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David is interesting. That's how use an arrepreneur. And he has a company called Inception, which is actually a mental wellness. It's a variety of different things. It's an actual a physical facility and it actually just reading it. I'll let him explain it better than I can, but it attacks it. I don't want to say attack. It approaches mental health from a whole different standpoint.
I like to call it, and maybe you can take Maybe you guys call it just a sent a wellness enterprise.
Well we call it the first mental health gym.
Mental health gym.
Yeah, that's that's something that so let's start right there, because that's that really caught my attention because usually it's a mental health clinic, mental health facility, even like a mental hospital. Right, I've never heard of it a mental gym. You think of gym. You think of like exercise and working out, physical gym. So it was interesting when you said mental health gym. So what does that mean? What's a mental health gym?
Well, the reason why I came up with a term mental health gym is because I want to normalize the actual process for everyday people to come in and take care of their The number one thing we have is our mind, right, but there's nothing for just the everyday average person. When we talk about mental health, we always talk about, you know, the aunt who's schizophrenic or something like that. We go to this very extreme, but we don't understand that seventy to ninety percent of doctor's business
or do to stress related illnesses. So all of your issues that's happening right now is based on stress and anxiety, and well stress anxiety is just a symptom of stress, but stress and trauma. So I wanted to create something and my first business, you know, kind of going back in two thousand and seven, because I personally suffer from anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. And from that standpoint, I was personally looking for something to help me overcome what I was
dealing with. But at that time, there's only two resources really avail to us.
Typically is talk therapy and the other as medication.
And that's when I first I found my first technology that we use called brainwave optimization brain training is the other term for it, and that helped me overcome my anxiety by fifty percent just in one day. Pharmacology can't even get those types of results. And this is all alternative based technology is not considered in the mental or
the medical field. So in discovering that technology and having that experience for myself that me and my dad brought that technology which first ones to bring it back to Michigan and we first started was called Neurofitness Center. So really the mental health gym is just an extension of that foundation that we started in two thousand and seven.
And so Inception is just it was a name and it's like, well I need to put a title to it to call the people to understand that, Hey, you go to the physical gym to reduce something for your in there.
Innsell, I think you said something something brilliant. You said.
A lot of people across the country, they look at gyms opening up, right, and a lot of people work on the outside appearance, but they forget about the inside appearance. And it really just means that there's a lack of something inside that makes you want to have the outside devalidated more than it should be. When you took that into mind right and creating Inception and thought about the brain training, how what took the technicque where'd you get
this from? Because you didn't initially study science, right, No, my back.
My background is and information technology.
So but the brain is really like like the Internet, and the universes, like the Internet, they all mimic each other. So so I kind of understood networks, and I understood that I understood neuroplasticity and neuro's plasticity is the idea that your brain can actually change itself.
Because growing up we taught we were taught that.
We all probably heard it you can't teach an old dog new trick. Well, that really conditioned us to understand that once something was said, you're pretty much stuck with that pattern, there's nothing you can do about it. That's always been the conversation. But that's not true. Your brain is constantly changing and developing. The problem is we continue to do the same pattern so we get the same results.
Right. So, yeah, we.
Found that technology, and I found it out of Arizona, and it's just some amazing people out here that's been doing amazing things in the alternative world.
But you never hear about it because.
It's not in mainstream medical society. So I was really kind of like on a customer out as an outlier out here with these people in the alternative world and looked.
At it in a specific way.
But now you fast forward thirteen years later, you hear everybody know who doctor s Aby was. I knew who doctor s Aby was thirteen years ago, but you didn't hear that story because that story was suppressed because look, it's money and sickness, not necessarily in being well.
So can we talk about your journey as far as so two thousand and five, you you suffered from severe anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and insomnia.
Right, So where did that just happen overnight?
Or was that something that you always kind of struggle with and just kind of got worse as you became older or yeah.
So kind of like both.
