0:00:12.1 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.
0:00:12.8 Jordan Syatt: Hello, Michael.
0:00:13.0 Mike Vacanti: Welcome to the podcast.
0:00:15.6 Jordan Syatt: How was your workout today?
0:00:17.2 Mike Vacanti: Mediocre.
0:00:18.6 Jordan Syatt: Okay, what’d you do?
0:00:20.7 Mike Vacanti: Pull day, so remember when I started that Dante Trudel pre-workout?
0:00:27.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh boy, do I. Yeah, absolutely.
0:00:31.1 Mike Vacanti: This like, concoction of basically taking effective dosage of many things and buying them in bulk rather than buying a specific company’s pre-workout and putting it together, and he had recommended dosages in this video that he made. And I remember I followed it for probably a week before realizing that it was like… And by the way, he’s like, 260lbs, just a ball of muscle. It was way higher doses than I needed [chuckle] and it would just tear through my GI tract. [laughter] We don’t need to get into details, but basically, I have a real scaled-down version of that, eliminating probably half the ingredients, keeping what I like and reducing the doses. Even in… Some of them that were “clinically effective doses,” I brought them down a little bit, but I made this mistake of thinking that adding some carbonated drink into the blender bottle before I shook it up was a good idea.
0:01:32.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, no.
0:01:33.4 Mike Vacanti: And here’s why, ’cause I was using so… One, such a small amount, so it was mostly un-carbonated liquid and two, the can had been opened in my refrigerator for about a week, so I figured it had gone mostly flat.
0:01:44.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.
0:01:46.5 Mike Vacanti: And for context, pomegranate juice and beet juice, pomegranate juice for the heart health benefits and just for carbs, as like a pre and intra-workout and then beet juice for the vasodilation, or both in this pre-workout. And so, when I shook it up [chuckle] and opened it, it exploded every…
0:02:11.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh.
0:02:11.6 Mike Vacanti: Like these white kitchen cupboards, [laughter] just painted in red.
[laughter]
0:02:18.3 Jordan Syatt: Did it get all over you as well?
0:02:20.1 Mike Vacanti: Literally like it’s gunshot… Everywhere. All over me, all over my hoodie, just painted the refrigerator like, just a massive explosion of red. So I cleaned that up and then went and got the pull day in.
0:02:34.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, how long did that take to clean up?
0:02:36.7 Mike Vacanti: Probably a solid 20, 30 minutes [laughter] with a full roll of paper towel.
[laughter]
0:02:43.5 Jordan Syatt: Well, that’s no fun. Alright.
0:02:45.7 Mike Vacanti: No.
0:02:45.7 Jordan Syatt: So you had to… You had to make a whole new shake after that as well.
0:02:50.0 Mike Vacanti: No, because it was a very small, like… I don’t know, it was maybe an ounce or two out of the 20-ounce bottle that actually left, but in like a… Yeah…
0:03:00.6 Jordan Syatt: Splatter fashion.
0:03:00.8 Mike Vacanti: It was a circumference of like, 15 feet.
0:03:04.5 Jordan Syatt: Gee, yeah, that sucks.
0:03:06.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:03:06.2 Jordan Syatt: Did it get on the ceiling? You didn’t check?
0:03:09.1 Mike Vacanti: I didn’t check. I really hope not. I’d rather just leave it there. Call it art. [laughter] Yeah, man, how are you?
0:03:17.9 Jordan Syatt: Good, man. Good. Got a great Jiu-jitsu session in. I have my competition on the 23rd.
0:03:26.3 Mike Vacanti: Of January?
0:03:26.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. I’m doing one a month. One a month, 2022 man.
0:03:29.6 Mike Vacanti: When did this start?
0:03:31.3 Jordan Syatt: Started in… I decided I was gonna do it in 2021. Years ago.
[laughter]
0:03:39.1 Mike Vacanti: A year ago, this is the first time hearing of this.
0:03:40.8 Jordan Syatt: Right, man, I could have swore I had told you this.
0:03:45.6 Mike Vacanti: No.
0:03:46.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I’m just… I’m ESTP-ing it over here forgetting everything…
0:03:48.1 Mike Vacanti: I do need to be back on social media just so I can get tabs on your life? Is that what…
0:03:52.8 Jordan Syatt: Probably. Probably.
0:03:54.7 Mike Vacanti: …is about to need to happen?
0:03:54.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. So I mean, my whiteboard behind me when I wrote my New Year’s goals, I was like, Alright, I need to do one… I wanna… ‘Cause basically, I’ve been doing jiu-jitsu for a little over two years now, and in those two years, I’ve competed three times. And for the first year I didn’t compete ’cause I was just trying to get better at jiu-jitsu, and then once I started competing… So really, in a year, I’ve competed three times. And I only competed three times because every time I would compete, I wanted to cut weight to the lower weight class, so I would be more competitive there, but cutting that weight about 10 pounds, that takes a significant amount of time and energy, and I don’t wanna do it. And I was like, you know what, screw it. I just need to get better at competing. So, regardless of what weight I’m at, regardless of if I have an advantage or disadvantage at my weight, I’m just gonna go in and compete. So, I was like, screw it, I’m not gonna cut wait for these competitions. I’m gonna do one competition a month for all of 2022, and just… I mean, that way, and this year I’ll have 12 competitions, which is literally four times the amount that I had over the last year. So, that’s what I’m doing.
