0:00:11.1 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.
0:00:12.6 Jordan Syatt: What’s going on, Michael? How are you feeling?
0:00:13.7 Mike Vacanti: I’m sick bro, I haven’t been sick like this in years.
0:00:18.5 Jordan Syatt: Man, I can hear it, you got that kind of sickness that makes my eyes water.
0:00:22.3 Mike Vacanti: I apologize for that, I wouldn’t wanna burden you with this. But, hey, we just got in a really good mentorship Q&A with a lot of good questions, and we’re getting the weekly uploads in, it was today, or it wasn’t gonna happen this week, and we’re hitting the podcast ’cause it’s 2022, and we just don’t miss weeks.
0:00:42.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you gotta respect the determination for you to get this one in ’cause you easily could have been like, “No, not doing it, I’m sick,” but you were really pushing for this episode, so…
0:00:54.1 Mike Vacanti: This is a new life. I don’t like making these public declarations, but we don’t do things like miss weeks anymore, that’s just not what we’re about. Something somewhat funny happened to me this morning, and I feel like I’m pretty bad at telling funny stories in general, and being funny.
0:01:09.7 Jordan Syatt: No, you’re not. You’re good. You’re super funny.
0:01:10.6 Mike Vacanti: Thanks, Dale, you’re the best. So my girl’s also very sick, and I went to get her Sudafed from Walgreens this morning, ’cause I felt like I had… I’m kind of anti-medication when I’m sick for a variety of reasons, I like to know how I’m actually feeling. Anyway, I went to Walgreens and I got the Sudafed and I got to the cashier and there was kind of a line, so I’m waiting, and I get up to her, and this woman’s probably, she’s probably like 40, maybe like early 40s and shorter, just a nice looking woman with a mask on, smiley Midwestern girl. And I said like, “Hey, how are you?” And she was like, “Oh my gosh, your voice, you could call me every single morning and I would,” and I’m just looking at her and I got this cough medicine and this Sudafed and in my mind I sound sick. And she’s like, “You must hear that all the time, that voice. If you could just call me when I wake up every morning,” and I’m like, “What’s going on? Is this lady hitting on me right now?” Very confused, and I didn’t even say anything, I just smiled and she’s was ringing me up, and then she looks at me and she just starts giggling uncontrollably. I’m like, “This is very uncomfortable.”
0:02:39.7 Jordan Syatt: You do have that deep, deep, very attractive voice, like male, masculine, attractive voice when you’re sick.
0:02:48.7 Mike Vacanti: That’s what I figured was going on, which really just made my normal self feel very inadequate and feminine, but whatever. Guess that’s life.
0:02:57.5 Jordan Syatt: I think we should clarify. Mike did get tested. It’s not COVID for, “Oh, he shouldn’t have been going… ” And, yeah, you got tested. It’s not COV. There are other illnesses outside of COVID, as crazy as that might sound.
0:03:09.0 Mike Vacanti: I went to Florida for two weeks and came back like this, just like the news has been telling us what happened, but no, actually, my dad got a… We were staying with my family all in a small house, we know from the last episode where I was struggling to find a place to do the podcast, but my dad had a cold and it was close living quarters, and unfortunately, my immune system just lost this one, just took an L, but we’ll bounce back.
0:03:36.5 Jordan Syatt: But the podcast has taken a W, ’cause our rankings are up, thanks for everyone listening, were stoked to see the podcast is doing super well and… Yeah, so now we’re back in and we didn’t have a plan for this episode, so hopefully this one doesn’t ruin in the entire show.
0:03:54.5 Mike Vacanti: Ruin the entire amazing streak we have gone. No, I figured, we’ll just… Just a normal chat, we’ll work some things, if we have questions to ask each other that we kinda find interesting, we can talk about, but otherwise we can just sit down. Hey, how are you?
0:04:08.7 Jordan Syatt: Shoot the breeze.
0:04:09.3 Mike Vacanti: What’s going on on your end?
0:04:10.7 Jordan Syatt: Going on a snowboarding trip tomorrow, got 12 dudes going on this snowboarding trip to Colorado, going to Breckenridge. It should be fun.
0:04:20.2 Mike Vacanti: Nice.
0:04:20.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, very excited about it.
0:04:22.7 Mike Vacanti: You like snowboarding?
0:04:24.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I do like snowboarding. I’m not that good at it, but I enjoy it a lot.
0:04:29.7 Mike Vacanti: We’ve even mentioned going to the mountains at some point, a business trip, whatever, and any time I say skiing you’re like, “Yeah, snowboarding would be really fun,” and I’m terrible at snowboarding and skiing just feels easy to me, so I’d rather do that, but…
0:04:44.7 Jordan Syatt: Skiing is much easier, it’s all fun, but skiing is much, much easier ’cause you’re just standing and it’s easier to balance on skis and than it is on the snowboard, also turning on a snowboard is so much harder, it’s not really as intuitive as you’d think, and when you catch an edge sometimes I will just fall down so fast.
0:05:06.7 Mike Vacanti: Dude, I mean I’ve snowboarded eight times going back to the fifth grade, and it’s very difficult, you’re falling on your tail bone or you fall forward and then your wrists are all jammed up and…
0:05:18.3 Jordan Syatt: Did I tell you when I was on a date when I snowboarding for my first ever time, I was on a date, and it was so bad, I was so bad at snowboarding. I was in Colorado, I was in Snowmass, this girl had, her family had a house in Snowmass. We went to Snowmass and…
0:05:34.9 Mike Vacanti: Hang on, hang on, how old were you?
0:05:39.8 Jordan Syatt: Twenty-four.
0:05:40.9 Mike Vacanti: Oh. Okay. For some reason I was, I thought you said your first date, I was imagining… First date with… Yeah.
