0:00:14.7 Jordan Syatt: What’s going on, Michael?
0:00:15.6 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.
0:00:16.7 Jordan Syatt: Cheers.
0:00:17.2 Mike Vacanti: Cheers, my man.
0:00:18.3 Jordan Syatt: Having a couple of Trulys while we record this podcast.
0:00:22.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s been a very productive, hard working week and, yeah, I think we deserve a couple of drinks.
0:00:27.8 Jordan Syatt: The watermelon kiwi is good. I’ve never had this one before.
0:00:31.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, the passion fruit is great too.
0:00:32.7 Jordan Syatt: Is this your first time having the passion fruit?
0:00:34.4 Mike Vacanti: This is my first time, yeah.
0:00:35.6 Jordan Syatt: It’s only a 100 calories per the can. This is not sponsored by the way.
0:00:40.0 Mike Vacanti: They’re delicious.
0:00:40.9 Jordan Syatt: They’re good.
0:00:41.6 Mike Vacanti: They’re good. I know they’re not your favorite, but I really like these trendy, Truly, White Claw type drinks.
0:00:47.2 Jordan Syatt: They tastes sort of watered down to me. We were just downstairs…
0:00:53.1 Mike Vacanti: I like that. Some hydration.
0:00:55.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I like… We just had some mojitos and those were… That was what I liked. It was a little bit harder. You can taste it more.
0:01:02.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. They were really tasty and they’re just super nice outside.
0:01:06.8 Jordan Syatt: Mike is down in Dallas for the last four days or so, getting a lot of work done, working hard on the book. The book which should be… It’s gonna be done in the next two weeks, and then we’re looking at release date for our book in April, it looks like, based on what we were talking to with our editor, and then doing a lot of mentorship work, getting a lot of calls with people who won challenges in the mentorship and setting up new challenges in the mentorship as well.
0:01:36.7 Mike Vacanti: Setting up new challenges we had a great Q&A, really good calls and reviewing challenge winners, which is really fun, just seeing how everyone is progressing on various social media platforms, how they’re progressing in their content is really fun to watch.
0:01:51.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and it’s cool to see the diversity of content across platforms, to see people, you know, they go hard on TikTok, they go hard on YouTube, they go hard on article writing, it’s really cool to see. It’s really like in fitness. In fitness, you’ll always hear someone or someone else saying, “Well, this is better or that is better, you need to do a hit or you need to do low intensity, or you shouldn’t eat carbs, or you should eat carbs,” it’s really like, find what works best for you. We’re seeing that in the mentorship as well with so many different coaches, like some people are going bonkers on TikTok, some people are ranking number one on Google for the long form articles. It’s like, find what works best for you, find the type of content that you really enjoy making and just really go hard on that.
0:02:32.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and you don’t need to do everything, which is such a common point of overwhelm for a lot of new coaches. It’s like, “Okay, there are seven places I should be posting, there’s 15 things I feel like I need to do. I don’t know where to start,” and as a result, get paralysis by analysis. Whereas, if you were to just start and go hard in one place, it almost doesn’t matter, as long as you pick one or two and go hard on it, it can really work.
0:03:01.2 Jordan Syatt: Yes, as you were explaining that, I was thinking, trying to think of an analogy, and I think the best one I can think of off the top of my head, a couple of mojitos in and just starting a Truly is [chuckle] that, imagine if, if you had… There is a big group of people that you didn’t know and you wanted to make as many close friends as possible, would you go and talk to each person for five seconds, or would you go to a couple of people and talk to each one of those couple for 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes each. And the answer would obviously be, you go to a couple of people and develop a very close, deeper relationship with a couple of people rather than barely develop any relationship with a lot of people.
0:03:46.9 Jordan Syatt: And I think when you’re trying to spend… Trying to be on every platform, you’re going to spend a very small amount of time with a lot of people. But when you just go on one or maybe two platforms and spend a lot of time on those one to two platforms, you’re gonna develop a better audiencehood, a closer relationship with the audience, and have a better chance of actually reaching more people as a result of it, because then the people you develop a relationship with will actually share your content and that will reach their friends and their colleagues and their followers, so it really, it… You might feel like you need to be everywhere, but it’s probably a better decision to be just somewhere as opposed to everywhere.
0:04:25.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. Really dove straight and hard, I wanna back up for a second and ask you about your workout this morning.
0:04:32.6 Jordan Syatt: I thought you were gonna talk to me about politics.
[chuckle]
0:04:38.5 Jordan Syatt: Workout was great. Worked out, I did lower body three days ago, and then yesterday I did upper body. So the training schedule I’m on now, post-jiu-jitsu competition, wrote a whole new training phase, so I was doing four times a week plus jiu-jitsu, and then I realized I couldn’t be as consistent with the four times a week as I wanted so I dropped it to three times a week strength and one day of conditioning, and this could cycle on about a 10-day cycle as opposed to a weekly cycle. Started lower body a few days ago, upper body yesterday and full body was the next workout, but since you were working out today, I couldn’t do a full body today ’cause my upper body is wrecked from yesterday. So I made it my conditioning day today.
