Joe Rouse (00:01.876)
All right, what's up everybody? Welcome back to the Brotherhood Beyond Business podcast. Today, I'm pumped to be sitting down with Nick Berry. Nick is an entrepreneur and a business advisor. He has over 20 years experience and honestly, he's been a mentor of mine since I first started business over almost 13 years ago now. Nick's built and led multiple companies, recognizing the Inc 5000 Entrepreneurs Magazine Franchise 500, Franchise Business Review's top franchisor,

for franchisee satisfaction, along with best places to work awards. Nick now runs redesign.business and he writes the golden thread newsletter and he hosts the business owner's journey podcast to help small business owners grow. So Nick, this one's a big deal for me, man. I really appreciate you coming on. I was excited when I asked that you had availability and I'm looking forward to talking to you.

Nick Berry (00:56.552)
Yeah, well, thank you for having me. I'm excited. I always love talking to you. I know we're going to have a good conversation no matter what.

Joe Rouse (01:03.34)
Yeah, that's, that's the goal. And I know that I'm probably going to learn some things about you that I don't know, which is like, I don't mean that in a way. Well, that's the thing. Like, I feel like I know a fair amount about you, because we worked together for so long or because you mentored me for so long professionally, but even I interviewed Trevor the other day and I learned things about him. didn't know. And, you know, I've been meeting with that guy in person for the last, ever since FR we, you know, kept doing our thing. So, this will be fun.

Nick Berry (01:09.596)
I think you already know a lot too, right?

Nick Berry (01:31.315)
It kind of lets you know where you stand as far as like your depth of relationships with people, right? When you're, you are still finding things out, which keeps, that's cool. But it also gives you a reason to think, have I really been listening? Have I been asking the questions that I need to ask?

Joe Rouse (01:35.757)
Yeah.

Joe Rouse (01:45.516)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where I want to go with you today. All right. So I mean, the most, the most, so Nick's a father. Nick's married to Kelly Berry and I, we're going to get into, think at some point you guys both being a business together and running a business. I'm going to dive into that because that's always a fun topic to talk about with your spouse. Nick has, Nick has a wonderful, I'm sure daughter, three and a half years and

Nick Berry (01:49.308)
All right, let's do it.

Joe Rouse (02:15.2)
I've known Nick since, well, I probably didn't really know you at first, because you were kind of in the background, right? I more so knew some of the success coaches. But I've been, I learned about the business Nick was in, which was essentially coaching fitness businesses, right around 2014. So I don't know if you know this, but you guys had like a 30 day trial.

for like fitness business accelerator or just accelerator it was called. And I jumped in on that trial and I knew that if I didn't cancel before the 30 days was up that I was locked in for 12 months. And it sounds bad. But look, I tell the story to everybody because I tell them it was the best like mistake that I ever made because I feel lucky. but I obviously forgot to cancel. Like I think I had two calls, forgot to cancel.

Nick Berry (02:55.985)
That sounds harsh.

Joe Rouse (03:11.118)
And I'll never forget looking at that. got billed or whatever it was. I think it was like 300 bucks or something. It was like a big deal back then. Um, in 2000, probably 13 was when I went full time into the business. So it could have been before that. No, 2013 was when I started. Yeah. So 13 was when I opened full time was 15. So it was probably like 13 or 14, but I, uh, I remember seeing that and literally thinking to myself, all right, well now I've got to maximize this thing.

Nick Berry (03:24.091)
I knew you before then. I knew you before you went full time.

Joe Rouse (03:40.748)
So let me see fully what it is they offer and how this can help me grow my business and become an actual business owner and not just be doing this as my second job. And I tell everybody that story because I'm like, I think it's one of the best, I mean, you could call it a mistake, like slip ups of my mind. Like I'm not saying I went into it fully intending to cancel, but I didn't think I could afford it at the time. So once I forgot to cancel, saw that I got billed, knew what the terms were, manned up and started looking and saw that you guys had live meetings.

And that was where I met Nick Berry for the first time was in a room at the Brown Hotel. It might've been the first time I ever like.

Nick Berry (04:16.147)
hotel and it was the most packed live coaching meeting that we ever had probably.

Joe Rouse (04:22.582)
Yeah, I don't know what was their movie. Well, people, it did. I think I met Marshall at that meeting. I definitely met Mark at that meeting. They were both at the next one I came to also. Will Savoy came in, I think late. Remember he showed up and popped in. Yeah, a lot of people there. feel like Izzy was probably there. Yeah.

Nick Berry (04:24.187)
Yeah. I mean, you remember who I was there is like basically turned into your mastermind.

Nick Berry (04:39.037)
Yep.

Nick Berry (04:44.883)
I mean, was, as he was there.

It was loaded.

Joe Rouse (04:50.626)
Yeah, was a great, but I remember being in that room and just thinking, my gosh, this is where I'm meant to be. Like these people think like me, they talk like me, they're excited about the same things I'm excited about. And we're getting advice from somebody who's already done it, which is not even a thing I knew existed. So it was one of the coolest like mental slip ups I've ever had because I feel privileged to have had business coaching from like the start of my business.

Nick Berry (05:18.515)
Yeah. Well, wasn't, it wasn't a thing that you were aware of, but I mean, we had been doing it for, since six. But so here's the thing that I think is so cool about, well, there are a lot of things that are cool about your story, but the thing, the like linchpin to all of it is just you being the way that you are. So, you know, it may have been an accident for it for

Joe Rouse (05:19.086)
Especially back when it wasn't really a thing. There might have been like two of y'all in the game, right?

Joe Rouse (05:27.085)
Yeah.

Nick Berry (05:47.316)
the, some of the occurrences, but the thing that's not accidental is how you, your response, response was not to complain. Your response was, right, now how do I make the most of this? Like that's a, that's just a very high agency. Like, Oh, this is, this is the hand that I'm dealt. Now what do I do with it? Um, and rather than dwelling or, uh, yeah, there are just a lot of different approaches that can be taken, but the year.

perspective and that showed up with you then, and it showed up with you the entire time that I've known you. like when you meet some people and things click or for me, think about when somebody has this, the the characteristic, it's that agency that like, okay, well, we get to work figuring out what to do next. We're thinking forward, not sitting here like basking in.

misery or, or even trying to come out with like a, trying to find our way to unwind it because we have this limited or fixed mentality to things. It's like, all right, let's go make some magic with it.

Joe Rouse (06:45.581)
Yeah.

Joe Rouse (06:56.802)
Yeah, what a terrible way that would be. That would be such a challenging way to live, to sit and think that way. It's easy to slide into that too. And I have a quote that I think you made up. I don't even know if you realize how much you impacted my life over the years. we were, I mean, you were always open. You always, the way that you would offer advice, you listened intently, and then...

you processed and then offered advice. And of course I was more like a fire hose at the time if I was going to offer somebody advice, but that always slowed me down a little bit and helped me think when you would do that. But I remember you saying this and I say this to my wife all the time when we're working on something. And I don't know if you got this from somewhere too, but you always used to say like, well, it's figure outable. And I use that all the time. Like I use it with my staff. I talk to my wife. I'm like,

I don't know what we're going do now, but it's figureoutable. that just kind of suited, I don't know, everything's figureoutable.

Nick Berry (07:58.204)
It is, it really is like, and most of it's not as big of a deal as we think it is. But it's like, that's the way that you, that's just, you didn't really have to, like that muscle was active, right? You didn't have to consciously trigger it to be that way. At least I don't think so, because you were consistently that way. And like, that's the thing, that's the muscle that you wanna make strong is the one that like,

Joe Rouse (08:05.9)
No! Even if it steals like a-

Nick Berry (08:27.431)
that agency muscle that, and it just activates on its own. It's habitual. It's the way you are, right? That's your identity is tied to like that behavior that you feel like is a positive one. And I don't know where that, I didn't, if I made up that I doubt I made it up. I don't know where I would have heard it, but I mean, I'm not above making up words or phrases, but yeah, I don't think I made that up.

