0:00:12.0 Mike Vacanti: Hello Jordan.
0:00:13.6 Jordan Syatt: Wow, we’re recording. Mike, what’s going on?
0:00:20.3 Mike Vacanti: So, I know it’s not 2015, and there will be spoilers here, but Jordan just finished the show Game of Thrones.
0:00:26.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah.
0:00:27.0 Mike Vacanti: For the very first time. And so I wanna spend a couple of minutes talking about…
0:00:31.0 Jordan Syatt: This is gonna be the whole episode, I know it. We’re not gonna talk about Game of Thrones for two minutes, that’s for sure.
0:00:37.6 Mike Vacanti: It might be longer than two minutes, but we have some really good questions today, both fitness, nutrition, and some fun ones too. But this is where I wanna start.
0:00:45.0 Jordan Syatt: Okay.
0:00:47.1 Mike Vacanti: What are your thoughts after just finishing season eight, episode six, the series finale?
0:00:52.3 Jordan Syatt: Yes, just to reiterate, we’re gonna spoiler alert, we’re gonna spoil everything. If you don’t wanna know what’s gonna happen, stop listening now. Highly disappointed at that ending. And I bet people are gonna be like “What, you haven’t watched Game of Thrones until now? What’s going on?” Yes, I just watched it and I watched it in the span of, what, two, three months?
0:01:16.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that sounds about right.
0:01:17.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It was great. I loved the entire series right up until… I even liked season seven, the first few episodes of seven were a little bit weird, but it ended strong and season eight was just an absolute…
0:01:32.5 Mike Vacanti: Disaster.
0:01:34.4 Jordan Syatt: Disaster. Yeah, just a dumpster fire.
0:01:35.6 Mike Vacanti: Who’s your favorite character in the show?
0:01:40.6 Jordan Syatt: Jon Snow.
0:01:40.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:01:40.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, Jon Snow. He’s just so… Well, I don’t know. Jon Snow in terms of… He’s just such a good human. I respect him a lot. The actor did a wonderful job playing his character. I think he’s my favorite from the perspective of what a good man should live like. I think he’s a really good example of that.
0:02:05.1 Mike Vacanti: It’s very similar to what I liked most about reading Harry Potter, is that righteous and morally strong protagonists in fiction serve as a model to strive toward in life, and I think Jon Snow was that in the show, for me at least.
0:02:25.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. 100% agreed. I will say, just in terms of characters that I really liked, Tyrion…
0:02:32.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:02:32.2 Jordan Syatt: He’s one of my favorites. He’s so witty and clever and smart, and I liked Tyrion a lot, I really liked him. He was just funny too, just like a good character, he had a… I feel like he had good character development throughout the entirety of the series.
0:02:50.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, he had a solid arc.
0:02:53.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I liked him a lot. I also liked Varys too. But yeah, in terms of the model, Jon Snow is really just a great, great character.
0:03:02.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:03:03.1 Jordan Syatt: Who was your least favorite character?
0:03:09.0 Mike Vacanti: I think this is everyone’s least favorite character, except for the one person who messaged you at one point, which is Ramsay Snow. He’s just completely off the rails, psychopathic, pure evil.
0:03:24.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:03:27.6 Mike Vacanti: Like evil that is difficult to even comprehend or understand or make sense of.
0:03:33.2 Jordan Syatt: You can’t. It’s impossible. He’s so, so evil in every… So psychopathic, so just deranged.
0:03:41.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s a good word. I’m trying to think of who else I didn’t love on the show. But, I think you said it is… It’s a once in X time show. They just don’t really make them like that. And I get that season seven and eight, they didn’t have the books to go off of, so it… And they were limited with time constraints, it could have been another five, six seasons on top of that, but…
0:04:06.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:04:07.4 Mike Vacanti: Still just like…
0:04:09.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:04:10.1 Mike Vacanti: Iconic.
0:04:10.5 Jordan Syatt: Great show.
0:04:12.8 Mike Vacanti: It’s also funny…
0:04:12.8 Jordan Syatt: Cersei’s another one.
0:04:13.7 Mike Vacanti: Who you don’t like?
0:04:15.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, she’s terrible.
0:04:17.3 Mike Vacanti: Or Joffrey…
0:04:18.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah.
0:04:19.8 Mike Vacanti: It’s a testament to the actors that they make bad characters so unlikeable. They play that so well. But I was gonna say it’s funny that I don’t know, someone, when you posted on your story that you were watching it, joking like, “Hey, is this five years ago or what… ” You weren’t watching shows in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018.
0:04:43.4 Jordan Syatt: No.
0:04:44.5 Mike Vacanti: Right?
0:04:44.5 Jordan Syatt: No. I didn’t watch any TV. I didn’t own a TV until the pandemic. And really not until five, six months into the pandemic, everything, if I… I didn’t really even start watching TV until I got a girlfriend.
0:04:58.8 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.
0:05:00.2 Jordan Syatt: When sometimes we would relax and like, hey… That’s why I got Netflix is ’cause I remember hanging out in my apartment when she was visiting me, and I’d be like, “What do you wanna do?” And sometimes when you’re with your significant other, you’ll just watch TV, watch movies.
0:05:16.6 Mike Vacanti: Hang out, binge watch a show.
0:05:19.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:05:21.0 Mike Vacanti: Of course.
0:05:21.6 Jordan Syatt: I literally didn’t get Netflix until I started dating, and…
0:05:22.5 Mike Vacanti: I remember that. And you guys hammered The Office, I think.
0:05:25.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s so funny. They took The Office off Netflix in… I think it was December 31st, they took the… Or January 1, they took The Office off Netflix. The Office for me is the show that I can just watch mindlessly and really decompress. And I’ve been so upset that I haven’t been able to watch it, and literally yesterday I bought all of the seasons on Google Movies. And I was looking for it, I couldn’t find it. I had really high expectations for YouTube TV or YouTube, whatever the subscription is.
0:06:01.8 Mike Vacanti: Well they push it so much, you would think…
0:06:03.8 Jordan Syatt: They push it so much, and I looked on Google, “Where can you watch The Office?” And there was this thing called Peacock, which I haven’t seen before, and then YouTube TV. And I was like, really, I was like, “You know what, I’ll just subscribe to YouTube TV.” I do a lot on YouTube, whatever, I’ll support them. It was awful. They did not have all the episodes, they were scattered all over the place, it was super hard to use. It was 65 bucks a month. I was like…
0:06:26.4 Mike Vacanti: What?
0:06:27.3 Jordan Syatt: Alright, I’m done and I got it, perused through it, it was awful, canceled immediately. And then I immediately just bought them all on Google Play.
0:06:35.7 Mike Vacanti: Nice, now you have them.
0:06:37.7 Jordan Syatt: Now I have them all for life, yeah. That’s where I have all my Harry Potter movies too.
0:06:41.5 Mike Vacanti: Nice.
0:06:42.0 Jordan Syatt: I have all the Harry Potter movies, all the Lord of the Rings movies. Just like good movies to have on hand, always.
0:06:48.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it’s like you would own a VHS or DVD, but now you own it there.
0:06:54.5 Jordan Syatt: Also, Black Mass. Did you ever see Black Mass?
0:06:56.3 Mike Vacanti: I don’t even know what that is.
0:06:58.1 Jordan Syatt: You ever heard of Whitey Bulger?
0:07:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Nope.
0:07:01.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh man.
0:07:01.6 Mike Vacanti: I know Whitey Durham from One Tree Hill.
[laughter]
0:07:07.4 Jordan Syatt: I’ve never seen One Tree Hill and I don’t know Whitey Durham. Whitey Bulger, my mom used to tell me about Whitey Bulger all the time. He’s this notorious criminal from the Boston area.
0:07:16.1 Mike Vacanti: Okay.
0:07:17.3 Jordan Syatt: Just did terrible, terrible stuff. He had the Feds in his pocket, murdering, just really terrible individual, evil murderous, just terrible, terrible guy. And my mom had a huge interest in him because she grew up in Boston, and she was a lawyer in Boston, so she was dealing a lot with trying to find him. And he escaped and they couldn’t find him for the vast majority of his life. Recently, in recent years, they found him, I think it was in California. But he’s an old man. They found him as an old man. He lived his whole life on the run. He framed a lot of people for crimes they didn’t commit, just really bad, bad person and Black Mass is with Johnny Depp and he plays Whitey Bulger. Amazing, really, really well-done movie.