0:05:20.5 Mike Vacanti: Some impressive weighted chins yesterday by the way.
0:05:22.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh, thank you. Yeah, that felt good. Yeah, that felt good. The conditioning stuff is fun for me. It’s like just movement-based fun, like get outside, be on the turf or the grass, sweat…
0:05:36.4 Mike Vacanti: Those sled pushes were not fun for me.
0:05:38.3 Jordan Syatt: The sled pushes were not fun. And I was like… We ended it with the sled pushes, but the beginning stuff like the leg swings, the different kick variations, the bear crawls, the somersaults forward and backward karaoke, it’s like the things that you do when you’re a kid on a sports team, that you set, stand in a line with all your friends and you go, you go down and back down, down and back and it was like, “It’s fun,” and you’re racing your friends and you’re moving. I think a lot of the time as we’re an adult, as we get older, exercise, it’s a way to move your body, but a lot of times the exercise, it’s like it’s too… It’s not… There’s not unplanned movement, if that makes sense.
0:06:16.6 Mike Vacanti: In exercise and in life.
0:06:18.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, there’s not random movements you’re putting your body through. So, if you’re listening, when was the last time you did a somersault? When was the last time you did a somersault forward or backwards? When was the last time you crawled on the ground or you crossed your feet and did the karaoke or anything like that. So I like doing that type of movement. I think it’s a very underrated, not just for health and mobility and conditioning, which is what I was it doing for, but also… Just for fun.
0:06:43.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, a form of play.
0:06:45.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s fun, yeah. It’s really fun just to roll around and do that type of stuff, and it’s good conditioning as well, keeping rest times short and continuing to go, I didn’t stop moving for an hour. So. Yeah, my workout was great. How was your workout?
0:06:58.3 Mike Vacanti: It was fine. [laughter] It was leg day, so I did it. Got it in and finished with the sled pushes with you. Yesterday was a fun upper body day. But yeah, man, just Always Be Recomping.
0:07:11.6 Jordan Syatt: You wanna talk more about that? ABR?
0:07:12.6 Mike Vacanti: ABR. You just demonstrated it perfectly with the…
0:07:17.8 Jordan Syatt: Well, you taught me. [chuckle] It’s something I’d never seen before. So for some clarification. Should we go into ABR? I’ll tell you what just happened, and then we’ll talk about ABR. So, before Mike came, my fiance is away right now. It’s her bridal shower, it was her bridal shower yesterday as of recording this, so she went back to her home and her whole family had a big bridal shower for her, it was really well done, it was really nice. But before she left, she bought a whole bunch of food for Mike and I, ’cause she knew Mike was coming, so stocked the fridge. And one of the things she stocked the fridge with was this fried chicken that she got at the grocery store, ’cause she knows I love fried chicken. And so Mike and I are talking about nutrition and trying to stay lean and all this other stuff, so as I’m pulling out the fried chicken, I was like, “I don’t really want this because it’s a little bit higher fat than I want right now,” and Mike was like, “Just take the breading off.”
0:08:12.2 Mike Vacanti: Well, first I inspected it because I was like, “This can’t be that,” it was from, I think it’s from Whole Foods, I dunno.
0:08:17.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s Whole Foods, yeah. Whole Foods, yeah.
0:08:18.3 Mike Vacanti: It looks nice. So I was like, “There’s no way it’s one of those that’s like 90% fried and 10% just chicken.”
0:08:23.7 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Yeah, yeah.
0:08:24.7 Mike Vacanti: And so I had half of one and realized it was decent, but there was a good amount… Sometimes there’s very little breading, in which case you’re gonna be getting, I don’t know, like a two to one protein to fat ratio, but sometimes it can be like a one to three protein-to-fat ratio or even worse. Which really adds up over time. But it wasn’t terrible, but I had half of one. And then for the other half, I just peeled the breading off and just ate the chicken on the inside, just ate the straight protein.
0:08:50.4 Jordan Syatt: Which I’d never done or thought of before. I was like… It just never crossed my mind to ever even think about doing that. And so I did it, so I started doing it. And oh my God, I wish we had a picture of it. The amount of breading, and I didn’t take off, I wasn’t scrutinously, meticulously taking it out. I just lightly brushed off some of the breading and…
0:09:11.3 Mike Vacanti: You gotta leave some on there for taste.
0:09:12.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, oh my, the amount of breading that came off of this fried chicken literally filled up the entire box of fried chicken. It was insane. It was about half a pound of breading…
0:09:26.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it was a ton.
0:09:26.8 Jordan Syatt: Which was… Yeah, which is, it’s funny for me to talk about this, ’cause we always talk about how our clients are unaware of how much they’re eating. I was unaware of how much was on there until you just, you take the time to actually devote to it. It never even crossed my mind to think about doing that.
0:09:42.4 Mike Vacanti: Well, it’s not socially acceptable, right? [laughter] So you’re never gonna go to a restaurant and order, like, a bucket of fried chicken, and then, you know, with your friends or family, peel off all the fried chicken, there’s a big mountain of it and you send it back with you. It’s just too socially awkward. Not to mention if you’re going to actually order fried chicken, enjoy it.
