This week we explore the world of fitness with Mike Tilberry who is Operations Director at “Iron Sharpens Iron” and they have a refreshingly different approach to their customers than the one most people receive at the gyms they are members of.
Iron Sharpens Iron has various CrossFit gymnasiums around North and South Carolina with many new locations due to be opening soon.
if you’ve been hearing about CrossFit and wondered what it is, you’ll be far better informed as Mike explains how they differ from a conventional gym and how they try to help their members reach the goals they set for themselves.
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Tony Winyard 0:00
Exceeding expectations Episode 68. It’s the new year and one thing about the new year is people make resolutions and one of the resolutions many people make is they join a gym with the aim of getting fit, losing those pounds to be in shape by the time summer comes around. And most gyms are very happy with all these new customers because they know most of them aren’t going to turn up and they’re just happy to take that money. Well, our guest this week, Mike Tilberry has a very different attitude and the gym where he works and they really encourage anyone who joins the gym to really try to exceed their expectations in many different ways. And we’re going to hear from Mike how they go about that. This is the podcast where we aim to give you ideas how you can give your customers a much better experience resulting in better testimonials and referrals and ultimately getting you more money. If you like this episode, why not share it with someone you feel may get some good value from it, and do subscribe so you can hear it on a regular basis now time for this week’s episode of exceeding expectations. My guest today, Mike Tilberry. How are you, Mike?
Mike Tilberry 1:11
I’m good, Tony, how are you?
Tony Winyard 1:12
I’m very well. Thanks. And we were just discussing the weather and it seems that is pretty cold in both where you are and where I am.
Mike Tilberry 1:19
Yeah, I guess we’re kind of in that same boat this time of year, right?
Tony Winyard 1:23
You don’t expect good weather this time of year. So I guess it’s quite normal.
Mike Tilberry 1:28
Yeah, you gotta take the good stuff when you get it though and appreciate it.
Tony Winyard 1:31
Absolutely. And you mentioned you’re in South Carolina?
Mike Tilberry 1:35
Yes. My wife and I’ve been here for five years.
Tony Winyard 1:38
And what was it took you to South Carolina.
Mike Tilberry 1:41
So my wife is a high school counsellor, and she was finishing up her master’s degree when we met about seven years ago. And when we first met, she let me know about that. And she said, you know, once I finished my master’s, I want to move south. She’s not one for the cold. So I didn’t think anything of it and then as our relationship progressed, you know, I got more serious, you know, two years in when she finished her master’s, she’s like, No, I’m a move itself. So I was like, Whoa, this is, you know, this is real. And, you know, the opportunity presented itself, she applied for a job down in South Carolina, and she got it. And she said, you know, hey, we’re, you know, it’s time to go. All right, let’s, let’s go, you know, warmer weather, different opportunities, you know, see a different part of the world and perspective. And the cold. Cold is just too much.
Tony Winyard 2:28
And how different is it to where you grew up? Did you say Pennsylvania?
Mike Tilberry 2:33
Pennsylvania? Correct. So, we grew up in the northeast part of Pennsylvania. So we’re about two hours south of New York City. The biggest difference i think is the the people down here. You know, growing up, we heard a lot about the southern lifestyle Hots a little bit slower, and how the people here are a little bit more. I guess, respectful, I guess would be the word I would use and courteous of others. And that’s the biggest thing. So you don’t Here you can say hi to a stranger and wave to them, they’ll smile right back at you and ask how your day is up in Pennsylvania when we go back to business family, you know, we do that out of habit. Now, when people just look at you, you’re like, You’re nuts. So it’s been a good change for us. We feel more comfortable with that.
Tony Winyard 3:17
What is it you do work wise Mike?.
Unknown Speaker 3:19
So I am a head performance coach for ISI Elite Training. We’re in South Carolina, currently and have five locations in South Carolina, one on the border of South and North Carolina. And within the past year, we’ve actually franchised the gym in the business. So we’re selling those. So we’re kind of taking that nationally right now, which is pretty cool. To see where it started and what we’re doing now. It’s pretty great.
Tony Winyard 3:46
And how was it that you got into doing that in the first place?