0:08:08.0 Mike Vacanti: It’s a good movie?
0:08:08.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:08:09.6 Mike Vacanti: I’ll watch it.
0:08:10.6 Jordan Syatt: It’s a really good movie.
0:08:12.6 Mike Vacanti: Cool. It’s funny that three, four years ago, to think that we would be sitting here talking about TV shows, just shows, and movies, the concept of balance within a decade or balance within a lifetime.
0:08:30.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I like that.
0:08:31.9 Mike Vacanti: And also highlights the importance of the amount of effort required early on to get a business up and running compared to the amount of effort required to maintain it.
0:08:44.7 Jordan Syatt: Also…
0:08:46.3 Mike Vacanti: And it’s not like you’re watching TV all day, every day.
0:08:49.2 Jordan Syatt: Correct.
0:08:50.4 Mike Vacanti: Or that I’m doing the same, but…
0:08:50.7 Jordan Syatt: I did do that on Sunday.
0:08:52.5 Mike Vacanti: Some days. Well, actually…
[laughter]
0:08:56.7 Jordan Syatt: But it’s also, you used the term “character arc.” We have our own character arc. In 2015, I would have been like, “Who the hell is watching TV? Who’s got time to watch TV? What a loser.”
0:09:08.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I would have posted that, like, “If you’re watching TV… “
[laughter]
0:09:15.1 Jordan Syatt: And now I look back and I don’t regret any of it. Don’t regret it at all, but 2015 me, in 2021 we wouldn’t get along. And it’s probably a good thing, realistically. If you would get along really well with a significantly younger version of yourself, it’s probably not a good sign.
0:09:37.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:09:37.8 Jordan Syatt: Realistically.
0:09:38.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that you’re not changing. Yeah, you’re not progressing, developing. Yeah.
0:09:40.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you’re not improving and not getting better.
0:09:44.4 Mike Vacanti: And getting better in a variety of ways.
0:09:46.8 Jordan Syatt: Which also speaks to… In hindsight where I was like, “Oh yeah, I made these mistakes when I was younger, I made this mistake, whatever,” but in the present moment, we often get so wrapped up in being right all the time. But in hindsight, we have no issue recognizing our mistakes. We have no issue ever being like, “Oh, I was wrong here, I was wrong there.” But in the present moment, it’s so hard to allow that, to be okay with being wrong. It’s something important to be aware of in the present moment, that one day, the opinion you hold now, strong chance you’ll look back and be like, “That was stupid. That was really dumb.”
0:10:23.6 Mike Vacanti: Which is good incentive to divorce yourself from having your ego wrapped up in your current day opinions.
0:10:29.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:10:30.1 Mike Vacanti: And being more open to changing your mind on the fly.
0:10:34.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, absolutely.
0:10:36.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. We don’t want a Jaime Lannister character arc.
0:10:38.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh man.
[chuckle]
0:10:39.5 Mike Vacanti: No one wants to end up at the end of the series making out with their sister and getting crushed by a bunch of bricks. Especially when you go so far just to end up there.
0:10:54.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:10:56.2 Mike Vacanti: Disappointing.
0:10:57.1 Jordan Syatt: Watching the video of them asking him what they thought of the final episode, of watching his…
0:11:02.5 Mike Vacanti: Of the actor who plays…
0:11:04.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. He was just so clearly upset about it.
0:11:07.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:11:08.5 Jordan Syatt: There was one really… YouTube has the best comments, there are some really great comment sections. Some bad ones too, but really some great ones. Some great ones when it’s not my video. When it’s my video, it’s terrible. When it’s someone else’s video, it’s great. But there was a really funny comment about the guy who plays Tyrion, and they were asking him what they thought of the last season, and he was so clearly upset about it, but he was speaking in a way that he was like, “Oh, it’s great. I loved it. It’s so epic. You guys are gonna be so excited about it.” And some comment was like, “He sounded exactly like Sansa expressing her love for Joffrey.” “I love him. He’s my king.”
0:11:51.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
[laughter]
0:11:53.9 Jordan Syatt: It was just so forced and just not genuine at all.
0:11:55.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. That’s awesome. Should we get into these?
0:12:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Let’s do these questions.
0:12:03.7 Mike Vacanti: Alright, you wanna start? Easy or hard?
0:12:09.4 Jordan Syatt: I’m gonna just cover my phone ’cause my hand literally just without consciously being aware of it…
0:12:15.0 Mike Vacanti: You thought you had seven seconds while I looked at the questions to check on something.
0:12:18.2 Jordan Syatt: My hand was just drifting to the phone and I was like, “No, don’t look at your phone.”
0:12:20.7 Mike Vacanti: Jordan just marshmallow-tested it and covered the phone…
0:12:23.4 Jordan Syatt: Marshmallow-tested it…
0:12:24.5 Mike Vacanti: Like the successful five-year-olds from back in the early ’70s, I don’t know the exact date, who would cover their eyes…
0:12:30.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:12:32.1 Mike Vacanti: So to resist that marshmallow to get a second one.
0:12:35.1 Jordan Syatt: It’s pretty cool that was a good predictor of success later on in life too.
0:12:38.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:12:40.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. If you’ve never seen the Marshmallow Test, Google search that. It’s really interesting.
0:12:46.2 Mike Vacanti: You didn’t answer though. Do you wanna start easier? I’ll give you a softball to start. “Go-to sushi roll you will know will be good no matter where you order”?
0:12:54.1 Jordan Syatt: Spicy crunchy tuna. Big fan of the crunch. In general, I like it. If I’m at a sushi place that I know is very good, like the quality of sushi is really, really high, I probably won’t get the crunchy. Because I know I’ll love the taste of the tuna. But anywhere you go, if you’re not sure of the quality, the crunch will often mask not higher quality tuna.
0:13:19.1 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.
0:13:19.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, It’s just always better. It’s sorta like…
0:13:22.1 Mike Vacanti: Good trick.
0:13:23.7 Jordan Syatt: Fried. It’s like fried food, you could fry anything. I could fry cardboard and I’d eat it.
0:13:29.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:13:30.5 Jordan Syatt: Same thing.
0:13:30.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:13:31.8 Jordan Syatt: What about you?
0:13:33.3 Mike Vacanti: I’m not a big roll guy. I get these salmon rolls from the grocery store by my apartment, but that’s really not even sushi because that’s grilled salmon and avocado. I really like eel.
0:13:49.6 Jordan Syatt: Unagi.
0:13:50.7 Mike Vacanti: So like an eel avocado roll…
0:13:52.8 Jordan Syatt: Nice.
0:13:53.3 Mike Vacanti: Is usually good.
0:13:54.6 Jordan Syatt: Nice.
0:13:55.2 Mike Vacanti: Because the eel sauce…
0:13:56.4 Jordan Syatt: The sauce.
0:13:56.7 Mike Vacanti: Masks it, even if it’s low quality. Yeah, yeah, you’re really on to something there.
0:14:00.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Good sushi, you can have without anything on it, you just have the fish, that’s it, and that’s a great sushi, but if it’s not good sushi, you gotta mask it, which is probably not a good sign.
0:14:14.7 Mike Vacanti: But you don’t know until you try it.
0:14:16.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Good sushi, you also can’t smell, really. If you can smell the sushi, it’s probably not good sushi.
0:14:24.2 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.
0:14:24.9 Jordan Syatt: Like good tuna, like there maybe is a slight hint to the salmon, if it’s really, really fresh, but if you’re really smelling the fish, don’t eat it, or it’s definitely not high quality at the very least.
0:14:38.3 Mike Vacanti: Interesting. I haven’t thought about that.
0:14:40.9 Jordan Syatt: Or it’s been out for a little bit too long. If it’s dry, not good. I love sushi, I’m a big sushi guy.
0:14:48.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:14:49.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:14:50.3 Mike Vacanti: And an expert.
