Mike: [00:00:04] Hello and welcome to episode 17 of the How to Become a Personal Trainer podcast. We’re your hosts, Mike Vacanti.
Jordan: [00:00:11] My name is Jordan Syatt, and this episode is the first episode in a series of two in which we break down the top 10 things you need to do if you want to build an online personal training business. This episode is the first five.
Mike: [00:00:27] Yes, this is an actionable list. So, a checklist, a toolbox. If you just became a personal trainer, or if you’d been a personal trainer for many years and you’re moving your business online, these are the actionable steps that you can take.
Jordan: [00:00:40] We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please leave a five-star review on iTunes.
Here we go.
Hello Michael.
Mike: [00:00:57] Hello Jordan.
Jordan: [00:00:59] How you doing, man?
Mike: [00:01:00] Little tired. Woke up about four minutes ago.
Jordan: [00:01:03] To be fair, it was your idea.
Mike: [00:01:10] Oh, I’m thrilled about this. I’m very excited. I don’t see myself doing another podcast other than immediately upon waking up for the rest of my life.
Jordan: [00:01:21] I think it’s smart. It’s great.
It’s nice out here in Boston. Have you looked outside yet in New York or no, you literally got up, went right to the podcast studio?
Mike: [00:01:31] Rolled out of bed, I had the coffee ready to go, hit the button, and then once that was made, came and sat down and here we are.
Jordan: [00:01:39] I love it, man. I love it. You want to jam on anything?
Mike: [00:01:44] You know, I think the energy is going to pick up as I drink more coffee. I actually want to jam on 6:00 AM wake-ups because there’s such a mentality now that it doesn’t matter what time you get up. It doesn’t matter what time you go to bed, as long as you get your work done.
It’s very nonjudgmental, do your own thing. And I think that’s right because some people, especially creatives, can be very productive late into the night, but for most people, including personal trainers, if you want to get more done in your day, if you want to have time to be making content, if you want that alone time, whether it’s away from your kids or before your day gets started — for me, it used to be before I would go to my accounting job — getting up early, like 4:00 AM early, is the way to do that. So, I think that it’s definitely not for everyone.
It’s not for me right now. That’s for sure based on my vibe at the moment, but it is something to at least consider.
Jordan: [00:02:57] I think there’s a difference between being productive in one area of your life and being productive in many areas of your life and also being healthy. And the reason I say that is because when I was coaching Gary for the majority of those three years, I would stay up outrageously late. I’ve been pretty open about pulling a lot of all-nighters and just doing stupid stuff to be very productive with my business.
But in terms of productive with many aspects of my life, no way. I was very productive with my business, but my strength training went down, my nutrition went down, my various relationships went down, and you can see it, you can even watch in my videos, my physique deteriorated and all this stuff.
And yeah, granted, that often happens when you’re building your business, blah, blah, blah. Either way, you can see a difference between when I was being productive with one thing versus when I was productive with many things. And often the jujitsu and the business and everything, that started to come with waking up early and I think you can definitely be productive with one thing and creative with one thing if you’re staying up late at night and who am I to tell someone not to do that? Because I did that for years. But I do think I feel better and am happier when I wake up earlier to get things done versus trying to stay up later.
I think there’s something to be said for waking up earlier and being productive before many people have woken up versus staying up later. And again, I don’t know if there’s a definitive right or wrong, there’s a really famous quote, I forget by who, but something about burning the midnight oil where it’s like, clearly many of the most successful people in the world have stayed up late into the night for a long time.
Again, who am I to tell someone what to do? But I definitely know that I personally feel better waking up earlier and getting stuff done.
Mike: [00:04:58] Yeah, yeah. Well, there’s also the fact that.10:00 PM to 2:00 AM sleep quality is more valuable from a circadian rhythm perspective than the 8:00 AM to noon sleep quality, like, matching your sleep with the sun — and I can see your sun is starting to rise over there.
Jordan: [00:05:22] Yeah. Super nice.
I’ve always been interested by that. It’s one of those pieces of science that continually shows up that is very clear. But, it’s also one of those pieces of science that I was very resistant to when I was staying up very late.
I’d be like, “listen, as long as I get that sleep, I don’t know why it would matter.” And then I would justify that to not pay attention because when it doesn’t fit what you’re currently doing, then you choose not to believe it. But it’s held true and it’s been easier for me to wake up earlier in the day when I get that sleep.
It’s harder for me to wake up later in the day, even if I get the same amount of sleep, if I don’t get that 10 PM to 2 AM — that really good timeframe.
Mike: [00:06:14] This reminds me — when you talked about your time with Gary and being singularly focused compared to what you’re doing now, which is more multi-focused, the pursuit of perfection versus wholeness, which is something that Carl Jung used to talk about. But it sounds like in your, we’ll call it pursuit of wholeness or more balanced or whatever you want to call it, being productive in multiple areas of your life, they’re actually enhancing each other.
It’s not like the fact that you’re putting time and effort into jujitsu and time and effort into whatever else, like relationships, things other than business, your own fitness, your own mind, we’re doing some non-fitness stuff together as well. That’s not making your business worse.
I would imagine it’s providing new angles and it’s actually helping you in some ways.
Jordan: [00:07:13] Without question. I completely agree that. I think also, on top of that — we say this a lot, it’s a cliché saying — there’s a difference between being busy and being productive, right?
I found I was always busier the later I stayed up, but I’m more productive the earlier I wake up, right? So, when I wake up late, I’m very busy all day with different things to do. When I wake up earlier, I get the same, if not more done in less time because I’m more productive.
And who knows why? I mean, I know it doesn’t matter how much I get done, if I wake up late, I feel gross. I don’t like waking up late. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel like I’m taking advantage of the day. And this is just me personally, it doesn’t feel like I’m living a very good life.
To wake up at like 9 or 10 I’m like, “Ugh.” I’m like, the day’s so much gone already. I don’t like that. I feel so much more productive waking up earlier. And I think on top of that, what’s really important to clarify is I’m constantly trying to alter my schedule in a way that makes things even more productive.
I mean, look at Gary — Gary now is doing nighttime workouts after five years of doing morning workouts because he’s realized that’s better for him in terms of, he can either get more sleep or start his workday earlier and then he’ll feel better and stronger later in the day.
I used to, for the first eight months of not coaching Gary, my podcasts would be between 10 and noon and then just recently I switched all my podcasts from between 3 to 5 because I realized that early morning time frame is where I felt best for making content rather than doing podcasts.
Podcasts is one of my nap time activities, I can do it no problem. So, for the majority of going on other people’s podcasts or guests, I switched the time and it’s helped a lot. So, it’s always just like a plug and play and trying to find what works best for you.
