A Conversation With Patty Durell

Transcript Taken From Fitness Candor Podcast Episode 130

Eric:                          Hey everybody. Welcome back to Fitness Candor Podcast. Patty Durell the CEO and founder at Rock Solid Fitness in Florida joins us today. She is a high intensity trainer, uh, excuse me, a high intensity training, personal fitness coach and a licensed physical therapist assistant. We got linked up because our, we found out a couple of weeks ago when we first hopped on the phone that, that people in certain circles, even if they don’t know each other, we’re still kind of connected somehow. So somehow over Facebook she found me or I found her and then we found some similarities through the people that we have worked with. Um, it’s Kinda like, it’s like a big family tree we kind of found out. So, um, anyway, we’re here. We both have a lot in common in terms of how we feel about personal trainer education or the exercise science field and where that whole direction is going in and the importance of giving more information and adding more value to people. So anyway, Patty, thanks for joining us. I appreciate. I know you’re sitting in your car, so you took a little break to be with us.

Patty:                      I am and I’m so glad to be with you, Eric. You know, I love talking about what we’re gonna talk about today. It’s one of my passions. So I’m excited to be with you.

Eric:                          Well, I think anybody who has the passion to help other trainers in the field, um, it’s definitely worth talking to because just like we said right before we pressed record if a were, if it weren’t for people sharing ideas and sharing thoughts, like where would we be? And I don’t think anybody would get very far. If you’re not sharing, you know, if you’re not around people who are willing to like boost you, then you’re probably in the wrong. If you’re not in the wrong profession, you’re definitely around the wrong people.

Patty:                      So true. So true. I heard someone say it in Ursa convention once, it was a speaker and he said, hey, you know, what is R and D mean to everybody? And of course somebody raised their hand and said research and development. And he said, no, I think it means rip off and duplicate, like there’s so many people who have done so many great things and have such great ideas. Just network, talk to people, learn what they do, learn what success means to them, and success leads, trails. So it’s true. I think that’s really true.

Eric:                          I listened to a podcast on my way home today and I’m one of the guests on a. It was on the Joe Rogan experience podcast and he, he said, um, what’s the, uh, the greatest form of flattery is?

Patty:                      And someone tries to imitate you.

Eric:                          Yeah. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. That’s it. Yeah. I knew, I draw like, but anyway, so, so yeah. So welcome to the show. Thanks for sitting in your car. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and your story and how you got to where you are right now.

Patty:                      So, um, it’s a story I tell everybody that comes into my organization and interviews with me. Um, you know, I grew up one of five kids. My Dad used to joke about taking the stick or the bottle out of my mouth and putting the stick of Pepperoni in there and eventually I grew up to be an overweight young child. And, and weight was always an issue for me and my family. My nickname became fatty Patty kids called me fatty Patty. They were pretty cruel in school and I grew up with a big, you know, kind of complex or um, self esteem issue. Not a lot of confidence in myself. Never feeling attractive or certainly not wanting to participate in any gym class or anything like that. So I grew up into an over fat young adult, you know, um, went to school, um, for licensed and to become a licensed physical therapist assistant and my anatomy and physiology partner at the time.

Patty:                      I was kind of belly aching to him. How I had, you know, found weightwatchers and weightwatchers taught me how to eat and I lost some weight, but I still had this like 20, 25 pounds on me that I couldn’t lose. And in order for me to get through school, I was loading trucks at ups in the middle of the night, you know, and I was taking in teaching karate and I was tending bar later on and I was in a fulltime pretty, you know, aggressive curriculum for physical therapist assistant and I still couldn’t lose this weight and I was so active so I was bellyaching to him. And he was like, you know what, I think you’re doing too much and I thought you’re so stupid. I think I’m doing too little. I just don’t have enough time to do more and eat less.

