0:00:11 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.
0:00:12 Jordan Syatt: What’s going on, Michael, how are you?
0:00:15 Mike Vacanti: We’re just working through some technical difficulties here at the How To Become A Personal Trainer podcast, but I think we have them rectified.
0:00:21 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, something’s wrong with our HQ’s WiFi. But uh… [chuckle]
0:00:26 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, HQ is having… We’re some issues at the HQ, but we’re here, we’re going, how are you doing?
0:00:34 Jordan Syatt: I’m feeling good. And just so everyone knows, we don’t have an HQ at all. We’re doing this remotely. [chuckle]
0:00:39 Mike Vacanti: There’s no HQ, no HQ.
0:00:39 Jordan Syatt: Skype isn’t working, so we’re doing a FaceTime call and each recording our audio on our own computers, and then somehow our audio engineer, David, is gonna sync them together to make it sound, hopefully, perfect.
0:00:55 Mike Vacanti: Hopefully. David is a pro, so I think it’s going to… We also don’t have a back-up, we’re not recording on Skype, so this is like what… You’re good with analogies. What’s a good fitness analogy?
0:01:08 Jordan Syatt: You’re just putting me on the spot. This is like going out for your max effort deadlift without any warm-ups, right?
0:01:16 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:01:17 Jordan Syatt: There’s possibility for big return, but also the chance of…
0:01:22 Mike Vacanti: You could really snap something.
0:01:24 Jordan Syatt: Oh, you could really snap your shit up.
0:01:25 Mike Vacanti: Vertebrae going different directions, like it could be really ugly.
0:01:30 Jordan Syatt: Yeah yeah, so that might not have been the best analogy but it’s sort of like, you know what a better analogy be? It would be like going to the gym without first checking your gym bag to see if you have everything you need. It’s like you can get to the gym and maybe it’s all in there and you go in and you’ve got your extra pair of underwear, God forbid you need those, you’ve got your shaker bottle, you’ve got your protein powder for post-workout, you’ve got your check-in card for the gym, or maybe you forgot it, or you missed out on a lot of stuff, and then you’d have to go all the way back home in order to get this stuff again, so maybe that’s a better analogy.
0:02:10 Mike Vacanti: That’s a good analogy. I would much rather drive back to the gym than do an hour podcast that didn’t get recorded, but it’s close.
0:02:19 Jordan Syatt: It’s funny, I would rather do an hour podcast that didn’t get recorded again with you, ’cause that means I get to talk to you for another hour. I just look at this as…
0:02:25 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Okay, Dale.
[laughter]
0:02:30 Mike Vacanti: Dale-y! I think that’s an I versus me thing too. Like an hour of real focused interaction is very different from an energy perspective for you versus me.
0:02:39 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:02:41 Mike Vacanti: After this, you’re gonna do six more podcasts and I’m gonna go lie down.
0:02:44 Jordan Syatt: After this, I’m gonna feel really good, and then after this, you’re gonna be like, “Alright, I need a 24-hour break.”
[laughter]
0:02:49 Mike Vacanti: Not actually to that extreme, but the theme is correct.
0:02:56 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. How’s everything else going? How’s your workout today?
0:03:00 Mike Vacanti: Elite.
0:03:02 Jordan Syatt: Yeah?
0:03:03 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it was the best I’ve felt in like… In a workout in probably three months.
0:03:08 Jordan Syatt: That’s awesome.
0:03:09 Mike Vacanti: Got a little beach time in with the family and then came here, so I’m feeling good, did a couple hours of work this morning before the gym, it’s been a good balanced day on my end.
0:03:18 Jordan Syatt: Saturated with vitamin D. You’re ready to go.
0:03:21 Mike Vacanti: A lot of Vitamin D. I went to a dermatologist for the first time in my life. I told you this, but I got a couple of sunspots and I’ve been wearing sunscreen, but maybe not as religiously as I could or should every single second, like taking the trash out or something like that, but all clear. He just said, “Keep putting on 30 every single day.”
0:03:43 Jordan Syatt: Wow, okay, well, good. We should talk more about dermatology. I’m a big fan of dermatology. [laughter]
0:03:48 Mike Vacanti: I’m a complete rookie, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t gonna get melanoma at 33.
0:03:56 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, no, that’s smart. I’ve had a lot of birthmarks and freckles and moles ever since I was a kid, so I remember I went… I think my mom made me go when I was like eight or nine, and they were like, “Oh, this one could be cancerous,” and I was like, “I’m gonna die.”
[laughter]
0:04:13 Mike Vacanti: Seriously?
0:04:14 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, like “This one can be cancerous.” I think they just… One of those off-handed things someone says without realizing what someone might think of it. So as an eight-year-old kid I was like…
0:04:22 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that there’s an eight-year-old in the room that… Yeah.
0:04:25 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and I think it was just something that it just slipped out and I was freaking out and then they took it off and it was totally fine, and I’ve never had…
0:04:33 Mike Vacanti: Did you have to wait to get the test result back?
0:04:35 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I had to wait like two weeks. I was young, now it’s like, I think, almost instant.
0:04:40 Mike Vacanti: An eight-year-old Jordan Ross Syatt was waiting two weeks in complete fear and agony that you could have cancer to get the result?
0:04:49 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, well, I freaked out in the office and they were like, “Well, no, no… ” They could tell that I was like, “Wait, hold on. You’re telling me I’ve got cancer,” and they’re like, “No, no, no, we have to check to see, it’s probably totally fine, but it’s just important for us to check, da da da da da… ” I was still pretty worried about it when I was younger, I still… But now I go twice a year, once every six months, and man, I know I’ve told you this, but they do full-body scans, they check every centimeter of my body, it’s crazy, it’s…
0:05:22 Mike Vacanti: That’s interesting. I must have only got the 97% skin check, which I’m okay with.
[laughter]
0:05:29 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I think once you… ’cause I get, I think I probably get something removed 50% of the time that I go. Like there’s either something that is that, “Alright, it’s probably fine, but we should probably just take this off just to check,” and they check it and there’s never really an issue, but yeah, there’s always new freckles coming out, I never expected to be talking about this on our podcast, but hey. [laughter]
0:05:50 Mike Vacanti: It’s genuine.
0:05:52 Jordan Syatt: It’s true.
0:05:53 Mike Vacanti: So you’ve been going one to two times a year since you were eight?
0:05:55 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, yeah. My whole life.
0:05:58 Mike Vacanti: I did not know that. I thought it was maybe the last few year things, I didn’t know the origin story of that.
0:06:04 Jordan Syatt: Well, I should say the time I was with Gary, those three years, I didn’t go to any doctors or anything like… I just…
0:06:11 Mike Vacanti: Yep, or open any mail.
0:06:13 Jordan Syatt: I didn’t open… Oh, that’s a different story for a different day. Didn’t open any mail, didn’t go to any doctors, that was just three years where I was completely and utterly off the grid.
[laughter]
0:06:22 Mike Vacanti: Well, off one grid and on another grid.
0:06:27 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s true. Should I tell a story about the mail?