Joe Rouse (08:52.46)
Yeah.

Nick Berry (08:58.259)
But it puts things into perspective, man, because you got to like, let's, we can kind of acknowledge whatever the situation is, but then we've immediately got to flip that into, all right, what are we going to do about it? Because I just don't think there's much of a place for that sitting still, like sitting in things.

Joe Rouse (09:10.243)
Yeah.

Nick Berry (09:19.677)
just for the sake of sitting in it, right? If you're gonna sit in it, you sit in it long enough to figure out how to help to get it to serve you. And then on we go.

Joe Rouse (09:27.383)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, even sitting in things like if I've got something going on, I don't know, let's say revenue's down and I've got to get it back up or whatever it might be, I can't stop doing the foundational important things that have to be done in order to sit in it and figure it out. I try to take time to think about things if things are off, but not allow those things to slip.

Nick Berry (09:47.795)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (09:58.221)
And that's been a very helpful thing for me to get through some of those tougher times, like closing a second location, all that stuff.

Nick Berry (10:02.387)
Mm-hmm.

I mean, the way that we're wired doing those other things, probably a lot of times it probably gives you just enough space, just enough of distraction to help you figure out how, like what, what the next step needs to be for the main problem.

Joe Rouse (10:16.195)
huh.

Joe Rouse (10:20.588)
Yeah. All right. So let's go. I want to go back because I want people to, I want to see what I can learn about Nick Berry that I don't know. From, guess, mostly from a professional side.

Nick Berry (10:33.009)
And I think this might be challenging because we've done the, like played the things that nobody knows about me game before, right? At some of your meetings. I've done that for years. I've done like the posts on social media, cause I'm not very good about coming up with actually valuable things. So I don't have that many more things that you might not know. We'll see.

Joe Rouse (10:41.142)
A few times at the meeting. Yeah.

Joe Rouse (10:56.358)
I mean, look, we've had lots of conversations over drinks in different places. I can remember just lots of them. I was, I feel like it was when we were in Puerto Rico and we had like a, I don't even remember the conversation. I just remember the setting and us sitting there talking somewhere in Puerto Rico. I think it was in Puerto Rico. Cause that was like the last place we really went before COVID. And we were down there in the thick of it surrounded by cruise ships.

Nick Berry (11:18.547)
Yep, COVID hit while we were in Puerto Rico.

Joe Rouse (11:24.142)
That's another good story I like to tell. I'm like, yeah, we have cruise ships all around us in February of 2020.

Nick Berry (11:31.069)
Sure did.

Joe Rouse (11:32.43)
came back, my member goes, do you think this COVID thing is gonna be real? Is it gonna really? And I'm like, no, no, no way. That's another conversation I remember. All right, Nick, so, all right, so roughly, how old were you when you opened your first business? Was the gym the first business?

Nick Berry (11:42.205)
We made it.

Nick Berry (11:51.852)
no, I think, let's see. I think I was 22 or three. I think I was maybe a 23. and it was, so I got out of college, 22. I had a job for six months and realized that I, there are two problems there. I was not good at that job. And also I was not a good employee.

So it's like the wrong person, wrong place, wrong time. Yeah. But so then I actually...

Joe Rouse (12:31.416)
That was a college related? Was that like related to what you went to college for? Did you do like exercise science? can't remember. Okay.

Nick Berry (12:35.249)
Yeah, it was exercise science. And so I had a, my, I knew a guy that had a company in a gym. he's working with a box club, a company that was growing really fast. And so I went and I worked with them and like, you know, figured out, okay, I can kind of block this potential path off from my, career options. And so.

I don't really remember my process of trying to figure out what I was going to do after that, but I'm sure I had no idea. Because at that point in my life, I never really had much of an idea. I was never really clear, drawn to anything. The only reason I did exercise science is because, I don't know, I guess I played sports and I felt like it would be enjoyable when I could get through it. I started out as a psych major and

Joe Rouse (13:12.77)
Yeah.

Joe Rouse (13:30.722)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (13:33.772)
flunked out after two semesters. So that was, yeah. So I knew that psychology was off the table too. Yeah. And I was hoping to not have to rule out every possible career path individually. But at that point, I stepped back and just going to try to figure out what I was going to do. And I ended up buying a, like the smoothie, smoothie bar, like a smoothie King.

Joe Rouse (13:42.4)
Okay? You knew what you weren't gonna do. You weren't gonna be an employee.

Nick Berry (14:02.707)
a pro shop in one of those box clubs. And then these guys asked me if I wanted to open them in there. Like they were opening more box clubs and they asked me if I wanted to open up the retail shops inside each one. I was like, sure. So we.

Joe Rouse (14:20.504)
How do you come to, how do you, I'm sorry to interrupt, but how do you come to the decision to buy a smoothie king inside of a gym or the smoothie shop? what, you're just like, you said you met them, I guess you got to know them at the bot.

Nick Berry (14:31.163)
Yeah. And I think it was just kind of opportunistic. I was spending time with those people in the business of running a membership gym environment. And they had their different internal revenue streams, personal training, retail. And so I was familiar with it. And then I knew the group that was

that owned the rights to retail. I don't remember the reason, but they wanted to get out of it. That was how it happened. It wasn't something that I pursued. I saw the opportunity there and was like, yeah, I can make this work.

Joe Rouse (15:20.664)
Does that not feel like life to you? that's me every day, all day, all the time. Like I had to scale it back a little bit. like, that's an opportunity right there. Or I know this, like, especially when I was in my 20s.

Nick Berry (15:32.862)
Yeah, I think it was like that just without, you now you see those opportunities and you're applying some filter, you're qualifying them higher, right? So they've got to be better opportunities. Then I don't know what I'll use to assess, but I'm sure the bar was low. But, you know, I got into that and then opened another.

Joe Rouse (15:42.615)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rouse (15:53.006)
Okay.

Nick Berry (16:00.072)
with that group and then also got their rights to the personal training company in their next location. And that was the business that we started that took off. And so this personal training company, you know, at that time we were doing annual agreements, EFT, group training. Nobody did those things. I mean, it was like...

Joe Rouse (16:21.58)
No, that was before that stuff. didn't happen until, yeah, like more when I came into the industry is when that was really being done a lot. Like group training was the thing and EFTs were just, yeah.

Nick Berry (16:28.134)
Yep. Yep. Before that, you know, personal trainers, so one-on-one training in 10 packs and you give them a check and they would like post, you know, post date a series of checks. so we, we like, I mean, it sounds, don't know. I don't want to be like dramatic about it, but like we re totally reinvented the way that those things were being done. And

Joe Rouse (16:53.603)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (16:55.579)
And it was like very efficient. mean, you had it lowered the barit entry. So, you know, clients could pay less and get more service. It was very efficient from the company standpoint because it clients like applying, like using the service that they bought. It was just, it was so much higher leverage than the way that the model had been before that. So we did that. It went really well.

And at that point, two things kind of happened at the same time, opened up an Anytime Fitness. And I think we were like the 32nd or 33rd or 34th Anytime Fitness ever. Yeah. So like back when it was unproven and then

Joe Rouse (17:38.125)
Okay.

Joe Rouse (17:43.406)
Are you still owning the smoothie shop part at this point? Or did you unload those in the personal training business and then just put it all into anytime?

Nick Berry (17:50.876)
Nope, they were all still going at the same time. We got out of the pro shop, the smoothie bar stuff at some point there, and really just focused on the training and the gym. The other thing that happened that was pivotal was, so we were going to these conferences and we'd tell people what we were doing, how this personal training business was going.

