Brian Mazza – From Creating The Ainsworth Restaurant and Bar to Becoming the Founder of High Performance Lifestyle Training
Episode 43
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Transcript
Kara Goldin: Hi everybody. It’s Kara Goldin at Unstoppable and we’re here today. I’m very, very excited with Brian Mazza. Hello.
Brian Mazza: How are you doing? Thank you for having me.
Kara Goldin: Thanks for being here. Actually, I’m here at your event that I’ll be joining a panel tomorrow to speak on, but Brian, if you are not familiar with him, is a super high performer. He was just telling me a story about working out with a Navy Seals, former Navy Seals, which I’m terrified and somewhat sad and excited at the same time that I wasn’t here this morning after hearing about this workout, but Brian is the founder and CEO of HPLT Training and you can check it out hpltraining.com if you want to see what’s going on. But basically started this entire business after having another successful career in restaurants and founded an incredible brand called The Ainsworth in New York, a restaurant group that was very, very successful as well, and then decided to really go after his passion of fitness and getting people healthy and not just in terms of physical but also mindset.
We talked a little bit about that, which of course I love that. And prior to this he did a brief stint in the men’s wear market a little bit, successfully sold that off to some other great people and I’ll let him tell us a little bit about that. And then basically the newest venture with HPLT is High Performance Lifestyle Training, that’s what it stands for. And he’s really giving not just individuals but also corporations an inside look of how to ultimately achieve what they want to achieve. Well welcome.
Brian Mazza: Thank you very much.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, we’ll jump into some more personal stuff after a little while too. But just take me back a few steps. When did you start HPLT and how did you sort of get the idea to actually do this?
Brian Mazza: Sure. So this May will be one year, so I’m fairly new to leaving my other business, created a really awesome brand in New York and we expanded to different states called The Ainsworth. We had over a hundred million dollars in revenue, which was great. But as the later years were continuing to come up in the business it just didn’t feel right anymore for me and it just wasn’t something I was super passionate about anymore and I was going in a totally different direction and kind of like a contradiction to that business in that sense where I don’t drink anymore. I’m about to be five years not having a drink, didn’t have a problem or anything. Alcohol just wasn’t fitting into my lifestyle of how I wanted to live my life and get every day and train and I was becoming a parent so I have this whole thing where I don’t ever want my kids to see me drinking or drunk.
There’s nothing wrong with it, with drinking but I just want to be that role model in that sense. So, as I was leaving the company and it just felt right, I was like, what am I going to do? What’s going to be my next step? What’s going to be my next venture? What’s going to be my passion and my why? And training and helping others and just being around positive people was that. So I remember, quick story, how we started it really. We were on our babymoon with our second child in Miami and I was working with a bunch of different brands at the time and just consulting and helping other brands and Chloe’s like, “What do you want to do? What’s going to be your next move?”
And I said, “You know what? I think I can create,” because I love to create stuff. “I think I could create a summit for like minded people, guys and girls who want to just be surrounded by other like minded people.” Didn’t have a name yet. So we’re sitting on the beach and I’m like, you know what, I’m going to call it High Performance Lifestyle Training because I think I train that way just fitness wise, right? That’s how it just started. And then she’s like, okay. Every idea I have she always kind of puts me in my place, and I’m grateful for that.
Kara Goldin: That’s good. You need the Ying and Yang.
Brian Mazza: Yeah, you need the Ying and Yang and sometimes it bothers me, but it’s good most of the time. So I was just sitting on the beach and I was like, who do I look up to right now? Who am I following right now on Instagram? What am I doing? And David Goggins kept popping up in my head and just him as an individual and as a savage I was like, you know what? Let me inquire about him to host this event with me. So I got in touch with his team and we worked it out and I didn’t really tell Chloe this, but I wired money, half of the deposit to his team. It was like two days after, while we’re in Miami still.
Kara Goldin: So his team would do what for you?
Brian Mazza: So he was our keynote speaker …
Kara Goldin: Okay.
Brian Mazza: … and he worked out with our group.
Kara Goldin: Okay.
