The Balanced Business Dad
The Balanced Business Dad is a conversation that focuses on balancing the important six pillars of life for the business and entrepreneur dad. Join hosts Dustin Hoog and R.J. Campbell as they talk about the challenge of balancing work and life with the pillars which are: Faith, Health, Marriage, Fatherhood, Brotherhood and Business. Whether you are a solopreneur, dadpreneur or owner of multiple businesses, you will learn from success stories, wins and challenges from these Christian business owners as well as hearing about using the Dad Up Framework to handle challenges.
The Balanced Business Dad
Lifting Spirits and Weights: Bart's Tale of Fatherhood, Fitness, and Entrepreneurial Finesse
Could you be just a step away from harmonizing the rhythm of fatherhood with the demands of entrepreneurship? Bart Pietrzak, our guest on the latest episode, is a testament to this delicate balance, taking us through the trenches of his profound personal transformation. Embarking on a path from a corporate fitness role to the thriving owner of Project Power Gym, Bart's narrative is both a guiding light and a reality check for dads navigating the six-pillar tightrope of life. His commitment to excellence in the face of self-doubt, and the influence of mentors like Andy Frisella, offers a narrative that's not just about lifting weights but lifting one's spirit in the pursuit of a fulfilling life.
The heart of our conversation beats to the rhythm of authenticity and accountability, two values that echo loudly within the walls of Bart's gym. This episode isn’t just about sharing success stories; it’s about the raw and real journey of aligning life goals with a spouse, the art of communication, and the courage to uphold high standards in both personal and professional realms. Listeners will be captivated by Bart's insights on nurturing self-respect through discipline and the significance of being fully present – a philosophy that applies equally to bench presses and bedtime stories. Tune in and find the inspiration to plant your feet firmly on the ground of your own life's ambitions.
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Dads, do you want a thriving business that doesn't control you, a passionate marriage and kids that adore you? Do you want to grow deeper in your faith, be healthier both physically and mentally, build more meaningful relationships with your friends? Welcome to the Balanced Business Dad Podcast, where, in each episode, we dive into balancing and optimizing the six pillars of life Faith, health, marriage, fatherhood, brotherhood and business. And here are your hosts, pioneers of the Balanced Business Dad movement Dustin Hogue and RJ Campbell.
Coach Dustin:What's going on, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Balanced Business Dad. I'm your host, Coach Dustin, and by the time you're hearing this, we have just got back from the Balanced Business Dad spring retreat. So right now, as we're recording this, I'm getting ready to go next week and I'm super excited. Guys, if you've never been in a mastermind situation that offers what's called a hot seat, where you're put on a hot seat for 45 minutes and other people there they're just to support you and pour into you and help you with your challenges, it's something I highly, highly recommend and we'll talk more about that in future episodes.
Coach Dustin:But today let's get on topic. We have a very special guest that I have known and actually started working with almost exactly seven years ago, which I don't know if he knows that, but seven years ago. Guys, welcome to the show. Bart. I'll never mention his last name because I would butcher it, but let's just say Bart, with Power by Bart and the amazing gym that we have in O'Fallon and his Project Power Gym. Sorry, I had that in my head, but uh, bart. Bart was a personal trainer of mine, the very first trainer I ever hired, I think right when you were getting into it Right, but it was seven years ago, cause my son was six months.
Bart Pietrzak:You were my very first client, but you didn't know that at the time I didn't.
Coach Dustin:That is because I remember we were moving houses and that we moved in July and it was a couple months before that, so my son would have been like four months old, yeah, cause we moved right at six months.
Coach Dustin:Yeah, now he's seven, so that is awesome. And since then, bart has had a lot more clients than me and is absolutely just killing the training world, owns this gym that I haven't been to yet, but I've just seen it through the socials and it's an absolute amazing gym. But besides that, he's also a father. He's also got all the challenges that a balanced business dad does. So I figured, why not bring him on to the show and let him tell his story? So, bart, welcome to the show, let's let's hear a little bit about you.
