Mike: [00:00:04] Hello and welcome to episode 19 of the How to Become a Personal Trainer podcast. We’re your hosts, Mike Vacanti.
Jordan: [00:00:10] My name’s Jordan Syatt. And in this episode, we discuss the last five points of the checklist in which we discuss what you need to do if you want to build a successful online personal training business.
Mike: [00:00:23] Enjoy the episode.
Hello Jord.
Jordan: [00:00:33] Hello Michael.
Mike: [00:00:34] How are you?
Jordan: [00:00:36] Good man. Glad to see you.
Mike: [00:00:37] Good to see you too.
Jordan: [00:00:38] Been over a month now.
Mike: [00:00:39] Welcome back to the city.
Jordan: [00:00:41] Super glad to be back. Just drove about four hours. Just arrived here.
Mike: [00:00:46] And what is the first thing you are doing upon your arrival?
Jordan: [00:00:50] What time is it right now?
Mike: [00:00:51] It’s 10:43 PM.
Jordan: [00:00:53] 10:43 PM. Left Boston around 4:00 PM or so.
Drove back, unpacked the car. It’s a rental car and the place was closed and there was no place nearby where we could drop it off, so we put it in a 24-hour park facility, came right over to your spot. Podcast. Got to get it in.
Mike: [00:01:14] Jord showed up at my door mask on. Following protocol. Being Smart.
Jordan: [00:01:19] Made me a cup of coffee, like a good host.
Mike: [00:01:23] A good host. Not necessarily looking out for your circadian rhythms, but we’ve got to get the podcast out by Wednesday. We’re trying to get consistent with that.
Jordan: [00:01:31] I feel like we’ve missed two times out of the whole time we’ve been doing it. We’ve missed two Wednesdays, I think.
Mike: [00:01:36] That that sounds about right.
Jordan: [00:01:38] So, we’re doing well.
Mike: [00:01:39] Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan: [00:01:40] If you like the podcast so far, let us know in the comment section of the reviews on iTunes. We appreciate all of the 5-star reviews so far. Those have been tremendous and obviously we’d love more, but let us know in the comment section of the iTunes podcast what you like and maybe if you think there’s anything you’d like us to discuss, that as well.
Mike: [00:02:01] I love it. I also am curious of those things.
Jordan: [00:02:05] What’s been going on with you the last month? I saw you rearranged your computers.
Mike: [00:02:12] In quarantine. I did, I rearranged this room a little bit. I made a nice standing desk with two monitors about two weeks back. You listening can’t see, but I have six books stacked underneath the monitor to make it so my cervical spine is perfectly how I wanted it, with my eyes on the midpoint of the screen.
And yeah, I basically just hacked the solution to posture in general. And I have used the standing desk for approximately zero minutes since that day. Instead, I used my laptop to do all my work and I sit.
Jordan: [00:02:51] Very forward head posture.
Mike: [00:02:54] Yeah. Just a real rounded lumbar spine, some real sleepy glutes, kind of just rounding out through the T-spine, and then I push my face toward the screen as much as possible.
Jordan: [00:03:06] Smart. Smart.
Mike: [00:03:07] Yeah. Get the shoulders rolled forward, hands way out in front of me.
Jordan: [00:03:11] Exacerbate the pec minor tightness. Just really get that going. Shrug the shoulders up to the ears.
Mike: [00:03:18] Yep. That’s another good one. And if you can just envision this position, it’s the prime, like, that’s how our ancestors were and that’s optimal human function.
Jordan: [00:03:29] Quasimodo. Really how he liked to sit at the computer.
Mike: [00:03:33] Yeah. I think it’s best for life.
Jordan: [00:03:37] Someone’s going to take this clip and be like, “they’re actually recommending this.”
Mike: [00:03:40] “These guys are idiots.”
Jordan: [00:03:41] “They’re actually recommending this. I’m done with this podcast.”
Mike: [00:03:45] You know what, to be fair, I don’t know if anyone who listens to this podcast will do that based on the feedback that I’ve gotten.
I feel like the How to Become a Personal Trainer podcasts has one of the coolest average listeners that I’m aware of.
Jordan: [00:04:01] Yeah, I agree with that.
But there’s always one…
Mike: [00:04:08] So, to answer your question, yes, I rearranged the apartment a little bit since you’ve last seen it, and I will start using those. Not much else, man. Just business as usual. I’m coaching Gary on FaceTime. He’s been very consistent with workouts and made solid, consistent progress. So that’s been fortunate.
Jordan: [00:04:30] You have him doing hill sprints tomorrow, but he doesn’t know it yet?
Mike: [00:04:33] He doesn’t know it yet. Tomorrow morning, yeah. He’s not gonna be pumped.
Jordan: [00:04:36] That’s a good story, the first time I had him do hill sprints. Oh man, ‘ cause when I first took over for you, when I started my beginning of three years, we were at the summer house and there’s a huge hill outside, like massive, massive, massive hill.
And I had asked you, I was like, “do they have any weights there?” You’re like, “yeah, they’ve got a couple of dumbbells, but, honestly, just take him out to the hill and do some work.” And I, at that point — two things I struggled with: number one is I overestimated his pain tolerance.
I overestimated it, especially in regard to working out. Because, to be fair, I think he talked it up a little bit. I think he was like, “yeah, I’ll do whatever you say. I’m totally in. We’ve been busting hard for two years.” I was like, alright, yeah, he’s in it. The other thing is–
Mike: [00:05:28] You may have also overestimated my proclivity to program something like hill sprints for him. To take some of the blame.
Jordan: [00:05:39] The other thing that I overlooked was he, at that point in time, I was very much, “I want him to know that he’s working,” right? I had just started coaching him. I was super nervous. I still really didn’t believe I had the job yet.
I was still thinking that he was going to be like, “all right, Mike, you’re on again. This guy sucks. Kick him out.” And so, it’s almost like this hard thing to overcome, where you want your clients to feel like they’re working, you want them to get that stimulus, that soreness, right?
So, I was like, all right, we’re going to do 10 hill sprints, which is a lot. 10 sets of hill sprints is a lot. And this is an unbelievably steep hill.
Mike: [00:06:23] Yes. And not short. It’s probably at least 50 feet.
Jordan: [00:06:29] Yeah, I was going to say it’s probably like 30 yards. It’s long.
Mike: [00:06:34] It’s steep and long.
Jordan: [00:06:36] Steep and long, 30 yards, and I had him do 10 sets of hill sprints. And we took like two to three minutes rest in between each one, full recovery, but the next day his calves were the most sore I still believe they’ve ever been to this day. It took about three days for him to actually be able to walk again, and he was limping around the house like, “Jordan, what did you do to me?!!?”
That was probably the biggest training mistake I made with Gary. ‘Cause I was like, “all right, got to show him we’re in it. I don’t want to just make him go too easy so he thinks that he’s going to call Mike back and I’m outta here.”