Joe Rouse (17:55.155)
you were rockin'.

Nick Berry (18:19.697)
the model, how different it was, the money we're making. And people would be like, I'll pay you to tell me how to do that. So that makes you a consultant right there. one of the first, so the first paying client to come to Elizabeth Down in Kentucky for a consultation, Pamela Michaelry and her business partner came. yeah. so like, so I've known Pamela, I mean, it's

Joe Rouse (18:27.084)
Okay. Yes. There's your opportunity.

Joe Rouse (18:43.255)
Right on.

Nick Berry (18:49.981)
getting close to like not quite half of my life, but I've known Pamela longer than I've known just about everybody as an adult. And so that was really where everything took off. the consulting turned into information products, into masterminds and group coaching, which turned into like we're spinning off some other partnerships and building this portfolio of companies.

that eventually turned into fitness revolution, which was what I had up until the beginning of 2024. So, I mean, like a whole lot of things happened through that.

Joe Rouse (19:30.094)
Yeah, there was a lot. mean, I remember observing a lot of that because so when it became a portfolio of companies, right, there's like Athletic Revolution, AR, RBT, and FCG. It was actually at sometimes it was confusing from the consumer perspective, to be honest with you. But I don't know if I'm going to keep coming back to this or what, but talking about being opportunistic.

Was that a part of the reason why you went with so many different partnerships and like branches within this umbrella? Or did it just seem, what's the business mind behind like having these different brands all kind of under one company?

Nick Berry (20:18.877)
So it was just, I mean, it was a portfolio strategy that we didn't fully know that it was, that's what it was at the time. What I did know was that it was like very high leverage. you know, they were, these entities shared some resources, but there was a lot of overlap in the audience. So that just created a lot of opportunities. So, you know, very efficient. That's why we were able to do.

you know, those live events and conferences for so many years because, know, most of the, I shouldn't say most, but we could get the majority of our portfolio could be represented there on stage because it was our event. So it was just, it was very efficient as far as like acquiring customers, and really all the way through to delivery because a lot of the shared resources.

were support resources.

Joe Rouse (21:20.579)
I remember using some of those. So it's efficient, there's leverage. Why condense it down or change? Why go a different route to where it all just became FR?

Nick Berry (21:32.531)
because in 2015, so Pat and I, my 50-50 partner, we split in 2015 and...

And in 2017, I believe it was. So really what, from, from that point, what I was trying to figure out is like, are we, is our upside, does it lie more in a singular focus or on, this continuing the platform portfolio strategy? And so in 2017 is when I decided like, we just need everybody to be able to wake up in the morning and know like, here's the thing that I do. It needs to be one thing.

So we got out of the remaining portfolio companies. And at that point, like each of them always had his own operator. So we were able to basically let that operator buy me out. And so then their company could stay whole, we could stay whole. And it let us focus all of the resources that we had on business revolution. So it was really a matter of, I think the upside lies for us more in

this brand than these brands.

Joe Rouse (22:51.47)
And they all, well, most of them still exist. I mean, know RVT, know IYCAA. I don't know what other companies you would, I mean, maybe the small group training.

Nick Berry (23:03.988)
Yeah, I don't know if they still are a thing or not. That would be another one that you know. let's see. Yeah, I mean, there are a couple that are not active right now, but I don't really know the story. don't know what happened with them. But for the most part, the big ones all are still doing their thing today.

Joe Rouse (23:06.466)
I don't know if they do either.

Joe Rouse (23:30.466)
Yeah. So once you switch, once you go just, it's just one company now. I mean, I can say from the consumer side, like, I mean,

You could tell all the focus was on one thing because innovation went up significantly, I guess is a word that I want to use right now.

Nick Berry (23:55.272)
Yeah. That's, it's not an accident.

Joe Rouse (23:55.695)
and it showed. No, no. So.

Why move on? Like COVID comes, and I'm assuming that has something to do with like how you changed routes or sold FR. So what, let's say COVID comes, like what's the thought process, what's happening around that time?

Nick Berry (24:22.056)
Yep. So, COVID comes and like with the, were, so whenever I decided like we need to be like more, more leveraged over here in one, one entity, one brand, not multiple. So we're not spread thin. So we do that and it, and it's working and, yeah, pandemic hits and we reorganized and

I mean, basically it was like, all right, you know, I in, mean, gosh, it's one of those things that you are, you just always going to remember really clearly how it went. You know, we had done like quarterly planning on a Monday, Tuesday or something like that. And then Wednesday, I went into the office and got the leadership team in there and was like, well, so everything that we just spent two days working on,

we're going have to put it on pause. Like we've got to make some changes right now because this thing is going to be real and it is going to be bad. so we can, yeah. And so we went in and reorganized and basically changed the way, gosh.

Joe Rouse (25:31.662)
You're talking about the pandemic. Okay, okay, that makes sense, yeah.

when they're live events.

Nick Berry (25:48.745)
changed the way that we provided what we were providing in a way that made it accessible, like way beyond what we were gonna be able to sustain. Like our goal was, well, like we're gonna get them through this pandemic one way or the other. So that's what we tooled up for. And we did that and we didn't have anybody, any of our clients close permanently from the pandemic.

Joe Rouse (26:03.192)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Berry (26:17.492)
We get through it and that's like, you know, this, I don't know. It was like.

12 months of just straight grind and just was burnout. so, but burnout like not, so I call it burnout now and I really don't know if it was burnout, like the real burnout, but I know everybody was exhausted and I was just like kind of worn a little bit. So it took me a while to figure out like, well, I'm just not motivated. Like, I don't know why.

Joe Rouse (26:31.651)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (26:53.3)
I'm proud of what we just did. I think it's really cool for us to be willing to do that. I think we did a great job of it. think it was, it's, yeah, I'm very proud of that. But I was like.

Joe Rouse (27:07.512)
Brand new territory for everybody.

Nick Berry (27:09.192)
Yeah. And I don't really, yeah. And I just wasn't as like the need to attack the work, like to keep pressing the way that had gone before the pandemic, the way that it was before. just, I don't know. It just like faded. so it's like, well.

probably time to find something different to do.

Joe Rouse (27:34.382)
I mean, that's a benefit of being a business owner, right? Like, if you position yourself the right way, if you're responsible enough, you can make decisions like that.

Nick Berry (27:43.251)
Yeah. Yeah. mean, you can, it has a lot to do with if you position yourself because it could also be the curse of being a business owner. If you don't have the option to just like try, you know, find another, another path. or, know, couldn't hadn't didn't find a buyer or I didn't have something that was worth buying. Like, so yeah, there were, it wasn't an accident that it worked out the way that it,

Joe Rouse (27:59.565)
Yeah. Or the talent.

Nick Berry (28:13.8)
had where we were able to make that choice, it wasn't how the plan was drawn up, I guess is what I would say.

Joe Rouse (28:26.626)
you had more future plans. Like you guys maybe had an annual meeting or had annual planning done and then you decided to change direction.

Nick Berry (28:35.676)
Yeah, and I mean, I hadn't even.

Yeah. And going through the process of doing, creating the plans, it still wasn't apparent to me, you know, in those moments that I was like, you need to be doing something different. It's, you know, sometimes the feeling the way what I've learned since, whether it's burnout or whatever else we want to call it, is sometimes that's a result of the amount of work. Sometimes it's

result of the type of work. Sometimes it's a combination, but for whatever reason, was like just couldn't, I just didn't have the drive that was there before and it wasn't coming back fast. Just rest wasn't, vacation wasn't recharging me. that's when I realized like, hmm.

Joe Rouse (29:24.088)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (29:35.212)
Okay.