I always try to take people and the understand the trauma paradigm and understanding that we've all experienced trauma in our lives. The problem is when we talk about trauma, we always think about it from a you know, someone was in a car accident and somebody was raped or something like that. But trauma is anything that's overwhelming to your nervous system. You could have been, you know, coming down and slide as a kid and then your dad or your mom forgot to catch you and you fail,
and all of a sudden you're traumatized by that. So it can take very small instances that can overwhelm your system, you know, depending on how your system sees a threat. So you take a look at tell people they say what happened to you? I say, well, I was born the moment you're born, you're a trauma clock starts ticking, you start to you know, experience world in an unsafe way, and anytime your brain feels unsafe, it's going to go into the fight, flight freeze response to protect you. So
that's all trauma is. Trauma is is nothing but a defense mechanism based on lack of safety. So I've had, you know, you go into school. We all at one point in time either we were bullied at school or we were to bully, and those two things stem from, you know, a lack of safety. Right, so going to school, you know, you have instances of school and then growing up, I was in a couple of car accidents and really is no one event for me that took me to
that one place. It just was accumulation of everything to the point where now my system can no longer adapt and now I'm having panic attacks and anxiety and depression. But when people come to me and they say they have these symptoms, always go back, Okay, what happened before? What happened when you start getting these symptoms, and it's all you can trace it back to that trauma.
So you spoke about as far as a technique I forget what it's called, but it's the brain.
It's altered. Yeah, yeah, is what exactly is that?
So brain training is a computer software is the technical term is called neuro feedback.
Neuro feedback have been around for thirty years.
So back to that trauma concept where your brain is going to go into a state of defense based.
On what you're up against, right, and it's going.
To protect you. Now, this is all instinctual. It has nothing to do with you. You know, your brain is going to react, just like if it starts to get warm in this room, in your room, you may start to sweat, but you didn't turn the sweat glands all right, like, so your body, your.
Body is hardwired and coded to protect you.
So but after the event is over, after the stressful traumatic event is over, where your brain becomes locked down in that pattern, still protecting you from stuff that happened years ago. So the neuro feedback is allowing your brain is we're placing sensors on the scalp and it's all read only. It's not electroshock therapy, so there's no juice going into the sensors.
So it's picking up the brainwave of.
Activity in real time sends it to the computer software, and the computer software it begins to send back these this information to the brain. Where you listen to you listening to music and there's these skips, pauses and interrupts in the music. And what that is those skips, pauses and interrupts is when your brain is going into these patterns of like what I spoke about before, of stress and trauma, and the brain becomes aware of itself.
So if I say, hey, you got something on your face right here, what do you do?
You're going to go and try to get it off your face because you want to be optimal. Well, the same thing happens to the brain when it's able to observe itself. So the brain training is really it's acting as a mirror so the brain can see itself and the brain can change itself. The brain changes itself by moving from a state of anxiety, stress, trauma to a state of relaxation because now the brain recognizes, hey, the threat is gone.
It's not even in front of us anymore.
Why are we still acting as if that threat is still present. So we have clients will come in and they'll do you know, brain training in one session and they'll end up in tears. Why is it because now the brain finding let go of everything that was hold on to and the body is now going to a relaxed state and that the emotions have the surface.
Okay, So as far as you know, turn it into an actual business, right because you decided to try not only help people, would actually build out a whole brand about it. What was the deciding fact then? How did that come about it? As far as all right, so you you had some issues and then you actually seek
help yourself and it worked out for you. And now you actually want to turn that into something where you're helping other people, Like what's the process into actually incorporating it and actually making it something that you want to make it to enterprise?
So when we created the first business neuro fitness center, you know, we were using that technology. So we became affiliates of that technology and again we brought that back here and was the first ones and we only had one one.
Technology at that time.
And when we were out in Arizona, me and my dad, we saw all these people come in.
None of us when I mean us, none of none of them.
No black people was there other than the fed Ex guy delivering stuff. Right, So me and my dad the only people there, and we're seeing people come in through like lunch breaks and things of that nature.
And we started.
Talking to a lot of them and the results that they were getting was amazing, and it was it was like our results. So we felt like this is this is something that people really needed.