Mike: [00:07:17] Personally, I like erring on that side, especially in a situation like that where you know you’re not going to hurt him.
Compared to spending months essentially under training, not giving him enough intensity or volume
Jordan: [00:07:31] It obviously depends on the client. If it’s a client that is super nervous to be working out, first time in the gym — go light. A lot of talking time, teaching them movement. By the time I pick Gary up, you’d already been coaching him for two years and he was very excited to begin training hard. From day one he was like, “I’m ready to go hard. Whatever you want to do, let’s do it.”
And he’s just the most competitive guy. He’s just like, “let’s go. Let’s go super hard.” I was like, “”all right, 10 hill sprints, let’s do it!”
And I also think, thinking back to it now, I think he was like, “just 10?” I was like, “yeah, that’s all you need.”
He’s like, “I could do 20.” I was like, “I think just 10 is good.”
Mike: [00:08:10] It’s so funny because I’m planning on doing five tomorrow for him.
Jordan: [00:08:14] Yeah. And I bet he’ll still be super sore from that.
But he’ll also be a little bit more apprehensive, I bet, too. Just always remembering that. I’ll never forget trying to watch him walk down the stairs in the morning after that. His calves were so unbelievably sore.
Mike: [00:08:32] I bet he’ll bring that up tomorrow.
Jordan: [00:08:35] Absolutely. You’re going to be “hill sprints,” he’s going to like, “noooo!”
Mike: [00:08:42] What else is on your mind? Back in New York.
Jordan: [00:08:45] Back in New York. Excited to be back in New York. I’m tired of this quarantine to be honest with you. I’m tired of it. And I said this to the Inner Circle earlier today, I did a Live with them and I’ve always sort of thought very highly of my ability to be optimistic and positive.
And it’s funny that when people hang out with you and I, they’re always like, “you guys never complain ever,” we’re just very positive, uplifting, encouraging. I’m getting to a point where, and that’s why I left Boston, I was just getting to the point where I was like, this is awful. I hate being in this one place. I’m ready for it to be done like everybody is.
I’m not saying I’m the only one, but I’m in a place where I’m starting to get to like, oof, I’m really not having fun at all. So, I’m ready for this to be over. And who knows when that’s going to happen, right? I’m just in the mindset of like, let’s get back to work, let’s get people out and about and moving and get people their jobs back and just living life. I’m just very ready for that to happen whenever it does.
Mike: [00:10:01] Yeah. I feel you. I’m the same. Thinking about what is within our control, what has helped me a lot is being outside as frequently as possible. Obviously away from people, mask on, but even going up to the rooftop one or two times a day, getting some sun on the skin, just moving around, doing some soft tissue work, even doing work up there or going for a walk, like a nice brisk walk, getting the blood pumping, fresh air. That has been a lifesaver for me.
Jordan: [00:10:38] Yeah. Just getting in some UV and everything.
Mike: [00:10:41] Yeah, because I know people who are literally, for quarantine, not leaving an apartment or not leaving indoors for weeks on end a single time, which on one end is incredibly impressive to me because I couldn’t actually do it to that extent. But it’s also like, I think a lot of people don’t realize what having bare feet on the grass does for you, what having the sun on your skin does, what being outside does for us. It’s necessary.
Jordan: [00:11:15] I literally stayed inside and didn’t step one foot outside for four days straight. And that was the longest I went. And then even other days, I would just go on the porch. I would jumper up on the porch, do pushups on the porch, but I never actually went off of that for almost a whole week. And that’s when I was like, “all right, I gotta get outta here.”
And we would only go to the grocery store once every 7 to 10 days. Just trying to do our part and everything, but at this point, if I stay inside all day, I’m going to go insane. The mental health aspect of this is very interesting, right?
It’s like, I need to get out. I need to get sun. Especially — this is interesting, it was easier to stay inside when weather was awful, when it was gray and rainy and cold. There were a couple of days where actually it hailed in Boston and I was like, “great, I’m inside. Doesn’t matter.”
As soon as it started to turn sunny and warm and I was inside, I was like, “this is awful.” When you can feel the warmth of the sun coming through the windows and you’re like, “I can’t go outside,” that’s the worst. It just feels terrible.
So yeah, just mentally ready. And again, I have no idea when it’s going to happen, but hopefully sooner than later. There are states opening up and hopefully they have good results with it. I have no idea.
Mike: [00:12:38] And not to hammer Corona cause that’s not what this podcast is about, but what’s your news intake been like recently?
Jordan: [00:12:48] So little. I think most people would be astonished at how little I watched news. My girlfriend will watch Cuomo talk every day for about 30 minutes to an hour.
She watches him every day just to get the updates from him. I’ll listen to anywhere between 5 to 15 minutes a couple times a week to hear what he’s saying, but otherwise, no FOX, no CNN, no mainstream media news, none of that. No left, no right, none of it. I just don’t watch any of it.
Just because I think both sides are unbelievably biased. Both sides have a narrative to drive home. Both sides are looking for ratings on the TV. So, for me, I really just don’t like to watch the news at all. I don’t even have a TV. So, I’ve been watching a new show on Netflix, which has been great.
It’s called Fauda, which means “chaos” in Arabic, but it’s a show about the Israeli defense forces and basically the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So, it’s a drama.
Mike: [00:13:57] Got it. So, it’s fiction based on the conflict. Cool. How many seasons?
Jordan: [00:14:02] I believe they’re going into their third season. We just started watching the second. Great show.
What about you? What about your news intake?
Mike: [00:14:17] I was following it very closely the first few weeks and even on multiple group threads with people smarter than me feeding me updates.
For the last few weeks, it’s been zero. Like, actually zero. So that’s part of why I was curious too, was just to get a, “what’s going on” a little bit from you, too.
Jordan: [00:14:39] Even when I listen to Cuomo, I immediately feel worse as soon as I listened to them talk about it. Immediately. Definitely the mainstream media, which I haven’t listened to.
We literally got to the apartment in Boston, my girlfriend turned on the TV, the news station was on for about 5 minutes and I was like, “no, turn that off,” because I immediately felt just a gut, like, “this is awful.” And it was over nothing I could control, nothing that I had any impact on, it was just feeding me the worst of the worst information.
And actually, speaking of Israel, with the news and everything, talking about how Israel is always being bombed and all this other stuff, which is just a lot of media nonsense, I would always be the one calling my Israeli family saying like, “are you guys okay?” And they’d laugh and be like, “yeah, we’re totally fine, it’s the news blowing stuff out of proportion.”
Now they’re calling me because New York is the biggest thing on the news. They’ll be like, “are you okay?” I’m like, fortunately yeah, I’m fine. There’s a lot of people who are very sick and there’s a lot of distress, but the news I think is blowing it up way worse.