0:10:00.3 Jordan Syatt: Right. Exactly.
0:10:00.7 Mike Vacanti: ‘Cause it’s a once in a while thing. But we’re having some drinks. Jordan just got nice and lean for his Jiu-jitsu competition, and the concept of Always Be Recomping was like… We kinda related it to both conditioning and physique, which was, once you are in a more advanced position, meaning when you are either well-conditioned or once you are pretty lean and have some muscle, it’s much easier to maintain that state than it is to originally get to that state, and so Always Be Recomping is, if you’ve gone through several strength and muscle gain phases and several cuts over the course of your multi-year training career, and you’re in a place where you’re pretty lean and you feel good about things, it’s kind of like, alright, just don’t let myself get too out of shape, too de-conditioned or too…
0:10:47.4 Jordan Syatt: High body fat.
0:10:48.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Exactly. Or like taking weeks or months off of training and losing a bunch of muscle, and so we’re having several drinks today. It’s like, okay, on days where I have a few drinks, I’m gonna take fats and carbs a little bit lower, or I’m at least gonna be conscious of it, like a situation like that.
0:11:06.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:11:06.9 Mike Vacanti: And so just Always Be Recomping.
0:11:08.8 Jordan Syatt: I like the idea of Always Be Recomping in terms of, I think when you first start and early on in your career, it makes sense to have specific phases. Alright, this is a cut. This is a bulk. If you’re starting off at 40% body fat, I don’t think recomping is a good idea. You start off by losing that excess body fat for health purposes, for aesthetic purposes, for just like… For many, many reasons. But again, like you said, once you go through a number of cutting and bulking phases and you go through these specific periods of time where you make a lot of progress on that one thing, well then rather than going through these more severe phases of cutting or bulking, it’s more just staying towards the middle ground and allowing yourself to stay lean while building muscle, but never going too far in either direction. And I think it allows you to feel your best and perform your best as opposed to going too far. Once you’re already really, really lean, if you try and continue to get lean, your performance is gonna go down, energy is gonna go down, libido is gonna go down, muscle is probably gonna go down, strength is gonna go down.
0:12:06.3 Mike Vacanti: And you can, just… You can only get so lean.
0:12:08.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So, ABR. Always Be Recomping.
0:12:12.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s a mindset. [chuckle] You can’t actually recomp forever. There’s only so much muscle you can gain, there’s only, like we just said, you can only get so lean before you feel like crap, but yeah. It’s a lifestyle.
0:12:23.0 Jordan Syatt: I like it, it feels good. I took a political test today.
0:12:28.1 Mike Vacanti: You wanna go in there on the podcast.
0:12:30.5 Jordan Syatt: I’m just, I’m really happy about the result.
0:12:33.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah?
0:12:33.4 Jordan Syatt: I’m really happy about it.
0:12:34.3 Mike Vacanti: You thought you were authoritarian, but you’re not?
0:12:36.3 Jordan Syatt: No, I didn’t think I was authoritarian. [chuckle] I knew I’d leaned more libertarian.
0:12:40.4 Mike Vacanti: So the test, I think for anyone who’s interested in doing it themselves, politicalcompass.org. Which is something I took several years ago, and it spits out, after you answer all these, like, strongly disagree all the way to strongly agree. So strongly disagree, agree, neutral.
0:13:01.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s like, yeah, you either strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree.
0:13:06.2 Mike Vacanti: And your results are on both a Liberal and Conservative axis, is the X axis, and then on the Y axis is authoritarian and libertarian. And it plots you anywhere on that chart.
0:13:19.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so, like. Authoritarian obviously is you want more government, more control, you want the government to have more control over what you do. Libertarian being, you want the government to have less control over what you do, and then left versus right, like conservative versus liberal, in terms of your political views, and the entire quiz took about, I don’t know, 15 minutes. There were about, I don’t know, I think there were about 35, 36 multiple choice questions. They were questions. They were interesting questions in how they were phrased and they sort of prefaced it before you got into the quiz, they were like, they were, “Number one, don’t try and manipulate it to get the result that you think you might want. Answer the questions honestly.”
0:14:08.3 Jordan Syatt: But also the way they phrase them, sometimes they make the questions intentionally vague in order to elicit an emotional response, and that’s what they want. They want your emotional response to these questions, in many cases, because the emotions are often more indicative of what you actually believe. So it was really, really interesting. I thought I was going to lean… I didn’t think I was gonna be very far right, but I thought I was gonna be more conservative and definitely Libertarian, but I was literally exactly in the middle, like I was equal parts…
0:14:49.8 Mike Vacanti: On the Y-Axis.
0:14:50.3 Jordan Syatt: I was on the Y-axis between liberal and conservative, which I thought was really interesting. I think it speaks a lot to social media these days and the impact it has on us, because based on social media and on the content I see, I think I’ve been led to believe that my beliefs are extreme to the right, right?
0:15:11.6 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.
