a race. We developed a race called Pumpkin man that had over a thousand people. It was a half Ironman.
Speaker 1:And then I owned a race called Cetus Summit and it was just a great way to again connect right, because people that do triathlon that was my former life, my former wife, that was our world. Almost all my friends were triathletes. I was actually 35 pounds lighter than I am right now. I'm around about 208 right now. I used to race at like 178, which wasn't healthy. Probably I was too light. That was my whole world back then and it's funny how I did one this summer. I did a sprint this summer and if you're not training for triathlons it's hard. I almost died on the three mile run, which is 20.
Speaker 3:Dude, they take you out, man, they are hard. I did a triathlon too and I had no training going into it. I thought that I was in good enough shape. I had run a half marathon the weekend before, but man, I had a mountain bike. I had a mountain bike, not a road bike, and that thing healed me. I had old people going past me on the bike and that was embarrassing. So once I got to the run I was dead at that point. But, man, really cool, we'll have to dig into that future on a future podcast or just a conversation between you and I. But really appreciate the time today and from the Financial Freedom Fast podcast, I'm your host, matt Ammabiel. Today we had on Dr Jeff Donatello and we are signing off. Thanks, jeff.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to the Financial Freedom Fast podcast, the show that teaches you to buy back your time and live life on your terms. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening, and follow us online at Matt Ammabiel. That's Matt A-M-A-B-I-L-E. Be sure to tune in Monday, wednesday and Friday for our weekly podcast drops. Thanks for listening. Let's retire together.