0:14:51.4 Jordan Syatt: No, I’m not an expert.
0:14:52.4 Mike Vacanti: Well, that was good intel.
0:14:54.2 Jordan Syatt: Thanks.
0:14:54.6 Mike Vacanti: I appreciate that.
0:14:55.2 Jordan Syatt: I’m an ESTP, I overestimate my abilities.
[laughter]
0:15:02.1 Mike Vacanti: Oh man, we don’t need to deep dive on that right now.
0:15:07.1 Jordan Syatt: Mike is an expert on MBTI personality.
0:15:09.0 Mike Vacanti: I’m not an expert whatsoever, but I find it interesting.
0:15:12.0 Jordan Syatt: You’re more of an expert on that than I’m an expert on sushi.
0:15:14.8 Mike Vacanti: I disagree, because…
0:15:16.1 Jordan Syatt: I agree.
0:15:16.9 Mike Vacanti: Supposedly, MBTI is actually… Has very little validity.
0:15:22.9 Jordan Syatt: Why would you say that?
0:15:25.3 Mike Vacanti: Because…
0:15:26.8 Jordan Syatt: I’ve lived my life the past like…
0:15:29.1 Mike Vacanti: Few months.
0:15:29.8 Jordan Syatt: 14 months.
0:15:30.1 Mike Vacanti: No, not 14 months.
0:15:32.9 Jordan Syatt: Six months, eight months, on what you’ve pegged me as, as an ESTP.
0:15:37.1 Mike Vacanti: Well, to be fair, you did watch a video that came across your YouTube, along the lines of…
0:15:41.6 Jordan Syatt: That was perfectly…
0:15:42.7 Mike Vacanti: Describing, yeah.
0:15:43.7 Jordan Syatt: In not a good way, all my downfalls.
0:15:47.2 Mike Vacanti: And it nailed you.
[laughter]
0:15:50.9 Mike Vacanti: So it does seem quite accurate, but no, I mean that the big five personality test is more repeatable, I guess, in testing, even though it has lower usefulness in day-to-day life, whereas I found Myers-Briggs… As someone who… I’m 33 years old, for the first 30 years of my life, basically didn’t understand human beings whatsoever. Like there basically weren’t other human beings in the world besides what was going on in my head, and I didn’t understand how to interact with people, even though I kind of thought I did. Most of it was just mimicking, but it’s the first thing that gave me a framework for bucketing people into different groups.
0:16:38.8 Jordan Syatt: I think it has a lot of validity for that.
0:16:41.4 Mike Vacanti: And it has like, “Okay, if the ENTJs act like this and try to deceive you like this or control you like this… ” Like no offense to any ENTJs. I’m sure you’re wonderful, but… Like that’s kind of a little bit of a bucket, whereas if the ISFJs are really sweet and nice, but have their feelings hurt very easily, which is a generalization, obviously, but holds a lot of truth that I’ve seen, that gives me context on how to better interact…
0:17:09.2 Jordan Syatt: Correct.
0:17:10.1 Mike Vacanti: With someone as a starter, right, don’t let it pigeonhole you, don’t let it like, “Okay, I’m this then I can only be this.” Don’t let it take away your freedom or like… But it’s been useful for me for those reasons.
0:17:22.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s not a self-fulfilling prophecy, it’s not where it’s like you get it and all of a sudden, “Well, this is who I have to be now.” But I think it helps you better understand your own thought patterns, your own impulses, your own, like, why you might feel a certain way or think a certain way, and then also how to be more empathetic to somebody else, based on like, if you find yourself getting annoyed based on what someone else is doing, but you understand what their personality might be like, you could be more empathetic, understanding, this and this person, like, “This person just literally needs to talk, just to get it out, like just to let it out, and me getting mad about it is… “
0:18:01.0 Mike Vacanti: Or trying to fix their problem for them while they’re trying to get it out…
0:18:03.8 Jordan Syatt: Bad idea.
0:18:04.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:18:04.9 Jordan Syatt: Bad idea, yeah. So I think for that, it’s been great. And it’s been fun to look at people in Game of Thrones, for example, and try and guess what theirs is.
0:18:13.6 Mike Vacanti: And you’ve gotten decent at guessing.
0:18:15.5 Jordan Syatt: I’ve gotten okay. I still mess up a little bit with the S in the end, but yeah, it’s fun, ’cause it does translate to everyday life, to trying to understand, “Okay, what is this person… Why are they thinking that way? How are they thinking?” So you can just better interact with them. I think it’s super… Been super interesting.
0:18:33.0 Mike Vacanti: I’ve heard you say like, “Oh, this person has to be a this.” Because I assume they remind you of someone else who is of that…
0:18:41.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.
0:18:41.7 Mike Vacanti: Or they just fit the characteristics of that.
0:18:45.5 Jordan Syatt: I usually match it to the characteristics as opposed to another person I know.
0:18:49.3 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.
0:18:50.1 Jordan Syatt: So it’s like if I see someone being like… I’m going from the… I always start with the I versus E, introverted versus extroverted, start with that, and then I go from sensing versus intuition, and I still am confused on that, and I just go down the line from there, but I actually, sometimes I’ll start with the I versus E, introverted versus extroverted, and I’ll go…
0:19:10.2 Mike Vacanti: The JP.
0:19:10.2 Jordan Syatt: Straight to the J and the P. Right, judging versus perceiving, and that helps a lot, ’cause then I can… So there’s room to play with, from within there.
0:19:18.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I think those are the easier two to nail down too, so it’s a good place to start.
0:19:24.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:19:26.5 Mike Vacanti: Alright. We’ll move into something a little different here. What was your first job?
0:19:33.4 Jordan Syatt: My first job. Trying to think of which one came first, so not counting the internship, like my first paying job?
0:19:44.9 Mike Vacanti: Yes, your first paying job.
0:19:46.6 Jordan Syatt: My first paying job… I forget it was either, my first paying job was either, I was a host at an Italian restaurant called… What was it called? I think it was called Vincent’s or something. Host at an Italian restaurant or I was a janitor and I forget which one came first, they were both… I think the host of The Italian restaurant came first.
0:20:12.0 Mike Vacanti: How old were you?
0:20:14.1 Jordan Syatt: 15? I think? ‘Cause I had been doing an internship at a gym for a while, but I wasn’t getting paid at that gym, I was like, “Alright, I need to get paid.”
0:20:25.8 Mike Vacanti: It was an individual decision by you, that was like, “Okay, I need spending money” basically.
0:20:31.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, ’cause my mom wasn’t… I had never got an allowance, ever. I remember there was this kid that I went to school with, I was so jealous. His name is Tucker Cabbot, super nice kid. Tucker, if anyone is listening that knows Tucker, amazing guy, super nice. His family was super, super nice, but I will never forget, he got an allowance based on his age, so whatever his age was, he got in dollars a week, so when he was eight, he was getting $8 a week. When he was 16…
0:21:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Was he doing anything to earn that wage?
0:21:02.8 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know, I just know that that’s what he got no matter what… And who knows? Maybe he was taking out the trash or whatever. But I remember I went to my mom, I was like, “Tucker is getting this much allowance.” And she was like, “Okay, what’s he doing?”, I was like, “Taking out the trash, cleaning the dishes.” She’s like, “Yeah, that’s you paying your rent.” “You don’t pay to live here, so you’re gonna do that,” like clearing the table, taking the trash out, cleaning the toilets, whatever. She was like, “You get to live here, so I’m not paying you.”
[laughter]
0:21:30.5 Jordan Syatt: Which, looking back on, I’m very grateful for, but I was like, “I need money” ’cause I was…
0:21:37.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:21:39.1 Jordan Syatt: I had a car, but I needed to pay for the gas. I needed to pay for the insurance. And I needed to pay for all of it. And the internship at the gym was great, but I needed to make money, so I got this job at the Italian restaurant. I really… I wish I could remember the name. It wasn’t Vincent’s. But anyway, it was off the highway, I remember I went in for the interview, I got dressed up in a full suit, and the manager of the restaurant walked right up to me and I remember in my head, I was like, “Smile.” In my head, I was like, “You gotta smile,” ’cause that’s gonna make a big difference, and I smiled, I give him a firm handshake, and he was like, “You’ve got a really good smile,” but with this Italian accent. And as soon as he said that I was like, “Job’s in the bag.” Sat down, got the job, and it was a fun job. It was a lot of fun.