Brian Mazza: So I’m like, “Hey, I started this business, starting the business.” She’s like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “I got David Goggins, he’s going to be our keynote. It’s going to be May 17th in New York.” And she’s like, “You’re crazy, you have no structure, you have no foundation. What are you doing? You’re using our money, you’re freaking out.” And I was like, you know what? In my mind, I needed to be in an uncomfortable state to start something. And I think going back to why this summit works for people is because we put them in such uncomfortable positions all weekend. They’re tired, they’re training, five in the morning they’re getting on the bus, they’re just out of their element. Somewhere in the element but somewhere out, and that’s the only way to grow. So I knew if I didn’t do that, I mean it could have totally backfired on me but if I knew I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t have pushed forward to create this business.
Kara Goldin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brian Mazza: So I said, okay, if I’m going to wire the money, I know 25 people I could get right now to join the movement. That’ll cover the cost there and then I can work with other brands that I have amazing relationships with. They’ll jump on and then we have a business and I will put up all the money myself. I will start it myself and we’ll see where it goes.
Kara Goldin: So the first conference, so May 17th in New York.
Brian Mazza: May 17th in New York. So we had 30 people part of the three day summit and we had 250 for the speaker day summit, which was amazing. And then David spoke and totally just killed it. But what I do now is whoever’s going to be our keynote speaker or whoever’s going to be part of our weekend …
Kara Goldin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brian Mazza: … we make them be part of the training. That’s why you’re coming to our run tomorrow.
Kara Goldin: Woo hoo.
Brian Mazza: No, I’m just kidding. So we did a six mile run with him, a 1,700 jumping Jacks, 700 pushup workout.
Kara Goldin: That’s awesome.
Brian Mazza: So that was really good, a really unforgettable moment. And that really just solidified us as a brand of what we’re trying to do. And the summit has just been super successful so far and people are dying to get in. We really handpick people to join, which is nice.
Kara Goldin: That’s awesome.
Brian Mazza: So it’s just been really special.
Kara Goldin: And so, it’s not just about physical, I mean everyone’s in great shape.
Brian Mazza: I mean, yeah, it’s nice to look good and feel good in that sense, right? Of your accomplishments of being consistent in the gym, of your routine but it’s so much more than that. I mean, we just came from a seminar. We have seminars all weekend and we have high performance coaches all weekend for us. I mean, everyone was crying in the seminar. We make them uncomfortable. We talk about what are your weaknesses, what are your excuses? And people are talking about, I don’t do shit for myself. I don’t know how to do anything for myself. And it’s crazy that these major high performers are like, I’m always the one taking care of so many other people, but I never just stop. I’m so uncomfortable being here right now that I’m taking time for myself and my clients are alone. It’s crazy. So everyone is just being vulnerable. Everyone’s being open with each other, everyone is allowing themselves to be free.
Kara Goldin: That’s awesome.
Brian Mazza: And it’s really remarkable.
Kara Goldin: So you set up this community really?
Brian Mazza: Yes.
Kara Goldin: Where people are coming into this group and they’re able to sort of be their true self, maybe not on day one, but as they …
Brian Mazza: Well our high-performing coach Brent Hogarth, whose amazing, he’s from Canada, so he’s super sweet, his vibe is great. Our first night we break everybody down. Not in a crazy way, but in a way where I’ll meet you and we’ll speak about what’s going on in your life, mostly negative stuff that you want to change, but I have to recite it to the group about you.
Kara Goldin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brian Mazza: So I have to really be engaged with you. I have to really pay attention and then I speak on your behalf and you’ll speak on my behalf and then people just …
Kara Goldin: That’s amazing.
Brian Mazza: And then we build up.
Kara Goldin: And so, how does this, beyond the seminars, how does this continue?
Brian Mazza: That’s an awesome question and everyone is starting to ask that, like what are you going to do? You’re going to just do retreats the rest of your life? No. So we’re building a plan right now. We would like to open a facility in New York where we could do smaller versions of this consistently, but also offer the training sessions, the physical training sessions, and continue to build the community from there.
Kara Goldin: That’s amazing. I have lots of thoughts and ideas for you on this.
Brian Mazza: Well thank you.
Kara Goldin: As I’m hearing it, listening to you …
Brian Mazza: Well you’re the goat in the business world, so you can definitely give us some pointers.
Kara Goldin: Well, it’s funny, I’m in the process of finishing up a book. My book is coming out and in October and it’s called Undaunted. And so, you’re an example of somebody who’s been undaunted and everything that you talked about in terms of just going and just doing it and the journey’s going to have ups and it’s going to have downs and it’s …
Brian Mazza: Oh yeah. I mean there’s days I wake up, there’s mornings I wake up that I’m like, oh my God …
Kara Goldin: What am I doing?