But we were really naive because we thought.
As you know, just me and my dad, we're thinking as entrepreneurs and thinking, oh, this could really help people and people would want it, but people didn't really want it.
That was that was my next thing.
It was like, there's a stigma, especially in our community, around mental health. It's not something we want to talk about, like like you said, it's like, oh that's my that's my uncle who lives in that room, and don't mess with them. And how did you how did you get around that stigma and combat that when you were going on this journey.
You know, honestly, I didn't even I didn't even recognize the stigma.
I just knew that I had an issue. I was an entrepreneur.
I got a tool to help me, and I was helping other people and we had clients coming in, So I never really looked at it as a as an issue, but along the way I started recognizing that when we even just offered it free to our family, like, they wouldn't even come in. So it's like, what's what's wrong? Why don't why don't you come in? And it's not just that it was a stigma. It's because people have an association to their pain, where you know, an unfamiliar.
Gain is greater than a familiar.
You know gain, So a familiar pain is greater than unfamiliar gain. So people will want to stay in that pattern because like, well, I know this pain and I don't know what's on the other side of this, but I'm familiar with this, so I'd rather stay in this pattern. That is a psychological term that's out there. It's it's secondary gain. They actually receive something from staying in the states that they're in.
You'll see people who will constantly complain about having all these.
Different things, but you'll see that they won't actually take a steps to do anything about it. So that's kind of like thing that we've been kind of up against for the last thirteen years. So to really answer the question, I've just really stayed the course for the last thirteen years to you know how three you know how truth goes through those three stages versus violently opposed, second is highly ridiculed, and thirtiest wildly accepted.
Well, we're going on a wildly accepted stage. I just happened to be still.
Doing what I've been doing thirteen years ago and evolved in along with you know, the consciousness as a move towards that.
So as far as you know, I know you have the thirty five hundred square for facility, and I would assume that building out a mental wellness facility or mental wellness company in general, it would be kind of hard to get financing because, like you said, especially in our community,
black community, it's not something that we really acknowledge. Even a lot of people still don't even acknowledge mental illness, and it's not something that we talk about, and it's not something that you know, people don't really go to therapist that much. So like, how is that journey as far as like financing, Like how was we able to
get financing? And actually, you know, get people excited and rally behind a business that there's definitely a need for, But like I said, it's not really like a popular thing.
Yeah, well, I'll talk to you about the all the pits falls along the way, because I want people to have a very clear picture that this is not like easypasy, Right. So when we first started, it was just me and my dad and he put up his own money for whatever technology we needed. At a time, we a had like eleven hundred square feet. And so along the way, again I kept looking at different things because I still
needed to get better myself. And there's no one tool that just takes you to the promised land.
You know, you need, you.
Know, multitude of tools. If you go to the gym, if that gym just has a bench press, I mean you out of there, right, So we need we need multiple tools. So along the way, I just kept taking the money that we were making and reinvesting it back into the business and adding different technologies. But it started really taking off of twenty fourteen when I added one of our most popular.
Services called flotation therapy. And flotation therapy have.
Been really growing around the world, and so that one service. By adding that once service, my business starts to really skyrocket, and people started going out there and making what's called float centers. But because I had my background and what I was doing in the beginning, I knew that just having a center with one tool eventually wasn't going to
be the thing, right, it wasn't going to work. We had a gym here years ago, it's called Fitness USA, and they had these lifetime memberships, and this is before all the gyms started really popping up around nineteen ninety nine. And what I saw too, what was happening is that places like Balle's and Fitness La Fitness and they started coming on board. And what did they start doing. Add
more amenities, right, add more services. So I kind of took that same approach and said, you know, if you just got one service, as these these wellness based technologies come out and you have no philosophy or rhyme or reason of what you're doing, you know, it's going to be hard to survive that. And that's really what's been happening. You see people with these one tools and they really
don't even know how they work. So I had the framework and understanding of what it is that we were actually doing, to the point where I had a medical doctor come and do some floating and he said, you know, I want to open up something and this was what our neuro fitness center of business, and we went and opened my full.