0:06:30 Mike Vacanti: I find it hilarious if you have any reason that you wouldn’t want to, but I think people will enjoy it.
0:06:36 Jordan Syatt: Alright, I’ll tell the story. So anyone who knows me is gonna be like, “Yeah, that’s definitely Jordan.” First and foremost, and I’ve said this story a million times, when you work with Gary, you’re constantly on the go, you’re traveling, you’re flying, you’re in airports, you’re in hotels, you spend very little time in your own apartment. So that has to be the context going into this, I wasn’t just chilling at my apartment and not opening mail, I was traveling all over the world constantly for three years straight but…
0:07:09 Jordan Syatt: And yeah, I’m not really the most organized guy, and I’m also a very nonchalant guy as well, I’m pretty relaxed with everything, so any time I would get mail coming in, I would just like… I would get mail and I would put it in a big black trash bag, and in my mind when I started doing this, I was like, “Yeah, when I get back from my next trip, I’ll just read it, I’ll open it all up.” But it slowly started to pile up to be a tremendous amount of mail, so that eventually it was like, “There’s no way I’m gonna go through all of this mail, number one. And number two, it’s just like, “Alright, well, I guess this is just where I’ll keep putting all of my unread mail,” and so…
0:07:51 Mike Vacanti: I would interject and add that you are very, very busy and on the go at this time, but you also, like you would do work from your apartment or from a coffee shop or a cafe or diner. It was that plus ultra focus on…
0:08:08 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah.
0:08:09 Mike Vacanti: Think of all the people in the world who would benefit from posting three times a day on Instagram every single day, but don’t for whatever reason, but they open their mail every single day, so it’s like a… It’s a weird inverse.
0:08:26 Jordan Syatt: Listen, you’re either dedicated to building your business or you’re gonna open your mail, it’s one or the other, you can’t…
[laughter]
0:08:31 Mike Vacanti: You can’t do both.
0:08:34 Jordan Syatt: But so I was so singularly focused just on my own business and building my business, that was just all I focused on, and also I think there’s something like… There has to be something related to Gary here too, ’cause I watched Gary and Gary is the best delegator in the world. He has someone do… Anything Gary doesn’t wanna do someone else does for him, and he’s the best at this, and there is nothing that Gary does himself that he could delegate elsewhere. He does what he loves and what he’s best at, which is speaking to people, making content, that’s what he’s really, really good at, and that’s where he thrives, and that’s what he structures to schedule around, but any logistics, he doesn’t do.
0:09:13 Jordan Syatt: Any driving he delegates that out, any cooking he delegates that out. Everything is delegated out. His assistant has an assistant, has an assistant, it’s like everything is delegated. So I remember watching Gary and being like, “Oh, I should do that.”
0:09:27 Mike Vacanti: Better in your strengths, pure offense, yep.
0:09:32 Jordan Syatt: 100%, and it actually… It’s worked out in many ways, I work with Kat, my assistant, she’s incredible, and I started to try and delegate, but then I saw… I was like, “Gary doesn’t open his mail,” he definitely doesn’t.
[laughter]
0:09:43 Jordan Syatt: So I was like, “You know what? Whatever, I don’t need to open it.” So I just kept putting it into this black trash bag, and then shortly after that, I started dating my girlfriend, and that was long distance for a long, long time, and every time she would come up to visit from where she was living previously, when in my attempt to clean the apartment and I had this big black trash bag full of mail, I would shove that in the closet, where as any good cleaner does, you don’t actually clean, you just hide it out of sight.
0:10:15 Jordan Syatt: So I hid this massive black trash bag out of sight, and there was one time when she was visiting, she was putting a coat away or something in the closet, and she was like, “What is this?” And she pulls out this massive black trash bag and she’s like, “Well, what is this?” I was like, “Oh God, this isn’t gonna be a good conversation.” And it was, I explained, it was all my mail.
0:10:40 Mike Vacanti: Were you embarrassed?
0:10:41 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, I was mortified. No one is excited to be like, “Yeah, this is about two and a half years worth of mail.” [laughter] And the craziest part is, I went filming, I was working with Anthony at the time, Anthony was my videographer, and Anthony was coming over, and we were gonna go film a YouTube video. And my girlfriend now fiance, she goes, “Alright, well, you go film, I’ll go through your mail,” and she literally spent the next eight hours going through all of my mail, opening it, sorting it for me.
0:11:12 Jordan Syatt: And I was like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe on your trip up to spend time with me, this is what you did.” And she was like, “I needed to do this for my own mental clarity, I couldn’t imagine you having a massive bag full of mail.” So that’s the mail story.
0:11:27 Mike Vacanti: I would forgive you of 40% of whatever guilt you might have felt there, because I think that you assume opening mail… Well, obviously, you assume opening mail is like a brutal thing that you wouldn’t want to do, but the thought of opening mail and sorting it sounds somewhat satisfying and enjoyable to me.
[laughter]
0:11:54 Jordan Syatt: Oh man. Yeah, she knows me so well though, if it’s mail, if it’s like a letter, I hate it. I don’t want to open it at all.
0:12:03 Mike Vacanti: Why?
0:12:04 Jordan Syatt: If it’s a… I don’t know, it’s not interesting to me, but if it’s a package, I get excited. If there’s a package, she knows she’s like, “Oh, he’s gonna be really excited about this for… ” ‘Cause I think it’s sort of like a gift for Christmas or Hanukkah, or whatever it comes in a package, and it’s always fun opening that up, if it’s a mail or a letter like, no, I’m not gonna open it, I just won’t. But the package I’ll get excited about. [chuckle]
0:12:28 Mike Vacanti: Were there any negative repercussions? Just in case anyone’s thinking about going with the three years of Instagram zero mail life strategy?
0:12:36 Jordan Syatt: Actually, yes. I’ve actually, I don’t think I’ve even told you… Maybe I told you this story. So it’s a really long story. I’m gonna save the excruciating details, but one of my… I got student loans for college and one of my student loans wasn’t coming out of my account like it was supposed to, and it was… They kept sending me notifications via mail saying like, “This student loan isn’t being paid, this student loan isn’t being paid and so that…
0:13:05 Mike Vacanti: And you thought it was like monthly billing you or quarterly or whatever.
0:13:09 Jordan Syatt: Yep, I thought it was automatic, every month, taken out of my account, and that actually wrecked my credit. It wrecked my credit because that one just wasn’t getting paid over and over and over and over again, so now it’s good, credit is fixed, got back on that. Thank God. But yeah, it definitely… Check your mail.
[laughter]
0:13:32 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that was not one of my… Anytime people ask me organization questions, I’m always like, “Definitely, the wrong person to ask it’s… ” People are always like, “Do you organize your content? Do you know what you’re gonna put?” I don’t organize anything. It’s one of the reasons why writing my goals down for the day every day helps a lot, that’s sort of my organization, but that’s the extent, everything else is just, “Alright, what’s going through my head now? Alright, let’s do this. Let’s do that,” and it’s just how I function.