Brian Mazza: … I’m unorganized, or I’m this, or why didn’t I hire someone to help me do this? I can’t continue to do it all on my own. My wife is such a huge part of this business too and I know we were just speaking before, she has a full-time major career and then she’s booking people and she’s helping with sponsors and helping us run shows and doing all these things and it’s like, what is the next phase of that? And now it’s become a real, real, legitimate organization.
Kara Goldin: That’s awesome. So was this always your passion?
Brian Mazza: I’ve always been an uber competitive athlete. I got a scholarship to play soccer in college.
Kara Goldin: I saw. I was reading about that.
Brian Mazza: Yeah. At 31 years old, the Red Bulls asked me to try out. I’ve always been super competitive but I was always a punk growing up. I was always a punk in the sense that I never worked to my full potential. I always just relied on my talent. And then when the circumstances or surroundings got a little difficult, I kind of shied away where if I had my mindset now when I was 18 I’d be playing in Europe. It just would be what it is. I think things happen for a reason, so now I finally feel like I’m maturing in that sense for the past 10 years though. But when I was a kid, I always loved fitness. I always loved that rush but I never totally understood the meaning of what I’m doing now.
Kara Goldin: Have you ever read Andre Agassi’s book?
Brian Mazza: I have not.
Kara Goldin: You should read Andre Agassi’s book.
Brian Mazza: I watched a documentary about him and …
Kara Goldin: It’s incredible. And I was a competitive gymnast growing up and I often say exactly what you’ve said. Like if I actually would have been focused, if I would have not tried to take shortcuts along the way.
Brian Mazza: Like the shortcut I took today during the workout trying to bring my shirt out in the water to cheat.
Kara Goldin: But Agassi, he talks a lot about that and sort of how he blamed people.
Brian Mazza: Yeah, I was like, it’s my coach. I remember calling my mom being like, I quit. So I quit my senior year. I was supposed to get on the plane and I just didn’t show up. I said, “F it, I’m not showing up. I want to go party. I want to just be a college kid.” And I remember calling my mom, now, I don’t always call my mom for things. I always just call my dad.
Kara Goldin: Yeah.
Brian Mazza: He’s just my homie, right? So I call him all the time, if I have a leak or I stubbed my toe, like damn. I stubbed my toe …
Kara Goldin: Yeah, call my mom.
Brian Mazza: He’s my best friend. So for some reason I called my mom that day. I was like, I can’t effing do this anymore and I’m cursing and I’m pissed off and she like ripped me, ripped me. Like, you’re a loser. Why you doing this? Well why are you going to quit? You have a scholarship. These opportunities don’t come often and it went like this, in one ear and out the other. And that was probably the only time that she really gave it to me hard.
Kara Goldin: And you remember that?
Brian Mazza: I remember that. I remember literally what I was wearing.
Kara Goldin: But you didn’t quit?
Brian Mazza: No, I quit.
Kara Goldin: You still quit?
Brian Mazza: But I was a punk. I should’ve listened to her and I blamed everyone else.
Kara Goldin: There’s an interesting article in the Times today about, I have teenagers and so, you’ll see when your kids get a little older, but when they’re actually asking for your opinion and then you think, oh, my kids don’t listen to me and how many times do you say that or your parents say that about, oh, he didn’t listen to me, it’s actually that you wanted their empathy for what you were going through. You didn’t actually want them to solve your problem, which I think is from a business standpoint, probably a lot of what you may have even heard today, like when people talk about things, about like, oh, I never do this, I never do this. They may think that they want you to actually solve their problem but what they want is the community.
Brian Mazza: Yeah, I have phenomenal parents. They’re actually here.
Kara Goldin: Oh, they are?
Brian Mazza: Yeah, they’re here. I have phenomenal parents and they were very even [inaudible 00:13:53] with me my whole, so I have the New York State goal record in high school and points and everything. If I scored eight goals in the game, so I’ve done that many times and when I’ve lost the game for my team or I kicked the ball over the net in the penalty shot to go to the state finals, they just kept it the same. But I wish they were harder on me.
Kara Goldin: Yeah. Interesting.
Brian Mazza: I wish they gave me more insight and broke my chops more about being better. But they were just unconditional love forever. And I mean, I’m super grateful with how amazing they are, but I wish they broke me down more. But maybe I wouldn’t have reacted well, I don’t know. The funny thing that I constantly say now it’s not even how you communicate. Everyone said it’s all about communicating with people, it’s really not. I mean, you know running a business, right? You could communicate to your employees all the time and communicating is just speaking something to them. But if they’re not comprehending your message, it’s not communicating.