Mike: [00:09:23] So interesting. And we won’t even dive into this, but it’s funny that podcasts are your nap time activity that, even last night, it was later than we normally do these and we jumped on and we were going to record this episode, but we ended up spending a significant amount of time actually planning the episode.
But by the time we had planned it, I was pretty tired and I was like, “ehhh.” Meanwhile, you were more charged up from the conversation like, “let’s do it. Let’s do it.”
Jordan: [00:09:53] It was the perfect example of an “E” versus an “I.”
Mike: [00:09:57] That introvert versus extrovert difference right there.
All right, man. Should we jump into the first– in this episode, we’re going to be talking about 5 of the 10 “To-Dos.”
Jordan: [00:10:14] Do you want to jump right into that or do we want to jam on your gut health for a little second? ‘Cause I’ve been super interested by that.
Mike: [00:10:20] I’m going to save that.
Jordan: [00:10:22] You want to save the gut health?
Mike: [00:10:23] I want to save it because I don’t want to jinx it.
Jordan: [00:10:26] Okay. All right. So far is it good though?
Mike: [00:10:30] Yeah. We can talk about it for a few minutes.
Basically, I unknowingly wasn’t eating enough different types of fiber consistently in my diet. And I knew this because I was having weird, bad poops.
And to put it bluntly and kind of gross, a lot of times there was a lot of mucus or what looked like, and after some Googling, gut-lining, basically, in my shit.
And I was freaking out for a little bit, you know, like an hour, Googling stuff and basically came to the conclusion that, okay, I should probably consume a little bit less sugar on the daily — because nothing had changed and this had been going on for a little while — And there were some other symptoms as well and I’m not going to get into everything right now but, I was like, I should probably be consuming more fiber and more of these, I’m going to call them “Jordan foods,” because every single gut health article was like, “you should be eating kimchi and sauerkraut and yogurt and
Jordan: [00:11:58] kefir.”
Mike: [00:12:00] There were more than just those, too. Various fruits, obviously. But basically, foods that you just eat consistently, all the time that you enjoy. And anytime I’m over at Jordan’s apartment, he’s like, “hey, man, you want some kimchi?” I’m like, “no, I don’t.” You know, politely. I’m like, “I’m good, man. Thanks.”
But without even really thinking about it I think they’re just the foods that you naturally gravitate toward, that tastes good to you, that you enjoy, that you feel good after eating.
Jordan: [00:12:40] Yeah. Yeah. I was just lucky because I didn’t, I’m not a gut health expert either. I was just like, “these are great!”
Mike: [00:12:48] So, literally, after just five days of — I mean, I’ve really made drastic changes, meaning I’m not eating any ice cream, I’m not eating any really processed stuff at all.
And every meal I’m working in some fruits, some vegetables, some nuts, whole grains, basically your textbook, “these are healthy foods.” Weird. You know, sauerkraut, artichoke, onions, a bunch of these different fiber types and making sure I’m getting not only enough fiber every day, but a variety of different types of soluble and insoluble fiber. I feel substantially better.
Oh, the other thing — I was unbelievably bloated. I took a couple pictures that are insane. I looked in the mirror and I was like, “what is going on?” I thought I either had a tumor or my intestines must be so inflamed because this cannot be happening.
And within a matter of days that cleared up, like inches off my waist gone.
Jordan: [00:14:06] That’s crazy.
Mike: [00:14:08] Insane.
And my energy levels on the whole, on the daily, are so much better, very quickly — and the poops are better.
So, across the board, it looks like — here’s a wild, wild idea:
Eating normally healthy foods is good for you.
Jordan: [00:14:31] It’s so funny. Two things, both of us in the same timeframe– I don’t know if you saw, you probably didn’t. One my YouTube videos when all this quarantine started, my only YouTube video when all this quarantine started, the nutrition advice I gave was, “focus more on fiber.”
I was like, “if you don’t want to count calories, that’s totally fine, but if you’re going to count something, count fiber.” Because so many people massively under eat fiber and/or get fiber from really poor sources. I was like, “get your fiber in, get your protein in and often it’s going to help you do well throughout this quarantine period.”
I was also thinking, as you were just talking right now, why did I start eating kimchi and miso soup? When did this happen? I remembered.
I remember when I was a kid, my mom would take my brother and I to this Korean restaurant in a town over once every couple of months, and I loved it. I loved the kimchi and I loved miso soup and it was a treat.
Once every few months we would go and I’d be so excited and I never had it otherwise. Then when I went to college — and I hated college, I hated it. I didn’t like anybody; I didn’t want to be around anyone. I would go on these hours upon hours upon hours-long walks, just around the campus and around the surrounding area.
And one day I found an Asian grocery store and I was like, “Oh, well, let’s go see what’s in there.” And I remember, number one, I saw the kimchi and I was like, “Oh my God, they had this at that restaurant!” I got the huge tub. And I kept walking around the store.
And you know, especially when you are first learning about fitness and food you spend hours in the grocery store looking at everything, looking at all the labels, like I spent hours going around that grocery store, and then I saw miso soup and I was like, “you can buy miso soup in a store?!” Because that was my favorite soup of all time and I never knew how they made it. I remember I was like, “I wonder what the recipe for this is…”
And it’s paste. They have miso paste that you put in soup and I didn’t know it.
And this was in 2009 and I don’t think there’s been a time since that I haven’t had at least miso soup, if not miso soup and kimchi in my apartment ever since.
So funny.
Mike: [00:16:54] That’s awesome.
That’s cool that’s how it got started.
Jordan: [00:16:57] Yeah. Just from hating everybody at college.
Mike: [00:17:05] Oh man.
Jordan: [00:17:06] All right. So, we’re doing the checklist.
So, what’s the title of this?
Mike: [00:17:12] Basically, if you just became an online personal trainer or if today’s your first day of wanting to coach people online, what should you do? What are, not philosophically or theoretically, but practically, what should you do right now, today and in the coming days?
And so, we assembled, in no particular order, the top 10 things that you should do, of which we’re going to hit 5 in this episode.
Jordan: [00:17:44] Perfect. So, we’re going to do the top 5 of the top 10 and then in the next episode we’ll do the second half of the list.
Mike: [00:17:53] Yes. So, this is the first 5, so I guess it is kind of in order.
Jordan: [00:18:00] Perfect. Got it.
All right, let’s go.
Mike: [00:18:04] Number one: to be a great online coach the first thing you should do is coach people in person.
Jordan: [00:18:14] Man, I’m glad that we started with that one because do you know how many people are going to be like, “dammit!”
