were in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. We opened up in Vietnam, Thailand, Korea, China, Malaysia, Australia and all over the place. It was all based on Club Med. If I opened the front door of the our center and a Van Halen “Jump” was not at volume level 10, I would crush the staff. I marked the volume, they got the CDs that I designed with the DJ’s. If it was too low or the wrong CD, you were gonna start working for Arthur Murray down the street. Michael: So you had something very unique that you found while you were over there that you implemented into your clubs. What was that? Eric: Well I started personal training in Asia and one thing that’s always been dear to my heart was yoga. So, it’s 1999, yoga is dead. There’s no yoga in India, other than in the jungles. There’s no yoga in Asia. There's no yoga in Santa Monica, Venice Beach, California. There’s only like one class a month. There would be two people in the back corner of the gym or whatever. I knew that yoga is the greatest lifestyle exercise or whatever you want to call it. I went to India and I hired yogis. Real yogis. Third, Fourth, Fifth generation. They know yoga. Not some month course, "I got a certificate” yoga teachers. They were the real deal. We advertised that these are Yogis, not yoga teachers. I went ahead and opened up in Hong Kong, 30,000 square-foot, $200,000 U.S. a month. I don’t
know many classes, probably 30 different classes a day within 60 days. We were putting 35,000 people a month through. It was an explosion how
everywhere throughout Asia. I brought it back to Santa Monica and opened it up throughout America. Yoga is one of my favorite things, because I know the benefits yoga. It
changes people's lives, Michael. Just like fitness changes peoples lives.
That was my noble goal, changing people's lives through fitness and yoga. It’s very simple, but how profound is that? That’s what the whole company was based on, a noble goal. If we had a question, we looked at the noble goal and said “Are we going towards that or away from that?” That was our Credo. We created such a passionate team that when I left they all became the biggest CEOs of the biggest companies throughout China in all industries. Dozens of them that are top business leaders and that’s one of the things I’m most proud of.
from personal experience that you celebrate others' success and wins. Very others conscious. You have had a lot of success starting at a fairly young age. I probably know what your dad thought was your biggest failure, he probably thought it was going from $4000 a month to $60 a month. None of us experience success without those failures, because those are what's used to learn. So, in your mind, what do you think is your biggest failure and what did you learn from it along the way? Eric: Well, there’s been a lot of ups and downs. But everything seemed to be in alignment with my maturity, you know, although I shouldn’t say that. I still make some big mistakes, but sometimes,
Michael: That’s amazing. I know
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