Mike: [00:00:04] Welcome to episode 24 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’re super excited for you to listen to this. We go into a lot, but specifically we really dive into social media. We talk about short-form content, long-form content, the things that you need to be focusing on to reach more people, help more people, and also to keep your own mental health and sanity going strong.
Mike: [00:00:31] Enjoy.
Hello, Jordan,
Jordan: [00:00:41] What’s going on, Michael?
Mike: [00:00:42] Not much. It feels good to be back in the big city.
Jordan: [00:00:44] Welcome back to New York, man.
Mike: [00:00:46] Thank you.
Jordan: [00:00:46] You have a good flight?
Mike: [00:00:48] Yeah, it was good. It was highly bumpy, but other than that…
Jordan: [00:00:51] Do you get nervous when there’s turbulence?
Mike: [00:00:53] I am my closest to God when I feel like I’m going to die.
I’m probably not the only person who feels that way. But usually no, I just kind of block it out and think that I made the global, high-level, macro decision 10 years ago that I’m going to fly on airplanes. And if I die, I die.
Jordan: [00:01:17] So funny.
I always thought that would be the best comedy skit, talking about what’s going on in people’s heads while they’re flying and there’s turbulence.
That first turbulence hits and at first, you don’t want to look too panicked. So, you’re just sitting there trying to look calm, but in your head you’re like, “uh oh. Uh oh.” And then it hits again and you’re like, “Oh my God.” And then you start looking around and you’re gripping your seat super tight and you’re like, “Oh my God, what’s going to happen?!”
You start looking at all these different scenarios. I always thought that would make a super good standup comedy skit.
Mike: [00:01:45] I think that’d be hilarious. Has no one done that?
Jordan: [00:01:47] Not that I’ve heard. I just always think about it every time on a plane and there’s turbulence. But then I also think about it from the perspective of like, if I’m with my girlfriend and she’s next to me, how even if I’m nervous, I have to pretend like I’m not nervous.
I’m like, “no, I have to be super calm and relaxed because if I freak out, then she’s definitely gonna freak out.”
Mike: [00:02:06] It’s almost better like that. I’ve experienced that, but I’ve also experienced if there’s just a stranger next to me, who’s visibly panicked, or if there’s a child in my row on either side, I automatically go to like–
Jordan: [00:02:24] Protector mode?
Mike: [00:02:25] Yeah, protector and just trying to overcompensate, play-act that everything is completely fine to make those people feel better. Or even start a conversation. I distinctly remember telling someone, I think it was when I was coaching Gary, and so I was doing a lot of New York to LA back and forth and I don’t remember the exact situation, but I was like, “I fly this all the time,” and, you know, just starting a conversation to make them feel better.
It’s cool because that almost shakes you out of your own head.
Jordan: [00:03:05] Yeah, you almost talk yourself into calming down. I always wondered what the likelihood of crashing or something happening due to turbulence was. And one time when I was, I think I was flying to LA or Vegas with Gary, and I happened to sit next to a pilot. We were in the very back row, got the cheapest seat, and the pilot was sitting next to me and I was like, “I got to ask you a question.” I was like, “what is the likelihood of crashing due to turbulence?”
And he laughed. He was like, “next to zero.” He’s like, “crashing due to turbulence is so unheard of,” and he took out a pen and paper and drew what turbulence actually was and what these air pockets were doing. And he’s like, “it feels really bad, but these planes are so well-designed that it’s nothing.”
And that alone made me way more confident with it. But still, you get one of those big shakes and then the plane drops a little bit and you get that weird stomach feeling, where the stomach falls out of you, you’re like, “Oh God, I’m going down.”
Mike: [00:04:03] Yeah. When you’re in the moment, at least for a microsecond, no amount of logic can shake that feeling.
Jordan: [00:04:10] Yeah, absolutely.
Mike: [00:04:12] But yeah, it was a good and productive flight. I was telling you; I feel like I’m on a business trip. Coming out to New York for three days, doing a bunch of filming for the Mentorship with you, and that’s basically why I’m here. And then headed back to Minnesota.
Jordan: [00:04:30] What do we got? We got Mentorship Q&A, Mentorship next challenge for the coming month.
Mike: [00:04:35] Brainstorm and create the July challenge.
Jordan: [00:04:38] Yeah, we got a lot of good Mentorship coming out.
Mike: [00:04:40] Q&A on Wednesday. I’m excited.
But just the feeling of being on a business trip is weird. And especially because I’m staying with my parents, so coming here specifically to do this with you, you know, I’ve been very focused on myself and my own training, and obviously coaching clients, but not so much business growth recently. But coming here, landing in New York — New York City energy — coming here, you coming here, and we’re going to podcast and then we both have a lot of our own work that we need to do tonight, so it’s going to be a good work session. I’m really excited.