0:22:31.0 Jordan Syatt: I remember there was this one guy there, he didn’t like me for some reason that was like… Thinking back, he must have been 22, 23, and I was 15 or something, and he was just being a dick to me for my first week and I was getting really mad about it, and he was significantly bigger than I was, but this is my ESTP really overestimating my abilities, whatever it was. He said something to me, like a snide remark… That’s why I wanna move out of New York City. If you can hear that beeping in the background, just the ridiculously long horn. He did a snide remark, and I was like, “Hey man, come here for a sec.” And he was a little bit taken aback, and I was like, “Listen… ” I’m trying to remember what I said. I was like, “Listen, if you don’t like me, that’s totally fine, but don’t ever disrespect me again.” And from that moment on, he was like, “I like you.” And from then, he was super nice…
0:23:28.6 Mike Vacanti: Flipped a switch.
0:23:29.6 Jordan Syatt: Flipped a switch immediately. He was a 22, 23-year-old kid, so I remember he started offering me drugs, he’s like, “Hey man, you want some… ” He was like, “I got some opium if you want some opium.” He was like, “If you want some weed… “
0:23:40.6 Mike Vacanti: Geez.
0:23:41.8 Jordan Syatt: It turned odd.
0:23:43.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:23:43.6 Jordan Syatt: But he never disrespected me again, and for whatever reason that moment, the flip switched where he was like, “I like this guy now.”
0:23:50.1 Mike Vacanti: What made you say that to him…
0:23:51.8 Jordan Syatt: I was pissed.
0:23:52.6 Mike Vacanti: Anger?
0:23:53.1 Jordan Syatt: I was super angry. I tried to let it go at first, I didn’t just have it… The first reaction, the second reaction, it went for about a full week before I said anything, finally, I was like, screw this guy, “Don’t ever disrespect me again, you don’t have to like me, but don’t ever disrespect me again.” And from then on, he was totally cool with me and over the top nice from there, but I thought that was interesting how it’s like… Sometimes you just gotta stand up for yourself, and as soon as you do, it’ll change. What was your first job?
0:24:23.9 Mike Vacanti: Before we get into that, you literally just reminded me of something that I don’t think we’ve ever talked about…
0:24:29.8 Jordan Syatt: I hate this city, with a passion. That horn, every time that happens my blood pressure raises. Sorry…
[laughter]
0:24:37.8 Mike Vacanti: Not enjoyable. I don’t even know if I’m remembering the story correctly, but I think I am… You were here, you flew here from Israel to interview with Gary, you stayed with me when you did that, and I think we went to Starbucks together on 42nd Street and 8th Avenue, in midtown…
0:25:04.0 Jordan Syatt: After coaching Gary?
0:25:05.1 Mike Vacanti: No. I don’t remember when exactly it was.
0:25:07.4 Jordan Syatt: Okay.
0:25:07.4 Mike Vacanti: If it was the day before or the day after.
0:25:08.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I know exactly what you’re talking about. Is it the short story?
[laughter]
0:25:12.8 Mike Vacanti: Uh-huh, uh-huh. I mean, you can tell a story. I remember I was ahead of you in line and from my perspective…
0:25:23.1 Jordan Syatt: Wow. I didn’t even know I told you this story.
0:25:25.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, from my perspective, I thought maybe you knew these people or because…
0:25:30.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh, you were there?
0:25:31.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Jordan dropped back and was talking to these people. He had his back to me.
0:25:36.8 Jordan Syatt: I forgot you were there.
0:25:37.0 Mike Vacanti: And I was picking out the sandwiches at Starbucks that have the turkey and Swiss whatever they have there with the little apples and carrots, and I assumed you knew them or something? And it turns out that… You can pick up from here.
0:25:50.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so I had… It’s only recently that I stopped carrying my laptop with me everywhere that I go, and I still do it a fair amount, but my entire business is on my laptop. You and I both had our laptops, we were gonna do work at Starbucks.
0:26:05.8 Mike Vacanti: Always.
0:26:05.9 Jordan Syatt: We were gonna like answer emails, this was after I coached Gary. So we went to Starbucks and you went to go get drinks, and I put my laptop down on the table… Dude, I can feel like the anger building up as I’m telling the story, I completely forgot about this for a while. And when you open your laptop, it was sunny out, so the sun is coming in through the Starbucks window, and I can see the reflection behind me, and there are two dudes who are probably like 40 to 45 years old sitting right behind me, and I can see them in the reflection of my laptop, but they don’t know that. But you know like when people are talking really, really loud, and then all of a sudden they stop. So, you know something’s going on.
0:26:51.3 Jordan Syatt: So immediately I heard… Noise and bustle in New York, Starbucks, whatever, huge, like, noise level drops, so I can look in the thing and I can see behind me that the guy behind me is making a hand motion, like making fun of me for how short I am and just laughing about it and looking at his friend really, really funny. And… Dude, I can feel the anger that I felt at that moment, I was like, “What an idiot.” And so immediately I turn around. I’m surprised I didn’t go intense, I almost like… I’m surprised I didn’t go ad hominem, personal attacks on them, but for whatever reason, I said, “First and foremost, bro, I can see you in this reflection.” And I was like… And I said… I was like, “Could you imagine if I made fun of you for something that you have no control over?” I was like, “Wouldn’t you take offense to that?” And he actually… I remember he was like…
0:27:50.8 Mike Vacanti: Apologetic, right?
0:27:51.5 Jordan Syatt: He was apologetic, ’cause he was gay. They were gay, and they apologized ’cause they’re like, “Honestly, it’s like completely… We’ve been there.”
0:27:58.5 Mike Vacanti: “We’ve been made fun of for…”
0:28:00.8 Jordan Syatt: “We’ve been made fun of for something that we can’t control,” and they felt super bad about it, so it turned out to be a positive, but I was like, “Could you imagine if I made fun of you for something that you have zero control over?” and that hit home with them so hard, immediately they were like, “That was super obnoxious. Really, really sorry. We’re gay, we understand that.” And it was great after that, but yeah, I’ll never forget that.
0:28:25.8 Mike Vacanti: The motivation to have… Most people will call that a difficult conversation or an intense confrontation with a stranger…
0:28:33.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:28:34.2 Mike Vacanti: From that feeling, that anger.
0:28:37.7 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I get this visceral reaction. My mom said that I’ve had this since I was a kid. She saw this in me when I was a kid, she always said that if I thought something wasn’t fair, I would be infuriated and that was the thing that… I would always say like, “This isn’t fair. This isn’t fair, this isn’t fair.” It usually wasn’t in relation to me. I remember one of my really good friends when I was really young, his name was Ben Ledeau, and his father passed away, I believe… His father passed away, or his father left and their family got a divorce. His mom was going blind and they had to move to another town, and I was livid, and I was like, “This just isn’t fair. Why aren’t we doing something about… ” And everything was about fairness, and my mom was like, “It was a really tough lesson to try and teach you that life isn’t fair, that you have to deal with it,” but she was always saying, I was always trying to…
0:29:36.3 Mike Vacanti: Still a tough lesson, by the way. It’s a transition, but.
0:29:38.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. So for whatever reason when… I don’t think it’s always stemming from something not being fair, but when I don’t think something is right, I have a very hard time keeping it in, so… Yeah.
0:29:51.2 Mike Vacanti: Makes sense.
0:29:51.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:29:53.4 Mike Vacanti: Going deep. We go deep here at the How To Become A Personal Trainer Podcast.
[laughter]
0:30:03.0 Mike Vacanti: My first job was…
0:30:04.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, what was your first job?
0:30:06.9 Mike Vacanti: The summer after fifth grade, I was a caddy at Minnesota Valley Country Club.
0:30:14.0 Jordan Syatt: Nice.
0:30:14.5 Mike Vacanti: And I caddied for three months.
0:30:19.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s good money for a kid.