Patty:                      So he’s like, let me take you to the gym and show you this style of training that I been utilizing. And so I went to the gym with them and we were working out pretty hard, a lot different than I was working out with my karate instructor and I was doing barbell bicep curls. I’ll never ever forget it in our world gym and Hamden Connecticut. And I felt like I was gonna throw up and I said that to this guy. I think I’m going to throw up, and he was really excited about that. I went and threw up and I came back and he was even more excited that it actually happened and I came back and he said, you threw up, Arthur Jones thinks you don’t work out intensely enough unless you’ve thrown up after one set of bicep curls. And I was like, who’s Arthur Jones and why do I care?

Patty:                      So I quickly learned to Arthur Jones was, I’m not sure if I really still cared at that point. Something about Nautilus and all this stuff and you know, I kept with the program. I kept working out with this guy. I was working out less frequently. I was working out less duration so I had more time for studies, more time for myself, which I really didn’t have much of it that time, but the best thing for me, Eric, was I started to lose weight. Even better than that was I had this sense of confidence that I never had before. Like I learned that I truly didn’t know what I was capable of unless I kept trying and if I didn’t quit I was capable of great things and for me it was very powerful. It’s that carryover effect that changed my life really more than how my physical appearance changed my life. That’s how I was introduced to high intensity training. That’s kind of my story.

Eric:                          Okay. So you got, you have this, this introductory introduction to high intensity training during, during your, um, your schooling for being a PT Assistant. Was there anything that was kind of counterintuitive to you or the things like that didn’t really make any sense and you were kind of battling against either way?

Patty:                      You know, in school I would say no because I really didn’t understand high intensity training at while I was still in school. Um, is there a lot of noise there? Eric? Um, so it was when I got out of school and started practicing therapy. Right. So for me, I was always like, if there was a gym available, which there usually was attached to the facility I was in, I would want to take the patients to the gym and strength train, not ankle weights, not tubes and bands and stuff like that. So and none of the other therapists felt that way, you know, they would be doing like functional training which is so important and so necessary when you’re at that level, right. I mean these are people who just had surgery or just had a stroke or just had a brain injury or had some life event that took them into a therapeutic setting.

Patty:                      So I should, I should say that I was working in inpatient, which is very different to outpatient. So it started in inpatient therapy when I started to question why am I the only one taking them to the gym, why am I the only one that’s valuing this really aggressive resistance training when in therapy itself I learned about progressive resistive training. I mean, that’s where I learned about it was in school for therapy and then of course this guy who turned me on to high intensity training who is now my husband, he’s the one that really kind of enhance that knowledge about what progressive resistance really means and looks like and feels like. So I think in a, you know, I think that that we have to get people to normal, but we can’t forget that normal isn’t where we want to live because the definition of normal in the medical world is that you can feed yourself, he can bathe yourself, you can kind of take care of those basic activities of daily living. And, and to me that’s not really thriving. That’s existing, you know. So I always like to think we need to thrive in our life.

Eric:                          Well you brought up another good point. The, you know, the, the medical system, the baseline for them is to have you keep coming back to them so they can prescribe more. And that’s not if you, if you can do things for and everybody should have the ability to do things for themselves and not rely on that. Now I’m not saying like let’s get rid of medicine. medicine is a pretty freaking incredible thing. I’m glad to be alive in 2018 lot better in 1918. So, but, but the idea that we have to rely on a popping pills or something that we don’t have control over our own bodies and our own stomachs and mind and in the whole the whole thing, the whole machine is they don’t want, they don’t like talking about that, which is why, you know, you’ve only talked to talked to a doctor. They might only have like an hour or two of nutrition training even so it’s, it might go, it’s part of the Standard American Diet, which we’re starting to find out more and more things now about the fallacies of that. But so, so fast forward a little bit and tell us about your interest in opening your own high intensity training studio and what that looks like now. And especially with the people that you work with.