It’s almost nostalgic because of how many of these types of days and nights of working together we’ve had.
Jordan: [00:05:28] Yeah. I would also imagine that a change of scenery can do so much. Which is one of the reasons why I think, if you’re at home, having a specific room in your home that you do work in rather than doing work wherever, because if you do work wherever, then it’s difficult to turn off.
And to have one room where you only work, it’s like, “cool.” So, once you enter that room, it’s a different mindset. I feel like New York City can be that room in a sense. It’s like New York City has that feeling of when you get here — you were saying, when the plane landed, you were like, “yep, time to go.” Versus when we went to Florida, it was like, “all right, time to relax.”
Mike: [00:06:08] And from the minute the wheels hit the ground and you look out the window and you see the skyline from LaGuardia or, you know, Florida, you just feel the humidity vibe, it’s the energy of the place you are.
Yeah, I’m a big believer in that. That is a good practical, applicable example that you just gave though, having a room in your house or having a specific place that one does work. I remember when we were talking to Pat, who has four kids?
Jordan: [00:06:44] Yeah, I think he’s got four now, which is crazy.
Mike: [00:06:46] And he said that he works from his office with his wife and kids at home and they pretty much leave him alone and he gets work done in there, which is extremely impressive to me, just how they can function as a cohesive unit for that to happen, to get deep work done in that setting.
When I’ve envisioned my future, I’ve always thought of having some kind of specific place to work and ever since I quit my accounting job, I knew it wasn’t going to be a fluorescent-light cubicle type office, shared space for small talk, weird, anything like that, but something — and we’ve even talked about, down the road, potentially having something where we had space and we had peace and quiet and opportunity to think. And even if we had some kind of gym equipment there where we could film, it’d be really cool.
Jordan: [00:07:43] Yeah, I agree. It’s an interesting idea too. I know some people like they like to batch their work. It’s almost like they do meal prep. On Sunday they do meal prep, I know some people like to batch their work ahead of time. So, it is an interesting thought that looking at this like a business trip, for example, right? Where you take three days out of the month, you come out here, work for 3 days super hard, get a ton done, and then the rest of the month it’s not that you don’t work, but I almost think of it like conjugated periodization. So, it’s sort of like, in the Mentorship, every course that we have for the entire year is periodized. Just like it would be for strength training, but we periodize it for business. So, I’m sort of thinking in this sense — conjugate periodization, you improve one thing but you never de-train anything. You focus on one thing and maintain everything else.
So I’m sorta thinking it’s like, so you could have those three days or four days or five days, whatever it is, where you really go crazy, you work really hard on one thing, then the rest of the month you maintain it. You maintain and you keep up to date with your clients, you get all your programming done, you post on social media, but maybe you take three, four, five, six, seven days or whatever to really get most of the work done and then you can sort of relax and maintain the rest of the month.
Might be a cool thing to try.
Mike: [00:09:04] I love what you’re saying right now and what can happen in those time chunks are little projects that are enough work that I’ve been procrastinating them for five years.
One that just came to mind was writing a really good auto response sequence to people who join either the Macros app or just my newsletter, because I’ve had how many people join newsletters that have had poor or no sequence follow up.
That’s just leaving good stuff on the table — opportunity to help people and opportunity to make money — leaving it on the table. But in a five to seven-day window where my main focus is work and I’m in a work environment, I could easily knock that out.
Jordan: [00:09:54] Within two hours.
Mike: [00:09:57] Well, maybe you could knock that out within two hours.
I don’t think I can knock that out — at least not the way I have it envisioned. But I could definitely knock that out in that trip. And imagine if one of those projects got knocked out every single month, or whatever the frequency you set it up as.
Jordan: [00:10:14] The reason my mind went to two hours is not because — I wasn’t thinking “cool, he can make completely, entirely new content from scratch in two hours and make this whole sequence,” I was thinking you have so much content already made from so many years, you could repurpose it into a brief auto response sequence that both lets them know how often they can expect to hear from you — which might not be that often — but you’re going to send them a few things over the next week or so that will really help them get started. If they have any questions hit reply to the email, but you’ll only email them when there’s something important to say.
So now they know ahead of time, “cool. I know I’m not going to hear from him very often. Over the next few days, I will get a bunch of emails,” and then you sort of set the precedent for what they can expect.
Mike: [00:10:56] I like that. I like that a lot. Especially because the way I was envisioning it was that I would have to, A) come up with new, helpful content — which obviously isn’t necessary, but, B) that it would have to be well-crafted for email, whereas some of the emails could be redirecting them to a preexisting piece of content or even just copy-pasting from stuff that has done really well historically.