Bart Pietrzak:Okay, well, I mean kind of summed it up. So I I moved to Missouri on a volleyball scholarship. I was able to go through Lindenwood university. During my time there I hooked up with a company that was grassroots and supplement super stores and first form. I was in that company for 10 years and built it from nothing to something, helped them. I was very, very, very, very high up in the company. I learned all the lessons necessary to take something from something to nothing.
Bart Pietrzak:So, uh, about 10 years after my career started there, I chose to end it and open up my own entrepreneurial journey with Power by Bart personal training, where I would rent space from a place and then I would train people in that place, pay them rent and do my own thing.
Bart Pietrzak:Within three months I couldn't fit any more clients into my schedule schedule and I did that for the next four years, knowing that because I can't really help any more people that I was going to at one point need to create a space for all the people that would like my philosophy but necessarily didn't have the opportunity to train with me personally. I wanted to create a space for them where they could come in and be engulfed in the atmosphere and the philosophy and the trainings and to create a team around that. So, very, very, very fortunate, two and a half years into my first location here at Project Power Gym you see behind me, yeah, wow, and it's been a whirlwind man. It's been so incredible from every aspect possible, from the lessons learned to the successes, to the failures. I've been very, very fortunate and it's been a wild, wild 10 years man, yeah that is amazing and I love that.
Coach Dustin:And Bart because, again, we worked together and then we kind of went our own ways. But I've been following him and he has something. That really why I wanted to bring him on the show for him to discuss. Well, let me back up. He was also on the panel that we had at a Balanced Business Dad workshop last year and he said something and I'm going to let him kind of talk more about it. But we know that balance is hard and we can't really have balance everywhere. But presence in the pillar that you're supposed to be in is how we get the balance in all the six pillars. And Bart saying that he said that has stuck with me is just be where your feet are Right. So, Bart, elaborate on that a little bit and let's help the dads out there with that.
Bart Pietrzak:All right. So my daughter was born August 2020. So, right in the middle of the pandemic, you know all the shutdowns and mask mandates and all the bullshit and all that rigmarole. So you know a lot was going on, because not only was Mika being born, but I was six months into the build out of this entire establishment, as well as trying to support my wife at the time with the personal training. So, as any father who's involved in any not just maybe owning your own business, but any responsible position in life will attest to, there's not enough hours in the day you create yourself as an entity, as a man, as a dad, to be able to help many different people in many different scenarios, and by doing so, you get pulled in every direction every day. And because you're capable of solving a lot of different problems, it becomes increasingly difficult to try and manage which problems for who need to be solved when. And the only thing that really helped me through any of these processes from again, from being a father to being a husband, to being a leader at the gym, to being a helper with my clients, to being a son is that saying is be where your feet are. I love that. So if I'm at the hospital with my wife and she's in labor. She was in labor for 26 hours. For 26 hours there's a lot of questions can be sent to me, emails can be sent to me, text messages, phone calls. People need me. In 26 hours there's a lot of need.
Bart Pietrzak:I'm with my wife and my unborn child at the hospital and I will not allow myself to be anywhere else, so that when I am asked to show up as a husband or as a father, at that time I show up to the best capabilities that I have, because the thing that you don't want the most is to walk by a mirror and make a decision. Let's say I was at the hospital by. I spent it writing emails and I didn't notice something about my wife's heart rate, or I didn't notice about this, or I didn't notice about that. And then let's say, god forbid, something happens and I wasn't present enough to have noticed, and you walk by that mirror and you look at yourself, and you look at yourself in the face and you go how could I have dropped the ball so badly for something that's so important to me? Because from the outside it may seem that it's not important to me, since I'm dealing with something else at the time, but the only difference would be is because you didn't cement yourself with where you're meant to be at the time you're meant to be there, with where you're meant to be at the time you're meant to be there.