Kara Goldin: No.
Brian Mazza: So there’s a way to do that, right? And I think now we understand that through HPLT how we can make people comprehend how to be the best versions of themselves, not just saying, “Go work out, go eat this, go do that, blah, blah, blah, and your life’s going to be great.” It’s not about that. It’s about how we give them that message.
Kara Goldin: That’s awesome. And so, where do you go with HPLT? I mean we talked a little bit about this, like are people joining?
Brian Mazza: Yeah so, we’ve had three events so far. They’ve sold out all three, which is great for us and people are just really dying to get the in real life experiences. We’ve added the speaker day summit where people get to hear people like you, who have such awesome businesses, successful businesses. And I’m sure it wasn’t always a beautiful ride, right?
Kara Goldin: It’s been a long ride.
Brian Mazza: It’s been a long ride, and hopefully the good times have outlasted the horrible times. But people want to have those in real life experiences to be around high performers such as yourself and other people we have on the panel, so we’re up to something really good and now it’s just let’s structure it in a way that there’s really a lot of longevity.
Kara Goldin: So I noticed on your social Instagram in particular, you’ve built a huge brand and you have a lot of engagement of people coming in, talk to me about how do you do that? How did you begin that? I think a lot of people are trying to figure out like is building a brand on Instagram or through social in general is that something that is necessary?
Brian Mazza: Well I think it’s your resume now and social media is only going to keep transforming and changing the way people can sell products, thew way people can sell themselves. I mean, every day that I’m on Instagram is an opportunity for me to sell what I’m doing in a positive way. You can use social for a negative way, which a ton of people do, or when they’re trolling people and going that route. So I come from the hospitality space, like we said, and I had an audience every single night at the restaurant. So I was building my brand, not even knowing I was building my brand.
Kara Goldin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brian Mazza: And I always knew that this restaurant life wouldn’t last forever, especially in New York. I mean, they still operate and they’re still going, The Ainsworth is going to be 13 years old.
Kara Goldin: That’s wild.
Brian Mazza: That’s a long time in New York city. Some restaurants don’t even last two days. So I saw that there’s not going to be 500 people here every night forever. I stopped drinking like I said, it was contradicting to my life. So I was like, okay, let me start building through the fitness space because I was an athlete and it was relatively easy for me to fit in in that space and stay fit, do the restaurants, get press, do all these things. So I started to build it there and as I was getting more press of being the fit restaurant guy and all of this and going to these workouts and whatever, I started just to see an opportunity probably five years ago on Instagram to post these Instagram workout photos with motivational quotes before really a lot of people were doing it. Now, I don’t have 15 million followers, right? But it’s growing. So I think people were seeing that I’m a real person.
I’m authentic to what I’m doing. I have the ups and downs, I don’t just post about the good times, it’s a lot of the bad times and the struggles. And I think people want to see that because they live that life too. So I think with people building their own personal brand, I think you have to be super genuine and if you’re not, you’ll get exposed and people won’t follow or people might not be into it. But if you are talking about how you really live your life and you can package, you know packaging better than anybody, right? With your products, packaging is everything. If you can package up your brand on social the right way, people will engage. And if you’re selling something, I’m not talking about a product, but if you’re selling something on Instagram through yourself, if they can relate to it, you’re good.
Kara Goldin: Definitely. So we talked right beforehand, you had a bit of a huge hiccup in your life a few weeks ago, your house caught on fire, which is really scary. Thankfully your whole family’s okay.
Brian Mazza: Thank God, yes.
Kara Goldin: But tell me and tell everybody a little bit about that and sort of what did you learn from it I mean more than anything about you?
Brian Mazza: Yeah, so I think we can even go back a little bit before that. So my son is two and a half years old and the first time I really started to face adversity, like crazy adversity was a week before Leo was born, I tore my Achilles. Brutal, right? So playing soccer, Chloe’s like, “Don’t get hurt tonight, be safe.” I take a step back and I hear a pop. I thought I got shot literally. So I’m on the ground, I asked the referee, “Why didn’t you call a foul?” And he’s like, “No one was even near you.”
Kara Goldin: Yeah.