Nick Berry (29:39.188)
Well, I don't really know what's next, but it's going to need to be something and because, yeah, I just need to start planning to bring this chapter to a close.

Joe Rouse (29:51.608)
So did you happen to see that recent podcast with Alex Hormozi and Tony Robbins?

Nick Berry (29:57.269)
I haven't seen it, no. I know about it. I haven't seen it, though.

Joe Rouse (29:58.319)
It's just an interesting, you know, interesting couple of guys to hear talk to each other. And it's mostly Tony Robbins doing the talking, which is not surprising, but it's a somewhat of a parallel where, know, this guy that most people would consider Uber successful in our, at least in our industry, for sure. Alex Hormozzi, like wildly successful, right? But when he starts talking to Tony Robbins, you learn that

Nick Berry (30:19.76)
Alex? Yeah.

Joe Rouse (30:28.354)
he doesn't, it sounds like he's feeling almost a similar way to how you were.

And he, losing my train of thought now, but he, the thing that stuck out the most in my head that I think is similar is he was kind of asking about balancing.

He asks about balancing happiness with something else, like with work. And Tony alludes to like, they don't have to be separate things. You just have to be doing the right work, essentially. But he goes into a story, Alex does, about cutting like something, I'm paraphrasing, a million dollar check for a charity. I think it was like something with food for kids who needed food in a school or something related to that. Had to do with kids, know, kids who needed something.

And he did it more than once. And he did it and like kind of sort of selfishly did it because he wanted to do something good and have the feelings that come along with that. And he didn't get any of them. He just felt like, all right, I'm a million dollars poorer now. That's what he says on the podcast. And that sounds somewhat comparable, right? Like you just, I think those are two different, two different maybe problems presenting themselves. Cause you were more like, all right, I want to move into my next.

Nick Berry (31:41.854)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (31:50.912)
opportunity. That's going to be like the word of this podcast, I guess. But he...

think he's made himself so focused on his term that Tony Robbins kind of gets at him. He actually says, he says, you know, just tell myself, I tell myself, fuck happiness. And Tony's like, what? What are that needs to go right now. And he kind of lights into him for it. But you can tell that that's, Tony says that he's like, he's hypnotized himself into it. And he's struggling to find, I like, I think it's fulfillment he's trying to find.

If you're cutting million dollar checks to give somebody a new life essentially, like, you get no fulfillment from that, then something's missing. And I just thought that was an interesting parallel.

Nick Berry (32:33.288)
Right. And it's probably not about the check either. It's probably like your, your joy meter is broken. Right. Like you're yeah. You're like, he's, not just that he's like, he's probably not finding joy in anything.

Joe Rouse (32:40.526)
Maybe joy was a word they used. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rouse (32:47.104)
No, outside of his wife. He changes when he talks about his wife. That's when the mouth opens up and all that stuff. He definitely changes.

Nick Berry (32:54.686)
Yeah. Yep. was similar. was like joy was kind of muffled everywhere. I just thought, I'm just tired because I've worked X number of days in a row, crazy hours. There's fatigue and then there's whatever you're doing to fuel yourself up. You just can't. I think we all kind of need to accept.

Like you can't just be high and happy all the time. Like there's a counter to that and be okay being still and not chasing whatever the release is. it's just not sustainable. The dip is going to come. And so that, think that's just kind what I'm going through.

Joe Rouse (33:46.743)
More than once. Yeah. So how does that work? mean, so you're going through that as the CEO of this company with employees and staff and a lot of them have with you for many, many years, right? And I'm sure you had the discussion with Kelly where you were at, I would assume.

Nick Berry (33:58.312)
Yeah.

Nick Berry (34:07.372)
We talked about it because she was probably ground down worse than I was.

Joe Rouse (34:11.82)
Okay, okay, I can see that. I can see her holding that load. I can see her holding, yeah, I can see her holding that load, yeah, heavily. Or just, they deal with it, my wife especially, for me, deals with it much differently than I would deal with it. But as you're doing that, like, let's say at some point you decided, okay, I'm going to sell, and you've still got a whole...

Nick Berry (34:14.1)
So nothing better than for me to come in and unload.

Joe Rouse (34:38.334)
meetings like you still have to keep the company running it has to hold value has to be efficient so as to serve its clientele like How did you how did you handle that?

Nick Berry (34:49.14)
So there are a few pieces to it. One is like, I just didn't have to be involved in the day to day very much. like I could get by, I mean, I could get by with going, you know, an entire week and not having any presence. That would do that for a few weeks and then it would be an issue. having a one meeting that covered the staff,

Joe Rouse (34:57.186)
name.

Nick Berry (35:18.516)
the coaching staff, that was the way. So I made sure that I reduced things down to where I knew I could do that thing and do that well. And that was kind of like the 20 80, right? The 20 % that would give me the 80 % of impact with them. And we talked internally, the staff, about adjusting my role. We didn't talk about necessarily why.

Joe Rouse (35:34.83)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (35:48.444)
I probably would have been open to talking about why I don't, but I.

Joe Rouse (35:53.849)
That's kind of my next, that's where I would ask the next question is like balancing that. when you think back, would it have been better? Do everything you did tell them ahead of time what the process is happening in the background? Or in my mind, they might, yeah, like that maybe you're working on that or I feel like everybody might jump ship at that point.

Nick Berry (36:09.288)
process of selling.

Nick Berry (36:13.426)
Yeah. I don't think you tell, yeah, I think you keep that private and out of the business. Yeah. For those reasons, because you can't, because you're putting this asset that someone's going to buy at risk. so like contractually, you shouldn't be able to talk about those things. I'm talking about would I share with them that I was like,

burnout or tired or whatever that I was adjusting my schedule. I wouldn't have any problem sharing that. And I would have, if I would have felt like it was showing up. So if I hadn't been able to reduce down my exposure in my day-to-day activity within the business enough that I felt like I could show up and be, know, 80, 90 % there.

If I couldn't maintain that, then I would have told. So there was that part. Then there was the handling of the transaction. so one thing that happened in our situation was the transaction just occurred. came about and went through really fast, like in a short time period. it was around 60 days, I think, give or take a little bit. So that's pretty quick.

Joe Rouse (37:36.75)
OK.

Nick Berry (37:42.547)
Yeah, we would not have been able to do it. Like I wouldn't have been able to drag things out for a long time without having to address something somewhere. Somebody was going to notice something or, you know, performance is going to like taper off at some point. Like you can't have a CEO who's just completely absent. So we were

We were fortunately able to process the transaction really quickly, relatively quickly.

Joe Rouse (38:16.014)
Did you entertain any other buyers or were there any other serious considerations before Justin bought it?

Nick Berry (38:22.382)
yes, I'll talk to some other people. Nobody got serious. You know, the thing, the buyer was someone who had worked in the business, was familiar, knew the process, had, so he came back like that. That's what helped it make it all so much more seamless. yeah.

Joe Rouse (38:41.752)
the right buyer and being somebody who was in it and was a staff member. Okay.

Nick Berry (38:45.746)
Yep. So, you know, that, that made a big difference. and that was something that I guess, like he came, he didn't know the situation. but he came to me, back to me and in the conversation asked like, would I be open to selling it? it's, yeah. So I guess I I had sown the seeds unknowingly for that years before.

Joe Rouse (39:13.528)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (39:15.636)
When we worked together, he and I had a good relationship. He'd been a business owner before. I liked the guy and we'd had conversation about, wasn't like the business was not for sale, but he had talked to me about like future plans and what I wanted to do. And I told him like, I mean, I don't have any plans to sell.

