Simon Lovell: I’m all fired up.

John Lee Dumas: Yes! Simon is the founder of The FitPreneurs, a global community of fitness and health professionals who are committed to exceptional growth in all areas of their lives. Simon, take a minute and fill in some gaps from that intro and give us just a little glimpse of your personal life.

Simon Lovell: Well, I was brought up back in the U.K. and I’m actually now living in San Diego. I was a personal trainer for many years and I love doing that. Through that transition, I just always loved the business side of it. A lot of trainers don’t really have that business acumen. So what I do is I help personal trainers turn into FitPreneurs. So with the intro, it’s about working on all areas of your life.

My biggest success has come from – not just the strategy – but when I worked on myself, when I’ve worked on my own personal challenged, when I’ve been willing to face fears and go to places where most people won’t go because they don’t want to solve those issues. So my own personal development in me allows me to lead these personal trainers to become FitPreneurs. And so I’m super passionate about it.

John Lee Dumas: Well, Fire Nation, if you’re not excited to hear more of Simon’s journey, get excited because this guy’s going to light this mic up. But first, Simon, let’s talk about today. Let’s talk about how you are generating revenue in your business.

Simon Lovell: Yeah, so basically what we do is we offer coaching programs, virtual coaching programs, and then we have Mastermind and different tiered programs. So, for example, if a personal trainer is coming in and they’re working out of a big box gym and they want to transition into a studio, we have a program for that. If they want to generate income online, we have a program for that. So it’s a virtual coaching system where we have success coaches involved, we have obviously myself coaching in different levels with the Platinum Mastermind and so forth.

We guide people through that process wherever they are on the timeline of their business. Which I think is really important when you’re a business owner is to look at the timeline of someone where they start, where they go towards, and then fitting programs within those segments.

John Lee Dumas: So, Simon, let’s kind of shift now from talking about today and revenue and where all things are happy, to a time where things maybe weren’t so happy. In fact, they were just downright sad. I’m talking about your worst entrepreneurial moment. Take us there, Simon. Tell us that story.

Simon Lovell: Well, I was a personal trainer. I qualified back in 2005. By day, I was training my clients, but by the weekends, I was a DJ. I was actually taking drugs. I had a gambling addiction at the time. It was just a really bad point in my life. It was actually Christmas one year when I’d gone out – I’d had a crazy night out – and I wasn’t able to be present with my family because I spent all day in bed. And this is just being really vulnerable about the position I was in. I sat there and I was like, this shouldn’t be happening. I knew I had this inner calling to be an amazing entrepreneur, but something wasn’t right.

It was at that point of darkness, that point of you know what? Something has to change here, that I packed everything up. I moved from Exeter in the U.K. to Bath and I started a new life. We talk so much in the entrepreneurial world about environment and how important that is to your growth and your surroundings and who you surround yourself with. So my environment wasn’t supporting where I wanted to be. So I knew I had to pack up, I had to move and I had to change my environment. Once that happened, once I made that difficult decision, a snowball started in such a positive, amazing way, I mean, I can’t even explain it.

So what I love is this amazing entrepreneurial journey where yes, we get to learn business strategy, but we constantly evolve and grow as people and as we do that, we can pull other people up. So I’m a firm believer in the challenges that we have, that we’ve gone through; it’s a perfect place for us to teach from.

John Lee Dumas: Fire Nation, who are your Top 5? Like look around. Who are the people who are influencing you the most? You know I end every episode of EOFire by saying, hey; you’ve been hanging out with myself and my guest today, who today is obviously Simon, so we’re part of your Top 5 today. So keep up the heat. Who are the other three people that you’re going to spend the most time with? Really focus on that because that’s going to have a huge impact on the trajectory and success or lack thereof in your life.

Simon, that’s my biggest takeaway is you had to remove yourself and put yourself around people who were going to help you and support you and guide you and lead you towards that light that you wanted more of. That’s my big takeaway, but what do you want to make sure Fire Nation gets from that story?