Mike: [00:18:25] It’s so true. It’s so true.
Jordan: [00:18:29] From the moment of declaration of, “all right, I’m going to do this online coaching thing. Where do I begin? What website do I get? What marketing materials?”
It’s like, no, you just coach people on person. Start with that.
Mike: [00:18:45] I’ll never forget being 23 years old, being an accountant, but being so well read on Lyle, so well read on Martin Berkhan, so well read on all these guys online, mostly on nutrition — and being shredded to the bone myself, like walking around 7% body fat — and knowing so confidently that I could just help anyone do this, that I could help anyone get in shape. And that point, with no coaching experience, it was coming from a place of arrogance, but it was coming from my own personal experience.
Fast forward two years — after coaching a wide variety of client types from 15-16-17-year-old high school athletes, to your average desk workers, both male and female, people who work in offices like I previously was, to people in their 60s, 70s, I even had an 89-year-old client.
Getting that experience and working under someone, which was useful as well, but getting that experience coaching highlighted that I previously only could have gotten a motivated 20-something in shape.
I didn’t know how to deal with people with certain ailments. I didn’t know how to deal with coming back from injury. I didn’t know how to deal with modifying exercises when someone was tight or had a limited range of motion or for whatever reason, couldn’t do something, something didn’t feel good.
That only came through the process of working with many, many different types of clients in person.
Jordan: [00:20:42] Yeah, I completely agree. And I’ve said for a long time, coaching people in person will make you a better online coach, but coaching people online will not make you a better in-person coach. And I very much stand by it.
When you’re coaching people in person, there’s so much learning that happens throughout a 60-minute session, a 30-minute session if that’s what you have to do. So much learning happens. And it happens from even before they walk in the door because when you have a session locked in — assuming you’re actually a good coach who cares — you’re not just waiting for that person to walk in before you start planning the session. You’re not just like, “all right, well, I’ll just wait until they get here and then I’ll just make something up.” Before they walk in, you’re planning the workouts.
Ideally, you’ve gotten a lot of information from them, so you can start understanding their goals, maybe what their limitations are. The first session is oftentimes an assessment — assessing their movement, assessing their work capacity, assessing not only just their movement and their work capacity, their flexibility, their mobility, their strength, but you’re also assessing how comfortable they are in the gym.
Are they worried to be there? Are they anxious? Are they an ego lifter, are they stronger than they think they are? Where are they on this spectrum? And you start to learn — sort of like a baby. You notice a baby learning how to crawl and walk and talk and make noises. They make these connections so fast.
I think a coach in their first three to six months on the floor is like a baby. They’re making all of these connections so fast and all the things that they used to think really matter often don’t. And all the things that they didn’t know existed are really what matter. I think that if you just are sort of on Instagram or TikTok or whatever it is, and you’ve made your declaration, “I am an online coach today” then it’s like, okay, well then the first thing you need to do is start coaching people in person because you will not be as good of an online coach if you don’t first coach people in person.
And I would say, listen, you don’t have to coach thousands of in-person clients. You don’t have to do that. There’s always diminishing returns after a while. Getting tired, getting burnt out, and there’s a reason why the vast majority of personal trainers quit within the first year.
It’s cause oftentimes people aren’t just doing a few in-person clients, they’re doing 8-10-12-hour days for a whole year, and that’s exhausting. And then your own fitness often goes down the drain, blah, blah, blah.
But at the very least get at least one, if not two to four consistent in-person clients that you’re working with and sit down with them, learn with them.
I know this goes into one of the later things that we bring up, but when you start coaching people in person, oftentimes the amount of learning that you get from coaching that person will be equally as beneficial to you as it is to the client. In terms of the sessions they’re getting in with you, the amount that they’re getting from it, the value they’re getting from it, is equivalent to the value you’re getting from it.
They’re helping you too. I think it’s an important mindset to have because a lot of times coaches go in being like, “well, you know, I’m really giving them a lot here. This is a full hour of my time.” It’s like, they’re giving you a full hour of their time too.
There isn’t a single person that I’ve worked with, including the absolute worst clients I’ve ever had that I haven’t learned from.
I’ve learned from everybody, and it’s all made me a better coach.
Mike: [00:24:22] Yeah. Yeah. I had a few ideas that completely left my mind in the moment when you stopped talking.
Jordan: [00:24:32] We should wake up earlier next time.
Mike: [00:24:34] No, I actually think we should. I think we should. That’s what’s missing.
I remember one of them: there’s a lot of impatience, right? In life there’s a lot of impatience. People want things now.
We’re not telling you that you need to go work with clients in person for years before you start your online coaching business. These things can happen simultaneously, right? The things that we are listing here, it’s not like, “okay, spend one year on coaching people in person and don’t do anything else.”
No, coach people in person, but also continue on the rest of this list. So, you’re going to be growing your business, but that in person coaching is going to make you a much better coach for many different reasons that you might not fully understand right now.
But beyond just making you a better coach, it’s also going to build you a network of an engaged online audience, your in-person clients are going to love your content. It’s going to build you a network of potential future online coaching clients. If you work with someone in person and they really like you and for some reason in the future, you can’t work together, they’re going to be one of the first people who wants to work with you online.
It’s just a multitude of benefits.
Jordan: [00:26:00] 100%. Yeah. Especially when you first start out, odds are you don’t have a large social media audience, or really at all. The people who follow you are people you’re friends and colleagues with already. So, it might start out that the people who start with you initially are actually in your local area anyway.
And so, it’s like, well, great. Start coaching them in person. And you can do a mix. It’d be like, “Hey, listen, I’ll coach you two times a week in person, but I’ll give you a workout for four times a week,” whatever it is. So, you do two times a week in person than the rest of the week is online.
Now cool, literally with the same client, you’re simultaneously building your online coaching systems and coaching people in person and then it can start to build.
I really think what I would say is this, if you’re listening to this and you’re feeling discouraged or upset or like, “eh, I won’t take that piece of advice,” you are really screwing up because we made this the first one for a very deliberate and specific reason, and you should also really be critical of, well, why would you not want to take this advice? Why are you resistant to it? And odds are because it’s going to take more time, it’s going to be more difficult, maybe it makes you nervous or anxious, whatever it is, in which case, then I would very strongly have you reconsider whether or not you actually want to be a coach. Because it is not an easy job.
It is a very difficult, very frustrating job. The rewards are incredible from being able to help people and establish connections with people all over the world. But if you want to be a great coach, then you need to start from the ground up. And that begins with coaching people in person.
Mike: [00:27:41] Yeah.