And somewhere in one of those conversations, I said something like, you know, if I ever got out of it, like you're, definitely are somebody, the kind of person that I would want it to be with, right? Because then I would know what to expect. It would be like taken care of the way that I would want it to be taken care of. and so, you know, that's what actually made him think to come back years later and just ask me. And he happened to ask at the right time. And it was the rightest time for me.

Joe Rouse (39:46.531)
No.

Joe Rouse (40:01.539)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (40:06.264)
working with leads.

Nick Berry (40:09.004)
so yeah, you know, if he hadn't come back, who knows? I mean, you never really know how long it's going to take to find the right buyer for something like that anyway. but that was one that, in this situation, it's like things aligned really, really well.

Joe Rouse (40:20.515)
Thank

Joe Rouse (40:28.706)
All hold on. let's say the line is the dotted, you sign, cross your T's, your I's, everything's signed, it's done. Well first, did you stay within the business for a certain amount of time or it's gotta be a clean cut?

Nick Berry (40:47.742)
So we had the like zero day where ownership was transferred. And then like, I don't remember the exact numbers, I'll mess them up, but it's like, you know, say 60 days later, maybe 90 days later, that's when, so we let the staff know immediately. And so, like he and I talked to them and then we let,

the clients know, I'm gonna say 60, maybe 90 days later, to just kind of do it in phases. And I was still involved at that point. So I stayed on for a year. And...

Joe Rouse (41:33.922)
Okay. That's not that long. Like I think some, like a lot of people stay on for a long time, don't they? Like when they sell a business, depending on the business, I guess, but like that can be a problem sometimes.

Nick Berry (41:41.801)
Yeah. Yeah. mean, it depends. really, so what we did was, it was, I'm to stay on a minimum of six months because like we had a training program that I had to take him through and then a maximum of 12 months. And it'll depend on where he's at in the training program as to like when it actually ends up being like the end point for me.

Joe Rouse (41:56.302)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (42:09.128)
But we had these milestones that we needed to meet. so I was committed to her up to a year. I think it was, I think it ended up being like seven and a half months or something like that. but even after that, like I still was available. still talked to him. so it's kind of like it tapered and,

Yeah, like it tapered and got down to where my obligations were on paper had been met. There weren't any, but it's not like I, you know, we severed ties and, you know, I left him on his own. Although he didn't need me for anything. He was prepared. I was still available if needed and like supportive. That was really it. Just so he had somebody that he could talk with.

if you needed to.

Joe Rouse (43:04.174)
Did you tell, when did you, you said you told the client like you told the staff or you told the coaches and then you told the clients, did you tell any of the folks like in the mastermind group, did you go, I feel like, cause I know they would come to Florida sometimes. I didn't know if you told them in person or not. I don't know. I didn't find out that you'd sold it till I think way later did I really realize or maybe it was right around the time you announced it to clients that I found out about it.

Nick Berry (43:32.808)
You know, I think I went to, really?

Joe Rouse (43:34.924)
Actually, I heard it on your podcast. That was where I heard about it.

Nick Berry (43:39.583)
Well, I think, so if you weren't involved in the Mastermind program at that point, I think I went to a meeting where they were in Florida nearby, Kelly and I went after that we had told them, because we told them first. That group didn't get treated like just anybody. They're like one degree outside of staff. You know what I mean?

Joe Rouse (44:07.82)
Yeah, great people.

Nick Berry (44:08.316)
And our staff is like one degree outside of family at that point. It's, I mean, you know, the people that we're talking about that was, you know, telling like Pamela and Asa it was like, you know, there's nothing, it's one of those things you're like, it shouldn't be problematic, but man, I, you just kind of feel like you're letting somebody down.

Joe Rouse (44:19.16)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (44:29.79)
yeah, yeah. And I don't mean that as like saying something to you. I mean, I know what you're talking about from a conversation I had with my general manager when I closed my second location. It's a different feeling.

Nick Berry (44:39.602)
Yeah. Yeah. And same with those, that group of clients is like, because we've been, I mean, you would be an example of one of these people. Like I remember when you said, I left my job, like I'm full time in the business now. I'm like, congratulations. It's like we grew up together through that period. So,

Joe Rouse (44:59.662)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (45:05.944)
Yeah.

Nick Berry (45:09.8)
Yeah, there's this thing about me that, you know, for better or for worse, I feel like, you know, we're in it together. And I, even though you're ready, you don't need me anymore. I'm like, I don't want you to feel like I'm not there. And so, or like I've moved on. Whether or not that's how anybody feels, I don't know, but it doesn't really,

Joe Rouse (45:27.47)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (45:37.046)
is what it is now, like can't do anything about it now, I mean.

Nick Berry (45:39.699)
Yeah. But that's, we cascaded to go back to your question about how we handled like optics. We cascaded the information starting, you know, kind of based on tiers and built in enough time in between announcements that just in case something didn't go well, like there, you know, we had an opportunity for damage control. And we just spent what I...

Joe Rouse (46:03.523)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (46:09.32)
believe was an adequate, a more than adequate amount of time. We allocated more than an adequate amount of time to communicating with all the people involved. So at the very least, they felt like they got to have a conversation about it. Like we gave a shit about how they felt about it. And I mean,

Joe Rouse (46:31.298)
I would never have thought any otherwise from y'all either, from you or Kelly. Had I been, I wasn't a coaching client at that point, but yeah, I think I wouldn't have thought any different from you guys. I would have expected y'all to be that way.

Nick Berry (46:34.738)
Yeah, well.

Nick Berry (46:44.006)
I don't remember the timeline with you, like you working with the company and how close it was or not, I'm kind of surprised that it didn't talk to you, like that you didn't find out directly because that's just.

Joe Rouse (47:02.424)
I don't know how I didn't, yeah, was wild that I didn't know. was like, my gosh, I was kind of, to my, I was kind of like, that explains a lot. Like, that was kind of what I thought. I was like, that's why I'm seeing him all the time, social media wise and all that stuff. I think I left when I couldn't travel to the meetings as much anymore, like at all. And the live meetings are so valuable to me. They're so valuable to me.

Nick Berry (47:24.56)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I do remember that.

Joe Rouse (47:30.574)
I don't know, so that would have been like 21 or 22. I was in this house, so probably 22, something like that.

Nick Berry (47:35.977)
Yeah, I do remember that. like, you you're one of those people that, that was in that group that we like hold a really high regard for. it's not because you're in that group. Right. So, it would have made sense that we would, should have like had some communication with you. know there are other people, similar people that, that are talked to. So, you know, it

Joe Rouse (47:49.454)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (48:05.78)
If I had to guess, it's the kind of thing that I lost track of. Like something slipped through the cracks and I didn't realize it until now. So I apologize. I should have let you know,

Joe Rouse (48:14.766)
I didn't feel slighted at all. It's not... Honestly, I was like, I want to talk to Nick. I was interested. I was like, I want to talk to Nick about it. That's what I wanted to do.

Nick Berry (48:22.834)
Yeah. I mean, that's like, you know, that's the way that we wanted to be, right? We felt like that's the way that we, the relationship that we had had with you and the relationship. And I didn't want it to be based on whether or not you are a client. in that case.

Joe Rouse (48:36.93)
Yeah. You've always answered my text. Like whenever I've texted you, you've always answered. At some point you've been willing to talk back and forth with me. So I've always been appreciative of that. Like when I was going through the second location closing and all that stuff.

Nick Berry (48:46.472)
Yeah, for sure.

Nick Berry (48:50.92)
Yeah. mean, and I'm happy. love doing it because I feel like I'm in it. got to, regardless at this point, like we are, you know, we've shared multiple chapters of our separate independent journeys together. And I think that's the coolest thing. You know, you're, we're going to get to the end of the book and look back and there are going to be a lot of people that were involved that you kind of intertwined.

Joe Rouse (49:03.182)
Okay.