0:15:11.9 Jordan Syatt: But when you take this…
0:15:13.1 Mike Vacanti: Well, being like anti-cancel culture, being anti…
0:15:16.2 Jordan Syatt: Or even just something as simple as I like capitalism, you hear like, “Capitalism is evil and it’s terrible and it’s the downfall of society.” It’s like, “Well, actually, I think to me, I think it actually makes sense.” And when the other side is just, “Capitalism is evil, it is the worst thing, it’s the downfall of society.” Then in my mind, I’m like, “If I agree with it, then I must be really far right.” And it’s like, “Well, no, that’s not the case.” I was literally exactly on the Y-axis, equal parts liberal and conservative, which I could not believe, but I was actually really happy about it, and it makes a lot of sense in terms of, I see both sides a lot. I can understand why someone would believe something on the left, why someone would believe something on the right, so yeah, that was really cool. That was fun to see that.
0:16:03.4 Mike Vacanti: Good. I’m glad you had fun taking that.
0:16:04.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:16:05.2 Mike Vacanti: Do you think you’ll post it? ‘Cause right after you took it…
0:16:07.1 Jordan Syatt: I’ll post it, I’ll post it, yeah. I think it’s cool, I’m sure some people will be upset, like we spoke about earlier, but…
0:16:13.5 Mike Vacanti: “Oh, you’re not on my team.” Kinda thing.
0:16:14.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. [laughter]
0:16:19.8 Mike Vacanti: Go bro.
0:16:20.2 Jordan Syatt: Should we get into some questions?
0:16:21.6 Mike Vacanti: Let’s do it. How long into a relationship before you can fart in front of your significant other?
0:16:29.2 Jordan Syatt: Wow. Someone asked that question?
0:16:30.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:16:32.0 Jordan Syatt: Was that one that I sent you? I don’t remember that one.
0:16:34.9 Mike Vacanti: I don’t remember where this…
0:16:35.5 Jordan Syatt: Someone emailed you that? [laughter] Did you just make that question up?
0:16:40.7 Mike Vacanti: No someone asked it, but I don’t…
0:16:41.7 Jordan Syatt: Someone asked it.
0:16:42.3 Mike Vacanti: I don’t remember where.
0:16:43.3 Jordan Syatt: How long into a relationship before you can fart in front of your significant other?
0:16:46.9 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.
0:16:47.0 Jordan Syatt: I’ve always been a big believer that it’s immediate. I’ve never been a fan of hiding it with someone. That’s not fair. That’s not true. When I was in high school, I was nervous, I was like, “Oh, I can’t fart, da, da, da, da.” But as I got older, like college and then passed, I was like, “Everybody farts, I’m just gonna fart.” And it was funny ’cause the more I just leaned into it, the more funny all the women I was with thought it was, and I think actually the sooner I did that, the sooner the relationship actually got more legitimate, more real because you’re not putting on a facade, like, “I don’t fart.” It’s like… Yeah, so…
0:17:23.0 Mike Vacanti: And it works both ways.
0:17:25.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So…
0:17:28.5 Mike Vacanti: Nice, nice.
0:17:28.5 Jordan Syatt: I think immediately. Like…
0:17:31.3 Mike Vacanti: I like that answer.
0:17:31.4 Jordan Syatt: What about you?
0:17:33.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, definitely early on. The one caveat I’ll give is, if you know that it’s gonna be a bad fart, then out of respect for the other person, [laughter] not out of embarrassment or anything, but just out of pure respect for the other person, hold it if you can…
0:17:51.2 Jordan Syatt: Or just excuse yourself.
0:17:54.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, or yeah, get up, take a walk around, and you’d say, “Hey, I got to fart.”
0:17:57.1 Jordan Syatt: I would say, “Hey, I have to fart really bad, and I think it’s gonna be a really bad one, and I don’t want you to throw up or something.” So…
0:18:06.6 Mike Vacanti: I like that. I think early on is absolutely the correct answer, especially because if I’m holding them in ever… You have bad stomach aches, it’s uncomfortable.
0:18:18.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you can hear it.
0:18:19.4 Mike Vacanti: It’s just… Yeah, you’re gurgling in there, but really just stomach discomfort, and I would encourage anyone’s significant other to do the same.
0:18:26.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, good question. Whoever asked that.
0:18:35.4 Mike Vacanti: We… Next up, Paul Taylor said, “Thank you for your content.” I think this one came in via email. By the way, if you’re not on our email list, there’s a link in the description that has a real nice give away to 30 Ways To Build Your Online Coaching Business. And you can hop on our email list. We write emails once every, probably five months, which may or may not improve in the near to distant future. But Paul Taylor emailed and said, “How do you suggest I approach overweight people/co-workers who I would like to help without offending them?” Woof. Which I… Paul, I love the question. I love where your heart is on this one, and your desire to help people who are friends, acquaintances, co-workers, people in your immediate surroundings. I think it just goes to show that you’re thinking of others and really want to help them. Unfortunately, I don’t know of a good way of initiating that.
0:19:33.5 Jordan Syatt: I’m just laughing because Mike just started laughing ’cause he saw me laughing. I don’t know.