0:30:21.7 Mike Vacanti: Great, especially forecaddying on Mondays and you have a good group. Forecaddying is where the country club would have, they’d host events, so they’d bring out a company, for example, a big company and there would be, who knows, 120 people golfing, and then each group would have carts, so they wouldn’t need anyone carrying their bag, but they would have a forecaddie, which is someone who runs ahead on each hole and then watches them tee off from the landing area so that no one… Now, I’m getting angry at the horns because you’re angry at the horns. And it was actually easier because you didn’t have to carry a bag, but you would get tipped by all four people.
0:31:00.8 Jordan Syatt: That’s awesome.
0:31:01.4 Mike Vacanti: And so if you had a cool group and they threw in $20 each and then you got $20 for the round, it was a hundred bucks for four or four and a half hours as an 11-year-old.
0:31:10.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s huge.
0:31:12.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:31:13.7 Jordan Syatt: You’re outside probably joking around.
0:31:15.7 Mike Vacanti: It was great, and you’re learning from people there… I loved golf, got to play the course for free, on a certain day of the week in the evenings, the caddy… All the staff got to play, made great friends, and caddying 36 in a day carrying a heavy bag as a kid… It’s not sitting in an office with air conditioning, in a good way.
0:31:41.7 Jordan Syatt: Right.
0:31:42.0 Mike Vacanti: It might have been a grind some days, but it was…
0:31:45.1 Jordan Syatt: Good lessons.
0:31:46.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Good lessons and enjoyable. Yeah, that was my first job.
0:31:51.2 Jordan Syatt: What was your second job?
0:31:56.0 Mike Vacanti: So I always did odd job stuff. In elementary school, I was picking up sticks for the neighbors for five bucks, raking leaves for the neighbors for five bucks, doing lemonade stands with my friends, trying to sell stuff, caddying. My next job after that was a lifeguard.
0:32:21.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah, I’ve heard about that.
[chuckle]
0:32:22.0 Mike Vacanti: Another outdoor…
0:32:23.3 Jordan Syatt: You love that job.
0:32:24.0 Mike Vacanti: Did that for like six summers, I didn’t love it the first time I did. The first time I did it was at an amusement park, and that was brutal, that was insane, we quit. Me and my buddy Jordan Wild.
0:32:33.5 Jordan Syatt: I didn’t know that. You quit? In the middle of the summer?
0:32:38.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, like two-thirds of the way through the summer we quit.
[chuckle]
0:32:43.6 Jordan Syatt: Why?
[laughter]
0:32:44.8 Mike Vacanti: I don’t care about throwing them under the bus, at this point, it’s been 15-plus years. Valleyfair Amusement Park has a water park within it, and basically… They paid… They paid like… They said it was $7.75 an hour, but it was actually $6.75 an hour. And then, at the very end of the summer, they take the extra dollar from every one of your paychecks and they give it to you if you like “fulfill your contract.”
0:33:15.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s obnoxious.
0:33:15.4 Mike Vacanti: They could do all this bullshit because they’re… It’s seasonal, right? So they didn’t pay any… We literally worked six days a week, 12-hour shifts.
0:33:23.5 Jordan Syatt: Geez.
0:33:24.2 Mike Vacanti: And so, they didn’t pay overtime on that, and it just… It was brutal.
0:33:30.6 Jordan Syatt: Was it a tough job?
0:33:32.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. You gotta go two hours before the park opens and you’re sweeping stuff up and cleaning the bathroom, toilets and doing… I don’t wanna complain because… For me, at the time, I was like, “This is brutal.” I’ll never forget the time… Saturday… There was a party Friday night, and I went home from work and I was going to get ready. I showered, and I laid on my bed, it was probably 8:30, 9 o’clock at night. I was really excited to go meet up with friends, hang out with people, and… Like I blinked. And my mom’s shaking me, it’s the next morning and I have to go to work again. And I was just like, what? Basically, I was in complete exhaustion for two months.
0:34:18.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.
0:34:18.3 Mike Vacanti: And then at the end of the summer, Jordan and I had this… Jordan Wild, who is my friend and co-worker, had this plan where we were gonna take… Because you had to put in… Or what was it? You got paid two weeks late for some reason. Who knows? Seasonal, they can do whatever they want. And they would… Most of the employees at Valleyfair, by the way, are from… I think they are from mostly Central and South America. And they would bring them up for the summer, and they would have them stay on “campus.” They could just do what… They owned the people, basically.
0:34:52.2 Jordan Syatt: Got it.
0:34:53.1 Mike Vacanti: So we got our paychecks two weeks late. So we had this genius idea that we were gonna take two weeks off. We were gonna say something happened, and take two weeks off. And then at the end of our two weeks off, before we were scheduled to come back, we were gonna go get our last paychecks because then they couldn’t deduct the extra dollar an hour. I don’t remember what our thought process was on this, but we were basically gonna get that extra dollar an hour that we deserved. And when we showed up, our paychecks weren’t there. We were like, “Why aren’t our paychecks here?” She was like, “There’s a note that Ryan Bond wants to talk to you.” Basically, it leaked… Our plan leaked, and it got to the top of the people in…
0:35:31.0 Jordan Syatt: It leaked?
[laughter]
0:35:32.2 Mike Vacanti: It leaked. There was a rat in the lifeguard crew, and it leaked to Ryan Bond. And he held our paychecks and basically… So we didn’t end up getting the extra dollar an hour.
0:35:42.7 Jordan Syatt: Wow.
0:35:43.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:35:43.4 Jordan Syatt: Who the hell was the leak?
0:35:44.8 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know, man. It could have been a lot of people.
[chuckle]
0:35:48.1 Jordan Syatt: So it wasn’t like you were keeping it secret in a group of three of you, this was…
0:35:53.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I think our plan spilled out. I don’t remember exactly. But then I lifeguarded for the city of Edina.
0:36:03.7 Jordan Syatt: Edina?
0:36:04.4 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm, a suburb of Minneapolis, at the city pool. And that was amazing, much better bosses, management… Yeah.
0:36:12.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. You had a whistle?
0:36:15.0 Mike Vacanti: Oh yeah.
0:36:15.7 Jordan Syatt: You blow the whistle?
0:36:16.5 Mike Vacanti: I had 24 career saves in 5 summers.
0:36:19.3 Jordan Syatt: 24 career saves?
0:36:21.2 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.
0:36:21.8 Jordan Syatt: Actually getting kids out of the pool?
0:36:24.1 Mike Vacanti: Yes, that’s exactly…
0:36:24.9 Jordan Syatt: Were they legit drowning?
0:36:26.2 Mike Vacanti: Of course. I’m not going in if the kid’s not drowning.
0:36:29.0 Jordan Syatt: Wow, you actually saved lives.
0:36:31.1 Mike Vacanti: See, I kind of like pessimistically rationalized that it wasn’t that important because if I wasn’t sitting there, someone else would have done it. But, yeah.
0:36:41.2 Jordan Syatt: Was it hard to get them out of the pool?
0:36:43.6 Mike Vacanti: No, they were usually little kids. So you double whistle, which activates the… People come running out for assistance with all the equipment and stuff.
0:36:51.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, other workers? Other lifeguards?
0:36:52.3 Mike Vacanti: Yup.
0:36:52.3 Jordan Syatt: Okay.
0:36:52.4 Mike Vacanti: Who were in the break room. You double whistle and you jump, and you have your red tube…
0:36:58.4 Jordan Syatt: So you like…
[vocalization]
0:36:58.5 Mike Vacanti: Yup. Tweet tweet. Jump, and then you put the kid on the tube, and then pull them back to the side of the pool.
0:37:06.0 Jordan Syatt: Were they babies? Like, two years old?
0:37:08.6 Mike Vacanti: My first ever save was literally this 14-month-old baby who was sitting on the side of the pool with his parents, and… I don’t wanna say negligence. But maybe they were a little distracted with something, and the next thing I know, I’m scanning my zone. You have to look across your whole zone every 10 seconds. You have to cover the whole zone. And I see in the corner, a little baby just floating in the deep end of the pool. I thought it was a doll. I thought it was a testing scenario. No, it was a baby. And just instinctively, tweet tweet. I probably jumped… It was the most explosive jump I ever had in my life. Landed literally right next to the kid…
0:37:47.6 Jordan Syatt: Wait, from the top of your tower? You jumped on it?