Simon Lovell: It doesn’t matter where you are right now. It doesn’t matter what situation you’ve been in or what situation you’re currently dealing with and the people around you. You have the ability to make a powerful decision from a place of confidence, not from a place of fear. The biggest fear most people have is fear of failing; they’re lacking in confidence. At the back end of last year, I asked my clients, “What did you most get from my program?” I was thinking maybe it’s going to be some Facebook ad strategy or some email marketing.

The one thing that consistently that came up was, “You’ve given me the confidence in my business.” When you have confidence and you push through fear, everything can happen because you become relentless. You talk to more people. You take more actions from a completely different place. So when we’re able to step into our power and come not from a place of fear, we can really create huge, powerful momentum, which then we can teach others.

John Lee Dumas: So you physically moved to another location and then you actually – I don’t know how many moves maybe were in between this, but now you’re living in San Diego, so you moved there. What prompted that move?

Simon Lovell: Well, this was another thing. For so many years, I’d said, well, I’d love to move to America; I’d love to live the American dream. And for so many people, and this was including me, this was a dream. Until I went to Wales and I sat down and said, I’m not happy with myself and I turned that dream into a decision. I said, I’m deciding. So I had a dream, move to America, but I wasn’t moving forward. And it was crazy things. Little thoughts. Like, I’m going to have to drive on the other side of the road. Little, tiny things, right? It’s those tiny little thoughts that will cripple us from moving forward. So I took that dream and I sat down and I went, I’m not happy.

I made a decision. When you make a decision and a powerful one, then you can find out specifically what needs to happen for that to happen, so then I went into a different level of energy and a different momentum. I found out, what visa do I need? Who do I need to hire? Where do I want to be? Then it just happened. I mean, it just happened. Again, from coming from a place of confidence and taking that thought that we have and something we want to do and putting action behind it. Because information without action is absolutely useless.

John Lee Dumas: Love that quote. Simon, driving on the other side of the street isn’t nearly as big of a deal as the fact that we say literally, instead of “lit-trolly,” which is so much cooler.

Simon Lovell: Absolutely.

John Lee Dumas: So let’s talk now about an ah-ha moment that you’ve had. I mean, you’ve had a lot, but what are your greatest? What’s one that you think is really going to resonate with Fire Nation?

Simon Lovell: The ability to sell and confidently sell yourself. When you can do that, you step into an amazing power. For me, it was just about building my confidence and having confidence in what I was selling. But also selling something that got results. Back when I was a personal trainer and I was doing a lunchbox diet – that came from an idea of something that worked, not from the place of something because I needed to make the money. And so when you develop products and you develop programs that came from that place of this is working, and then you sell that, you’re going to get more testimonials; you’re going to get bigger results; and then the business will grow from that place.

John Lee Dumas: So let’s kind of really dive into this ah-ha moment. So you had this idea. What do you actually do from that point to turn it into action and then turn it into success?

Simon Lovell: Just making phone calls, making connections. Hustle. I always use the word, just never stop hustling and never give up. It’s just that persistence. I can remember back in the day when I wanted to work on video games magazines. I didn’t write very well, but the editor of the magazine said, “Simon, I didn’t hire you because you were necessarily great at writing, it was because how passionate you were and you never gave up and you were so persistent.” He said, “I would rather teach you on the job and in the role, as opposed to somebody who wasn’t as passionate and just had that skillset.”

So drive and passion is so incredible important to get us to where we are. How lit up are you by what you’re doing. And if you’re not, find something different.

John Lee Dumas: So what was the turning point? What was that first moment you were like, okay, this is going to work? What did that moment look like?

Simon Lovell: When I had a phone call from Elle magazine and they’d picked up my 13-page e-book which was on my website and they said, “We want to review your diet.” I was thinking, “Oh, my God. This is going to be against printed books.” That lit up to me in terms of the action which I took of this idea and I just put it on my website. That created that opportunity. So many people have ideas but are not willing to follow through with them because they have to be perfect; everything needs to be brilliant. So I just took an idea that worked and I executed on it.

John Lee Dumas: The founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, Fire Nation, has a great quote which I love: “If you waited until your product’s perfect before it ships, you waited way too long. It’s never, ever going to be perfect. You’ve got to get it out there. It has to be tested by consumers, by clients, by customers, by fans, by listeners. Whatever it might be. It has to get out there into the world if you’re ever going to improve it. So, let’s kind of move into the fire round, Simon. I want to talk a little bit about your weaknesses as an entrepreneur. So give us your biggest.