0:05:46.5 Jordan Syatt: No, no, this was a date first with a girl, like early on in the relationship. And she was like, “Have you snowboarded before?” And I was like, “No, but I’ll probably be fine,” just ’cause I assumed I’m pretty athletic, I can usually pick things up relatively easily, and snowboarding was just different. It was very, very hard, and I’ll never forget one part of the trip… One of the hardest parts about snowboarding is when you have skis and you have the poles, if there’s a long stretch of flat ground, you’re fine, ’cause you can use the poles to push you across that flat ground. With snowboarding, you gotta try and pick up speed ahead of time so that you can make your way across that flat ground. And if you don’t… Number one, if you can’t pick up the speed, maybe you’re scared to pick up the speed, maybe you don’t know that you have a big stretch of flat ground coming, this was my first time ever on this mountain.
0:06:38.7 Jordan Syatt: I had never been there before, so I had no idea I needed to pick up speed before this long stretch of flat ground, so not only did I pick up not enough speed, but I also went towards the woods where the snow was so soft and fluffy, that I just sunk. I sunk immediately and I went down like a foot and a half, and this girl is just watching me struggle to climb out of this snow bank for 25 minutes where I try and get up and I’d try and stand up and boom, fall over, just get up, fall over, boom, fall over. It was just, it was awful. So, needless to say, that relationship didn’t work out.
0:07:18.1 Mike Vacanti: She’s like, “How is this man gonna protect me against all the evil in the world when he can’t even move on the snowboard?”
0:07:26.3 Jordan Syatt: What a pitiful excuse for a man. Just absolutely awful. Yeah, so that was not the most fun experience.
0:07:34.2 Mike Vacanti: That’s very funny. And you’re 100% right, it’s so much easier on skis, even without poles, because you can just skate.
0:07:41.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
0:07:44.0 Mike Vacanti: And snowboarding, I feel like it was hard to get my boots locked in, so then you’re in this awkward… You’re either jumping or you got one foot out and you’re like… Yeah, Not easy.
0:07:52.7 Jordan Syatt: Or you’re trying to get off the lift. That’s always super awkward ’cause you’re trying to get off the lift, you have one foot out and then it’s slipping on the board and you’re trying to snowboard down this little tiny, little bunny hill when you get off the lift, and you’re trying to do it and get out of the way for the next people coming, and you just feel super rushed and you end up falling over.
0:08:15.0 Mike Vacanti: Then you’re afraid you’re gonna get run over.
0:08:18.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I feel like there could be some good stand-up comedy about that, like the anxiety that you feel as you’re about to get off the lift for the first time. I can already feel it creeping in for the snowboard trip. Maybe I’m gonna cancel the trip. I’m not going.
0:08:30.6 Mike Vacanti: You’re absolutely going.
0:08:31.7 Jordan Syatt: No, I’m not.
0:08:31.9 Mike Vacanti: You thrive in the face of that nervous energy. Do you have any stand-up comedy in your near future, ’cause I know you have done a little in the past?
0:08:43.0 Jordan Syatt: I would like to. It’s just it takes a lot of time to develop a routine that would actually be worthwhile to get on stage, and I don’t think I’m in the place where I’m like, “Alright, I wanna sit down and develop this routine,” and, you know I got a baby on the way and I have other stuff I’m trying to do, and I keep convincing myself I’m gonna start making Reels and I haven’t made any Reels yet. I bought all of this equipment. I bought a Shake Weight, I bought a Jawzrsize. Have you seen that commercial? To…
0:09:11.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:09:11.7 Jordan Syatt: I bought a Jawzrsizer. I bought this hula hoop that’s like a fake hula hoop but I bought all of this stuff to make funny Reels for social media and I haven’t made anything yet. I haven’t made one thing so, I’m just trying to get that done before I start venturing into stand-up comedy just yet.
0:09:31.4 Mike Vacanti: Life ebbs and flows, man. You make a solid amount of content. I make a solid amount of content and all I make is this podcast, and only half of it. No, but really there’s… I know you don’t need it. Don’t beat yourself up over not making Reels yet. Pep talk from me, but for anyone listening.
0:09:57.0 Jordan Syatt: The Reel king over here.
0:10:00.2 Mike Vacanti: Let me tell you something about content, Jord. It’s just, it’s funny ’cause you can go from three posts a day, working 18 hours a day to a wife and a baby on the way. And even I see your shift toward more focus on your own health and your own cardio, your own performance, your own Jiu-Jitsu. I see that shift and it’s cool. It’s cool that we as humans get to pick and we, especially given the industry that we chose and the opportunities we’ve had, that we’re in a position where we get to choose the type of balance and how we spend our time and what our priorities are, and it’s a great opportunity.
0:10:50.0 Jordan Syatt: I saw a Hormozi clip yesterday that if I had watched it five years ago, it would have spoken so loudly to me. He was talking…
0:11:00.9 Mike Vacanti: Was it the one about hard work?
0:11:01.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it was the one about, basically talking about how he just… All he wants to do is work, that’s when he’s the most happy, and…
0:11:09.8 Mike Vacanti: You know I sent this to you 10 days ago, right?
0:11:13.0 Jordan Syatt: Really? That’s… Oh yeah.
0:11:15.0 Mike Vacanti: Scroll up. It was when I first got the Florida. Jordan doesn’t look at any of my links that I send him. He’s just like, “Oh, eight minute YouTube video? No thanks. From OTR? Can’t be that good.”