0:14:01 Mike Vacanti: What a great story. I’m sure most people listening here have checked in on your Instagram, but we haven’t done an episode since your competition, do you wanna hit on that briefly?
0:14:14 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, sure. So…
0:14:17 Mike Vacanti: Or in-depth? I just…
0:14:18 Jordan Syatt: No.
0:14:18 Mike Vacanti: Wasn’t trying to put you on the spot.
0:14:21 Jordan Syatt: We don’t need to go in-depth on it. Actually, I did a whole podcast on my own just for… On my first Jiu-Jitsu competition, if anyone is interested in that. But for the most recent one, I won my first match, I was happy with it. He was actually he was really good. He was way better than I expected, so I won that match. The second match I lost to the guy who got third at my first competition, so he was super good, took him down, scored two points really fast, just made… I made a stupid mistake, I made a stupid mistake. He capitalized on it, and then to make a short story more short, he choked me out almost immediately, just hopped on top, choked me out and it was over, and that was it.
0:15:05 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:15:05 Jordan Syatt: So that was it.
0:15:06 Mike Vacanti: Well, nice first win, more experience, like it’s only your second competition. Just doing it, facing more opponents were you… Was the vibe in the bullpen, or even your energy in the 24 hours leading up to the competition different from the first one or pretty much the same?
0:15:27 Jordan Syatt: I was way less nervous this time, I was way less nervous, I was in a much better mindset, I think part of that is ’cause I had done a competition before, also my weight was on point. So for the first competition I was cutting weight, this competition I’m just maintaining my weight, it was a massive benefit this time…
0:15:45 Mike Vacanti: That you didn’t have that stressor of mental and physical.
0:15:50 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, there was… I didn’t cut any water, I was eating the morning of, it was totally fine. So that was great, and I was competing in the same weight class, so I’ve gotten a lot of people asking me to make content around my nutrition for both the weight cut, but also the maintenance, ’cause I know you and I spoke about it after the first competition, you’re like, “What are we gonna do in terms of with your weight, are you gonna reverse out of this, what are you gonna do?”
0:16:13 Jordan Syatt: So yeah, that could be fun to talk about, but just for everyone who doesn’t know, Mike just asked about the bullpen. If you don’t know anything about Jiu-Jitsu, this part is… It’s almost comical how this works, when you’re competing in Jiu-Jitsu, they take everyone in your weight division that’s going to be competing, and before you go out to compete, they put you all… They weigh you in, and then about 10 to 15 minutes before you all compete, you’re corralled in a gated area together, that’s all of 10 to 15 feet, and so you are just in a small gated area with the people you’re about to fight, and it’s super intense and you’re trying not to make eye contact but it’s super hard, and then you’re like, “Well, should I say like, good luck? But I don’t wanna look weak.” Everything’s going in your head. But it’s funny ’cause…
0:17:02 Mike Vacanti: A lot of testosterone and ego probably pumping through those bullpens.
0:17:06 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah, and it’s actually really funny ’cause they make… There’s a lot of Jiu-Jitsu memes with what kids… ‘Cause there are kids who compete in Jiu-Jitsu, six, seven, eight-year-old kids, and when you look at kids in their bullpen before the competition, they’re joking around, they’re having cartwheel contests, seeing who can do a better cartwheel, they’re just hugging each other. And if you look at the adult bullpen, they’re just silent, like red in the face, try to be stone cold, it’s very interesting ’cause kids…
0:17:32 Mike Vacanti: That’s funny.
0:17:33 Jordan Syatt: I don’t even think they really understand it, and they’re just there to have a good time, whereas adults they take it so much more seriously so… It was good, it was a good learning experience back at it. Took one day off, got right back into practice and yeah, that’s it, and then I’m coming down to Florida on a Friday to hang out with you and write our book.
0:17:51 Mike Vacanti: Oh, it’s not a secret mission? It’s just…
0:17:53 Jordan Syatt: Oh no. It’s out.
0:17:53 Mike Vacanti: It’s out of the bag. We’re finishing this thing, putting the final touches on in this last week, I think a week should give us enough time, 8 to 10-hour days.
0:18:07 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:18:10 Mike Vacanti: I’m pumped. I’m extremely excited. We’re looking at a January 2022 launch. And it’s gonna be great.
0:18:17 Jordan Syatt: We were planning on January 2021, but with everything going on this year, it didn’t make sense, it didn’t make sense for us or for the market, we think it just… It didn’t make sense, and we definitely took advantage of that, like all right, we’ll push it back, we stopped writing it for the last few months, we stopped really working on it, so now we’re very excited to get back into it and prepare for a strong January 2022 launch.
0:18:42 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I mean, from our end, you’re absolutely right, also just foot traffic in bookstores, and obviously, in this day and age, cold foot traffic through a book store isn’t what really helps a book, it’s what our audience’s, their response to it, but every little bit helps and as many hands as we can get it in, as many people as we can help with it, we’re excited to. And for airports, Barnes and Nobles, like wherever, to have such little traffic this January, compared to what we hope will be more next January, it’s kind of a no-brainer.
0:19:27 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, so that’s it.
0:19:29 Mike Vacanti: That’s it. Should we get into things?
0:19:32 Jordan Syatt: I’m ready, let’s do it.
0:19:35 Mike Vacanti: Alright, first one’s not question, just an impromptu, and it’s not gonna work as well because we’re on FaceTime on our phones and we need to look at our phones, but we…
0:19:43 Jordan Syatt: Are you trying to surprise me with this?
0:19:46 Mike Vacanti: No, I’m not surprising you. It’s no surprise. I mean, the whole podcast is a surprise for you, but…
[laughter]
0:19:53 Jordan Syatt: Is it screen time?
0:19:54 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, let’s do a little screen time update, just a real quick… I’m curious.
0:19:58 Jordan Syatt: Alright, like a daily average screen time?
0:20:02 Mike Vacanti: Or just even what you can do is you can look at… We can go back to the week, if you click on it, and then you click on week, and then if you scroll along, left to right, scroll across from bar. So I can go back to what we originally did, where I was like seven hours and 41 minutes a day on average. And then the next week, so I’ve been down week over week, and this has been a point for me because a lot of my cell phone time has not been productive and has not been benefiting me in any way whatsoever, and that’s the portion of it I’ve been trying to eliminate… So on from 741 down to 718, down to 526, down to 446.
0:20:53 Jordan Syatt: What?
0:20:54 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:20:55 Jordan Syatt: Wow. And the first time we did it, I think you were at like eight hours and 11 or eight hours and 10 minutes, right.
0:21:01 Mike Vacanti: Oh, so that was even the week that… Yeah, that was the week that I can’t even see ’cause it’s only letting me scroll back three.
0:21:07 Jordan Syatt: Geez, and you’ve been deliberately trying to reduce it.
0:21:10 Mike Vacanti: If I note… If I just catch myself doing something stupid or not beneficial, or even just not intentional, it’s like, “Wait, what am I doing. Okay. This is just boredom. I don’t wanna be scrolling here, what should I do with my life right now?” And oftentimes, I then end up on the golf course or something else, but, yeah.
