0:00:11.7 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.
0:00:12.6 Jordan Syatt: What’s going on, Michael?
0:00:14.4 Mike Vacanti: Got the hardware equipment situation fixed.
0:00:17.3 Jordan Syatt: I just heard you say the word, “Testing, testing” more times in the last 15 minutes than I think I’ve heard you say in our entire friendship. “Testing, testing.”
0:00:27.3 Mike Vacanti: How many times do you think? Like 84?
0:00:29.6 Jordan Syatt: At least 40 times.
0:00:32.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. We’re in good shape.
0:00:34.4 Jordan Syatt: Back on the air.
0:00:35.5 Mike Vacanti: We are back on the podcast grind, and it feels good.
0:00:39.6 Jordan Syatt: Carbo loading. Carbo load.
0:00:43.3 Mike Vacanti: You know, I made the mistake of carb deloading before my upper body high volume workout, and so that did not go as planned, late in the workout without any muscle glycogen to speak of. But post-workout, I carb-loaded for the podcast, so I at least have brain glycogen for this session.
0:01:04.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s good. Brain gains.
0:01:06.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, man.
0:01:06.8 Jordan Syatt: Progressive overload.
0:01:08.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. You can’t just run on pure ketones. You need some of that good CHO.
0:01:13.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s right, that’s right.
0:01:14.7 Mike Vacanti: Right? A little fruit, a little… We don’t need to name all the carb sources right now. How are you?
0:01:20.1 Jordan Syatt: [chuckle] Polysaccharides, monosaccharides, let’s just go through ’em all. I’m good. I’m good, man. Doing well. I just had a really funny interaction. Actually, I’m gonna read this to you. This is… So I’m posting my daily weigh-ins for this mini cut that I’m doing, and I get really… And really, some of them are great. 99.9% of the responses are great, some of them are just weird. I just got one, and this really highlights how unaware people are of what they’re doing with their nutrition. As always, I’m not gonna share their handle, but literally, this just happened a couple hours ago. So on day eight of my mini cut, on June 22nd… So today is what? Today is June 30th, right? So on June 22nd, she responded to my story, and she wrote on June 22nd, “I’ve been in a calorie deficit for three days, and I haven’t lost a pound. What am I doing wrong?” Now, I didn’t see this. This was in my message requests, so I didn’t reply to that. Today, now, about a week later, she says… She replies to my story with my weight going down, and she says, “This is annoying, because I’ve been in a calorie deficit for a few weeks now, and I’ve only lost a couple pounds. Men have it so much easier than women.”
0:02:45.6 Jordan Syatt: Now, I’m not the best math guy in the world, but I know that, based on June 22nd, being in it for three days, and on June 30th, it has not been several weeks. So I wrote back to her, I was like, “You’ve been in a calorie deficit for about a week and a half, based on the last message you sent. And a couple of pounds in a week and a half is very fast progress. You’re being impatient.” And there was no reply for about 30 minutes, and then finally she was like, “You’re right. I looked back at my tracker. It’s been since the 19th. Oh God, it feels like time is going so slow,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, “You’re right, thank you so much, really needed that.” But it really just goes to show how unaware people are of what the hell they’re doing, and… A lot of people think that when… For example, if someone says, “I’m not losing weight, even though I’m in a calorie deficit,” and you say, “Well, you’re probably not in a calorie deficit,” they get really mad. They’re like, “How dare you? I’m not lying.” It’s like, I’m not saying you’re lying, I just don’t think you’re aware of what’s actually going on. And this was the perfect example that, literally, right in front of her, the last message she sent was proving what she was saying wrong.
0:03:54.2 Mike Vacanti: Uh-huh, uh-huh. The timing of that’s amazing too, because tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM, that’s exactly where we are, is why you are not losing weight, in the book.
0:04:05.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot about that. That’s true. Yeah.
0:04:09.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, man. And it’s hard to meet people where they are, especially in a format like that, when it’s a complete stranger, someone who follows you in a DM, you don’t really have context, so meeting them at their level of education, meeting them at their emotional charged-ness, right? Like if someone’s going to get offended or angry at you for letting them kindly know that they’re probably not in a deficit. Yeah. It’s hard.
0:04:44.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I just thought that was interesting, that that was a… It’s important to be aware of… When people are swearing up and down, they’re doing everything right, and they’ve been in a calorie deficit for so long, it’s like, “Have you really, though?” [laughter]
0:04:57.9 Mike Vacanti: That was one of the biggest things… One of the biggest jumps I made from when I first started coaching to kinda year one, year two, year three, was realizing that people are not always telling the truth, and it’s not that they’re intentionally lying, it’s that they might just… There’s a little bit of willful blindness, there’s a little bit of naivete, there’s… Sometimes there’s negative intent behind it, but usually it’s just, “Oh yeah, I didn’t realize I wasn’t tracking Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I thought I was tracking every day, but I guess I did leave those days out,” and, “Oh, that does kinda matter.” But early on, when someone would swear up and down that they were dialed in completely, it’d be like, “Alright, well, this must be a special outlier, and I have to take their calories even further. This doesn’t seem right, but let’s test this.”
0:05:45.6 Jordan Syatt: That was so nerve-wracking, ’cause you’re racking your brain, looking at Lyle’s articles, or Martin’s or Allen’s articles, like, “Who… What does… Could this possibly be? This must be the one in a million person who happened to find me.” It’s like… Yeah. It’s really nerve- wracking. And then over time, you’re like, “Alright, this is just… ” But it’s also clear in the research as well. It’s very obvious this is… People are unaware of what and how much they’re eating. So I think early on as a coach, you’re like… You’re so intent on proving your ability and your knowledge that you just wanna make sure everyone is getting the best results possible, and you forget that there’s human error involved. But it’s not… Data and numbers are important, but how you collect the data and numbers are equally important, and a lot of times, people aren’t accurately collecting their own data and numbers.
0:06:37.5 Mike Vacanti: And the more people you coach, the more you start to recognize patterns; you start to kinda bucket people into various personality types. You’ll start to realize, “Oh, this girl or this guy is completely dialed, and when they’re sending me their log every single day, they’re sending me exactly what they’re eating.” And then you have other people who aren’t quite there. And which… And our job as coaches is to help all of them .
[overlapping conversation]
[laughter]
0:07:05.2 Jordan Syatt: Forgot to send the lasagna.
0:07:05.9 Mike Vacanti: Or… The most common isn’t even forgetting. It’s like, “Oh, and then I just stopped tracking at X time in the day.” And that usually means, “Okay, you were at 800 calories and 90 grams of protein in the afternoon, and then you just stopped tracking, but dinner was pretty good.” Dinner wasn’t pretty good. But it’s good to know that, because that information is helpful in analyzing progress.