[laughter]
0:19:41.0 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know why my mind goes here. But I love comedy. I love stand-up comedy. I’m a huge fan of it. And whenever I’m doing cardio, I always listen to stand-up comedy. And when I heard this question I was just picturing in my head like a funny scene of just a very well-intentioned Michael Scott, for example, going up to someone and just completely unsolicited, giving advice to someone in a completely inappropriate way. Which is like… It’s funny. It’s comical when you think about that. It also speaks to it not being appropriate, unless they ask for it.
0:20:23.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, unfortunately Paul. Even with intent in the right place, there’s not a good way to initiate that. If this person knows that you’re a personal trainer and happens to ask you for a question or ask you advice, amazing. But that’s something where you can’t initiate there.
0:20:43.3 Jordan Syatt: I can’t stop laughing just thinking about that scenario.
0:20:45.0 Mike Vacanti: Thinking about the office?
0:20:47.6 Jordan Syatt: Just like… Or someone completely unsolicited walking up to someone in an office, just being like, “Hey, you need to lose weight.” It’s just completely inappropriate. And again, love the reasoning and intent behind it. And like, “Hey, I’m sure this person is aware and I’m sure they would probably want help.” But for even just from the perspective… Taking away, making them feel uncomfortable or any of that… Just from the reality of the likelihood of them to succeed in losing weight and getting healthier, they are much more likely when they seek it out. When they get to a point in which, “Hey, I’m ready to take this step.” Versus you actively approaching them. It’s sort of…
0:21:40.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s true.
0:21:40.1 Jordan Syatt: It’s the difference between like you go up to a random person in the gym who has terrible technique and you’re like, “Hey, your technique is bad. We need to fix that.” They’re probably gonna be like, “Screw you.” But if someone comes up to you after seeing your technique and is like, “Hey, can you teach me how to do that?” They’re much more likely to take your advice more openly and willingly and do better with that advice than if you just went up to them unsolicited. It’s a difficult situation. I think it’s also different if it’s a family member versus a colleague. Or someone…
0:22:14.0 Mike Vacanti: Yep.
0:22:14.8 Jordan Syatt: That you don’t know or know very well. It’s very different if it’s someone in your life that you have a relationship and a history with, versus someone who’s just like, “Hey, I work with Paul in accounting and he’s been here three months. And I think Paul needs to lose some weight.” It’s like that’s not really okay for you to do, in my opinion. But if it’s a husband or a wife or… For my brother, for example. My brother is a really good example. We’ve been super open about it and we’ve done a number of podcasts and videos on it. My brother was literally about 200 pounds overweight and I always tried my best to make sure he knew that I was there for him, if and when he decided he was ready for help. It took him over 10 years, but he finally did. Now he’s at 100 pounds down, which is incredible. But it took 10 years for that to happen. So sometimes you just gotta wait until they’re ready.
0:23:09.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah and be available to them and help them if there’s ever a situation. It’s funny because that highlights a slight… I don’t know if it’s personality difference or… I just remember back in 2016… I don’t know what exactly prompted it, but I knew in my gut and intuition with my dad in his late 50s, and… I think he’s six foot. He was 240 and pretty soft, not…
0:23:38.8 Jordan Syatt: He was 240?
0:23:41.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:23:42.0 Jordan Syatt: Wow.
0:23:43.8 Mike Vacanti: Not 240 with lean mass but a soft 240.
0:23:44.3 Jordan Syatt: What is he now?
0:23:46.3 Mike Vacanti: 190. Yeah. He’s maintained it.
0:23:49.3 Jordan Syatt: That’s why I was like, “Wow. What a beast.”
0:23:51.3 Mike Vacanti: But I told him I wanted to go for a walk. I just had a burning inclination that if I didn’t do this… This was after my first rotation with Gary. I was back in Minnesota with family. And I was about to think about where I wanted to move next. And I just thought, if I didn’t initiate this, that I would feel very guilty if anything happened to him in the coming years. And I don’t know that this strategy works across the board. I may have gotten lucky. But I told him like… We went for a walk and I said, “Hey, we need to do something because if you continue to eat and not be super active and act this out over the next 10, 15 years, it’s not gonna end well.”
0:24:28.1 Mike Vacanti: And I offered to coach him. I was there, so it was easy for me to do that. We were living in the same city. But he took me up on it and we worked together for four months in person and continued to work with him online. But the moral of the story, when it’s someone you’re close to, you can initiate that conversation in a much more socially acceptable and like… You have a better feel on how to initiate that conversation. Whereas a stranger or just a random acquaintance or co-worker, there’s not a good way for you to be the initiator.
0:25:00.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Good question. Are you still drinking your Truly? You haven’t taken a sip in 20 minutes.
0:25:08.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, man. I definitely have. And I was passionate about that answer okay… You’re trying to get me drunk? Hang on let’s… Yeah you’re still way empty…
0:25:16.3 Jordan Syatt: I’ve drank more. Yeah.
0:25:20.5 Mike Vacanti: You’re a fast drinker.
0:25:22.3 Jordan Syatt: And I’m a slow drinker. I’m a fast eater, a slow drinker.
0:25:22.7 Mike Vacanti: You ate that dinner last night quick.
0:25:28.7 Jordan Syatt: I eat fast.
0:25:29.3 Mike Vacanti: When you’re hungry you eat fast.