Unknown Speaker 3:49
So when growing up, give you a little background on that growing up. I was an overweight kid. I played sports. I was never really great at any of them. But like I said, Growing up, I was overweight, an athlete somewhat, and I got picked on a lot for being heavy. And I kind of thought that’s where I was stuck. But, uh, you know, I played football throughout high school and all that. And then after high school, I went to college for one year. And I didn’t really do much of anything in the weight that I had got a lot worse. So I ended up becoming 270 pounds after high school. So I gained 50 pounds in a year, which was a lot. And I just felt horrible about myself, and I never had great self confidence or self esteem. And that made it worse. So I decided I probably 20 years old, I was like, I gotta do something about this. So I really got into weightlifting more. And I was little bit more conscious of what I ate, and it made a big difference. And then I kind of got complacent after I’d reached the goal. And I put all that weight back on. And I was like that for probably about seven years and then I spoke earlier about my wife when I met her right before that I lost all my weight. I was going through a really difficult time, kind of was life where I was, I wasn’t happy with, with my career. It wasn’t even a career. I was working in a warehouse. I was just miserable it was, you didn’t see the light of day until you got out. And it was just, it’s not what I wanted. And I really didn’t know what I wanted. So I made it even worse. But I was going through through a lot of stuff emotionally, mentally. I was drinking, probably five, six nights a week, missing a lot of work and probably should have been fired. I don’t know how I got away with it. But I ended up staying there for five years. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I’m grateful for that experience. And then I met my wife, you know, we talked and she’s like, you know, I’m not going to push you to do anything. She goes, but you’ve you’ve changed your life. She goes, have you ever thought about helping others? And up to that point? Oh, no, never crossed my mind. So she’s like, why don’t you look in and be a personal trainer? She goes, if it’s not for you, then don’t worry about it. I looked into it. I was like, No, this is definitely something I can do. So then when I did it, I had that mindset of, Hey, I get to work in a gym for a living, and that’ll be cool. So, you know, I finished my certification in Pennsylvania, and there really wasn’t many opportunities for a personal trainer up there. So when we moved to South Carolina, I thought there’d be a lot more, but there wasn’t as many as I thought. Like I said, earlier, we live near the beach, so I thought there’d be a little bit more. But so we moved down here, didn’t really do much for two months, I didn’t have a job. So I was trying to build up my own clientele at some of the local gyms. And it was really tough. And it was just kind of getting down on myself. And, you know, we were kind of running out of money at that point with only one income. And my wife found a listing on Craigslist. And she’s like, Hey, why don’t you go check this out and see what they have to offer. So I looked into the gym, and I looked at what they did, and I thought it was a CrossFit gym. I don’t have any experience in CrossFit. And I was like, man, I don’t I don’t know if I can do that. She’s like, just go into the interview, see what they say. And you know, if it’s not the right thing, then, you know, you think for the time and leave. So I said, All right, so I built up, the courage went in, and I walked in, and it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I think a lot of times we have a certain expectation of what a gym may look like, kind of walk in and see these big meatheads or people on the treadmill running or whatever. And it could be very intimidating for people. When I walked into this gym, it was completely different. There was turf, there was there was not any equipment. And there was a gentleman on a microphone, coaching people, not necessarily yelling, but you know, coaching, and there was probably about eight or nine people. Wow, this is unlike anything I’ve ever seen or experienced. So I went in and I sat down for my interview and the owner. You know, he kind of explained everything that that the gym stood for. And you know, I was hooked maybe three minutes and I was like, I’ve got to do this The rest is history that was just a little over five years ago, I celebrated five years, two weeks ago.
Tony Winyard 8:06
And for people who maybe are not familiar with CrossFit, do you want to tell us more about that?
So CrossFit is kind of depends a little bit on where you’re at but a CrossFit gym; the results are amazing, if you find a great CrossFit gym and coach, you’re going to get tremendous results. But a CrossFit gym is high intensity, for the entire workout. You’re going nonstop a lot of those CrossFit, they call the mods will last anywhere between 15 to 25 minutes, and they’re usually in I believe, they call them boxes. So it’s kind of a small space, where they go on and they just hammer out the workout. But what makes CrossFit so successful, and we’ve been able to learn from from CrossFit is that they have a tremendous community. So it’s not come in as you will. There’s certain times that you come in it’s led by coach and above the workout and stuff like that, but it’s time intensity. Again, it’s something that I had never been familiar with a lot of Olympic lifts that I had never done. So I was a little nervous about that. But CrossFit, like I said, it’s, it’s great when you find a great coach, they’ll take the time and invest in you.