Bart Pietrzak:So if I create a communication to everyone that potentially may need my help while I'm at the hospital, that I'm at the hospital, that I do care about their needs and I will attest to their needs once I'm done being at the hospital, I won't screw up my business and I'll also be able to be a great father and a great husband, and that change for me has really allowed me to impress myself with how I handle things in every different aspect. So I love that. If you can, yeah, for sure.
Coach Dustin:So I mean, you kind of touched on it just a second ago. You know, you made sure that you communicated with the people who you needed to communicate with. That you were out of touch. You made sure that you communicated with the people who you needed to communicate with. That you were out of touch. But on a daily thing, not the birth of a child, but just being at home for dinner or breakfast, whatever it is. What are ways? Because that's an amazing philosophy, but what are ways that you adopted that and make sure that you're there, because that can be a challenge for a lot of us.
Bart Pietrzak:Make sure that you're there because that can be a challenge for a lot of us. What I'll say is this I have this kind of like an analogy in my mind about you know what I'm building? Right, because if you're an entrepreneur, you have ambition. With ambition comes vision, and with envision comes creativity. So true, you're able to create such giant concepts in your mind and through your understanding of yourself. You know that through hard work and time you can accomplish massive things. And it's very difficult to know that that exists, but choose not to chase it because you're trying to be home for dinner or you're trying to listen to the story that's taking an hour and you already know it's already going to get to where it's going to get. You know, and what I'll say is I had to become okay with if you give me a two week period, and I said I don't care about being a husband, a father, I don't care about my health, I don't care about anything other than my business. I know in two weeks I can accomplish X, okay, okay. So now you have this understanding that what you can get done in two weeks with your business do not assume that's a reality, because you're not just a business person. That is not a feasible thing for you to do. Because if you try to hold on to that understanding of what you're capable of and now you're also trying to add be a husband, and now you're also trying to add be a father if you don't relinquish what you think you can do in two weeks, you're going to displace anger, anxiety, all these different sensations because in your mind you're being pressed right that time. That time has already been pressed two weeks I can accomplish all of this with my business. And now I'm going to try to sprinkle being a dad on top. Well, that extra little sprinkle pushes just too much pressure into what's able to be done in two weeks. So in my mind, what I, what I basically said, was I understand what can get done if I put whole self into my business and I'm going to be okay with not getting all of that done. I'm not. I'm not going to get all of those things done and that's okay because I will also, in that same time frame, fit being a great father and being a great husband and being great for myself and my health.
Bart Pietrzak:Because when I do look in the mirror and you can very much attest to this if you've accomplished anything great in your life. When you look in the mirror, do you look at yourself and say, wow, I've accomplished a lot of cool shit. Or do you more often look in the mirror and say, fuck, I've let myself go in my health or, damn it, I haven't seen my daughter enough this week, or shit? My wife is mad at me because I missed dinner twice this week? You may have made $20,000 this week, but I promise, when you look at yourself in the face, you don't think about the $20,000. You think about the two dinners that you missed to do it and you'll try to justify by saying that you got $20,000. Wow, right.
Bart Pietrzak:So if you know that's true and you know you do that to yourself over and over you look at your body fat and you're not happy with it. When it's time to make that decision today and you know you make it you know you say I know I need to go to the gym, but I can make this phone call real quick and we get to set this deal up and even if it takes maybe 45 minutes, I skip the gym. It's potentially a hundred thousand dollar deal. You're not going to look at the deal when you look in the mirror, man, you're going to look at your fat belly and you're going to say I'm pissed off, that I skipped the gym, and if it's not today, it will be tomorrow, and if it's not tomorrow, it'll be to the point where it's so far gone that you have to pretend that the deal means more to you than your belly. And that's what I keep in my mind every day.
Coach Dustin:Talk about a mic drop. I know that hit home to me. I'm going to assume that it hit home to everyone else that's listening to that, because that is damn. We should just let you speak to all of us in the morning. That's what you need to start doing. Put out this voice memo every morning. Take your ass, Wow.