Jordan: [00:11:25] I know so much of your content because I consumed there for so long, so literally my mind goes — you had a protein video on YouTube, right? It was like “11 Protein Myths?” — So my mind immediately goes to: you could directly link them to the YouTube video or, knowing that there’ll be fewer people who click through to a video, you could just take those 11 myths and bullet point them out, written.
Mike: [00:11:45] It’s already an article.
Jordan: [00:11:46] There you go. Exactly. So, then you put that in an email it’s, like “11 Myths About Protein,” boom. At the end, “if you don’t have the Macros app, by the way, I’ll tell you exactly how much protein to have. You can join it here.” Now they’re on both.
Mike: [00:11:58] Free business consult with Syatt Fitness right on podcast.
Jordan: [00:12:02] But that’s the best part about–
Mike: [00:12:04] Having so much content?
Jordan: [00:12:05] That’s exactly right.
And that’s why you and I both say, “if you don’t have any content start with long form content, start with writing articles.” Because one long-form article will give you so much content to repurpose. If you want to do 2000 Instagram posts — amazing, do that. I mean, I have, but it’s taken years to do 2000 Instagram posts, whereas if you have.10 to 20 long-form articles, from those long form articles I’d say you’d get at least four pieces of content from each long-form article. It just goes down the chain much better. It makes repurposing much easier.
Mike: [00:12:42] Yeah. Content’s the game.
Jordan: [00:12:44] Yeah.
Mike: [00:12:45] I had a weird feeling when I was showering about an hour and a half ago.
Jordan: [00:12:50] Pause. “I had a weird feeling when I was showering…”
Mike: [00:12:54] You’ll know why in a second. I almost don’t want to say it, but, “Two Minute Vlogs.”
Jordan: [00:13:02] like Rico’s “60 second vlogs” on Instagram. Those have been great.
Mike: [00:13:07] Those have been — from the two that I saw, from the four times I’ve been on Instagram in the last, however long. But I told him I was like, “these are amazing.”
And, you know, pick the number, but some short amount of time. Which is not ideal for growing audience on YouTube — actually, I don’t know. It seems like it’s not ideal, but have you seen the guy on YouTube, “Long Beach Griffey?”
Jordan: [00:13:38] I haven’t.
Mike: [00:13:38] Comedian. All of his videos are between 60 and 90 seconds or 60 seconds and 2 minutes.
Jordan: [00:13:48] They must be outrageously entertaining in that brief timeframe.
Mike: [00:13:51] Outrageously. They’re all skits. He plays two different people who are having a conversation and they’re hilarious. But he has a million or 2 million subs, they get tons of views. Whereas historically, or from what I’ve seen on YouTube, what does well is something longer.
Jordan: [00:14:12] About 10 to 20 minutes, yeah.
Mike: [00:14:14] Because “watch time” is such a big piece. And even if people are watching a hundred percent of a video at 60 seconds, they’re only watching 60 seconds and YouTube seems less incentivized to push something like that unless people really, really like it.
But I think it actually stemmed from a client of mine, who I’ve been coaching for many years, he’s like, “I don’t even know where you are during all this. When I used to follow your vlogs, it was easier for me to know what was going on with you.” Because I was telling him I was in Minnesota, but just some kind of quick, easy way of documenting what’s going on.
Jordan: [00:14:57] Yeah. I think that’s a good idea. Not to mention, I think one of the major components of a blog or vlog style content is to get people invested in you. And so, I think if someone sees a vlog that’s 25 minutes and they know nothing about you, it’s gonna be very hard to get them to watch any of it.
But if they see something that’s 60 seconds, 75 seconds, 90 seconds, it’s like, “okay, cool. I can watch that.” And then doing a month, two months, three months, a quarter of that, then maybe going from a minute to two minutes, and then another quarter, and then from two minutes to three minutes, almost branding it as like the “60 second vlog,” “90 second vlog,” “120 second vlog,” whatever.
And I think over time that would probably pick up steam as the content improves and people get more invested.
Mike: [00:15:48] Anyone listening, if this is appealing to you, you should run with it.
Jordan: [00:15:52] Yeah. Yeah.
Mike: [00:15:54] I’m probably not going to. I really want someone listening to run with this.
Another reason I like it is: staying out of the middle in so many aspects of life is really important, right?
Last week we talked about extreme stressors versus complete relaxation in “Antifragile,” rather than this constant low-level stressor. Being in the middle, as far as content duration or attention is a weird place.
Maybe it’s not, but I was thinking of kind of the opposite of a podcast, which is very long form, people are very invested. What is really short and is something that can, can play to people’s strengths on video?
Jordan: [00:16:43] Yeah.