0:04:54.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s really cool.
0:04:55.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.
0:04:55.7 Mike Vacanti: And what? One weight class higher?
0:05:00.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, just one…
0:05:00.4 Mike Vacanti: Or two?
0:05:01.7 Jordan Syatt: So I won’t have to cut weight, just one weight class up.
0:05:03.3 Mike Vacanti: What, like one… Was it 139 or 140?
0:05:05.4 Jordan Syatt: 155. So, at my old one it was, I had to weigh 139 in order to compete at 141 or so, just because the gi weighs like three or four pounds, and then this one is with the gi about 155, so I’ll be fine.
0:05:21.8 Mike Vacanti: Perfect.
0:05:21.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:05:22.7 Mike Vacanti: And you’re walking around just under that?
0:05:24.7 Jordan Syatt: At 150-ish, yeah.
0:05:28.6 Mike Vacanti: Well, good luck, bro. Where is it?
0:05:28.7 Jordan Syatt: It’s in Dallas. It’s a local tournament. So the main organization I compete with is IBJJF The International Brazilian Jiu-jitsu Federation, but that they don’t have one this month that I saw that I could go to, so I just signed up for a new federation, like American Grappling Federation or something. So then they have one literally 20 minutes away. So, gonna do that. And then next month, I’ll probably do a IBJJF and we’ll figure it out from there.
0:05:53.0 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go, I love it.
0:05:55.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, man. So that’s it. Everything is good. It’s cool, I really feel this Zone 2 improvements in my recovery. I was talking with my coach Alex about it today. He was saying, he was like, “Man, I remember when you first started doing jiu-jitsu with me,” which I had already been doing jiu-jitsu for a year and a half at this point. He was like, “We did a couple of rounds and you were gassed and you couldn’t do anymore, but now today we rolled for 40 minutes straight non-stop,” like, literally I didn’t stop once, and he was like, “Man, this is crazy. Your cardio has improved so much.” So, yeah, it’s really cool to see that improvement.
0:06:27.0 Mike Vacanti: I mean, you’ve been going super hard on the cardio for months now.
0:06:31.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the cool part is like, it’s… Going hard isn’t being consistent, but the cardio I do is so easy. I do phone calls when I’m on the… When I’m doing… You know what I mean? Like, the consistency…
0:06:43.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. That’s what I… I meant total hours a week…
0:06:47.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
0:06:48.0 Mike Vacanti: Over the course of months, not intensity within sessions. Yep.
0:06:52.0 Jordan Syatt: I know you meant that, I meant, like for the people listening, it’s just like… It’s not like I’m doing hit or sprints or anything. Actually, I did an awesome podcast with Alex Viada about it. Did you listen to that?
0:07:02.3 Mike Vacanti: No, I haven’t. I literally thought about it during my workout.
0:07:06.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, definitely, it was amaze… He’s so smart, man, that guy’s an absolute genius. Unbelievable, so.
0:07:11.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah. He’s a beast. I’m a fan. Well, sweet bro. Good luck, nine days.
0:07:17.1 Jordan Syatt: Thanks, man. We… Are we doing a Q&A?
0:07:19.4 Mike Vacanti: Let’s dive in. I mean, just an episode a week, got a little streak going here, got a little momentum.
0:07:28.3 Jordan Syatt: Alright, let’s see. How helpful is creatine when strength training, but you’re still in a calorie deficit for weight loss?
0:07:38.4 Mike Vacanti: Very helpful.
[chuckle]
0:07:41.4 Jordan Syatt: That’s it? That’s all they get?
[laughter]
0:07:42.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s it.
[laughter]
0:07:44.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I mean, the benefits of creatine don’t get in the way of fat loss, and fat loss doesn’t take away the need or the improvements that you can get from taking creatine. Like, you can do both, and you should do both simultaneously. Actually, it might even be more important to take creatine when you’re trying to lose fat, just to hopefully help with muscle retention, potentially.
0:08:08.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, absolutely. If strength is a goal of yours, whether you’re at maintenance or in a deficit or in a surplus, taking on average 20 to 25 grams of creatine per week, just makes sense, right? It’s heavily researched, it has been heavily researched for going on four decades now, I believe, and has been shown to be safe at those dosages and effective for the majority of people. So, I think it’s a no-brainer. I’m also… It’s funny you mentioned Alex Viada just know, because it’s probably been a year at this point, but he had a PowerPoint presentation on a lot of the other benefits, like non-strength benefits of creatine, talking about heart health, talking about potential benefits, neurologically. So, there may be other reasons besides strength, where supplementing with creatine is beneficial as well.
0:09:14.4 Jordan Syatt: Okay, I always find my will powered down half a packet of chips. Where do you find yours? So where do you find your will power, Michael?
