Chris Albert

Full transcript: Chris Albert on London Real

0:00 I am here with Chris Albert, Business Accelerator graduate, Business Accelerator team leader, course instructor. Chris, tell us a little bit about you, for people that don’t know who you are, where you’re from, etc. Well, my name is Chris, obviously. I live in Redlands, California, and I own a company called Warrior Soul Apparel, and we’re just transitioning that from being Warrior Soul Apparel to just plain old Warrior Soul.

0:34 We’re a lifestyle brand for United States military veterans, and our whole mission involves getting veterans to live their best lives. We inspire them with our clothing, we help them out with educational courses, our content like our podcast and our videos. We do our best to try and get them involved with things that they wouldn’t have come across before, ideas that are gonna open up their minds, things that can help them get through life and live their best lives. So. Okay, and how’d you find London Real?

1:06 So it’s kind of a story in and of itself. I started a gym called Metroflex Gym in Long Beach, California about four years ago, and it became very famous. It’s actually still very successful. The problem was that I wasn’t financially capable enough to hold on to the gym, so I ended up having to sell my shares and I pulled out. And I had a disease called ulcerative colitis, and I was training people on the side at that point and wasn’t able to earn the money because I was constantly dealing with the ulcerative colitis, so I ended up living out of my car for a while.

1:47 And it’s on the streets of Long Beach, and it’s going through a really bad time, and somebody gave me a computer. And I had just gotten into doing YouTube, because my friend said, you know, I know you’re going through a really bad time, I want you to try and start your own online business. They said, you’re really talented with fitness stuff, so try it out. And so I did it. I started a YouTube channel, and I was going through videos trying to find good stretching videos to help my online clients out, and I came across your interview with Kelly Starrett.

2:20 And I was like, all right, I got a spare hour, let me check this out. And this American guy living in London, you were kind of going through this transition phase, you’re wearing the Under Armour gear, you had your cargo pants on, and you were just kind of, seemed like a traveller. And I was kind of in the same space at that point, and I said, you know, this looks awesome. And at the time I was really busy. I got through that interview, I thought it was really cool.

2:46 But about, you know, six months later I was like, you know what, I was doing some work and I was coming to a little bit of a brain block, and I said, let me check out this London Real guy again. It was a little bit different that time. You had, was it Alex Ikonn on, and it was a more business-focused episode. And then a few months later I came to the same kind of block, and I saw your interview with Dan Pena.

3:16 And it was actually after you’d filmed both interviews with Pena, when you were doing the first interview and then you went up and you went to the castle, and I saw this crazy kind of transformation. It’s no longer the guy in the Under Armour anymore, it’s a guy in a suit. And at first you were kind of unsure about yourself, and then also you have this immense confidence, and there was like an immediate change in you that I kind of wanted for myself. You know, I wanted to walk around with that kind of confidence, that kind of knowing about what I wanted, what I wanted for my business, what I wanted for my life.

3:49 Because at that point I was earning money as an online trainer. You know, things turned around really well for me. I got myself out of the car, got myself into a rented room, got myself eventually into an apartment with the amount of money I was making, but I had no real direction. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was just sitting there kind of writing out programs in front of Excel spreadsheets all the time, and that’s not why I got into fitness in the first place, not why I got in the business in the first place, and I wanted something more. And that whole transformation that you did really spoke to me.

4:20 And you were one of the first members of our inaugural Business Accelerator class a year ago, and I find over the years that the people that take these classes are usually at kind of this crossroads in their life when they decide to make that investment. Were you in a similar space? Yeah, and that was one of the things, ’cause I was making all this money as a personal trainer and I wanted to do something more, so I started Warrior Soul clothing as a company on the side.

4:52 Because at the end of the day, when I was doing the fitness stuff, I was saying to myself, what are you really doing, Chris? You’re helping people get abs, which is cool, you’re helping people become a little bit healthier, but you’re also catering to vanity, you’re catering to people’s self-image issues. And I wanted to do something for veterans, because I served the United States Marine Corps, and at the time veterans were going through a really bad state. We had a really high suicide rate. I had friends who were dealing with all kinds of issues.