0:37:49.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:37:50.7 Jordan Syatt: Wow.
0:37:52.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s what you do.
0:37:53.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, okay.
0:37:53.7 Mike Vacanti: Covered a lot of ground and… I’ll never forget this baby’s face because he was submerged by probably 4 to 6 inches and kind of bobbing…
0:38:06.4 Jordan Syatt: With his diaper and he’s like above…
0:38:07.8 Mike Vacanti: His eyes were open. So I could… Made eye contact and just went, pulled him up, and…
0:38:14.1 Jordan Syatt: Was it face-down in the water?
0:38:15.7 Mike Vacanti: No. He was literally floating vertically.
0:38:19.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy.
0:38:21.5 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm. I mean, he had just slid off the edge because… You know. He would have been floating after a certain amount of time, but…
0:38:31.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy.
0:38:32.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:38:33.0 Jordan Syatt: I love how you refer to it as saves too, like a baseball game. The reliever comes in and, “How many saves you got this season?”
[laughter]
0:38:38.9 Mike Vacanti: Saves, yeah.
0:38:40.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy. I didn’t realize that. I always thought those jobs were like the high school lifesaver job… High school kid is a life-saver. Lifeguard. I never thought that they actually like…
0:38:52.3 Mike Vacanti: It depends where you are. I had zero saves at Valleyfair.
0:38:56.8 Jordan Syatt: Zero saves.
[laughter]
0:39:00.5 Mike Vacanti: You gotta think about…
0:39:03.0 Jordan Syatt: Like, Curt Schilling, 24 saves this season.
[laughter]
0:39:03.4 Mike Vacanti: You got to think of where you are, right?
0:39:06.8 Jordan Syatt: He’s a starter.
0:39:07.1 Mike Vacanti: If a kid comes down… You like to justify that you do know some things about sports.
[laughter]
0:39:14.7 Mike Vacanti: He wasn’t a closer, he was a starter by the way, I knew that. Yeah, man, 24.
0:39:22.3 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy.
0:39:23.0 Mike Vacanti: And yeah. Yeah, so caddie and then lifeguard were the two jobs.
0:39:27.8 Jordan Syatt: Nice. Twenty-four all-time saves.
0:39:31.7 Mike Vacanti: Alright. We’re gonna move into… How do you avoid over-eating when working from home?
0:39:41.6 Jordan Syatt: You like this one, right?
0:39:43.0 Mike Vacanti: I did like this one.
0:39:43.8 Jordan Syatt: You wanna start?
0:39:45.4 Mike Vacanti: We can just spitball and kick it around, I don’t have a great monologue in my head. I mean, number one, you can back up and say, how do you stay full, or how do you avoid over-eating in any situation when someone is dieting, and all of those answers are going to apply here. Like, are you getting adequate protein, are you eating nutrient-dense foods, or are you just eating gummy worms to fill up all your calories? Are you drinking enough water? Are you sleeping enough at night? And we can add more to that list, but all of that applies. The “at home,” the biggest one for me is your environment, and with environment, I mean, do you have healthy snacks available?
0:40:31.4 Mike Vacanti: Do you have food that doesn’t take that long to prepare, or you can order it from somewhere, or it’s already prepared and you can just heat it up, that are solid options that are gonna fit your day, are those readily available and are the opposite of those available? Do you have four pints of Ben & Jerry sitting in your freezer just waiting for you, because keeping stuff that you want to be eating in high quantities available while not having the stuff that is gonna set you off… I mean, if you can keep ice cream in the freezer and not eat a whole pint, great, do it. But for a lot of people, myself included, I like to buy the “unhealthy foods” in the quantities and when I want to eat them, so having your kitchen set up for success is at the top of the list for me.
0:41:15.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I agree. I would say something that’s helped a lot for me is usually… Usually, when someone’s struggling with over-eating when they’re alone, they tend to be going for a really highly palatable foods; high sugar, high fat, maybe a lot of salt on it, whatever… French fries, chips, ice cream…
0:41:36.7 Mike Vacanti: Oreos.
0:41:37.0 Jordan Syatt: Oreos whatever, these really not nutrient-dense, just these quick calorie-packed foods. One of the things that’s helped me a lot is having a food that… Like my food is an apple. I always have apples in my fridge, and so if I’m like, “Hey, I want Oreos,” or, “I want ice cream,” or, “I want French fries.” I’ll say I can have it, but first I’m gonna have an apple. And for me, usually when I’m having that thought of “I want that type of food,” I’m not even hungry, it’s just like I want that…
0:42:09.4 Mike Vacanti: The feeling…
0:42:10.2 Jordan Syatt: That mental boost, the sugar rush, the taste of it, it’s not even hunger, it’s just like, “I just wanna taste that in my mouth.” So I’m like, You know what, I can have it if I want, but first I’m gonna have the apple. Usually, that, number one, makes me more full, so I don’t even want it anymore, and oftentimes just getting that taste in my mouth, which is nothing… An apple tastes nothing like an Oreo, I’m not saying it does, but getting some taste in your mouth and then filling up is often enough for me to be like, “Do I really want this?” And if I do still want it, I’ll have it usually in a better portion, a more appropriate portion size, but having something as your go-to beforehand I’ve found to be very, very helpful.
0:42:48.8 Jordan Syatt: And the other thing that I’ll never forget reading Martin Berkhan say years ago, which was just like… And it’s obviously easier said than done, but the best way is to have a hobby, do something. When you’re just at home… I think the hard part about that is, of course, it’s easier said than done to have a hobby and do something, but if you’re bored and you’ve got nothing going on, it’s very easy just to, “Alright, I’m gonna go get some food.” But when you have something to do, when you have something that you’re actively focused on, it’s very difficult to… I don’t know if I wanna say it’s very difficult, but I will say, when you are focused on something, it’s one of the reasons why I sometimes like, “Wow, three hours went by and I didn’t even realize I wasn’t eating.” It’s one of those things where because you’re so focused on something else.
0:43:37.0 Mike Vacanti: Get yourself in a flow state.
0:43:38.1 Jordan Syatt: Get yourself something to focus on, get yourself something excited about… Maybe it’s just going on a walk, maybe it’s being a part of a book group, maybe it’s like, I don’t know, watching a certain show, maybe it’s like doing something outside of the house, I think it’s super important, but also can be difficult right now with the pandemic and lockdowns, but being bored is definitely the enemy of boredom-eating.
0:44:03.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and it’s hard too when people are working from home who are bored by their jobs or who aren’t stimulated by what they’re doing, that’s… Because it isn’t as easy a fix. What you’re suggesting is great, that adds on top of, adding a hobby, adding walks, adding things to be doing to feel better and to be able to focus on, but at a higher level, it’s the work you’re doing that needs to be stimulating in some way, and obviously, it’s not practical for everyone to, “Oh, you’re not stimulated by your job? Just go get a new job.” It’s like, “Okay buddy, easier said than done.” But even within your job, finding, whether it’s mini-goals or finding ways to take pride in specific assignments or tasks or projects that you’re working on and, yeah, trying to make boring work less boring, or you can just…
0:45:07.6 Jordan Syatt: Listen to our podcast.
0:45:07.6 Mike Vacanti: Tell your whole accounting firm that you’re gonna go start your own thing and have them all make fun of you… Either/or.
[laughter]
0:45:18.1 Mike Vacanti: Alright. We got two heavy hitters. I’m gonna throw this one at you first so that you can talk about a little more than me. Parts that suck about having a big audience.
0:45:31.5 Jordan Syatt: A lot. A lot.
0:45:38.3 Mike Vacanti: I’m not saying this is just you, I’m happy to chime in with my moderate to small audience.
0:45:45.5 Jordan Syatt: You don’t have a moderate to small audience. Guy says this when he has hundreds of thousands of people downloading his free app, Mike’s Macros, which by the way if you haven’t downloaded it, Mike’s Macros, best app for tracking calories and macronutrients so definitely download it free.
