Evans Armantrading - From Deep-In-Debt To New Systems And Debt-Free

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“My wife and I are completely debt free, and our business is debt free as well. Just with the NPE tools I was able to apply,” explains Evans Armantrading, owner of CNU Fit (pronounced seeing-you-fit), Dover, DE.

Evans is 2017 NPE Client of the Year for the PRO™ group. Evans is a military veteran who became a successful sales executive. In 2009, his employer went bankrupt. He struggled to find other work (especially work he felt passionate about). His house went into foreclosure and eventually had to be sold, he had $40k in personal debt, and his family expenses were increasing. He started training people in their homes, then got a small studio, and later a larger one. In the past three years, Evans has been part of three NPE programs.

In his story, he explains how with NPE’s help he boosted sales 30% in a 90-day period ($68,000 total) in the first program, increased his profits 24% in the second program, and has raised total sales and profitability in the third. “I am doing less work and making more money,” says Evans.

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Transcript

Evans Armantrading
Good morning.

As she said, I’m Evans Armantrading. And I guess I took a little bit different of a journey when it came to fitness. So I’ll just run you guys through that a little bit and then talk about my journey here have a conversation really, about my MP experience. So for me, it started before. Like, I wasn’t really interested in fitness, I wasn’t the guy who was playing sports, I chase girls in high school. So fitness wasn’t really my thing. You know, I’m I like to eat. I’m Jamaican. You know, I’m the first one born in America. And I live my first five years there. So I love to eat oxtail, and curry, goat, and rice, and peas, and all those kind of things, you know. And so I wasn’t interested in fitness at all. But in 2009, I was doing sales in the company I worked for went out of business, I was making about 84 and a half thousand dollars a year. And there was like, hey, the gas prices went up. And so we’re going to close up shop, you know, this, I need to figure out what to do. Um, three months later, while I’m trying to figure out what to do, I fall asleep on a bridge and totaled my car. And, um, so that was interesting. You know, I got all these bills coming in, and now have no car. And so that was that was actually the picture from my, from my house looking down at the car. And you think that’s good enough. But a couple months later, I my house got foreclosed on. And this house was very emotional to me because at 21 I was able to sign off on my home. I felt like I was doing it, you know, I’m it’s 3500 square feet, four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, the double ceiling, the double foyer had the catwalk, my basement was 1500 square feet on half an acre. And you know, as a young person, your early 20s be able to walk in that kind of home. Like, you know, it was like yeah, and it was the truth. It was like, Yeah, and I loved it, you know, I could do cartwheels and somersaults in my bathroom. And, and, um, and now’s foreclosed, you know, and so I didn’t know what to do at the time, I was really under a lot of stress. There’s other variables happening, you know, my son got diagnosed with like, seven different food allergies, just out the blue. And, you know, something like, when you go from, like, $85,000 a year to remember walking, I didn’t know they did unemployment. You know, I’m just Jamaicans we just work multiple jobs, you know, so we didn’t know there’s unemployment. So someone’s like, go to unemployment office, and you’re like, Okay, cool, you’re a high earner. So you’re going to max it out, you get $226 a week. I was like, oh, my goodness, I have $40,000 of personal debt, not counting my mortgage, as well as it took $4,000 a month to support my home. So I was like, I gotta do something different. So I saw an ad about making money and I and I signed up and I you know, got my producer license this little Aflac for a little bit. And realize I’m not an insurance salesperson, you know, it was very morbid, telling people, you don’t qualify for this, you don’t qualify for that. And it was like the perfect storm that that occurred. Because I’m overwhelmed with all the things that are happening in my personal life. You know, I feels my responsibilities to protect, protect and provide for my family, to you know, supply the need and help. My wife’s a school teacher at our church. So they don’t make a ton of money and I just boasted the year before that I paid more taxes than she had made. Now we’re living off of that. And but it was awesome because my mentor said to me, Evans, and Baba, apply some new practices to my business. Why don’t you come and join us? You know, like, why don’t you like just work out with me and you know, learn how to you know how to get in shape. That was one piece the second component was so the first thing I needed to do something the second my coach in life he says, Hey, I’m doing some stuff and he worked out on switch the nigga loose rig No. I only knew Lou Ferrigno from the Hulk. I had no clue that you know that there was this environment of people who do fitness and, and I saw my brother with his shirt off. You know, our brother is four years younger than me, but we don’t look alike. He’s tall. He’s really good looking. got all these muscles and everything else. And we’re at a business conference. He’s rolling with my little brother. And I’ll never forget, he comes out the bathroom. He has water on him. And he has a towel around his waist. And he goes, do you have any aquifer? And I’m like, I’m gonna go lotion. And every insecurity I’ve ever had just showed up. I was like, I was like, dude, you gotta put a shirt on. My wife is right there. You know? Is it true? And my wife, you know, she was an athlete. She just got Hall of Fame in her college a couple months ago when my wife Like, it doesn’t bother me.