Mike: [00:16:43] A short form vlog like that would probably be daily or at least five days a week. It would have minimal time filming and obviously it’s going to be quick cuts, isn’t going to be a lot of depth as far as what you’re talking about, which is really the opposite of something like this, where we’re going deep.
Jordan: [00:17:04] You know what my mind officer just went to as another option? I was like, “okay, cool. So, what about the people who might not like camera?”: a 6 second podcast, right? Just 60 seconds. And it’d be so simple to do something like, “Three Nutrition Myths Debunked in 60 seconds.” Boom. And then just go like, “protein doesn’t make you bulky.” You could say, “carbs don’t make you fat,” whatever.
And if you wanted, you can do one myth, you could do three, you could do five, you could do one and go in detail explaining why in 60 seconds, you could do five and just literally list them off with minimal explanation.
I think that might be a fun idea. Anytime you say exactly how much time — it’s sort of like the Instagram videos where have the countdown, “59, 58, 57…” people are more willing to watch because they know how much time is left. I think people will be more willing to listen as a new audience member when they see how short of a timeframe it is, and if the title is more enticing.
So, for someone who doesn’t want to do video — you don’t wanna do the vlogs, you don’t want to do the editing. Cool, do a 60 second or a 90 second or 120 second podcasts where you go in on one topic, super passionate, explain it, and then get out.
And then maybe another time you answer a reader question or whatever it is, but I think there are a lot of cool opportunities for people that are not being taken advantage of. I think the biggest thing that turns a lot of content creators, coaches away from long-form content is, 1) the effort that goes into it, but also, 2) is, “well, I don’t have many people who follow me, so I don’t want to put an hour into a podcast and have one person listen to it and really that person is my mom.”
I understand that. I think it is shortsighted to think that way, but I also think that if you want more of a quick way in, then maybe starting with something short — 60 seconds, 90 seconds — whether it’s YouTube or podcast or whatever, could be a really cool way to get people into your long-form content from a shorter-form version of it.
Mike: [00:19:12] Yeah. And I think the most important thing you said there is to get them into your longer-form content because it is a feeder, right? And you can give value in 60 seconds or even less. I’m thinking of some of the TikToks that you’ve done that are for fat loss, or this or that, that go nuts and they’re exactly what you just described with the “Three Myths in a 60 second podcast.”
On everything that we just described there isn’t long-term searchability, so you don’t want to just be standing on that, obviously, but you want that in conjunction with continuous article writing and/or continuous slightly longer-form educational video content.
Jordan: [00:20:11] I think if you really break it down, every piece of content is essentially geared towards the goal of getting them to long-form content, including long-form content, because the ultimate long-form content is your coaching program.
They’re going to spend a lot of time reading the program, they’re going to spend time going to the gym, doing the program, they’re going to spend time doing the grocery shopping based on whatever you’re telling them to eat. That’s the ultimate long-form content: coaching with you. That’s a ton of time investment that they’re only going to get to by investing time with you before that.
So I sort of look at Twitter, Instagram, TikTok as the short form pieces of content that are essentially a feeder for website articles or YouTube videos or podcasts, which are a feeder for coaching programs, whatever it is, consult calls, essentially the ultimate long-form content.
And I think that coaching is essentially the ultimate long-form. And the funny part is you’ll give your clients big PDFs, lots of information, and they won’t read it. Because it’s a long-form content. Even if they sign up with you and they pay a bunch of money, there’ll be a lot of people who will not read whatever you give them.
I guarantee there are a significant number of people who are listening right now who will not actually listen to this entire episode. And that’s totally fine. The point isn’t that they have to consume every single second of what you put out, but I do believe — and I know we’re both in agreement here — that long form content, and we’ve spoken about this ad nauseum, is considerably better at getting people into investing in you both from an emotional perspective, but also from a coaching perspective to invest in what you have to offer.
So I think looking at every piece of content as another step in the chain towards ultimately coaching with you, starting off with, Twitter — the ultimate short form — then I would say Instagram, TikTok, and then on top of that, Facebook, depending on how in-depth you go with your Facebook posts and videos, then on top of that YouTube, then on top of that podcast/long-form articles, and then on top of that, then you have your coaching.
Mike: [00:22:26] It’s a good model. It’s a good way to think about it. It’s a feeder system.
Jordan: [00:22:30] That’s it. That’s really all it is.
I was talking with someone on Twitter — two days ago, three days ago, I did a mini-contest where I was like, “I’m going to pick three coaches who comment on this post to get on a 30 minute call with you for free. The only caveat is if I get on a call with you, if I choose you as a winner, you have to pick three people to give free consult calls to, as well, for fitness coaching.”
