Pursuing Significance with Kyle Jones

Come on Blackboard. This is George G. And the time is right welcome. Today’s guest is strong and powerful. Kyle Jones. Kyle, are you ready to do this?

Kyle Jones 0:18
Yeah. How’s it going, man, always a good morning and always a great day.

george grombacher 0:22
Amen. Kyle is the co founder and CEO of AI, cryo, recovery and wellness for the body and mind excited to have you on. Kyle, tell us a little about your personal lives more about your work and why you do what you do.

Kyle Jones 0:37
Man, this podcast must be three, three days long than that. But no, it’s honestly love, love sharing the story of I cry. Me personally, I’ve always been in health and wellness, since I can remember, my father had me as a multi sport athlete growing up since I was four years old, played every sport that he could possibly put me into. And I love it, it did a few things for me, you know, as a, as a young adult, it puts structure in my life, it kind of kept my mind into always wanting more and achieving more and really just striving, there’s a, there’s a term I used to use goal getter. And I love to just achieve goals, set my eyes on something, my sights on something and, and not just be a singular approach to achieving that goal, but putting people around me that are smarter than me, and achieving those goals as a team. And I would say that’s, that’s one of the big reasons why I cry is where it’s at today is is not because of just me, right? I mean, I had the initial vision, I had the idea, I brainstorm and thought of what this could be. But without putting a massive team of people that are smarter than me around me, I cry wouldn’t be where it is today. So you know, my I always give 100% credit to my team, my executive staff, the rest of the rest of the of the staff, the corporate office. And for me, growing up, you know, sports was everything. And I realized, as you know, as I started to pursue my, my degree in my undergrad, I got a full ride scholarship to play football. So so that was that was amazing, right, and every kid coming out of high school thinks they’re going to go pro. And I kind of took a step back and a mentor of mine at the time was a coat with my coach. And he actually saw the writing on the wall before I did you know, and he, he pulled me aside after my freshman year, and he said, God, I’m gonna, I’m gonna give you a real tough decision here. I’m going to offer you another full ride scholarship. But as your mentor, I’m going to tell you to decline it. And he said, I think you have something more in in, you’re passionate about more of what’s off the field, right? Like, what you’re eating, what you’re doing to recover how you’re sleeping, and more than you are on the field, right. And he said, man, you’re just laser focused on on things of recovery. And so I took his advice, I came back home, I tried to figure out what it was what my calling was in life. And I’m, I remember reading an article back in 2010 or so. And it was the top five most rewarding jobs on the planet at that point in time. And I think the third one was physical therapy. And it caught my attraction because it was basically going in describing you were the person that was responsible for, you know, a 75 year old senior citizen that couldn’t get on the ground and play with his grandkids to be able to do that pain free, right. So you couldn’t put a monetary figure on that. It was just something that was super rewarding. So I did just that I went into my doctorate program into PT school, got my undergrad in exercise science. And that led me into just the world of recovery as we know it today. And this was a decade ago, right? And so I think it was just a testament to see life throws curveballs at you. And change is not always bad, right? You just have to learn to accept that change and make it the best that it can be. And I fully believe that you’re guided amongst life to make life changing decisions. And if you don’t, then you’re stuck, stagnant, right, you’re stuck in the same place. So I always entertained change. I always interchange evolution and it’s gotten me where I am today. So as far as that’s concerned, that led me into working at a PT clinic here in Houston outpatient clinic and just stumbled across cryotherapy back in 2012. I was blessed to be one of the first in the United States of America even know what cryo was. And my business mind just started turning me and my entrepreneurial spirit just started kicking and actually went so far make a long story short, went so far as to drop out of PT school. I didn’t finish my doctor program and I went full onboard in with cryotherapy. I ended up managing that operation at the PT clinic we bought a couple cryo chambers. We were treating patients we were treating, you know We came up with some membership models and packages for the public and it caught like wildfire. And and I think there was two things that really stuck out to me. So on the business perspective,

it just it took off, we had no idea what it was going to do. I mean, it was generating 10s of 1000s of extra revenue that we weren’t expecting. But on a personal side on on my passionate side, we were discharging patients weeks ahead of time, we were, we were dealing not just with physical issues, but mental problems, sleep, anxiety, stress, depression, and seeing this firsthand, I just consumed me It consumed everything about my life. And, and so yeah, 2015 I spun off and I launched the first I cry location on 2016 17 ish, my dad got involved. Me and him co founded the franchise together in 2017. And since then, it’s been a whirlwind, we’ve got almost 250 250 locations awarded across the United States. We’ll launch our second country this year, we’re due to open another 40 locations this year alone. And our business model has is slated to do 1000 Plus locations here in the States. So it’s been a weird, it’s been a roller coaster.

george grombacher 6:17
Awesome. Congratulations on all that. Thank you. And through all of that you’re still a competitive professional athlete.