So Mike, security’s got even more, I gotta do something. So. So that’s what I started to do fitness I was overweight in the military surface six years deployed couple times. And you know, so we got bombed that and I was interesting, but I was overweight in the military on fat boy program. When I sold homes, I was overweight, then we just had my son around this time. And I just like to eat, it was nothing for me to hold Stromboli or, you know, something like that. And I started applying these principles, I was like, I need to do something. We started working on a lost weight, you know, so I went, I dropped about 40 pounds. Now, to be honest, if you look at oops, if we go back, I thought it points. But if we look at the picture, that was not four months, that was like six years. Over time, the first five years, I didn’t even like working out. We had clients and they’re like, do you like to work out? I was like, No, like, so why am I paying I sleep because we both need to do it. So I was very relatable, at least, you know, by the size of the show, and in place, the NASA that was a lot of fun. So we started the business, it really started from people were looking at me at first, you know, I preach to my church, my elder, my church, you know, so, you know, super excited, thank you about that. And people thought that I was depressed, they thought I was going through this life change. Because, you know, everybody knew I didn’t have a house. It was public, you know, so embarrassing, you know, because it was like, public, your houses on the foreclosure list, I’d come home. And it was this white thing stuck to the door. And I’m like, as long as they don’t like padlock the door, but I know to break in the windows, my house, you know, so But um, you know, I didn’t have staff and I used to drive to people’s homes to teach them how to get in shape. You know, I did it for free. And then I charge $35 an hour, oh, no, $35 a month to do it. And I’d spend an hour a week at your house to get you in shape. We got great results. Because it’s true. And um, but if you live like 20 miles or 20 minutes away, I charge $50 a month, I didn’t think that people really pay for this stuff. But I couldn’t survive, you know, out of my home. So Dr. Wilson said, Evans, you know, have some space in my office, you can sublease to me for $600 I thought $600 was like, like, that was just too much. I’m not paying my mortgage, I’m, I can’t support my son. And when you when you’re allergic, like all the gluten free things had nuts in it. You’re like he’s learned to gluten, nuts, eggs, you know, is this milk? We’re just like, Alright, just give him like protein and vegetables, you know. So it was really, really interesting time. So we moved into his office, and I had to up my rates, you know, and I just said, hey, let’s go to $100 a month, everybody will come to me. And strange enough, people bought more, and our business grew. And I was like, Wow, it grew so much. I mean, at first I had bands, I used to carry the Total Gym, if anybody removes that. I used to carry this whole gym in my vehicle to your house. And like take out the whole gym, and we’ll train and then I bought bands, I take the bands to your house. And then I’m doing band workouts in a gynecological office, you know, so you have these many women coming up and come in is really bad some days. But, um, but they’ll come in, I’ll just take him in the exam room, push the table aside, and we’ll do squats and blue band workouts. And I’ll do my consultations in there. And everything else that was a really silly situation, but it worked. After a period of time though, I needed to do something else. So I stopped talking with a friend of mine who had a gym and he let me sublease. And our business grew some more. And now I’m paying 601 place expense another driving like 15 minutes in between each kind of appointment. And, um, we were excited. Like, I don’t think I could do this rest of my life this way. And we put our logos on the door. And the day we did that he shot an email, it was like I thought was the best day. My logo went up on his door. So we’re like, you see the phone number up top. That’s his logo and stuff. But you know, my kids were like, tall enough. So it worked out really well. And, um, and then I hired my first employee that same day. And I got an email saying I’m not renewing your lease. So you got to get out the end of the year. So me like a good business owner, I take the email and I read it to my employee on her first day at work. I was like, check this out. You know, they’re not renewing our lease. But don’t worry, I’m a Christian. I’m a tither God said you’ll never see the righteous forsaken or see begging for bread watch it work. I don’t know where it’s gonna come from, but it’s gonna come and she was there. Like I was like, I don’t know if you believe but you’re gonna