Even just getting back to New York tonight, there are people out. People are out.
Mike: [00:15:51] Well, first of all from what I’ve gathered, being outside and moving around and exercising with a mask on and staying away from people is recommended. And yesterday it was over 70 degrees and sunny and over on the Hudson River, on the West Side Highway, there were a lot of people out.
Most people wearing masks, being smart, staying away from each other. But yeah, it seems to be trending that way.
So, should we dive in?
Jordan: [00:16:29] Let’s get into it.
Mike: [00:16:30] So we’re talking about the second half of the 10-item checklist. So, if you want to become an online trainer, what exactly should you do?
Jordan: [00:16:45] And we did the first 5, not last episode, but the episode before that. Because last episode we spoke with Marci, and the episode before, that was the first 5, the checklist.
Mike: [00:16:53] Exactly.
And just a refresher, if you didn’t listen to that episode:
Actually, coach people in person is number one. Number two is create your website. Number three is educate yourself with internships, books, we listed some courses, various resources. If you haven’t listened to the episode, check it out. Number four, coach people for free online. Number five, write articles on that website that you created.
So now we’re going to hit items 6 through 10
Jordan: [00:17:25] And we really expand on each of those in the first episode, so if you haven’t listened to that yet, please, please go listen to that.
It’s one of those things where, let’s say you had a two part podcast series on everything you needed to know for fat loss and your clients saw the bullet pointed list of calories, consistency, protein, and they’re like, “all right, well I know that,” when they didn’t listen to it, but you know, you went way more in detail on all of them and they didn’t listen to it, you’d be like, “what are you doing? Go listen to it!”
Please go listen to that. We know it might sound a little bit boring, but we outlined a lot for you to really get the foundation of what you need if you want to become an online personal trainer.
Mike: [00:18:07] Yes.
Jordan: [00:18:08] So, number six.
Mike: [00:18:10] Number six is: start an email list and collect emails.
Jordan: [00:18:16] Okay. All right. This is a big one.
Mike: [00:18:18] This is a big one.
Jordan: [00:18:19] This is a big, big, big one. Do you want to start off with it?
Mike: [00:18:22] Why don’t you start off with a quick version of the mistake you made around email lists?
Jordan: [00:18:28] Little story? All right.
So, I’m very big on not regretting stuff. I don’t think there’s much in my life that I regret.
And as soon as I say that, I’m immediately flooded with things, “you regret this, you regret this, you were bad here, you were a terrible person here,” all these regretful memories that come back. So, I’m happy to say I don’t regret very much in my life and especially not with business.
One of the biggest regrets I have at business, one of the few and huge regrets that I have with business is not starting my email list immediately once I started my website. And there were a couple of reasons for why I didn’t. The first one is, number one, I didn’t understand how important it was. I was too ignorant to understand how important it actually was. The other reason was laziness. I knew there was going to be time and effort required to build an email list — way less than I actually thought it was going to be, it doesn’t take a long time to build an email list at all — but I knew there was gonna be time and effort and I was just like, “eh, no, whatever.” Very sloth-like of me. I’m not very happy about it.
Mike: [00:19:37] One of the seven deadly sins.
Jordan: [00:19:38] It was very sloth-like.
I’d say those were the major two: I didn’t understand how important it was and the other one, I was just lazy about it.
I also ignorantly thought that if I had a website that people liked and enjoyed, that if they ever needed anything, they’re just go to my website.
Part of the ignorance of this is not understanding that sometimes you’ll want to get people’s attention even when they aren’t actively thinking about you.
You’ll want to inform them of something, you’ll want to get their attention regardless of whether or not they love your website. And I didn’t understand the power of that.
I remember being told left and right from Eric Cressey, JC Deen, Roger Lawson, everybody: “get an email list, get an email list, get an email list.”
All tremendous guys in the fitness industry and all mentors of mine. And I was like, “no, no, no, no, no.” So. I wrote an article, and if you Google search “how to stay full on a calorie deficit” right now, I believe my article comes up top three, maybe even top one — how to stay full in a calorie deficit.
I wrote this article. It took me an unbelievable amount of time to write this article. The writing is not very good, but it’s outrageously detailed with so many ways to stay full in a calorie deficit.
When I first published it, I was still getting maybe 20-11 views on a good day for an article when I published it and I shared it on every social media platform that I could. So not many views at all.
I published this article expecting it immediately to go viral. Nothing happened. Very few views, probably even less than usual. Six months goes by and all of a sudden, my website crashes. I’m like, “what is going on?”
And I contact my server, I had Blue Host at the time, and they were like, “you’re getting a lot of traffic to your site right now. We’re going to upgrade your whatever so your website is up.” And I was digging around, I was trying to find what happened, and I realized an author from Lifehacker shared that article, how to stay full in a calorie deficit.
This is six months after it was already published. And in that day, I got 24,000 page views to my website — which, number one, was outrageous at the time. It’s still phenomenal if you’re getting 24,000 views to an article in a day. It was six months after it was published, which is going back to the first episode of this series, why it’s so important to write long form content, not to mention how many people are searching for that, and it comes up number one on Google now, or top three at least.
Either way, I remember getting a text from Roger Lawson saying, “bro, you must be getting so many emails on your email list right now.” And I remember getting that email sitting on my couch in my college dorm room, my roommate, Jeff Luken, in the other room, no clue what I’m doing.
He worked so hard. He was an engineer, a super nice kid, but he had no idea what I was doing, like all my time on my computer, and just being like, just devastated.
And I replied, I think I had a flip phone at the time and I was like, “I don’t have an email list.” And he was like, “what?!?” And I immediately got one set up, but I regret it because if you have 24,000 people visiting your page, the amount of people, especially at that time —
Mike: [00:22:55] Yeah, you would have had a lot of emails.
Jordan: [00:22:59] Thousands and thousands of emails from that.
Mike: [00:23:02] And one email isn’t equal to one Facebook page like, or one Instagram follower. I don’t even know what the exact conversion is, but when you send an email, the majority of the people on your email list are at least seeing it in their inbox. Whether they click on it, whether they read it is another story, but it’s going there. There isn’t an algorithm within email service providers or inboxes yet that forces you to not see that at all.
So, yeah, that’s a bad beat, but you only had to make that mistake once.
Jordan: [00:23:41] Made that mistake once and immediately made my email list after that.
And you know, I’ll say, some people, the email world, will say, “email’s the most important because sales happen through email,” and the social media world will say, “social media is the most important,” but just like everything — both hold true. Both are better than either alone.
Generally speaking, you will make more sales via email than you will on any social media post, but the more active you are on social media, the better engaged your audience, the greater percentage of sales you’ll make from your email list when you actually do sell.
Mike: [00:24:16] As well as: the number of people who follow you and like you, that you can ask to sign up for your email list.