I got a bunch of requests and I had two of those calls today. One of the calls was with two young men. They were talking to me all about their marketing strategy and they were talking to me about how they wanted to set up their business and it sounded nice, but they were like, “what do you think we should do? Should we build our email list?” I was like, “how many people do you have on your list?” They’re like, “300.” And I was like, “okay, what about social media?” And I looked at all their social media and it wasn’t doing that well.
And they were looking at Facebook ads, they were looking at all these things that if you hired a business mastermind guru, they would tell you to do all these things, “build your email list and all this other stuff,” and like, it’s not necessarily bad, but it’s in the wrong order of events.
It’d sort of be like, if a client came to you who needs to lose a hundred pounds, and the first thing you told them to do was ice baths and hill sprints. You’d be like, “what in the hell is wrong with you? That’s not what you need to do.”
So, I looked at their social media and they’d posted six times in all of June. Literally, six times in all of June. I’m like, “you guys need to focus way more on consistency with your posting on social media.”
They actually did say something that’s very interesting: they were following a Gary-model of going to other fitness accounts that are larger than them and they were going into the likes on those posts and then they were cold DMing people on those posts and saying, “Hey, how are you dealing with the gym closures during a coronavirus? Is there anything we can do to help?”
And I was like, “I respect that. You’re going in, you’re messaging 20 to 30 people a day. That’s awesome. But when you’re messaging them, they’re going to your page and they’re not seeing any content. They’re not seeing anything.”
The reality is you would rather people find you from a referral from somebody else saying, “wow, this page puts out great information, go follow them.”
Or DM, but also make sure that you’re putting out content so when they go look at your page, they see that you’re updating every day, several times a day with new content. So, then they want to work with you without you having to try and convince them to.
Mike: [00:25:05] Yeah. What they’re doing is an amazing distribution strategy. Meaning, it’s only been six posts in June, but they’re at least getting more eyeballs on those six posts by initiating a conversation with a potentially interested party.
The thing is distribution needs to be balanced with creation, right? The other side of that coin is you’re trying to build the business, but all you do is write long-form articles and you do zero social, you don’t do anything else, you don’t even tell your friends and family you’re writing long-form articles, you just write them and put them on the website. But there’s no link backs to that website, nobody knows that website exists.
You don’t want to be imbalanced that way. Finding that balance of making enough, and in this case, posting on social and bringing awareness to those posts.
Jordan: [00:25:57] Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Mike: [00:25:58] Yeah. And I’m just going to keep beating this drum, actually, because Andy, who’s in the Mentorship, emailed me several days ago and said that he was looking at my “social blade.” And I actually know what “social blade” is from hearing you and Rico, but I’ve never actually been to it.
And I get that it tracks Instagram followers, but I guess like all social media.
Jordan: [00:26:25] YouTube, Instagram. I haven’t checked it in the better part of a year, but I know YouTube and Instagram, for sure.
Mike: [00:26:31] And he was like, “Yeah, just, I noticed, you’re kind of very slowly losing some followers on Instagram, which makes sense, because right now you’re not posting, but what I thought was crazy was you’re getting like a thousand or something new views a day on YouTube.” And he’s like, “but you haven’t posted on YouTube for like six months either.”
He was like, “that really hit home with me that the long-form SEO, the fact that you keep hammering articles, video, articles, video, is just so important.” Even the majority of people who sign up for coaching nowadays — that aren’t referrals from current clients — I have a little thing in my coaching submission, “how did you find out about me?” And it’s ALL, “I found an article on Google.”
Jordan: [00:27:21] That’s awesome.
Mike: [00:27:22] Like, 2013 to 2016.
So, doing that long, hard, deep work that seems to have no payoff for a long period of time actually has a very long tail and would be very beneficial for many years to come.
Jordan: [00:27:41] Yeah. It’s sort of like the same way I feel tired of beating the calorie deficit drum.
Mike: [00:27:48] Do you feel tired of that drum?
Jordan: [00:27:50] I feel tired of it, but I understand the importance of it.
Every time I post about calorie deficit, in my mind, I’m like, “I know that people are gonna be tired of hearing this, but I also know there are people who need to hear this.” So, it’s sort of thinking of new ways to beat that drum that aren’t so redundant and repetitive, even though it is the message if you want to lose weight. There are other important aspects of it, but that’s still the most consistent thing people get wrong.
Same thing with people trying to build a business and trying to grow their business. It’s long-form, long-form, long-form, SEO-able content. Whether it’s article, video, podcasts, I mean, if you look on Google and you Google search something, you’re going to find long form articles. If you click the video tab, you’re going to see YouTube videos. These are what SEO. Those are the things that are the most important.