0:07:34.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s right. How’s everything with you, bro?
0:07:38.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, we don’t dive straight into fitness topics on this. It’s been a while since we did this, so we may be a little rusty, but things are good with me. Other than the exhausting training session. Actually, there’s something… We can keep on the fitness stuff right now. I realized during my workout that, for the last week or kinda 10 days, I wasn’t doing a lot. I got a few workouts in, but my sister got married.
0:08:06.6 Jordan Syatt: Mazel tov, yeah, yeah.
0:08:06.7 Mike Vacanti: As you know, I was the officiant. So it was somewhat stressful for me, and fitness was on the back burner, and the eight or nine days before that, I was deloading, so… Been a solid three weeks since I… It had been three weeks since I had lifted really intensely, right? Probably since I took a… It’s been three weeks since I took a set to failure. So I took my numbers for this workout from three weeks ago, pre-deload, and was looking at them, and during my warm-up sets, just thinking, “There’s no way this is happening today. I’m not going to do this.” And it was an interesting thought because I had this… Basically, “Program intensity so that you don’t hurt yourself” thought running through my head. It’s like, okay, if I back off five or 10 pounds here, still get all the sets and reps, and then week over week, build off of this base, compared to just trying to keep the linear progression going, I know that I’m gonna hurt something, and that’s gonna set me back even further, which is… It’s just an interesting way to think about periodizing or varying intensity over time.
0:09:18.5 Jordan Syatt: Yes, it’s an interesting topic because… I’ve noticed, if I take… If I’m going really hard with lifting for a certain period of time, and then I take a week off, I always come back stronger after that week, but if I take two or three weeks off, I always come back weaker. There’s something about those extra couple of weeks that… It doesn’t mean you lost muscle or strength, it just means you aren’t… It’s a brief neuromuscular adaptation that you’ll quickly get back, but if it’s just a week off, I actually feel better; it was like a good deload. But any more than that, the first session, your first week back is awful.
0:09:56.8 Mike Vacanti: I’m the same way, and I have found clients and people in general to follow that pattern. So yeah, that’s what’s been going on with me.
0:10:07.1 Jordan Syatt: Good, yeah, I heard you were the best officiant to date in the history of officiants at weddings. That’s the word on the street.
0:10:14.9 Mike Vacanti: That might be a little bit of an overstatement, but I appreciate the kind words, Jordan.
0:10:19.3 Jordan Syatt: Well, I believe it. I take it at face value. Heard you had people cracking up, and you were leading the best service to date.
0:10:28.4 Mike Vacanti: Just call me Reverend Mike. I’m an ordained reverend at this point. It only took about five minutes online, but got it done.
0:10:39.5 Jordan Syatt: There we go. Gonna find you on Craigslist.
[laughter]
0:10:45.3 Mike Vacanti: You got your competition here in about three weeks. A little less than three weeks.
0:10:49.6 Jordan Syatt: Less than three weeks now; it’s about two and a half weeks away.
0:10:53.0 Mike Vacanti: You feeling good?
0:10:54.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I feel way less nervous for this one than I felt for the first two. So, feel good on that front. I know my jujitsu has improved a lot. I’m also at a point where… Worst comes to worst, I lose my first match, and I’m… ‘Cause it’s single elimination, and I’m not… It’s not a big deal. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself for these outcome expectations, these outcome-based goals as opposed to process-focused goals, and I was so focused on “I need to win to prove my worth” before that I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to win, which… I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that, but I know that’s why I’m not as nervous or anxious now, because I’m not putting that pressure on myself; I’m just training everyday, as often as I can, trying to get better, and I’m really enjoying it. And so, even if I go in and I get completely demolished, I know I’ve still gotten dramatically better over the last six, eight months or so, and I was having fun with it. So hopefully I go and I win, but if I don’t, I’m not gonna be that upset about it.
0:12:08.1 Mike Vacanti: That’s awesome. Let me ask you a real, real, real question. How much of that result focus and pressure to win is associated with the fact that you’re sharing this with hundreds of thousands of people, compared to if you didn’t have any audience whatsoever and the pressure was coming only from yourself?
0:12:35.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, it’s almost… Probably 99% of the fear and anxiety comes from sharing this publicly. [chuckle] Yeah.
0:12:42.5 Mike Vacanti: Interesting, interesting. I would have thought some of it, but I don’t think I would have guessed that much.
0:12:49.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I remember, in high school wrestling, I would get nervous right before I stepped on the mat. Because it’s normal; you’re about to literally fight somebody, so you get nervous. But I would say there was more on the line in high school than there is now, in terms of your reputation in high school, and trying to make sure you get the points for your team so your team can win the duel, and also to impress the girls in the crowd that you want to impress. And there’s so much pressure when you’re a freshman on varsity to really show people that you know what you’re doing. Versus now, it’s like, most people don’t even know what jujitsu is; they hear jujitsu and they think karate. And they have no idea, and they’re like… They’d support me either way, ’cause they just… They’re nice people. So there’s very little on the line. My job isn’t jujitsu, my job is nutrition and strength training, and this is just people following along ’cause it’s a hobby of mine. So even though there’s less actual pressure now, just the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of eyes on it makes it… At least in my mind, it creates more pressure.
0:13:54.7 Mike Vacanti: That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. There’s also something too in high school and competitive high school sports, it being the most important thing in your life.
0:14:07.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah.
0:14:07.7 Mike Vacanti: Or at least for me, hockey was more important than school, more important than grades, more important than… It was the thing. And so that… Yeah, that makes sense that you felt more pressure then than you do now.
0:14:23.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, that’s… I remember… I was nowhere near good enough to be even remotely… Nevermind Olympic, but even a super high-level college wrestler. I was nowhere near that, but when you’re in high school and that’s all you do, you’re like, “I’m gonna be the best. I’m gonna outwork everybody.” And I remember being like, “Yeah, I’m gonna be an Olympic wrestler.” And it’s just, it created so much passion for me, and I loved it, but it’s funny looking back. I’m like, “No.” [laughter]
0:14:53.2 Mike Vacanti: Dude, you and I have never talked about this for as long as we’ve known each other. When I was in my summer, going into my sophomore year, I thought I had a shot at the NHL, and I was pretty sure I was gonna get a full ride to go to Division One.
[laughter]
0:15:11.2 Jordan Syatt: Do you remember the moment when you were like, “Oh, maybe not”?
0:15:14.2 Mike Vacanti: My buddy Jordan Wild, who is the reason I call you George sometimes, or Jamal, is just the most blunt, straightforward…
0:15:22.1 Jordan Syatt: He’s jay.