0:11:26.6 Jordan Syatt: No, I watch your links but this one I didn’t watch. But yeah, it was that like, “How the industry lied to you.” I forget what the title was, but yeah, Hormozi talking about how all he wants to do all the time is work. And five years ago, four years ago, three years ago, I was like, “Yeah, I just wanna work all the time Work, work, work. That’s when I’m the most happy.” And then me watching this clip yesterday I was like, “That sounds so unappealing to me right now in every,” and I had this mini seven-minute cognitive dissonance, mini-crisis in my head being like, “Should I be like that? Should I be working more? Should I be spending all my time working?” And I had to remind myself, I was like, “Man, life has all these different seasons to it and just because for one person, that’s where they’re the happiest, doesn’t mean that it has to be that for you.” And he was talking about how… It was almost like… I almost don’t know how much I believed the clip and how much of it, I didn’t… He said something to the effect of, “Man, I tried spending all of my money and I just have so much money, I couldn’t spend all of it.” And I was like, “Number one, that’s sort of a douchey thing to say.”
0:12:36.2 Jordan Syatt: Number two, I was like, “If you really wanted to spend your money, it’s not that hard to like, I don’t know, buy a jet, or a yacht.” I don’t know.
0:12:45.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, go to real things that have an eight-figure sticker on them and buy them.
0:12:50.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s not… If you really wanted to spend all your money, it’s not that difficult. Do you know what I mean?
[laughter]
0:12:56.1 Mike Vacanti: Give me your money. I’ll spend your money for you. Watch it.
[laughter]
0:13:00.0 Jordan Syatt: So as soon as you said that, then I was like, “Yeah, I bet this guy just really… He really enjoys his work.” Which that’s the best part.
0:13:07.4 Mike Vacanti: Best place to be.
0:13:08.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s the best where what you do is what you love. But that’s where I was for like 10 years. But now I’m in this place where I’m like, “I wanna do just enough to keep where I’m at. But I don’t wanna put in the extra work on top of that.” And listen, you and I have both spoken about how we pulled all nighters. We stayed up way too late. We sacrificed friendships and relationships in order to work, bust our ass for the better part of a decade. But now it’s just like, “I don’t wanna do that right now.” And if I want to in the future, I know how to. I know what I need to do. But for right now, I’m like, “I’d rather not. I’m okay spending more time on my own health and fitness. I’m okay spending more time with my wife. I’m okay sleeping in a little bit, and that being okay.”
0:13:53.3 Mike Vacanti: It’s like Pat Flynn said or has told us many times when he’s like, “Yeah, how’s business?” Not setting any PRs, but it’s exactly where he wants it to be, or at that time exactly where he wanted it to be. Because he was focusing time and energy on other things. And that’s the beauty of it. That’s the choice. That’s also the choice that… ‘Cause I actually do believe… When Alex was talking about basically selling businesses and then having massive net worth and having true passive income coming in from businesses that he isn’t actively participating in, but are running themselves at this point, and then to not have anything to have to do, I can understand how that would lead certain people into a place of unhappiness compared to the happiness they derive from doing work that they love and enjoy. And I’m with you. You know what’s funny? That clip spoke to me. And that clip would not have spoke to me a year ago, or two years ago, or three years ago. But for some reason, it was like… Because I have worked less hard in the last few years than I did in the three, four, five, six, seven years prior to that. And we talk about seasons like… Life ebbs and flows.
0:15:20.0 Mike Vacanti: We’re not gonna make any promises here on this podcast, here on episode… Where are we at? 68, 69, something like that. But I’m glad you feel good with the amount you’re doing. And by the way, the amount you’re doing is a lot. It’s not a lot relative to what you were doing in 2017. But it’s still a lot. Like number of podcasts you do in a week, mentorship challenges, planning, Q&As, doing this podcast weekly, making Instagram.
0:15:46.5 Jordan Syatt: Inner Circle.
0:15:46.6 Mike Vacanti: You might not work as much as you were. Of the entire Inner Circle every single month, all the Q&As there. You’re like, “Don’t sell me short.” But to then spend time with your family and spend time… Weird, like family and your own health? What a terrible way to spend your time? It’s great.
0:16:08.8 Jordan Syatt: It is funny though, how it’s easy to fall into that comparison trap where you watch other people and then what they’re doing. And it’s like… It’s funny, ’cause 10 years ago, if I had said… If you had told me in 10 years, 10 years ago, that I would be where I am today, I’d be like, “There’s no way.” If you had told me 10 years ago that I am where I am today, I’d be like, “Then I’ll be completely content. That’ll be perfect.” But that’s never how it works. It’s always like in the present moment, there’s always the comparison. There’s always like, “Well, maybe I should be doing this. Maybe I should be doing that.” And I think actually coming to terms with that is part of understanding, that’s just the human condition, where it’s like… People always say, “Well, don’t compare, don’t compare.” It’s like, “No, it’s normal to compare.” Just don’t let that comparison cause you to change the action that you know is right. For me, going all in on work right now, or doing more than I already am and working out less, or doing Jiu-Jitsu less or spending less time with my wife in order to make more Reels is not where I need to be.
0:17:09.4 Mike Vacanti: Correct.
0:17:10.1 Jordan Syatt: But for other people, it is where they need to be.
0:17:12.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, and it’s all based on where you’re at right now, what you want, where you want to go. Yes, some level of comparison is normal. But you’re comparing based on impartial information. You’re only comparing based on what you see. And what you see is what that person shows, for any person. So sure you can compete on metrics and engagement and what… That kind of stuff. Or you could even compete on money to an extent or compete on certain things along that nature. But you don’t know someone’s life in detail. You don’t know holistically, how they feel, how happy they are, how much meaning they’re deriving. You don’t know their mental state. You only know a sliver of it, which is why I love that from JP’s first book, the compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. It’s such a good rule. And because you don’t know the multi-millionaire driving the Ferrari, you don’t know that their 12-year-old daughter doesn’t talk to them anymore because they weren’t around for the entire six years. You don’t know all of these things. And so, yeah. I really like that self-comparison and then self-comparison on the metrics that matter to you. And we’re talking about when health and personal relationships are prioritized.