And from what I know of CrossFit, it’s much more focused on the whole body, it doesn’t just focus on certain parts of the body. It’s much more the whole body; the approach from my friends that go there?
Unknown Speaker 9:26
Yeah, it’s usually a full body workout, they’ll throw you know, your upper body and your lower body. Core cardio, they’ll run you know, in between, they’ll jump on the bike, you know, they’ll do the roll machine, the med balls, everything so they, they found a great way to incorporate everything to work out. You know, when how limited people had or how limited time people have definitely found a way to maximise everything and make it work. So it definitely a great concept.
Tony Winyard 9:52
From what I know some people who just go to the gym, especially if they don’t have any kind of personal trainer or coach and they might be focused on particular muscle groups to make themselves look good, but they don’t realise the damage it’s causing them and things are getting out of balance and so on.
Unknown Speaker 10:10
Correct so you if you go into I don’t like to call them regular gyms but you know, a gym with free weights and you know kind of on your own, you’re going to see a lot of people that do things very incorrectly that’s going to cause a lot of harm to their body. I was at a I go to a quote unquote regular gym a few times a week just to kind of escape and focus on me for a little bit. When I was in there, maybe a week ago, I was watching a gentleman on lat pulldown machine and I thought he was gonna rip the shoulders out every time he would do a rep. So you see that a lot people that just kind of go in and I think they’re, I don’t know if it’s pride that holds a lot of people back from asking questions or for help. I don’t want to say ignorance either but people that think they know what they’re doing because There’s a lot of information on the internet, you can see and watch YouTube videos and everything. A lot of people will, will do that and think that they, they know, they’ll try some of those things without the proper training or coaching. And I think that that can definitely harm your body
Tony Winyard 11:13
And maybe, I mean, part of the problem seems to me is that in a way, there’s too much information and there’s a lot of misinformation and so people think that they’re doing the right thing but but clearly they’re not.
Unknown Speaker 11:27
Yeah, like you said, there’s there’s a lot of misinformation out there. You can find anything you want. You can find something on you know, Google or whatever, to justify anything in your head that you want. And I’m that’s what people do, or they’ll see a lot of, you know, these these models on Instagram or whatever, that you know, just working out, will get you there and you know, you just have to spend five, you know, 5 or 10 minutes on the treadmill or whatever. And you don’t realise all the work that really goes into living a healthy lifestyle. There’s there’s a lot of information and I think the key word you used there was misinformation.
Tony Winyard 12:03
So what would you say Mike; How you are as a cross trainer, would you say you do anything different to other cross trainers, Sorry, PTs.
Unknown Speaker 12:14
Yes. So like I said, we’re everything so it’s kind of how our, our setup works. I’ll go into that a little bit, is we don’t like to call it a gym. We like to call it an experience. The moment you walk into our one of our facilities, you’re greeted by name. So we you know, we have different size gyms with different size membership, kind of depends on where you’re at. But our gym’s go from anywhere between our smallest right now has about 75 members, and our largest right now has about 450 members. And one thing that we really take pride in is knowing every one of our members names and just a small bit of information about them. So the second you walk through the door, you’re greeted with a smile that might be at 5am or 7:15pm Depending on, on what time you’re getting your workout in, you’re greeted by name. And we’re going to say, hey, how did your son do with his baseball game yesterday or, hey, we know that your mother hasn’t been feeling well how she doing. So we like to do that and really get them excited and feel part of the family, you feel part of a community. And then they walk out into the our floor. So the way our gyms are set up is we have turf, and then we have rubber, athletic rubber. And it kind of looks like I don’t know how to explain it. It’s a cool setup. But the turf is usually laid right down the middle with the rubber on on the outside, and then the equipment kind of spread out around it. And then the way our workouts work, our workouts are 15 minutes. They’re usually high intensity workouts. So we took kind of that a lot of research. And what we wanted to do was we wanted to pull the best part of each exercise a workout concept and kind of pieced them together to find what works best for your regular personal We’ve realised that not everybody is trying to be a bodybuilder. Not everybody is trying to be a professional athlete. So we want to just we want to target and help the people that need help. So you you walk in right now our old school concept was our workouts were written on a chalkboard. You know, as we’ve grown, we’re starting to utilise technology a little bit more, we’re, as we’re redoing all of our facilities, they’re going to be on TV screens, but the workouts on our chalkboard, our coach is on a microphone. Our sessions have grown tremendously in size. So our session go anywhere between five people up to our biggest location right now has up to 65 people per session. So our coaches have to be very attentive to everything that’s going on and have to have everything very well laid out. But they’ll have the workout on the board. They’ll come in, we’ll go into a warm up in a stretch. We never want to get people to jump in cold. So we want to definitely warm them up for Get their blood flowing. loosen those muscles up a little bit. So that can go anywhere between depending on the coach five to 15 minutes. And then we’ll go over the actual workout and demonstrate all the movements and how everything flows. Our coaches have the freedom to create the workouts that they want. The only thing is each day is a specific body part. So that’s the only thing that we have to follow. Other than that we want to coach us personality to shine through in the workout. Music is loud, energetic, inspiring. So we’ll go through the workout itself. And then we’ll take a little breather, and we like to do it we call it finisher for the last three to five minutes. Will we demand everything that they have left in their emotional and physical tank, and we want them to leave it all out on the turf. And then the last two minutes, two to three minutes, we’ll do we call a cooldown and a stretch. So we kind of maximise those 15 minutes from a warm up and a stretch to the actual workout itself to the finisher exerting everything They’ve got left, and then the cool down just to kind of bring everything back to centre there.