0:15:23.7 Mike Vacanti: Extremely jay. And we were training partners one off-season, and he was like… He’s like, “It’s basically the best player on each team kind of maybe is gonna go to Boston College or University… Any of these really good Division One hockey schools.” He’s like, “You’re not going to BC. Let’s go, let’s focus on the state tournament. Don’t be an idiot, you’re being delusional.” And…
0:15:51.5 Jordan Syatt: Did you get pissed?
0:15:53.3 Mike Vacanti: No, I didn’t, because I respected him a lot, and I knew he wouldn’t say that just to make me feel bad. I knew that he’s… Yeah, smart, and was just trying to give me a dose of reality, because you don’t… On the one hand, you don’t wanna kill someone’s dream, but on the other hand, you don’t want them floating off into delusional land if they’re… Yeah, so…
0:16:19.6 Jordan Syatt: Got it, got it. Yeah, that’s funny, man.
0:16:23.7 Mike Vacanti: Alright, we got some good questions. Actually, we have one really good question. You wanna dive into it?
0:16:29.1 Jordan Syatt: Sure. I don’t know what it is, but you gotta read it.
0:16:32.0 Mike Vacanti: We have one really good question, and then we have a bunch of random fun things that we’ve never done on this podcast that I just have in my notes to potentially drop on you as a surprise.
0:16:43.0 Jordan Syatt: Alright, I love it.
0:16:44.2 Mike Vacanti: Alright. “What are the top three things,” this is a question, “that separate a person who succeeds in online personal training or building an online business versus someone who doesn’t?”
0:17:00.0 Jordan Syatt: Okay. How about… Do you wanna do it like, I’ll pick one, and you pick one, and we’ll go back and forth for each of our three?
0:17:07.0 Mike Vacanti: Sure, or for as long as we want.
0:17:09.1 Jordan Syatt: Alright, cool, so I would say the first and the most important one is your skill and knowledge level as a coach. It’s like you… This is the foundation of everything. If you haven’t taken years to study and practice and learn the science of what you’re doing, you can’t expect… If a significant percentage of your knowledge comes from Instagram, no, just no. That’s not where you study and learn. There are things you can learn from there, but that’s not where the majority of your studying and learning should come from. Books, as crazy as that is to hear. Books, longform website articles, reading the research, digging into the science and the research behind this, and then actually practicing it in person… I guess that’s two, is really studying and learning and then also practicing in person, I would sorta lump into one.
0:18:11.9 Mike Vacanti: Yep. We can group those together into knowledge and skill as a coach.
0:18:15.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. So how good you are as a coach is number one.
0:18:18.2 Mike Vacanti: 100% agree. I would almost… I would put next to that, maybe below it, but somewhat related to that, because to help someone, to succeed in this business, you need to help people. And to help people with fitness, it requires that skill and knowledge, but it simultaneously requires a desire to help those people. And it’s almost cliche at this point, but someone with the highest level of skill and knowledge who has very little passion or compassion or patience or desire to help someone over a two, three year window, compared to someone with slightly less knowledge… We’ll call it 10 out of 10 versus 9 out of 10, A plus versus A minus, but that person has better people skills, has more patience, more compassion, a genuine desire to help someone, an interest in helping people. That is going to lead to better progress from your clients; it’s going to lead to you having more clients, more referrals over time; it’s gonna lead to you having a better reputation; it’s going to lead to you being more likely to succeed over time.
0:19:35.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, agreed. Agreed. So next one, this is I was sorta thinking about it while you were talking. There are many places we could go with this, but I would say… It’s funny, the more I think about it, the more it just directly relates to what are the top three things someone would need to succeed in anything like fitness and stuff, but I would say the next one has to be discipline. Discipline being the foundation of it, but in terms of you can have all the knowledge in the world, you could be super good at it, you could be the best of the best, but if you don’t have discipline in taking the time to teach people and taking the time to post and to… ‘Cause really, if we’re talking about building an online business, you can be the best coach in the world, but if you don’t have an audience, then it doesn’t matter, then you don’t have people who follow you. And it doesn’t mean you need hundreds of thousands of people. You could have 500 people who follow you and you have a very successful online coaching business. But if you’re not disciplined enough to learn the skill of creating an online business, an online presence, then it doesn’t matter. And this is what a lot of people overlook. Strength-training is a skill, nutrition is a skill, coaching is a skill. Creating a business is a skill, and it’s actually a massive skill that has many sub-skills underneath it.
0:21:00.0 Jordan Syatt: I remember when I first started writing long-form articles in 2011, after doing it for six months, I remember I made a Facebook post saying something to the effect of, “If someone told me that in order to build a great online personal training business, I would also have to be a phenomenal writer, I would have said like, ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.'” But that, very quickly, was a slap in my face, being like you really have to learn how to be a great writer, and you have to learn how to speak well, and you have to have the discipline enough to go through the periods of time where you suck and you’re nervous on camera and you’re nervous to hit the publish button. You just have to have the discipline to do that over and over and over and over and over again, and be okay with getting bad feedback and negative feedback and arguments and debates with people and not having anybody read your stuff. You have to have the discipline to keep doing it.
0:21:48.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s not cool, though, Jordan, anymore. That might have been cool in 2013, 2014, but hard work, it seems, in Internet land is, I don’t know, trying too hard or not enjoying life. It seems like there’s… And I could be completely off on this, but it seems like there’s an apathy towards hard work or not wanting to adopt that opinion that working really hard, having discipline, putting in a lot of hours is an essential, if not one of the most essential components of success in any business.
0:22:26.7 Jordan Syatt: Correct. I think a lot of that stems from… I think a lot of people have created this idea that if you work really hard at something and are super disciplined with something, well then, it must mean that you are not happy with yourself and you must not love yourself. If you’re working really hard at something, then there’s no way that you could actually be okay with yourself. And it’s like, “Where did you come up with that idea?” It’s like…
0:22:53.1 Mike Vacanti: “Why don’t you just… Why do you have to work so hard? Why don’t you just enjoy life?”
0:22:57.4 Jordan Syatt: Right. It’s like, “Why can’t you do both? Why can’t you work hard and enjoy life? Why is it… ” They’re creating a false dichotomy.
0:23:03.7 Mike Vacanti: “Why can’t you enjoy what you’re working on?”
0:23:05.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.
0:23:05.7 Mike Vacanti: It is a false dichotomy. That’s exactly right.