The reason I think it’s so important to keep beating that drum is because we know most people won’t actually do it. Most people will take the “easier” route of posting something quick on Instagram, posting something quick on Twitter, posting something quick on Facebook, posting something quick on TikTok, which all are great, but I think it’s important to remember: I think people see my Instagram or my TikTok or whatever, and they think like, “Oh, that must be the most important.” But I’m telling you, for a fact, I get more people from my website and my podcast and my YouTube than I do from anything else. Regardless of how many likes you see on Instagram or how many whatever.
I mean, my TikTok is going crazy right now. I have a video with over 80,000 likes that’s going crazy. I have a video with over 900,000 views. TikTok is going crazy and I’m super excited about it, but I still will prioritize podcast and video over that, significantly, just because it’s just better. Period. It’s just better.
Just because I say it’s better doesn’t mean that it’s all that matters. Of course, everything works in a system and systematically to try and improve the end goal. But if you’re not making long-form content that’s SEO-able — and by SEO-able, I think the best way to describe it is “you can easily find it on Google search” — then you’re really making a huge mistake, especially for your long-term business goals.
Mike: [00:30:16] That’s amazing. And do you still have your email sign up?
Jordan: [00:30:20] Yeah. My email list is growing from TikTok like crazy.
Mike: [00:30:23] That’s amazing.
It’s almost like when you hear people talk about working in your business versus working on your business. There’s probably a comparable fitness analogy that you could come up with, maybe something along the lines of building muscle that will make your future body composition come easier to you.
But when you are making SEO-able content, you are benefiting your future self. You are getting new audience in the future and therefore making your future business work better, meaning that you can either do more in the future or work less for the same result in the future. Whereas, whatever you’re doing currently is beneficial, but is only beneficial in the present.
Jordan: [00:31:19] Yeah. I think the example you used is the best one. Doing only short-form content is like the cardio bunny. Doing only short-form content is the cardio bunny who goes to the gym, they do an hour-hour and a half, two hours of cardio, never lift weights. Basically, just doing that to burn the calories for that immediate day-to-day result so maybe later that day they can eat a little bit more. Whereas if they went and they spent 20-30 minutes doing cardio, but they also spent another 30, 45, 60 minutes lifting weights several times a week, over time they would build more muscle, get more defined, increase their metabolism, and then over 3, 5, 10 years, they wouldn’t need to work as hard because they’ve already spent so much time building up their body, improving their metabolism, so now they don’t need to spend that much time doing cardio. It’s the same thing.
So, if you’re telling your clients not to be a cardio bunny, but all you’re doing from a content perspective is making short-form content, you’re the cardio bunny of content creation.
Mike: [00:32:17] It’s true. It’s true.
Jordan: [00:32:22] Is there anything else you want to hit on business wise, fitness wise, coaching wise?
Mike: [00:32:28] You know, I’m really excited. I have this, this sugar-free, artificial sweetener laced white Monster in hand, that’s kicking in and I’m excited to start doing client programs and getting this night underway.
But, I’m down to jam on anything else.
Jordan: [00:32:49] I’ll say, sort of going along with what we were just talking about, but also from a different perspective, I’ve been thinking a lot about actually spending less time on social media and I’ve actually been doing that considerably, especially Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. And I’ve been spending less time making content in general, but especially those platforms around this time right now with everything going on in the world.
It’s just felt heavy, it hasn’t felt good, I haven’t wanted to be on it.
Mike: [00:33:28] Consuming or creating? Or both?
Jordan: [00:33:30] Both. Considerably less on both counts.
But also, I would say, for the purpose of what I’m saying, is creating. I’ve created way less content. I’ve reused old content consistently, but I haven’t been making as much recently.
And I think what’s important to remember is — literally going for the same messages before — one of the main benefits of long-form content — I would say it’s one of the main benefits and also one of the main drawbacks. One of the main benefits of long-form content is that you don’t get a lot of immediate engagement or reactions.
So I know, for example, if I post something on Instagram: it’s a blessing that I might get 500 comments on a post, but it’s also not so great when I know a number of those comments will be hateful or completely unrelated to the post and saying things that make me feel super bad about myself, or call me out, whatever it is.
Whereas you make a long form piece of content, it’ll take you longer to make, but you can publish it and there’s not going to be an immediate flood of comments on there. I mean, maybe YouTube there might be depending on how big your YouTube is, but unless you’re Christian Guzman is probably not going to be happening.
I think there’s a. lot of benefit to making long-form content for your mental and emotional health, knowing that you don’t have to see, and you don’t expect an immediate response to it. I think there’s a lot of anxiety that comes from having a larger platform — and maybe not even having a larger platform, but just from posting on a platform that is defined by immediate response: Instagram, it is instant. Twitter, Facebook. Immediate response to your post, which can be super anxiety producing, especially as you get more and more people on there.
So I think there’s some huge benefit to knowing that your long-form content that you publish today and tomorrow and next week, 1) when you publish it, there isn’t an immediate response, so there’s not going to be immediate hate or anything like that. And 2) years after you publish it, it can still help you and can still build your business.