Jordan: [00:24:27] I think one of the major bonuses of an email list — and we can sort of go into why people should get it now –number one is a big thing I’ve said for a while, and someone much smarter than me said this, I don’t remember who it was, likely Pat Flynn, considering he’s the smartest guy I’ve ever met in my life.
Mike: [00:24:46] Yeah, Pat’s the man.
And about a month ago, we had Pat on the podcast and talked about sales and email lists specifically for the entire hour. So, listen to that episode if you want to go deeper on emails or just hear Pat talk.
Jordan: [00:25:02] But basically to the effect of, “don’t build your house on someone else’s lawn.”
And everyone in the Mentorship has heard me say this a million times over, but if you have all of your presence, all of your attention on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, whatever it is, you’re basing the attention that you have on another company and a social media company, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, whatever.
And changes in the algorithm, which we see all the time, changes in what people use, god forbid, something goes down, you have no control over your audience there. You have complete control over your email list. And someone might be like, “well, what if the email company goes down?” You can always be saving backups of your email list so you always have it no matter what.
You just download that file and you have everyone on your email list always, which you should always be doing. But you always have control over your email list, you can contact them at any point in time. In an Instagram post, maybe someone’s not going on Instagram, maybe they’re not seeing your posts, whatever it is. With email it’s always going to be in their inbox. They’re always going to be in their inbox. So, you have much more control of what they see when you want them to see it.
And along those lines, if you’re trying to get more engagement on your posts and you build up your email list, anytime you publish, you can send an email, “Hey, just publish this article, I just published this video, go watch it,” and immediately you’ll get more people going there.
There’s a lot of benefit to having an engaged email list.
Mike: [00:26:28] Yeah, absolutely.
Some practicals here: aWeber and MailChimp are the two email service providers we recommend. One note: and actually, the April challenge in the Mentorship was collecting email addresses, creating a lead magnet to have people sign up for your email list and acquiring new emails.
Point number six here isn’t, “hammer your email list with daily emails.” It’s not, “dedicate 70% of your content creation time towards crafting the perfect email and writing a lot of emails,” because you actually don’t want to spend a ton of time writing emails when you’re first building your list.
And the reason being, when you have 13 people on your email list, that means only 13 people, at most, are going to see that very nice email that you’re writing. So instead maybe put it on your website where more than 13 people will end up seeing it.
In the early stages it’s: get your email list created so that people can sign up and join on your site. Begin building that list and then in the future, as it gets bigger, you can use it in different ways. One, like Jordan just described, to push people to various platforms when you make a new piece of content, to deliver value straight through email, to keep in touch with people, to sell. You can do many things, but just to hammer home, the point here is get it created and get it started and then start acquiring new emails.
Jordan: [00:28:00] Yeah, and Mike said that perfectly.
Again, collecting emails is not the same as spending much time writing emails, right? So, creating a lead magnet, creating something that people would want — some people would do eBooks, manuals, whatever, we discuss a lot of these different options in the Mentorship, but creating a lead magnet for people to want to sign up for your email.
This is really important because some people will make a lead magnet and it’s “free,” and no one will sign up for it — speaking from personal experience, by the way — and they’re like, “I don’t know why they’re not signing up for it. It’s free.”
Well, no, it’s not free. They’re paying for it with their email address. They’re paying for this by giving you access to their inbox. It’s not free. And so, you are charging them access. You are charging them access to them.
People get enough spam in their inbox nowadays, they’re pretty protective over their inbox. Less so than they used to be, but they’re protective over their inbox, and so you have to make something really good, very valuable for them to want to sign up for your email list, and then from there you can contact them.
I would say building up your email list is like building up your strength foundation, right?
It’s building up the foundation of strength, building up your squats, building up your deadlifts, building up your pushups, building up your planks. Getting emails is your foundational strength. Once that’s reached enough of a strength foundation, then you can start going into different variations. You can start doing deadlifts vs chains and bands, you can start doing cleans, you can start doing snatches, you can start doing a close-stance, low box, safety bar squats if you want, whatever it is. There’s a bunch of different options, but you can’t do any of that stuff unless you have the foundation and technique first. And getting the emails is that foundation.
Mike: [00:29:46] Number seven: post content.
So, we actually recently did another podcast together. We were guests on there and the term “Instagram coaches” came up a couple times, not really referring to us, but in general, Instagram coaching,
Jordan: [00:30:10] That was with Andrew Coats and Dean Guedo.
Great guys. I forget the name of their podcast, but Andrew Coats, Dean Guedo, amazing podcast, very much recommended.
Mike: [00:30:20] We had a great conversation with them too. That was the first time that I had met them, both really good dudes and they mentioned– I don’t think they were actually surprised, but it was along the lines of, they were saying that they maybe thought their listeners would have thought that the advice coming from us and really anyone with an Instagram following would be that that is THE place, and they were pleasantly surprised, it seemed, when we were recommending long form content as the basis of your content, stressing the importance of a website, even in this era of social media, making articles and the benefits that come from creating those, not only from a learning perspective, but from the long tail and SEO upside that is going to come with creating a lot of good long form articles. So, there’s a very specific reason here that “post content” is number seven on this list and not number one, two, three, four, five, et cetera.
Jordan: [00:31:35] That’s a great distinction. And to clarify — posting content, we’re talking about social media and we’re making the distinction between number five, long form articles and number seven, shorter form content on social media — TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, small Facebook posts.
These are clearly important. I would say they’re the isolation exercises of your strength training routine. They’re the bicep curls, they’re the face pulls, they’re the triceps pressdowns, they’re the calf raises, they’re the side planks. They’re the exercises that you would never make the first exercise of the day. You’d never make them the deadlift.
Mike: [00:32:28] Jordan’s giving some disrespect to the biceps curl in this episode.
Jordan: [00:32:32] By the way, I’ve been doing a Mike Vacanti special three times a week arm specialization program. Been working wonders.
Mike: [00:32:39] And your biceps look great.
Jordan: [00:32:40] They look great.
Mike: [00:32:42] But yes, the analogy holds true.
Jordan: [00:32:44] Point being — most people, when they decide they want to grow and when they want to be an online personal trainer.
Hopefully no one’s being like, “I want to be to an Instagram coach,” when people are like, I want to be an online personal trainer and build an online business, they treat social media, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, whatever, as the main compound movement when the reality is they should be treating long form articles, podcasts, YouTube videos as the compound movement.
And the reason I use these analogies is because any coach worth their salt, presumably you, would never tell your client to start off their workout with cable overhead triceps extensions–
Mike: [00:33:31] 200 reps of calf raises.
Jordan: [00:33:33] Right. It doesn’t make sense, but a lot of people are going hard, “all right, going to go nuts on Instagram, go nuts on Facebook, nuts on Twitter,” and again, something is always better than nothing. So, in the same way if you have a client who like, “listen, I’m not gonna work out. If I can’t start off my workout with bicep curls and calf raises and shoulder raises and shrugs and all this stuff,” like, fine, whatever. At least you’re doing something.