0:23:07.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:23:08.5 Mike Vacanti: I like that you went with discipline. My thought was a little more granular, which was post consistency, meaning wherever you’re doing it, whether it’s website or Instagram or TikTok or podcast, but be consistent with it and be consistent for a very long time, which falls under the discipline umbrella as a component of building business.
0:23:37.9 Jordan Syatt: You good?
0:23:38.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I’m looking at my list.
0:23:40.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh, got it. [chuckle]
0:23:41.0 Mike Vacanti: My questions list. [chuckle] You’re like, “What’s he squinting at? Your eyes okay?” [chuckle] Jordan and I are on video right now, by the way. He’s at home in Texas, I’m in Minnesota for a couple weeks, like I said, for my sister’s wedding, playing a little golf.
0:23:55.9 Jordan Syatt: Soon, you’ll be here in Texas with me, though.
0:24:00.0 Mike Vacanti: I will, I will. It’s gonna be good, gonna be a very productive trip.
0:24:03.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah, business trips, they’re the best.
0:24:06.6 Mike Vacanti: Some good lifts, some serotonin-inducing UV from the sun.
0:24:12.0 Jordan Syatt: Bro, I’ve been walking a lot for this cut, way more than usual and I start every day, I get up. Well, we write the book every day first, spend a couple hours doing that. And I go out and I walk just in the sun for an hour. It’s been great.
0:24:29.7 Mike Vacanti: Have you noticed any… So when you say it’s been great, I’m assuming you mean mood and how you feel?
0:24:35.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, mood, how I feel. I sweat, get sweaty just from walking. Sometimes, I’ll throw some sprints or a little running in there, but just get out there, get some sun, fresh air, sweat. Sometimes, I’ll use the treadmill, but I hate the treadmill. I really do. I hate standing on a treadmill walking nowhere. I would rather walk outside. There’s a turf field outside my gym. I don’t know, it’s maybe 100 yards, and I’ll just walk back and forth. I’d rather literally walk back and forth ’cause at least that way, I can be in the sun and the fresh air and I’m going somewhere, as opposed to standing on the damn treadmill where I’m just standing in one spot the whole time. I hate the treadmill, so it’s been great to get out and be outside for an hour a day. It’s just amazing.
0:25:22.0 Mike Vacanti: Have you noticed any improvements in sleep quality since you started doing that?
0:25:29.0 Jordan Syatt: Honestly, no, just to be blunt. I’m not saying it hasn’t, but I haven’t been aware of it.
0:25:35.0 Mike Vacanti: Cool. There’s actually pretty good research indicating that getting exposure to sunlight first thing in the morning, and not through your window, but being outside and getting sun in your eye for, I think it’s 20 minutes or at least 20 minutes, ends up stimulating more natural melatonin production later in the day, which improves sleep quality.
0:26:03.1 Jordan Syatt: Someone is gonna listen to this podcast and they’re gonna write on a forum and be like, “They told us to stare directly into the sun for 20 minutes every day.” [chuckle]
0:26:13.2 Mike Vacanti: You know what? I actually… So we’ll clarify that, but I don’t think people listening to this podcast will do that. We have…
0:26:20.1 Jordan Syatt: We have a great, great group of people, yeah.
0:26:22.8 Mike Vacanti: Unbelievable audience. Relative to every other audience on the Internet? Yeah. But yes, don’t stare straight at the sun. However, there’s… I’m almost certain that…
0:26:35.6 Jordan Syatt: “On the other hand, maybe.” [chuckle]
0:26:38.4 Mike Vacanti: No, I’m not saying that, but I remember someone asking or me reading, “Can you do it with sunglasses on? Will you get the same effect?” And the answer was, “No, you don’t.” So it’s be outside with the sun out in the morning, but yeah, don’t just stare straight at the sun for 20 minutes.
0:27:00.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:27:00.8 Mike Vacanti: Or at least we’re not telling you to do that.
[chuckle]
0:27:03.2 Jordan Syatt: We’re not doctors. [chuckle] Alright, so for the third one, what, the next thing to create a successful online coaching business. Alright, so we’ve got knowledge, skill as a coach; discipline; and then for the last one…
0:27:19.0 Mike Vacanti: We also have genuinely care about people, since Jordan’s just skipping over my thoughts and just saying his own, yeah. You got to go first, too, which gave you a little leg up. We should be snaking this. You should have had one, and then I have two and three, and you have four and five.
0:27:30.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay, so you go next, you choose the next one.
0:27:33.0 Mike Vacanti: Well, it’s a little late for the snake draft, but…
[chuckle]
0:27:38.3 Jordan Syatt: You go next.
0:27:38.8 Mike Vacanti: I mean just a… This isn’t in order, but a real bare-bones fact about someone who starts an online personal training business and succeeds, versus someone who starts and then completely falls off and then becomes a crypto investor six months later, or maybe like a how to get your own Lamborghini get rich quick scheme.
0:28:02.0 Jordan Syatt: Or what’s really happened is the people who… They start off as an online personal trainer. Six months later, it didn’t work. So then, they become a coach telling people how to create their own online coaching business. [chuckle]
0:28:13.5 Mike Vacanti: That’s another level, that’s another level of spam.
0:28:15.4 Jordan Syatt: I see that all the time. [chuckle]
0:28:17.8 Mike Vacanti: That’s insane.
0:28:20.0 Jordan Syatt: But what were you gonna say?
0:28:22.6 Mike Vacanti: The people who succeed made a website. They weren’t just trying to do this new age like, “Who needs a website?” It’s yeah, that’s it. They create a website and they start putting long-form articles on their website that help people with things in the fitness world that they need help with, versus not taking the time. I don’t know if it’s that the website in that short amount of time actually helped their business that much, although I’m sure it did, to an extent, for reasons that we’ve hit in many podcasts, or if it’s partly because the people who take the time and effort and some financial investment to get a website up are just more likely to succeed, but that is another one that I see.
0:29:11.0 Jordan Syatt: You know, it’s really interesting, I remember… We have such an interesting perspective on this because of the mentorship, and we have a sample of people who literally started with nothing. There are people who started, no followers on social media, no online coaching clients, very little knowledge, if any, on coaching, and they started, and now, they actually have successful online coaching businesses. And I think it gives us a unique insight into what it takes. And I’ll never forget… I don’t remember if it was after the first year or the second year of the mentorship, but I remember you and I having a conversation, and maybe it was even during a live Q&A during the mentorship, where you said you were initially hesitant to start doing it because you weren’t sure if it was replicable. You weren’t sure if anybody could do it.
0:30:00.0 Mike Vacanti: I thought, “Maybe Mike and Jordan were anomalies.”
0:30:01.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and which is I love… It could have been, right?