Tony Winyard 16:07
And for anyone listening who’s not sure what high intensity training is, do you want to just explain to people what what that is?
Unknown Speaker 16:14
So that’s constant moving, I guess would be the best way to describe it. A lot of people have the expectation, again, that workout is the only type of workout is that you go on the treadmill for 20 minutes, or that you bench press and then do a couple other auxiliary movements to complement that. And where you take a lot of rest in between each set, which is one type of workout, but the high intensity workout, it’s, it’s kind of go go go go go go at your own pace. You know that set up. And I think that’s the biggest thing that kind of scares people when they hear that word high intensity is they think it has to be non stop and you have to keep up with the person next to you. That we encourage is the only person the only one that you’re focused on is you. That person next to you doesn’t matter unless they’re down and you got to pull them up and help them out. But other than that, you’re just worried about you and giving you 100% we realise everybody’s 100% completely different. Our membership ranges from, we’ve had division one athletes, pro athletes, we’ve trained NFL football players, we’ve also have one of our locations as a 72 year old grandfather. Everybody works out together. Which is, to me the coolest thing because it creates this, this awesome sense of community where these older people or people who have never worked out before where they can feel that sense of belonging and hey, I work on next to this person. So, you know, high intensity, it’s just kind of your hundred percent the whole time
Tony Winyard 17:47
And are high intensity sessions, typically shorter than most gym sessions in most gyms?
Unknown Speaker 17:54
Yeah, so ours, the actual workout itself is going to go anywhere between 25 35 minutes. That’s the actual heart of the workout. The other part is the warm up in the stretch, and then the cool down and stretch at the end. And then obviously, we’re going to throw some breaks in there, here and there. And we encourage our members that hey, if you’re feeling winded, let’s step out, let’s breathe. You know, let’s grab a sip of water, those types of things. You know, obviously, safety is number one.
Tony Winyard 18:24
So obviously, everyone’s different, but what would you say typically, are people’s expectations when they first come along? And then how are you able to, to maybe give them some things they weren’t expecting?
Unknown Speaker 18:38
So I think a lot of people there, their expectation of what is it training is, is this I think that word elite sometimes can scare people. And like I said earlier, we want to provide an elite experience when I think people are very, very scared and intimidated to walk through the doors because they’ll see on Facebook and Instagram and other social media. platforms, they’ll see some videos of what, you know, workout looks like it could be intense, our coaches are going to push our members to their their limits. But you know, we understand what people’s limits are. And I think people get nervous that we’re going to the second you walk in, you may not have had a workout in 20 years or you have never worked out. And people get nervous and intimidated that we’re going to push them right into it. And that’s not the case, we’re going to gradually build your strength and your confidence. So I think that’s, you know, that’s one thing, but what we’ve realised over the years through a lot of research and, and data and all that is people come to us because they want results. I’ll put our training regimen up against anybody, we get results for our members, and I think that’s why people start, but once they come in, they feel that sense of belonging. I think what a lot of people in today’s society don’t necessarily feel anymore. I think when how disconnected everybody is. So when people walk in here they come for the results, but they stay because we provide a sense of community and belonging for people. We do events outside the gym. So a few weeks ago, we did a volunteer event with Habitat for Humanity, where we help build a house in the community. So we like to do those types of things, not make it just a gym. Like I said earlier, we want it to be an experience. And we want to be involved as much as you want us to be involved.