0:46:00.2 Mike Vacanti: What a friend. Plugging me like that.
0:46:00.4 Jordan Syatt: No advertisements, no nothing. Maybe advertisements in the future, one day, if he takes my advice, but if it’s under Mike’s advice, then there will never be an advertisement on there.
0:46:09.6 Mike Vacanti: Thank you, bro.
0:46:12.3 Jordan Syatt: And I made a social media post about this, on my Instagram recently, talking about how when I was younger, I would idolize people with… I’ll say this, I wrote in the caption and I was like, “When I was a kid, I used to idolize people with big audiences,” and someone commented like, “When you were a kid? How old are you?” I was like, “Well, I remember I got my first Facebook account when I was 13, so I was a teenager.” So that’s a kid. So when I was a kid, I would look at people with huge social media audiences and be like, “They must be so happy all the time, they’ve got so many people following them, they’ve got so many people liking their posts,” I vividly remember seeing posts with… I remember looking at Eric Cressey’s page with hundreds of thousands of people, getting thousands of likes and being like, “He just must be happy all the time.”
0:46:58.1 Jordan Syatt: Literally, and as I’ve gotten older, obviously, and as I’ve matured, I understand that’s not true, but I also know that because I’ve experienced it, and so I made this post just being like, “Listen, there are many potential opportunities that can come from having a large audience, and it’s a blessing that I’ve been able to build a large audience but there are many days in which I’m thinking, ‘Maybe I just delete it and move to the middle of nowhere and work at a corner store in the middle of… In like the desert of Israel, just like go in, go to… ‘”
0:47:41.7 Jordan Syatt: They have all these little shops that sell… One my favorite shops just sold fresh peanut butter, I was like, “Maybe I’ll just go work there, or maybe I’ll go work at a falafel stand in the desert,” and there are many, many great opportunities that come with it, but there are many, many drawbacks. The way I phrase it in the post is like, “There’s a cost that you have to pay, it’s sort of like, rent, rent is always due.” And there’s that rent for having a big audience, and I think part of that rent is understanding that you leave yourself open to significantly less privacy, you leave yourself open to anyone and everyone’s opinion about whatever they want, which can be draining. It can just be very, very draining to have tens, hundreds, thousands of opinions flowing into your inbox on a daily, weekly, monthly basis that… A lot of people say, “Yeah. Just don’t let it get to you,” it’s like, “Yeah, good luck. You try doing it.”
0:48:46.9 Mike Vacanti: Experience it and then give the… Yeah, yeah.
0:48:51.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s like people you never know, you’ve never met, you’ve never seen, saying things that you would never imagine saying to somebody else, but they feel entitled to say it, which is fine, it’s their right, it’s fine, but that’s part of the cost, it’s part of the cost, and I’ve seen some people say, “Turn comments off on your post,” it’s like, “No, that’s not the kind of social media I wanna run,” but… Yeah, again, there are pros and cons to everything, but I think the main reason I made that post and one of the reasons I’m glad to talk about it now is because it’s important not to idolize or glamorize or sensationalize that… It’s sort of like when your clients are like, “If I just weighed 10 pounds less, everything would be better.” It’s like, if you just had a hundred thousand more followers, everything wouldn’t just be better. There are… Some things might improve and other things might go down, so the scales are always trying to balance themselves in some way.
0:49:53.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, great answer. We can go so many ways with this. Yeah, it’s especially hard because people who are using social media in association with their business are incentivized to make content that is well-received by their audience, they’re directly incentivized, and that increases engagement, which helps them grow faster, and they’re indirectly incentivized in that… Basically, what they make is influencing whether or not a potential future person will continue to follow them, will become a client, will be someone who supports them, will like what they’re putting out. So the incentive for the creator is on making stuff that is well-received. Well, there are so many opinions and so many viewpoints in the world that it’s incredibly difficult to… You’re essentially, and I’m saying this less from personal experience and more from watching everyone in the world creating, but you’re essentially walking on eggshells constantly unless you’re just very okay with taking a lot of negative feedback, and by the way, let’s actually talk about this next, but I don’t think negative feedback is the worst thing in the world, and we’ve talked about your growing dislike for some of the positive feedback, right? And a lot of people think about, just block out the negative, but really, you need to block out the positive just as much as you need to block out the negative, which isn’t easy, for anyone.
0:51:43.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. When Mike first told me this a couple of years ago, I thought he was crazy. ‘Cause it was around the time when you started to take a break from social media, I remember you told me you were like, when some people would give you positive feedback, like it would get you angry, and I remember at that time in my life being like, “This guy is insane.”
[laughter]
0:52:06.3 Jordan Syatt: I was like, “Why would that ever make you upset?” And recently, I’m like four years behind Mike on… Three to four years behind Mike in mental… I’m just trailing him in terms of growth, and I think a lot of philosophy and spirituality… He’s always been a little bit ahead of me, and I’m at a point now where I’m starting to get it, in that sense where… This is gonna sound really weird. I was telling my buddy about this earlier today, it’s gonna sound very weird to some people, but try and empathize, and maybe you can get it. Imagine someone you don’t know at all. Actually, here’s a good way to say it. Imagine your partner, imagine your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, whatever… We’ll say boyfriend/girlfriend, that you’ve been dating for a short period of time, says, “You are perfect like you are literally perfect.” That can be annoying sometimes, right, where it’s like, “No, I’m not,” and they just, “Everything you do is amazing and incredible,” and they’re just… They’re like blown away, by how incredible you are, it’s like eventually you’re gonna be like, “Alright enough, I’m not perfect. Stop glamorizing me.”
0:53:24.6 Jordan Syatt: It can be nice to a point, but when it becomes like, “You are literally everything and anything in this world and you are all that is perfect,” it gets like, “Ugh, stop, stop, stop. I’m not that good.” ‘Cause when people build you up like that, you inevitably start to face like, “I’m not that… ” And then you almost focus on your drawbacks as a result of it, “But I’m not because of this and this and this and this,” and so you take that to social media, which… It’s such a blessing to have people reaching out and saying such kind things, not something like, “Your work has really helped me.” That’s always nice. That’s always real. Like, “This video is so helpful.” I mean, the comments where it’s like, “You’re just the best person ever, you’re such a great person,” which, you might hear it and be like, “I’d love to get those comments.” But when you get them all the time, from people who don’t know you, you inevitably start to think about how you’re not a great person, and it’s like, “But you don’t know me and I’m a human, and I’ve made mistakes, and I make mistakes, and I’ll make mistakes again.”
0:54:31.7 Jordan Syatt: And in an odd way, it forces you to face them and get resentful, and then you get upset about that, you get mad about that, you’re resentful, it’s like, “Why can’t I even take this compliment?” It’s this weird dichotomy of, you want to grow your channel, you want to grow your social media, you want to reach more people, you want people to like you, but even when they start really liking you then, it’s weird, I don’t even know how to articulate it, just difficult to express. But, I think this conversation is important because I know my younger self just purely idolized it and thought that that’s it when you do that, you make it, but it’s almost sort of like something Pat Flynn said to me, in… I think it was 2015. I remember, Pat Flynn gave me some of the best advice in terms of money that I’ve ever got in my life. In 2015, he was like, “Making more money will solve more problems until a certain point at which it will create more problems.”
0:55:35.7 Jordan Syatt: Where it’s like after you reach a certain point of making money, whatever you have to do to keep making that amount or more, will cause more problems than is needed and can cause more harm than good. And I think you can sort of use the same analogy with followers, right? Where it’s like it might get to a certain point where you have… Getting more followers can help you with your business, it can help you with getting more opportunities, but after a certain point, it might cause more harm. And I actually think I’ve breached that point in the last year. In the last year, I was like, “If I never got another follower for the rest of my life, what a blessing. I’d be okay, I’d be totally fine.” I think I’m at a point now where I’m watching TV now, I’m relaxing, I’m sleeping in, I’m focusing more on myself, where, if I had kept going like I did in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, it would cause more and more and more problems because I would still be so focused on that one thing as opposed to bettering myself, and I think actually now, taking a step back and, never mind not growing as quickly, but slowing down, maybe even backtracking a little bit might be the better option for myself, you know?