Simon Lovell: I would say numbers. I’m a very creative person, so I love ideas; I love things. But anything analytical, I’m not so great with. So I have to have team members to help me with that. So that’s definitely a weakness. But it’s also about playing with your strengths. So that stuff to me is just a massive drain on my energy. So anything that drains me, I tend to outsource.

John Lee Dumas: So let’s kind of talk about some specific things that you do outsource. So, like you say numbers. What does that mean exactly?

Simon Lovell: So, for example, like accounting, anything like that. Or if I need people to put together spreadsheets on my numbers on profit or the numbers of people coming into the programs and leads generated, and anything spreadsheet-wise, I have my assistant do. He’s actually based in the U.K.

John Lee Dumas: What’s your biggest strength?

Simon Lovell: My biggest strength is my creativity and my ideas. I can take an idea and I can visualize it and then I can put the action behind it to get it into momentum. So those ideas some people just have a struggle with. It’s the ideas that we have. For me, it just takes a very simple conversation with someone. I was listening to one of your previous podcasts where you said you had a 15-minute conversation with someone and that turned into a massive win for you. So I think a lot of people they have these conversations and these really amazing ideas, but they don’t move forward with them.

So all I need to hear is something very simple. I need to read something in a book and I can build a six-figure, seven-figure business from that. So it’s taking those simple little avenues and taking opportunities. So many people don’t take the opportunities that go by them every single day.

John Lee Dumas: Have you implemented a morning routine yet?

Simon Lovell: Absolutely. Meditation is a non-negotiable for me. And why? Because it gets me centered, it gets me calm. But there are so many negative thoughts around that word, right? People say “meditation” and they think someone under a tree holding their fingers together. Where actually what it does is it just centers you and enables you to be calm and make decisions from a much more powerful place. So, for me when I start to meditate – and I was with Tony Robbins in India and I’ve done the oneness type of stuff. It was such a huge impact on me.

It helps my clients to be more centered when they come into a sales conversation or making decisions from a place of intuition. So you can tap into amazing skills in that place. If you ask very powerful questions during meditation, you get some amazing answers. A lot of business decisions have come from that place.

John Lee Dumas: So what does your meditation look like? I mean, how long is it? What are you doing? Are you listening to anything? What does that look like?

Simon Lovell: Sometimes I guide myself. Other times I will use a guided meditation from someone like Wayne Dyer, who obviously recently passed, but an amazing spiritual teacher. At least 15 minutes per day and typically ideally before I go to bed. Why? Because we tend to simmer on what goes in our brain before we go to sleep. So I don’t tend to listen to anything business-related before I go to bed because, I’m sure you may have this too, but I’ll be up on a whiteboard at 3:00 in the morning if I’m doing that.

John Lee Dumas: Absolutely.

Simon Lovell: So I tend to want to disconnect. So I do personal development meditation in the mornings and business stuff throughout the day and then I lock down trying to relax myself before sleep and try to remove technology so I get a good night’s sleep.

John Lee Dumas: What are some other non-negotiables in the morning that you have to hit every day?

Simon Lovell: Check in with my team; just making sure that everything’s on track. Getting everything out of my head onto a whiteboard because especially for someone like myself who’s quite creative, if we keep it within, it tends to add up and build up into a lot of stress. So I try and get everything out, whether it’s MindMeister, whether it’s on the three whiteboards I’ve got in the office. So that’s really important to me, to just get everything out and then I can start to structure and prioritize my list.

John Lee Dumas: What’s the one thing, Simon, that you’re most fired up about today?

Simon Lovell: Client results. I’m always asking this question. How can I get better results with my clients? So, for example, with my Platinum Mastermind, people are going into that really quickly and that is a testament to the speed of results. So I think as entrepreneurs, if we can always ask that question, how can I get better results? How can I improve? How can I get things faster for the people I’m working with? That’s just a fantastic place to come from. That has really helped me build my business and helps my clients build their businesses.