It’s a huge stress relief to know that that will continue to work for you. Even during a time when maybe you don’t feel like putting yourself out on social media, you don’t have to. There are still other options that you can be productive and help people with that might not be necessary or you don’t need to put it out on a short form platform today.
Mike: [00:36:06] Yeah. That alone is a good enough reason to redirect that time if some people are experiencing those similar feelings towards creating long-form content. I would argue that the main reason that many people don’t, isn’t that they don’t know its benefit, necessarily, but is simply — and this is me just as much as anyone else — it’s hard.
It’s hard to write 1,800, really, really, really good, impactful words about a subject that’s educational without getting sucked into whatever’s going on on your phone, without getting sucked into the news, without getting sucked in to go hang out with whatever people.
It takes a lot more time and what’s more is it takes a lot more time in a row of direct focus. You almost need to get into a flow state to really produce, at least written, long-form content. And I can really only speak for me personally, but I think that most can feel this over the last several years — and maybe even decade — my attention span is slowly eroding.
And, you know, I’m actively doing things to fight back against that, like meditating, like trying to use my phone a little bit less, but it’s not easy. And so yeah, I guess this is just a little extra push from Jordan and I — like a long-form content challenge. If you don’t know what to be doing or if you’re not producing long-form content, or if you’re a personal trainer, you want to grow your online business, and you don’t have a website or you’re not writing articles…do it.
Make a website. It doesn’t matter what it is, yourname.com. That doesn’t exist, yournamefitness.com, that doesn’t exist. Make a URL, get it up there, pay the relatively small amount of money, and start making long-form content.
If you’re trying to grow your business and you’re only on Instagram right now, this is something we have people doing the Mentorship course:
Website is the focus. If you’re listening to this, redirect your focus there because in four years you’re going to thank us for where it led you on the path to.
Jordan: [00:38:30] Yeah. And just to go in on that, if you don’t know where to begin, join the Mentorship. We’ll put the link in the show notes, join it. That’s what we’re here for.
And if you’re the kind of coach who wants your clients to not need you eventually, if you’re the kind of coach that wants your client to learn from you, understand how to work their nutrition, to understand how to work out, and you don’t want them to stay on forever because you want to give them tools, that’s what this is. We will give you the tools that you need to build a successful online business — not in a day or a week or a month, but so that you know exactly what to do for the rest of your life.
And this sort of makes me think about “Antifragile,” right? I was listening to that today. If you haven’t read “Antifragile,” definitely highly recommend this book.
He was talking about job security.
Mike: [00:39:25] I love this.
The taxi driver versus the lawyer?
Jordan: [00:39:29] I don’t know if it was a lawyer or just a marketer or something.
Mike: [00:39:36] Yeah. Finance. Like, corporate job.
Jordan: [00:39:40] And it’s so interesting how society nowadays — I remember vividly my mom just begging me to get a “regular” job due to job security, but in “Antifragile,” the author, he’s talking about the difference in two different types of jobs and how you have someone who might be making $5,000 a month consistently. They have a paycheck. It’s a guaranteed paycheck, they’re working for this job, but then one day they’re 50 years old or maybe there’s like a black swan event like coronavirus and all of a sudden they’re let go, they’re laid off, they don’t have a job, or they’re just like, “Hey, the company is going under,” and now all of a sudden they need to find a new job or whatever it is.
And they went from making money to not making money. There was no in-between. Versus someone else, a guy who spent three years trying to get his taxi license or whatever it was — which now is just way easier with things like Uber or whatever — but the guy spent years getting the ability to have a car and to be able to drive people, following the laws. People might look at that and say, “well, that’s not nearly as secure.” And his pay might be more variable day to day — one day he barely makes enough to pay for his costs, another day he might triple that, but it’s actually a much more anti-fragile job because it’s his. He owns it.
It’s his car, it’s his job, and not to mention, he brought up all these random examples of maybe one day everything is shut down and someone needs to get to the airport and they’re like, I will pay you $2,000 to get to the airport. These things happen.
That’s probably why you’re listening to this podcast — because you want to build your own business, because you want to build something that isn’t dependent on someone else, because you want to work for yourself, not be told what to do by someone else.
And while everyone else might be telling you like, “well, I don’t know. Is that a good idea?” It’s probably one of the best ideas and it’s not going to be easy, it will take years to build it up. But literally what we teach in the Mentorship is basically we try and expedite the process by having you focus on what we wish we focused on and by teaching you not to make the mistakes that we made.
So, if you were even halfway considering doing it and you were serious about building your business, go to the link in the show notes, join the Mentorship. We promise you will not regret it.