0:18:40.0 Mike Vacanti: And I’m even starting to compete with my previous self little bit and be like, “Okay, maybe I should step up business a little bit. Maybe I shouldn’t just rely on Jordan to sell this book. And maybe I should make my first piece of real content on my own in who knows how many months, dozens. [chuckle] That’d probably be a good thing, you know. But that’s not because Joe Shmoe down the block on Instagram is getting this many follow likes or whatever. It’s because I know who I have been and what I have been doing. And based on where I want to go, it’s me versus me. And I think I’ve always naturally internalized that you… I think you think of you versus you as a little bit more of a meme. It’s a cool idea, but whereas I actually compete against my previous self.
0:19:27.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you’re very good at that. You’re very good at competing with yourself, whereas I get competitive against other people, usually.
0:19:34.6 Mike Vacanti: Which is also good. It just depends on the circumstance.
0:19:37.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
0:19:40.1 Mike Vacanti: Pros and cons.
[laughter]
0:19:41.0 Mike Vacanti: This is a fun episode. I’m feeling it. What else?
0:19:48.2 Jordan Syatt: So yesterday I was doing a Q&A. And someone asked in my Q&A, they said, “I’m genuinely curious if you make money from social media or just from Inner Circle/clients.” So these types of questions, I’m always curious as to whether or not I should answer them. If people ask, “How much do you pay in rent?” or something like that, I never answer those questions. I usually make a funny joke about it. I usually say like, “Do you wanna know my Social Security number as well?” Something like that. But for this type of question, I like how this woman asked it. Because she was asking how I make money. And I thought that would be an interesting topic to discuss in the podcast. ‘Cause I think there’s also huge misunderstandings like, how people actually make money. So especially online personal trainers or people with a bigger audience. So I said, the first bullet point, I said, “Instagram doesn’t pay people for likes or views or engagements. So I make zero dollars from Instagram.” I think this is really important for people to understand. Bless you, Mike.
0:20:42.2 Mike Vacanti: Thank you.
0:20:43.8 Jordan Syatt: No one on Instagram is making money… Bless you, Mike.
[laughter]
0:20:47.9 Mike Vacanti: Thank you.
0:20:50.0 Jordan Syatt: The Instagram or Facebook or Meta or whatever we call it now, no one’s paying them because they have a larger audience. Instagram doesn’t pay that person because of that. So I make zero money from that. Nobody does. And I also said, “I don’t do paid posts either. So I make $0 from that.” This is something that’s important to cover. Because there are many people who do paid posts. And this is actually… Actually, I’ll talk about that at the end. But I think… We’ll talk about paid posts at the end. We’ll talk about that after. But I don’t do paid posts either. So I make zero dollars just from Instagram.
0:21:22.9 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go in on that right now, actually. I like that.
0:21:24.5 Jordan Syatt: Alright. So we’ll go in on paid posts for a second. So basically, one of the things that I wanted to talk about in relation to paid posts was after I made this post, this actual post got a large amount of engagement, a lot of replies, which I didn’t expect, a lot of people saying like, “I had no idea. This is so interesting.” I actually got a lot of sign-ups to the Inner Circle just from this post, which was funny ’cause I didn’t put a link up to the Inner Circle in this post. I didn’t say, “You can join here and support me here.” All I said was that… I just gave my complete breakdown of how I make my income. And I’ll read the rest of the story later. But in terms of paid posts, I got a lot of people saying, “This makes so much sense as to why I’m so engaged with your content, and I’m not engaged with anyone else in the fitness industry’s content.” Because so many other fitness influencers, if you wanna call them that, so much of their income is based off of paid posts. And when your content is based off of paid posts, another company paying you money in order to promote their product, you’re not going to do what is truly relevant to your audience.
0:22:27.2 Jordan Syatt: You’re only gonna do what is relevant to you making that money. And you might try and cater it to them as best as you can. But it’s not truly authentic. It can’t be. Just by definition, you’re getting paid for that. It can’t be truly authentic. Because there’s another reason behind it. And it’s not to say making money is bad. And it’s not to say doing paid posts is bad, but I know Mike and I are very much on the same page when I say neither of us do paid posts. Because it doesn’t fit with what we want to get across. And I got so many people saying, “This makes so much sense as to why I am so interactive and engaged by your content. Because so many other people I see are just constantly doing paid posts, like swipe up here, click this here, use my code here, da, da, da, da, da.” It takes up so much of other people’s content that they actually don’t even get to know the person that well, because just so much of the content is about getting paid. So I don’t make any money from paid posts either.
0:23:16.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, paid posts, advertising. You see it in sponsorships. You see it clothing stuff. You see it… A lot of big podcasts have a few sponsors on the podcast. You even see it on YouTube, not only with pre-rolls. But you’ll see in the video, “This video was brought you to you by Audible. Here’s my code.” And that person is probably getting a fixed amount for the video or possibly a fixed amount plus a percent of each sign up to Audible with their code. But you’re right. I’ve actually come the other way. I wrote an article in 2015 that said why I don’t do affiliate marketing or something along those lines. And it was for all the reasons you just mentioned. Because I won’t be impartial. If a company is paying me to promote their product, I can’t be 100%… And other people would say, “Oh yes, you can. You can be 100% honest.” But it’s really hard to be 100% honest when that’s happening, especially ’cause you have deals with the company like, “What if I like these companies like this product, but I don’t like this other product?” Maybe you can say it, sure. But I was stunned. I was an idealist, is what I would have called myself. I’ve come to the realization that there are only so many ways that you can monetize attention that are scalable.