Kyle Jones 6:25
Yeah, so I actually I transitioned a several times through my life. When I dropped out of PT school, I didn’t take my second year option to pursue football, I transitioned from football into powerlifting, I kind of changed gears and my competitive nature, I powerlifting nationally for about six years, I got a couple gold medals, couple gold titles. So I kind of had reached the pinnacle at that point in that sport. So I switched gears again, paid a little bit more attention to nutrition, the the esthetics more than the strength. I went into bodybuilding for six years, got my professional card in a couple organizations. So once again, reached the pinnacle in bodybuilding. And then right then in there, my sixth sixth year of bodybuilding was 2019. And that’s when I cry really took off, we sold, it was about 75 or 80 locations in one year. And I cry just started to consume all of my time. So I had to put shows on the on the back burner had to put you know, lift powerlifting meets everything else in my life just became secondary. I cry became my firstborn child. So I had to pay attention.

george grombacher 7:40
Yeah, it’s wild. And it’s clear when when you go to the to IKONOS site, and you check it out that that you really are putting people first it’s it’s it’s in all your language, and it’s it’s your employees, and then the people you’re serving your clients, your customers, patients, however you refer to them. Not everybody is going to have you heard Dr. Kyle, right. How and you recognize the value of people? How do you go about managing developing your people knowing that not everybody’s gonna be I don’t want to say that you’re a psycho, but probably a little bit.

Kyle Jones 8:18
You got to be a little bit crazy. I was I was explained to people when when we hire people, and I cry or you become part of the family. It’s gotta be a little bit crazy to work here, guys. But it’s fun, though we consider everybody family. I mean, to be honest, we just, we’ve hired a couple new folks or recently and we’re, I get I just get really close to everybody that’s in the organization, I want to know who they are, I want to know what makes them tick. For me, it’s all about unleashing the person’s power that they don’t know they even have. And sometimes the world just beats you down, right? The world fills you with negativity The world tells you you can’t, you won’t, you shouldn’t. And I tried to exchange the exact opposite, right that you got to give that transfer of belief to somebody to believe that they could do it. And I think that’s something that I crowd does best and the company is founded amongst, you know, coaching people not really employing or or instructing people I really don’t like the the job title approach. I’m more of like, the team camaraderie and the collaboration. It’s in our it’s in a lot of our culture. A lot of our mission statement, we talk about coaching people and mentoring people and you know, somebody does something wrong, that’s fine. That’s okay. We’re human, we make mistakes, but how do we learn from that? How do we take what we just did wrong and perfect that and make it right. And I there’s one thing that I tell people all the time and you know, people ask, you know, how do you achieve this? How did you get to this goal? You know, how did you launch I cry at the age of 24. And how are you doing some of these things? And I always tell them two things. Number one, everything I do Life is a mistake. And you have to learn from that mistake, I have failed my way to the top. And that’s what I expressed best people all the time. Nobody in life does things alone. So the moment you realize that a team can accomplish more than individual, that’s step one. Secondarily that you have to be ready to fail, you will fail more times than you succeed. But that one success is a huge leap in the in the right direction, that one failure, it’s a minor setback. So for me, it’s understanding that team is everything, and that that failures will lead to success. And you have to learn to accept that.

george grombacher 10:34
Amen. sort of answer my question, I imagine that you are a formulaic kind of a person, you, you, you understand your nutrition, your physical exercise, all of these things. And so you sort of figure out steps. But then it’s a function it’s life is emergency after emergency, it’s stuff not going right. It’s it’s needing to pivot. How do you think about when you’re running into a problem? Is it I need to really change a lot of things? I need to just tweak it a little bit? How do you think about that?

Kyle Jones 11:07
So when I change something in anything, it could be very something small in my life could be a very massive life changing decisions. The honestly, the first thing I look at is what are the what are the pros on this? What are the what are the things on the upside I could gain from this? And then obviously, you have to look at the negatives, right? What are some of the things that could go wrong? For me, there’s always going to be something that could go wrong, but that can’t, that can’t startle you, or that can’t put so much fear in you that you don’t do it. I think honestly, the term Failure to Launch majority of people, that’s the problem, they get so scared and consumed about, you know, the fear of what could go wrong, that they never launched that failure launch is such a such an underutilized term in my mind, because, for me, it’s what prevents a lot of people from reaching, not success, but significance in their life for me, I’ve never, I’ve never, I’ve never gone through life wanting to live a successful life. I want to leave this planet, knowing that I made a significant impact in the people around me. So I live a life of significance, not success. That’s kind of one of the one of the models that I live by. And I would say to, you know, to the time of when you go to pivot into something, just take a consideration and look at are you making a significant impact with this pivot with this decision? Right. So if I’m looking to change gears in my career, if I’m looking to change gears in my relationship status with a friend with a family member with my significant other, if I’m looking to do something from a hobby perspective, I always take a look at I say, Is this going to impact me or the people around me in a significant way? And if it’s not, well, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it, right. But if you look at it and say, well, golly, you know, if I do this, my mother could have a better lifestyle. Or if I change my diet, not only am I going to be healthy for me, but I’m going to be healthier for my children, right? I’m setting a good example. So I’m always looking at the choices that I make the pivots that I make in life, are they making a significant impact and the people that rely on me the most?

