Trust the Process (With Matan Gavish)

This is The Momentum Podcast. Put yourself in this situation. You've just been told that you have two weeks before you'll be out of business. Two weeks. What would you do to get your business profitable again? The current crisis facing the world has dramatically shifted the needs of entrepreneurial business.

Entrepreneurs have faced this situation far too many times this year. In today's episode of The Momentum Podcast, we're joined by a special guest, Matan Gavish of Fit Hit. Matan was told that he would have two weeks before he would be out of business. In fact, in the state where he operates, it became illegal to operate his business as a gym. This presentation was taken from a recent CHARFEN Summit. The perspective Matan shared was powerful and it shows the perseverance of entrepreneurs when their backs are against the wall. I hope you enjoy.

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is The Momentum Podcast, made for empire builders, game-changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers, and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to, we challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat, because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future. Instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution, and we always will be. Deanna: Matan is going to be talking about how the cadence helped him bounce back from near catastrophe. Not to speak for Matan, because obviously he's going to tell his story, but he's been a member for quite some time. Matan was in our accelerator program and then COVID hit and things just went sideways, all different kinds of ways. Then you have been really able to make a lot of adjustments. When you submitted what you were going to talk about... Honestly, Matan, I didn't know a lot of the stuff that you had mentioned so I was so excited about it because you really had just completely, it sounds like changed and made a lot of recovery from the situation that it created. For those of you who don't know Matan, he had an in-person fitness facility in New York City, which was hit very, very hard by COVID. Matan, I'm going to let you speak to that in terms of how the Charfen process has helped you turn around a really, really difficult situation. Matan Gavish: All right. Sounds great. Deanna, thank you very much for the lovely intro and just say how exciting it is to see all these faces. It just means that you guys are 679 - Trust the Process (With Matan Gavish) Page 1 of 7 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Dec 22, 2020 - view latest version here. doing something right on the Charfen site. There goes one of the awards. I usually keep my awards in the closet to collect dust, but I figured I'll pull them out today and then attempt to impress you all. I'm going to try to keep it short. My idea for today is to, if anybody has doubt regarding the process that every single one of you have signed up for is to trust the process. A little bit of a history. We've created a company, a fitness company that provides weight loss and [prescient 00:03:49] and mixes it with self-defense and female empowerment. We created this thing that didn't really exist. When I just started with Charfen, we were doing okay. But before COVID, using the cadence, we actually, within a year almost like quadrupled the size of the company. Then qualified through this award over here, which is the Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies in the U.S. which is an award that I wouldn't even think was possible for us to achieve before sitting in the actual room of this virtual summit a few years back when we were actually meeting each other in real life and talking to some real entrepreneurs. Now, what that has done, here's the cool stuff, right? We got this and the award is for 2020, but it's based on performance that is before 2020, which means before COVID. Well, what happened in real life is like we hit this multimillion dollar situation. We were probably in the top 1% of 1% of gyms in the U.S. as far as how many members, and growth, and money and all this other stuff. We were flying, riding really high. An unbelievable team that worked like a well oiled machine because they're all working by the cadence and they're all true believers because we've created, like we just followed everything to the T. Everybody on team just wakes up in the morning ready to change the world with us. Then when COVID hit, when it hit New York, it became illegal to do what we do. It's still illegal today, December, to do what we do. We are still not allowed to hold classes. We used to have huge classes, 70, 80 people in a fitness class, eight times a day. It was nuts, the level of growth. What do you do when the thing that you are the best at and you set your mind to change the world with all of a sudden becomes something you're just not allowed to do? From a physical perspective, we lost, I would say 80% of the business within the first month of COVID. We went back, I don't know, seven, eight years in advancement and work like instantaneously. Our expenses did not go down. They stayed exactly the same, which means we ran out of cash really quickly. In April, our CFO told us that we have 14-day cash runway to go out of business. We had two weeks to figure it out. I'm sure a few people here can also relate to that, right? I believe it says, it got knocked down sideways. I was like, we're sideways. We went from riding really, really high, moving up really fast to hitting truly low. This is like lower than seven years ago or eight years ago when we were just getting started. It was there. What needed to happen, and this couldn't have happened without the Charfen cadence is we had to reinvent everything. Basically, what I gave my team is that the new order of the day is we're starting 679 - Trust the Process (With Matan Gavish) Page 2 of 7 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Dec 22, 2020 - view latest version here. over, starting with the client-centric mission. We can't be who we were a month ago anymore. Our mission has to change because our mission today isn't working. Our mission today does not exist. How do we know we're successful? How do we know we're successful? There is a Fit Hit facility in every major city around the world. That's what we were working towards. Opening, replicating our system, bringing in investors. We want to bring 50 million dollars, open 30 locations in two years. That was the mindset. What