see a miracle happened here. She just gave me like a blank face. It was just the strangest thing. So you think that’d be enough encouragement. So I go inside the studio and announce to all my clients that we’re getting evicted at the end of the year, but don’t worry about we’re gonna get a better place. It’s gonna be awesome. God’s gonna provide you know, and they were like, okay, you know, you better call somebody. Do you know anything about like renting commercial real estate. I was like, I don’t know anything. About that, we’re going to make it happen though. So it’s beautiful. One of my clients, they own commercial real estate, they rented me a facility, we’re able to move and get into our own place that a beautiful ribbon cutting, we grew more, you know, we got excited. And we were really excited about what was happening in the business, but I struggled with staffing. So my kids would come and they’ll just helped train. I’m serious, like, I would double booked appointments, they knew how to count reps, they’re great form, you know, so really, like these kids got to go to school now. So staff members, you know, that was just a little challenge that we went through. So the reason why there’s a question mark with NP because I wasn’t really sure about NP, I didn’t know what they wanted, what they were about, I think I might have clicked on something on Facebook and downloaded something, but I start getting emails from them. And they became a question mark, next to an exclamation mark, cuz they’ve totally changed what was happening in my business, you know, so, you know, I realized that they follow their processes pretty tight. That was the first email that I missed a consultation, you know, so we try calling you and you missed your consultation. And I didn’t know I was a part of this whole Infusionsoft campaign that they were running me through, I thought I was controlling the variables, Michelle was just talking about that a little bit ago was pretty interesting. But I took responsibility. Um, what was happening in my business at this time, was I had about seven trainers, everybody there, like an hour here, an hour there two hours there. But I had an office manager or admin, and we were like, you’re bumping heads, but I wasn’t doing administrative work. I wasn’t writing emails anymore. I wasn’t doing any of that. People say you write like you talk. And you think the way I taught them is you write really fast. But it didn’t mean that at all. What it meant was that I didn’t do too well in writing, and talking either. So they showed me systems and we grew, you know, and even though I was stressed out, you know, they said the answer to your stress is systems, you need to create a system that you’re not in place, and your business can grow. And we are really, really excited about it. So I thought a different way to do things I came out to VIP, for the first time I met Justin and Brian, actually, a lot of the people here that were a part of pro now we’re actually with me, you know, in that first VIP session, and I got excited about it. But I did the accelerator program before. And I was like, I’m not paying any extra money. You know, it’s kind of like it’s fast track today. I was like, I’m not paying more. This is enough. You already got my 3000 and change. It works. I got it. A year later on my call them up as I need to do something different. So I signed up for um, for VIP and I fell in love. I brought my team down and the lady on your left. We came back she said I quit. No, she had a nice trip in Florida and she quit took me over seven months just to reclaim that business. And I struggled with business. I grew through VIP. I had phenomenal coach Katrina season to build in, she rocked it out coach me extremely well. And I was like, She’s so good. Why should I pay for pro? You know, like, I’m doing well. And they’re like the challenges that you’re having, you’re not in the right room. Now, I was like that sounds really salesy. am I paying anything extra, it’s like $7,000, at the time to sign up, plus 1700 a month, I’m like, I’m good. You know, and, but I was still hitting the same wall over and over and over, you’re like you’re not in the right room. So finally, we signed up for VIP Pro. And the business was just like a lot of those little problems were getting fixed, I realized this where I had the tools to help me where I was. And we brought the team down. We always like to do fun stuff. When we come to VIP events. We went shooting on we learned a lot about different about a core alignment. But I think hear this slide and I know I’m over. So forgive me. But the this was the most important part of the entire experience. I mean, I get great coaching every single month or twice a month. But you know, they said that there’s this down payment that you have to pay to get your coach to come to your facility. And