0:25:29.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. I think whenever anybody’s hungry they eat fast.
0:25:34.1 Mike Vacanti: In the last six to 12 months, I’ve made a real effort to over chew my food.
0:25:38.0 Jordan Syatt: Interesting.
0:25:39.8 Mike Vacanti: And I’ve anecdotally, n equals one, noticed improvements in digestive health.
0:25:44.1 Jordan Syatt: You’re big on digestive health. You’ve become big on digestive health the last couple of years.
0:25:47.9 Mike Vacanti: I’m big on paying attention to n equals one feelings and pursuing them.
0:25:54.3 Jordan Syatt: Mike really got me into checking my poop. Like really…
0:25:56.2 Mike Vacanti: We don’t need to go… We’ve talked about this on the podcast the last summer, it was more of the theme.
0:26:00.9 Jordan Syatt: Did we?
0:26:01.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:26:03.1 Jordan Syatt: I forget, but yeah.
0:26:03.5 Mike Vacanti: You want it to be smooth and brown. You don’t want random colors. You don’t want, and… Yeah. I know we talked about this on the podcast because I gave the caveat that like, “This might sound gross, but it’s actually super, super important for your health.” If your poop is white or gray or black, these are not good things. If they’re consistently like that. But yeah. And Jordan has the greatest gut health diet of all time, just based on…
0:26:25.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, we spoke about that, yeah.
0:26:26.9 Mike Vacanti: The food he enjoys and the restaurants that were in his proximity, or… There was the grocery store that sold fermented foods, and…
0:26:34.1 Jordan Syatt: Miso soup and kimchi and all that, yeah. And kombucha. Kombucha, yeah.
0:26:38.6 Mike Vacanti: And now you have all of those on a weekly basis to this day?
0:26:41.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. They’re my favorite foods. And you’ve been eating almonds like a boss every morning.
0:26:46.4 Mike Vacanti: I have been having almonds with my protein shake for breakfast every day, and… Yeah, my digestion is never been better.
0:26:54.6 Jordan Syatt: Love that.
0:26:55.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, just upping fiber a little bit and… Yeah. Where should we go next with this one? This is a quick one.
0:27:02.7 Jordan Syatt: We’re only 26 minutes in, we got a…
0:27:05.1 Mike Vacanti: We got a little time. Do you take creatine?
0:27:07.8 Jordan Syatt: I just started taking creatine. So I did not take creatine prior to my jiu-jitsu competition because I didn’t wanna have the extra water weight that can sometimes come with it. So yeah. So I didn’t take creatine for that. But literally the day after I got back from the jiu-jitsu competition, I started up taking creatine again. It seems like there’s more and more benefits coming out about creatine daily. And it’s obviously not that fast. But it is crazy. And… ‘Cause it used to just be, creatine is very effective for strength and muscle growth and power production. But now it’s coming out that there are benefits like cognitive benefits and health benefits.
0:27:45.7 Mike Vacanti: Brain and heart health.
0:27:47.5 Jordan Syatt: It is crazy. And really cool. Like really, really cool. I remember when I first wanted to take creatine in high school and my mom was like… She thought it was a steroid. She thought protein powder was a steroid, nevermind creatine. Creatine just has a name that makes you think, this is dangerous.
0:28:02.3 Mike Vacanti: It is a name that got dragged through the mud between 2000 and 2008, I would say. As getting lumped in with pro-hormones and like…
0:28:13.5 Jordan Syatt: Test boosters.
0:28:13.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah… And even steroids.
0:28:14.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.
0:28:15.5 Mike Vacanti: People thought of them in the same category when they’re absolutely not. Creatine is one of, if not the most, heavily researched supplements over many, many decades. And there are a ton of benefits.
0:28:28.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. So I just started taking it. I’m not loading it. Right? You could do the whole loading thing where you take five grams, five times a day, for total of 25 grams a day… No, I’m not doing that. There are different ways to take it. You could do the loading phase so that in about five days your stores are fully saturated. Or you could just do what I’m doing, which is I take five grams a day, and then over about 30 days your stores will be fully saturated.
0:28:52.9 Mike Vacanti: Do you take it everyday or just on training days?
0:28:54.9 Jordan Syatt: Every day. Yeah, every day. Just to keep your stores saturated.
0:28:56.9 Mike Vacanti: So, 35 grams a week?
0:28:58.8 Jordan Syatt: Yep. Yeah, that’s it. What about you? Do you take creatine?
0:29:02.8 Mike Vacanti: Cool. Yes, but I’ve been traveling a lot this summer. I don’t always pack it. I would say I’m lazily taking it recently.
0:29:11.7 Jordan Syatt: Got it.
0:29:13.5 Mike Vacanti: But yes, about 25-30 grams a week. Yeah, it’s very easy. I was dry scooping it recently. You ever dry scoop?
0:29:22.0 Jordan Syatt: I don’t get why people dry scoop.
0:29:23.8 Mike Vacanti: Because it changes the texture. If I have a one scoop of protein protein shake and I put 5-6 grams of creatine in there, it makes my protein shake a little… Taste like sand. And so instead of that I just threw five grams of creatine in my mouth, and took a sip of water and gulped it down…
0:29:42.3 Jordan Syatt: Interesting.