locations? There is no locations. There is no brick and mortar anymore. People aren't leaving their houses anymore. Your dream is done, it ain't happening. What we did was we had to restart from scratch and we had to reinvent a new business. We were teaching people fitness and weight loss. People came to us in a good mood trying to get in a better mood. People now couldn't even get out of bed in the morning. Most of the people that are attracted to our program are actually creators, entrepreneurs, people that are movers and shakers, because when they come to us, we make them move and shake even harder. What happened when everybody got hit the same way that we did, everybody lost control. If you're an entrepreneur, you know that when you lose control, you lose everything. I was looking at what was happening for me emotionally. Four major emotions crept up fast, sadness, anger, anxiety, fear. All four of them were eating me from all directions. I felt to myself that you know what? If I feel like that because I have just lost control of my dream. I've lost control of the path. I lost control of everything. I am sure my community feels same way. For me to solve it, for me and them, I have to recreate everything. We created a new program that solves those problems to the community. Even though we lost, again, 80, maybe 90% of the business in the beginning, we figured that we're to going to have to just recreate the whole new thing that gets people to get up in the morning. Not just get up, but also make their bed. We went from this macro thing of changing everything, before and after pictures, learn fight skills, become a champion. We went competitive. We won all these awards, all these competitive athletic and fighting awards. It wasn't about that anymore. We had to talk to people differently and we had to restructure everything. Now for me to physically be able to do that, I needed a team that could now help me reinvent the thing. Thank you, Adrianne. Thanks, Jonie. We were a team of 32. Under Charfen cadence, I grew my team from six to 32. Just to understand the level of growth in a year. I had a team of 32. Each and every one of them handpicked. Each and every one of them a wonderful human being. At least 20 of them did not have room in this new world of mine. You go through this super painful process of letting go of some of the most brilliant people that totally signed up to your vision of what's reality. Right? But what are you going to do? There is no more front desk anymore. Our amazing front desk people are useless, right? There is no cleaning crew to clean because there's no facility for us to go to. I can understand the depth of personal issues. After letting go of 20 679 - Trust the Process (With Matan Gavish) Page 3 of 7 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Dec 22, 2020 - view latest version here. people in one day, in tears, I actually cried on the Zoom call and that's the first time that happened, right? We had to redo everything. Now, here's what I love about this program, because I come from the fitness world, I connect to it so wholeheartedly. When you have the skillset, it doesn't matter where you are. You can catch up a lot faster with the skills that you have. If you don't have to learn a whole new bunch of new skills, and you already have them, you put them into play and things will move a lot faster for you. Even though we lost so much money and lost almost everything, we had 14 days of cash run rate. I mean, within three months, we were seven-figure run rate. A couple of months after that, we passed a million dollars in actual revenue. We're now back on track. We want to hit this list again. It's not going to happen this year, unfortunately, because we're less than last year. But next year, we know we're going to hit it. We know we're going to be okay. The reason I know it is because when we put the cadence into play, I force my team to stretch, to fit this new reality. Right? We've decided, okay, so we're no longer a gym. What are we? We're an internet company. We're Facebook now. No, we're an internet company. Okay, well, how do we do this? All right. What's your job? You are a program director. Okay. Now you're program director plus sound and video and figure out what bandwidth means because I don't know that. Right? The fact that I had a platform to challenge my team to step up and come back with solutions to things that I don't know. I don't know how to run an internet company. I mean, now I do, but then I didn't know how to run an internet company. I had the platform to make my team live up to the fact that they are amazing people and grow, which means, again, it goes back to their four Rs, right? If your four R earlier today had to do with running an amazing class. Now it's figuring out which applications to use, how to connect with people remotely, how to get people excited remotely. It's a whole new set of skills that they had to build. We were able to recognize what they were, putting in the four R documents so it's in front of them. All the works, all the job, every single person job had to change. Our mission in the world had to change. We were now solving a different problem. We were doing that with kind of like a news. Every day you would hear about a gym that went down and never reopened again. I'm in a community of like a lot of gyms and every day another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust. Another one goes down. Another one is never coming back. This one is closed. They're all hating on the government. They're all hating on the governor. They're like, how come we're not getting help from the outside? How come we're not getting help from the outside? That's the little guys. Then the big guys started falling. Gold's Gym, out of business. New York Sports Club, out of business. Cyc Fitness, out of business. Flywheel, out of business. YogaWorks, out of business. These are all 10-figure companies, right? This is not seven-figure, eight-figure. These are like nine and 10-figure companies. They can't figure it out. Meanwhile, I feel like I have this little cheat code with the 679 - Trust the Process (With Matan Gavish) Page 4 of 7 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Dec 22, 2020 - view latest version here. Charfen cadence, right? They don't. I come to my team and I was like, hey, you're my marketing. There is a marketing person in a 10-figure company. They couldn't figure it out, but you can. You are my program director. There's a program director in 24 