0:09:23.7 Mike Vacanti: We can talk about where our individual metrics fall, but I’m gonna give her a lot of credit because I think that it’s rare for people to “find their will power” in this context, after half a packet of chips, myself included very often is… If I’m that far into something that I didn’t plan on eating for the day, and let’s pretend I’m trying to lose fat at the time, and pretty dialed, I either have it or I don’t. Meaning, once I’m down half a packet of chips, half a can of Pringles, half a bag of caramel corn, half of whatever, I’m eating a lot… You know, three cookies in, I’m eating 12 cookies, I’m eating 15. Like, I’m not… Once I’ve started, it’s gonna be a lot of dessert calories. So, to be able to recognize where you’re at in that moment and cut the damage and then make the rest of the day solid as you planned, I think that’s unbelievably impressive and makes you more likely to be successful at achieving whatever goal you’re after and maintaining a healthy body weight in the future.
0:10:33.2 Jordan Syatt: So I know you said that if you get half way down, you’re just gonna get the whole thing, or if you have three cookies, you’re just gonna have 12 cookies. When do you get back on track? Where do you find that will power, it’s the next day? Like, when is it…
0:10:46.7 Mike Vacanti: The sleep resets for me, every…
0:10:48.9 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Sleep resets your will power.
0:10:50.8 Mike Vacanti: Or if I… I mean, sleep or fullness, meaning, if it’s 2 o’clock in the afternoon and… We’ll just use Oreos as an example. I had four and then I had eight and then I had 15 of them and whatever, wherever I get full, sometimes I’m not just gonna call the day right there and like, Okay, I’m just gonna eat whatever for the rest of the day, my next meal. So if that’s at 3 o’clock, then when I’m hungry again, 6:00, 7:00 PM, I might have a solid dinner, like, normal food, protein, vegetable, starch, what I planned on eating. But if it’s later at night, then yeah, the next day I’m right back on track. If it’s a Friday night, I’m right back on track the next day, I’m not waiting till Monday. I’m not waiting till the first of the next month, I’m never letting it slide more than a day.
0:11:38.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I like that. I like the concept of never having two bad days in a row, where it’s like…
0:11:45.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:11:46.1 Jordan Syatt: I think it’s just a very easy way. It’s like, cool, if you have one off day, just make sure the next day you get right back on it, and that’s actually why I like the calendar where you can mark your consistent days and inconsistent days, ’cause you can see like, cool, so you had an inconsistent day, don’t let the next day be inconsistent, you don’t wanna have two of those in a row, just for the momentum purposes of it. Gary would always say like, momentum is real. He’d always talk about like, momentum is really. It is. Like, when you get in that momentum, whether it’s going the way you want or the opposite direction of what you want, the momentum is real and it will roll whatever way you have it going.
0:12:16.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, absolutely. And then to be able to visualize it with a consistency calendar and see like… ‘Cause the momentum can go the other way too, you start accruing a few bad days and then it’s like, “Oh, I’m just off now,” and that can… You’re basically setting yourself back a number of days, weeks, months, in terms of achieving whatever end goal you’re after.
0:12:42.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Okay, alright. Well, here’s one… We’re not gonna answer… The question is, “Do you offer online personal coaching, I’m in Australia?” And I’m gonna answer this, obviously, I’m not doing one-on-one coaching right now. That just reminded me that we have a big sale for the mentorship coming next week, and if you want to do online coaching, if you wanna build your online coaching business, go to the link in the show notes and sign up for our email list, because we have a huge sale coming, we only do this once a year. And so, if you want to get on our email list, you can be notified when that sale goes live, so you can join the mentorship. We can help you build your online coaching business. Don’t miss that. So go to the link in the show notes right now, put your name and email in there and you’ll be notified when that sale goes live, so we can help you build your online coaching business.
0:13:34.2 Mike Vacanti: Yup.
0:13:35.2 Jordan Syatt: Alright, alright, here’s a question, what is your best business advice for 2022?
0:13:41.5 Mike Vacanti: Man, I don’t know if I can just give one piece of advice, I feel like we can… I feel like we can just rant and riff on this one. The first thing that comes to mind for me is somewhat cliché, but if you’re just starting your online business, if you’re just starting your online coaching business, if you’re early in your online coaching business, don’t think about 2022. Meaning, don’t try to make it “this year,” don’t try to make this a full-time… Don’t try to make as much money as possible, and this year, don’t sacrifice things like your integrity, reputation. Don’t make sacrifices just for money for short-term gain in this year. Don’t sell things you don’t believe in, don’t be dishonest, don’t like… We can talk about 2022, and we can talk about platforms that are doing well right now, and we can talk about this year specifically, but I would think about growing your business in terms of how many people can you help in a five to 10 year window, not just during this year.