0:21:32 Jordan Syatt: Man, all right, so the first one, I went from eight hours and six minutes to the next week was eight hours and four minutes, that was a solid two-minute improvement…
0:21:42 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, but you’re not actively trying to improve this and the consistency is actually interesting.
0:21:48 Jordan Syatt: Then the next week was six hours and 46 minutes.
0:21:51 Mike Vacanti: Wow.
0:21:53 Jordan Syatt: Interesting, right? Then the next week was seven hours and 12 minutes, and that’s… Yeah, that’s this current week, and it looks like that’s down 20%… So I’m not trying to at all, and for whatever it’s worth, I would imagine that a lot of that has to do with the day before and the day of my Ju-Jitsuoftentimes competitions significantly less on social media because I’m just… I get off, and not completely, but I’m nowhere near as active on it, I’m not looking at messages, I’m definitely not posting on it, so I would imagine that that has a big impact, and if we do this again next week, I would bet that it’ll probably be right back up.
0:22:32 Mike Vacanti: Back up.
0:22:34 Jordan Syatt: Just to be honest about that. But yeah, it’s interesting.
0:22:38 Mike Vacanti: Alright, question one. This is a good one. Video Production advice for someone who can’t afford to pay a Rico yet. You can start, or I can start on this one.
0:22:54 Jordan Syatt: You start with that.
0:22:58 Mike Vacanti: So I have done many, many, many videos on my own, and I have done videos with multiple videographers, and I would say that the time you save from outsourcing, and that’s a conversation in itself we could have, but the time you say from outsourcing can be beneficial to use to do other things, and that might make sense, but for this person who can’t afford to pay a videographer yet, the advice that I would give is; One, understand that there’s a steep learning curve to the process, and that includes simple things that you wouldn’t consider, such as transferring footage from phone to your computer or from your camera to your computer, that would include just learning how to, “Edit in a software,” whether it’s iMovie or Adobe or any free software, anything, but just learning. And when I say edit, I mostly mean cut, basically clip, ’cause you’re not doing fancy edits on your own, all you’re really doing is one, volume control and two, editing out whatever parts you want out, it takes much, much longer initially, number one, than you expect, and number two, it takes you much, much longer than it’s gonna take you two weeks from now, four weeks from now, eight weeks from now, if you continue to do it.
0:24:29 Mike Vacanti: So there’s a steep learning curve, don’t get frustrated early on, but get excited about it, there’s actually… There’s a lot of mental benefit to the learning process and doing something new, and yeah, just go in with that expectation that it’s gonna take you longer than you think, and then the last thing I would say is really just understand that so much of the value that someone’s gonna get from watching the video isn’t from something that a professional videographer adds. After my summer with Ben, and then when Ben had to go back, he was done with his internship, he had to go back to England, and I was on my own and I was frustrated because I felt like video quality was down, the number of DMs and emails and even comments on videos I would get ’cause my output was slowing down, that was like, “We don’t care what the videos look like, we just wanna see you, we wanna hear from you, it doesn’t matter if it’s edited or if there’s cool edits or anything.” So understand that what people want isn’t like, they don’t need to be watching a movie, they really just want consistent content.
0:25:46 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right, that’s the biggest thing is, good content is good content. It doesn’t matter how long it is, it doesn’t matter how well edited it is, which by the way, that’s the weirdest thing to say in English, Edited… It doesn’t matter how well, edited it, it is. Good content’s good content. I’ll say, I’ve had a number of videographers as well, and I’ll also say Rico and I recently stopped working together full-time, Rico is an incredible young man and who… I admire him and respect him greatly, and we recently decided to stop working together full-time, largely because of everything that’s going on in the world, just because of all that we weren’t getting together on a weekly, or sometimes even on a monthly basis, and it just didn’t make sense anymore, and it’s funny because while we were working together while everything was… While all this was going on, we worked together for almost two years; over the last six, seven months or so, I was not motivated to do anything on YouTube at all, and I think a lot of it is because I knew that in order to create a YouTube video with a videographer, with Rico, it was gonna take a lot.
0:26:57 Jordan Syatt: We’d have to find time to get together. We’d have to plan it together, there’d be a lot of shooting, it’s like… If you think recording a video is difficult on your own, imagine trying to record it in front of a videographer. That makes it actually exponentially more difficult because now you have a real live human watching you perform. They see all of the outtakes, they see all of the mess-ups, and it’s very easy to get in your own head. So it’s interesting, ’cause as soon as we stopped working together full-time, I got this weird motivation, this fire to start making YouTube again, I just published first YouTube video on a while yesterday. It’s doing super well. I edited that video, I shot it myself, edited it myself, it was all on my phone, I edited two clips for Instagram that I made myself and this… We’re all getting to some advice on what might be helpful for you. And Mike was actually about to go into this, the benefit of doing it yourself. The number of messages that I got saying how much they loved these clips because of the editing was very interesting to me ’cause no one knows there…
0:28:01 Jordan Syatt: No one knew that Rico and I weren’t working together anymore. And I think one of the reasons that the editing was so good, even though it was literally just jump cuts, that’s all the editing was; there was no music involved, there was no crazy special effects, it was literally just jump cuts, is because no one, no one knows my content better than me, and no one knows my audience better than me, no one… Doesn’t matter how amazing a videographer you get, it’s just impossible for them to understand you, your content, or your audience better than you. You will always know them best because you’re in the DMS, you’re in the messages, you’re the one working with those clients, you know their thoughts, their feelings, their insecurities, their emotions, so you know what they need to hear and when and how. So because of that, I think those clips stood out because I was the one editing them, I was making sure I was figuring out what clips go where, at what time, what cadence, all of that, and it was literally just… I took the rock clip and I just made cuts and that was it. And I was very…
0:28:55 Jordan Syatt: I was meticulous with it and I enjoyed it, it was a lot of fun. Now, what I will say is, I think audio is very important, the audio quality is actually very important, especially on something like a podcast, but also on YouTube, so I recently bought a microphone for my cell phone, it just plugs into my cell phone and then I attach it, it’s called the Saramonic Blink 500.
0:29:19 Mike Vacanti: Woah woah woah woah.
0:29:20 Jordan Syatt: What?
0:29:22 Mike Vacanti: No free brand deals. I’m just kidding. What’s the name of it?
[laughter]
0:29:26 Jordan Syatt: We’re not getting any money for this. This is just… I’m very happy. It’s called the Saramonic Blink 500. I got it from Best Buy, and for whatever it’s worth, the first time they delivered it, the package was all messed up, it didn’t include something that it needed, so they sent me another one for free, they didn’t even take the other one back. So it’s called the Saramonic Blink 500, you plug it into your cell phone and then you record and that’s it. And the audio has been great, it’s been super easy. So I would say that. And then the other thing I would say is, you might wanna get a ring light and/or a tripod stand for your cell phone. And often times they come together. So I got a $26 ring light and tripod stand. So I have the microphone, the Saramonic Blink 500. I have a ring light that I got on Amazon for 26 bucks, and then I upload it to iMovie, and that’s it. And from that, I made an entire YouTube video and two Instagram clips from that one video, so you can get a lot of content out of it, the amount of content, you’ll make content more slowly because you’re not just filming it and then sending it to someone else to edit, you have to do all of it, but I think the quality of it can radically increase because you’re the one doing it.