Brian Mazza: Non-contact injuries are the worst. That’s when you know it’s really bad. So I tear my Achilles. We couldn’t get pregnant forever. So we had to do two IVF processes to have both of our children, so that was adversity and that was a struggle and not feeling like a man and feel like I was letting Chloe down because I was the problem. I had a low sperm count just so we can talk about that, that was the issue. So dealing with adversity through that process has taught me a lot, right. So it taught me that the show moves on, you have to continue. We finally have our kids and Leo had a major surgery. He was all good with that, had to face that. Then we had to do IVF again and we had another amazing baby, and Luke is great.
And then a month ago, it’s actually a month ago like we were talking before, I just got back from a trip. I think I was out here scouting for more stuff for L.A. and I grew up making fires and having fires in my house with my parents forever. That was like our thing, our bonding moment for our family. Especially Sunday nights, it was great. Kind of wind down from the weekend, get ready for Monday, for school. So we just got our fireplaces serviced in December and we just got the one serviced in my office that we never used before we moved into our home and Chloe and I were just talking, I was like, “You want me to make a fire and we’ll have dinner here with Leo, we’ll put Luke to sleep and we’ll have dinner with Leo,” and mess around and dance and it was great.
So making a fire, it’s cranking, it’s awesome all day. I think we started it at like 4:00PM on a Friday, so it was nice. It was really cold out in New York. So Leo goes to bed around seven. So my thing is I always put him to bed, that’s just our jam together. So he always asks me to get in his crib. I get in his crib with him and I smell this kind of synthetic smell and it wasn’t anything that would have really like freaked me out where I would’ve gotten him out of the room right away. So I left him in the crib and I went downstairs to go talk to Chloe and she was like, “Hey dude, it’s smoky down here.” Now it wasn’t smokey where again, I would have called the fire department, it was just a little smoky, like sometimes you have with the fire.
Kara Goldin: You thought the vent wasn’t open or something.
Brian Mazza: Exactly. So my brother is a very big home inspector in the Northeast, so again, I always called my dad for stuff, I always call my brother with problems. Yo dude, it’s a little smokey in here. What do you think I should do? First thing he says to me, you might have a fire in your wall. I’m like, what does that even mean? Right? Fire in the wall.
Kara Goldin: How could I have it?
Brian Mazza: How could I have it? I don’t see anything, there’s no fire. I just see smoke. So I open the door and opened the windows, which is the dumbest thing to do.
Kara Goldin: Oh, really?
Brian Mazza: Because it fuels it with the oxygen.
Kara Goldin: Right.
Brian Mazza: Didn’t understand. So my brother’s like, “Call the fire department,” but he’s like, “Just an FYI, if the fire department comes in and they find anything, if it’s minor, whatever, your house is going to be destroyed. It just is what it is. It’s going to get wet, there’s going to be smoke, there’s going to be fire.” So I’m like whatever at this point she’s like, “Hey, go check on the babies again.” So my plan of action was to go up and check on the little baby first, Luke, their rooms are closed. Let me check on him to make sure his room is okay and thank God I didn’t do that because if I did that my other son would have died, which is the craziest shit. So I get to the top step on the landing and I hear, “Daddy, I can’t breathe. Help me.”
Kara Goldin: Oh my God.
Brian Mazza: Now I don’t know if you have an old home or a newer home built, but you know those old tutor homes, the doors are heavy, everything’s heavy. The fire department said those doors are so heavy no smoke was going to get out of your room. It was just going to build in there. So I opened his door and I can’t see anything. Obviously I know where the crib is so I just lean over. I literally grabbed him by his hair and his shirt and rip him out of the bed, bring him down to Chloe. Now I don’t see any flames so I don’t know what’s going on. So I open the windows in his room because I’m like get the smoke out of the room.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, totally.
Brian Mazza: I thought it was coming from the vents, whatever.
Kara Goldin: So scary.
Brian Mazza: Now the fire department comes in and now we’re doing the heat seeker on the walls to find …
Kara Goldin: So they still can’t find the fire?
Brian Mazza: Nothing. So we’re like doing all the temperatures on the wall and there’s nothing crazy. It’s not hot. He’s like, I don’t know what’s going on, so everyone’s so confused.
Kara Goldin: Yeah.
