Ben Greenfield On Making $48K In 7 Days In His First Online Launch And Balancing Hyper-Productivity With Family Life

The Fail On Podcast with Rob Nunnery - Fail Your Way To An Inspired Life

Ben Greenfield is an entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author of the book, Beyond Training: Mastering Endurance, Health & Life.

Ben was named in the Top 100 most influential people in health and fitness.

He’s a biohacker constantly looking to increase human performance by thinking outside the box.

I’ll be talking to Ben about how he was able to shift from an offline business to an online business and his true “ah-ha moment”.

We also dive into how he was able to generate $48,000 in just seven days on his first online launch.

Finally, Ben shares how to balance being hyper productive in business and fitness while also being a great husband and father, and much more.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Ben tells us how he was influenced by his father and got started in business and entrepreneurship from a young age.
• Ben his journey of extensive education, the places he worked, and what he learned.
• Find out how Ben had to shift his mindset from being goal-driven to letting go.
• Learn more out how Ben manages to balance his personal life and work life.
• Hear how Ben went from personal training in a gym to being a successful entrepreneur.
• Ben tells us about his failures and how those drove him to being even more successful.
• Understand exactly what it takes to have a thriving membership website with Ben’s insights.
• Hear as Ben shares all about his fears and the strategies he uses to overcome them.
• Find out more about Ben’s mission to change, evolve, and expand his brand.
• Learn how reading and education gets Ben outside his comfort zone and helps him to keep pushing the limits.
• Find out how Ben handles and conquers the day-to-day lows that come his way.
• Find out why Ben’s wife has had the single most profound impact on his life and what she taught him.
• Get a glimpse of what is next on the horizon for Ben and what he is excited about.
• And much more!

Tweetables:

“I’m a fan of, if something works, just keep on modifying it and revising it.” — @bengreenfield

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[0:25:09].7]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Ben Greenfield — https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/

Ben’s Podcast – https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcasts/

Ben’s book, Beyond Training — https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Training-Mastering-Endurance-Health/dp/1628600128

Ben on Twitter — https://twitter.com/bengreenfield

Neil Strauss – http://www.neilstrauss.com/

Enneagram Assessment – https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/

David Hawkins’ Book, Letting Go: The Pathway of surrender – https://www.amazon.com/Letting-David-Hawkins-M-D-Ph-D/dp/1401945015/

Zig Ziglar – https://www.ziglar.com/

Vince Del Monte – http://www.vincedelmontefitness.com/blog/

Fitness Book by Ben, Shape21 – https://www.amazon.com/Shape21-Complete-Lean-Body-Manual/dp/1434898024/

The Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle – https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/innercircle/

Laird Hamilton – https://www.lairdhamilton.com/

Tim Ferriss – http://tim.blog/podcast/

Tony Robbins – https://www.tonyrobbins.com/

Dave Asprey – https://blog.bulletproof.com/about-dave-asprey/

Aubrey Marcus – https://www.aubreymarcus.com/

Michael Singer’s Book, Untethered Soul – https://www.amazon.com/Untethered-Soul-Journey-Beyond-Yourself/dp/1572245379/

Michael Singer’s Book, The Surrender Experiment –https://www.amazon.com/Surrender-Experiment-Journey-Lifes-Perfection/dp/080414110X/

TRANSCRIPT

Read Full Transcript

EPISODE 006

“BG: The struggles that you go through, whether they are physical stressors, or mental stressors, or very hard times in life, ultimately, it doesn't matter that much as long as your spirit is well and as long as you're able to bring happiness in the lives of others. As long as you're able to be grateful for even the tiniest thing, you can be grateful for that day.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:25.1] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Fail on Podcast where we explore the hardships and obstacles today’s industry leaders face on their journey to the top of their fields, through careful insight and thoughtful conversation. By embracing failure, we’ll show you how to build momentum without being consumed by the result.

Now please welcome your host, Rob Nunnery.

[INTRO]

[0:00:51.4] RB: Hello and welcome to the podcast that believes if you desire to create the life of your dreams, then embracing failure by taking urgent and bold action is the only way. Today, you and I get to learn from none other than Ben Greenfield, an entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author of the book, Beyond Training: Mastering Endurance, Health & Life. Ben was named as one of the top one hundred most influential people in the health and fitness industry and he's a biohacker constantly looking to increase human performance by thinking outside the box.