0:30:40 Mike Vacanti: And what you mean on there is if you’re making a clip, for example, you know the exact content to include in the clip to make a compelling 45 or 60-second piece.
0:30:54 Jordan Syatt: Correct.
0:30:54 Mike Vacanti: You know what to pull from a longer-form video to make this… Yeah, that makes complete sense.
0:31:00 Jordan Syatt: If you’ve ever worked with a videographer, you’ll know exactly what I’m about to talk about, and if you’ve never worked with them and you won’t understand, but… I’ll try and paint a picture. If you’re trying to get a really strong 45, 50, 60-second clip for Instagram from a 10, 15, 20-minute YouTube video, it’s pretty difficult, it’s not like, “Oh well, I’ll just snip this one clip and throw it up there.” It’s like, no, you know you have to edit it down. And you might tell your videographer, “Okay, I want a 60-second clip from this section explaining this.” Then they’ll send you their first idea of what that might look like, and it’s gonna take a while for them to edit it down, export it, send it to you then you’re gonna look at it, you’re gonna have to figure out what you like, what you don’t like, try and explain it back to them briefly and concisely, so they also understand it, then they’re gonna have to take the time to go back edit it, do all that stuff send it back to you. It’s a big back and forth.
0:31:49 Jordan Syatt: It’s a big, big back and forth, whereas if you do it yourself, you don’t have to communicate with anyone else, you know exactly what you want, and it’s not easy, it takes a long time and you’re gonna have a lot of edits, your computer might shut down in the middle of doing it and it’s super obnoxious and you didn’t have it saved and you have to start all over again from the beginning, that’s happened to me with videos and articles and every… This is the side of content creation that no one really sees or talks about, but it’s true, but when you do it yourself, you’re the creator and again, no one knows your audience better than you, and it gives you the opportunity to really give them the absolute best piece of content. I think more important than how much you’re putting out, it’s how good the content you’re putting out actually is.
0:32:31 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I’m with you. That was a good answer. We smashed that. Question two, do you track your… And the question’s very far away in this new set up we’re on here, so I think I’m making this out correctly. Do you track your client’s body fat percentage?
0:32:47 Jordan Syatt: No, no. And I don’t check my body fat percentage either.
0:32:52 Mike Vacanti: I also do not track my client’s body fat percentage, nor do I track my own body fat percentage. One of the reasons I don’t, because I used to. One of the reasons I don’t is because it’s incredibly hard to… Using any method, it’s incredibly hard for anyone to get an accurate body fat percentage. If you have someone who is genuinely extremely curious, for whatever reason, maybe some people on the… There’s a techy, almost nerdy interest in specific aspects of the human body, like that personality type often will go get a DEXA, but you’re not gonna have someone getting a biweekly or monthly DEXA, and other methods just aren’t accurate enough to have benefit, for me, at least. You have people who might argue for the bio-electrical impedance method, just because it’s so easy to step on a smart scale and get your body fat percentage there, even if it isn’t super accurate in absolute terms. And they’ll just say, “Do it every single day and it’ll average out.” Which is true over months, it will, but those methods are so influenced by things like hydration, that it isn’t accurate enough for me to want and it isn’t that useful for me when we can just take waist measurements, and waist measurements are extremely correlated with fat gain and fat loss, and so I get three measurements at various points on the waste, and that is the main piece of data use in addition to scale weight in assessing progress.
0:34:47 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I’m the same way, I’ll say. The only way to truly get a 100% accurate body fat assessment is to get a… What’s that thing called?
0:35:00 Mike Vacanti: A DEXA scan? Even that’s not like…
0:35:04 Jordan Syatt: No, no, no… An autopsy is the only real way to get a truly accurate body fat percentage, but even then you get a DEXA… Whatever, it’s not 100% accurate, and if you’re having your client to get to DEXA in order to check their body fat, you’re doing it wrong, it’s like that’s ridiculous. Even a high-level physique competitor doesn’t need that, it’s just cool information to have if you’re interested. But the thing that I’ve noticed with clients, it’s hard enough to get your clients to understand that your weight will fluctuate, and not just for them to understand it, but for them to not freak out when it does, to have the emotional and the capacity to internalize what a scale fluctuation means, but it’s easier to get them to internalize that because anyone and everyone knows, well, your weight is more than just your fat, you know it’s also your stomach content, your bone density, all that other stuff right?
0:35:56 Jordan Syatt: When you get on the scale and they measure your body fat, in their mind, it’s only measuring their body fat, and of course that’s what’s going in their mind because they’re getting a literal body fat percentage test. So imagine you have a client from week one to week three see their body fat goes up, because they step on and it gets that reading… Well, they’re gonna freak out like, “Why in the… ” People freak out enough just on the scale, they’re like, “Oh my God, the scale went up.” And you can sort of calm them down and you can educate them and talk to them, but if they see their body fat went up, well, now you’ve got someone…
0:36:33 Jordan Syatt: Never mind the issues they’re gonna have mentally and emotionally, but you’re also gonna have issues ’cause they’re not gonna trust you. They’re not gonna… This isn’t working, maybe you calm them down, but in the back of their mind, they’re gonna be like, “My body fat went up, and they’re telling me that this is affected by hydration and stomach content and other things, but I don’t know if I believe them,” ’cause people will believe the stuff about the scale because it makes sense logically, but body fat is harder for people to really buy into that, even though it’s true. For me, listen, I don’t want you to step on one of those skills, and I’ll tell them why, I’ll explain all of this to them, but I don’t have them measure their body fat, because like you said, measurements are probably, realistically, measurements are a better idea than the body fat scale, because measurements, even though they do have their own margin of error, just in terms of, it’s essentially impossible to measure the exact same spot every single time, but you probably get a better idea on a week to week basis from measurements than you do from stepping on one of those body fat scales.
0:37:32 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yep. Number three… I gotta move a little closer to this. What do you do… Oh, I like this… What do you do if you feel overwhelmed? I don’t know what to do next to scale my business. The reason I picked this question is because I felt like this the other day. And not about scaling a business, but literally about a massive to-do list of work, just a lot of things. And something that I reminded myself of is… And this applies in a lot of situations. And if you’ve ever had racing thoughts or if you’ve ever felt like you were unable to focus on something, this might be something that you can relate to. You can only do one thing… Even if you’re the best multi-tasker in the world, you’re going to be better only doing one thing at a time. And so if you’re… That sense of overwhelm is often coming from an inability to just pick one thing and focus on it. I need to be on Instagram, but I also need to be on TikTok, but I also need to be running paid ads, but I also need to be commenting in Facebook groups, but I also… Like… You can’t do all of that at the same time.