But in your heart, you’re like, “okay, they would be getting way better results if they were starting with squats or deadlifts or bench press or pushups or chin up, something like that. So, posting content, clearly very important, but contrary to what many gurus and masterminds will tell you, it’s sort of like the rapid fat loss where you might get quick results very quickly, but you’ll burn out very quickly.
It’s not very sustainable unless you’re one of the very few people who take off from the very beginning. But even then, I have a number of people who I’ve seen over the last three to four years take off very quickly on social media — way quicker than most ever have — and their business spikes up and then radically drops once it gets difficult.
Mike: [00:34:39] Yes.
And I would say even outside of those very fast growth situations, I know many coaches and many people in the fitness industry with hundreds of thousands, if not more followers, who are struggling to “convert,” are struggling to build their business on the coaching side or on whatever the revenue model is.
Those hundreds of thousands and upper hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers aren’t converting into business. So, in our opinion and based on what we’ve seen, that shouldn’t be the base.
Jordan: [00:35:26] So funny. Number seven is post content and we just told you why you shouldn’t be posting so much or focusing on it.
Listen, it is very important and we would like to see you doing it consistently. That was literally the first challenge that we had the Mentorship do is posting content like that.
So, let’s give some practical advice. When you are posting content ideally on at least a four to five times a week basis, what do you think, Mike, should start off with when people are posting content? What’s the take home? What’s the major impact thing they should be doing with their content?
Mike: [00:36:00] The biggest thing is something that you’ve talked about before and I actually just remembered today a story from when I was editing my very first lead magnet before I even knew it was a lead magnet. I had written this beginner’s fitness guide, this 17-page manifesto of what I thought about fitness and believed to be true based on what I had read and experienced myself.
And I had my dad proofread it and he said he loved everything about it, he was very complimentary and just told me to go through and change all of my “I’s” to “you’s.”
Jordan: [00:36:41] You’re dad said that? Smart man, smart man.
Mike: [00:36:45] And I didn’t even understand what he meant. He literally showed me in a sentence. I was like, “Oh, okay.”
So, I went and I rewrote the entire thing, where it made sense, and changed 80% of the I’s to you’s to make it not about me but about the person who is reading it.
And to be honest, I don’t do that in a great deal of the content I’ve made just because a lot of the content I’ve made over the years has been more journalistic and more just me creating for reasons other than trying to get clients or even some trying to help people, but all of my content that has been the best received, that has helped people the most, that people have brought up to me on a recurring basis consistently is you-focused.
It’s focused on the type of person who is trying to make fitness progress and it is a helpful, it’s nailing a specific subject that is going to help that person — whatever it is, get stronger, learn how to weigh their food properly, learn how to count their macros, whatever it is. It’s focused not on me, but on them.
Jordan: [00:37:59] Yeah. That’s such a huge, huge point that so many people overlook it. If you want to do a quick self-audit of your social media, go through your last 10 Instagram posts and look at the captions. And number one, many people will probably have captions that are 12 words or less, which is ridiculous. They should be longer captions. But either way, how many times in your captions do you say the word “I,” and how many times in your caption do you say the word “you?”
If you’re saying the word “I” more than you’re saying the word “you,” then clearly, you’re talking more about yourself than you are about the person who’s reading your content.
And I think it’s, it’s very tempting, as an author, when you’re writing one of these things and you’re expecting many people to read it, or at least more than one person to read it, to say, “you all,” “y’all,” “we,” “us,” speak in plurals, but something I’ve always said is that no one’s reading your posts in a group. They’re not crowding around a phone being like, “oh look, Jordan posted this. Let’s all get together and read it.” They’re reading it on the toilet, they’re reading it in their cubicle at work, they’re reading it while they’re in traffic and at a red light, they’re reading it by themselves. They’re by themselves and they’re reading it one-to-one. So, whenever you’re writing a caption, speak to that one individual.
I literally just in my post today, if you go read my caption, you’ll see very clearly now that I use the word “you” and I even said somewhere in it to the effect of, “by the way this is something everyone struggles with. You and me both.” I said that. I was like, “you and me both,” saying it’s just two of us.
So, when you’re reading that caption, it feels like I’m speaking directly with you, we’re having a discussion. Super, super important in order to make more of an impact that feels personal to the people reading it.
I would say the other thing that’s probably the most important, has had the most impact on helping build my social media and having a great impact positively to help people is just answering the most common questions. Which are usually, by the way, the posts that a lot of coaches don’t want to make because they say things like, “well, it’s already been said before,” you know? “Everyone knows that.”
No, they don’t know that. “Everyone’s already said it. I don’t want to copy.”
And it’s like, okay, well that’s stupid. You can either send someone else’s post to your potential client or send your own post to your client. You have to remember you’re in a bubble. You are in a fitness bubble. You’re seeing posts from all these fitness content creators and you’re seeing so many different types of content that so many different people are making. Most people are not seeing that stuff. So, if your clients are asking you like, “well, I don’t know how much protein to get.” “Oh, what foods have high protein?” “Well I’m eating a lot of peanuts. Peanuts have high protein.” These are all things that you can answer in your own posts.
So, it’s literally just answering the most common questions and mistakes, myths, fallacies, facts. Answering the most common things that you possibly can. Not to impress other coaches, not to show other coaches how much you know, not to show them how expansive your vocabulary is, not to talk about upper lower cross syndrome, talk about anterior pelvic tilt, talk about teres major, teres minor, none of that stuff. Talk in the language that you would use with your clients and speak to each one individually, directly answering their questions. And that is the best way to make great, high-impact posts.
Mike: [00:41:37] Very well said. And post content could be a five-part series in and of itself with which platforms to focus on, frequency, video, infograph, caption.
Jordan: [00:41:50] Yeah. We have hours upon hours upon hours of that and the Mentorship as well.
Mike: [00:41:54] Yeah. I think that the only other point in the “post content” realm that I have here that we talked about before was that while you should be consistently making your own content, sharing other people’s content isn’t a bad idea.
Jordan: [00:42:14] Absolutely. Is this the next one on the list?
Mike: [00:42:16] It’s not. It’s just a sub-part of posting content.
Jordan: [00:42:21] It’s so funny, this is actually really what helped build my business — sharing other people’s content from the beginning.
One thing I learned very early on is number one, most coaches don’t want to share other people’s work because they’re scared that if someone finds someone else’s work, then they’ll lose that business. Like, that person will go to that other person.
And first and foremost, maybe they will. Not a big deal.
Number two is people often forget who said something, but they remember where they got something.
So, if you share an article like, “Oh, great article by,” I used to do this with Eric Cressey all the time, multiple times a week.