I was like my facility is great. You know, I don’t need my coach to come back and take pictures we can do like a video on let me keep the 7000 or whatever it was a 5000. But when Tiffany came up, she locked our team together, she was able to help us build unity with our team and really go through like we never we needed somebody who thought differently many times is the mind that gets you in the problem can’t get you out. And mentorship is the key to all that. So just so you kind of see what happened, our revenue went up. We, your staff, were able to expand our office in one day, we tore down my office totally demolished it in a day, which is so cool. And in build more training space, which was really awesome. At repaint our goal. Then we were able to increase my salary. I spent a long time just making $30,000 a year because I my self image team allowed me to pay myself more want to keep the money in the business. You know, I also spend more time with my family. That’s why I do what I do. I love my wife. We’ve been married for 16 years have phenomenal children and just to have the opportunity to spend time with them and speak my values into my family. That was really important. You know, we have our personal values, we started our faith, our family fitness, finances, freedom, and empowering others. And because we built the business we allow to do that. But our family doesn’t stop at home, it’s really our senior fick family. So we do fun stuff with our team, as well, through the resources that we develop, you know, it’s my little girl was able to date my little daughter, so she knows how that’s supposed to happen. And then date My Bride, you know, so she knows that supposed to happen to, you know, so a real good time, together with all those kind of things, which is phenomenal. So we had a lot of personal growth. And I just want to leave you with some takeaways. From the experience, you know, sometimes, you know, for the warm and fuzzies, some people just need to see what the numbers are. So I’m really quick, you know, 2014, we did $218,000 in revenue, this is pre NPV. We made about 50 grand, and we did excelerator, three months, I’m good, I’m gonna stop. And we apply the principles. And we grew like crazy. We had systems in place, and I was doing less work, but we were making more money, which was pretty awesome. We’re able to increase our admin payroll, and we did vi T, you know, after much tug of war, and each time I literally, the reason why the VIPs I got bored, I was in my office thinking, Okay, what else should I do normally to take my business to the next level, but I didn’t know, like what you do, but I knew MPV had a system. So I was like, let me just call them up. I called them up, I said, this is the type of coach I want. And and they say, Sure we have somebody like that, which was Katrina, and our business grew, you know, which is exciting. So we went from, you know, we grew about 85 grand that year, which is really awesome. And we were able to increase the admin payroll. And then finally, I decided to do Pro, you know, it’s like, hey, let’s do the pro program. I was really frustrated in that transaction, I called Rick. And he was like, why do you think you’d be a good fit? Like, dude, I got the money, like, stop playing games with me. Don’t try to close to me. And he was like, well, you have to qualify now. Like, are you serious. So we went through that transaction, I guess I qualified and we grew year to date, we actually about 425,000. So we did more already year to date than we did all year, last year. And our numbers went up, tripled payroll, double my personal payroll, my personal pay, full time office manager, now full time health coach, lead trainer, and we have over $87,000 in net profit and over $80,000 savings. Today, personally, my wife and I are completely debt free with over a 750 credit score, and our business is debt free as well, just through the tools we’re able to apply, which is pretty awesome for us. So that’s our experience. I know, I got one last slide here, which lessons I think are really valuable is control your mindset. You know, Henry Ford said, If you think you can, you’re right. And if you think you can, you’re right. You know, most your challenges are leadership challenges, and everything lives or rises and falls on leadership, locked into the MP values they haven’t been placed to help us grow as business owners. Um, don’t be that unicorn in the tree and trust the process. So again, I’m Evans you know, super glad that you guys didn’t fall asleep on me like my staff did when I did this presentation. So I’m honored for that. And I just want to give a good shout out to Sean Tiffany Katrina, the entire MP staff, and I just honor my lord with the opportunity to be able to share with you guys today. Thank you

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