Patty:                      So it started for, you know, Dave and I, Dave is my husband Dave Durrell and he’s, he’s the person I say as responsible for introducing me to high intensity training and really teaching me all that I, I know, um, up until um, what really, he’s, he’s really, he’s responsible. Eric, let’s just say that. So we saw this revolving door and physical therapy, right? So I started in inpatient, we moved to Florida. We’re working in outpatient. We have this really sweet deal. We’re working in orthopedic surgeon’s office. Basically we could see the patients with the surgeons. We could go to surgery with the surgeon. So we, we really felt like we had landed in a very educational job and position, which was awesome for us. We were working under great therapists and it was amazing. So. But what we saw was this revolving door of patients that would come in, they would get, well, we would take them to the Nautilus Center, which was it attached to the doctor’s facility at this outpatient clinic.

Patty:                      It was amazing. They would get. Well, they would come back though because it would not join the fitness center that we hooked him up with. We hooked him up with a program. We taught them what to do. We gave them a special rate that docs would charge seven or eight bucks a month just to keep their patients well and the patients wouldn’t do it, so they would come back to therapy again. And so we were like, gosh, if we could just really teach them what to do in the gym, maybe they wouldn’t need us. So we started, we approached the owner of the gym we worked out of, which was a world gym and Largo Florida, which is now a parking lot for the high school of Largo, part of this story. Um, so we approached the gym owner and we said, hey, can we bring people in here and can we train them and we’ll give you a piece of it and it will become your members.

Patty:                      And he was all excited about it. And so we just started with some patients and we brought the patients to the gym and we started to work out with them for, gosh, I think we were charging $15 an hour or something like that in 1997. And they started to get well. And then some of the therapists came and we had these two doctors that came and they just got great results and they started to send all their patients to us and then we had a waiting list and then the gym changed ownership and we had to find a new place and then that gym went out of business and we had to find a new place and then that shit went out of business and we had to find a new place. And then we went back to the original place and then it went out of business.

Patty:                      And it’s now a parking lot. So, you know, it’s hard. The gym business is hard. So if you’re not controlling your asset and you don’t have control of this space and the equipment, which is what a mentor of mine shared with me, I should find a new profession. So that’s really in 2001 I went and full time kind of in our business. I left PTA and went full time and then Dave had moved on to work in the NFL a little bit, so I was taken on all of his clients and then, you know, I just kind of put down a credit card and bought some equipment and when I moved into a space and lots of our clients that started with us are still with us to know so many years later. So now we’re in a really sweet space. We started in what I call our incubator.

Patty:                      It was a thousand square feet and clearwater, I don’t know how we built a business in this little space, but we did. And um, we moved a year and a half ago to Dunedin Florida and we’re in a 2000 square foot facility that’s um, we feel like we stepped into our brand. That’s, it’s pretty when you walk in, it’s got a beautiful lobby area. It’s got handpicked equipment in there. Um, you know, just a nice changing shower area. It’s nothing over the top, but it’s, it’s comfortable. It’s our brand, it’s exclusive, it’s high end. So we like where we are now.

Eric:                          Yeah, that sounds very familiar to the gym that I worked in that I’m a Joel Wainscott owns Mission 5 Fitness. So I think like minds like that, you know, it’s obviously your catering to a certain group of people, but it’s like here are the essential, this is what we need. And you know, you said you didn’t know how you built a brand inside of the thousand square foot, but I can kind of, I can see how not being since I don’t know own my own training studio, but you know, hearing you talk and you know what you’re doing, number one, you care about people and the people that come into it doesn’t matter the size of the facility to facility can be 500 square feet. But if you know what you’re doing with the equipment that you have and you care about the people you work with, you, you can build a business.

Eric:                          You can, you know. So whether the business is 16,000 square foot or thousand square foot, you can be successful in each way or unsuccessful on how you treat the people you’re working with and if the lack of knowledge, you know, if you don’t have knowledge and, and, um, don’t take ownership of what you’re doing with people, then that can fail a place. Which kind of brings me to my next question and my, my next interest. We both talked about, we both value, um, the education process of personal training. We also value, um, how other people see our time when they work with us and I know you, you have kind of a special interest in a special or a, a different idea on how something like that should go. So can you talk a little bit about that and just explain like the importance of how you feel about educating the personal trainer?