0:14:49.1 Jordan Syatt: I like that. You know, it’s funny, you know, my buddy David was just here this last week, he just left today. And my buddy David, I grew up with him, wrestled with him from the time I was really young, and he has a lot of knowledge about health and fitness and nutrition, and strength training, and he’s thinking about getting into the fitness industry. So he just came here, he wanted to visit me and see me, but also just to see what I do on a daily basis. But I told him… He wanted to come and see what I do on a daily basis, but I had to let him know, I was like, “Man, just so you know, what I do today is very different than what I did for the first five years or so of trying to build my online business.” And I think it’s a really… People try and copy what I do now. It’s like that, it’s a very different stage of my journey or my process in a business. And it was funny because I have all of the documents that I created from 2000… I started my business in July 2011. I have all of my goal sheets, I still have everything, ’cause it’s all been in the same folders.
0:15:50.5 Jordan Syatt: And I showed him what my goals were like, I showed him what my daily routine was set up like, and I had it all written out, which was really cool for him to see. And one of the things that he was really taken aback by was that my daily actions for the first about four to five years were literally exactly the same for the first four to five years. Like, they didn’t change at all, they were… For example, for the first four to five years I have this system of daily to-do list, which basically I have my top one, which is my do or die activity, I have one thing every day that I must get done no matter what, it’s the do or die. If I do nothing else, it doesn’t matter as long as I get that done. Then I have my daily medication, which is like, two to three things that are important but don’t need to be done today, they’re not like… They don’t need to be done immediately. And then I have three to five things on the bottom, which are my nap time activities which I can do instead of procrastinating, whether it’s emails or client programs or something, things that are relatively easy for me to do and it will help me progress forward.
0:17:01.4 Jordan Syatt: So I had all those listed out all day from 2011 until 2017, and the number one thing for the first four or five years was number one, website article. It was like the number one thing I had to do every day. And he was like, “Wait, so did you write a new one every day?” I was like, “No, it takes about a week to write a really good article, and I would publish on Monday,” so I would… The number one thing every day is I just had to work on the article that was going to be published on Monday, because I didn’t wanna wait until Sunday to try and write a great article. I was like, “I need to do the research… Or I need to think of the topic. I need to do the research for it, I need to write the first draft, I need to get the pictures and images for it, I need to do all of that,” and that takes about a whole week to write a really good article, that was literally the first thing on my to-do list every day for the first four to five years.
0:17:44.9 Jordan Syatt: And then I also had anyone who’s followed me for a long time, remember I used to write these things called Strength Lessons on my personal Facebook page before I even had a business page, just every day, I would write one strength lesson. It could be anything, any tip. Some days where they were motivation, some days they were strength training, some days they were nutrition, some days… Wednesday was workout Wednesday, I’d give a free workout, blah, blah, blah, like, I had that every single day for four to five years. I had… I would share three articles from other fitness professionals, so I would share articles from Eric Cressey, I’d share articles from Tony Gentilcore, from Mike Robertson, from Joel Jamieson, from Dan John, from Pavel Tsatsouline. And I’d share their articles because I realized, number one, just giving out good information is always good for your audience, it doesn’t matter if it necessarily is written by you, as long as you share good information and they know where they can find good information, if you’re that person where they can find good information then great.
0:18:41.3 Jordan Syatt: It doesn’t hurt your brand to share someone else’s content ever, especially if it’s good. And I remember having… David was looking through it and he was like, “Man, it literally didn’t change for four to five years.” I was like, “Dude, I literally did the same exact shit every single day for four to five years.” It was not… It’s not like this crazy articulate business plan, it’s not super fun or sexy or whatever, and at that time, I didn’t think about… I wasn’t like, “Oh, this is gonna work.” I was just like, “This just makes sense.” I was like, “I’m just gonna keep doing this until an audience builds.” And that’s what happened.
0:19:17.2 Mike Vacanti: I love it. I especially love the un-sexy aspect to it because so many people’s minds go to, what is the system? What’s the advertising scheme, how do I grow it fast? And it literally… For both of us, but I love that you had it documented in a way that proved it out for David looking at it, was just, I’m going to work hard to make free, helpful, accessible, educational content for anyone to consume, I’m gonna do it daily on Facebook I’m gonna do it weekly on a website, I’m gonna do it… And then even if you didn’t have it fully documented, like then 2017 shifted to Instagram like you were doing it in other places, but it’s still just in the dirt, in the mud, just every single day, working a lot of hours without the expectation of getting anything in return, but just making stuff that’s going to help people, not worrying about the immediate, not worrying about the conversion of clients this week, not worrying about how much money you’re making this month, literally just focusing on the day and the objectives of the day, not the results, the objectives, what you need to do to help people without expecting anything else in return, and doing that day after day after day after day for five years.
0:20:37.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah that’s exactly right.
0:20:42.9 Mike Vacanti: For five years. If this is putting people off from wanting to work in the fitness industry, putting you off from wanting to start a business, putting you off from wanting to be an online coach, good. Because this is the reality of what it is, it’s not fast, it’s not… In very rare instances, are you going to go from zero to building a massive business in a very short period of time and neither of us did, it’s a real grind and it takes time and continuous effort. And I think it’s important for people to know that to know the road that you’re about to start on, but if you’re willing to do that if you want, if you enjoy that, if you enjoy helping people and if you enjoy training nutrition, behavioral change, if you enjoy this stuff in general, then it could be a great path for you… Yeah man.