5:25 And I wanted to figure out something I could do. Now, in the fitness space I couldn’t do much besides creating content, besides putting things out there, because people couldn’t afford my training packages. I was catering to a very high-end element. But I wanted to create something where I can give something to veterans and still be able to create that helpful content for them, so I said t-shirts, it’s a perfect, affordable item for them.

5:55 So I started putting out the t-shirts, created the company in a weekend, and that’s been the classic thing about me, is I’ve been really good about creating things, but then they’ll sit there for, you know, six, seven months before I actually make a move on anything. And so I had these t-shirts made, I had the website made, and I wasn’t able to do anything with it because I didn’t know what the next move was. I didn’t know where to go with the content, how to move from being an online trainer to being an e-commerce person.

6:29 And I sat on it for about two years. And I remember when you put out the announcement, about a year ago tonight, he put out the announcement for the Business Accelerator, and I said, you know, I joined the Academy. Brian was really good with the Academy, I got so much out of it, I’ve gone to the focus groups. Brian was always a real guy, as opposed to some of the other people I’d been involved with in the internet community. You’ve always been super real. And I said, I’m gonna try this, I’m gonna do it, and when I do it I’m going to go 100%.

7:03 All out, balls to the wall, because at the time, I mean, it was an investment. I said, I still got to try it, I still got to do it. And it was the most amazing thing I’ve done for my business. Completely transformed the way I’ve done things. It’s brought a new purpose into my life, I think, as far as having become an instructor since then, and I mean, it’s completely transformed everything. It’s like getting an aerial view of what you’re trying to do. Do you remember those first few weeks of that accelerator, and kind of what we were throwing at you, and do you remember what you thought or what you felt?

7:41 For me, at the time I was in, and this is the thing about me, and I don’t want it to come off the wrong way, but I was kind of like, I don’t give a… Like, I’m just gonna do this. Like, I don’t care if this is hard, I’m just gonna do it. Whatever he says, I’m gonna do. If I don’t agree with it, it doesn’t matter, it’s just gonna get done. And those first few weeks I just got so wrapped up into trying to make sure that I was, I wasn’t getting everything out there.

8:14 And it was kind of like, you know, my bro Tony, he talks about flow, Tony Flow Real, it was kind of like I was just going step by step by step, and it was kind of just flowing out of him, because what you did was he gave us a good framework, and you said, you know, you’re starting with your niche. I had the niche, I had United States Marine Corps veterans, and what I had to do with my niche was kind of figure out other ways that I could help. Was I getting everything out of what I was trying to do for them? Was I actually trying to help them live their best lives? T-shirts, the best way of doing that? Those are questions that had to come up.

8:56 And so as we got into the material, it helped me really refine things and organise things in my head. But at the time, you know, I’ve done a lot of difficult things in my life, and this is very difficult, but at the same time it was doable, it was honest, and I saw the benefit in it, so I just went right after it. Do you remember the biggest challenge you handled in the course?

9:20 There were a few of them, but the biggest honest-to-God challenge, I got pneumonia halfway through the course with a really bad ulcerative colitis flare. I lost my voice, and we’re doing the 10 vlogs in 10 days challenge, and I’m sitting there and I’m shooting vlogs and I was like, yes, and I’m not talking about.

9:43 I think so there’s a whole contingency of people out there who think I talk like Batman, because they’ve only seen those videos. But I think somebody else came on here and they said Chris has got this really raspy voice, and, you know, the reality was I was super sick with pneumonia, I was dealing with the ulcerative colitis flare-ups, and I was getting like two or three hours of sleep at night at that point.

10:15 And that was the biggest challenge, the biggest challenge that I faced in this course, was dealing with the outside world kind of creeping into my world and trying to keep everything organised. Yeah, everybody kind of faces something. Exactly. So I think the work, getting the work done for you wasn’t a problem. You were aligned with, you were like, I’m gonna do this, but then everyone faces resistance, and yeah, for you I think it’s the outside world having its own agenda.