0:29:42.6 Mike Vacanti: Like I was taking a pill. And then just enjoyed my protein shake.
0:29:46.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I’ve never done that. I’ve never… I’ve literally… If I have the creatine I’ll just… ‘Cause I agree. I if put…
0:29:53.4 Mike Vacanti: Mix it.
0:29:53.6 Jordan Syatt: Creatine in my protein, it tastes weird. So I don’t do that. But I’ll have my protein, and I’ll have a small cup with a small amount of water, and just put it in there. And just drink them both separately. And it’s funny, this is one of the more common questions I get asked on my Q and As, on Instagram. “What are your thoughts on dry scooping?” “What do you think of dry scooping?”
0:30:12.2 Mike Vacanti: I think 16-year-olds were doing it on TikTok for a while, and that popularized it.
0:30:18.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I get this question every time I do a Q and A, “What are your thoughts on… ” I’m like, “I don’t know. If you want to, go for it.” People focus on the weirdest stuff. It doesn’t matter. Just… I don’t know. If you wanna…
0:30:29.0 Mike Vacanti: However you wanna get it in your mouth.
0:30:31.3 Jordan Syatt: For me, I feel like if I’m throwing powder in my mouth I’m gonna choke on it. It’s like… You know when you eat tiramisu, and you just like… You breathe it in too quickly and that cocoa powder, whatever, gets caught in your throat? And you’re… That’s what I think would happen to me if I tried to dry scoop. So I’m like, “I’m just gonna put it into a liquid”. But…
0:30:49.1 Mike Vacanti: It’s probably safer.
[chuckle]
0:30:52.0 Mike Vacanti: Alright, next up, we got a question from Scott. Scott, who’s actually in the mentorship but this question has been on our list for a while. It was before he joined the mentorship. And he asked if we’d talk about it on the podcast so I’m gonna read it. He said, “Hi, I’m a UK-based trainer, almost 30 years experience. My in-person coaching is going great, but I need help to negotiate the online side of my business. I’m not new to any of this, but always keen to learn more. You both echo a lot of my work ethics and professional execution in your podcasts, so this is the reason I’m contacting you. My concern is time constraints. Not an excuse, a reality. I work eight hour in-person sessions per day, not including programming and admin.”
0:31:33.1 Jordan Syatt: Geez.
0:31:33.7 Mike Vacanti: “And also a full-time dad. But, I understand the right time will never come. I just wanted to ask if I can realistically execute your advice and guidance to the best of my ability with such a hectic commitment? Any guidance on my question will be very welcome. I love this job and want to grow in a way that not only benefits my clients, but also my own personal development and health. Healthy regards, Scott.”
0:31:53.5 Jordan Syatt: So, does he want to transition to online? Is that the question. How do you transition from in-person to online?
0:32:00.6 Mike Vacanti: That is my interpretation, given the insane in-person load as well as responsibilities being a dad.
0:32:07.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so we actually just spoke about this in the mentorship. I believe it was yesterday in the Q and A. And also on the call with… Who was it, Jeff? Is that who we spoke about it with?
0:32:16.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yep.
0:32:19.3 Jordan Syatt: So this is some…
0:32:21.3 Mike Vacanti: And Deb, we were talking about this with.
0:32:21.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, with Deb… With Deb. Yeah, we were talking with Deb. We’ve done a bunch of challenge winner calls recently. So here’s the thing. This is something that I did when I was transitioning from in-person to online. A number of people in the mentorship have done it. Ryan Kassim, in the mentorship, did this seamlessly. When you’re… When you’re coaching eight hour… Eight hours every day, that’s brutal. That is absolutely brutal. And Mike and I talk a lot about the importance of coaching in-person. You don’t need to coach that much in person every day. I think… I’ve always thought if I was gonna open up a gym… Which I’m not. I don’t plan to in terms of opening a gym where I have coaches and stuff training there. But if I was gonna open up a gym, I would have a rule that a coach could only coach for about two to four hours max a day. ‘Cause after that four hour mark, you’re done.
0:33:19.8 Jordan Syatt: You can’t give your best after two to four hours of coaching. So in terms of transitioning to online from there, I’m gonna preface this by saying, I understand this can be very scary to do. ‘Cause I was very scared to do it when I did it over 10 years ago. And I know Ryan has done it and he was very scared to do it, but now he’s fully online. And anyone in the mentorship who’s done it, it can be scary. But I promise you this works.
0:33:50.2 Jordan Syatt: If you really wanna transition to online, I would do it progressively as opposed to just overnight. So if you’re… For example, here’s what I would do. Let’s say you’ve got a person training with you four times a week… And that’s gonna be a small percentage of your in-person clients, ’cause it’s way more money. But if you’ve got someone training with you four times per week, what I would do is I would… Number one, get them on a phone call outside of a training session.