Bart Pietrzak:Yeah, wow, I have to do it to myself, man. I do it to myself all the time and at some point you just have to be aware that that's what you do and not pretend that it's not. Because, again, we're creative and we have vision, so we're really good at justifying shit to ourselves. We are Really good at it, okay.
Coach Dustin:So you mentioned that this is what you do. Where did that come from? Because the discipline. There's two things that when I hear Bart's name, two things that I think of right, I think of discipline and, I think, a standard of excellence that I've never seen before. So let's start with the discipline side of things. Was that, hey, I'm just a disciplined person and I was born that way, or my parents were that way. Where did that come from?
Bart Pietrzak:Oh man, you know I've I've been asked this a bunch of times and I've tried to work it out a bunch of times and I always as honest as I can. Okay, so background on me. I went to Lindenwood on a volleyball scholarship. I had absolutely no direction in my life whatsoever and theoretically I had absolutely no discipline because I didn't ever do anything.
Bart Pietrzak:I was a video game playing dude who went to the gym and ate and did literally nothing else. I procrastinated everything all the time, every chance I got. I did nothing with my life dude, literally nothing. I went to that job, I went to the gym and if it wasn't those two things, I felt like it was too much and I just decided not to do anything. I had such low self-esteem in myself.
Bart Pietrzak:Yeah, yeah, oh, dude, this is a trip that a lot of people can't really believe, but it's beyond the truth, confidence in myself that after, let's say, me making a uh, uh, an impression on you let's say, we met for the first time I have charisma, I have an ability to to be boisterous and happy and joyful and I know how to make a good first impression.
Bart Pietrzak:I do, but I don't believe that if you were to spend time with me, that that impression would hold up. I I felt that, yeah, I felt that if you spend enough time with me, that the jokes that I did in the beginning would eventually fall short and you'd be like bart's, not really that funny or the creativity like. I literally thought that longer you stayed with me, the more of the charade you would, you would notice and eventually you'd be like okay, bart's a full of shit, like that's not really who he is. Yeah, so in college I faked being my own roommate so that I literally didn't have to live with anybody. So I yeah, this is a long story, but I went through the linenwood application line because it used to be a physical line. I went through it twice and the second time through I pretended to be somebody else, like a made-up person, and I signed myself up for my same room so I could live by myself in the dorms a little bit of fraud, but I like it a lot of them.
Bart Pietrzak:Lennon's gonna send you a bill for that yeah, well, I've already told the story a couple of times and I haven't seen anything yet. So I think we're first thing, we're cleaning, um, but yeah, I, I, I acted. I acted my whole life, dude. I knew what it meant to be a disciplined person, a funny person, a smart person, and I just acted on on like my belief of what I kind of person would be, but I never thought of myself as that person. Does that make sense? It does so like I would, I would portray I would, I would fake it essentially. And I never tried to make it. I just literally faked it all the fucking time and then just shunned people. I literally didn't hang out with anybody, didn't do anything, because I felt I was a procrastinating, lazy piece of shit.
Bart Pietrzak:Now where that all started turning is at Supplement Superstores. The owner, andy Fursella, and I became very close, and for what reason, I cannot tell you. Maybe I created such a good impression that he believed in me. But he started using me as an example of what he would like others in the entire business to be like, of what he would like others in the entire business to be like, from how I interacted with the customers to the results I got them and he started using me as like a really positive role model for other people. So that was my very first like understanding that holy shit, like maybe I can accomplish something and I can amount to something. And what he touted and what he said about me were things like discipline. And every time he shows up he shows up in the same manner and you know, all these things that you see in me. Now I guess he saw in me, but at the time I thought I was just faking it and he was seeing what I was faking.