10:39 In retrospect, it’s been a year now, what were the big things you took away from that course and ran with? The biggest things that I took away from the course and ran with, I think, was just getting as much out there as you can as far as content goes, creating the sales funnel. Right, the sales funnel is so important, and if people don’t have one set up, they’re so far behind the curve, but if you’ve even started to set one up, you’re so far ahead of the curve.

11:09 And one of the things that I got out of it was just constantly looking at every level, constantly, every quarter, you know, even every week, taking small looks at where you are in your sales funnel, what’s working, what isn’t. Helps you to be highly analytical, because if not, you’re just kind of just throwing darts at a dartboard, and that’s what I was doing before, and I don’t want to do that. But with the framework we’re given in the course, you really have that analytical framework set up, and you have your inputs and then you have your outputs, and if you’re able to take that and really look at each thing, you can create an amazing business, and the sky’s the limit. But if you don’t have those things down, those very simple things down, then you’re gonna be lost out in the woods.

11:52 Yeah, you also really went big with influencers, and I noticed on the course you did it, but now it seems like you’ve gone to another level by, you know, doing JVs and landing big people on your podcast. Well, that’s the thing, the biggest thing I got out of the course was that, you know, dealing with influencers, you have to extend your network. Your network is your net worth. And so one of my main focuses was creating a network, and I said, how am I gonna create this network in the most efficient way possible? Well, I’m gonna create a podcast.

12:31 And so actually, I think it was the week or two before the course ended, we had a bunch of stuff going on, and one day I woke up and I said, I’m gonna figure out how to do a podcast today. So I sat down and I went through like five different tutorials. I figured out how to set it up, I figured out how to get it on iTunes. That actually is quite difficult, which I didn’t realise. It’s really technically difficult. I’d been a YouTuber for a while; YouTube’s easy compared to setting up iTunes. And I recorded my first episode that day.

13:03 All right, so I sat there for five straight hours, got everything set up, recorded my first episode, put it out there, and people started responding to it. And so recorded, I think, ten episodes by myself before we ever brought anybody in for an interview or anything like that. It’s just super intense. In some places it was almost like emotional catharsis, like, you know, really intense readings, really intense conversations with myself, really intense conversations with myself about the veteran community. Yeah, and I did not listen to a bunch of them. Yeah, they’re really good, really well researched. Reminds me of Jocko. Yeah.

13:43 And then we started getting guests on, and I started pitching people. I’ve gotten Ben Greenfield on. We’ve just brought on Combat Flip Flops, who got a deal on Shark Tank. I brought on Andrew Marr, who was a guest on the Joe Rogan podcast, and he’s now one of my business partners in the business, so, you know. And he’s doing great work with you with the Warrior Angels Foundation. And we’ve got some amazing people coming up, too. We have Brad Burge from MAPS, that’s doing psychedelic research with veterans, and we just had Tom Campbell on.

14:13 I mean, and this is what I mean, we’re bringing ideas that the veteran community never really gets in contact with, and it’s a shame that they don’t, because there’s so many things out there that can allow them to take charge of their own lives, to not sit there in silence suffering, but actually take charge of their lives and improve the states that they’re in, and take charge of making their lives better. And who would have thought that I would have had Tom Campbell, a consciousness thinker, on a veteran podcast?

14:53 Yeah. Big. Let’s say you walk down the street and bumped into the Chris Albert who didn’t take that course. How is he different than you? You know, the Chris Albert who didn’t take that course would be sitting there each day creating a YouTube video, writing a blog, doing Twitter, doing Instagram, doing Facebook, but he’d be doing it in a much more disorganised manner, with no single purpose, without trying to sell products, without putting it into a sales funnel.

15:21 It would look, you know, in the Marine Corps we talk about tight grouping. When you’re shooting, you want your shots to be grouped very close together. That means that, you know, you got accuracy. The Chris Albert who hadn’t taken this course, the shots would have been all over the place, would have been really loose groupings. It would have been like throwing spaghetti at a wall. Some of it would have stuck, some of it wouldn’t have.

15:46 And I would have been sitting there trying to do that, working intensely every day, but going to bed every night wondering what the hell am I going to do the next day, what the hell am I gonna do tomorrow. You know, and that’s, we don’t want to be. If you’re in business, you want to at least end your day knowing that you’ve accomplished something, and you want to end your day knowing what you’re gonna try to work on tomorrow.