george grombacher 13:14
I love it. That’s an awesome framework right there. So going in and doing your first franchise, the first first franchisee the first store everything, I mean, amazing, exciting, terrifying. And now you’re talking about having 1000 biggest learnings or maybe I don’t even know how to ask that question

Kyle Jones 13:40
to say that. So it’s funny. The first franchise location for us was probably the most terrifying and you want to talk about you want to talk about making a move. So once again, we started the company with cryo therapy was really it. You know, we’ve surrounded the the cryo therapy division with other things. We do IV infusions, we do infrared saunas, we do body sculpting, we do a lot more than just cryo at this point, but it started with just cryo therapy. So in my head, I imagined cryo being a little bit more popular in warmer markets, you know, Texas, Florida, you know, Nevada, stuff like that. And our first franchise we sold in upstate New York, Albany, New York, where it snows what, four or five months out of the year. Right. And it was crazy, because not only did we put our first franchise in a cold weather state, but it wasn’t even a big city. When I tell people we launched our first location in New York like oh man, inner city, Manhattan tons of money in like, no, no, no, no, no. We went into a small town called Latham, New York. It’s a city of about 19,000 people. Oh my gosh, it we back on like we were saying we were crazy. And I remember I flew out there for the grand opening the franchisee Eric glim. And he’s actually a really good friend of mine today. we’ve forged a great friendship over the years. He’s probably one of the best people I know. And honestly, he had to convince us to do it. I was completely against that. I said, There’s no way like our first one, that’s insanity. And he goes, Kyle, I’m going to make this happen. I am going to make this happen. I try. I mean, he, he literally threw his life and pivoted everything that he had done for the last 20 years. And he went all in. And I said, Look, you know, I believe in this guy, Eric, and we flew out there the day before the grand opening, a blizzard came through, about 14 inches of snow hit the ground, and I’m sitting here looking out the window, like, what are we doing? What, what are we doing here? Grand Opening Day was nothing short of success. It was nothing short of just clarity around what we were doing was the right decision. We had about 400 people come through in about five hours. It was electric. I mean, people were he he consumed towns from an hour away, people were driving, and that location just exploded. He bought five more locations in that area, and opened up two more. Yeah. Our first location for us was clarity around the brand was real, the business model was real. And the operations of this business had now we had a floor, a floor plan, right? And we built upon that right? We built several layers to this to this business model since then, but so yeah, the first one was terrifying man. The first one was, was wild and then seeing it mold and evolve in in in in really tackle. Not just cryo but the recovery space itself. More people now are looking at ways to prevent certain issues and maintain a healthy lifestyle than ever before. It’s it’s wild, one of the reasons why I decided to go into PT school outside of the the reward of helping others was, I remember reading an article back in 2012 13, maybe there was a guy it was a small article wasn’t anything big. A guy that was basically claiming that the decade of 2020 to 2030. Mind you, this was eight years prior would be a decade focused on recovery, people would stop worrying about what they’re doing on the field, right, whatever that is, whatever your field is, and start worrying about what they’re doing off the field to be the best version of themselves on the field. And that just hit me from home. I just was like, man, you know, people are going to start to pay attention to what they should be doing to perform better during the day, thank clear sleep better. And something hit me pretty hard. I, I say this a lot. And I love when people really sit and they think about it. A lot of people say if I’m if I’m a father, common statement you’ll hear is I would die for my kids. And I say that’s great, but would you live for them?

And they sort of sit there and look at me and I say Look, don’t kill yourselves, for your children or for the people around you do the things to make yourselves the best version of you for them. Right? Number one, you need to be on this earth to see them get married to see them reach the pinnacle in their life. Don’t kill yourself. So you can’t see those things. I mean, it’s more rewarding to live for others than to die for others because they rely on you. So for me, that’s I kind of want to find a tangent there. But for me, those are some of the biggest things that impact my life. And I think, you know, going back to that first location that we opened and seen sites of now 1000 It’s, it’s how can I make myself the best version of me for this company? And I try to instill that in every single one of our employees.

george grombacher 18:47
Amazing. I love it. Well, it makes a lot of sense how you’ve been so successful Kyle gratulations man, I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they learn more about potentially franchising with AI cryo give it to us?

Kyle Jones 19:05
Yeah, so I love to connect personally as well. You guys can go to the business platforms I cryo calm it’s I see our y Oh, calm. Same thing on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, use simple at eye cryo. If you want to connect with me personally, it’s at Kyle William Jones on Instagram. And once again, LinkedIn, Kyle W. Jones, so love to connect with people, whether it’s wellness, whether it’s business, whether it’s personal. I’m a very outward facing person people people know me they’re like, you’re kind of out there. So love to connect with people and whether it’s about business or whether it’s just about personal goals. You guys can always reach out

george grombacher 19:44
awesome. Well if you enjoyed this as much as I did show Kyle your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend that also appreciates good ideas go to I cry Oh calm. I see our yo.com Find him on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn list all those In the notes of the show Thanks kinco Thank you and until next time keep fighting the good fight we’re all in this together

Transcribed by https://otter.ai