Fledged concept up in ann Arbor.
So we did that and that's how I Actually that was an investor that came in that put that money up. But then we started having problems with that investor and we had to go through a lawsuit with that investor and next you know, I'm.
Out of that location.
Long story short, So anybody who thinks about going to loss to sue someone, specifically, if there's a medical doctor, if you're of color, that's probably not the best thing to do. You know, you're probably not gonna win that fight. But and not winning that fight, it was a great situation for me because I had already learned, you know, how to build out, do a build out, and I already had multiple people coming at me wanting to do more things because they saw the model that we had
and understood it. And so I moved away from that and started fresh and just starting inception at the beginning of something new.
At that point, you have the brain training and then the flotation device, flotation therapy.
Six different services at that time.
Okay, okay, so my quick question about the brain training is I want the difference between that and meditation or are they combined?
Like, what's the difference is there?
So meditation is simply closing your eyes and observing yourself so that you become self aware of.
Your thought process.
Right, Well, meditation can be really hard for people whose nervous system again you're stuck in that fight or flight response, that fighter flight or freeze response. So when you close your eyes you try to meditate, it's like your mind is just racing and it just feels you feel very overwhelmed by trying to meditate. So the brain training is not necessarily a meditation to it.
It's really and this is.
What's trying to take place with meditation as well. It's just a slower moving process. But brain training is like that meditation on steroids where it's really it's deactivating your autonomic nervous system, which has to do with that fight
or flight response. So when it comes to mental health, I don't look at it from a psychological standpoint, and that's where most people look at of that, and your authorities on the subject matter shows you that these are brain body issues that we have within what's the mental health is brain body issues. So again that brain training is really looking at the structure of your brain and body and deactivating.
That versus having it go after you in a conscious way. So did that make sense?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, man, the issue is in the tissues, right.
So you said, so I want to go back to the to the gym. So that's interesting though, because you know gyms, they do have a unique business model, and like you said, I mean they have different you know, different things Like you go to a gym and they might have a yoga class and they have a spend class. They don't just have just one thing if it's a good gym, like, they have a variety of different things.
So if you don't for you to open a mental gym, it makes complete sense that you have actually offer a variety of different classes and things of that. So from a business standpoint, do you run it the same as a gym? Like is it a monthly membership that people pay like per month or can they pay like ala cart? Like Okay, I want to go to this class, so I want to go to this class, like and do you have to go to classes every week?
Like? How is that?
Well, all all of our technologies are really kind of plug and PEP play. They aren't class based, so you come in and how we structure it with these the circuits, our Total Life Reset circuits. It's three technologies, three services within a ninety minute timeframe, and we have a set price for that. We had a membership model to where people can come in and get that same circuit once a month, and so we have two different circuit tracks
as well. So really what we're doing is is taking all those years of everything I've learned and simplifying it and saying, hey, this is what you need to come in and do and why versus you trying to figure out you got six different technologies, what do I do? You ever seen the people at the gym and you see them these videos where you know, they're like funny videos, people on workout machines. They're doing crazy stuff because they don't know how to Nobody taught them how to use it.
Right, think about what we do in our technologies.
People people don't know why they're using something, so we want to We want to guide them along the process. And so this is something that we're constantly carving out too, that understanding for ourselves and for them, And that's the philosophy of it.
All all right, dope, dope.
So in the next second we're gonna get into some more details and yeah, find out some more information for sure.
All right.
So in this secon we're gonna talk with a few different things, but one thing that I'm curious and I'm sure a lot of people might be interested in nowadays, it's own.
Erners. What's up?
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Mental effects of isolation and social distancing. This is something that we've never really seen on a large scale, but it's been scientifically proven that, you know, humans for the most part, are social creatures, whether whether it's you know, attending a religious institution or whether it's a church or whatever, or going to school, going to work, everything. Most of
the most part, you always congregated around people. Even if you're an introvert, you still go to school, you still go to work like you have some kind of interaction. This is like the first time and you know, I can remember probably in modern history where everybody's been isolated for a long period of time. So what do you think the mental effects of social distancing will be on people?