16:10 We launched the second course, and you’re the first guy on our minds. We’re like, we need Chris involved in the second course. It’s three times the size of your class, and for us it just seemed like a no-brainer, and I think you were the only one we spoke to about that. What was it like seeing it from the other side? Now you’re in there teaching these people. What’s it like to work with us? What’s that whole experience like? Why’d you say yes?

16:39 I said yes because, one, I love what you guys have always done here. I love what London Real stands for, I love the ideas that you put out, and I think that the Business Accelerator had such an influence on me. I saw it as an opportunity to increase my own IP and a way to teach others and to spread knowledge to others, particularly bringing it back to the veteran community, which I think is something we all have to do, is we go out, network, we carry knowledge, and then we bring it back to our village. That’s so primal. That’s what it’s about.

17:10 Working with you guys, you are very particular, you’re very organised, you have your way of doing things, but I don’t find that intimidating at all. I find that refreshing, because regardless of whether you’re, you know, laying the smackdown, I think at least I know where I stand, you know, and you’re very, very clear about that.

17:36 Seeing it from the other side, what I noticed about it was this: there’s people who come into this and they look at it like a college course where they have to get an A or something like that, and I think that’s the wrong way of going about this. When you come into this, it’s not about pleasing me, it’s not about pleasing you, it’s not about, you know, getting the best grade on anything. It’s really about taking this stuff and applying it and living it and implementing it and seeing the big picture, seeing where everything comes in.

18:09 Because if you come into this course and you’re afraid to… you’re afraid to screw up, I’m sorry for cursing so much, if you’re afraid to screw up, that’s where you’re gonna start to fall behind, because resistance is gonna hit you right automatically. But if you come into it with that “I don’t give a…” mentality, I’m gonna make this happen, hell or high water, those are the people I’ve seen succeed. Those are the people who get the crazy eyes you talk about, those are the people I’ve seen succeed. But when people are tenuous about it and they’re so scared of growing on it…

18:42 It kind of messes with them, it messes with their creativity. They’re afraid to be creative, and the one thing you need if you’re going to be successful in business is you need your creativity. You need to be able to think on your feet. How do you describe our community of class members in the Business Accelerator? Eclectic. Very eclectic.

19:07 I mean, we’ve had everything on here. We’ve got Teeka Tiwari, who’s, you know, the Wall Street guy, curses a lot, and I remember I was trying to communicate with Teeka and he wasn’t getting it because I was talking politely, so I started cursing at him, and he’s like, oh, thank you for putting it in terms I can understand. And then we had Fahim, who was on here, and Fahim astounded me, because, you know, at first he was one of those people who was kind of tenuous. He didn’t know what he was doing, he was just kind of over-analysing everything. And then it came to, I was like, you know, Paleo, halal Paleo. You know, it’s just, all he had to do was look at his own situation.

19:47 That’s the only thing he had to do: look at his own situation, look at his life, look at who he was, all right, look at his identity. And he was able to create this amazing thing that he was able to have instant success with, and that was awesome. That was an amazing, you know. We’ve had so many different types of businesses on here.

20:09 And the cool thing, and I feel, you know, I’m probably a little bit, what’s the word, self-indulgent, because it’s almost like watching business porn. You know, you’re sitting here, you’re watching all these cool ideas kind of take off, all these kind of like cottage industries, but each idea has the potential to grow, right, and it has the potential to become this amazing thing. And you see somebody take it from, you know, this kind of figment that was in their imagination, and they’re a little bit unsure of themselves, but then they grow more and more confident, then they have a website.

20:42 You’re sitting there and you’re looking at their website, you’re looking at their landing pages, you’re looking at them writing blogs, you’re looking at them doing their videos, and you see that confidence growing in them, and that fire that builds out of their belly, and then you start to see their glow. And that’s been the biggest pleasure for me, as somebody who’s from the other side, watching that glow, watching that life kind of take shape in their eyes.