0:21:30.0 Jordan Syatt: And the more I think about it, the more… That’s what I did with everything. Even when things changed, I didn’t do a ton of different stuff. I was like, I did website articles for the first like five years, three to four years or so, then I would switch to email list and I really just focused on the email list for two years, and then I went to Instagram and I just focused on Instagram for two or three years, and then I went to YouTube and I adjusted that for about a year and a half or two years, and then every time I do something, I’m not trying to focus on everything. Right, I’m not trying to build every single platform, I’m not trying to be everywhere at the same time, I’m not trying to be the best everywhere, I’m just trying to be the best in one place, and I think that’s what you’ve done as well, it’s like you look at your business model, it hasn’t been crazy all over the place, it’s just you’ve been the best in one place at what you do, and I think there’s a lot to be said for being the best in one place rather than trying to be the best everywhere or to be good everywhere, because when you can be the best in that one place, you own that market, you own that place, everyone knows you, everyone wants to work with you, it’s much better to go all in on one than to try and be like haphazardly everywhere.
0:22:47.6 Jordan Syatt: Now, with that said, I think it does matter where you try and become the best, for example, being the best somewhere anywhere is always good, but for example, I would rather… If I could choose, I would not want to be the best on Twitter, for example. Just based on where people are going to, where you’re probably gonna get the most business, I don’t think Twitter would be where I would choose to put all of my time and effort to, I wanna be the best fitness person on Twitter, it doesn’t mean it would be bad if you were the best fitness person on twitter, you’d still probably have a phenomenal business and you could lead people in many, many places, but I think if someone is going like, “Where would you spend your time now in 2022,” the people in the mentorship are gonna know exactly what I’m about to say and what we’re both gonna say, but it’s like if I started all over again from scratch, I would still go back to website articles.
0:23:43.1 Mike Vacanti: Yep 100%.
0:23:45.2 Jordan Syatt: And we’ve seen this time and time again in the mentorship with the people who take the article writing challenges seriously, they come up number one on Google all the time, their articles are beating our articles now for Google because they’re updating their website more consistently than us, and their certain search terms are coming up number one on Google.
0:24:03.1 Mike Vacanti: And following the guidance of the SEO course, and then during the website, the article challenges. Yeah, which is so fun to see. So you’re 100% right. And people do get overwhelmed by feeling like they have to be everywhere, how can I create consistently on eight different platforms, it’s overwhelming and obviously is going to lead to burnout for 99.999% of people, but you’re making a great point that you don’t have to be everywhere, and it’s actually better to focus one or two platforms. You said Twitter alone might not be the best place, and I agree with that there are definitely better places to be, if you’re someone who really enjoys Twitter though, the pairing of a short-form and a long-form, Twitter plus email list or Twitter plus website is interesting. Just like the combination of TikTok plus YouTube or TikTok plus article or TikTok plus potentially podcasts. Because they can all serve as… When you think about breadth versus depth, they can all serve as organic reach or the majority of these things we’re talking about website, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, that you can find new audience in all of these places. But then the long-form content is really an anchor for deep education, building that trust with your community, and a place for someone to really consume hours and hours of your work, which is often what leads to coaching clients.
0:25:44.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, agreed. The other thing that I’ve found Twitter very helpful for, ’cause I still use it almost every day, I use Twitter as a testing ground, I use Twitter as a testing ground for content for what things people are interested in, what things people are… How to phrase certain things, like I could Tweet the same thing five times, but in different ways, and it’s sort of like you’re split testing is what it comes down to, if you know anything about marketing or advertising, there’s something called a split test where you basically run the exact same advertisement, or almost the exact same advertisement with one or two tweaks to two different audiences and you see which one performs better.
0:26:22.7 Jordan Syatt: And you can say like, “Okay, cool, so maybe this one performed better because we used the word fuck and in this one we didn’t use the word fuck. And for whatever reason that got people’s attention or this headline,” whatever it is, and so I use Twitter as my way of being like, Okay, this is a type of content that people are really gonna be interested in hearing about on Instagram or on TikTok or on YouTube, or on my email list or a whole website article. ‘Cause I remember, David would ask me, he was like, “How do you come up with ideas for content?” And the number one way I do ideas for content that I always did is just, What are my clients asking me, like what are they asking me, what questions do they have, and I would just answer them publicly.
0:27:01.3 Mike Vacanti: And if you don’t have clients yet, what do your friends ask you about working out, what does your uncle ask you at Thanksgiving like…
0:27:08.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, or… Let’s say, Listen, if you are interested in health and fitness, you’re definitely getting people asking you questions, but for example, I do a Q&A on my story, five, six times a week, go look at the questions I’m being asked in my Q&A and make content answering those questions, obviously, don’t plagiarize me, but take the question that someone asked me and make a response to it in your own words, in writing it… Make a video, whatever tweet about it, something… Those questions are great. Look at the comment section in my posts, you’ll get tons of questions, go into different fitness communities online, or go to a fitness magazine in CVS or Walgreens or whatever, they have all these fitness magazines and they’re gonna have all these headlines like the best superset for muscle growth is like… I don’t know if their content is good or not, but you could talk about what are supersets, how to build muscle are supersets good for muscle growth. There you go, there’s another piece of fucking content right at the top of my head, it’s like HIIT workouts, walking, cardio, Fuck it… There’s so much shit that you could talk about. It’s mind-blowing, but if you don’t know, then just look in comment section, look at Q&As go to magazines, see what people are talking about, see what buzzwords are and talk about that stuff.