0:30:07.3 Mike Vacanti: We actually delayed for probably 18 plus months launching because in my mind, I was like, “I know that anyone can get in shape. I don’t know that anyone can build a business.”
0:30:18.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And I think it was after the second year of the mentorship when we had enough of a sample size, you were like, “This is crazy. Like if you do the work, it works.”
0:30:26.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. There’s a formula, and if you follow it…
0:30:30.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yes. That’s what you said, there’s a formula. And so with that in mind, I’m just thinking about the most common things that I see the most successful people in the mentorship do. And that includes you and I, but the people in there who, over the last three years or so, have gone from literally nothing to just crushing it. I would say number one…
0:30:58.0 Mike Vacanti: Filled client rosters.
0:31:00.0 Jordan Syatt: They’ve become very, super knowledgeable. They’ve spent a lot of time studying and learning and interning and coaching people in-person and online, and researching and learning and reading books and whatnot. They’ve been outrageously disciplined just like Eric Roberts, Beth Feraco, Kim Schlag, Susan Niebergall. These just insanely disciplined…
0:31:20.0 Mike Vacanti: Too many shoutouts to give, yeah.
0:31:21.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, too many. Rachael. Just insane numbers of people just outrageously disciplined with it. And the other one that I’ll say…
0:31:29.8 Mike Vacanti: Rick Fit, Ben Cure.
0:31:30.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh, my God! Yeah. Yeah, yeah, geez! And it’s crazy; crazy, crazy, crazy. And yeah, you brought up the website. I’m gonna bring up, and I know we’ve spoken about this before, and people who listen to the podcast will be like, “You say this all the time.” And, “Well, yeah, you probably say calorie deficit all the time, too.” It’s like it’s important to hear it. It’s coaching people for free at the beginning. I see all of the people who are now huge and crushing it beyond what they ever thought possible started with coaching for free. And it doesn’t mean you coach everyone forever for free, that you’re not allowed to make money, but it means if you’re not sure where to start or how to get clients, start doing it for free. And that’s such an integral part of the formula that… And it’s one of the parts of the formula a lot of people try and skip over or they leave out or they don’t do it. And if you miss that, yeah, there might be some people, occasionally, who can skip that part of the formula for a number of reasons, whatever it is. But the vast majority of people, 99.9999% of people start with coaching people for free. And maybe it’s only for three months. Maybe it’s for three months you coach people for free. Maybe it’s for six months, whatever it is. But if you start there, it just gives you so much opportunity to grow.
0:32:55.7 Jordan Syatt: And I was actually just talking about this on a podcast before you and I got on because what people don’t realize about a successful online coaching business is most businesses run on the idea that your customers are gonna keep returning for years and years and years, hopefully. And in a successful online coaching business, you’ll have a handful of them who do, a small percentage who do, after years and years and years, they like your programming and it’s just easy and they like it. But most people will not stay with you forever. And that’s what you want as a coach. You want them to get to a point where they no longer need you. But what happens when that person… Someone says, “How’d you get so fit? Where’d you learn all this stuff?” Like, “How did you grow your muscles? How did you get so strong?” They will recommend you, and they become a walking referral for you all over the world to their friends, to their family, to their colleagues, to everybody. And that’s how I see these online businesses growing, is through referrals. More than having a huge social media audience, more than being ripped or shredded, it’s having a tremendous number of people giving you referrals, and that starts with coaching people for free. You coach one person for free, that person becomes a walking referral for you.
0:34:03.0 Mike Vacanti: Very well said, could not agree more. Referral, yeah. I’m not gonna go down the rabbit hole of like yes, building a large audience can help you build a big coaching business, but there are downsides that most people don’t talk about, and maybe we’ll save that for another podcast, about having a large audience.
0:34:22.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah, brutal, let me tell you.
[chuckle]
0:34:30.0 Mike Vacanti: We’ll, yeah, we’ll save that for now. What was I just gonna say? I had two thoughts. Oh, one: You talking about each of those people in the mentorship, and then talking about those attributes, and the way you went in on outrageously disciplined and consistent? Today’s Wednesday, June 30th, we’re recording this on June 30th. It depends on where you are in the world, where your level of restriction is. And compared to how it’s been for the last year-and-a-half, but in a lot of places in the west, in the US, at least, places are opening up, people are out and doing things and people are ready to be having fun and doing things. They’ve been cooped up inside, they’ve been locked inside, and they’re ready to go have some fun. Not to mention, summer is a time when people unwind in general and work less in general; July, August, especially.
0:35:22.4 Mike Vacanti: However, if you are in a place where you’re just starting your business, if you’re in a place where you are maybe in… If you’re younger or if you’re just in a place where you need to get up and running, if you need to start accumulating income and savings, if you’re in a place where you’re hungry for it and you just want it right now, now is a great time to think of others who are relaxing and enjoying as your competition, and go hard. Make this an incredible two months. Write a 2,000-word article a week for the next eight weeks. Post every single day on Instagram or three times a day on TikTok. Use this time to get ahead because… I mean psychologically, I just think it’s a great place to be in. It’s like this underdog mindset. Well, think of like Mighty Ducks if like the, what was that? The Hawks.
0:36:08.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah.
0:36:08.0 Mike Vacanti: Like the Edina kids there, they’re all out golfing, doing whatever…
0:36:11.4 Jordan Syatt: The Black Hawks.
0:36:11.9 Mike Vacanti: But you’re doing dry land, you’re doing… You’re working hard, you’re doing sprints, you’re lifting, you’re getting, you’re doing 5:00 AM skates, you’re doing everything you can. And that’s content, that’s helping people, that’s coaching people for free, to replying to every single DM, that’s going into Facebook groups, that’s going into other people’s content and commenting, helping people for free and really racking up equity, we’ll call it. Racking up reputation, good will during this time, when other people are sleeping? Man!
0:36:37.9 Jordan Syatt: Bro, you’re hyping me up. Reminds me of the content you used to put, I think it was on Snapchat, where you’d be in a coffee shop or something, and you’d show, you’d be… You’d take a snap of the entire coffee shop and no one was working in there, and it was just empty, and you’d post like, “The competition, like, nobody’s here. There’s no competition.” [chuckle] You’re just creating this competition in your mind like, “Alright, I’m gonna outwork all of you.” I loved that, that was so funny.
0:37:06.8 Mike Vacanti: Which is unbelievably useful and helpful in the micro. As a long-term life strategy? Maybe it’s not the best average mindset to carry around for 60 years, but in that place, and I’m just… If it speaks to you, if you’ve been cooped up for a year-and-a-half and you wanna go enjoy yourself, go enjoy yourself, I’m not telling you what to do. But if it speaks to you, do it. But people are like… I would always get a lot of pushback on that.