21:12 And for me, and, you know, I’ve been through all kinds of crap since I became an entrepreneur, right, so I’ve been homeless, I’ve been affected by disease, I’ve been dealing with all kinds of things, but it’s that fire that keeps me alive. It’s that waking up every morning and saying, I get to do this. This is my life. It’s freaking amazing. And seeing that in another person, and being able to ignite that in another person, when you are able to do that, it doesn’t matter how much money you have in the world, it doesn’t matter, you know, where you are, what kind of pain you’re going through, how many hours you slept, when your last meal was. If you have that, you have life, your fire. That’s freaking amazing. That’s beautiful.

21:52 And you like inspiring that as an instructor, and you’re seeing people kick in there and do it. Yep. Yeah. What would you say to people who aren’t sure about the course, whether they should take it or not? I would say ask yourself why, right, yourself why. Because, and I was actually thinking about this and I wrote about this the other day, there’s different types of humility, right?

22:16 And I think a lot of times we tend to think of humility as this all-encompassing good thing, right? But there’s positive humility, where you are in a state where you know that you need to learn things in order to get better. That’s positive humility, that’s good humility. But then there’s also this state where you’re saying, okay, well, I’m not good enough, so I’m not going to try this. In my opinion, when you say to yourself that you’re not good enough, that’s not humility, that’s laziness, because it means that you recognise that you have the shortcoming but you’re not going to do anything about it.

22:49 You know, I don’t think the course is for everybody, but if you’re out there and you’re trying to start a business and you’re sitting there and you’re telling yourself, well, I don’t know if I’m ready for the Business Accelerator yet, I would say do it, because you need to learn. You need to learn this stuff, you need to see the bigger picture, you need to understand what these things are. And it might not even click to you, it might not even click in your head while you’re in the course, right? It might happen six months later.

23:20 You know, we’ve seen people come out of this course six months later, they said, oh, that’s why I need an email list, that’s why I need a landing page, you know, and we’ve seen people come out and they’re doing amazing things. But it’s, ask yourself why you don’t want to do it, and honestly assess why you wouldn’t want to try it now.

23:44 And there’s a whole lot you can learn if you open up your mind and you tell yourself, I do have things that I need to learn about this, I do have things I need to work on. And you have to know without a shadow of a doubt that you are going to create a business out of the whole thing, and if you got that, absolutely, 100 percent, best thing you’ll ever do.

24:09 Can you speak on the fact that a lot of people get through the Business Accelerator, and when they talk at the end they’re talking about all these successes, but sometimes it’s got to do with their own personal self? You know, and they’re like, I don’t mind now, I’m confident, I can go do this, I’m not worried what people think, I’m going ahead to make mistakes, I can go into meetings now. Can you explain how it’s almost a metaphor, the business part, for just excelling at life? Yeah, and I’ve said this before, it’s definitely like a “me accelerator”. It’s where you’re, so you can go through this whole business thing.

24:42 And you can say, all right, I don’t see that other people are doing this. You see people doing the opt-ins, you see people doing the landing pages, you see people, you know, doing the social networking thing, but then you say in your head, okay, that’s those people, all right, but you don’t see yourself doing it. Why don’t you see yourself doing it? You don’t see yourself doing it because you don’t have the confidence, you don’t have the self-awareness, you don’t have the voice to speak about the passion that you have for your business yet.

25:15 But when you see it start to click for people, you know, like it clicked for me, because I was kind of lost on my content. Prior to coming to the accelerator I had been producing a lot, but I was lost, and I started to see, being forced to put it out there, started to see people respond to it, started to see what it was doing for veterans. I started getting letters from veterans telling me how much their lives had changed because they read a blog that I wrote or they watched a video that I did, and that lit the fire like nothing else.

25:48 You know, when you are putting something out there that changes somebody’s life, then that is going to completely change your perspective on what you are, what you do, and what kind of energy you put out there into the world. You know, it changes the way I teach, the way I treat people on the streets. I used to be a bastard, I used to be a mean bastard. Hey, I want to walk across people, I say hi, how you doing? You know, anybody I run into I treat like the CEO, and that’s because I know how hard people work.