I'll be talking to Ben about how he was able to shift from an offline brick-and-mortar type business to an online business and his true aha moment. How he was able to generate $48,000 in just seven days on his first online launch and how to balance being hyper productive in business and fitness while also being a great husband and father and much more.

First, if you'd like to stay up-to-date on all the fail on podcast interviews and key takeaways from each guest, simply go to failon.com and sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page. Again, that’s failon.com.

Now, without further ado, Mr. Ben Greenfield.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:12.4] RB: All right, welcome to the Fail On Podcast, another episode in Eleuthera in the Bahamas. Right now I've got Ben Greenfield sitting with me.

[0:02:23.2] BG: I have a piña colada headache right now. I’m sipping my piña colada too fast.

[0:02:28.0] RB: That didn't take long. That didn’t take long — Brain freeze.

[0:02:30.3] BG: No. No. The rum didn't even hit my system yet, just the freeze. My motor cortex is failing.

[0:02:37.9] RB: All right. Just to get a little context and background on Ben. How did you get started in business and entrepreneurship and at what point in your life was this?

[0:02:45.1] BG: My dad was this funky serial entrepreneur, ex-fireman growing up. So when I think I was 11, he had being a firefighter paramedic all my life growing up, and then he started ordering coffee beans from all over the world and became like a gourmet coffee roaster, which was a head-scratcher for me because I was used to just something that people ask what my dad does , that I told them he was a fireman. That's easy. It was like, “What did your dad do?” I’m like, “He’s a coffee roaster,” and then he started like a pager service. Back when pagers were in. It was really annoying me, because me and all my brothers would carry pagers wherever we went, like drug dealers, except it’s mostly so mom could page us be like, “Pick up eggs on your way home from basketball practice.”

Yeah, exactly. Then he started like a non-emergency ambulance transportation service and then he started a bagel restaurant franchise. The he started a water filtration —

[0:03:40.8] RB: Were all of these simultaneous?

[0:03:43.0] BG: No. It’s like total — Seriously, serial entrepreneur, do this, do that, move on. For me, watching that, I guess maybe it kind of like set the context for me early that it’s okay to not have — Not to be a fireman, or as I wanted to be, at that point, the president of the United States or a policeman. Probably influenced by him, I was 15 years old. I had been playing tennis for a couple of years. I just love tennis. I know you played tennis as well even though we haven't had the chance to match. We could grab the badminton rackets over there.

[0:04:19.1] RB: We could, whip it out.

[0:04:20.2] BG: Yeah, try something. Anyways though, I, at 15 years old started contacting all of my friends’ parents and some of the local families in the community. We lived in a small community in North Idaho offering tennis lessons. I would have kids show up and I would teach them lessons, group lessons, and individual lessons, and I actually save up for college just teaching tennis lessons for a couple of years, I mean every single day, because I was home-schooled. I’d finish homeschool by the time it was 11 or 12 p.m.

[0:04:52.9] RB: How old were you by the way at this time?

[0:04:52.9] BG: 12pm. I was 15. Then I would teach tennis lessons from about 2 p.m. until about 5 p.m., just in and out like all day long, Monday through Friday.

[0:05:03.3] RB: Is it on the public court?

[0:05:04.1] BG: No. I help my dad build a court at our house, we have asphalt. I painted all the lines in. That was my first business. I did that for a couple of years, and there was like a brief stint before I started going to college where I wanted to be a computer programmer, and so I started making computer games and computer programs and coding websites and I was like one of the first guys to play online World of Warcraft back when nobody knew what it was and it wasn’t cool. We’d use terminal to pull up browsers and play this little like multi-level — I forget. It’s like MMOPG. It's multiplayer games, which is a huge industry now. I shouldn’t have stopped with it because Esport, you paid like a million bucks or more in Esports.

Anyways though, I wounded up playing tennis in college and most student athletes do, I declared myself like a kinesiology, personal training type of manager and I got my personal training cert my first year of college and it started training clients. I worked at two different gyms and eventually four different gyms during college. I worked at a pub at night as a bartender and a coffee shop by day. I worked at the little French bistro in the morning, so I had five jobs through college.