Brian Mazza: Now Luke is still sleeping because there’s no smoke in his room, I obviously went in to check after Leo, there’s no smoke in there. The fireman steps in Leo’s closet and the smoke shoots out from the floor. So he’s like, “Get everyone out of your effing house, you have a fire.” Now that’s when shit got real. That’s when we speak about the training, living in the flow moment and being able to handle certain situations. It was like boom and I got into tunnel vision mode and it was like super dad mode. Now I have two cats and a dog, so we get Luke, bring him downstairs, Chloe she’s like, “Why are you bringing me Luke?” I’m like, “We have a fire. You need to get out.” Now she’s in her pajamas, they don’t have shoes on, jackets so I have to run back up, get them their stuff.
I had to find my two cats. I go to bring two cats down to put them in the basement with Chloe. As I do that, the fire department comes in, one cat freaks out attacks the hell out of me because he’s so scared, runs upstairs, I can’t find him. Have the other one because he’s like a dog, he’s awesome. Bring him downstairs. They start bringing in the chainsaws, the axes and start just ripping everything. They find the fire. So the fire burned through the fireplace into the kitchen wall, which then shot up into Leo’s room, which then shot up into Luke’s room.
Kara Goldin: So it was coming out there first.
Brian Mazza: It was coming out through the walls and everything. So, everybody’s fine but I remember sitting in the foyer when they cut everything and then the hoses came on and that’s when I knew my house was done. The amount of hundreds of gallons of water that they poured into the house. Ceilings were falling, everything’s falling off the wall.
Kara Goldin: I’m glad you guys are okay.
Brian Mazza: Yeah, so we got everyone out.
Kara Goldin: Did you get the cat?
Brian Mazza: So we had to leave him that night, but they contained the fire so I had to go back the next day and find him and he was in the suitcase shivering.
Kara Goldin: Oh my God.
Brian Mazza: So now he’s probably all screwed up from that.
Kara Goldin: Yeah.
Brian Mazza: He was already a little skitzo, but now he’s just way worse.
Kara Goldin: He’ll be fine.
Brian Mazza: Yeah so, that happened and that was really tragic, but it just goes back to mindset. Tomorrow’s not guaranteed ever. So live your life like it’s not going to be there tomorrow. Be nice to everyone. Live with gratitude, train every day as much as you can. You don’t have to be like a complete animal, but get moving, do something, help other people because it can be taken away from you in a second. And my son almost got taken away from me.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, and your whole family. I mean you’re so lucky.
Brian Mazza: We are so lucky.
Kara Goldin: I mean, so, so lucky. Wow. Well, and then you guys are planning this whole event too.
Brian Mazza: Yeah so, like I said, life goes on, right? Not just that, my event was three weeks away or four weeks away. The next morning it was back to business. You got to go find a house for your family, found a house, you have to get on conference calls, you have to pay deposits, you have to do everything. As much as people are going to have empathy for you, which a ton of people did and the community came around us and supported us and like I said, back to using Instagram as a positive thing. I mean, we had people show up at my parents’ house that follow us on Instagram that were just fans of what we’re doing, just to help were having dinner at my parents house who drove two hours away.
Kara Goldin: That’s amazing.
Brian Mazza: And that’s what the community is about.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, and I think you’re definitely building that and it doesn’t build overnight.
Brian Mazza: It’s building it through real life experiences.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean it’s interesting. I mean I have a pretty sizeable audience on Twitter and that’s the space for me where I talk about lots of different stuff. I talk about challenges with business, my family, the goods, the bads, my travel, everything going on. And I mean, I’ll go away for like three or four days and not intentionally, not sort of communicate with people, but just …
Brian Mazza: It’s good to take time off to.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, and all of a sudden it’ll be like, Oh my gosh, she’s back. How are you doing? I saw you were in Brussels, is everything okay?
Brian Mazza: You motivate so many people, right?
Kara Goldin: Yeah, no and it is.
Brian Mazza: You’re such a powerful woman in what you do that people need you.
Kara Goldin: Yeah. I guess.
Brian Mazza: No they do. And people maybe listening might be like, you guys take yourself too seriously when you say that, but it’s the truth. What you do and what you accomplish and how you live your life is an outlet for people to aspire to be you and that’s important. And we need more positive people like you and what you do and what we’re trying to do as a company and as a unit, because there’s so much crap in this world.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, no, it’s totally true. I mean, that’s one of the reasons people ask me all the time, did you always want to write a book? And I’m like, “No, I travel on the plane so much that for three years I was writing and I just was journaling and sort of talking about stories and then I would talk to people about different things along my journey.” And they’re like, “Wow, you should write about that.” And I was like, “Really?” I’ve always had lots and lots of stories and crazy stories along the way. I married a New Yorker, but I grew up in Arizona and I just decided when I graduated from school that I was moving to New York. And so, I just moved to New York and people are like, “How did you have the courage to do that?” And I’m like, “I didn’t know that that was courage.” And so it’s very much the mindset. Like unless people actually tell you that you can’t do something, then you actually might go do it.