Lowered immune system and high trauma?
Because so two thousand and seven, I heard a story and I don't have the exact source of this, but they were telling me that, So if there's a let's say there's a pool of fish and one fish diverts from that pool, and that there's an earthquake, Well, the pool of fish together collectively survived that earthquake. That one fish, that one off dies. Why this group economics is group energy, is group currency. Right, You by yourself stand alone, you can't survive that. This is why we go to churches.
This is why we're we're really very tribal. You know, we are more stronger together than we are apart. So the social distancing affects I mean again, it's it's it's our brain is literally reacting to this.
Our brain is reacting to lack of touch too, because touch is huge, and we don't we don't really don't even talk about that.
So specifically, again, men, men don't really get touched. Why do we think we always have to sex. We don't really get touched when you get a handshake from your brother or something like sometimes, but you don't really it's not like many people hugging you.
Right, So I think that we're gonna.
See some major deficits from this in terms of just mental, emotional or physical because of again this distancing and constantly seeing trauma over and over again by constantly watching the numbers, and you know, Detroit, a lot of people have died, So to keep seeing that people I know, people who I went to school with parents and things of that nature.
That's that's very traumatic to be watching that.
So I think that it's it's it's going to be worse than the virus.
Yeah, I'm I work in elementary school, so I'm always thinking about the mental well being of the children that going through this.
Right.
I have a sums in kindergarten, so this is his first school experience, right, And there's so many children throughout the United States and throughout the world really that are living in social isolation, and sometimes that's not the best environment.
Do you think there is like maybe something modified that brain training could be something that could creep into education, right, because I feel like the mental health piece is going to be something that we won't know the long term effects right because we're living in it right now.
So say that again, do I think that brain training would be kind.
Of, oh, some type of modified version of it of having mental health professionals? I know you guys have a team there. Is it something that could creep into education?
Yeah, I mean we've been looking at.
Wanting to be able to put this into like school settings, but it's just.
A lot of red tape involved in that.
Now, we do work with we do work with kids in general, but again it's a lot of red tape with that. But we actually made some headway and get into the Detroit police and right before this happened, we had twenty Detroit police officers that's supposed to come in on Eightpril fifth and that got diverted. So so that's something that we want to do is get out there and be inside communities and take our tools outside of the doors.
To the people who need it, which is really you know, everybody.
So one of the things that stops middle class, just black community in general from going to mental health is the prices, Right, So like you know, therapists, they can charge. It depends one hundred dollars an hour, thousand dollars an hour, depending on what part of the country you're in. And I think it's always been looked at as kind of like a luxury a lot of times going to therapy
and something that you know, people wealthy people do. So what's what's your what's your eight what's your thoughts on that? Like I said, specifically specifically for our community, what's your thoughts on that? And how have you battled that as far as your your business mind? Because obviously you're in Detroit, which is you know, it's a it's a blue collar town, which obviously has had a lot of economic issues, So like, what's what's how do you handle that from the economic standpoint?
I handle that as a businessman and understanding that people pay for what they want. You know, people pay for the things they find value in. So the problem hasn't necessarily been the pricing. The problem is being they don't see the value in it, Like I don't understand, like, what's this really doing for me? You know, what will stand in line for Jordan's We know this, how many times we somebody on your show.
How to say that, right.
Maybe that's always the example. That's you.
I just I just thought the other day, right.
Everybody, that's the example, and we do.
And my thought process is because when I was dealing with anxiety and panic attacks. You know, I'm not a wealthy person, but I'm gonna make it happen. I'm gonna get I'm gonna get what I want. And I put a lot of money into myself because that's if I put so much into here, I'm going to get more out of myself.
I'm going to be in a better state to be able.
To manifest and create opportunities for myself and other people. Those shoes or whatever things that we buy, it don't it doesn't do that, right. So I think that has just really been a it's been a brand issue, you know, And that's where I think that inception that we're rebranding mental health because I'm working with a lot of you know, hip hop artists.