Jordan: [00:27:42] Also, and this is something that bugs me. This is basically completely and utterly unrelated, but people talk about, “Oh, in society these days, everyone just wants the quick fix,” and they always preface it with “well, in society these days…”
In society all day’s people have wanted the quick fix. That’s why the wheel was invented because they wanted to get somewhere faster. It’s just like now that we’re so much more advanced, the rate at which we can get something is very freaking fast. But we’ve always wanted the quick fix. Literally the whole point of technology is to get something faster.
Mike: [00:28:27] Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. I hadn’t thought of it because I think I do a lot of times adopt the position that previous generations were more patient, in the context of this discussion, but just different.
Jordan: [00:28:47] I think they were more patient because they had to be based on that time period, but they still would have preferred for it to be faster. And I think it’s about expectations, right? So, based on their expectations at that time, they knew it would take longer, but they still would have preferred it more quickly. And they would have done anything, they could have to get it more quickly.
I just hate the preface of, “well, today’s society, everyone just wants it as fast as they can.”
They always wanted it as fast as they can.
Mike: [00:29:18] I think that’s right. I think to make it even more accurate; many people today want it as fast as they can, and many people in every generation wanted it as fast as they can.
When we talk about patience — and there’s good impatience, right? This is going way off topic and I’m okay with that. We have all day because we woke up very early.
When we talk about good impatience versus bad impatience the good impatience, you’re talking about is what motivated innovation. It’s ambition. It’s ambition not just for one’s self and one’s personal gain, but going from horses to cars — and I don’t know the full story behind that, but ambition that creates innovation that makes society better is different than, “I want to get rich quick” ambition “because I want to lay on the beach and sip martinis and you know, have four wives and do whatever.”
And no offense to anyone who holds beliefs under that umbrella. I wasn’t going there. But it reminds me of a concept that you and I spoke of recently that I think I first heard of in a random book called “Levels of Energy” that talks about three modes of being — it’s like “have” is at the bottom of the triangle, “do” is at the mid-point of the triangle, and then “be” is at the top of the triangle.
Jordan: [00:31:09] Yeah.
Mike: [00:31:09] Whereas you’re acting out of wanting things; wanting money, wanting status, wanting possessions, wanting material. That’s at that base of the pyramid.
So, what you’re doing is to get something, your action. “I want to become a coach because I want to get rich and have people know my name.” It’s for really getting something versus the next level is “doing,” which is more of a continuous action.
I think of you in college, actually, even though I didn’t know you, but based on the stories you tell me. ‘Cause you used to wake up at 4:00 AM consistently in college and work all day long.
Jordan: [00:32:02] Yeah.
Mike: [00:32:03] I think of “doing” as action of extremely dedicated, extremely focused, and then that “be,” that next, top level that I don’t even know if I can speak on, because I don’t think I’ve fully even comprehended it, but it could be more of like a Buddha or a monk.
You’re unbelievably present and whatever action you’re taking isn’t out of this forced disciplinarian, it’s out of being in this present state.
I don’t know how I got on there.
Jordan: [00:32:50] I like it.
Mike: [00:32:51] Early morning podcast.
Jordan: [00:32:54] I like that.
Mike: [00:32:55] Wait, step one is be a coach and “have,” “be,” “do,” and enlightenment?
Jordan: [00:33:00] I think for me personally, I’ve never been in the “be” at all, I don’t think. I think I almost innately fell into the “do.” The “have” has never been something that’s overwhelmingly interested me.
I think one of the coolest parts of that triangle that you had explained to me when we spoke about it, is how you can sort of fluctuate between the three and especially in different areas of your life.
At least in terms of fitness and business it never much interested in me to be in the “have.” I think some people have to sort of fight to get out of that sometimes, or they don’t even realize they’re in it. I think for me it’s generally been more of the just “do,” and I don’t think I’ve ever been in the “be,” unless I’m mistaken, but I don’t think I have.
I don’t even think I can comprehend the enlightened state. Not for that, at least.
I think that’s jujitsu for me. I think lifting at one point in my life was that as well. Like, deadlifting, powerlifting, competing is that sort of enlightened state.
You’re doing it just out of like, “this is part of my soul. This is what feels amazing in this moment. I’ll work really hard at it because it feels like this feels right. This is where I’m my best self.”
Mike: [00:34:34] Joy.
Jordan: [00:34:38] That’s definitely what it is for me. And who knows, maybe — this is a whole separate discussion from the original podcast, but I think the thing that you told me that made a lot of sense to me was that it’s not just that you’re always in one state or the other.
It’s that in different parts of your life, in one part of your life, you could be in the top, best enlightened state and another part of your life you can be in the worst state and maybe it’s not about trying to get to the top state in every single area of your life, but trying to bring it up as high as you can in as many areas as you can and sort of figuring out what needs work at various times.
Mike: [00:35:31] I think that’s right. And to wrap this, I think in the context of doing in-person coaching, there’s a stigma, and this is true of I would say it’s usually a younger male. I used to get this a lot with entrepreneurs hitting me up or kind of wannabe entrepreneurs.
This, “I want to get into X” — and these are the types of people who switch industries every six months because they’re purely operating from a place of wanting to do something so they can have. “I want to blow up as an Instagram trainer and get 100,000 followers and coach a thousand clients and have crazy systems, and then outsource it to my assistant,” like that kind of, “so that I can have a car and have this and have that.”
That’s operating from a place of “have” versus, “no, I lost 40 pounds, got in the best shape of my life, and I feel incredible, and my relationships got better and everything got better, and as a result, I want to help other people with that.”
Those two people are operating from fundamentally different positions. And I think the latter person, the person who wants to genuinely do it for let’s call it a deeper reason: helping people, serving people with what they’ve learned is a deeper reason innately.
Those people are going to be more open to and more eager to doing harder things like in person coaching.
Jordan: [00:37:09] Yeah, absolutely. Completely. That was the best, most articulate way to put it, for sure.
Mike: [00:37:16] Number two?
Jordan: [00:37:18] Yep. Number two.
Mike: [00:37:19] Number two is: create a website.
So, number two is not: purchase an Instagram bot to follow and unfollow and rack up thousands of followers so that you can build a client base on that. It’s not even posting shorter form content.
Number two is creating a website for many reasons. The first of which is Jordan and I both hold the position that long form content should be — if you’re comparing long form versus short form content, long form content should be at the base of your content pyramid. And that can be article, that can be video, that can be podcast, but having a website is, one, it’s a place for articles, for long form content so that people can come and find you and go deeper with you who may have found you in other places.