Tony Winyard 20:27
And you were saying before about how you also hold people accountable?
Unknown Speaker 20:30
Absolutely. So I actually just ran a report today. So what we’ll do is we’ll check what we recommend for all of our members is that we, we recommend four workouts per week. Most of our gyms are open seven days a week, and they’re all within enough proximity of each other where if you can’t make one because of traffic or whatever, there’s another one maybe 10 miles up the road. So we want to provide them that much experience. So we give them those opportunities, but we recommend four workouts per week. Then what we started doing last year to go above and beyond exceed their expectations was we were looking at all our data. And we found that people get the best results mentally, physically and emotionally, when they get those four workouts per week, so we broke it down into four quarters per year, what we do is we’ve got a quarter of a metal, if you get 48 workouts within a quarter, you get this piece of a metal, and we kind of celebrate it, we want to celebrate that accomplishment. So just for a lot of people just showing up for four days a week is a massive accomplishment for them. And we want them to know that we appreciate them investing in their health. So within the last year, four pieces, we’re actually finishing up at the end of this month. So it’ll be they’ll get that fourth piece to create a whole metal, which is pretty cool. We broke it down into the Greek gods, which we’re pretty excited about. So we have Zeus, Poseidon, Hades and Athena, which were, which we thought was really cool and our members were excited about and then within that we started we’ve also decided to have a friendly rivalry amongst our locations. So, the location that gets the highest percentage of their membership to get 48 workouts per quarter is presented with this flag. So our training sessions are called ABT, which stands for Athletic Based Training. We named it the ABT championship for that quarter. And we rent out this big massive restaurant bar area out on the intercoastal waterway, which leads into the Atlantic Ocean here. And we do a massive presentation at the end of every quarter for the facility who wins it. So again, we just want to encourage people, you know, like, you’re not just doing this for you, you’re doing it for your fellow members, and your family. We we want to thank them for being a part of what we do.
Tony Winyard 22:46
And how do the members respond to that?
Unknown Speaker 22:50
It’s been crazy. This has been our best attended year since we’ve opened and it’s just again, going above and beyond a little bit. We’ve never increased our membership to do this, we don’t ask for any other additional money. It’s not a buy in to do this. It’s something we wanted to do for them out of appreciation and to continue to encourage them to do this. It’s something tangible that they can take home with them. And then the championship itself is just pride. And then it’s turned into a good friendly competition where members are holding each other accountable now too which is pretty neat.
Tony Winyard 23:29
You were telling me before we started recording about a trainer that you saw in Pennsylvania?
Unknown Speaker 23:35
Correct. Yes. So when when I decided I wanted to pursue Personal Training, there was this trainer and I don’t like the term personal trainer. I know. I think that’s what most people resonate with. We call our quote unquote personal trainers we’re coaches. And that’s what we want to do. We want to coach you rather than train you. So it’s all about coaching, but I remember seeing this personal trainer He would, he had a very large clientele base, he did well for himself in those terms, but I would watch him in between my sets of my workout, and how he would have his client doing a certain exercise. And as they’re doing that he would be looking off from the other direction, and not even invested, he could care less what they were doing. I thought to myself, like man, I never want to be that guy. You know, if I have a client or member for one hour, that is the most important thing to me in that one hour. And that’s what we’ve tried to instil into all of our coaches, that for that 15 minute session that you have those members or that member if it’s a private personal session, that is the most important thing for you for those 15 minutes to an hour, however long that might be. And then that stuck in my mind didn’t and it’s kind of motivated me to be the best coach I can be.
Tony Winyard 24:57
In the next few years, how would you like to see your career developing and the things that you do?