Because so many people are on a system, implementing a system in a business that they’ve been taught by maybe a training company and they don’t improve upon it. I believe that we can improve on every area of the business, every single minute of the day.

John Lee Dumas: Well, Fire Nation, we’re going to deliver some results in the lightning round. But we’re going to take a quick minute first to thank our sponsors.

Simon, are you prepared for the lightning rounds?

Simon Lovell: I am ready for it.

John Lee Dumas: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Simon Lovell: A job in a company where the boss was honestly a bit of a douchebag and it was really holding me back. So it got to that point of me just getting so frustrated I actually finally ended up going and doing something on my own and I actually launched a publishing company. It ended up not working out, but I took that leap because of – and that position. So if you’re listening and you’re in a position that’s not supporting you and you want to dive out and be an entrepreneur, go and do it. Take that action. Because I can guarantee you you’re going to be so more fulfilled.

John Lee Dumas: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Simon Lovell: Be persistent and never give up, ever, ever, ever give up. You just have to have that persistence and that will drive you through any challenge, no matter where you are. In a negative spiral in your personal life or in your business.

John Lee Dumas: What’s a personal habit that contributes to your success?

Simon Lovell: Again, I’m going to reaffirm this, and it’s meditation. Why? Because it just brings me into a great place. 3:00 comes, we’ll be on the computer for three or four hours, maybe even five, six hours, and that brings me back into a centered place where I can get back and be even more powerful in what I’m doing.

John Lee Dumas: Can you share an internet resource like Evernotes with Fire Nation?

Simon Lovell: I’m going to say Stripe. Why? Because it really helps my clients, in particular, personal trainers turn into FitPreneurs, run more efficiently. So Stripe has been a huge asset in my business in helping my clients do the same.

John Lee Dumas: If you can recommend one book, what would it be and why?

Simon Lovell: Action, Action, Action. That is why I love “Do the Work” by Steven Pressfield. It’s very short; you know attention spans these days are even shorter, so I love the short, concise message. It actually gets people into amazing actions. So any book, I think, that turns the words into action steps is fantastic. We’ve all read books so much where it’s just like words and words and words, but now, especially with the books I write, I’m turning those chapters and I’m saying, go and do this; go and take action. So when I’m watching webinars, reading blogs or I’m listening to podcasts, I’m making a list of action steps. I love that book for that reason.

John Lee Dumas: Simon, this is the last question of the lightning round, but it is a doozy. Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning in a brand new world identical to Earth by you knew no one. You still have all the experience and knowledge you currently have. Your food and shelter is taken care of, but all you have is a laptop and $500.00. What would you do in the next seven days?

Simon Lovell: Something which I didn’t do back earlier on in my career, which is build relationships. So what I would do is I would just go out and talk to local businesses and add value, add value, add value. We’ve all heard of the strategy of preeminence by Jay Abraham. It’s so critical. I would just go out and talk to 100 businesses and add value to them because I know things would come in return.

John Lee Dumas: Simon, I want to end today on fire with a parting piece of guidance – the best way that we can connect with you and then we’ll say buh-bye.

Simon Lovell: Head to fitpreneurs.com/fire, where we’ve got an amazing free gift if you’re a personal trainer. One in two becomes a Fit Preneur. You can also follow me on facebook – facebook.com/boylovell. B-O-Y-L-O-V-E-L-L.

John Lee Dumas: Nice. And a parting piece of guidance?

Simon Lovell: Just keep on hustling. Never give up. Get into the right environment of the people that support your dreams. Don’t push and bring your fears up to the front of your mind. That’s critical. If there’s any fear-based stuff, get away from it and people who are creating the best and amazing vision of your future, get yourself around them.

John Lee Dumas: Fire Nation, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You’ve been hanging out with SL and JLD today, so keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com. Just type Simon in the search bar. His show notes page will pop up with everything that we’ve been talking about today. These are the best show notes in the biz, Fire Nation. Links, time stamps, galore, it’s there. Check it out. And of course, head over to fitpreneur.com/fire for that gift. Simon, thank you for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we’ll catch you on the flip side.

Simon Lovell: Thank you.