Brian Mazza: I mean I also think when I was creating HPLT, I think Chloe doubted it a little bit and not from a malice point of view, but just maybe her being a little insecure about what I was going to do or …
Kara Goldin: It’s a lot.
Brian Mazza: … maybe scared with kids and she was pregnant and now you’re going to start doing this. So I think that motivated me to prove her wrong in that sense that I can do it and that it’s going to be a business and now she’s working on it and loving it.
Kara Goldin: Well you’re actually an athlete though too, which is a whole …
Brian Mazza: Different.
Kara Goldin: Well it is. And I tell people all the time, I mean there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that I meet. The most successful entrepreneurs that I meet today have been, I should say the majority of the most successful entrepreneurs have played sports at least through junior year in high school. Like they did something and then they left for whatever reason, but they did something and they committed and that takes appreciation of a team. The ability to listen to a coach, the ability to fail some days and get back up. I mean, there’s a lot of very, very similar skills and learnings that you learn from being an athlete.
Brian Mazza: I couldn’t agree more. And I think I wasn’t always a punk in every situation in sports, but I had a club soccer coach who I would have taken a bullet for, but he was able to communicate in a way that I was comprehending.
Kara Goldin: Yeah.
Brian Mazza: How to play, how to live, what he needed from me.
Kara Goldin: Yeah.
Brian Mazza: So I think it’s all about the message being delivered to people in life. If you can’t deliver a message that they’re going to be able to grasp and then move forward with, you’re not doing your job.
Kara Goldin: I love it. That’s great. So I always ask, first of all, what’s your favorite Hint flavor?
Brian Mazza: Cherry.
Kara Goldin: Yay.
Brian Mazza: I grabbed it, right?
Kara Goldin: You got one right there.
Brian Mazza: Yes. I love cherry.
Kara Goldin: I know. I do too. I love cherry, although we just came out with Clementine, which is so good.
Brian Mazza: Oh, yeah? I don’t know what Chloe’s is. I think honestly, she loves them all.
Kara Goldin: Yeah.
Brian Mazza: And she’s so annoying when she asks me to grab it out of the fridge in the middle of the night. I’m like, oh my God. Can you just go?
Kara Goldin: So you need fridge right next to the bed.
Brian Mazza: You know we had that once and I was like, “This is crazy.” I’m like, “It’s annoying. The lights on, you hear it.” I’m like, “We’re not doing this.”
Kara Goldin: It’s so funny, I was interviewing Randy Zuckerberg for my podcast before and she told me that she has a special fridge that she thought was hidden for her cucumber Hint and then her mom actually found the cucumber Hint.
Brian Mazza: I don’t think I’ve ever had cucumber.
Kara Goldin: Yeah.
Brian Mazza: I love cucumber.
Kara Goldin: People have stories about their Hint fridge a lot, like I run into people who tell me like they built a special refrigerator when they were redoing a house just for Hint. I mean I always wonder, does the Coke executive get these same stories, it’s pretty funny. So one last question. What makes you unstoppable? You’ve answered a lot of that.
Brian Mazza: I would like to think I’m unstoppable in what I’m trying to do and accomplish.
Kara Goldin: I think you are.
Brian Mazza: I just think it’s getting up every day with the attitude that I’m going to be the best I can be. And I think it’s waking up every day and for anyone who’s listening, who’s having a struggle trying to be in stoppable or continuing to grow, focus on having small wins in your day to day, that will 100% lead to massive victories.
Kara Goldin: I love it. Awesome. Well thank you so much Brian.
Brian Mazza: Thank you for having me and excited for tomorrow.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, excited for tomorrow too, it’s so great. So where can people find you?
Brian Mazza: So you can find me on Instagram, just my name at Brian Mazza. You can find us at HPL Training as well on Instagram, we link a lot of stuff up there and my new website will be launching very soon.
Kara Goldin: Awesome. Thanks so much.
Brian Mazza: Thank you.
