We recently connected with Josh Brown and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Josh, thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us a story about a time you failed?
I have experienced failure consistently in my life. In order to be successful, you must be willing to fail repeatedly and make more mistakes than anyone else you know. You must then invert failure into success. This requires you to analyze your mistakes (which can be painful) in order to extract the lesson from each mistake you make and then apply that wisdom to your future self. When you do this, your mistakes become investments for your future self.

I have failed repeatedly which has helped me get to where I am today. One of my biggest mistakes/flaws is being hands-on to a fault. While it is better to be too hands-on as opposed to the alternative, this trait can definitely be problematic, especially for leaders or anyone who wants to accomplish anything substantial in their life. This is because everyone has a “limited bandwidth” in terms of how much they can produce/accomplish in any given moment, day, and lifetime. This means you have to prioritize what is important, build a strong team that can help you accomplish more (as there is only so much you can do on your own), and trust your teammates enough to where you can delegate tasks/work to them so that you can accomplish more as a collective unit.

I learned this in my early 20’s going through Officer Candidate School (OCS) training in the U.S. Army. I was the Platoon Leader in charge of over 50 men and women. My commanding Officer gave me and my platoon the task of moving a large number of supplies and equipment that were critical to our current mission from point A to point B. As Platoon Leader, I was in charge of making sure we completed the mission of moving the supplies and equipment successfully. As such, I started giving orders to the platoon on how to accomplish this. After giving orders to my platoon who started working on moving the equipment, I started physically assisting them in moving the supplies and equipment myself. My commanding Officer saw this and quickly pulled me aside.

He told me that while he appreciated my work ethic and my willingness to get my hands dirty, as Platoon Leader that was not my role. My role as Plato0on Leader was to command my Platoon and to ensure that the mission was a success by managing the overall operation to make sure the supplies/equipment was successfully moved from point A to point B. In order to do this effectively, I needed to be managing/overseeing the mission as a whole which meant delegating out tasks to my Platoon as opposed to doing the specific tasks myself. By attempting to physically assist my soldiers with their specific jobs and tasks by moving the equipment myself, I did not have enough of a “birds-eye” view as I was too caught up in the specific tasks. This made me less effective as a manager and as a leader and as a result, my Platoon was less effective in completing our mission as I was not managing them to my full ability because I was distracted by the smaller tasks that I should have entrusted and delegated out to my Platoon.

Today, whenever I catch myself starting to be too “hands-on” with my business, my employees, or anything else in life, I think back to my failure at OCS as Platoon leader and remind myself of the valuable lesson I learned. If you want to accomplish anything meaningful or difficult in this life, you must create strong systems, build a strong team, prioritize, delegate out work/tasks, and trust (but verify) that you are on the right track by consistently managing/overseeing the overall mission objective.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I got into the Cryotherapy Industry as I have always been passionate about health and wellness and helping others. Our goal is to assist as many people as possible live their best life possible by helping them reach and exceed their health-related goals and get the most out of their bodies by providing them with natural, simple, and sustainable solutions. There is no other business that provides our unique combination of goods and services. As such, we have helped many customers accomplish their health-related goals, whether it be pain issues, weight loss, or other health-related goals, which in turn allows them to accomplish more and live a more meaningful life.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
I started with minimal funds at my disposal. I started by financing one piece of equipment, a cryotherapy unit (our main service), and that was it. As time went on, we continued to grow, learn, and evolve. As we started getting more incoming cash flow, we continuously reinvested in our business and added more equipment/services, more systems, and employees. It was very slow and organic growth initially. This allowed us to make mistakes on a small scale, extract the wisdom from our mistakes, and continue to refine our approach. Eventually, as we gained experience, we were able to start to scale at a faster rate.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
After getting out of the Army, I was doing a sales job that I couldn’t stand. I already knew at that time I was passionate about health and fitness so while I was working at the undesirable job I obtained my Personal Training Certification and started personal training people for additional income on the side. As I pursued Personal Training, I started meeting and networking with people in the wellness industry as I continued to learn more about all things related to health and wellness. This eventually led me to discover Cryotherapy in 2010, which was very new in the U.S. at the time. I saw this as an amazing opportunity and jumped into it head-first. Fast forward to today, we are now the busiest cryotherapy center in the U.S. It all started with me being willing to sacrifice time and money to get my Personal Training Certification on the side (despite not knowing exactly how I would utilize it) as I continued to work in my full-time sales job.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cryonationwellness.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cryonation/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cryonation/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-brown-150a8a17b/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/cryonation
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOXxXpYr0ksvEF5cRSgoPsQ
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/cryo-nation-grapevine