0:37:33.8 Jordan Syatt: I remember.
0:37:35.0 Mike Vacanti: Or maybe these are all… Maybe that person…
0:37:36.3 Jordan Syatt: “Maybe they’re just enjoying themselves.” [chuckle]
0:37:39.5 Mike Vacanti: It was worse than that. It was like, “Maybe that’s a firefighter who just worked an over… Maybe that’s a nurse who just saved a bunch of… Maybe that’s a single mom that’s also… ” I’m like, “No. It’s like kids like me, except they’re playing video games on their phone and whipping espressos, rather than working.”
[laughter]
0:37:57.0 Jordan Syatt: “No. It’s not.” [laughter]
0:37:58.6 Mike Vacanti: I asked them. I talked about it.
0:38:03.0 Jordan Syatt: “They’re my best friend. I know.”
[laughter]
0:38:04.0 Mike Vacanti: Oh. I had another… Oh. I have another top three attribute which is, “Not quitting.”
0:38:20.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:38:21.0 Mike Vacanti: And I know that sounds ridiculous, like what’s the difference between someone who succeeds and someone who quits? Not quitting? Well, obviously, because the people who quit don’t qualify for that, but what I mean is, I launched my website in April of 2013. I started writing the articles for my website in October of 2012, which, if I could do it again, I would have closed that gap up a lot, but I wanted five articles up. And, then even before that, it was many months after I quit my accounting job. So from the time I quit my accounting job, until the time I actually got my website up was nine months, and from the time I got my website up until the time I had my first paying client was another nine months. So from the time I quit my job to do this, to the time I actually had someone who paid me like $119 a month for coaching, it was a year and a half.
0:39:13.5 Jordan Syatt: A year and a half of being consistent? Like working super hard and not like posting once and then not posting for another three months? Like, it was hard work?
0:39:22.8 Mike Vacanti: Well, we’ll say it was 10 to 12 months of hard work. The first three months, I kinda didn’t know what I was doing but…
0:39:27.8 Jordan Syatt: But you were making your website and stuff, like?
0:39:30.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I was. I was. But I would call some of that planning as a form of procrastination, but… You’ve talked about it before the mentorship a lot, and on here just that it took a long time from when you started until you had a paying client. And there’s a practical side of things which is savings or a side job, or a part-time job to stay afloat financially, but there’s also just a mental matching expectations with reality side of things where you need to… It’s gonna take longer than you want it to. But that doesn’t mean you’re not moving in the right direction. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to succeed. Just don’t quit.
0:40:15.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That’s it. I love that. I think that’s arguably the most important one, right? And that’s another cool thing about the sample size and the mentorship is there have been some people who were super quick, off the top of my head like, Rachael, super quick, dominated super fast, whereas, you know who didn’t quit, who’s blown me away with his effort and now he’s really crushing it is Adam. He didn’t quit and he would post, he’d be like, “I’m not getting the engagement I want. I’m not getting the results that I want. I’m not getting clients.” And then one piece of content changed his life and then he started to replicate it and replicate it, and it’s really started to grow. It’s been amazing to watch. And in the same way, some people lose weight faster than others, some people gain muscle faster than others. Some people will build a business faster than others, but as long as you don’t quit and you follow the formula, it will work. It will.
0:41:14.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, the other amazing thing is Adam was very… Wore his heart on his sleeve with frustrations or desire to see more progress than he was, and he kept going.
0:41:26.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.
0:41:28.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, man. It’s a great example. Alright, I have something unrelated to fitness, which is just…
0:41:34.0 Jordan Syatt: I see that smirk coming up, that’s just like you’ve got something good coming.
0:41:39.8 Mike Vacanti: No, just a little ripping off other people’s content concepts that I think they’re fun. So I’m gonna say a word, Jordan, and you say overrated or underrated.
0:41:52.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, alright, cool, cool.
0:41:54.5 Mike Vacanti: Alright, ready?
0:41:55.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Ready. Wait, are you gonna…
0:41:57.0 Mike Vacanti: Stretching.
0:41:57.9 Jordan Syatt: Stretching?
0:41:58.5 Mike Vacanti: Maybe. I’ll contribute when I feel like it. Stretching.
0:42:01.1 Jordan Syatt: Underrated.
0:42:02.3 Mike Vacanti: Why?
0:42:04.0 Jordan Syatt: Partly because I’ve been doing more of it, so I’m biased, but…
0:42:08.3 Mike Vacanti: Do you feel good?
0:42:08.7 Jordan Syatt: Dude, my back hasn’t felt this good since I was like a toddler.
0:42:14.5 Mike Vacanti: Wow.
0:42:15.0 Jordan Syatt: My back feels amazing. My back hasn’t felt this good since before I started competitively power lifting, which says a lot, right? Back feels great, hips are loose, I’m just… And that wasn’t in my mind as a goal or a reason why I should do it more, it was just something that I very quickly noticed that I was like, “Wow, there is no pain or any issue when I go to tie my shoe or put my socks on or anything.” I can feel the looseness and the fluidity as opposed to before, as I was like, “Okay, I know I’m gonna have to… I’m gonna feel something when I do this.”
0:42:51.2 Mike Vacanti: Are you only doing split-style stretches or are you stretching other parts of your body as well?
0:43:00.7 Jordan Syatt: I’m mostly doing lower body stretches, so there’s a lot. It’s not all just like splits, but they’re almost all exercises that will help me get a split, but I mean hamstring stretches, calf stretches, different types of hip stretches. I’d say there are some intense isometric style stretching that I’m doing specifically for the split, but I’d say the vast majority is just overall lower body stretching that will eventually help me get to the split.
0:43:28.8 Mike Vacanti: Interesting, good. I need some of that.
0:43:35.1 Jordan Syatt: [chuckle] The best is when you were like, “Hey, here’s how… My split right now.” [laughter]
0:43:41.0 Mike Vacanti: I tested it because I was curious, and then I had to show you just to let you know. Overrated, underrated, Jake Paul.
0:43:51.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh God. If you had asked me this before the Ben Askren fight, or even immediately after the Ben Askren fight, I would have said overrated. Now that I’ve listened to him more and spent more time paying attention to what he’s saying and not what the media is saying, and also seeing the impact, I literally, just before we hopped on this podcast, I saw something from him where a female UFC fighter, I forget her name, started a GoFundMe. She’s a UFC fighter, she’s in the UFC, she started a GoFundMe to help cover the costs of fighting, which people don’t understand, going through a fight camp costs a fortune. People hear how much money these fighters make in a fight, number one, they’re only hearing the Georges St-Pierre, Israel Adesanya, like the top of the top of the top. Most people don’t get paid nearly as much as these fighters, not to mention they have no idea how much money it costs to go into a fight camp, how much it costs you pay all the different coaches, your striking coach, your grappling coach, your conditioning coach, your nutrition coach, fly them all out with you out to the fight, your corner men, all this stuff. It can be hundreds of thousands of dollars just for the fight camp.