0:24:30.7 Mike Vacanti: So the ways you can monetize attention to don’t require hiring a team, having employees, which is not something I’m interested in. And you and I have had conversations about this over the past few weeks. And membership is a great option for… You can really help a lot of people and make a nice living doing it. And it’s scalable. You don’t need to hire out a team of coaches or you don’t need to hire out sales people or whatever. But even though… So there’s a cost benefit to affiliate stuff, to paid posts. You weaken your connection with your audience and you’re little bit less authentic, but it’s also a revenue opportunity. So you don’t do paid posts.
0:25:15.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I don’t do paid posts. So zero dollars from Instagram, zero dollars from paid posts. Facebook doesn’t pay people for likes, views or engagements. So I make zero dollars from Facebook. I also don’t do paid posts on Facebook. Twitter doesn’t pay people for likes, views or engagements. So I don’t make any money from Twitter. I also don’t do paid posts. Podcast does not pay people for listens or downloads, and I don’t do any paid advertisements from my podcast on either this podcast with Mike or on my own podcast. This has been something that over the last few years I’ve gotten a lot of requests for.
0:25:43.0 Jordan Syatt: I’ve gotten a lot, a lot, a lot of requests for, and even Mike and I, when we first started this podcast, several years ago, we had discussed potentially doing it, if we found the right company, that we were, “Okay,” like it including something that made sense. Nothing’s made sense. There’s been nothing that’s made sense to include on this podcast as a paid post. And same thing on my podcast. I think one of the the main benefits that we have on this podcast and also on my own personal podcast, bless you, Mike, is that people really listen the whole way through.
0:26:18.8 Jordan Syatt: Bless you. Mike you are what what my mom calls a “series sneezer,” where you don’t just sneeze once, you sneeze several times in a row. My mom will sneeze like seven times in a row.
0:26:30.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:26:31.8 Jordan Syatt: So when you have a group of people who are… You’re about to sneeze. I see it, I can see it on the way.
0:26:36.3 Mike Vacanti: No. Nope.
0:26:36.5 Jordan Syatt: No?
0:26:36.6 Mike Vacanti: Nope. Gone.
0:26:36.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh okay. [laughter] When you have a group of people who listen to you talk for 30, 45, 60 minutes, you don’t wanna give that up for a few hundred bucks or even necessarily for a few thousand bucks as your audience grows. That’s not something you wanna take for granted, it’s so easy to look at some of these… What these companies might pay you a couple of hundred, a couple of grand, whatever it is, but you don’t realize how much you’re missing out on for that couple of thousand. And it’s so easy to take for granted that you have, I don’t know, 50, 100, 1200, 5000 people listening to you for an hour straight. What that could turn into down the road is so much more than a couple of thousand for a paid promotion. And this is really where people miss the forest for the trees. They get too drawn into that current short-term income, like, “I just want the money now, I need to pay this now.” That’s why even though like my podcast, my own podcast just passed 5.2 million downloads, I haven’t done a single paid promotion on it.
0:27:40.1 Jordan Syatt: And I probably, I won’t say I will never, ’cause I might. If someone comes in and says, “I’m gonna pay you $50,000 for something that I like.” Actually, you know what, I probably wouldn’t do that. You know what I would probably do? If someone came in and said that they wanted to pay me for a five-year deal, that’s probably what I would do. Is if they were gonna pay me for a five-year deal for basically a salary, and basically I wouldn’t do, “All right, and this episode is brought to you by,” but I would say “I will discuss your product whenever I want to organically in my podcast.” I’m not gonna say I’m gonna talk about it in one a month, ’cause I’m not gonna do that ’cause then I will have to force myself to do it, but I will say, “I will represent your brand, and when it comes up organically, I’ll talk about it, but you have to sign on for like a three to five year deal,” and that’s not a good deal for them, just so you know. That’s not smart for them, but that’s probably how I would do that.
0:28:37.6 Mike Vacanti: In your experience don’t all of those… I’ve never seen a company that didn’t require metrics for mentions or the stories versus feed versus YouTube versus… I mean, I see Rogan and Spotify deal, but for most companies, I see them monitoring the frequency of your mentions.
0:29:02.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, which is.
0:29:03.2 Mike Vacanti: Of course, which makes sense for them.
0:29:04.7 Jordan Syatt: It makes sense for them, yeah. Which is probably why I’ll probably never get one of these deals ’cause I’m not gonna be… They’ll say things like, “Alright, well, how about we give you a code and this code will allow us to see how many people are using your thing?” And I’m not doing that, ’cause I know what that is, and everyone knows what that is and it’s obnoxious. So it’s like…
0:29:21.6 Mike Vacanti: That seems to have spread to like massively. Like five years ago, and I’m not, you know you gotta fill me in on what’s going on on social, I’m like the grandpa who’s out of the loop a little bit on a few things here, but it felt like there were fewer people with discount codes, whereas now it feels like…
0:29:42.1 Jordan Syatt: Everybody’s got a discount code now. Everybody’s gotta a discount code. Because what happened was, and I didn’t realize this, I just came to this realization recently, and this is my observation of human behavior, I realized that it became a goal for people to get their own discount code. That people on social media who didn’t have an audience and saw people with an audience saying like, “Hey, use my discount code,” it became a goal for people to say, “I want a discount code that I can give to my audience so they can use,” and not even necessarily for the money, but just for the perceived status of being like, “Oh, you can put my name in there,” and that…
0:30:17.2 Mike Vacanti: So, I’m just off because I see it as anti-status.
0:30:21.1 Jordan Syatt: Yes, correct, but like…
0:30:22.4 Mike Vacanti: When I see discount code, I just see like, “Oh, you shilled,” but you’re saying that people see it as people who have a “discount code” are like a level above.
0:30:33.9 Jordan Syatt: I’m not saying everyone sees it like that, but there are people who… They they want that because they think it gives them status, yeah. And now companies are saying, “Well, listen maybe this person has a smaller audience, but it’s a pretty engaged audience, so we’ll give them a discount code ’cause it actually does make sense.”