I want to work with, you know, we work with Charlotte Mane, work with people.
I don't want to look at this as like, you know, come because you have this issue. No, come because you want to better yourself.
You have some diagnosis.
Yeah, I'm glad you said.
I don't want to talk about Charlamagne thing too, because he's just actually this is You're the second guest that he's worked with, and I think it's interesting because, yeah, he's been very vocal about his mental his mental health, and he's wrote a book about it, and he's he's been, you know, obviously very on the forefront of that. So how did that partnership come about? As far as were you and Charleye?
I told my mom back in January twenty nineteen, I said, I'm gonna get Charlott Mane.
I don't know how I was gonna do it. I just believe. I mean, I'm I'm big into manifesting.
I'm big into creating my reality and understanding that and by using all my tools, it gives me a level of peace and slowed.
Down this and relax where I can.
Be a businessman who's going to be on the being the flow versus trying to make things happen.
I don't like that process. I want to be in the flow of everything. So for Charlotte Mane, it was just natural.
It's like, this guy's talking about this, but I feel like he's missing pieces that I lied to him, and so I kept tagging him in a post because we had some posts that went viral about it's a picture of me and my mom's saying how we created the first mental health gym, and it it started going viral.
So I started taking and then retagging it, retagging.
Him and Big Sean as well, because Big Sean is from the DP, so I'm tagging him. I'm tagging, you know, the notable people in the mental health field, like I want to talk to y'all right, And one day I wake up and I just look at my IG and I see ct to God start following you. I'm like, yo, this dude just start following me. I'm tripping out, Like it's like nine.
O'clock in the morning.
Actually it's like six o'clock in the morning. I'm tripping out, like I wonder is he gonna message me? Because I had already messaged him and told him, Hey, I got this going on, I'm going to work with you, blah blah blah. Right, and he messaged me and said, first everything he says, peace the peace.
Man. He said, what's your number? Man?
So he gave me his number and we started talking you know, I told him what I was doing, and he was like, you know, I want to be down with what you're doing. And so we, you know, we had a little back and forth in terms of playing tag until one day I finally we kind of reached reached each other and and and started really building and I went and picked him up. It was like June second last year. I still remember June fourth last year, and I picked him up with riding in the car.
I said, hey, you found me through me tagging you, right, He said, no, that's not how I found you. I said, well, how did you find me? He said, I looked up mental health gym. I searched mental health gym because I wanted to create something to see if it was something that was like a mental health gym out there.
And and at that moment, I knew, is it saying that.
What you're seeking is seeking you? And me and him were seeking each other. And so he said, he said, man, I saw it, and I if I saw some.
Other dudes was doing it, I was just gonna do my own thing.
He said.
I saw it was a brother, and I saw you had the message in me.
And so that's that's really how it happened, and we've been you know, we've been building ever since then.
He's definitely been at the forefront of the mental health space. Have you seen more men of color as clients since then? And who was the demographic of clients that you have?
Well, first, let me say this.
In the first probably twelve years, my client was ninety.
Nine percent white women. Okay, that was my clients.
Last year alone, I saw more black people come through that door and probably a month than I had in the whole thirteen years. Black men, we're definitely showing up now, so the numbers are really half and half. To the point where someone asked me, he said, is this place with black people on?
But people assume that now because so many black people are coming.
In right the perception so it's it's we're gravitating to it. We're getting this message. It's our time to really heal. And I think that, like, look at us, we're talking about this right right now. We're like, hey, man, like no, like, you know, this stuff I learned childhood was dysfunctional.
This was not this is the way to go, right.
We understand that. I can even look back at our music, like, man, I love this stuff, but man that was dysfunctional like that. Some of that stuff wasn't good from my mind, you know. So it's a lot of us coming in now. So it's it's it's exciting to see.
Actually, So how do you market? How do you market?