Patty:                      Yeah, I mean we feel very strongly about having educated people in our facility. Um, one, we look for people who already have a, an education, a college degree in exercise science or something related. I mean, I am probably the least degreed person in my facility. I only have an associate’s degree in science, you know, everyone that works with me has at least at least a bachelor’s, if not a master’s degree in exercise science and nutrition. So I, I start there. That’s how much I value education, working in commercial gyms, saying other personal trainers that just didn’t have the knowledge or the education. They still had the heart, they still cared. Um, they still wanted to help people, but in the process of not knowing they were hurting people. So that was one of my biggest concerns when I started the business was how was I going to hire people?

Patty:                      How was I going to find the right people? How was I going to make sure they weren’t hurting the people that we work with? Because as you heard, we had people coming from therapy, so they might have had a brain injury, a stroke survivor, an amputation and total joint replacement, something like that. So it was really even more important to me that people knew so well. Now that we get people who already have an anatomy and physiology with lab one into will you bring them in and we talked to them about high intensity training and it blows my mind how many people can graduate from an exercise science program with a bachelor’s degree and never learned about Arthur Jones and all of the research that he has done in the field of exercise science. So we teach them if they didn’t learn it in school, then we teach them and we have a basically like a little college curriculum of materials put together from experts, you know, like yourself, people who are teaching about exercise science and how to train in a gym professionally in a gym setting. What was still applying the principles of, you know, brief, intense and frequent exercise. So, um, uh, yeah, I, that the more educated we are, the better we can serve our population and it doesn’t stop there ever, right? We’re all students of life. We looked at research, we try to talk to researchers. I’m so excited to create new friendships and relationships like yours, you know, we follow you on instagram so we can find out your latest and greatest news and information is shared. And so it just is ongoing. Constant.

Eric:                          Yeah. But you know, what’s interesting and this, I’ve never thought of it this way even though I’ve talked about it a lot, but the little jab at the, uh, the medical system that I took earlier about how doctors are going to take one hour of one or two hours of nutrition. Well I think back on my own education, exercise science going into to a masters in kinesiology, sports studies, and I don’t remember having very many weightlifting classes. You know what I mean? Like there was a lot, there’s a lot of anatomy and physiology exercise, you know, one and two and a lot of, uh, clinical settings, exercise and clinical settings, which is great. But in terms of like, just like bare bones, here’s how, going back to like the bicep curl, for instance here, here’s how a proper barbell bicep curl should be performed. There was none of that.

Eric:                          Of course it wasn’t, it, none of that’s geared towards someone going out and helping a population, um, in, in your kind of setting or in my kind of setting. And that sets, um, that’s a disservice I think. But I think what you’re doing, what you’re taking on, you’re saying, okay, great, now you’ve, you’ve got this, um, this information behind you, now let’s apply it. And that’s the missing link, right? And of course what you said, it’s, it’s constant learning and we’re in such a great age right now. It’s kind of a double edged sword because you can go out there and find people to follow and they have awesome work and you can, you, you can use it and you put it into practice and then the next thing you flip through is like someone teaching the exact opposite and they have twice as many followers.

Eric:                          And you’re like, what is happening here? Why? You know, why, why is the person teaching the easiest, the best principals not getting enough traction? If is it not sexy enough, you know, do we need to take our shirts off to do this? Like, what? I don’t understand.

Patty:                      You got to show some skin now. I know.

Eric:                          So it’s funny because I, um, I’m going through my instagram. I don’t follow a ton of people. I don’t have a ton of followers now, but I’m starting to, to unfollow the people who can’t show me a video without having their shirt on for some reason. I’ll go outside and I see it. I’m like, Oh God, all right. If I see another ass shot from a girl doing a deadlift, I swear to God I’m gonna throw my phone against the wall. I’m like, great. You have a dead lift. We don’t need to see that angle of your dead lift.