0:30:50.7 Mike Vacanti: And even if it’s not an engaged audience, it makes sense for the company because they’re not that person.
0:30:56.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s free advertisement.
0:30:57.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, usually in these deals you’re getting paid, you’re not… The company is not setting a fixed amount, I’m not giving you a $1,000 a month, you’re…
0:31:06.4 Jordan Syatt: Correct.
0:31:06.4 Mike Vacanti: You’re getting a percentage of what you can move, so it’s a win-win on a revenue basis for the company and the person selling it. If the person moves zero units of product, the company doesn’t pay the person anything.
0:31:18.1 Jordan Syatt: Correct, yeah, that’s exactly right. So yeah, so no paid posts, none of that, whether it’s Podcast, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. YouTube does pay for views if you’re monetizing your YouTube, which I think you probably should.
0:31:32.5 Mike Vacanti: Pre-rolls.
0:31:32.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, pre-rolls or even just like mid-roll, end-roll whatever it is, if people watching your videos going through your ads, YouTube does pay you for that. I think people are massively uninformed as to how much money you actually make from YouTube. You need to have not only a huge audience, but you need to get real, real views in order to make a significant amount of income. I have like… I haven’t posted on it, on YouTube in about a year or so, but when I was posting every single week for several years and I got up to like 150,000 subscribers on YouTube, it covered probably a little bit more than my groceries at the best time. It wasn’t a tremendous amount.
0:32:14.2 Mike Vacanti: New York City groceries. We’re not talking about…
0:32:16.5 Jordan Syatt: New York City groceries. So not Arkansas groceries but New York City groceries, which, it was a fair amount.
0:32:22.7 Mike Vacanti: Shout out, shout out Arkansas. Shout out Arkansas.
0:32:25.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, one of my favorite fighters is from Arkansas, Thug Nasty. But it’s not enough to cover your rent or to… It’s not… I think people see people with a 100,000, 200,000, 500,000 YouTube subs, and they’re thinking they’re making millions from that, and they’re not at all, not even close. And that’s why a lot of them will put in other advertisements within the video, so not only do they have the pre-roll and the end-roll, but they’ll also do other brand deals and partnerships in their YouTube videos, which I never do as well. I don’t do that stuff, because it takes away from the purpose of the video. So the last bullet point that I have in this answer is my income is almost solely from my Inner Circle, for those looking for help with my workouts, nutrition, mindsets, etcetera, and my online fitness business mentorship for coaches looking to become better coaches and build their businesses. That is it.
0:33:16.1 Jordan Syatt: And one of the reasons this is so important is because when you aren’t giving up that short-term, when you’re not giving up quality in order to make short-term money, you actually on the back end, make more money because people are trusting you more, they’re engaged with your content more, and they want to support you more. The fact that I got actually a mind-blowing amount of sign-ups just from this post shows me that people literally just wanna support me. Just because I’m not giving up for those quick fixes, for that brand deal, just to make a quick couple of thousand dollars. And people will do the same for you. So I think it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees and just go for the quick brand deal to make a couple of extra hundred bucks.
0:34:00.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you’re building goodwill, you’re building rapport with your audience, your jab, jab, jab, jab, jabin’ over time, and then you’re basically just building tension around that ask, which is gonna lead to more sign-ups when you do ask.
0:34:16.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah…
0:34:16.6 Mike Vacanti: Rather than continuing to extract, extract, extract. Be it through continually hard selling, or be it through promoting other products, doing paid posts, having advertisements on everything. If a software company came to us and was like, “We’ll give you three grand per episode to run a 30-second ad spot for our online personal training software, because you guys have this many people listening and blah, blah, blah, lots of coaches, or even we’d give you 10,000 per episode. 5K each, for this episode,” say, “Absolutely not because Jordan and I don’t believe in using software for running an online coaching system, that’s not what we teach, that’s not what we have everyone in the mentorship doing, we have them building their system themselves, we don’t have them outsourcing it. So, because we don’t believe in this, we’re not going to promote this.”
0:35:08.1 Jordan Syatt: Unless you offer us a million each, then we could change our stance.
0:35:11.8 Mike Vacanti: There is an amount in which I would sell my soul to you, you’re just not there yet. But really within reason, it leads to more money over… If you’re gonna quit, if you’re gonna switch industries, if you’re gonna like… If all you wanna do is extract the maximal amount of money and not care about ethics in any way, and then you’re gonna bounce and your reputation doesn’t matter, because in two years you’re gonna be that freaking the guy who’s selling who knows what in a completely unrelated space and you’re re-branding, you’re under a different name, whatever. Sure, go ahead and sell your soul and try and sleep at night, and try and lay your head on the pillow at night, but for most people, for basically everyone, that doesn’t make sense.
0:35:57.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Should we talk about how people should make in it, like different revenue sources, so if we’re not huge fans of paid post, which by the way, if you wanna do paid posts that’s fine. I have a lot of friends and colleagues who do paid posts, it’s not like it’s bad, and then we look down on you if you do it, but I think a lot of people…
0:36:16.0 Mike Vacanti: I do, I look down. [laughter]
0:36:19.9 Jordan Syatt: I think that the biggest issue is that it could change what you actually believe, it’s not gonna be actually authentic to you, and you’re gonna end up missing out on money that could have been made in a better way, and probably more money down the road.
0:36:36.2 Mike Vacanti: You don’t make real… How much, for someone with a small audience, how much are you really gonna see offered for a paid post? Some of the offers I’ve gotten to do product reviews on YouTube are so insane to me, it’s like, “Hey, we’ll give you $300 to make a whole video about this product,” and I don’t think people understand. Think about this, if you charge $250, which is a very reasonable amount, a very reasonable amount for one-on-one coaching, if you charge $250 a month and you help a client for a year, that’s three grand for one client. One coaching client. And you can build, we talked about this in the last episode, you can build a real online coaching business, on not a huge audience. You can’t build big affiliate marketing on a small audience.