But two, it’s a place where you have complete control. You’re not at the mercy of the Instagram algorithm. You’re not at the mercy of the Facebook algorithm. You’re not even at the mercy of the Gmail algorithm that creates a marketing tab and might move your marketing emails somewhere else.
Your website is a place where, if you’re making consistent content there, people will come there and you have complete control over that distribution.
Jordan: [00:38:53] Yeah. And again, I can foresee many people being like, “okay, number one is coach people in person. Ah, damn it. Okay, well what’s number two? Number two is get a website. Ah, damn it. Okay, what’s number three?”
These are probably two of the most time intensive things that do not lead to immediate income, right? And that wasn’t how we structured it. We weren’t like “all right, well what are the hardest things to do that are not going to lead to income?” No, these are just the things that you need to do to set the foundation for building your online coaching business and to being a great coach.
The name of our podcast is, “how to become a personal trainer.” These are the foundations for building that. It’s sort of like if you have a client who’s like,” okay, well I want to get shredded, so what supplements should I be taking?” It’s like hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
The client who is 50 pounds overweight and asking what supplements they should be taking to get shredded is the same thing as you being like, “okay, well I want to start my online coaching business, so like what marketing materials should I get? Or like how many times a day should I post on Instagram?”
It’s like, hold on, hold on, hold on. You are way out of line. You’re looking at the 0.5% when you need to be looking at the 90%. The big rocks, if you will, as a lot of the coaches want the “big rocks” of nutrition, the “big rocks of training.”
Cool. So, these are the “big rocks” of business. Coach people in person, get your website. It’s time intensive, you will not see immediate benefit from it, you won’t know if you’re doing it right, you’re going to be completely unsure of whether or not you’re going in the right direction. Welcome to the world of business.
That’s where you begin.
Mike: [00:40:46] So well said. Clip, that little rant. That was great.
Jordan: [00:40:52] It’s true.
Mike: [00:40:53] Yeah. I don’t even know if more needs to be said on that.
From a practical perspective, Jordan and I both use WordPress for our website. There are other companies, I know Wix is blowing up, and I actually had a friend of mine who works at a hedge fund, a really, really intelligent dude, texted me yesterday asking me what I knew about Wix, because apparently their numbers have been really good, and they’re also releasing some new business tools to make it more competitive with WordPress, which is interesting.
Jordan: [00:41:36] It’s about time
There are some people in the Mentorship who use Wix, I’d say the two most common in the Mentorship is either WordPress or Wix. I know you and I both prefer WordPress, but someone in the mentorship who has one of their article’s SEO #1 now on Google, I think they use Wix.
I’m not a hundred percent sure, but they both work. Just start a website, wordpress.org or Wix, whatever you want, or Blogspot. My first one was a blogspot.com back in like, when was that, the 70s?
Ideally, it wouldn’t be a Blogspot, but if you don’t know what else to do, just get a page up that people can go to, that you can write down all your thoughts.
And then worst comes to worst, after you’re getting all this work done is you can transfer it. You can copy and paste all of it and put it into something else. It would take more time down the road, but at least you’d be getting your thoughts out and you’d have the page that people can go to.
I know that I prefer WordPress. They have a lot of these free templates that look great now, and I’ve told this story a million times, but when I first started my website it was awful. It looked terrible, but people still came to my website because the content was good. If you look back at my old articles, you’ll see comments from people being like, “this article is great, but why does your website look like shit?” But they still came back because the content was good.
Get a website. It’s so important.
Mike: [00:43:09] That is so true. I’ll go to any site — I remember blogs that were so basic and so crap-looking and now the templates are so good that that doesn’t exist as much. But if the content’s good, whatever on the design.
Jordan: [00:43:31] I remember reading websites, really straining my eyes to read websites that had like all-black backgrounds and an almost shade of black text that you had to squint to read and you’re like, “Oh, this is amazing.”
Even though it would probably take 10 years off the lifespan of your eyes, but for whatever reason, you just loved it. The content was great and I don’t know why the owner of that website would make it so difficult, but if the contents good, it doesn’t matter about what it looks like.
Mike: [00:44:07] Yeah. Yup. That’s exactly right.
Number three. So, you’re coaching people in person, you created a website, number three goes in line with number one: educate yourself.
So that means internship, that means reading books, that means taking courses, that means doing what it takes “off the gym floor” to become smart and become the best possible coach you can.
Jordan: [00:44:41] Yeah. Again, super hard to do. A lot of time, a lot of information out there, not immediate return on investment. These are the basic, foundational things. This is the checklist of what you have to do.
Should we give some resources right off the bat? Things that people should be making sure they’re reading or consuming in order to really educate themselves?
And we should preface by saying these are not Instagram accounts to follow. You can follow their account if you want to on Instagram, but we want you reading and consuming their long-form content because that’s where you’re really gonna learn the most. Should we do some of that?
Mike: [00:45:23] Yeah. I mean, the two that I mentioned that are free, and we’ll list both free and paid because there is more value. Like, Precision Nutrition, for example, is a paid certification, a paid course that absolutely makes sense and is going to make you a significantly better coach.
There’s also free resources like Lyle McDonald’s website, bodyrecomposition.com or Martin Berkhan’s website, leangains.com that have incredible information on both of them. Lyle’s books, for example, are an example of paid material that’s gonna make you a significantly better coach, and it’s going to give you a more fundamental understanding, whether it’s on rapid fat loss, whether it’s on the ketogenic diet, but those are all places that’ll be beneficial.
Jordan: [00:46:17] Yeah. I remember I was so deep into Lyle’s work that when the Protein Book came out, I was so excited. I was like, “a whole book on protein? Oh my God, this is incredible.” And I don’t think I’ve used any of that information practically ever, but I was just so deep in the, “I need to learn everything about science” that I remember just face buried in the book of the Protein Book, being so joyous and happy to be learning about all the different amino acids and all that. I was just like, “Oh my God.”
So, Lyle McDonald’s website, bodyrecomposition.com, that’s like one of the OG places to be. I think that’s where I first saw JC Deen, was his comments in Lyle’s forums.
Mike: [00:47:11] Lyle and Martin going back and forth in Lyles forums in like 2009.
Jordan: [00:47:17] Lyle MacDonald. Martin Berkhan, leangains.com, Alan Aragon. Alan Aragon’s research review is only $10 a month and, by far, the consistent best resource of up-to-date nutrition research is extraordinary. Cannot recommend it enough.
And Precision Nutrition is a great resource, as well, but I think those three to four are probably the best nutrition resources you can find. You don’t really need much more than that.