Patty:                      It’s so true and it’s such an exploitation for such an unnecessary thing, you know, it really is. I wish to things that I want to comment on what one I wish that doctors would pull out their prescription pad and write on it; You need to move 30 minutes every day. You need to do high intensity strength training three times a week for 30 minutes and you need to eat fruits, vegetables, and fiber. Like if we can just start there, Eric, we could change the world a little bit. A little bit. Yep. Yeah. And the other thing I want to say what some. Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say that, you know, the conflicting, confusing information on the Internet right now is, is what is going to make us the best experts because you’re right, out there, there’s so much stuff and our clients then the general population gets so confused about it. They shut down and do nothing or follow the pretty body. So it’s really an opportunity for us to capitalize on I think.

Eric:                          Oh, I think you’re right. Yeah, that’s a good way. That’s a good way to think about it. I see what you did there. I see what you did. You turn my negative into a positive. All right, I’ll take that. It’s fair. Checkmate. So, so Patty, we also talked about what time versus the time versus value and how um, how us as fitness professionals, we block off a certain schedule on a certain time in our schedule. We say this time slot is worth this much. My time is worth this much and we hope that the person we were telling that to sees the value in that and they respect that value and I think, I think, um, you know, when I’m teaching the business for personal training classes since any state and I’m telling, I’m telling the students, hey, here’s how you have to value your time.

Eric:                          Here’s how often you should increase your rate based on knowledge, based on, you know, punctuality and all these things that you’re giving your client, even though they might not realize it. And that’s a hard thing to grasp, you know, when, when, especially when you’re the customer service industry and we are a service. That’s what people see us as. I feel like we are a service that they’re using and you kind of have a different idea in a different way to approach that, which I thought was really, um, really unique. So can you talk about that a little bit?

Patty:                      Sure. Like we’re in a phase right now where we’re getting away from selling time and sessions to our clients and it’s really a different shift for all of us to think about. Right? We’re not even offering a free introductory workout anymore, so that’s always been the thing, you know, you want to come try us out. We think everybody should take us for a test drive before trying us out and I still believe that, but it’s not free anymore. It’s still a test drive. And because Eric, what happens, I mean here you are teaching a college class about the business of personal training, so it’s a real thing, right? It’s service that we can provide to people that will enhance their life immediately, immediately, it’s going to start to have positive impact on them and so when you change lives at that level, I think people should be compensated for it and when you have people like educated the kind of people that you’re creating at your college that we’re creating in our industry here in our little studio, you should be able to charge for that and get paid for that and I should be able to pay my staff what their degree, what their time and what their value is.

Patty:                      Right? But I think in our industry we are so used to undercutting the session dollar and competing with the session dollar that we deep value everything about us. We’re not your, your students are not sitting in front of a computer over the weekend getting a certification. They’re getting an education or learning. They’re learning it at a different level. So we are saying to our clients, hey you, we don’t spend a half an hour with you. You might come in here and the facetime you have with us is 30 minutes, but when we came in this morning and half an hour before our shift, we read through all of your cards. We were up to date on what happens with you last time if something happened. If you’re, you know, playing football with your kids over the weekend and you sprained your ankle, the next coach who works with you knows that and knows how to work around that or whatever.

Patty:                      You just had surgery. We know where you are in the process and we know what to do if you will. That takes time and preparation and when we’re done with you at the end of the day, we go back to your workout card and we plan your next workout and we discover is there any article that we need to send to you and your research? Did we promise you something in that session? Were you struggling with your nutrition? And we need to sit down and go through your menu and then send it to you. So we might spend up to an hour, an hour and a half with a client, you know, for, for one session, where do you capture the value of that? How do you charge them for that? If you’re charging them for 30 minutes of your time, you don’t. So what we decided to do was make it a membership and not limit access to us so people can pay a monthly rate and they can come in and see us as often as they need to.

Patty:                      Basically. That’s of course we’re still going to stick to the high intensity training principles. We’re going to see your workout card and we’re going to know if you’re over training or under training, you know, all of those things are still going to be the same. But if you’re coming in twice a week for strength training and you really want to get a third workout in and we think you can handle it, come on in and we’ll push it through a metabolic. Or maybe you’re just that kind of person who just has to the split up your body and we’ll split it up for you for three days. You know, there’s so many different ways to make things work and we’d rather get people exercising and moving then not and making it a habit than not. So we’re trying to reward people for at least coming in eight times a month, you know, give them additional rewards or way that they can earn perks.