Unknown Speaker 25:03
So it’s funny as, as we’ve grown, I’ve grown with the company. So when I started five years ago, we had one location. And we had less than five members or not five, I’m sorry, less than 100 members. And then there was the owner, and then our head performance coach, and they were the only two. And then I came on and then one of our other coaches has came on a week after me who’s still with the company. So as we grew, my responsibilities grew and evolved and changed. I haven’t been in the same location for more than 12 months at a time, because we should we try to utilise my skill set to fit as we’re growing. So within those within the past five years, I’ve opened two of our facilities. I worked as director of operations. I worked as a regional director, and then within the past couple months. Again, as our as we’ve evolved, we found that my skill set is better The ground level with our members. So I’m working within within two of our facilities hands on every day doing that. So it’s been great to see that experience all that but like I said earlier we’re franchising can take it nationally. So the next step is to work within that and, you know, grow as our franchises grow, and hopefully, help open up those franchises as, as we’re growing and travelling our country and help those people who who bought into and believe in what we do, and help them understand our culture, our community and our mindset. So that’s on that end. I’ve also recently started become or started a life coaching business, I realised that my passion and calling in life is to help people. Now I originally thought that the fitness industry was was my passion. And I realised that it’s just my vehicle to help people. So I’ve looked at other ways to help with that. So I kind of ventured off a little bit, just dabbling in a little bit on the side with life coaching or professional coaching, or career coaching that I’ve kind of been helping some people with as well. So I’d like to see that grow a little more. You know, my my goal is to impact or positively impact as many people as I can and whichever way I can.
Tony Winyard 27:20
And so when you’re doing these; to progress yourself, are you taking other types of training to extend your skill set in different ways?
Unknown Speaker 27:30
Yeah. So, recently, I finished my professional coaching certification. That’s eight months to do. We’re always looking at different certifications within the fitness world. So my original certifications were specialists in personal training, and also a specialist in fitness nutrition, realising the importance of nutrition, to somebody’s health, and overall well being was something that changed my life. So I want to gain as much knowledge in that as I could to help other people. So that’s something that I’m constantly reading up on and taking different courses in podcasting as well. different articles, things like that.
Tony Winyard 28:13
The people come to the gyms that you have, how knowledgeable would you say the average member is on things like nutrition?
Unknown Speaker 28:26
I think that, like you said earlier misinformation. I mean, we’ve been conditioned as a society for so long that the less you eat, the more weight you’re going to lose. And studies and data and everything have shown that’s not the case. So what we try to do is we try to make it very simple for them. We tell them to move more and eat better. You know, couple years ago, people might have thought, hey, exercise more, eat less, but now and move more and eat better. So we tried to, again exceed their expectations. They come in thinking that they’re just going to come workout. But we also offer seminars, personal coaching, as well to help people with nutrition. And we’re available. Sometimes it’s a pain in the butt, but we’re available 24 seven to our members, for the most part, you know, if they have a nutritional question, “hey, I’m at the store, should I buy this? Or should I buy that?” And as long as we’re available, we’re going to answer that question for them. And not just answer but educate them on it. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. We’re really trying to break that, you know, we want people to eat more. A lot of our members come in and like hey, “I’m consuming 600 calories a day”. And then we’re looking at their Apple watch and they’re burning 700 per workout. Only 15 minutes of your day, we got to increase that. So just educating them on that and not just telling them to do it. But definitely a lot of misinformation out there.
Tony Winyard 29:52
And by improving their nutrition and doing the regular physical training, they’re probably going to reduce the amount of medication they’re taking as well?
Unknown Speaker 30:03
Those are my favourite stories to hear. So a lot of our members will have great physical transformations where they might have lost 50 pounds, or they might have gone to run their first Spartan raised or rugged maniac or those obstacle course races, or the first 5k or whatever it is, and those are great to hear. We love hearing those when we celebrate, but my favourite are when we get somebody who comes to us and says, Hey, I don’t have to take my type two diabetes medication anymore. Or we had a member who was severely depressed and was on all sorts of medication for depression. And it was crazy because she was one of our personal training members. So she would, she would do Personal Training, just one on one with one of our coaches. And a lot of times she would come in and just have such a bad day. We would be doing a certain exercise, such as dead lifting. And we would do one set, and then the coach would change the weight on the bar and she would just cry because they’re depressed so bad. But that was four years ago, move along for years now and she’s completely off it. She had very bad, very bad anxiety. She’s out in public now. And she does a lot of our social events, which four or five years ago, even two years ago, she would have never done. So to see that change and hear that she’s off that medication. That’s what I think most of us are proud of, is that were changing people’s lives that way.
Tony Winyard 31:26
I think a lot of people have probably no idea; a lot of people who maybe aren’t going to the gym regularly, have no idea that they are able to change things like depression and diabetes and so on by going to a gym?