Bart Pietrzak:No-transcript, just decided one day that. But but also I guess my personality is such that if it's possible, it's for me. So whenever there's exaggerations of standards for example, like if you come to my gym, like we not only stripped the plates off of the, the, the equipment, but when we put them back we have to put them with the words facing out. I was going to mention when we put dumbbells. Yeah, when, when we put the dumbbells back, we rotate the dumbbells, so the numbers face straight up and down. Why? Because I can, and if I can, why shouldn't I in that high of a standard? And once you get past, like, the initial breakthrough of like keeping yourself at a high standard, then competitiveness takes over, Because in order for me not to have a high standard now, I have to actively say, well, I guess I just don't care right now, and like I can't get myself to do that, I can't get myself to actively just say I'm not going to do that anymore because I know I can't. Does that make?
Coach Dustin:sense it does there's. There's a couple of things I want to unpack there, which honestly, because I've known Bart for a long time and I didn't expect any of this.
Coach Dustin:So bear with me to come off this, but one thing that you know one of our founding members of our council, the DadUp Council, talks about is you're one relationship away of changing your life and Andy Frisella, who a lot of people know who Andy is, let's be honest with his podcast and 75 Hard and everything that he does, but he believed in you and that dude he was driving a ranger.
Bart Pietrzak:Like we were playing call of duty in the back of the stores, like. Like andy and I hooked up before andy was right. You know what I'm saying and.
Coach Dustin:But it was what it took, and what it sounds like is it took one person to believe in you, for you to actually believe in yourself, and for all the dads out there, I believe you have that person in your life and you might not know it yet.
Coach Dustin:So start listening to the people around you and if you don't reach out, because there's people out there that can help you and help you find who you are, so that's amazing. I love, love hearing that testimony there. The second part is what I heard is if you have the ability to have a high standard, why don't you and I was going to call out the highest standard of excellence that you have at the gym where you'll call people out. You'll call your members and your customers out if they're not living up to that standard, which a lot of business owners are afraid to do that because I mean, I could lose that member or I could lose that paying customer or whatever, and you just don't seem to care. You're going to have the standard for your members just as well as you do for yourself. That's amazing.
Bart Pietrzak:Your definition of standard really is determined. It determines what your personality towards it is. So when people say high standards, right, all I hear is high respect. That's all I hear. It's a respect issue Interesting. So, absolutely so.
Bart Pietrzak:If you're in a gym and I've been in gyms again since I was 18 years old, so it is my sanctuary, so to speak. Right, it's my therapy, it's my sanctuary, it's where I find peace, it's where I find an outlet for my aggression. It's a life-saving thing for me. It's 100% For gym shows back to us, which is again just another common concept. And reality is the respect you show others is what you believe, the respect you have for yourself is. So when I call people out, it is not a authoritative, you know, hey, if you can't fucking rip rates, like get the hell out of here, it's not that at all. Right, fucking rip your rates like get the hell out of here, it's not that at all. It is a very I wouldn't say kind of hearted, but it is a listen. There.
Bart Pietrzak:There isn't a lot of people anymore that hold others accountable or, let's say, believe in other people. I truly believe that everybody can have a lot of self-respect and because I believe you can have self-respect. You may not have ever been told that and you may have never been held accountable to that, so I'll be happy to be the person to help you along that journey. And I know you're capable of taking plates off of a piece of equipment. I know you're capable of knowing what numbers look like straight up and down. I know you are, and so I'm here to be like let's do that. And because you're now respecting the gym, others in the gym respect the same gym. All of you respect the same thing, which means all of you respect each other, and now it's a completely self-governing thing. I don't have to say shit to anybody, because everyone here holds each other to the same accountability of respect.
Coach Dustin:Wow, I tell you what. There's not a lot of times I'm speechless in life when I'm doing interviews and bart has thrown me off this whole 20 minutes that I'm just like where to go with this next, because I'm so, wow, all right. So, man, this, this 10-year journey of an entrepreneur 17 years, whatever it may be, the, the personal development thing that I saw, that you go through with books that you read and I don't know if you're ever part of coaching and mastermind and things like that. You obviously had some pretty amazing mentors, but what was the personal development journey like? And as a husband, what was it like? Because I talked to a lot of dads who are wanting to do this and their wife's like, well, but we had a really nice, secure job over here, and now you're wanting to mix all that up. Was the spouse on board? Was there a journey with that? How'd that?