0:37:30.7 Jordan Syatt: Correct.
0:37:31.0 Mike Vacanti: You’re really just, in this short-term, it’s sacrifice, it’s putting in work in the short-term to derive the long-term benefit, but this is the opposite of sacrifice. You are wanting to get paid right now to make this post when the amount you’re getting paid is not worth it. But yes, let’s talk about different revenue streams.
0:37:48.4 Jordan Syatt: So I know one of the most common questions is, “Well, should I do like e-books or should I do courses or any of that stuff?” Which, if you had asked that question about 12 to 15 years ago, that would have been a very reasonable revenue stream, I think. That would have been a really good idea, but as of right now, I don’t think it’s smart at all. There are people who sell e-books, and there are some e-books that do really well, but in order to make a lot of money off of some type of a product like that, you need a lot of people buying it. That model is based off of you having a large audience and a large amount of people who are willing to buy something like that. It doesn’t work if you’ve got 20 people buying it. You get a product for $40 that you got 20 people buying it, that’s great, but how many new products are you gonna be able to put out and that are gonna generate a significant amount of revenue over the course of your career? There’s probably not many, unless your audience grows dramatically.
0:38:42.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and 20 times 40, 800 bucks. How long did it take you to create that product? How long did it take you to set up the launch plan for that product? How long did it take you to launch that product? Add up all those hours, take the 800 in revenue divided by those hours, what was your hourly on that product? What could you have been doing with your time? What was the opportunity cost of the hours you spent on that product? I completely agree. We’re in a time when e-books don’t make a lot of sense, subscription services are just… I like them in terms of how they deliver value, and I also like them in terms of… The way the business is run, right, you’re not constantly trying to sell and constantly trying to convince people, you’re providing a great service for people, and then there isn’t that re-up, “Buy my next e-book, buy my next e-book.”
0:39:34.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, I think the… And that brings up the next question, which is, should you do a membership? People are like, “Well, I wanna do one-on-one, but I wanna do a membership.” And which obviously I’m a big fan of memberships because I have one in the Inner Circle, you and I have one in the online fitness business mentorship, which if you’re not in that, what are you doing? Link in the show notes if you want to join. But the thing about memberships is, that’s another one where you need an audience. You need a relatively larger audience in order to make that worthwhile, especially if you’re earlier on in your career or even if you’re not and you just don’t have that large of an audience. What you’re gonna end up doing is you’re gonna end up giving one-on-one coaching to people for less money. So if you charge… One of the major reasons people think they wanna do a membership is because like, “Well, I can charge less money.” People don’t buy something just because it doesn’t cost as much. That’s not why people buy something, they buy something because, they buy your coaching, they buy your program, because they like you and they wanna work with you.
0:40:32.6 Jordan Syatt: So whether you do a membership that’s $10 a month or $20 a month, or online coaching that’s $300 a month, people are going to buy it. But if you take a membership that you’re charging, I don’t know, 20 bucks a month for, and you get 20 people signing up for it, 30 people signing up for it, 40 people signing up for it, now, you’re essentially gonna be giving a tremendous amount of coaching to those people, whereas if you had taken on 10 people at 300 a month, you’re gonna be giving literally the exact same service and making more money. And you’re actually giving probably a better service because it’s easier to give 10 people great one-on-one coaching than it is to give 20 people, or 30, or 40 people. And not to mention you’re not gonna resent them because they’re paying you 300 a month, whereas, if you have people in your membership for $20 a month that you’re essentially giving one-on-one coaching to ’cause you’re trying to get the best service, you’re gonna end up resenting them because they’re only paying you $20 a month. Whereas your online coaching clients are paying you 300 a month. So the first thing that you should really build is you’re one-on-one online coaching, from there you can go into membership if you want to down the road, but for a sustainable, wonderful job that provides an amazing living one-on-one is definitely the best place to go.
0:41:41.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and you’re right, when you’re at a place where you’ve built out your one-on-one, maybe you’ve been doing it for a number of years, maybe you’re not enjoying it as much anymore. Maybe you wanna make more money, but you can’t take on more one-on-one clients because you’re at your capacity for what you feel like is the top end of clients you can work with and give a good service to, then starting to build your membership makes sense, but starting with your membership, for the reasons you just mentioned, does not.
0:42:07.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.
0:42:08.2 Mike Vacanti: And then let’s talk about other options, so apparel, like, “Okay, do you wanna… ” High cost of goods, low margin. Is it really something you’re passionate about? Is it really something you’re good at? You might be a great coach and you might really know your shit when it comes to training and nutrition and psychology, but what do you know about fashion? Does it make sense to go into a product line, into a space, just because you see an opportunity there, without passion and expertise? And then you could say, “Okay, well, I don’t want all that responsibility. I don’t want all that cost. Maybe I’ll just try to get a sponsorship for clothing or for anything.” We were just talking about paid posts. You really do need a good-sized audience to make a meaningful amount of revenue from any kind of affiliate. If you even decide that you wanna take the short-term cash, you wanna do brand deals, you need a big and engaged audience to get offers for a big enough brand deals that they could even come close to comparing with the revenue that you would do from coaching or from a membership.
0:43:18.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, the only… One of the reasons we’re such big fans of one-on-one, but I would say the only types of coaching, or types of revenue, in this industry that you don’t need a large audience to make a tremendous income off of are one-on-one and small group coaching.
0:43:31.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.