Unknown Speaker 31:40
Yeah, it just it changes your mindset. It’s, I think a lot of times when we get down on ourselves, it’s easy to stay there. And I know that depression is clinically diagnosed and everything, but I think a lot of people are scared to do anything about it. And I think a lot of times the medication is pushed on people metacognition along with proper exercise or, you know, on depression or anything like that therapy and counselling is great. But I think people need to get out there and experience things. And that’s what we try to provide is something that, that people can feel part of, and not worry about whatever else is going on. But I think people are definitely afraid of something like this thinking, or depression or whatever it might be, you know, it’s going to hold them back from accomplishing what they really should accomplish.
Tony Winyard 32:32
What are your general thoughts on exceeding expectations Mike?
Unknown Speaker 32:37
so I think exceeding expectations. You know, I absolutely love that title. I think that people have certain expectations in every aspect of life, my expectations of where I would be in life, seven, eight years ago was nowhere near where I am now. I don’t think I had any expectations. So any positive improvement in my life has been exceeding it. But I think when you can go above and beyond What people perceive is that expectation that I think that that’s, that’s the goal of a business, I think, a good business. Are you a good person, like, my wife and I recently had a child, my first child just turned five months yesterday. And my wife is she’s taken her maternity leave. And she’s working so hard while I’m at work and she does such a great job. So she, I think the expectation is just as kind of me coming home and helping her kind of relieving her and all that. But um, you know, I noticed how hard she’s working and, and taking care of our son, you know, need hours a day or whatever it was. So yesterday, I decided to go out and I purchased an hour facial massage, full body massage all that stuff for her. And she had no idea that that was going to happen yesterday when I came home from work. And I’m just so ecstatic about it. So I think we can exceed expectations every area in our life. I think we just have to, to want to do that.
Tony Winyard 33:57
So if people want to find out more more about you and about the the gym you work and so on where would they go to?
So you just Google it real quick www.ISIeliteTraining.com. It’s going to pull up our website, all of our information to have some great videos and have some great testimonials. Then I’m on Facebook, Mike Tilberry coach. Same thing for my Instagram handle. So we’re definitely out there. We’re easy to find.
And you mentioned about some new locations that you will be opening up at where where would those be?
Unknown Speaker 34:33
So as of right now, we’ve, we’ve got five in this area, one just kind of on the border of North and South Carolina. Those are corporate locations. Then we’ve also got, we also have franchise locations opening up we’ve got one in Georgia, and we’ve recently just signed some deals to open them up in Wilmington, North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina believe we’ve got three of those opening up there. And now one and I believe Orlando, Florida And then there’s probably about 25 right now, that are, you know, kind of going through the process. So we’re, we’re going to be near people soon. We’re very excited about bringing what we do, you know, throughout the US and hopefully globally one day that would you know, that would be the goal you know, positively impact as many people as we can.
Tony Winyard 35:18
That’s a pretty rapid expansion. So good luck with that. And you do you have a quotation you like Mike?
Unknown Speaker 35:26
so my favourite quote it’s, it’s actually on the wall in my office. So every day I walk in there, I see it. It’s a Buddha quote, and I’m gonna paraphrase it a little bit because I kind of mix up the words, but “In one moment can change a day, one day can change a life and one life can change the world”. And that’s how I try to change my there that’s how I try to live my life everyday realising that just a small conversation with somebody can spark something in them to change their lives, which may one day you know, who knows change the world.
Tony Winyard 35:57
it’s been a pleasure speaking with you and good luck with all that you’re doing. Maybe I’ll come out to Carolina one day. Who knows?
Unknown Speaker 36:05
Come during the summer when the weather’s nice at the beach, but absolutely, Tony, I really appreciate this opportunity.
Tony Winyard 36:17
Hope you enjoyed this week’s episode from Mike Tilberry. And coincidentally, I recently joined CrossFit, it’s a complete coincidence but it’s been a great experience so far. So if you are looking to join a gym, it’s definitely worth trying. Our guest next week on episode 69 is Mark Green, who is a business and leadership growth coach. And he mostly helps CEOs and executive teams worldwide. And he really tries to liberate human potential. He addresses coaches and advisors business leaders across a wide range of industry on various topics such as leadership, mindset, behaviour, change, human performance, and much much more on next week’s episode. Hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s show. Why not share it with someone who you feel may get some benefit from this, especially anyone who’s looking to join a gym. And please do subscribe, leave a review for us on iTunes. That would be really helpful. hope you have a fantastic week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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