Joe Rouse (49:08.266)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Berry (49:19.38)
But there are not going to be that many people who you got to spend a lot of chapters with and that you just like speak fondly of. so I think that's just a really cool thing that I try to appreciate as much as possible.

Joe Rouse (49:25.379)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (49:37.187)
Yeah, think there's, I don't know the word to describe that, but I would agree wholeheartedly. Like I've got guys in my life who are gonna be in my life, and you would, you're gonna, I'm sure in some way you'll be, we'll have an association, we're gonna talk at some point, probably forever. You know what I mean? Like somehow we're gonna talk. But I mean, think about the guys like, we got me, Trevor, Danny, Mark.

Jimmy. Jimmy's an oddball a little bit, but Jimmy... I'll run my mouth about Jimmy all day. I don't care what he says.

Nick Berry (50:12.21)
I'm not gonna say anything.

Nick Berry (50:19.572)
Can we create a special little clip for Jimmy?

Joe Rouse (50:21.676)
We can create a clip for Jimmy. That guy can eat it. mean, Jared now, and Jared wasn't even really somebody I knew that well while I was in it. I got to know him more towards the, well, we were putting a group together and that was where I really got to know him. And we were born on the same year and on the same day. We share, yeah, we have the same exact birthday. It's wild. And we share a lot of similarities too.

Nick Berry (50:42.42)
I didn't realize that.

Joe Rouse (50:47.15)
And then other guys that are, know, Adam Kessler's with us. He meets with us now, Jim Herrick. Yeah, it's amazing. And I'm gonna, I'll probably know these guys for the rest of my life now. Like, I feel like I'm, of course.

Nick Berry (50:47.582)
Yeah, I mean that's

Nick Berry (50:54.045)
Isn't that cool?

Nick Berry (50:59.25)
Yeah. I mean, at this point you've known, so you said you were 40, you've known some of these guys like maybe 10 years. It's a quarter of your life and half of your adult life. Like you're going to reach a point where you won't remember life without them. That you will have spent more of your life with them than without them. I mean, the list is not that long of those kinds of people.

Joe Rouse (51:09.196)
Yeah.

Nick Berry (51:29.216)
so it's like, it's a, I just think it's a cool thing to like stop and recognize.

Joe Rouse (51:29.678)
Joe Rouse (51:36.035)
Yes, it's valuable, it's unique, and it's fulfilling. It's something that everybody needs and if they haven't experienced it, they really need to. I mean, even Trevor, he's like, yeah, Nick, I've hired Nick as a business coach. And I'm like, let's go, dude. That's cool. So in another way, you're in our conversation all the time.

Nick Berry (51:42.836)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (51:49.534)
Yeah.

Joe Rouse (52:06.414)
at this junction in life which is completely different than it was years ago. It's just wild to think about

Nick Berry (52:11.221)
Yeah. And I mean, and you can't manufacture like eight or 10 years of like sharing part of the journey together quickly, right? It takes, you have to earn it. You can't just decide like, hey, I'm going to start, you know, having friends that I've had for 10 years. You've got to have friends and be a friend and like, you know,

engage and fulfill your part of the bargain. So those people exactly. So then you look up and it's 10 years and one of you has no hair and like, but

Joe Rouse (52:39.715)
show up.

Joe Rouse (52:51.276)
Mine's going back, look, it's just, it like that when we met.

Nick Berry (52:56.277)
No, I wasn't going say anything, but.

Joe Rouse (52:57.358)
I don't cover it up. should probably start covering it up.

Nick Berry (53:04.585)
But yeah, I mean, and that's part of what makes it real. It's like, is as earned as anything can be. But I suppose there's a degree of that, like the best time to plant a tree to it. It'd be great if you started these friendships 10 years ago or the next one 10 years ago, but next best time, like go start today. It doesn't make it less joyful.

Joe Rouse (53:10.659)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (53:26.254)
100 % like... No, everybody should have it.

Nick Berry (53:30.419)
Yeah, agreed. And you have to take responsibility for curating it too. It's like your support system as an entrepreneur. I say, you got to have a coach, you got to have a peer group, you got to, need to be part of big communities. And you have to be responsible for making those things happen. Like they're not going to come hop in your lap. You have the one that has to curate your support system. And that's what we're talking about here. you, people aren't going to come beg B.

Joe Rouse (53:31.937)
Everybody should have it.

Nick Berry (53:58.952)
longtime friends with you or share part of your journey. You have to go and actively make that.

Joe Rouse (54:10.582)
Yeah. it's a, mean, I would say Trevor even taught me that maybe he learned that mostly from you, but he's been very open and honest or specific about nurturing relationships. If he thinks he should have a relationship with somebody, he's going to reach out to them. He's not going to not reach out to them. And that was a lesson for me. And I was like, yes, Trevor, that is exactly what you do a hundred percent. And look, and he's unique that way. And it's, it's,

Nick Berry (54:30.335)
Trevor may hop in your lap.

It's Trevor.

Joe Rouse (54:38.958)
Trevor and I can have the most, it's probably less now than it was at one time, but the most.

We can disagree wholeheartedly on something. Whether it's something that's important or it's like football. And have these heated conversations and then just go back to talking normal, we don't care. That fills me up. You can't have that with everybody. He's a unique guy that way. Yeah.

Nick Berry (55:05.897)
Nope, there's a lot to that. know, it's like the way that you, the comfort that you have with yourself and your own identity, then also the understanding of somebody else. And you know, you're able to do that because you're able to have the disagreements not about each other, right? It's not a lack of approval of each other. It's about whatever the thing is. And so then you can just walk away. It doesn't define either of you, but it's like, that's not an accident either.

Joe Rouse (55:31.402)
No, no, it took. Yeah. We just did that a lot over many, many years. And I think that just deepens that relationship significantly. So, all right, Nick, let's we're, we're, think we're close to today, right? present time you, you now legally are not, you're not, you're not, mean, you're, you're available, but you're not really doing anything with FR. So tell me like,

Nick Berry (55:37.439)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (56:00.183)
What were you thinking? You were like, did you sit down at a whiteboard and you're like, what am I going to do now? Or was that already started before you sold it? Did you start doing something? And you were like, I could get into this, which we can, feel like as entrepreneurs, we can feel that way about a hundred different things. So we have to be, you have to weigh those opportunities. But I mean, where was that for you?

Nick Berry (56:22.601)
Yeah. So I didn't sit down at a whiteboard and ask that question, but I did ask that question. And I guess, you know, I'll always like.

I've always kind of asked that question. that didn't, it's not, that question is not enough for me to like, to get clear on the path. So I didn't know what I wanted to do. What I was sure of is that whatever it was, I just didn't want to default back to doing the same old thing. So I knew like, you know, if you're not careful with muscle memory, you'll just, you'll show up and do, do the thing.

So like, need to do enough of a break and, and to, so that that doesn't happen, but also like, you know, give myself some different prompts and try to look at some things different ways and expose, you know, exposure to other things. so, I'm just like, I'm just going to take an indefinite amount of time and I'm going to do some things that I would advise somebody else to do, like getting involved in a program, getting, you know, talking to mentors and just things to like kind of.

freshen up my brain. I knew that's so that's, you you've got somebody, an entrepreneur who just sold a business, selling themselves that those things, that's where podcasts come from. knew I wanted to have conversations with other people that like that part of my process for figuring out what I was going to do would be talking to

Joe Rouse (57:33.102)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (57:44.472)
Yeah, okay.

Nick Berry (58:00.295)
other experts, other business owners, just people who I think are smart or cool or both and have something interesting to talk about. So I was like, I'll just make it a podcast. And if anybody likes it, fine. And if they don't, that doesn't bother me. Like I'm not aspiring to be a podcaster. So I started the podcast, the Business Owners Journey podcast in like April, I think, or maybe May of 24.