0:45:09.7 Jordan Syatt: And then… Anyway, she had to start a GoFundMe, and Jake was like, “I’m gonna help her out.” He was like, he’s literally helping fund this woman’s fight camp, and he does these things that really make me think there’s more to him than the persona that’s been put out online. And he said something also, he’s like, “Can you imagine someone in the NBA, like a rookie in the NBA, having to start a GoFundMe to cover the cost of playing in the NBA?” It’s like, no, of course not, that would never happen. But in the fight game, especially in mixed martial arts, it really does happen. And so he’s really pushing for the decentralization of the fight game, so that fighters really have the power and they’re the ones who are risking their lives and putting in all the work. And I really think his efforts are… I really think he has good intent behind it. I don’t like a lot of the stuff he says, I disagree, and am frankly, nauseated by a lot of the stuff he has said and done, but I think he’s underrated.
0:46:08.8 Mike Vacanti: I love it. Long-form content.
0:46:13.7 Jordan Syatt: Underrated, now more than ever. Now more than ever. It’s like… I think when we first started doing content, there could have been an argument for short form content being underrated just ’cause no one was doing it at the time and it would’ve been great to create these 60 second clips or whatever it is, but now long form content, what do you think?
0:46:39.5 Mike Vacanti: 100% agree.
0:46:40.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:46:41.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:46:42.4 Jordan Syatt: What do you think about Jake Paul? Overrated, underrated?
0:46:46.3 Mike Vacanti: As a fighter, I think he’s very underrated.
0:46:49.5 Jordan Syatt: Okay, okay. Oh, God, I didn’t even think about as a fighter.
0:46:53.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:46:53.6 Jordan Syatt: Okay.
0:46:54.6 Mike Vacanti: And I think similar to you, although… I wanna give him the benefit of the doubt and I try not to be cynical in general, but I think some of that is just helping her… There’s a component of it that is just… He’s in a feud with Dana White, the president/owner of the UFC. And so saying that UFC fighters are underpaid and then doing everything to take the fighter’s side of that is a fun little…
0:47:24.5 Jordan Syatt: Slap in the face.
0:47:24.6 Mike Vacanti: Thing between the two of them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, but I also think that… I think the decentralization of fighting, meaning basically just shifting more of the revenue from the organization and to the people who are actually… Basically giving a bigger piece of the pie to the fighters and then the organization gets a smaller piece of the pie is inevitable and will be an interesting shift with the technology we have and now with… You know better than I do, but in the UFC, two fights a year is a lot, right?
0:48:06.3 Jordan Syatt: For a high level fighter. For a very… Yeah, it’s a lot for a very high level fighter who’s already worked their way up and established their name. A lot of the lower level fighters who are new to the organization, they’ll fight four, five, six times sometimes just so that they can get more fights under their belt and it’s not healthy and it’s not good. They really put themselves through hell, but a lot of times in order to make a name for yourself, you’ve gotta step in there a bunch.
0:48:29.6 Mike Vacanti: Okay. So that’s not as valid a point, but I was gonna say that then when the fighters are in control of their schedule more than an organization, then they can also increase frequency to the extent they want or that their bodies can physically handle that load.
0:48:46.3 Jordan Syatt: The thing that a lot of people don’t realize about a fight is that it’s not the fight. You watch the performance, but you don’t see… There’s no off-season for fighting. In every other sport, there’s an off-season. There’s a time period where you can go home, hang out with your family. And I’m not saying it’s easy ’cause any professional sport is super difficult and training camps and all this stuff, traveling all over the world or the country, whatever it is, but in fighting, there is no off-season. They can call you four weeks out, three weeks out, two weeks out, someone had to drop out of the fight, someone got injured, you need to fight right now. You have to be ready to go all year round and it’s not just working out and practicing the sport, you’re fighting every day. In the morning you go to jujitsu, in the early afternoon you go to striking, and then night you go to strength and conditioning. And then the next day you start off with Muay Thai, then you go to… And it’s crazy. It’s insane. So yeah, for someone to do six fights or five fights or four fights a year, it might not sound like a lot, but every fight camp is ideally at least 12 to 16 weeks. That takes up the entire year if you have four fights a year. It’s insane.
0:50:01.3 Mike Vacanti: Overrated, underrated? OnlyFans?
[chuckle]
0:50:08.6 Jordan Syatt: I think that… Oh God, you’re really putting me on the spot. I get so much shit every time I make fun of OnlyFans. Any time I make fun of…
0:50:18.5 Mike Vacanti: You made fun of OnlyFans publicly?
0:50:19.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I’ve made fun of it. I remember I did something in my shower when I first moved into this apartment and I blurred out my penis and everything…
0:50:27.6 Mike Vacanti: I think I remember that.
0:50:28.6 Jordan Syatt: And I was like, “Full video on my OnlyFans” and then the overall response was, “Ha, ha, that’s so funny,” but there were a couple people who were like, “How dare you make fun of that? That’s how people are making their living now.” I’m like, “Calm down, you idiot. I make fun of everything and all of a sudden that you choose to be offended by?”
0:50:45.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:50:46.1 Jordan Syatt: I think from an entrepreneurial perspective, it could be great for some people and it’s really helping some people pay their bills.
0:50:55.6 Mike Vacanti: Do you think so?
0:50:57.6 Jordan Syatt: Some people are making great money with it.
0:51:00.4 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Purely from a financial perspective. Sure.
0:51:03.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, from a financial perspective. And it’s funny. There’s actually someone in my building who her whole business is OnlyFans and her and her husband do it together. And I was talking to, he manages it, and I was talking to him about it and he was telling me everything that they do and it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work, but you know what’s funny, here’s something I didn’t realize. They’re working… Now a lot of the creators on OnlyFans are upset with OnlyFans and they wanna get… They don’t like OnlyFans now. OnlyFans is essentially the promoter for fighting like UFC is a promoter. OnlyFans is taking a huge percentage of the money and they control a lot.
0:51:45.6 Mike Vacanti: Do you know what the percentage is?