I’ll say, Martin is clearly an intermittent fasting guy, but if you actually read his content, you’ll realize even though he’s an intermittent fasting guy, he says you don’t have to do this. That’s just what he has done and is sort of what he branded himself as.
For anyone who doesn’t know, if you’ve ever heard of 16/8 intermittent fasting, that’s Martin. Martin created that. Martin made it up. Many people have since stolen it, like verbatim, and repackaged it and sold it, but Martin made that up.
And he made it up when everyone thought he was out of his mind. And actually, I’m pretty sure Alan– one of the best parts about Alan is: they went back and forth and Alan was like, “no, you’re wrong. You need to eat more frequently.” And this is back in the early 2000s, when that was the state of the industry where it’s like, “you need to eat more frequently to stoke your metabolic fire.”
And Martin sent Alan the studies showing him, and Alan came out publicly and was like, “you know what? This guy is right. The industry’s mistaken.” And that was when a shift really started to take, and that’s when intermittent fasting really started to come out and a hundred percent credit to Martin for really popularizing it.
Mike: [00:49:11] I’d never heard that little story, which is so cool because people just get so married to their positions and have so much ego tied into their beliefs that almost no one is willing to or even wants to change their position. So that’s very admirable by Alan there. I’d never heard that story.
It’s also so hard to speak against the crowd, like Martin basically did for years. Especially when all the smartest people are saying the same thing, “you have to eat X number of meals a day” to continue to, the theory was basically to keep the thermic effect of food maximized because it was believed that it was based on meal frequency rather than total calorie intake, but for every one, and all the smartest people to think that and to be able to stand your ground based on the facts, based on the literature that you’re looking at, based on actually using your logic and not being persuaded by others, and then to do it in the face of negative feedback and people fighting back and people calling you an idiot, like it’s so impressive.
Jordan: [00:50:33] Yeah. Yeah. It’s extraordinary. It’s absolutely extraordinary.
Should we look at training resources now?
I would say strength training, resources you should study from — my first one’s got to go to Eric Cressey. Eric Cressey, I would call the Alan Aragon of the strength and conditioning world.
I actually remember the first time Eric heard Alan speak publicly. Eric came back to the gym and was talking about what Alan was saying and he was like, “man, that was the best presentation,” and it was the first time Eric had actually consumed any of Alan’s content. It was at a seminar, and I was just like, “my two favorite people are coming together. This is amazing.”
Eric is the epitome of the science and practice of strength training really coming together and doing such an extraordinary job of fusing the two. Any and all of his free material, any and all of his paid material is just incredible.
I’d say Mike Robertson is very similar to Eric in their styles. He’s tremendous as well. Joel Jamieson and also Mike Perry are two great coaches that lean more towards the mixed martial arts style of programming. It’s not just that, it’s strength and conditioning, but oftentimes with a more endurance focus.
So, if you want to learn more of the endurance side of things, the more cardiovascular side of things and how to incorporate improving work capacity, I would follow them. If you are more strength-focused, I would follow more Eric and Mike Robertson. Tony Gentilcore has a great blog, which I think does a very good job of essentially dumbing down a lot of the information that Mike and Eric put out, that’s more accessible for the people who might not be at an advanced level yet with their terminology.
I never focused too much on physique stuff, so I don’t know if you have anyone you’d recommend people follow for more muscle growth or physique-style training, Mike.
Mike: [00:52:47] I like all the names you mentioned. The thing that I was thinking in addition to following specific individuals is buy an anatomy book, or at the very least, like I did, buy those posters and just put them up on your wall because it’s gonna help.
You can briefly tell your Eric Cressey story here if you want to.
Jordan: [00:53:15] No, go for it.
Mike: [00:53:17] Well, I’m not just going to quote him, but you should know what the body is to know what the body does.
It’s just something that is annoying and a pain and you can kind of get around it, but knowing all the bones and muscles is going to be beneficial.
Jordan: [00:53:40] So when I interned at Cressey Performance, I was 21 years old and I thought that I knew everything about everything. And I was so excited to be interning at Cressey’s.
I had just finished my training time at Westside Barbell. So, I come in there, I’m like, yeah, just like sick powerlifter or whatever. I walk in and Eric trained at Southside Barbell in Connecticut, and that’s also a very intense powerlifting gym. And Eric is an outrageously strong powerlifter. I have a feeling that he knew my mentality coming in before I had even come in.
I had a feeling that he understood. He was just like, “okay, so this kid was just at Westside, like, okay.” So, I walk in and almost immediately he’s like, “go write all the muscles that attach to the scapula on the whiteboard.” And I was like, “Oh God damn it.” Like what kind of– how do you even make that kind of question up? How does that even enter your brain as an idea?
And I could only name like 9 of the 18 or so muscles that connect to the scapula. I remember just being demoralized immediately, which was, it turned out to be a great tool for me. I think some people might not respond well to that type of teaching. I responded phenomenally well to that type of teaching. Just bury me.
And I remember he walked up to me and he was like, “how can we know what the body does if you don’t know what the body is?” And then he was like, “when you go back to school, enroll in as many gross anatomy courses as you possibly can. Study kinesiology, anatomy and physiology, everything.”
And just in case people aren’t sure where to go, there’s a phenomenal website. It’s called exrx.net. And that website has a lot of different information in it, but I think the best information they have is the practical teaching they have for human movement.
They have all of the human muscles broken down, the bones, the joints, all of it broken down. And then they have actual videos and gifs that show every single movement and that break it down. It’s incredible. So, if you don’t have the ability to get a course or whatever, it’s all free exrx.net.
Every movement, every muscle, every tendon, every joint, every ligament, it’s all there. At the very least learn all the joints, learn the ankles, learn the knees, learn the hips, learn the back, and definitely the shoulders. I have a huge bias towards that, but I think the shoulders are the easiest to injure out of everything. Easiest to injure, easiest to irritate. It’s the joint that’s the most mobile and the least stable. Spend time learning those joints and the movement and the muscles associated with it.
I see this a lot. It’s actually funny, I was talking to my girlfriend ’cause she follows a bunch of different Instagram influencers, ’cause she’s not in the industry, which is great, it’s one of the reasons that I think we get along. She follows a bunch of the mainstream Instagram influencers and she’s like looking at their workouts and after speaking with me about programming a little bit, she started to look at them and be like, “these workouts don’t make any sense.” And I was like, “that’s exactly right. They just look cool.”
If you’re just programming exercises based on, you think it’s going to be difficult, that is a very, very poor reason to program exercise. You could follow that train of thought down a very dangerous cascade of events like, “well, if the exercise is difficult, it should be good,” or “if the exercise looks good on Instagram, it must be good.”