0:34:19.6 Jordan Syatt: You don’t do this while they’re working out or while you’re working out with them or anything like that, ’cause they can’t focus on it. I would say like, “Hey, can we schedule a time to hop on a call. I have something I’d love to chat with you about.” Cool. Get on a call. And you start the call by saying something to the effect of, “Listen, if you don’t want to do what I’m about to tell you, then we will keep doing exactly what we’re doing. It’s totally fine. But I am building my online coaching business, I’m really excited about it. It is way less money than coaching with me in-person, and what I’d love to start doing with you is if you’re open to it, instead of coaching four times a week every week, we’re gonna switch to one time a week every week. It’s gonna save you a ton of money, and we’ll coach in person one time a week. I’ll give you your program for the other three days of training. If you wanna send me videos, you can send them to me via email or you can text them to me. I’ll analyze your videos.”
0:35:12.3 Jordan Syatt: “But it’s gonna cost you way less. And this way, we don’t have to… We don’t have to schedule and work around like, ‘Okay, we gotta meet at this time every single day.’ You can do it, whenever works best for you. Any questions you have, I’m happy to help you with. And I’ll help you with nutrition. So you’re actually getting more for your money, and it’s less total money.” And this way you meet with them four times a month instead of 16 times a month, which frees up a tremendous amount of hours in your coaching day. And then from there, you can either stay with that sort of like a hybrid of in-person and online, or later on, you could be like, “Hey, we’re meeting four times a month, how about we meet one time a month.”
0:35:47.7 Jordan Syatt: And this is what I did. I went from four times a month with people to one time a month. And the one time a month I met with them, I would go over the entire month’s programming. So I’d say like… Alright, so the one time a month I met with them, we’d go over every workout. I’d show them all the technique, ask if they have any questions about the program. And then the rest of the month, they’d do it on their own. And if they had questions, they’d email me or they’d send me technique videos. And I’d check up with them. But now instead of meeting up with them one time a week, four times a month, I met with them 12 times a year.
0:36:19.9 Jordan Syatt: And now I have way more free time. It costs them way less money. And then eventually from there, “Hey, let’s just transition to fully online. We’re meeting with each other once a month. You know all the exercises. You know all the technique. I’ll still do everything as is. If you ever want to meet in person, I’m happy to set that up with you. But we’re meeting one time a month now anyway.” And then from there, it’s a very seamless transition. I remember for me the biggest fear was being worried that they would get angry or upset or they’d find a new coach. They won’t. They’re with you right now because they love working with you, because they trust you. And again, you give them the option of saying, “If you don’t want to do this, we’ll keep doing exactly what we’re doing right now.” But even if only 50% of your current clients take advantage of this option, that’s gonna free up your time by many, many, many, many hours every week and every month. So that would be the route that I’d take.
0:37:10.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s a great actionable, practical, very useful strategy that, Scott, I would put into play starting as soon as you hear this. Where you’re at right now, Scott, with your online business, is you’re in the building phase. And there’s a maxim in life that we kind of alluded to earlier in the podcast. Where it is infinitely harder to build anything than it is to maintain it. And that can be building muscle. It’s way easier to build muscle than it is to maintain it. It’s way easier to build a physique than it is to maintain it. It’s way easier to build the conditioning than it is to maintain it. It’s much… I’m sorry, I’m saying that backwards. It’s much harder to build it, than it is to maintain it. Jordan is force-feeding me Trulys, so I apologize for the dyslexia. It’s harder to build something than it is to maintain it. The same is true with an online coaching business. It’s substantially harder to build it than it is to maintain it, and you’re in the building phase, going from…
0:38:16.3 Mike Vacanti: I mean, each additional client gets easier and easier, but in the process of going from zero to, let’s just say, 20 online coaching clients might take you a year or might take you two years. Or it might even take you longer than that. But in that gap window… In that, call it 18 to 36 months, somewhere in their, window, when you’re going from starting your online coaching business to having it be your full-time revenue stream that can support your lifestyle, that’s gonna take an amount of work that hopefully, you never have to go back to again.
0:38:52.1 Mike Vacanti: And… Unless you choose to. And doing that on top of you having your family, having your kids, that just makes it infinitely more difficult. But know that this is a temporary period of extreme effort and time commitment to the process of building your online coaching business after which you’ll have the option of never having to work that hard again and having more time to allocate to other aspects of your life. Because maintaining that business once you build it up is far easier and takes much less time and energy than it does to build it initially.
0:39:26.9 Jordan Syatt: Love that. Well said.
0:39:30.7 Mike Vacanti: That’s our last question.
0:39:32.1 Jordan Syatt: Alright, so what we’re gonna do is we’re going to call this podcast right here, and then we’re gonna jump right in to the next podcast you’re gonna listen to. We’re just gonna keep going, ’cause we don’t know what the next week is gonna look like scheduling-wise. And we’re really trying to make sure that we get you a podcast every single week. So we’re gonna call this podcast here. If you enjoyed it, please leave a five-star review. It would mean a lot to us and they help a ton. If you’d like to join the mentorship, you can do that. The link is in the show notes. If not, all good. We’ll see you next week and we’re gonna pause this podcast. And we’re going to go right into the next one.
0:40:07.6 Mike Vacanti: Have a great day. Talk to you soon, bye.