Mike: [00:42:06] Yeah, we would absolutely love to have you in there. Now you got me wanting to talk about that.
Jordan: [00:42:12] “Antifragile?” Let’s do it. Let’s talk.
Mike: [00:42:15] And by the way, I’m so bad at selling and I’ve always been so bad at selling, but this is so weird because I so genuinely believe in this message and the message isn’t even joined the Mentorship, but the message is: if in your gut you feel like it makes sense to give this a shot, you should do it because I’ve lived it.
I worked as a public accountant for two years, working 70 hours a week for a stable, secure, “recession proof” job paycheck. And I earned that wage for two years and I didn’t like the work, but it’s more than that.
In that section of the book, Taleb talks about how taxi drivers get signal from the marketplace in the short-term, and they can adjust. Meaning if their fares are down a few days in a row or a week or two weeks in a row, they can move to a different part of town and they can experiment and it’s not this binary, all or nothing like, “okay, I can put food on the table for my kids. I can pay the bills. And then I can’t.”
It’s, “no. It’s down 10%. It’s down 12% down 15%. Okay, I need to adjust. I need to work an extra hour a day. I need to try driving different part of town.”
When you’re working with a pure salary, whatever you’re doing, there’s no signal. There’s no like, “all right, you’re not performing, we’re considering firing you but what we’re going to do is we’re going to give you an 8% deduction in paid because…” and like, deduct, deduct, deduct down to zero. You don’t get that. It’s like one day you walk in and you get your feet pulled out from under you.
I wrote about this on my website. In 2008 when I was a junior in college, and I had already locked into the accounting path and I felt decently okay about it. I was home, I believe it was spring break, it might’ve been winter break, and I distinctly remember standing around the kitchen counter with my mom, and my grandparents were there, and my dad walked in the door and walked up to us at the island, and he was looking down, he wasn’t looking at anyone and he was like, “I lost my job today.”
And I remember the feeling of never wanting someone else to be in control of my livelihood. And my dad’s a beast. He figured it out, he pivoted, he got another job and he made it work. But I just, in my gut, I was like, “all right, I’m not going to let someone else be responsible for this. I’m going to be responsible for this.”
Jordan: [00:45:08] It’s so interesting, too, I was talking about this with a friend yesterday — when you go through the process of trying to build your own business, especially in today’s world, you become a Jack of all trades, right?
And this is something that I just thought about, I was just talking about it yesterday with a friend, how when you go through that process, you learn so much. I remember writing about this when I first started doing online stuff and I vividly remember making a Facebook post in about 2011 or 2012, saying something to the effect of, “if someone told me when I was in high school, that in order to be a successful personal trainer, I’d also have to be a great writer, I would have told you to F off.”
But that’s what I had to do. When I first started, it was writing long-form articles and I had to get really good at writing. And then from there I had to get really good on video. And then I had to learn different social media platforms. And I had to learn how to interact with people. And I had to learn copywriting — which is a whole separate skill — and learning advertisements and then learning podcasts.
You become a Jack of all trades. Even if you’re not a master at them, at least you become competent in them. Sort of like a language: you can go to a new country and you might not be able to understand the newspapers fully, you might not be able to watch the news station, understand exactly what they’re saying, but you can go to the marketplace, you can like say what pieces of fruit you want, you can order from a menu, you can go on a walk and ask for directions. And this makes you valuable.
This makes you very valuable in a variety of situations where let’s say, God forbid, your business doesn’t go the way you want. Or maybe your goal is you want to earn an extra $5,000 a month, but in the first two years you were making $2,500 a month. First of all, that’s freaking awesome and congrats. Second of all, you have now developed new skills that make you highly valuable in the job market that otherwise you probably wouldn’t have had.
Mike: [00:47:00] That’s great episode.
Jordan: [00:47:01] Yeah, this is good. I think we can end it there. We’ll say again: if you are even halfway considering–
Mike: [00:47:07] You know what? If you’re killing it in your business or if you’re happy with how things are going, or if you feel like you’re getting enough from the podcasts and you don’t need more help from us, keep doing it.
Jordan: [00:47:19] 100%.
Mike: [00:47:20] But if you want to learn more, if you want to — everything that’s coming out of my mouth right now feels cheesy.
“If you want to take your business to the NEXT LEVEL, if you really want to DOUBLE DOWN, if you want to go ALL IN…”
…but actually, if you want to put more focus on growing your business and you’ve listened to a bunch of these and you feel like you have a good feel for Jordan and I and you trust us and you want to give the Fitness Business Mentorship a shot, we are accepting new members. We would love to have you and the link is in the show notes of this episode.
Jordan: [00:47:55] That it. Have a wonderful day.
Mike: [00:47:56] Bye everyone.