And went that entire year. that's all that I did by the end of 24. I'd started doing some advisory work with a couple of people that was just like these things came up with them and they needed like, I liked them. So I was just like, I'll just, I'll do that with them. And then the beginning of. Yeah. Yes. And then, in the beginning of 25.

Joe Rouse (58:51.608)
like business opportunities.

Nick Berry (59:00.116)
I realized, like at that point I had enough direction that I knew kind of what I wanted to do. So, you know.

I say I knew what I wanted to do. I'm not going to say long-term. I'm going to say I knew probably what the next steps to take were. So then I started doing individual coaching consulting again, like a limited client base and then the podcast and then the background had been building a web app to

Joe Rouse (59:19.448)
Okay.

Nick Berry (59:38.269)
you for like podcasters and content creators to use that really I just built for my, for myself to, to solve a problem that I had and then realized that, you know, as it goes, like, I'm not the only person who has this problem. So that's kind of the third leg of the stool is the web app that is, we're going to start bringing that to market in probably a month or so from now. with, you I was the beginning of February, so probably in March.

Joe Rouse (59:44.812)
Okay.

Joe Rouse (59:52.161)
Yeah.

Joe Rouse (01:00:08.524)
Is that something you can talk about or you can't talk about it right now?

Nick Berry (01:00:08.67)
So yeah, I can talk about it. Yeah.

Joe Rouse (01:00:13.976)
Tell me about it.

Nick Berry (01:00:15.454)
Joe Rouse (01:00:16.952)
What was the problem that you had?

Nick Berry (01:00:22.932)
So for someone who has an online presence, if you have a brand, personal or business brand, and now that with the LLMs and the abundance of bad content that's put out there that's really lacking in substance, lacking in teeth, it's just inauthentic, it's not unique, it's like meh, it's mush.

It's not hard to be different from that, but it is hard to stand out from that. so there are a lot of people who need to be able to strengthen their brand and get their signal out a little bit stronger and make it stand out. And at this point, they're kind of resorting to like, how do I yell louder to get above the noise? And there's gotta be a better way.

Joe Rouse (01:00:57.357)
OK.

Nick Berry (01:01:20.946)
What this thing does is helps someone take content like it could be an idea, but an idea could be in the form of an interview. It could be a podcast. It could be an article. It could be a sentence, but it takes that idea and then runs it through this workflow process that creates assets like long form assets that will, that are tied together. basically creates content clusters around.

Joe Rouse (01:01:44.782)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (01:01:50.289)
you like the author of that idea and the idea itself and puts them online in a way. it's, they're corroborating one another. They're pointing to each other. there is a higher likelihood of search engines and then LLMs seeing you as credible. So the idea is to be able to like strengthen your online presence, build your authority and

Joe Rouse (01:02:04.398)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (01:02:13.762)
OK.

Nick Berry (01:02:19.826)
You're doing that by representing yourself thoroughly and consistently across assets that the machines can read.

Joe Rouse (01:02:30.69)
Got it. That's exciting.

Nick Berry (01:02:33.778)
Well, we've got a lot of work to do on how to describe it well, right? Because there's a lot of technical to it that's really irrelevant. What it is is like, there are people out there who like, there are a lot of people who need like their online presence needs to be stronger. They need to be able to control their story online. They should be doing that with like a podcast and they should have a...

Joe Rouse (01:02:36.366)
That's a whole new business.

Joe Rouse (01:02:44.568)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (01:02:55.831)
Okay.

Nick Berry (01:02:59.828)
a binge library of things about them. So if somebody wants to learn about them, like they've got an origin story, methodology, background, their case studies, like the problem they saw their audience, all of it right there. But they're not going to do that because think about how long it would take and how much work it would take. This basically lets them sit down and you can speak it into the recorder, like into the

Joe Rouse (01:03:18.678)
Yes, yeah, yeah.

Nick Berry (01:03:28.668)
Zoom or into Riverside or whatever, and this thing will build it for you. So you don't, it's like being, it's going to help you capture all those things that need to be known about you, feed it into the machine, clean it up, structure it. So now your library is ready. And now like we've just captured all that content for you in a fraction of the time that it would have taken you to get it all scripted out, figure out where all these things need to go, get them there in the format they need to be.

Like, it does all it.

Joe Rouse (01:04:01.923)
So how did you, I mean how do you get, and it was a problem you were having and you were like, wanna, you literally to yourself, you were like, I'm gonna create something to solve this or were you like, I've been working with this person, I think they could help me solve this problem. Like how did it, or was it just, you just had, you were like, I wish I had this and I'm gonna create it.

Nick Berry (01:04:21.14)
So it was really probably started out as a sequence of problems and it was all production wise. So I was working on the podcast and I'm like, you know, I've got this asset here, this in the form of an idea, right? So this is the source code is the idea. And I'm like, I've got this thing here. So I can go, I can make a blog post and I can put it out there and it can be like one blog post out there and like lonely ass blog post out there in the.

Joe Rouse (01:04:50.478)
I dunno.

Nick Berry (01:04:50.964)
Or like, how could I get more attention on that? And how could I turn it into more versions? So it's not just like duplicate content. So I figured out how to like extrapolate more ideas and create the content, the cluster basically. And then like, how do we make it more credible and give me credit for it? So then we've got to strengthen like my...

personal profile, like in the eyes of the machines. So Google and the Knowledge Graph and all that. so some of it is like structural on that side. like you need to have like an about page for you. You need to have like your things in your background. So your education, your like it all, needs to be corroborated with other sources online.

So, so it's believable. So the machines know like, okay, Joe Rouse does like this Joe Rouse and that Joe Rouse are the same, but this other guy, this Joseph Rouse over here, Joseph T. Rouse, that's a different Joseph Rouse. So, you know, when, but we've learned who this one is and we, and now we know like he's credible, people like him, we can trust him. And when Google and, and the LLMs

Joe Rouse (01:05:58.243)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (01:06:16.788)
get to that point when they trust you, they'll tell other people about you, which is what we want them to do. So you have to give the machines the information that they need so that basically they can triangulate like who you are, that you are what you say you are, that you can, the advice that you're giving comes from somewhere that it's unique. But once you've given it that the machines that information,

Joe Rouse (01:06:21.538)
Got it.

Nick Berry (01:06:45.256)
then like they're on your side, they're willing to vouch for you. just, they can't do that until they know who you are and if you're real, if you're legitimate.

Joe Rouse (01:06:57.07)
Is there a certain amount of time or content that you have to put out to make, like, let's say you get everything connected correctly.

and somebody's searching for...

credible podcast to be on to help their brand or I'm trying to think of what they would search for for like Nick Berry, right? They're looking, let's say they're looking for coaching using your system. Like is there in order for you to be like the main thing, the main person with credibility, is there a certain, do you have, have you found any data or stats on like how often that information needs to be put out consistently?

Or is it more about just having specific things out there that live out there?

Nick Berry (01:07:43.989)
So it's a little bit of both, but it's also more than anything, it's case by case. So Nick Berry is a good example. If you Google Nick Berry right now, you probably would need to do it on a incognito browser, because Google probably knows you and I are doing this right now. if you had never searched, if you'd never talked to Google that you might be interested in me and you Google Nick Berry, you're probably going to get this British accent.

Joe Rouse (01:07:51.266)
Okay.

Joe Rouse (01:08:13.165)
Okay.

Nick Berry (01:08:14.066)
So globally, he outweighs me in terms of the confidence that Google has in knowing this guy is. He's got been on TV, just thousands of instances online pointing to him saying, that's that guy. So how do I ever get Nick Berry that you want to find to show up in your search is target it more geographically.