0:28:18.1 Mike Vacanti: Did David come to any kind of decision or resolution, or was he pushed further one way versus the other, or…
0:28:26.9 Jordan Syatt: I don’t really know. He seems like… David is like a… I don’t think David… I don’t know, to be honest, David doesn’t necessarily want to just do one thing, but I don’t think he just… I don’t think he just wants to do fitness, I don’t think he just… ‘Cause he’s also an actor. I don’t think he just wants to act, I think he wants to have his hand in 10 different pots, which is cool, that’s fine. So I think… We’ll see, we’ll see. I have no idea.
0:28:56.8 Mike Vacanti: Cool. What’s interesting is, that actually works, except when you’re in the building phase from my experience, like you can get to a place where you can then put your hand in multiple pots, but building an online fitness business requires at least a few years of fully dedicated work. Although, you know what, Chris Gates comes to mind, who has a full-time job, and I don’t even know how many clients at this point in the mentorship, like there are…
0:29:30.3 Jordan Syatt: He said he’s got 25 when we spoke to him. Right. Is it like 25 clients, something like that.
0:29:35.0 Mike Vacanti: Something 20. I don’t remember. But I remember it being in that range… Yes. And yeah, working a full-time job in education that he enjoys there is… Maybe that’s the anomaly. I wanna be conservative with the advice we’re giving and say, “Hey, don’t try and be a jack of all trades and only spend one eighth of your time on building a fitness business and expect it to blow up in 18 months.” The highest probability of guaranteeing yourself, the highest probability chance of success is gonna be dedicate a few years to this being your main thing, but yeah, even if you’re splitting time, you can grow your fitness business as a side hustle and then potentially make the decision of okay, do I like what my main gig is, or now that I’ve built a side hustle up into something that is meaningful, I have 12 clients. Do you want to make that your full-time gig?
0:30:34.3 Jordan Syatt: You also got to ask yourself, what is success for you? Is success just based on, I don’t know, 15 to 25 clients paying… That could be an amazing form of success, another form of supplementary income to your family, you’re able to help people is success… ‘Cause for some people success is they just wanna have a lot of followers, which I think is a pretty… I don’t wanna say that goal is shitty, but it’s a shitty goal. It is, it’s a shitty goal.
0:31:02.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s a shitty goal.
0:31:04.1 Jordan Syatt: It is a shitty goal for a lot of reasons, but let’s say that’s your goal, let’s say I just wanna get a ton of followers, da da da da, if you wanna get a lot of followers aside from being someone who’s just super fucking hot and only has perverts following you and you just post basically soft core porn, I’m assuming you don’t wanna go down that route. If you wanna build a lot of followers solely based off of your intellect and your ability to help people, that’s a much more difficult route to go down, and it’s not… That I would say is not necessarily… That’s not as bad of a goal as just purely wanting more followers, but if you wanna build a huge audience based off of your intellect and your knowledge, and your ability to help that’s… You can’t do that part-time. You can’t. That is a full-time job. But if your definition of success or what you’re striving for has less to do with how many followers you have, and more to do with just creating a great supplementary income or even like six-figure income, you can absolutely do this as a part-time thing, but just understand it’s not gonna happen in a year.
0:32:14.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s not gonna happen in 2022, it might happen by 2027 or 2026, having a part-time career as this and literally bringing in an extra six figure is very, very doable. It’s actually like, it’s honestly shocking how doable it is, but it’s probably not gonna happen within a year, and I think a lot of people associate tons of followers with success, and that’s just… It’s a false equivalency. It’s not accurate. It’s not how it works. I know people with tons of followers who are struggling and never mind money, they’re struggling money-wise, but they’re not happy.
0:32:53.4 Mike Vacanti: Mentally and emotionally.
0:32:55.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. So I think striving for the goal of a lot of followers is one of those things that in today’s day and age, that’s how people get famous, and it’s easy to like, “Well, I wanna be famous, I want people to like me, I wanna have a lot of followers ’cause I’ll get free stuff sent to me, and I can be an influencer, and then I can use my discount code,” and da da da da da, it’s like… It’s a crock of shit. Just it is, and if you just wanna be able to support yourself and your family and live a great lifestyle, you don’t need that at all.
0:33:25.5 Mike Vacanti: You’re speaking truth that I wouldn’t know unless I had been on the other side of it, and that is that you can have a ton, hundreds of thousands of followers and be struggling financially from a business perspective, and the opposite, if you’re making good educational content, you can have a few thousand followers and have a full client roster, and we see it all the time, and that’s important to know when you are goal-setting and deciding what you want. But yeah, I couldn’t agree more that… I just think fame for the sake of fame is a bad goal, and I think we’ve probably talked about this in depth in previous episodes over the last couple of years, but there is a… It’s actually a line from Cool Runnings that I really like. Have you seen Cool Runnings?