Just because it's not like a traditional business, I guess where you know, obviously it kind of takes a little bit more creativity to market. But I like what you said about the story. That's a great way of marketing things like social media stuff like that. So what's your what's your marketing strategy?
That's my main marketing strategy right now is do the ig through Instagram and then word of mouth and then I do have around and then we have around twenty twenty to thirty ambassadors.
Are really connecting with.
People in the city who were really movers and shakers who I thought really fit what we what we do, and they and they came in and so they go out and they they spread that word.
You can you talk about that the ambassador program, like what does that look like?
So our ambassadors they have access to our services and you know, like I tell them, come in and use everything and get yourself to a place of the best mental space.
Physical space that you.
Can be in, because at that point, you just a walking billboard. You know.
It's kind of like if you're walking around with six packs of.
Abs and you know in your shirts off, people are gonna run.
Up to you, like, hey, you a trainer training.
So really that's that's really the same model that we have for our ambassadors.
It's very simple for them.
But you know, they come in use the services and they and they go out to the community and they see people who you know.
Want it and they bring them in.
So just regular this is just regular people.
Or yeah, so you got me somebody else said that the other day that we spoke to them, or you need to shout out to him. But it's like you got to have evangelists. So people look at influencer marketing and they only look at it like on Instagram, as like paying celebrities to like promote your product. But there's all kinds of influencer marketing and there's all kinds of different ways how you can have evangelists for you, and that's the best. That's really the best form of marketing.
It's like to have, you know, a core group of people who really believe in your product and have them actually tell their friends, their family, because it's like even if you want, like if you give the product.
And this discoes for just any business in general.
I feel like if you if you have a you know, a restaurant, right and you might say, okay, look, I'm gonna feed this one person, but this one person is connected to twenty five other people, so he's gonna eat for free. But he loves to fool so much. He goes back and he tells his whole neighborhood, his whole block about the food. Now fifteen people that he told come in now they're pain.
It's worth it.
And I think that, you know, for entrepreneurs, like I said, that's a valuable lesson just for entrepreneurs in general.
Definite strategy.
Yeah, I found that, you know a lot of stuff I started doing before we are bigger. Now I was just doing it, you know under my old company, neuro Fitness Center, that I.
Was following Loulie Women's model, you know, which is you know their ambassador program.
They you know, they're arming all their yoga, these yoga teachers, what they're clothing. You know, That's how Lulu Lemen really got to that place that they are is through a really strong ambassador program.
Yeah, you're the leader of this mental health gym space, right, So I'm thinking and even you said, Charla Nage searched it. Have you seen anybody try to create it or replicate it or come into the space.
Are you seeing more people doing that?
I mean people will come into the space and again, like I said, they'll put a bunch of technology something to one roof.
And then they'll hear me get on a podcast.
Like I did a podcast with a guy who had a floating podcast just for floating, and I came on in and I started talking about everything. I'm talking about trauma, fight or flight response, all these different things, and he said, wow.
We never heard of that before. So I'm like, so what are y'all doing?
Like, what are you doing with the tools? You don't you don't even know. It's like it's like a you know, you give a baby grand piano to anybody, but that don't mean they're gonna get on there and play it.
Right. For me, the brand and the philosophy is what inception is.
Not so much we put all these tool us under one building because I have I've had more tools at one point and pulled them out because they didn't fit the rhyme or reason. So I'm kind of ahead of understanding how the pieces work and why they work.
Yeah, the brand ambassator on thing, I just want to go back to that because that made me think going on interview that we did. We interviewed Nick Storm shot out to him and he was like the driving force behind Sarak and Hypnotic as well, And especially when the Sarak he was saying, like, you know, people might not know, but the reason Saraq really blew up is not Diddy.
It was actually the ambassador program with DJs, and they had dj from all over the country from New York to Atlanta to and and they really they focused on the DJs because they understood that the DJs was in the nightclubs where people buying bottles in the nightclubs. So if they that's when they started with the Sarac boys. And he was telling us the whole play behind the
ambassador program. And when you told me that, I just realized that, you know, a lot of times we hear stuff on such a high level like that Saraq Ambassador program, but it's like you could really implement any kind of business strategy, whether it's a big or small level, and it's.