Patty:                      It’s, it’s new to us. It’s exciting. We’re literally in the first week of transitioning all of our clients over. Some of them love the idea and just love the fact that they’re going to have access to the experts when they ever, whenever they want and others aren’t loving it and that’s, you know, you learn that some people are going to exit our life and we’re not going to be happy about it and we hope they continue to strength train when they’re not with us and other people will stay and benefit from our knowledge and value it and appreciate it. Like we value and appreciate them.

Eric:                          Yeah, that’s really unique and it’s a, it’s a really cool system and I’m excited to see how it plays out because there’s, there’s always something in the industry. For instance, when we know when I, when I first started 10 years ago, 11 years ago, um, all I thought was, well, I’m going to go out and I’m going to sell people a package of 10 and it’s going to be a discounted rate because that’s what you do and I’m just gonna, you know, keep, keep going. And then eventually I learned that, you know, the knowledge and the time that you put in, like you said, with the workout cards or sending information, newsletters, you know, free content that goes into what they’re doing, making promises and following those promises. All of those things, they shouldn’t be discounted. You know, it. It’s not like we leave the gym and then we’re done for the day.

Eric:                          Maybe some people are, I, I’m sure some trainers are. And if they’re successful, great. If they’re keeping people happy and they’re safe, great. But I think for the, for the most part, people here for the long haul who really love this industry and want to see go forward. They do things like you’re going to do and they kind of shake things up a little bit. Because even though you might not, maybe there are other places in your area that are doing something like that. There’s not here, but eventually somebody’s going to catch on to like, wow, that’s a great idea. Just like when I finally said I’m done doing discounts, I’m done selling packages. No, I’m not going to have you pay up front to get a cheaper rate. Like, here’s the value. This is it. You should value this appointment because of X, Y, and Z. You know, I’m gonna keep my word, you keep your word. And then we go. If it all works out that way, but I think that’s cool. Like to have somebody to, to change the game into eventually, um, may set a higher standard for what we’re doing and for what people should expect from us.

Patty:                      That’s right. You contact doctors, Eric, you find out what your clients need, right? I mean that’s. Who else does that? People who work at La Fitness don’t do that. I don’t think, if they do great, but if they’re not doing it, we all are right. And so we should, we should be compensated for that and people should recognize that value. So I’m telling him like, uh, you know, like almost like I’m angry about it. Hey, this is what we do for you. We want you to know we love you and we care about you and you’re not a time slot at Rock Solid. You’re a unique individual at Rock Solid.

Eric:                          Yup. Yeah, that’s, yeah, the, the idea that, um, so it was my brain started to go into like a bunch of different directions we’ve got like harness harness myself in, but the idea that um, you know, someone gets injured for instance, and then they automatically say, I have to stop training. I’d have to go in, have some kind of, some kind of surgery. Whether it’s, let’s just say I’m having a knee replacement. Okay, we understand that’s, that’s invasive. You’re going to have some time off, but there are things we can do before you go into surgery to keep them stronger. And I, and I’m not saying I’m not tooting my own horn, but I’ve worked with several people who have had multiple hip replacements because they have some degenerative diseases that they’re dealing with. I just attack their joints and other people who’ve gone and had knee replacement just because of longterm wear and tear.

Eric:                          They were football players, baseball players, super active an accident happen. And before they go into to um, have surgery, the doctors even told them like, glad you’re working out because this is going to make the recovery process a lot easier. We can tell because your muscle structure and you know, the way, the way that the, the joint is, you’re looking healthier than it was before. Those kinds of things take, take time to build. And if you build a rapport with, with those professionals that see your clients that you’re working with, that’s going to benefit the entire scope of your practice and their practice. And I think that. I think that goes a long way. I don’t think that was my original thought, but I’m glad it came out that way because I think I’ve talked about the disconnect between exercise science and personal trainers in the medical field. Um, and with physical therapists and you know, and other people, if they hear personal trainers, they’re just kinda like, oh yeah, I know you’re working with a personal trainer and it’s sad.