0:34:19.9 Jordan Syatt: Of course. “Draw a line down your head, make it look like a butt.” [laughter]
0:34:26.7 Mike Vacanti: I think it’s John Candy late in the movie, and it’s worth a re-watch, I might actually re-watch it in the next week, here. But he says something to the effect of, “if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.”
0:34:41.3 Jordan Syatt: I remember that.
0:34:42.2 Mike Vacanti: And the type of person who feels the need for fame and accolades, like whatever is missing on the inside, and do you feel like that’s gonna fix it? That’s not gonna fix it.
0:34:55.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s so true.
0:34:57.4 Mike Vacanti: There’s an endless amount of that, not to mention that you’re just gonna reset your bar, once you’re at 10,000, then you’re gonna want X, and once you’re at 50, and it just keeps… Once you’re at a million, you’re looking around to these people at 10 million, it’s a never-ending game.
0:35:14.6 Jordan Syatt: What you end up looking is, then the followers don’t need you as much, ’cause then it’s like, well, then if I have this many followers, how come I’m not getting that many likes and they have less followers than me, but they’re getting more likes and da da da da da. And it’s like you’re always gonna change it ’cause you’re never happy with where you are.
0:35:28.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, that’s why 1000 True Fans is such a cool… That Kevin Kelly piece from a decade ago, it’s like, That’s a real business model, where it is you’re taking attention and then you’re monetizing it in some way, and he uses the example of a band, but you can have a great business that gives you meaningful work that you enjoy that helps people, that puts food on the table, that also leads to you not running into this mega-fame problem or desire for mega-fame. Great question.
0:36:07.6 Jordan Syatt: That was a good one. All right, what is your best advice for staying consistent with working on my business?
0:36:24.6 Mike Vacanti: My mind first goes to something that leads to people, coaches being able to be consistent is enjoying their process, enjoying what they’re doing on a day-to-day basis, and you can make content of a certain kind and really, really enjoy that, or make the same type of content, talking about the same type of stuff, or writing about it, or filming about it, but it being in a different format, a different medium, video versus audio versus written versus short-form, and not enjoy it. So early on, picking a platform or two going hard on them for a period of time and then backing up and reassessing how much you enjoy that process, has it been successful, but over time, tasting a handful of platforms and then picking the ones that you enjoy making content on the most. Because if you did three months of YouTube and realize that you really, really don’t like being on video, for whatever reason you don’t like editing, and you don’t… Whatever about it that you don’t like, but you realize that you do enjoy writing, like you really enjoy waking up early and putting in a few hours, writing a thousand words every single day and posting on your website, and you’re enjoying that process, then you should do the one you enjoy more because you’re going to be able to be more consistent.
0:37:51.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I agree. There’s so many ways to go with this question, and I think I wanted to just go for the… I wanna go for the harder truth like it’s fucking hard, it really is hard.
0:38:11.6 Mike Vacanti: To be consistent.
0:38:13.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s super hard man, it’s really, really difficult. And I know we’ve spoken about this before, and I’ve told this story before, but I think it’s worth repeating that I very much believe that the main reason that I was able to stay consistent when I first started is because I didn’t realize that a business was possible. When I first started in 2011, writing articles, I didn’t realize that you could make money online, I didn’t know… I didn’t know PayPal existed, I didn’t know people would pay for online coaching, I was purely writing articles because I wanted to be able to help people, and I wanted to be a coach that had… I wanted to be a coach that people knew they could come to for help, and I figured the best way I could do that was to emulate the people who I admired the most like Eric Cressey and Dan John and Pavel and Mike Robertson, and all these guys.