“Great article via Eric Cressey posted on my Facebook. People, go read it.” And people would forget who wrote that article. People would forget Eric wrote it. But they would always know that I was posting great articles on my social media to go look at. They always knew I was going to post Eric, they always knew I was going to post Tony Gentilcore, they always knew I was going to post Dean Summerset, they always knew I was going to post Nia Shanks, they always knew I was going to post great people writing great articles, and rather than put all of these different websites in their RSS feed, they would just come to my Facebook page every day and see what I was posting.
Not to mention, obviously you build relationships with people that you’re posting. Tag them in it. If you’re sharing Eric Cressey’s article tag, Eric Cressey in it. If you’re sharing Mike Vacanti’s, his article tag Mike in it. That’s why I actually got my internship at Cressey Performance and I didn’t even have to do an application.
I just emailed Eric after a year and a half of sharing his articles every week like, “Hey, could I do an internship with you?” He was like, “yeah, yeah, sure, no problem.” And it’s one of the most prestigious, difficult internships to get, but because he’d seen me pop up so many times sharing his work, he just let me in.
Mike: [00:44:09] That’s awesome.
Number eight. This isn’t really an action item, but something to keep in mind — and I’m sure we’ll have some actionable takeaways — but don’t take your current network for granted. Your family, your friends.
I think a lot of people think that when they’re starting their online business, they want to be an online personal trainer, that they’re going to go out into this vast wilderness and acquire new audience and build this audience of fitness enthusiasts who are gonna follow them and sign up with them. And that’s how it’s all going to begin.
When in reality, the first people reading your website, your first clients, the first people who are liking your stuff, who are leaving comments are almost certainly going to be people that you already know.
And the one actionable takeaway here is: try to help people for free.
When I was still an accountant, before I even had made the official jump, I was doing program design and I was helping friends with their workouts. I was helping friends with their nutrition. And not even because I heard it on a podcast or because it was an idea of something to do, but just because it’s what I was interested in.
And you might already be doing this, but those actions just because that’s what– I wasn’t even trying to be a good person, I was just that into fitness that I wanted to be helping those people. Many of those people either spread the word of what I was doing or I’m sure a few of them purchased “Look and Feel Better,”
There were dividends down the road, whether directly or not. But yeah, just not taking for granted the people who are already in your life when you’re getting started.
Jordan: [00:46:12] Yeah.
I remember the number of people who’ve come to me like, “Oh, I don’t have a big audience. I only get like 30 likes on a post.”
I’m like, imagine if you had 30 clients. If you’ve got 30 clients, $200-$300 a month, that’s an incredible business. People see they’re not getting hundreds of thousands of likes and they’re like, “ah, it’s just, it’s not worth it” or “I’m not going to get any whatever.” It doesn’t take that many people in order to really have a significant income and a successful business.
People massively overestimate it. And yes, having a bigger audience, more engagement helps with that because you have more opportunities. But so many people overlook the 20-30-40-50 people closest to them in their network. Those are the people that were the foundation of my business, I’m sure they were the foundation of your business.
I always think of a referral network. That’s what a great small business is built off of, a strong referral network. And I always think of it as you take a pebble, one small pebble, you throw it at a windshield and the windshield spider cracks a little bit in four or five different directions.
That one small pebble is your first client. Just one person, one like, one comment, one person looking at your stuff that doesn’t even like or comment on it, never messages you, just one person who happens to reach out and they sign on. Boom. That one person over the course of a year will probably lead to three to five other clients if you do a good job with them.
Then each of those three to five clients, boom, another pebble, spiders, three to five from each of those, boom, three to five from each of those. This is how it builds and expands and spiders and you build a tremendous referral network from a good small business. If you overlook that one, then you never get the opportunity to build a great business.
Mike: [00:48:11] Yeah. That’s a great analogy. I think that’s sticky. I think that’ll hit home for people
Jordan: [00:48:17] “Made to Stick.” Get the book, Chip and Dan Heath.
Mike: [00:48:19] It really ties in with number four too, which is “coach people for free” because many of these individuals, if you want that pebble, that pebble doesn’t have to be someone paying you $300 a month for coaching.
That pebble can be someone who you went to high school with who is getting married in six months and wants to lose 30 pounds, but literally cannot afford coaching. And so, you help that individual for free and on their wedding day, “oh, you look so great.” “Oh, remember Jordan from high school?” “Yeah!” “He’s a personal trainer and he actually helped me do this. He does it online. He helps people from all over the world. How cool is that?” “What’s his website? What’s his Instagram?” That’s where those pebbles come from, especially when you’re first getting started. Because when you’re first getting started, time is your asset.
Jordan: [00:49:14] That’s right.
Mike: [00:49:14] And you can use that time to help people for free.
Jordan: [00:49:18] Those pebbles for me were college roommates, old high school friends, and it’s so funny because I was posting multiple times every day on Facebook and Fitocracy and Twitter and all these things and I remember going home from college. I remember we always used to have these house parties in high school and in college. Those were great. Those were super fun.
And going home during a college break, getting together at a friend’s house, Kristin Richards, she always had the best house parties, and my buddy from high school who I sort of stopped talking to in college, but every time we got together at a party, it was just like we left off like we saw each other yesterday, whatever it was.
And he was like, “man, I’m loving all your Facebook posts!” And I was like, “dude, you’ve never liked one of them. Not one.” One of my first clients was a girl named Anna. She never liked my posts. She was one of my first paying clients. Another one, Becca, one of my first paying clients. My roommate, Dan, he was one of my first paying clients.
These are pebbles. And actually, with Dan, he was one of my first paying clients, but I made him a deal where I was like, “if you follow this to a tee, after 12 weeks, I’ll give you the money back.” He followed it for 12 weeks, I gave him the money back. I made $0 from him, but I got so many people as a result of the testimonial. His girlfriend became a client of mine.
Actually, I don’t think they’re together anymore, but his girlfriend at the time became a client of mine because of how well he was doing.
And just so people know, I took on someone for free six days ago. Six days ago, I took a client on for free. This is something Gary talks about — you’re never too big.
Once you start thinking you’re too big, once you “deserve” like, “Oh, you’re devaluing my service,” or whatever it is, once you’re too big for your britches, you’re losing. And especially if you’re not making money yet, you’re not taking on paid clients yet, you haven’t deserved to yet, you haven’t earned it yet.
And even when you do, it still makes sense sometimes to take people on for free.
Mike: [00:51:17] Yeah. We’re very aligned there. That ties in with number ten, so we’ll pick up on that point.
Number nine is an interesting one, and something that I hadn’t really thought of: write down what your program includes and doesn’t include.
Jordan: [00:51:39] This one I didn’t really understand the importance of until I started coaching more coaches, started helping coaches either in the Mentorship or just coaches in general help, build their business. And I fortunately did it very early on at the suggestion of JC Deen, actually. I created a manual, a PDF, if someone inquired for coaching in the early on, basically mimic mimicking with JC Deen had. Which was basically: what I required from all of my clients, what my clients could expect of me, and what they could expect of the program.
