I don’t typically have bad days.
I’m probably what most people would call “happy go lucky”.
I love my life. I’ve worked super hard to get where I’m at, and I’m thankful for every person in my life – my family, friends, clients, customers, our community, and subscribers of this here blog.
I realize that no one owes me anything, and that I’m the luckiest guy on the planet for finding my calling, my purpose, my passion so early in life. That I get to wake up each morning and teach and work with the good folks in our industry – the industry that I come from.
My good pal Craig Ballantyne once said something that totally described me. He said, right now my life is a 9 out of 10. And for me, that’s so true.
I think 9 out of 10 is the best we’ll ever get… life’s imperfect so I’m realistic enough to never expect ten out of ten.
Like I said, I don’t have many bad days. I’m definitely an optimist, maybe that’s how I was wired or maybe it’s because times we’re very tough when my mom and dad decided to defect from communist Armenia and bring us to America. A family five, with less than $300 in their pocket, living in a one bedroom dumpy apartment but thankful as can be for having the opportunity to come to America and have the chance of becoming and achieving more.
My general philosophy is this, short of death, there really isn’t a circumstance where you or I couldn’t make a come back from. So the way I see it, I can turn chicken shit into chicken salad. And I hope that you realize you can too, after reading this post.
It just so happens that life sometimes gives you more chicken shit than you expected.
This past February and March I had a few bad days. I’ll be the first to admit that I wear my heart on my sleeve – good or bad – that’s just me. And I gotta tell ya I was hurt, angry, disappointed and I really felt that society had gone down the shitter.
Maybe you remember or saw what happened.
First, in a two week period someone went on a hate rampage online and posted fake consumer complaints about me, my products, and services. It was really obvious these were fake since it all took place in the same two week period and the person or persons doing this used the names of my staff and some of my clients as the people posting the complaints. Funny right?
Here are some screen shots from that two week period…
And then there was this one… (check out the “posted by name”: Josh Carter…lol)
And of course, this one…
And this one (either we started delivering REALLY poor service during this two week period, or this is all B.S.)
As you might imagine I was pretty pissed and hurt to see these fake complaints about me and my business. And I wrote this post about it.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we don’t get customer complaints… we do a lot of business and we do make mistakes from time to time, people have fallen through the cracks and while our policy on most of my products is a full 12 month money back guarantee, our procedure is to refund folks who ask for it even if they’re well past the 12 month money back guarantee period.
I just think that this is a fair way of doing business.
Just a couple weeks after these fake complaints surfaced, I woke up one morning to find out that my ENTIRE Facebook pay per click ad campaign had been disapproved.
It’s like you’d have to know someone on the inside of Facebook or something to make something like that happen.
Now keep in mind I’ve been advertising on Facebook for over four years now and I spend multiple six figures each year with them so I was blown away to see a blanket disapproval of ALL my ads. OUCH!
Check this out (inside my Facebook ad account – not a cool thing to wake up to)
It was about that same time when I started getting multiple threatening emails and text messages… not cool. And those emails and text messages where followed up by more hate driven blog posts and facebook slandering.
I was hurt and angry that my reputation was being thrashed online and I had done nothing to deserve it. Truth is I was disappointed in humanity. I had always believed that people were inherently good. But I was now convinced that humanity as a whole sucked.
I chose not to participate in the shit slinging and felt no reason to defend myself on the lies that were being told about me and my businesses. I’d rather let my decade plus history and the hundreds of testimonials on my blog and websites speak for me. So chose to continue to do what I do best which was to deliver value to our community and to teach fitness pros the systems of running a successful personal training or boot camp business.
Never the less I was hurt, disturbed, and disappointed.
So I searched google to prove my case that humanity sucks and that people are NOT inherently good.
And I found the proof.
Since all these lies and attacks on my reputation were driven by hate and a scarcity mind set – I decided to google those two words.
I went to google’s keyword tool and searched the word “HATE”.
Just as I suspected! Over 13,000,000 searches each month for the word HATE.
This is so sad, that each month there are over 13,000,000 (MILLION) searches done for the word “hate”. Kinda makes my stomach sink when I think about it.
Then I searched “scarcity” and I found that it’s searched 165,000 times a month.
This was proof to me that people are messed up and that maybe more people live in a constant state of hate and a scarcity mindset then we think.
I was totally bummed after seeing these search results. And so I let myself have a few bad days back to back. I guess I felt sorry for myself.
Maybe you can relate…
Maybe you’ve had hate, lies, and mis-information spread about you by disgruntled clients, weirdos, or competitors.Maybe someone has tried running your reputation through the mud. You know what? Embrace it, because it most likely means you’re doing something right.
And the fact is the ONLY criticism you should be focused on are those that come from clients.
Now looking back, I realize that I wasted one too many days dwelling about this crap that took place. I’m thankful for all of the support that poured in from clients, friends, and readers of this blog. The facebook posts, emails, text messages meant a lot – THANK YOU =)
And while a few days of feeling sorry for myself seems like a short time. I realize that those are three days that I failed to add value to our community.
For those few days I failed to live my passion.
And that’s the message I want to share with you. Because once I stopped my pitty party and decided to go back to google and search out two more words. (Thanks God for my optimism)
LOVE and ABUNDANCE
And guess what?
While HATE and SCARCITY are searched 13,000,000 and 165,000 time respectively each month.
The word LOVE is searched 185,000,000 times each month. WAY MORE SEARCHES FOR LOVE THAN HATE =)
And the word ABUNDANCE was searched 301,000 times. Almost twice as many searches for abundance than scarcity. Whoop whoop!
And so my take-a-way was this…
– There is hope for society after all…
– People ARE inherently good….
– Humanity is A-Okay!
– Love and Abundance trumps hate and scarcity every time.
– I’ll probably have more bad days in my life. That’s just a given. But I’ll never let it extend into several days.
– I give myself permission to piss and moan and to feel bad for myself for a whole two minutes. But then I have a responsibility to the community I serve and so I’ll always focus on delivering value, driving change, and exceeding expectations in all things fitness business.
– For me, I’m not gonna waste my time with being angry, pissed or hurt with the person or persons who tried to thrash my reputation… I only feel compassion towards them and I’ll continue to serve the community that I’m so passionate about.
– And while there will always be people who hate, lie, and try to damage your reputation – odds are it’s because you’re doing the most good in your community so embrace it and stay the course.
– Don’t take your eyes off your passion to retaliate or shit sling.
Like Forest Gump says: Shit happens. And when it does, you have my permission to piss and moan and to feel bad for yourself for a whole two minutes – then it’s time for you to do what you do best which to deliver amazing fitness and fat loss results.