0:39:03 Mike Vacanti: So if you want to make a list of everything you feel like you should be doing or want to be doing, that makes sense, and then put a one… I mean… What I’ll do on a daily to-do list is order them. So I’ll put ’em in the order that I want to do them, and sometimes I’ll put little times by like… Estimated how long it’ll take, and then it’s just only think about one of those things. And another little trick that also works is if you can’t even do that, then give yourself the permission, and this sounds weird, but give yourself the permission to do nothing for the rest of the day. I don’t care if it’s 9 o’clock in the morning, be like, “You know what, I’m gonna play video games the rest of the day. I’m gonna go lay in the sun the rest of the day, I’ll get back at it tomorrow.” Within 15 minutes of playing that video game, there’s a very, very good chance that you feel a surge of like, “Okay, you know what I actually do… Like I’m going to start on this, I’m going to reply to these long emails that have been outstanding for a while… ” or whatever it is. But giving yourself that permission to just chill often gives you motivation or whatever intention back towards doing something on that list.
0:40:13 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I like that. I would say… Another thing I’ve noticed in terms of overwhelm, and it goes along with what you were saying is a lot of times you get overwhelmed because you’re comparing yourself to other people… So it’s… I think what you said is 100% accurate. You get overwhelmed because there’s so many things to do and you don’t know what to start with. So like… And you can’t do all of it at once. I think also that will come from comparison being like, “Oh well, they’re on TikTok and they’re on Instagram, and they’re on YouTube, and they put out this many pieces of content, and I’m not doing that, and I don’t know where to start… Which one should I begin with? I know they talk about doing long-form articles, but I don’t even have a website yet, I don’t know where to start. What do I do?” It’s like, relax… Number one. Number two is comparing yourself to other… And this is such a cliche thing… I hate cliche sayings, I really hate cliches… And this is a whole separate.
0:41:00 Mike Vacanti: Why?
0:41:00 Jordan Syatt: Topic we could talk… I hate cliche sayings… They’re obnoxious to me.
0:41:04 Mike Vacanti: They’re usually the most true things…
0:41:07 Jordan Syatt: They’re true, but they’re obnoxious for me to use in content. I try to stay away from cliche sayings in content as much as possible because they’re so predictable. When you say like, “Comparison’s the thief of joy.” It’s like, “Alright, we fucking know what you’re about to say… ” Even though it’s true, no one is hearing comparison is the thief of joy and being like, “Yes… Yes.” It’s like, we know it’s true, so for me, that’s why, whenever I write or make content I try and take the message from that cliche saying and change the cliche saying… I try and make a different saying that no one’s ever heard before, that way I can still get the message across without saying, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” it’s like, “Yeah, we’ve all heard that. Shut up Jordan.” [chuckle]
0:41:44 Mike Vacanti: And you’re probably also giving some people a new way to think about it, or…
0:41:50 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah…
0:41:51 Mike Vacanti: Maybe that message didn’t hit for someone else, but yours does.
0:41:55 Jordan Syatt: For me, it’s like getting people to really pay attention to your content, it’s difficult, there are so many pieces of content out there, there are so many creators, there’s so much good content. Well, I think for me, the easiest way to make sure people don’t pay attention to your content is to be boring and to say the same thing that people already know. So that’s why I don’t like cliche sayings and I’ll just make up my own with the same message. But back to the original point… I’m all over the place man… Back to the original point, which is, if you’re comparing yourself to someone else, you’re setting yourself up for failure and you’re setting yourself up for overwhelm.
0:42:28 Mike Vacanti: And your joy is being stolen…
[laughter]
0:42:36 Jordan Syatt: I’ve never heard that one before. That was good. And the joy is being stolen… [laughter] You should tweet that, “Comparison is stealing your joy.”
[laughter]
0:42:48 Jordan Syatt: And then like quote, Michael Vacanti.
[laughter]
0:42:57 Jordan Syatt: It can actually… Comparison can work in your favor, but if it’s leading to overwhelm, if it’s causing you to have paralysis by analysis, then it’s doing you no benefit, and you have to be really aware of that. And I think what you said, which is, focus on one thing, pick one thing and do it, that’s really… That’s really the take-home here. Where… If you’re a coach telling people on social media or telling your clients, “Listen, just get more steps in.” or “Listen, just drink more water.” What you’re telling them to do is just focus on one thing and be better at that one thing. So you have to take the same advice you give, yourself. It’s like, focus on one thing… And you know telling your clients to just drink more water, that’s not going to, all of a sudden, help them lose 75 pounds and have 6% body fat, you understand that, but you do know that having them drink more water is probably gonna help them, number one, stay more full, stay more hydrated, feel better about themselves, it’s gonna get them on track to doing one habit at a time, that will then lead to another habit, to another habit, to another habit.
0:43:51 Jordan Syatt: So if you don’t expect your clients to, all of a sudden, track their calories, track their macros, go to the gym six times a week, get 10,000 steps in a day, get 8 hours of sleep every night… If you don’t expect them to do all of that at once, then you probably shouldn’t expect yourself to be on every single social media platform multiple times a week, over and over and over again. Pick one at a time and then over the course of three, four, five, six, seven years, you will now have systems in place to help you be on every platform. But if you’re expecting to be on every platform right away, you’re in for a very, very rude awakening.
0:44:25 Mike Vacanti: Or even… Absolutely, yes… But there are a lot of very successful people in many, many industries who are on one or two platforms…
0:44:38 Jordan Syatt: Correct.
0:44:38 Mike Vacanti: Including the fitness industry. Not only do you not need to be everywhere today, but you might not need to be everywhere ever. But you can cross that bridge when you come to it. Because you can’t be everywhere today, so start by being somewhere today, and…
0:44:53 Jordan Syatt: You know the first guy who comes to my mind like that.
0:44:57 Mike Vacanti: Let’s guess. Let’s play a guessing game… My mind was Nate Green and Pat Flynn.
0:45:03 Jordan Syatt: Wow, same concept… Because they’re email focused, but different person. I like that.
0:45:09 Mike Vacanti: In fitness?
0:45:10 Jordan Syatt: A lot of fitness people, this will give you… Tell you exactly, a lot of fitness people steal his content, especially lately…
0:45:20 Mike Vacanti: Martin Berkhan?
0:45:20 Jordan Syatt: No, no, no, no. James Clear…
0:45:20 Mike Vacanti: Oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I knew you… Okay… Yup, yup.
0:45:24 Jordan Syatt: They take his content and they’re like, “Oh yeah, I’ve been reading books lately. [chuckle] Atomic Habits.” [laughter]
0:45:30 Mike Vacanti: No, but they don’t even say that… Just like, “There was this interesting study where if you replace a bottle of Coca-Cola with a bottle of water, 74% fewer people… ” Like… Like… “Yeah, I just picked that up… Just pick that up today myself.”