26:20 I know how much people want better lives, and for me, at least, that’s been the biggest benefit, is just changing my outlook on everything, changing my perceptions of what I can do, what’s possible, living in a world of possibility, rather than sitting there and saying, oh, I wish I knew how to do that landing page, oh, I wish I knew how to do an email autoresponder, and sitting there for two years like, oh, you know, not doing anything about it. Now when I see a problem, I attack it or research it and fix it.

26:51 What’s next for Warrior Soul? What can we expect in the next year? We’ve got some really, really awesome things going on. I’ve just brought two people onto my team: Tony Flow Real, who’s been involved with the London Real Academy for quite a while now, also working with us as an ambassador and as our chief evangelist. And I’ve just brought on Andrew Marr, as talked about before, he’s ex-special forces operator. He heads up the Warrior Angels Foundation, and the Warrior Angels Foundation, they work on getting veterans affected with traumatic brain injury in touch with therapies in health care that are going to help them out.

27:41 So what we, where we’re going with Warrior Soul is we still have the clothing, of course, that’s our base business, but we’re taking it to another level as far as identifying new technologies in the medical world, in the health and fitness world, that could help veterans, that could help them improve their lives, that could help them improve their state of being, and we’re going to be bringing those to market.

28:04 We’re also putting out educational courses. We just released an educational course that teaches other people about e-commerce, teaches other people how to create clothing brands and things like that if they want to, and we’ve got it all launched on a new website, WarriorSoulogy.com. So we had the fitness clothing site, that’s WarriorSoulFitness.com, and the WarriorSoulogy.com, which is more of our media site, where we house our podcasts, where we house our videos, and where we’re putting a lot of our knowledge products out. I own Warrior Soul apparel, following your shirts. I love it. Always scares my daughter when I wear it. Some guy’s getting stabbed, or it’s a guy getting shot. Yeah, right. Old-school jokes.

28:48 Oh, it’s so exciting to see you take this business to the next level. I still remember you coming on that first cohort, and those first ten were very special for us. That was our first core product sale, and the fact that you invested in us meant a lot, and the fact that you took that seriously meant a lot to us. And so it was a no-brainer to ask you to come back, and then of course we asked you to come back again, and it’s been amazing. I’m always extremely impressed with you, Chris. You always deliver. Actually, that’s not true, you always over-deliver.

29:20 And so it’s like, it’s so nice to have you back here in London, or here in London, I say back, so it feels like you’re just coming home. But it’s great to have you here, and because you’re part of the team, you know, everyone feels like you’re part of this team, and you’re an essential part of London Real, and I hope you remain a part going forward. And again, you know, when people talk about the Business Accelerator, your name comes up. It’s like you’re a part of that curriculum, and they’re like, yeah, I saw Chris’s video, it’s why I joined.

29:42 I know he’s taking roll, so I got to show up. I heard him go off on that tirade about I have to be tougher, you know, and it’s part of the course. So I just want to say thank you and acknowledge you for all the hard work you’ve done for us. You’ve affected so many students’ lives and really affected a lot of businesses, and it’s important work you do. Well, thank you, and I want to acknowledge you, because you’ve significantly changed my life ever since I saw my first London Real video, and you’ve touched hundreds of thousands of people around the world, whether they’ve taken the accelerator or not.

30:21 You’ve done that. You’ve given people new perspective on different things, and you’re creating a new generation of business leaders who are taking over internet business as we know it. You’re gonna see so many amazing businesses come out of this project, and I’m so excited to see how you change the world through… Thanks, Chris. It’s gonna be a lot of fun to do, and you, sir, make me proud, and we’re expecting a lot of big things from you, and I know you have them.

30:46 So again, like you said before, I think we all have the tendency sometimes to work in our business, not on our business. I think that’s probably what you were doing a year ago, and quite honestly, that’s what I was doing two years ago, and it took like a Pena to snap me out of it. And now, once I get to that level, it’s not like I’m working more, I’m just working smarter, and I think if we both continue to do that, things are gonna be big. So yeah, looking forward to see what you do in this next year or two. Let’s grow together, old man. Let’s do it bigger. Chris, you’re certainly a part of this show and everything, so I appreciate it. Cool. Done.