0:39:07.6 Jordan Syatt: So I just did what they did, which was write articles, ’cause Instagram didn’t exist yet, and that was just cool, this is what you do if you wanna be a coach that is known as a coach that helps people. And I had no clue that money was available as I didn’t know that, I still wanted to open a gym in person because I thought that was the progression of what happens. That you build an online presence and you can open your own gym and then people will come visit the gym, but you’ll have a great facility and all this stuff. So that’s what I started off doing. And when that was… My whole perception of what was possible. My form of “payment” was just when someone liked the article or if someone wrote me a message and said, “Hey, that article was really helpful, thank you so much.” That was enough for me to say, “Cool, it’s worth it. Like the 20 hours I spent making that article, formatting it, editing it, all that stuff, it was worth it, because one person was like, that helped me a lot.” And I don’t say that in a self-righteous way, it wasn’t ’cause I’m morally better…
0:40:10.5 Jordan Syatt: Ethically better or self-righteous, it was literally just because I didn’t know money was available from this, and I think we see so many coaches quit now because they expect quick money, they expect, “Okay, I post seven times on Instagram and I should have clients,” and it’s like, that’s not how this fucking works is it takes a long time. It’s sort of the same reason why so many people quit their fitness goals, because they see someone on Instagram say that they lost a ton of weight in 30 days, and then when they don’t lose the same amount in 30 days, they think that they’re a failure and they quit, well, it’s like, well, number one, that person didn’t actually use that much in 30 days, and even if they did, do you see how much they gained back within the next two weeks and all that stuff, it’s like, so then they think they’re a failure because they didn’t get the same thing as what the other person did, whereas if they just stayed consistent with it and didn’t quit, then they would have gotten there and probably even better, they just had to stay consistent, so…
0:41:11.2 Jordan Syatt: The point I am trying to outline here is number one, it’s very fucking hard, it’s really, really difficult, and number two is, especially at the beginning and early on, I’d say within the first year to two years, doing your best to take the focus off of money as success or followers as success and just taking any comment that you get any like, “Hey, this was really helpful,” or, “Hey, I appreciated this,” someone leaves a comment on your Instagram post, “This was great,” that “This was great” Should make your day. That should motivate you to write another article or make another post, and you better not just give them a thumbs-up emoji response, you better say, “Thank you so much. I really appreciate you saying that,” send them a message, that says like, “Hey, thank you so much for commenting that, I really hope you enjoyed the article,” da da da da whatever. That’s how you build a Thank You Economy, that’s how you build a great, a great sustainable business that people will love you, they’ll appreciate you, they’ll continue to read and learn from your content, and it builds a culture of appreciation, but also a culture of like, I love what I do because I know it’s helping people.
0:42:08.4 Mike Vacanti: Amazing. I’ll add one last little different answer to the question, which is make content about something you enjoy. So when you were saying in those first couple of years, when you were talking about what you were doing, you said you’re emulating those coaches who you had immense respect for, I thought you were also going to say you were researching things that you are interested in for yourself.
0:42:37.2 Jordan Syatt: Yes, absolutely.
0:42:39.4 Mike Vacanti: Which I’ve seen you to this day, having Alex Viada on the podcast to grill him on Zone 2, because you’re deeply passionate about that right now, not only ending up on platforms you enjoy, but talking about concepts and topics that you’re very interested in personally, selfishly, not choosing content ideas, purely from the perspective of what’s popular, what’s in, what will get clicks, what will people respond well to, although that matters, it’s hard to build a fitness business and not talk about fitness at all since day one, but within fitness, making content around subjects that you’re interested in.
0:43:22.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right.
0:43:24.5 Mike Vacanti: Whatever that is, if that’s… Just because you see a market opportunity, just because you see a lot of women signing up for online coaching, that doesn’t mean you should start making content about scale weight fluctuations around the period, unless it interests you. Unless you really wanna dive in on that, then do it, but don’t do it for the outcome, do it simultaneously because you’re very interested in what you’re talking about.
0:43:51.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think that’s super important. I remember back then, most of my content was around power lifting, West Side Barbell, all that stuff, that’s what I was interested in. And the more I got into fat loss and I was studying Lyle McDonald and Alan Aragon, I would start writing more about that, and then even now, I don’t know, did I tell you I hired Alex to be my new coach for fitness?
0:44:09.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yep. You did tell me that.
0:44:10.8 Jordan Syatt: I’ve done this so many times with people that I wanted to learn from, whether it was going out of my way to intern at West Side intern at Cressey Performance, hire Paul Carter to be my coach. I hired Bryan Krahn to be my coach when I was living in Israel, hiring Alex to my coach. Now, I have hired a jiu-jitsu coach. I hire people I wanna learn from, especially when it’s something I’m really passionate about, and I think that that’s another really important aspect of staying consistent, is essentially being held accountable, but also learning from someone who knows more than you do and being okay with that, right? When you invest in somebody who knows more than you know, who’s better at it than you are, and you can appreciate that and accept that, not take it as a slide against your ego, but like, “Hey, they know more than me, this person knows more than me, I wanna learn more from them,” then you set yourself up for success and you are gonna be held more accountable, you have more skin in the game, which is why I hire people all the time, which is why I just hired Alex.
0:45:08.5 Jordan Syatt: I’m super excited to work with him. I think I’m gonna learn so much more. I think I will learn more from… I know I will learn more from working with him more quickly than I would if I was just gonna read a book, for example, ’cause I’ll see it practically applied. And I’ll also say like shameless plug as well. That’s why you should join the mentorship, because that’s what we’re gonna do for you. We’re going to help keep you accountable. We have challenges for you every month, not to sound cocky, but if you’re listening to this, we probably know more about building an online fitness business than you do, and we’re very good at it, and the people in the mentorship are the proof of that. And so we would love to have you again, if you want to join during the sale, click the link in the show notes, join our email list, put your name and email in there, we will send you an email when the sale is live again. We only do this once a year, but if you’re ready to be held accountable and to learn from us so that you can build your online fitness business, we would love to have you in the mentorship, so make sure you sign up in the email and in the link in the show notes so we can send you that sale Link.
0:46:09.8 Jordan Syatt: Great. Yeah, just to echo what Jordan said, we would love to have you if it interests you and thanks for listening, a great episode. We’ll be back next week and wishing you a great week.
0:46:21.4 Jordan Syatt: Have a good one.