0:45:45 Jordan Syatt: “I was… I was just… Reading research on PubMed…
0:45:47 Mike Vacanti: Doing research [laughter]
0:45:49 Jordan Syatt: And found that myself.” But James Clear, he dominates email… Like dominates email. His email is just incredible in the same way that Pat Flynn and Nate Green and… Which is interesting that… ’cause I didn’t think you were gonna go with email, I thought you were gonna pick something like YouTube or Instagram, but I’m glad that you picked email because it’s one of those things where… No one… Unless you are speaking with someone and they outright tell you how many email subscribers they have and what their open rates are, you have no idea. And it’s like you could be sitting next to someone in a coffee shop who has 500,000 email subscribers and just is crushing it, but you have no idea because maybe their Instagram has 400 followers… And they… You have no idea. That’s one of the things I love about email is like, it’s so… It could be so anonymous if you want it to. But there’s so much benefit to being a specialist on one platform. There’s also tremendous risk, especially if that platform is a social media platform like Instagram or Facebook, because they really control the algorithm, they control how many people will see your posts. But something like your email list, you own it and they’re gonna get the email no matter what.
0:47:03 Jordan Syatt: Also something like your website. I vividly remember Martin Berkhan’s website, I would go to his website every day to see if he published a new article. I wasn’t even on an email list, it was just… I knew every time I read one of his articles, I was gonna love it and learn a lot, so I would go to his website. So I think just dominating one platform, just being the best or one of the best on a single platform is way better than being, eh okay on a bunch of platforms.
0:47:29 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and you become… You become dominant or the best by making one piece of content there and then making two and then… You know…
0:47:38 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. We’ve seen this in the mentorship, we’ve seen a bunch of… ’cause we have all these challenges in the mentorship and certain challenges, we say, “Focus on this one platform for this one month.” The number of people in the mentorship that we’ve seen go viral and grow massive audiences on TikTok or Instagram, whatever, is insane. It’s… Really, pick one, if you’re overwhelmed, pick one thing to focus on. And I know the question… Also we spoke about scaling your business… I really think most people are way too worried about scaling their business. I think people think about it way too much.
0:48:10 Jordan Syatt: It’s like the cool thing to talk about, “How are you scaling your business, Michael?” It’s like you’re… You’re… Stop. Stop. You’re… People focusing on scaling their business is sort of like people… I’m trying to think of a good fitness analogy. People worrying about scaling their business are like people who are just getting into fitness, and they’re super concerned about their carb to fat ratio, and they’re really trying to dig in deep to be like, “Alright, well, I really wanna make sure I’m getting the right types of… I wanna make sure I’m like… ” No, it’s not even carbs to fat ratio, I’d say it’s more like making sure that you’re looking at your beta carotene and you’re looking at all of your nutrients trying to balance to make sure that your vitamins and minerals are on point… It’s like, “Alright, unless you’re living in a third world country, you’re good.”
0:48:55 Mike Vacanti: Or someone who can’t… They’re half-squatting because they haven’t learned to properly barbell back squat, yet they need chains and bands and all kinds of crazy apparatuses.
0:49:08 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, scaling your business is something that… It comes with time… It really…
0:49:17 Mike Vacanti: Or it doesn’t, because you don’t have…
0:49:19 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I’m glad you said that.
0:49:19 Mike Vacanti: There are so many… Especially in the fitness industry, and especially with personal training, you can be a one-man or a one-woman show and build a very successful business that helps a lot of people, that brings in a substantial amount of money for you and/or your family to have a very good living.
0:49:43 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:49:43 Mike Vacanti: If we just run the numbers, charging $200 or $300 a month and coaching people online, by yourself and doing everything, doing content by yourself, you can do extremely well. So when I hear scaling, I think going from the couple hundred thousand-ish to a million to 10 million, that kind of revenue goals… And I… Right now, at this point in my life, I don’t have ambition to have a 20-person company that does 10 million in revenue, that doesn’t interest me. It’s not scaling to get 30, 40, 50 online coaching clients that’s just continually doing the thing for a few years or even three to five years in a row, but it’s not scaling.
0:50:36 Jordan Syatt: How many clients would you need at $200 a month to be in the six-figures category?
0:50:43 Mike Vacanti: Putting me on the spot with math, Jordan…
0:50:44 Jordan Syatt: I’m not good with math. I know… You got this.
0:50:46 Mike Vacanti: Well… Well, six figures, I mean, 8,000 a month is 96,000. So 8,000 a month is what? 40 clients at 200 a month. So probably…
0:51:00 Jordan Syatt: Got it.
0:51:01 Mike Vacanti: To get 100,000…
0:51:02 Jordan Syatt: 45…
0:51:03 Mike Vacanti: 40 to 45 clients, yeah.
0:51:03 Jordan Syatt: So 45 clients at 200 a month. So that’s… If you work hard for two to three years, that’s gonna happen. That’s just… It really is.
0:51:11 Mike Vacanti: 30 clients at 300 a month. Yep.
0:51:14 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. So I mean, I think… When I think people… When people hear scale, I think a lot of the people, when they use scaling, I think what they think is, “Oh, I wanna make a lot of money and not work very hard.” I think that’s what most people think. “I wanna scale my business ’cause I read one time in an internet article or on someone’s Instagram post that you could make six figures a month and not work hard,” and that’s what… And they… All they said is, you just have to scale your business. I think that’s where most people’s mind goes… That’s bullshit, that’s nonsense, number one. Number two is… Man, I just had a huge brain fart… Just like… The… Number two is this… Is… Man, I tried to pick up where I left off… You were like, “Alright man, I’m gonna go back hard… “
0:52:00 Mike Vacanti: Selfishly… Selfishly I’m okay with this, because I feel like I’ve had the last seven brain farts over the last three months, and you haven’t had any… So…
0:52:07 Jordan Syatt: I always brain fart… I’m trying to think of it, this is really important… So scaling, we’re on the topic of scaling, people are… Alright, they think it doesn’t mean work, do any work, da, da, da… Man, this was such a good piece of information that I was about to just let flow out of my mouth and then it just brain-farted right out of my ears.
0:52:21 Mike Vacanti: It’ll come.
0:52:23 Jordan Syatt: That’s what she said.
[laughter]
0:52:28 Jordan Syatt: Oh, this is what I was gonna say… This is why I hate it when personal trainers on social media call themselves entrepreneurs. It really bugs me and it’s because they’re being like, “I’m an entrepreneur, I have my own business. ” And what they do is they start to take on this identity of what they think an entrepreneur is. And they think that an entrepreneur should be scaling their business, and they think that an entrepreneur should be getting a 20, 25, 30 person team, and they think that an entrepreneur should all of a sudden be giving out like business advice and finance advice and talking about scaling and systems and da da da… It’s like, “You are a personal trainer… Period. That’s it.” Like, I’m a personal trainer, that’s all I am. I am a personal trainer. That’s all I am. You’re a personal trainer, you help people with their fitness goals, ideally you’re there as a support system for them, you help of them eat better, you help them work out, you help them be more consistent, maybe you help them with their habits.
0:53:27 Jordan Syatt: You’re a personal trainer, you’re not a fucking entrepreneur, so stop calling yourself an entrepreneur on your Instagram Stories and on your Instagram posts and to your friends and family, you’re not, you’re not an entrepreneur, you’re a personal trainer. And you should be proud of that, ’cause it’s a really great profession that helps a lot of people. And the more you start identifying as a personal trainer and not an entrepreneur, well, now the more your content is gonna be focused on helping people. And now your business is less focused on scaling before you have two clients and more focused on actually helping people and really building up a sustainable business that helps people and is great for you and your family and for everyone in the industry.