If you don’t have a legitimate reason in terms of muscle used or energy system used for every single exercise and every single rep of every single set, then you are wasting time.
You should know exactly why you’re doing every single exercise, every single rep scheme, every single set, every single rest period. You should know exactly why. And when asked and prodded, “why are you doing that?” You should have a very good answer for every single thing. And if you don’t, cool, study more.
Mike: [00:58:07] Yup. That’s exactly right. I think that’s a really nice group of resources that are also very comprehensive. We obviously also have open enrollment now in the Mentorship,
Jordan: [00:58:24] Oh, yeah, yeah. You wanna tell them the website, the Online Fitness Business Mentorship?
Mike: [00:58:30] fitnessbusinessmentorship.com.
Jordan: [00:58:32] Fitness business mentorship. And we’re just going to shamelessly plug this thing just because it’s really freaking good.
This is where we’ve taken all of the best information that we’ve learned over the years and we spent over a year building this thing. We have courses upon courses upon courses upon courses, teaching you how to do program design, how to do strength training program design, how to coach nutrition clients, how to build your website, how to set the website up, what should your website look like, how to be a better writer.
Mike: [00:59:08] Systems for your online coaching business.
Jordan: [00:59:10] Literally everything. Really, really, really explained in detail and explained in detail in a way that you can understand regardless of your level. You don’t have to have much experience to know what we’re saying.
If you do nothing, go look at the other resources that we’ve told you about, a lot of the free resources, but if you want, number one, a community of other coaches who are also in the process of building their business from the beginning, then we have that.
We have a community of coaches who are doing the same thing and they’re all helping each other, and we’d love to have you join that. And if you want accountability, and if you want, literally everything that we wish we had available to us in one place, rather than sort of having like, “okay, well I guess I’ll sort of go find this or go find that…”
We have everything that we would recommend at the highest level in one place. This is the Mentorship.
Mike: [01:00:06] That’s well said.
I have 20 minutes until Gary.
Jordan: [01:00:11] How many have we done so far?
Mike: [01:00:13] We’ve done three. We got two more.
Jordan: [01:00:15] Okay. Alright, perfect. That was Mike’s way of being like, “Hey, no random stories. Let’s stay on track.”
Mike: [01:00:24] No, I just– yeah, in the next 10 to 15.
Number four. Number four continues the trend of, “ugh, I don’t want to do this.”
Jordan: [01:00:39] The second podcast in this series is going to be a lot more fun, I think, for people to listen to in terms of like, “okay, yeah, okay, I can do that.”
But start with these.
Mike: [01:00:48] And that’s exactly why we set it up this way.
Jordan: [01:00:51] Yeah.
Mike: [01:00:51] Number four is to coach people for free.
Jordan: [01:00:56] Oh yeah. Go on it.
Mike: [01:00:58] Let me play devil’s advocate —
Jordan, why would you DEVALUE yourself as a coach who is very intelligent, and let’s say you’re earlier on in your career, you’re trying to accrue new coaching clients or trying to build your coaching business. Why on Earth would you take all those years of hard work and just piss them down the drain by coaching people for no money?
Jordan: [01:01:30] I really wish you used an accent or a different voice for that, when you asked that question.
Mike: [01:01:36] I don’t do accents, Jord. People are smart enough to know that that’s sarcasm. If this is the first episode you’ve listened to, well they’ve now heard me say that and talk about my poop. So, it was nice to meet you.
Jordan: [01:01:49] “Why would you devalue yourself?!” I hate when people say that. I’m not going to devalue myself. Your coaching has no value if you haven’t coached anybody yet. You’re not devaluing yourself. Someone else is taking their time to spend their time with you and you haven’t even really coached that many people yet.
It’s like, you have no value — not as a person, you have a lot of value as a person, but as a coach, get over yourself. Relax. I still coach people for free. I still do coaching for free.
If you’re operating under the assumption that you deserve to be paid a certain amount when you don’t have a successful business yet, then you are operating on a very faulty assumption, my dear friend. You do not deserve anything yet. What you should do is coach people for free, for any number of reasons, not least of which, like I said earlier, it’s going to help you be a better coach.
Mike: [01:02:47] That’s what people don’t realize is: receiving money from a client is only a piece of the benefit that you receive from that client.
Jordan: [01:02:58] 100%.
Mike: [01:03:00] You’re not devaluing yourself because when you coach someone for free, you’re gaining as much, if not more than they are gaining. And you can say, “well, how can that possibly be true?” Well, let me ask you, do you have comprehensive online coaching systems built out yet? “Well, no, I don’t.” Okay, well, do you know how you build those out?
You coach people and through the process of coaching and designing programs and interacting with clients, you are going to be able to create the best system for you when it comes to program design, when it comes to making files and storing client information and storing progress pictures and technique videos and all these things, you’re going to be able to create your system through the process of coaching. So that’s number one.
Number two, you’re going to get better as an online coach, right? You can be an amazing in-person coach, but there’s still some adjustment moving online when it comes to how to communicate with your client, meaning frequency, word usage, motivational interviewing, a number of things.
You’re going to get the practice of coaching online, which makes you better at helping clients through online coaching, which means in the future you’re going to be able to help your paid clients more.
Number three, and these are all important, but third and very important is the testimonials and referrals that will come from these clients are going to be the bedrock of your business.
If you do a good job helping someone achieve their goals, they are going to tell people. And there’s a very good chance that one or several of those people will become paid clients.
I used to be afraid that if I coached someone for free, and they told people how they made their amazing results, that those people would also expect to be coached for free.
That was a thing in the back of my mind. And in reality, the person who reached out to me for coaching through a referral never expected it to be for free. Whether they even knew that the other client was being coached for free or not, they just reached out to hear about my coaching, I gave them the pitch, and they either signed up or they didn’t.
But many of those individuals signed up as clients who were paying the full price. So, referrals as well as testimonials are the best sales tool and helping someone make incredible progress, whether you have progress pictures or not, but if you have progress pictures from that person and whatever their story is, whatever their genuine thoughts and feelings on working with you, whatever those are, that is going to lead to lead to other people wanting to sign up with you.
Jordan: [01:06:00] Yeah, that was a great clip. Definitely gonna cut that. That was great. I agree completely and I can hear people being like– because that thought crossed my mind too for a while and I was like, “well, if I coach this person for free, then what if their friend wants to be coached for free?”
And it turned out, number one, not a single person ever expected that. Ever. Out of the literally hundreds of people I’ve coached for free, not joking, hundreds of people I coached for free, never once has any of their hundreds upon thousands of referrals that I received, right? ‘Cause if you have hundreds of clients, you’ll get thousands of referrals. That’s how it works. It’s a spider web. If you, if you coach five people for free, then you’ll get tens upon tens if not over a hundred referrals from those initial clients.