Patty:                      It is sad and we get it all the time where, oh, my doctor told me not to work out with a trainer and I’m like, why we are the place you need to be at! What do you mean if they sent you for physical therapy it would be okay, but exercise anywhere else is not okay. And it’s just because unfortunately there are trainers out there who aren’t educated and know better. And so they, there are people in every profession that hurt people and unfortunately in that business, you know, there are, we see more injuries and our gyms that were created from poor lifting for years of poor lifting, you know, backs and shoulders and knees and squats, heavy squats. I mean, my own cousin can hardly walk from heavy squats all his life, you know, so

Eric:                          Heavy squats, kinda like power lifting type stuff or…

Patty:                      Regular exercise routine, just loading his spine for 30 years or whatever, you know, just regular stuff. And so, you know, I get it and he was a, he was an attorney or you just, you know, worked with a trainer and, and did his own thing and it’s, it’s hard to. It’s hard to see. It’s hard to watch, you know, that, you know, if we had just done something different, maybe it would have been a different outcome.

Eric:                          It’s 100 percent, especially with your body. Oh my God, you look back, you’re like, oh, I wish you wouldn’t have done that. What are they? What are they thinking? Move forward. It’s true. Well Patty, this has been awesome. And before I let you go, I, I’d like for you to share if you could, uh, maybe a personal habit that you’d recommend to other professionals. Maybe something that’s been told to you that you’ve implemented in and shared with others.

Patty:                      You know, I think the biggest thing for me personally, Eric, is I’m spending time with my husband because as I’ve, as I’ve been building a business and hiring people and being in a team, my husband and and I now we carve every Sunday we sit down and we’d get our schedules together and we have a connection time in the morning. We have what we call quality time block on Wednesday. Nothing gets in the way of our quality time block at 5:30. Everybody in my life knows that I’m not reachable by phone. I’m not gonna make an appointment with you. And if it, if I do, it’s because my husband approved it, you know it’s done and usually he won’t. It’s our time. And then Saturday nights or date night. So we, we carve out time for each other and I think that’s the best habit that I could. I could tell people who are in business, building a business, make time for you and make time for the people that are important to you and schedule it like you schedule everything else.

Eric:                          Yep. That’s. Wow. That’s pretty powerful because I know it’s part of the business in this industry to be constantly on. Right. That’s what’s expected, but in, a lot of other. Well, I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t in every single industry. That’s just the time we live in and but it doesn’t. I don’t think it has to be that way, so that’s good. That’s really good advice and I should probably, heed that – don’t laugh.

Patty:                      I’m smiling because you should make a date with your wife and make that night be yours and there’s no cell phones and there’s no other people and you have to look at each other and have a conversation and it’ll be the best time you spend in your whole week.

Eric:                          And I know other professionals out there are probably thinking to themselves, yeah, I could do that too, so that’s awesome. Hey, thanks for sharing that. If anybody has any other questions, comments, concerns, where’s the best place to reach you? Not by phone.

Patty:                      No. Actually by phones invest way, not by email, so I’ll give you my phone number. If somebody wanted to reach me, you can call me at 727-, 580- 2885. And if you wanted to email me you can. Um, I’m not responsible for it. It’s [email protected] that’s for Yeah, we have Rock, Solid Fitness FL in Facebook, which is pretty popular. We have Instagram and Twitter as well. Awesome. And Snapchat? I think so.

Eric:                          Good. I’ll link all this stuff in the show notes. So if people do have questions, comments, concerns, I hope they reach out to you. So again, Patty, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Go back, get get out of your car, go back to work.

Patty:                      Thank you so much, Eric, and keep the good work going. Thank you for all the education you’re doing. Thank you.