0:54:09 Mike Vacanti: Mic drop… Mic drop. I’m glad you got that one back.
0:54:12 Jordan Syatt: Yeah me too. That would have been a bad brain fart to lose… [chuckle]
0:54:16 Mike Vacanti: Did you have a phase at any point during your three years with Gary where…
0:54:20 Jordan Syatt: Yes. Yes.
0:54:23 Mike Vacanti: [chuckle] Me too.
0:54:23 Jordan Syatt: Actually, even before Gary, but yeah.
0:54:27 Mike Vacanti: Oh yeah?
0:54:27 Jordan Syatt: Mike was gonna ask if I had a phase where I thought I was an entrepreneur, and… Yes.
0:54:29 Mike Vacanti: I thought I was an entrepreneur.
0:54:30 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yup. And that’s why I can come at it so hard, ’cause I’m also talking to my younger self…
0:54:36 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, your former self, yeah…
0:54:37 Jordan Syatt: “You idiot, what are you doing?” I bet if you scroll back on some of my old Instagram posts or Facebook posts, you’ll see some entrepreneurial type posts that I just… I won’t delete them ’cause I think it’s important to look back and keep everything there, and it’s always cool and important to watch your journey. But yeah, I think that’s a part of my past and possibly a part of, depending on who you are, your present… Whoever… You’re listening, it could be part of your present where you’re identifying as an entrepreneur because of what you think you need to be, when in reality, it’s like you’re a personal trainer. And that is a wonderful job, it’s why you’re listening to this podcast, it’s because you care about your clients, and because you care about helping people get better results, and you care about being a better coach and a better personal trainer. So you don’t need to tell all of your followers on social media that you’re an entrepreneur, because you should be more proud of what you actually are, which is a coach.
0:55:28 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And people can cross this bridge for themselves when they get there, but if you get to the point where your plate is too full and you want to scale and you want to grow… Grow the business into being something bigger than just you coaching people, then give it a shot, but keep in mind that coaching people, in person and or online is very different than being a CEO who manages employees.
0:55:57 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right.
0:56:00 Mike Vacanti: Right? That’s something that I realized for myself, multiple times, and re-realize with these lessons is… [chuckle]
[laughter]
0:56:07 Mike Vacanti: It’s very different… Like managing employees and delegating is a different skill set and just less fun for me, but it’s just… It’s completely different than coaching people. And I like coaching people.
0:56:25 Jordan Syatt: That’s one of the things where… One example could be, in a gym, maybe you get promoted to business… To manager. Right? Well… One of my best friends… Actually he’s not one of my best friends, I haven’t spoken to him in a long time, but previously, when I… He was a great friend, I respect him… Really… In Boston, we were coaches together in Boston. Amazing, amazing guy. I love… He’s actually incredible at Jiu-Jitsu too, he just has that like caveman strength. He’s one of those guys where you look at his forearms and they look like baseball bats, and you’re like, “What the hell is this?” But he was a wonderful personal trainer, he got promoted to manager at Boston Sports Club, and at first he was really excited, “Cool, I’m gonna get paid more, I’m the manager.” And he hated it, and it caused him to leave the industry. He was like, “Screw this,” he was like, “I’m managing people and they’re making me focus on sales as opposed to actually helping and coaching people.” You could… The same thing could happen online, right?
0:57:17 Jordan Syatt: It’s like… People… I get the question all the time, “Do I still coach people in person?” Yeah, I do. I have people come to my apartment and I coach them for free. Like whether it’s athletes from my Jiu-Jitsu school, they come over, we train, whether it’s friends one of… My buddy David, he comes over and I train him for free, it’s like… I’m a coach. I like coaching people, I like doing that. If you love being a coach, then I would be very wary of anybody who’s trying to sell you on being an entrepreneur. And there’s nothing wrong with being an entrepreneur, but for whatever it’s worth, even Gary talks about this all the time. Gary’s like… He’s like, “Being an entrepreneur didn’t used to be cool.” He’s like, “Being an entrepreneur meant you were sort of a failure.” he’s like, “Only recently has being an entrepreneur become cool.” And I think he’s even taken responsibility, to be like, “I feel like I sort of used to give out this impression that being an entrepreneur was easy.” Which is why now he goes so hard on showing the truth about what it’s like, which is so difficult… It’s not coaching… When you’re managing other people, you’re not a coach anymore. You’re a Business Manager. So I would take pride in being a coach.
0:58:28 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, absolutely. That was a great episode.
0:58:30 Jordan Syatt: That was really good. It’s so funny, I was thinking about, at the beginning, when you’re like you… “Yeah. At the end of this episode, you’re gonna feel so good… ” And I was like, “Yeah, I feel so good right now.” I’m like, man… A part of me is just like, “Let’s keep going,” but I know, maybe it’s coming to the point where you’re like, “Alright, well, that was a good… ” [laughter]
0:58:43 Mike Vacanti: That was a good one. That was a lot of good energy. That was a lot of good information, that was… That was… I thought that was a great episode. I actually still feel good.
0:58:56 Jordan Syatt: We’ll end on a high not that though… We’ll… Rather than letting it…
0:58:56 Mike Vacanti: [chuckle] We’ll end on a high note… [chuckle]
0:58:57 Jordan Syatt: We’ll end on a high note. This has been a wonderful, wonderful episode. Is there any messages or any things that we want people to… Whether it’s message us, email us, is there anything that we need to say?
0:59:10 Mike Vacanti: You know, for the timing of this when it gets released for those in the US, wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving. We always love five-star reviews…
0:59:24 Jordan Syatt: Always love a five-star review.
0:59:26 Mike Vacanti: We’re not opposed to begging for those, we really like reading them too, for those… So many people have said so many nice things with the five-star reviews, and that… That is extremely fulfilling. I think that’s all I have. I’ve made a lot of promises about pumping out weekly episodes the rest of the year, and last week we didn’t have an episode, that’s on me. That’s on me, guys. I think that’s all I have as far as logistics goes. Do you have anything?
0:59:53 Jordan Syatt: Happy Thanksgiving, if you’re celebrating, if you’re not celebrating, have a wonderful Thursday. And I would say if you have any questions that you’d like us to answer, make sure you either email us, Mike, do you wanna give out what email you should send it to?
1:00:12 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you can email me at mike@ontheregimen O-N-T-H-E-R-E-G-I-M-E-N… Ontheregimen.com. And… Yeah, whatever… If you wanna hear us talk about anything or answer any specific questions here on the podcast, please do email me and I will compile that on our list because we would… We love getting these questions and answering them for everyone, so please do.
1:00:39 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so that’s it. Have a wonderful holiday. Enjoy every moment to the fullest. And we will talk to you next week.
1:00:45 Mike Vacanti: Bye everyone.