[0:06:06.9] RB: That’s crazy man, because it’s a full time — May people don’t know, full-time student athletes —

[0:06:11.7] BG: Yeah, but I've always been driven and I know your podcast is kind of about failure. I think for me, my early drive was not just like seeing my dad and all his businesses and having like that early success just like my own tennis coaching business, but because I was home-schooled I kind of always had this — You’re making my glass clink against the microphone as i set my.

[0:06:30.0] RB: It’s okay. It’s just a pina colada.

[0:06:31.5] BG: It’s hard to drink a pina colada with a microphone. Anyways though I had a perception growing up that I was weird because I was home schooled. I was the odd man out, the lone wolf, whatever. So, even through college, I wanted to be like the guy who was the best of the best so I could prove that, “Hey, even though I come from a different background than the rest of you, I’m something special.” That's the way the Greenfields grew up too. I did a podcast with Neil Strauss from my show.

He liked psychoanalyzed me on my show which he is really good at and he's like, “How did you grow up? What was your upbringing like?” I like, “The Greenfield's have to be perfect. We had to be like these standout student-athletes who got perfect grades and had the perfect hair and wore the cool clothes because a big part of it was I think that trying to defy the status quo, like the Prairie Muffin home schooler who wasn’t cool.

I had that going into college like that drive to just achieve and achieve better than anybody else. I went to college for four years and then I had — I had another failure that looking back really was a huge blessing in disguise. I decided a couple of years into college I didn't want to be like a strength conditioning coach or an athletic trainer, I want to be physician, like a sportsman physician or an orthopedic surgeon.

I took all the pre-meds, hardcore. I was like 28 credits a semester. I was studying my ass off. I was 4.0. I know sound like I’m bragging right now, but I’m trying to tell I was driven. I was driven. I’ve done the Enneagram assessment. I’m a type one achiever, completely, completely driven. I completed four years of college, my pre-meds, my MCATs got accepted to a bunch of medical schools. Did not get accepted to Duke or Harvard, the two schools I wanted to get accepted to. Again, I’m not the guy who wanted to settle. I wanted the best of the best.

I wanted to get a master’s degree, and I wanted to get a master’s degree so that I would be more attractive to some of the bigger IV League institutions that I wanted to attend even though I’m a white male. I was fighting an uphill battle.

Yeah, I went back and I got my master’s degree in biomechanics and exercise physiology, and then I got offered a job for a surgical hip and knee sales company called BioMed, and I saw dollars signs.

[0:08:45.2] RB: As a salesman?

[0:08:46.5] BG: Yeah, that’s a good freaking job. For coming out of college — I think it was as starting salary for me is sort of been 2005. They offered me something like 80, 90,000 bucks a year coming out of college and I’m like, “I’ll do that.” My perspective way, “Hey, even this turns out to be a short stint, it would look good on my medical school resume too.”

I had failed getting into these medical schools that I wanted to get into.

[0:09:11.1] RB: Let’s be honest, you failed getting into Duke and Harvard.

[0:09:13.9] BG: For me, it was a right.

[0:09:14.9] RB: For sure, yeah.

[0:09:16.3] BG: I really wanted to do well at sales and I did it for four months and absolutely hated it. Sitting there with the laser pointer, showing surgeons how to implant overpriced hips and knees in a broken medical system and that morbidly obese people who could have done all the things to fix their joints.

[0:09:34.0] RB: What were you able to learn from that job, from that stint?

[0:09:36.1] BG: What was I able to learn from that job?

[0:09:36.9] RB: Yeah.

[0:09:37.7] BG: Hardcore. Biomechanics and exercise science. We’re doing everything from that. The implantation of joints which is huge in terms of biomechanics joint angles, joint lever arms, et cetera, because if you implant something incorrectly, the incorrect angle, shits hits the fan when somebody wakes up from the surgery. We also did things like platelet-rich plasma injections, like way before anybody was doing them, which is very similar to like a STEM cell injection, take somebody’s blood and you spin it, you re-inject the growth factors at the bottom of the tube. Just really got me...