And this is something that I had laid out before I really started working with many people. And what it did was –, and I didn’t know it at the time, but looking back, it really helped me get a very solid pitch for my coaching program.
Most people, when they’ve never coached or they’ve only coached a couple of people, they’re like, “I don’t know what my program has. I just want to help. I just want to coach you.” So, they get on the phone or whatever it is, and they’re like, “yeah, yeah, what’s your goal? Okay, well, I’ll help you do that.”
It’s like, okay, well, how many weeks is it? How much is it going to cost? What’s accountability look like? How often should I email you? How am I going to email you? Is it going to be in a Microsoft Word document is in a spreadsheet, how are you doing check-ins? Write down everything about your program.
And the cool part is you get to make this up because it’s your coaching program. Are you gonna check in with them every day? Are you going to check in with them five days a week? Are you going to check in with them one time a week? Can they send you videos for exercise technique? Or are you going to do that via Skype? Or are you not doing that at all? Are you going to give them a warmup to do?
Write down everything about your program so you know exactly what it is, keeping in mind ahead of time that it’s going to change 5,000 times throughout your career. It will change as you grow, as your business grows, as your beliefs change, as you become a better coach. This will change, but you must have an idea of exactly what your program is.
How long it’s going to be, what they’re going to pay, what they can expect from you, what you can expect from them, and have this very clear because that way when you get on the phone with them and you start talking to them, you have a guide to go off of.
And what people are looking for, they’re not just looking for a program. They’re looking for structure. They’re looking for, “tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
I don’t like giving lines like this, sort of like with “pickup” stuff where people are like, “all right, well just give me a line to say to a girl and then she’ll love me.”
That’s not how it works. It’s not a line, it’s who you are. But I’m going to give you a line right now that will help put your potential clients at ease during the pitch. And I’m hesitant to do this because I know people are going to use it and they’ll use it inappropriately and incorrectly and wrong and it won’t work.
This only works if you actually mean it, if it’s true. And the line that has helped me a lot over the years is to the effect of,
“I’m going to take away all of the guesswork for you. I’m going to tell you what to do, when to do it, and exactly what needs to be done to help you get the best results possible. You are the one who needs to put in the work, but I will take away the guesswork. I will give you the plan. All you need to do is execute.”
That immediately takes a massive amount of stress off people. And I used to ask people on a call. After I gave that little line, I’d say, “do you feel less stressed now?”
And immediately be like, “yes, I feel like a weight’s been lifted off my shoulder.” And when I started asking people that and getting that response, it was very telling to me because what it means is that there’s so much out there they just don’t know what to do. They don’t know what program to try. They don’t know what to believe.
When you just say, “I will tell you precisely what to do, how to do it, when to do it, everything will be done, you will not have to guess. You just execute on what I tell you.” Boom. They absolutely love it.
And you have to follow through on that. You can’t just say that and then not follow through. But the only way for you to say that and mean it is for you to know exactly what you’re going to be giving them. And early on if that means check-ins every single day, cool. I’m gonna check in via email with you every day. Or if you want them to check in, “you have to check in with me by 12:00 PM Eastern Monday, Wednesday, Friday.”
I’m just making this up. You make it up. Write it down on a piece of paper, get very clear about it. And that way when you get on the phone and you have someone asking about your program, you can tell them exactly how it’s structured. And then, by the way, if they say something like, “well, you know what about like, I can’t really do by 12:00 PM because I got to drop the kids off at this…”
“Listen, I’m not going to care if you get back to me by 6:00 PM, I just care that you email me every day.” This is where you can be a little bit more lax. You don’t have to be like a drill Sergeant, “No! I said 12:00 PM! It must be 12:00 PM!” It shows them that you actually have a plan, that you have a structure, and then from there you can figure out what needs more leeway.
Mike: [00:56:27] Yeah. One other benefit is that if you don’t specifically outline what you’re offering, each of your clients is going to — and it depends on the client type, right? Like some clients have a good idea in mind of what it is they want, and that’s why you having something specific that you offer is so important because if your first few clients all have a different idea of what they want, you’re going to be slowed down, you’re going to be made inefficient as a coach.
If you can just think, okay, client one, their free day is Thursday. So, every Thursday they want to have a one-hour check-in call with you and you agreed with that during the signup process because you’re in a little bit of a place of scarcity and you wanted clients.
So that’s client one. Client two, they’re going to email you every single day with their weight and their measurements and everything. Oh, but you have to update their program once a week instead of once a month, because they get bored really easily and they need new exercises every single week, starting on Wednesdays because they work a certain job where Wednesdays is when they need their new program.
And then client three has some other set of specifications. You’re going to have a handful of clients and it’s going to be overwhelming because there are so many moving parts. There’s no consistency. There’s no system. There’s no offering. And a lot of that can be prevented and avoided by outlining what it is you offer.
And like you mentioned Jord, which is a hundred percent right, that’s going to change, but it’s going to change based on your experience and what you realize works and what doesn’t work. That’s where you’re going to make modifications.
You’re not going to change it based on the desire of a potential future client.
Jordan: [00:58:24] Absolutely.
When I was deep in the world of Westside and conjugated periodization, I very much believed that three-week training programs were optimal. So, any powerlifting client that I got, they were three-week phases instead of four weeks.
Most general population, they were four weeks, and then occasionally a brand-new beginner, they would be six or eight weeks and it all be depending on whatever I thought. And I was like, “this is the smartest thing to do.”
It very quickly became a very dumb thing to do because I had to figure, okay, well some clients are needing a program every three weeks, some clients need a new program every four weeks, other clients need a program every six weeks, and other clients need one every eight weeks. And it drove me insane because inevitably I missed some people’s programs and other times, I sent someone to program way too early and they’re like, “I thought I was doing this for eight weeks.”
And I’m just like, “Oh yeah, just ahead of time on this one. Just so you have it.” And they’re like, “well can I start now?” Because anytime they get a new program, obviously they want to start it immediately.
So, I eventually switched to: it’s four-week phases. Period, end of story. And it just made it way easier, way more sustainable.
And that’s just one scenario. Another one is my first training programs; my first systems were all built on Microsoft Excel and I suck at Excel. I am awful at Excel. I only did that because I saw Martin Berkhan had his on Excel. I was like, “well, this just must be how you do it.” And then I did that for the better part of a year, maybe more and then I remember sitting on the floor of my college apartment, spending seven hours changing everything over to Microsoft Word, and that was way better for me. It’s still on Microsoft Word. Everything is there.
So, you’re going to make mistakes, but have everything laid out.
Mike: [00:59:57] Speaking of Martin Berkhan, completely off topic.