So if you look at my profiles, like on my website, the business owner journey, it'll say things like American entrepreneur, Nick Berry, business, business advisor, Nick Berry. So it's things that we can do to disambiguate this Nick Berry from that one. So because I'm saying American Nick Berry and you're like in the United States doing that search, then it probably knows like, okay, like Joe doesn't typically search for international actors. He's.

Joe Rouse (01:08:51.298)
I noticed that, yeah.

Nick Berry (01:09:12.436)
you're probably looking for a business guy and then it would probably serve you my results. So it's more like niching it down. then, so then I've got to try to get American entrepreneur, Nick Berry out there as, you know, as loudly, as broadly and consistently as I can. That's what this system does. It's like, can, I mean, I could overwrite my, with the podcast especially because the distributions.

nuts. But you can, you know, it's a megaphone for whatever your message is that you want to get out, a podcast is. you take that and pair it with this system, then you're able to get like this whole new message out there, like broadly, consistently. It's all corroborated. It's all pointing back to you. So then you can like follow on with that over time, depending on how you want to shape your message.

Joe Rouse (01:09:49.09)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (01:10:13.42)
So is that your plan now? Is this where Nick Berry's headed for, does the fulfillment come from the creation of the thing? Or is it that plus now you're gonna head towards, you're gonna have this, we'll call it like a product or an app, as well as redesign.business, as well as the Business Owners Journey podcast. Like does all of that

Continue or does the focus shift to the app?

And are you now at a point, I guess I'm asking like four questions. I just like to ask questions. I learned that from how to win friends and influence people.

Nick Berry (01:10:53.8)
But they're good. They're good questions.

Joe Rouse (01:11:05.262)
Do you know that this is where you want to go now? Do you still deal with any of the feelings or urges or things you were dealing with when you knew that FR was no longer where you wanted to be or what you wanted to be doing?

Nick Berry (01:11:19.378)
Yeah. So, I definitely didn't wake up one day and was like, what I need to do is start a business around taking this product to market and like, let's go blow that up. but I built this thing and then built a little bit more and built a little bit more of it. And it's like every day it, the appeal has grown and, it's like,

It's definitely taking more time than I originally thought it would. And I'm now interested in giving it even more time. Like I don't know. You know, we're taking it to market. Like I'm that far as far as the fulfillment side of things. Like I'm motivated by it. So yes, all those things are coming, but they have come back, but they're still growing, right? It didn't just like.

It wasn't just like a fire in my stomach all of a sudden. It was like, it just kept growing and kept growing and it's still growing. So yeah, I'm not sure like where it's going to end. Like I've got a plan for the next couple of years for now, but I mean, could see they're still, it's so early, they're still, could go a lot of directions. But as far as it, is it scratching that itch that I said was, had disappeared?

Yes, it is. I just can't say that I saw that coming, but I'm cool with it. It's fun, it's exciting. And I think it's a cool product. I mean, I am god awful at the explanation. I'm sorry for whatever I've done to your audience and trying to explain what it does.

Joe Rouse (01:12:50.158)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (01:13:10.678)
I mean, I understand. I think it makes sense. can see what you're creating. I feel like I've heard of different aspects of it before and like different, like separated, but not necessarily together.

Nick Berry (01:13:25.204)
Yeah, that's it. There's, there are probably half of it, at least maybe more exist in pieces out there, but like it's not, it could, it could produce short form content out of ideas. Like that's, but that's not really what we're trying to do. It's take the person who is just looking for like, get max leverage out of ideas so they can get more of them out there.

Joe Rouse (01:13:26.798)
to an extent.

Nick Berry (01:13:52.371)
They land faster and stand out and they stick longer. So then you can like, you can be, use it as that megaphone for whatever you want your brand to be. If it's just like putting a fresh coat of paint on your current positioning or your messaging, put it, or if you want to like override it entirely, that's fine, but you can, and it helps you keep all these things, all of these assets that are derived from it, it's all coherent.

Joe Rouse (01:14:03.566)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Berry (01:14:21.714)
which is really important for the machines to corroborate that you are who you say you are, and you're the one who said this information, and therefore we can trust it because we can trust you.

Joe Rouse (01:14:37.358)
So when do we, this is related but not related, I've got your website pulled up and this just made me, I was looking at the picture at the top of your website again and I think I remember that looks familiar. When do we see Nick up on stage again?

Nick Berry (01:14:55.156)
Yeah, I don't know.

Joe Rouse (01:14:56.45)
Do you come back out in front? you've always done this, but I actually read it on your website also that you kind of pride yourself in the background, which podcast is different, right? Now you're the face.

Nick Berry (01:15:10.196)
Yeah.

I'm not sure. I'm not against it. Like it doesn't.

I don't think that I want the business to be driven by me presenting. I don't know that we're going to be in that type of environment, at least not in this year. think what I expect out for Authority Engine is we're going to probably, if somebody's going need to be in front of an audience, then it'll be a professional speaker, somebody who does that.

Right. I did that because I was the CEO of the company and like I've come out and give a message or, or I was the, the subject matter expert on a methodology that I created. So, you know, it made sense, but I think if for what we're doing with authority engine, I don't know that I, that it has to come from me. But if it does, then, then, you know, if it needs to be, if I need to be more polished.

presenter to do it, then there are people who you can go somewhere and be taught how to be a more polished presenter. So that's what I would do. I'm not against it. just don't know. It's not going to be, it's not the driver at the moment, but my relationships and the network that I have is going to be the driver. The people who I am going to be bringing into the

Joe Rouse (01:16:29.614)
Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Berry (01:16:49.97)
the program early on to test, like they're all people that I know. And then when I want to reach a broader audience, like I'm to go to my network to, you know, people that are strategic and be able to, you know, work through them and, they're going to help me like sharpen the message too. Right. It's, think we're a far cry, like the way that I've described it here to you today, technically might make some sense, but, you know, that's not a marketing message.

Joe Rouse (01:16:59.534)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Rouse (01:17:07.822)
Mm.

Joe Rouse (01:17:18.734)
You gotta shrink it down a little bit.

Nick Berry (01:17:20.648)
Yeah. Yeah. And make it appealing. So I don't know that I had much of that in that explanation, but

Joe Rouse (01:17:30.574)
There's always a way to, it's figure-outable. It's figure-outable.

Nick Berry (01:17:32.316)
It is figure outable. Yeah. That's the job. mean, when you're running the business, that's the job is get it figured out.

Joe Rouse (01:17:36.344)
Do you?

Joe Rouse (01:17:42.2)
Yeah, you don't want somebody leading you who doesn't think they can figure things out or find a way or have a resource to figure, have advice to get from somebody to help them figure it out.

Cool. Nick, man, it's been like an hour and a half, so I could keep asking you questions forever, but I don't want to take up too much of your time, dude. I appreciate so much you hopping on here with me for the podcast sake, but really I just appreciate having the conversation with you.

Nick Berry (01:18:09.638)
Likewise, man. Thank you. I appreciate you guys thinking of me. You know, I love talking to you. All you guys except for Jimmy.

Joe Rouse (01:18:18.446)
Yeah. There's Jimmy's clip right there. I'm going to send it to him. All right.

Nick Berry (01:18:19.203)
There's a clip for Jimmy.

Yep. Yeah. No, seriously, I do. I appreciate you guys. Thank you. I love what you're doing. Congratulations. You know, this is exciting. And I can tell that it's good for you, you guys. You know, that's wonderful. That's the goal.

Joe Rouse (01:18:42.957)
Yeah, yeah. All right, well, everybody, thanks for tuning in. Hopefully you enjoyed this conversation. You got something out of it that you can take away from it. until next time, we'll see you.