Bart Pietrzak:go. There's an understanding that I have to have that. Let me word it this way If you're someone who has vision and you're someone who has ambition, and you're someone who has creativity and you're someone who has now connected that with your own work ethic, you're gonna have to know that there's gonna be friction and it's not gonna be all fairy tales and rainbows. Um, for a couple reasons. Number one, I think right now, especially in society with tiktoks and all these things you know, we're trying to portray that it's possible for two of the very similar, like-minded people to find each other and support each other on on the goals of of their lives and they're trying to together do this. And uh, as a realist, I will tell you that that's very seldom the fucking case, because, even if it is true, the timing of both people being ready to commit to giant risk is fairly low, right so? So the truth of the matter is is, more than not, you're going to have friction whenever you present a giant idea to your spouse that requires a risk on all fronts, because where you are on your journey of trying to accomplish your business definitely doesn't necessarily mean that they are going to be on that same journey of personal development. So what I would strongly suggest is to not portray the right information, because you're going to need to communicate. That's number one. You're going to have to sit down and have a full blown start to finish written out conversation about what your vision is, where you're currently at, what you think it will take when you're going to get there, how it's going to look, what you think it will take when you're gonna get there, how it's gonna look, even if you're one of those visionaries like me who hate. I hate putting boundaries on things. I hate it because in two weeks, I may have twice the big idea that I currently do and I would hate to stifle myself, right. However, however, if you're talking to someone who isn't on that same page, giving them an arbitrary we're just gonna be rich one day is not enough for them to sacrifice their entire life, okay.
Bart Pietrzak:So the first thing is is you have to sit down and full blown communicate their what's the word? Their timidness is not a sign of disrespect or it's not a sign of disbelief in you. Okay, when you present a giant idea to someone and you're going to tell them that shit's going to suck for a long time, it's not that they don't believe that you're going to get them through it. It's just that they're't believe that you're going to get them through it. It's just that they're fucking scared because they're a human being, like that's a normal thing.
Bart Pietrzak:If you hook yourself up to a horse and the horse says at some point this may all go wrong, you're like I don't know if I should hook myself up to this horse. Um, so don't, don't take it as disrespect, which is why that communication piece is so important. And third, thirdly, you have to be very honest and let them know that it's a safe space for them to tell you all the things they're scared of and all the things that make them not want to do it, because then at least you can. You can like tailor your communication towards their fears, versus just arbitrarily telling them not to worry about things that matter a great deal to them, and I think that's the most cohesive way to try to help your spouse get on board with your massive ideas. That's huge.
Coach Dustin:That is. I mean, that's a keynote presentation right there for working with your spouse or one of you going into entrepreneurship or the other one's working, because I mean, you've heard of that with my journey Cause I've been self-employed for 12, 13 years now and yeah, so that is that's pretty amazing man You've. You're walking and living the life you want, which is pretty, just so amazing. To see the gym. I do have to come out there and see that, but, uh, this has been awesome. I know that I got a ton out of this episode.
Coach Dustin:So, dads, go back and re-listen to this, because this is the truth. So, bart, thank you guys. Let's carry on this conversation. Thank you so much for being here. We talked. I kind of stole your thunder, but your number one tip for the Balanced Business Dad was to be where your feet are, and we talked a lot about that. So, thank you Guys. Make sure you carry on this conversation. At the free Facebook group the balanced business dad, where you can go to dad up groupcom, join the free Facebook group there. Um, this is where you know, over 400 guys are doing life together and we're trying to grow this. So, uh, we don't ask a lot, but I would highly, highly, uh, encourage you to go share this episode with any other man out there, because this is the truth. Bart's speaking the truth, so we appreciate it. Dads, remember to dad up, because the people who love you the most deserve it the most, and we'll see you next week. Thank you, guys, so much.