Martin Berkhan has made me rethink the value of supplement deals for athletes, coaches, whoever, people promoting supplements. Half the time Jordan comes over, he makes a comment about whatever’s out on my counter and Purple Wraath, this brand of amino acid, as well as NOW supplements are two of the staples that I use. I have NOW fish oil and Purple Wraath sitting out, and those were both recommendations from Martin Berkhan’s blog in 2010 and I’ve been using them pretty consistently since 2010. I’m just trying to calculate, in 10 years, the revenue that those companies have derived from his recommendation.
Jordan: [01:00:48] Yeah. I only get NOW supplements as well. That’s always what I’ve bought. Because he said these are the most pure–
Mike: [01:00:55] Have the highest vitamin D, vitamin C.
Jordan: [01:00:58] Yeah.
Mike: [01:00:59] Reasonable costs, trustworthy, company’s done well in the randomized testing. When they inevitably find companies that are 60% cardboard in their formulation of whatever, NOW isn’t one of those companies –, and by the way, they’re not a sponsor for us, but yeah, it’s interesting.
Jordan: [01:01:20] And then people will buy it from listening to this when it originally came from Martin. We’re the pebble.
Isn’t that interesting?
Mike: [01:01:27] It is really interesting. But it makes me question the value, meaning that the recommendation actually could have a higher dollar amount than I had previously thought, but it also just reinforces that I wouldn’t be continuing to take those if the product quality fell off.
And so, doing the right thing as the basis of it is going to lead the longevity.
Jordan: [01:01:51] Yep.
Mike: [01:01:53] Number 10, the final ” to do:” much like the advice that you give to your clients:
be patient.
Jordan: [01:02:18] What does that look like? What does a timeframe look like for patience here?
Mike: [01:02:23] You know, I posted multiple articles per week on my website when first getting started, combined with almost daily on Fitocracy, combined with multiple posts a week on Facebook, I was tweeting — this was all back in 2013 — and for the first eight months I had zero paid online coaching clients.
I had my first paid client nine months in, a woman who was a referral from another coach who I charged, I believe, $129 a month. Felt like a fair price to me in my gut at the time. And she was actually a client who this coach had previously worked with, and he didn’t tell me this, but in his mind, I found out later, was just a massive handful. And so, he gave me this glowing recommendation. I was so pumped. But yeah, eight months of consistently making content–
Jordan: [01:03:28] Multiple times a week, long form articles.
Mike: [01:03:30] Yeah. Long form articles and other things as well. I had multiple guest posts for Fitocracy, I was trying to get published in various places, I was coaching in person, interning, I was doing a lot. And through all of that, zero paid coaching clients.
Jordan: [01:03:55] How long did it take you, on average, for one long form article?
Mike: [01:04:01] For the really good ones, for I would recommend someone listening to this to write — that type of article, at least 20 hours.
Jordan: [01:04:13] 20 hours. And then I’d say, because you can’t have your best article every time. So maybe 12 hours?
Mike: [01:04:20] A minimum, I would say, of eight.
Jordan: [01:04:22] Yeah. Minimum eight. Minimum eight, I’d say.
Mike: [01:04:25] And that’s like your, “the seven myths around muscle building.”
Jordan: [01:04:32] Yeah. The eight hours is equivalent to: you go to the gym, do your warm up, and leave, right? It’s like you got it in, congrats. But you didn’t really “get it in.”
Mike: [01:04:44] It would have been better to double the amount of time and do half as many articles.
Jordan: [01:04:48] Yeah. So, then I’d say the average is 12 and then 20 hours for a phenomenal article.
I’m about the same, but the reason I wanted to highlight that is because most people who say they’re “really working hard,” they’re “really grinding it out” on social media, they’re spending maybe 30 minutes, 45 minutes on a post? Maybe 30-45 minutes on a post.
Even if it’s an hour, congrats, an hour and a post, four to five times a week, three months straight, and they’re like, “why isn’t anything working?”
You went eight months, oftentimes 20-30-40 hours a week on two to three pieces of content and then that’s it and nothing. Nothing for eight months. I think it’s really important for people to hear that.
Most people are not consistent for 60 days straight, posting consistently on social media, never mind a lot from articles, and we really want you to focus on the long form stuff right now because it will pay off down the road. But if you’re frustrated with your lack of progress in terms of business, you really have to analyze have you earned the right to be frustrated yet based on how consistent you’ve been.
It’s sort of like if you have a client who is consistently getting their warmups in, but they’re never lifting heavier weight, should they be upset that they haven’t gotten stronger? Should they be upset that they’re not getting any more muscle definition? No, of course not.
Maybe they feel a bit better because they’re more mobile. Maybe they have better T-spine mobility, they have better flexibility, maybe even their glutes are a little bit stronger, so maybe a little bit less pain. But they in no way, shape or form should be absolutely overwhelmed with the progress that they physically made when they haven’t lifted any weights. And if the majority of your content has been, you spend less than 45 minutes on it several days a week for several months, you’re just getting your warmup in. You haven’t really dedicated as much time and effort into it as you need to really make tremendous progress.
And even when you’re dedicating a ton of time and effort, it still takes months and months and months, if not years, to really make a big impact.
So, patience. Flex that patience muscle.
Mike: [01:07:06] And it seems like we all know it and it is easier said than done, but it’s just necessary to have that longer-term view because for almost no one is an overnight success actually possible.
Jordan: [01:07:23] A hundred percent
Mike: [01:07:25] And that’s where your mentality needs to be correct around patience and also your planning, right? I had two years of living expenses set aside. If I had zero revenue for two years, I would have crawled back with my tail between my legs, but you have to leave yourself enough runway to succeed because otherwise you’re never going to know. If you stop after three months, you’re never going to know what could have been.
Jordan: [01:08:00] That’s it.
Mike: [01:08:01] That’s it. Those are the 10 things.
Jordan: [01:08:02] What time is it right now?
Mike: [01:08:05] It’s midnight.
Jordan: [01:08:06] Midnight on a Monday after traveling all day, unpacking the car– and the thing about this is I really wouldn’t rather be anywhere else right now. I love doing this.
It’s over an hour podcast, midnight. And some people are like, “over an hour to make a piece of content?!” Yep ,we just did that right now. Over an hour for one piece of content, up at midnight, and it’s for free. And we love it.
And so, you really have to ask, do you love it? Do you love coaching? Do you love helping? Do you love this?
Because if you do, then it’s worth it. If you don’t, then that’s a bigger conversation.
Mike: [01:08:47] Maybe one we discuss in a future podcast.
Jordan: [01:08:50] We hope you enjoyed the episode. If you did, please leave a five-star review on iTunes. We would really appreciate it. And again, if you would like to leave a written comment about either what you’re enjoying or things you’d also like us to discuss, that would be amazing as well.
Mike: [01:09:02] Bye everyone.