0:56:48.6 Mike Vacanti: Which would sound so crazy to a younger version of either of us.
0:56:51.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:56:53.9 Mike Vacanti: With either attention, right? The amount of attention on you, we’ll call it follower count, but also with intentionally taking a step back with business, intentionally saying, making slightly less money per month or per year, because that time can be spent doing things that aren’t business growth-related.
0:57:19.0 Jordan Syatt: Yep.
0:57:19.4 Mike Vacanti: That can be personal relationship, that can be personal health, physical, mental, spiritual, that can be… It can be anything really, but I think health and relationships are the two… They’re definitely the two places where I have invested more time and attention over the last few years than I invested between 2012 and 2017.
0:57:44.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:57:45.4 Mike Vacanti: And it’s hard because those aren’t metrics that are glamorized. First, they’re not even metrics at all, right?
0:57:51.0 Jordan Syatt: They aren’t even quantifiable, yeah.
0:57:52.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, right. And they’re also not glorified by most people, by the mainstream, by…
0:58:02.4 Jordan Syatt: Correct.
0:58:05.6 Mike Vacanti: The headlines, right? Celebrity culture…
0:58:08.6 Jordan Syatt: There’s no newspaper or social media headline, like, “Man spends 16 hours less a week on work, improves his marriage.”
0:58:16.8 Mike Vacanti: Right.
[laughter]
0:58:19.8 Jordan Syatt: You never see that headline at all.
0:58:20.9 Mike Vacanti: And we’re not talking about going from 25 hours a week, to nine hours a week, but when you’re on the other end of the pendulum, when you’ve swung too far, bringing it back. Yeah, it’s not praised. Start that newspaper.
0:58:38.7 Jordan Syatt: That’d be so funny, right?
[laughter]
0:58:42.6 Mike Vacanti: “Man calls his mother more often.”
0:58:47.6 Jordan Syatt: “Woman gets eight hours more sleep per week, radically improves her relationship with food.” You just never hear that stuff. Yeah, yeah. So not to belabor the point, but if there’s one message to get from this specific topic, is that I think we always hear, “Don’t compare yourself to other people on social media,” this is another way of giving that message, where it’s like, “Don’t assume that all your problems would be fixed with more followers,” ’cause some might be remedied, at least in the short term, and others might be compounded, and others might present themselves that you didn’t even know before. So again, the scales will always try and balance themselves in some way.
0:59:39.1 Mike Vacanti: And guess what? This is How To Become A Personal Trainer podcast. I’m gonna take you back to something we’ve probably said 11 times, over the course of the last 16 months or however long we’ve been doing this, is you don’t need a massive audience to have an incredible coaching business. I was literally… Jordan and I, we put in serious work on the book, last night, and afterwards, we were just hanging out, chatting, and I said to him… We were talking about membership site and throwing numbers around, and it’s like, “Dude, it is so much easier to build a full-time coaching business, than to build a full-time membership site.” To have the same monthly revenue, at $300 a month one-on-one online coaching client, compared to a $25 a month membership, it’s night and day. Easier to build a coaching business, which is cool, because you can build a successful coaching business with minimal online following.
1:00:46.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and you also notice, Mike… Mike never posts on Instagram, but even myself, we never pushed this podcast on social media, maybe once every three months, I might say, “Hey, go check out this podcast if you’re a personal trainer,” but this podcast has a relatively small audience compared to both of our actual audiences, largely because we don’t push it. It’s grown tremendously, mainly, I would imagine, through word of mouth, and the name of the podcast was done deliberately, in terms of search engine optimization, How To Become A Personal Trainer. But we could grow this podcast very, very quickly with a couple of emails, more targeted approach on social media, but what we have found is the audience we have here, even though it’s smaller, it’s a loyal audience here on this podcast. The mentorship has solely grown from this podcast. That’s it.
1:01:49.4 Mike Vacanti: Correct. Yup.
1:01:49.9 Jordan Syatt: The mentorship is entirely built on this podcast, and one of the best things about that is, the culture in the mentorship, the community, is built around people who love this podcast. There are no issues in the mentor… There’s no bad blood, there’s nothing bad going on, there is no… When people listen to so much of this podcast and listen to us, it’s built on a foundation of people, a relatively small amount of people, who absolutely love it and who really connect with it. Whereas you could run ads and get a ton of people listening to it and try and get more people in, the quick way, but that dilutes the community of it, that dilutes the… You will inevitably get people who do not align with who you are, what you believe in. And so, there’s a lot to be said for having a slower growth, a smaller community of people who really, really connect with you, because number one, it’s way easier to manage a smaller community, way easier to manage. And number two is, it’s nice to have a small community.
1:02:57.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it’s much more enjoyable.
1:02:58.7 Jordan Syatt: It’s way nicer. It’s just so nice to have a small community of people that you can interact with and enjoy.
1:03:04.5 Mike Vacanti: And they’re here because they really want to be here, not because an advertisement that had some nice clickbait got them roped in, and so they’re then listening to an episode.
1:03:15.8 Jordan Syatt: Guaranteed, the reviews on the podcast would be worse if we were just running crazy ads for it because inevitably, we’d reach people who do not align with us.
1:03:24.9 Mike Vacanti: Who don’t like our ideas.
1:03:25.8 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Which is totally fine.
1:03:27.1 Mike Vacanti: They think the movie 300 sucks. They think that Jon Snow was the enemy and that Ramsay Bolton was the hero of the show, which…
1:03:37.0 Jordan Syatt: He’s not the hero.
1:03:38.0 Mike Vacanti: No, he’s not. I’m not even…
1:03:38.8 Jordan Syatt: He’s not. He’s a terrible…
1:03:42.4 Mike Vacanti: But yes, it’s…
1:03:44.0 Jordan Syatt: You almost went… You almost were like, “Maybe he is.”
1:03:47.0 Mike Vacanti: I tried to go, but then my mind just went to moral relativism. I was like, “No, no.”
1:03:52.8 Jordan Syatt: But it says a lot. I think it’s easy to get into the trap of, “Well, I’ve only got 40 followers,” or, “I’ve only got 400 followers.” There’s a huge advantage with that, there’s pros and cons to everything. I think it can be hard to see that advantage when you haven’t experienced the other side of it yet, but there’s a tremendous, tremendous advantage to having a small group of people who are very close-knit, who really trust and are loyal to you and value what you have to say. So if that’s what you got, build off it.
1:04:28.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And that’s such a great place to be because it’s a meaningful… It’s meaningful work that pays the bills, that helps people, that makes you put your head on the pillow feeling good at the end of the day, that also doesn’t have the downsides associated with growth, with the aim of whether it’s conscious or subconscious, but recognition, validation, the things, the “wrong reasons to be in this game.”
1:05:00.6 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Yeah.
1:05:03.1 Mike Vacanti: Great episode. This was very fun.
1:05:05.3 Jordan Syatt: Was there one more, we’ll save that for next week.
1:05:06.9 Mike Vacanti: We’ll save that. That’s… We’re at now, where I think, my introversion is coming out and I’m not going… We can tease it. What is your deepest fear?
1:05:18.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh wow, okay. Alright.
1:05:20.5 Mike Vacanti: Next week.
1:05:21.0 Jordan Syatt: Next week, we’re gonna talk about our deepest fears.
1:05:23.3 Mike Vacanti: And many other awesome things. If you enjoyed this podcast, we would really, really appreciate a five-star review. That is, I think, one of the primary reasons people find this podcast is, everyone who’s left such amazing reviews, we really appreciate them.
1:05:36.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I’m just gonna go hard on that. If you could do us a favor, five-star reviews are great, but if you could leave a written review, those… I think those help the most. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy long. If you wanna leave a long one, totally fine. But just a note about maybe why you like the podcast, why you listen to the podcast, something you’ve learned from the podcast, how it’s helped you. It definitely helps the podcast, it’s also a huge ego boost for us, just like it’s nice to read them, and we really appreciate it. So thank you, have a wonderful day. And we will talk to you next week.
1:06:13.8 Mike Vacanti: See you next week.