0:43:32.2 Jordan Syatt: Those are the two best options for people, if you really want to build a business that generates a significant amount of income, helps a lot of people, and you don’t need a large audience for. In terms of apparel, it’s funny, I’m not doing apparel on the Inner Circle anymore because the company that was doing it actually shifted gears and they’re not doing it anymore, but for many years, when the Inner Circle had apparel, I made zero dollars from it, because what happened is the amount of money that the company charged me to make the shirts and to ship them and to store them, and all of that, I essentially charged with the cost. So the cost of all of that is what each shirt costs, so the only people who could get the shirts and the gear were Inner Circle members, but I made zero money for it, and I made sure they knew that. I was like, “You’re paying $17 for this shirt, and all of that money is going directly to the company in order to store the shirt, to make the shirt, ship the shirt, all of that.” And so that was my deal was like, “I’m not trying to make more money off this apparel, I just wanna have Inner Circle members have the ability to get this apparel so they feel more connected with it and so that they can enjoy it and feel proud of it,” but I mean, I’m not trying to make…
0:44:41.3 Mike Vacanti: It was like a cool perk to being a member. That they could get access to that shirt and you were doing them a solid. It wasn’t like, “Okay, I’m gonna try and build another revenue stream to increase my profits by 30%.”
0:44:53.9 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Exactly. And I will say, I think if you’re thinking about like, “Well, what’s the best? Or, I do wanna add another revenue stream,” I will say having your own clothing brand is definitely, I think, a better option than doing paid posts for someone else’s brand. Where it’s like… I think if you have a good audience and you have a good amount of revenue and you wanna start something else, you’re passionate about trying something, I think making your own shirts, or your own pants, or your own gym clothes, your own gym gear, water bottles, towels, whatever it is, I think that is a much better option than repping someone else’s brand or doing paid posts or getting a discount code for someone else’s brand, because that’s still you and people will still wanna support you. And you could have your own creative process in it and have your own inside jokes as a part of it, and have your own brand as a result of it. But I still think… And we could talk about a small group coaching as well as for people who might not wanna only do one-on-one. I think one-on-one and small group are the best places to go.
0:45:54.7 Mike Vacanti: One thing on clothes, I would… If it was something I was already wearing, ’cause I don’t wanna put the time and the effort and the creativity and the design in to make the self, if Target came to me and was like, “We’ll give you 5k a month to wear our white t-shirts or white crew neck shirts,” I’m like, “Sweet, I’m already doing that,” and I didn’t have to promote a code, but just wear it in all my content and mentioned it link in description, whatever. I would do that. If Alpha, if Christian Guzman DM’d and was like, “Hey, I’ll give you 10K a month to wear my joggers in your videos,” I’d be like, “Cool, that’s all I wear on my legs anyway,” so yeah, I’d be good with that. But if it’s a new company whose stuff I don’t rock and like, “You gotta wear this, you got a shout out, or you gotta have your discount code, you gotta do all that.” No, thank you.
0:46:43.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and they’re like, “You have to do four feed posts a month, just pushing this.” It’s like, “Absolutely not.”
0:46:48.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s like, “Buddy, I don’t do a four feed posts a month.”
0:46:51.2 Jordan Syatt: I bet if Christian Guzman said, “I’ll give you 10k a month to do four feed post a month.” You’d be, “No.”
0:46:55.2 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely not, no shot.
0:46:56.4 Jordan Syatt: No, no, even though you wear it already.
0:47:00.0 Mike Vacanti: But when I make a… “I’ll wear your joggers, when I do my podcast that’s what I’ll do.”
[laughter]
0:47:06.2 Jordan Syatt: Which are not going on YouTube by the way, so no one can see them anyway.
0:47:09.3 Mike Vacanti: Actually…
0:47:10.8 Jordan Syatt: Potentially.
0:47:11.5 Mike Vacanti: We’ll see, we’ll see. Big things are coming in 2022 potentially.
0:47:17.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. We’ll see. Getting a new office space for myself, so…
0:47:20.3 Mike Vacanti: That’s awesome.
0:47:20.8 Jordan Syatt: Might have some business trips down here.
0:47:23.6 Mike Vacanti: We got big things coming for this podcast and for many other avenues, although, you know what we, go ahead.
0:47:31.2 Jordan Syatt: I was gonna say the last thing I wanna hit on, because a lot of people do ask about small group coaching or just group coaching in general, and it is a very viable source of revenue and you don’t need a large audience to do it. We have people in the mentorship doing this on a pretty frequent basis, where they have a small number of one-on-one clients, somewhere between 10 to 20 one-on-one clients, and then every couple of months they run a group, and this group is lower cost than the one-on-one coaching, and it could be like $50 a month, $100 a month, whatever it is, but it’s a relatively low cost compared to one-on-one. But then they could get 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 people in this small group that they run, every couple of months, and it’s not one-on-one coaching, it’s a group program that they all do together, oftentimes it’s done in a Facebook group, but that’s another tremendous way to utilize a smaller audience and still make a significant amount of income from it and help a lot of people that without needing to ruin your brand or without needing to sacrifice your brand. It can actually help strengthen your brand and allow to work with more people, and a lot of the people who take part in these challenges will probably become one-on-one clients as well.
0:48:35.2 Mike Vacanti: Great, you know what we gotta do right now? We gotta film the challenge, we have to…
0:48:40.7 Jordan Syatt: The March challenge.
0:48:41.9 Mike Vacanti: The March challenge, we’ve already got it planned and we just gotta jump on, create it, get it uploaded. So today’s a big work day, we got the podcast in, thank you very much for listening. A review, a five-star review would really help the podcast if you have just two minutes right now and you wanna stop, pull your phone out, give us a little five-star, write something nice, say hello in the review. We read the reviews, we would really appreciate that. And yeah, thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
0:49:09.9 Jordan Syatt: Have a great one.