Like strategy when it was mean by myself work.
You know, Yeah, it's all about creativity.
Way to get to a certain level to implement something like that.
Yeah, now that's dope.
So as far as like on a mental health conversation, because like I said, I mean, I think that it's not talked about it enough as far as the stress the entrepreneurs might face. And I'm sure there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast that are entrepreneurs or business people. Can you talk about that because it's
a unique set of you as an entrepreneur. I'm sure you probably know yourself right, like even going through this coronavirus and not being able to open up your business, like the financial demands and and just a different stress level. You don't work a nine to five job. If you're an entrepreneur, you never get off. You're always thinking about your business two o'clock in the morning. That can that can that can cause divorces, That can cause you not
spend enough time with your children. You can cause you all kinds of mental stress. So I think that that's something that we haven't spoken about as well, so I want to talk about that because that's there's always a flip side to everything, and the flip side of being entrepreneurs are the mental. So how can people mentally, you know, get themselves in a good space? And can you talk about some of the mental stresses and pressures that entrepreneurs may face.
I mean, you said it like it's it's a daily, daily thalt process. And specifically when you start taking on when I started taking on employees and my rent quadruple, you know, you know, you got a bigger nuh to crack before you can break even, right, So that day to day stress or monthly stress, because really around the beginning of the month, everybody's stressed, right, specifically business owners.
And and I realized that because I was doing probably about twenty years ago, I was doing what do they call factory where we take invoices and pay on those invoices.
Where I learned at that point in time that the.
Average business is literally at that point was like six weeks from going out of business, you know, based on their cash flow.
So this is something that it's like, it's not just it's not just you know.
A few people, it's all of us who you know, in the business world, we have these mental these stressors going on.
If I didn't, if I didn't do my own.
Stuff, dude, I would have been gone, Like, there's no way I could have been overcome.
I was building. I was going through a lawsuit, still.
Running the location, still running another location, and building inception all at the same time while going through a lawsuit. And I spent a lot of time brain training. I spent a lot of time using my tools, because again, when you're going through stuff like that, and you specially a lawsuit, and you get these what they call interrogatories and things that nature, they send you stuff and they tell you the worst thing about yourself, right.
And you just fired up, like what he said?
What?
Like?
You know, they keep doing that and still be trying to build a business, and then the businesses aren't necessarily where they need to be. And I got to pump in cash flow for both both businesses. I mean that that's very stressful. But you have to find some type of outlet that's outside of your business.
And that's something I I did in twenty seventeen. I actually started. I got with a.
Guy and I wanted to learn it earlier. I started saucer dancing, and that I would go once a week to my homie who's from New Orleans, who's like one of the best Cuban thought of dancers in the world, black guy named Dwayne Rinn, and would I would I would have that mental space and that one hour with him, you know, once a week, and then I would go out and I would dance.
It gave me ability to get back into some type of.
Community where people didn't know me as like that you're the business owner, you didn't see that, like I need to be able to just go and focus on something that's totally outside of my business. And that's one of the things that helped me. And just community too. You need people around you. You can't be if you're out here and you're a lone soldier, I mean, entrepreneur.
Suicide is really high.
People don't know about that, you know, because again specifically, now I'm fortunate in the sense of I guess some people thinking fortune not fortunate, but I'm single.
I I don't have a family.
Like That's how I'm able to go through this because there's no way I would take a wife and kids through what I'm going through right now, and a lot of people do it.
I'm like, I commend you. I don't even know how you do that, because there's no way I would be able to do that.
So if you're a single person and an entrepreneur, you definitely have to surround yourself with strong people. And I never really had the business people. You know, you know how you want to find mentors and people who are doing great business.
I never really had that.
I've been doing this kind of all on my own the last thirteen years, and here and there, I'll get plugged in with little people here and there.
But I think it's important to find.
Community to do something outside of your business, and find community to people who are doing things bigger than you.
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