0:51:47.4 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know what the percentage is, but he was actually asking me for advice being like, “Do you think we should start our own website and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah?” And I was like, “Listen, if you have a big audience and all of this, you might as well transfer over to your own so you don’t have to pay the fees, but there are other benefits of being on OnlyFans.” There’s a whole… I didn’t think that we’d talk about OnlyFans on this podcast, but either way, I think for the creator… It can be great for some people. If it can help you build a business… I think what it really boils down to is, is that something you’re comfortable doing and something that you want to have out there? Who am I to say that you shouldn’t do that? I definitely wouldn’t… I wouldn’t, but that’s just me. You do what you wanna do. [chuckle]
0:52:33.4 Mike Vacanti: I like that over the last many, many months and maybe over the last two years, gradually you and I have both intentionally started talking about things that could be more polarizing or things that we don’t need to talk about but that we think might be important even if it’s gonna make people dislike us or aggressively disagree with us. I have no problem saying that I think any dude who pays money to see a girl get naked is pathetic. Like if you’re paying a monthly subscription to see a girl maybe get naked, whether it’s because you think then she’ll notice you out of the thousands of subscribers she has and then fall in love with you, and then maybe you get to be with her. If, I don’t know, you just think that she’s so much better than any of the girls on the free websites, and so you wanna pay to see her, whatever. The entire… And I’m slightly under-educated here because I don’t know if there are a ton of female subscribers for male OnlyFans, and I’m a man, so I can only speak from the perspective of a male subscribing to a girl on these websites, but…
0:54:00.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I’ll stick with my original statement, any dude who’s paying money to see a girl get naked on there needs to cancel his subscription immediately, get in the gym, clean up his nutrition a little bit, do a little cardio, get some sun, and find a real girl in person like at a coffee shop or even on Bumble, wherever, but not paying to see her naked to maybe get noticed as your strategy.
0:54:28.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I’ve spoken to some women who do this and it’s… Listen, I don’t know, again, do whatever you wanna do, but I know that one of the reasons, the reason…
0:54:42.0 Mike Vacanti: Do you believe, do whatever you wanna do… Would you say do whatever you wanna do for prostitution?
0:54:52.6 Jordan Syatt: I think you and I have spoken about this before… Man, this is really going off topic, but…
0:54:55.8 Mike Vacanti: And I actually have a tea time, so we’re gonna have to wrap this relatively soon.
0:55:02.0 Jordan Syatt: If porn is legal, I don’t see why prostitution shouldn’t be legal, you know what I mean? In terms of people are being paid to have sex with someone, and they’re both willing and consensual in pornography, so if we’re okay saying, porn is legal, then I can’t see why prostitution should be legal.
0:55:20.3 Mike Vacanti: Alright, so you’re pro freedom, so you don’t think it should be illegal. Do you think that it’s right?
0:55:28.2 Jordan Syatt: Now that’s the question, and you’re right I think I’m very pro-freedom to make your own decisions. I’m very pro that.
0:55:35.0 Mike Vacanti: And you know what? I agree with that. I think that I tend to skew libertarian, although I don’t even know if that… Actually, I don’t know, I don’t know anything about politics is what I’ve come to know recently, but in my gut, it feels like fewer laws, if you had to default to having more laws or fewer laws, I’d default to having fewer laws.
0:56:00.8 Jordan Syatt: Correct, I would as well.
0:56:00.9 Mike Vacanti: When it comes to restricting individuals’ liberties.
0:56:02.9 Jordan Syatt: Yes, agreed completely. Agreed completely. As far as what’s right. So I remember when you and I and Pat, we’re all like doing that, like reading the Bible at the beginning of the pandemic, which for me was really interesting ’cause I had never read the Bible. I was brought up with the Torah, and it was very interesting for me, and one line stood out to me, and I’m gonna butcher it, I don’t know exactly what it was, but basically it was saying like, you can’t judge other people for their actions, if you’re doing things that are also bad. It’s like, I forget what the exact line was, but that was the message that we took from it basically being like, everyone is so quick to judge other people.
0:56:52.8 Mike Vacanti: Christ said, “He who is without sin can cast the first stone.”
0:56:57.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, right. So basically saying like, by all means, judge other people, but you better not be doing anything bad either on your own. And that hit home with me, that line really hit home with me, and I think… It’s easy for me to be like, “No, I don’t think that’s right,” but…
0:57:17.8 Mike Vacanti: You do things that others may… Yeah.
0:57:18.0 Jordan Syatt: I do things that aren’t right… So what makes me like the person that…
0:57:24.0 Mike Vacanti: You know what, you know why I think I come at it from a somewhat aggressive perspective is because I was pathetic with girls in sixth and seventh grade… Like the term SIMP.
0:57:36.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:57:38.3 Mike Vacanti: I had this Disney world view of… Not even Disney, like…
0:57:43.1 Jordan Syatt: Prince Charming and…
0:57:43.2 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know what my thought process. No, but even worse than that. It was basically just the quintessential blue pill, like if I can just be as nice as possible, maybe she’ll like me, and to use a fictitious example, but I don’t even know…
[overlapping conversation]
0:58:08.1 Mike Vacanti: But even more, because it’s grade school, even more intense version of that and then through life and through experience, it’s like, “Okay, paying some girl for her subscription is not going to lead to you ending up with her, go and prove yourself,” and it’s more of a tough love position to guys, to a certain subset of guys who are sitting at home, not really doing a whole lot and subscribe to seven different OnlyFans.
0:58:35.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.
0:58:36.7 Mike Vacanti: Save your money.
0:58:38.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think it’s also important, it’s a different discussion between like…
0:58:45.6 Mike Vacanti: Consuming and creating.
0:58:46.5 Jordan Syatt: Yes, exactly, like for the consumer versus the creator, do I think it’s the right move for someone to be subscribed to 17 different OnlyFans and spending all their free time doing that? No, I don’t. I think you’d be better off working on improving yourself and getting stronger and getting healthier and getting more fit and doing things on your own than spending your free time doing that, but then again, I spend a lot of free time watching The Office, it’s like I spend a lot of time not improving myself either. That’s where I struggle, I struggle with telling people what they’re doing isn’t right, when I know I’m not doing everything right, that’s where my issue is like it’s hard for me to come at it so hard when I know I have so much room to improve myself.
0:59:36.3 Mike Vacanti: That’s fair. That’s fair. Alright, we’ll wrap it here. Maybe we’ll do OnlyFans part two next time who knows.
0:59:45.1 Jordan Syatt: Thank you for listening. This is definitely a surprise for me, did not know the conversation was gonna go this way, hopefully you enjoyed it and we’ll leave it here. We’ll talk to you soon.
0:59:55.7 Mike Vacanti: Have a great week. See you soon. Goodbye.