Hour Fitness, a billion dollar company. They can't figure it out but you can. Why? Because we know how to do OTAs and they don't know how to do OTAs, so we're going to do that. We're going to figure it out and really using the little details, the little nuggets that you get from this program. We've revamped an entire business, eclipse in my opinion, the whole industry right now. Here's the beauty of it, right? What COVID did to fitness other than crushing it to the ground is that it evened out the playing field. More money in the bank didn't mean an advantage in real life. Right? Equinox that probably spent eight million dollars to just open their location, right, where they import their floors from Italy and they bring in whatever, the chandelier is from whatever and it's gorgeous. They don't have an advantage with me anymore. They run a class on Zoom online just like I do. How do I beat them in this new game? It had to come to people, right? I had to stretch my people more than they could stretch their people. I had to deliver a better product using the same exact tools because money didn't matter anymore, better than they do. The only way that that could happen is to have a team that will die for your mission. When I say die, I mean, half of my team took a pay cut below minimum wage. They would've made more money quitting on my mission and go to minimum wage and they would have made more money. But for them it was insane. It was a non-starter. It was a non starter because they know that if we can figure it out, we'll do it. I bet you that one of the reasons that all of these big companies couldn't handle it is because nobody was sold on their bigger mission of changing the world. They weren't confronted with that. At the same time, and I don't know if it's ego, I don't know. I wasn't in the room when they made decisions. Not one of them made huge decision to their value proposition like how am I changing the world. Oh, I can't open up my physical location. Well then, I guess I'm done, right? I didn't understand why with all the money and all the power and all the board members and all the, you got resources. Why aren't you challenging the very core of what you do and solve the problem that exist today that didn't exist three months ago? We made a hard pivot, a really hard pivot and the skillset, and this is the cool part, right? Because you get that skillset right here, right? With these coaches you have right here. It's that skillset. It's a completely learned skillset. I didn't have that skillset in 2017. It's a completely learned skillset. You go ahead and apply it. Now you can skip stages. What took me eight years to build, I managed to quadruple in one year. I lost all of it and I managed to come back in five months because of the skillset. It's like fitness. If you ever tried to lose weight but you don't really have the right formula, what's going to happen in your life? You're going to lose a little bit. 679 - Trust the Process (With Matan Gavish) Page 5 of 7 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Dec 22, 2020 - view latest version here. You're going to gain it. You're going to lose it. You're going to gain it. You don't really skip stages. You get somebody high level gives you the formula and hold you accountable to it. Boom. You look different. You feel different. Your energy is in the sky. Then let's say you get off the horse. Very quickly, you get on the horse. I just proved it. It's funny. I really love this idea that the formula exist just to prove to the world. My wife, we just had a child. Oh, you know, so add to it a pregnant wife. After the pressure of pregnant wife and COVID, then we had our kid, our daughter two months ago. Just for the heck of it, when she was at her most pregnant, I decided to gain a bunch of weight with her to show people how fast I can drop it under the worst conditions ever. No physical gym. Crazy work environment, 19 hour days, newborn, which means you're out there with two hours, whether you like it or not, 24/7. If I can drop the weight and do it, anybody can do it. Why? Because I have the blueprint. When I'm talking about business, this is the blueprint. You're getting it right here. This is not some conceptual fluff that gets you all excited and you're going to do 20% of it. Dive in, my biggest goal to you is take everything and do it. Then if something doesn't work, go through that same process again. Just think about it. We were an Inc. 5000 company that we're now rethinking and recreating our mission statement. Talk about starting from zero. This is like a startup mentality, right? It's nuts. But we were able to do it because we got that little grid that says who do you want to serve? What are you going to do for them? I know you're going to successful. Like we just answered those questions again. How much you mean it in the process is something that's very important. Those of you that are just starting out, I just want to tell you that there's going to be a few things here that are going to raise an eyebrow for you. Like really daily huddles. I'm going to demand my team to meet every day. We demanded it throughout COVID. Our team became so tight. I mean, we had it before COVID, but for some reason they thought maybe it should be something that we're giving up during COVID. I insisted absolutely not. The cadence is what got us here. The cadence is what's going to get us through this thing. Let's not drop the ball just because nobody sleeps today. I mean, you know, just show up tired. That's what's going to happen, but show up. Alex Charfen: What a powerful presentation about trusting the process and leaning into skills that you acquire as an entrepreneur. If you're ready to unlock the code that helped Matan go from having a business on the brink of bankruptcy to growing and making a massive contribution, we are ready to help you. If you go to billionairecode.com right now, you can get on a call with a member of our coaching team and find out which one of our coaching programs best fits the needs of your business right now. Let us show you the systems, the processes, the frameworks that we teach entrepreneurs, that'll teach you to predictably grow your business in any market, even this one. Go to billionairecode.com. That's billionairecode.com. 679 - Trust the Process (With Matan Gavish) Page 6 of 7 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Dec 22, 2020 - view latest version here. 679 - Trust the Process (With Matan Gavish) Page 7 of 7 Transcript by Rev.com