That’s how it works. That’s why coaching people for free is so beneficial or one of the many reasons. The referrals multiply compared to it.
This is going to be a “too soon” joke. It’s not even a joke, but it’s like with coronavirus, if you have coronavirus, you could spread it to 10 people, right? If you have it without knowing. You have one client; you could get 10 or more clients from that one individual. Same type of a thing.
That’s how it’s spread. It’s so rapid. And not necessarily in a day, but you coach one client for six months and over the six months that one client could definitely get you 10 referrals. And it’s not even from like, “Hey, would you mind like putting in a good word?” It’s like, no, they just talk about it. People ask, “what are you doing?”
I can hear people being like, “well, but what if someone does say, well, I thought you were coaching so-and-so for free.” It’s like, “yeah, they’re a really good friend and I coached them for free, but you also have to understand this in my business and you know, that’s just how it works.”
Again, I’ve never had that situation ever, but it’s like, cool, you just tell the truth like “they’re my friend and they were helping me start my business and this how much it costs. If you can’t work with me, it’s okay. Totally fine.” And then they’ll still work with you.
I think you broke it down in a really good categories in terms of, okay, cool. So, you don’t have systems set up? Coaching people for free — help you set up your systems. You want more experience coaching people? Cool. This is gonna help you get more experience. If you don’t have a referral network — skip over experience, ’cause a lot of people like to skip over the whole experience part of coaching thing — if you don’t have a referral network and/or you don’t have your system set up, you do not deserve to be charging for your coaching it.
You build your systems and you build your referral network starting my coaching for free. And if you disagree, cool, that’s totally fine. But whatever.
Mike: [01:08:37] It works. And this is the amazing thing about the Mentorship, and I think I’ve talked about this before, but I used to operate from this belief that I knew that there was a toolbox that would help people lose fat, build muscle, get stronger, improve flexibility, get healthier. I knew that existed.
For whatever reason, I couldn’t conceptualize the business toolbox. And it took a while for you to convince me that it exists. I thought that it was kind of innate within certain people, whether or not they could build a business, but watching people in the Mentorship go from 0 to 20 coaching clients in a year’s time, which is much faster than either Jordan or I did it.
That showed me that these theories that we have, when applied, actually work. It’s not just like, okay, you’re lucky or you’re not, you have it or you don’t. It’s not magic. These concepts that we have tested, that we spent years conceptualizing and testing, when you apply them, they do work.
That’s just been so cool and so fun for me and just given me even more conviction in these ideas is watching them play out in reality.
Jordan: [01:10:01] That’s such a good point. I was talking with someone in the Mentorship the other day and they had asked me a question. They were like, “Hey, you know, I’m having trouble figuring out how to phrase this one part of my pitch when I get on the phone or the potential client, like, what do you recommend?”
And they said, “I’m trying this, I’m trying this, I’m trying this.” And I was like, “Oh, well, just phrase it this way instead.” And they were like, “well, that’s a million times better.” And they texted me later, they’re like, “Oh yeah, it worked. It worked really well.”
And it was funny because I told them very quickly, offhandedly how to phrase it instead. Like, “well, that was way better.” But part of the conversation that didn’t actually happen was I went through about three years of trying different ways of phrasing it to get that. And that’s what the Mentorship is, it’s literally everything that took us from 2011-2012 until now that we’ve learned.
So, it’s not that it’s a magic pill. It’s not like it’s going to just immediately build your business, but it will give you everything that we wish we knew from day one and that we’ve learned over the years to help you build a successful business that you love and enjoy and actually impacts people.
We’re not teaching you how to go viral, we’re not teaching you how to be a mega millionaire. We’re teaching you how to be a great coach with a great business that’s reputable and people really love. So fitnessbusinessmentorship.com. Shameless plug. Let’s go on to the last one.
Mike: [01:11:20] Not even shameless, just: plug.
Number five of the top 5 of the top 10 is to write articles on your website.
So, coach people in person, you created your website, educate yourself, coach people for free, and now this is the first step into start making content. And it’s not Twitter, and it’s not Instagram. It’s not the shorter form– which can’t make sense in some instances, right?
Like, beginning a positive feedback loop of making something, even if you get one like on something, you’re getting some feedback, whereas long form articles usually aren’t going to get immediate feedback. But the reason that we recommend long form articles first is– I mean, for many of the reasons that we mentioned when we were talking about creating a website.
One, you control your website. Another company doesn’t control your website. So, what’s there will exist there. Whatever you want to be there will be there and whoever wants to see it can see it.
Two, just the power of SEO. Jordan and I have both had so many new eyeballs as a result of articles that were written years ago that exists on website and it exists on YouTube and potentially podcast a little bit. But it doesn’t exist elsewhere.
So, the first pillar of content is writing long form articles.
Jordan: [01:13:10] Not to mention I think a lot of people might hear the, “well, you’re not gonna get the immediate feedback on social media,” and they hear it as a bad way, but it could also be a good thing. If you’re worried about the kickback from other people or coaches or you’re worried about what people might say about your content, you don’t have to worry about that with your website at first because you can write it, you can publish it, you don’t have to share it with anybody if you don’t want to. Literally, no one can know. We would recommend you do share it with people, ’cause ideally it’s going to be helping people. But the long form content that you write, these long form articles about deadlift technique or about setting up your macros or about foods that keep you full while you’re dieting or whatever it is.
And if you’re like, “how did he come up with those ideas?” Because I’ve been doing this for like a decade, but these long form articles — each article, if it’s 2000 words, you can make 3-4-5 Instagram posts, 10 tweets from it. There’s so many great pieces of small form content in longer form content.
And yes, it has the chance to SEO well, it has the chance to reach people for years to come, whereas an Instagram post you made last week is now irrelevant.
The long form articles are the in-person coaching of content creation, right? Long form articles are what you need to build your foundation of being a great content creator as coaching people in person is what you need to be the foundation of being a great online coach.
The long form articles are what you need to build your foundation.
Mike: [01:14:44] I love that.
Jordan: [01:14:45] We’ll let you go because you gotta coach G. Is there anything we want to end with?
Mike: [01:14:51] I don’t think so. That was fun episode. If you have any questions drop us an email.
Jordan: [01:14:59] And we hope to see you in the Mentorship. fitnessbusinessmentorship.com
Mike: [01:15:03] Absolutely. We would love to have you.
And with that, we will see you next week.
Jordan: [01:15:10] Have a good one.
