Episode 84: Top 10 Business Growth Tips in 2022 (Part 1)

0:00:11.5 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.8 Jordan Syatt: What’s going on, Michael? Back to the weekly uploads.

0:00:16.0 Mike Vacanti: Weekly uploads. This is… You know how your favorite Netflix show has like a mid-season intermission sometimes.

0:00:24.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I mean, no, ’cause I usually just get them…

0:00:25.6 Mike Vacanti: Part one, part two?

0:00:26.8 Jordan Syatt: I usually end up watching it like four years later. So I just have them all there. But yeah, I know they usually have an intermission. So you have to wait a little… Wait a few months or something to get to the second half of it.

0:00:37.6 Mike Vacanti: We had an intermission, an All-Star break, you could call it, whatever. But Jordan had a little international trip and now we’re back.

0:00:48.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and sometimes you just gotta take a little break so they know like, “Oh shit,” so they don’t take you for granted, right?” So like, “Oh man, where are those episodes.” You know what I mean?

0:00:58.7 Mike Vacanti: Can you give us a dating analogy that might make this a stickier concept for us?

0:01:04.2 Jordan Syatt: Dating specifically? Sure. I wonder why dating? [laughter] Can you give us a dating specific you know?

0:01:13.2 Mike Vacanti: You’re good at those.

0:01:14.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think everyone knows if you have, whether… If someone’s pursuing you and they’re just constantly hitting you up and they’re just like, “Hey, hey. What do you think? What do you think? Should we go out? Should would go out?” You’re, “Alright.” Even if you’re interested at first, it’s like, “Alright, enough.” And if they’re always there… Everyone says like, “I don’t like to play games. I don’t like to play games.” Everyone plays games usually subconsciously.

0:01:36.3 Mike Vacanti: At least a little.

0:01:38.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. So if someone’s always available oftentimes, subconsciously or even consciously, you’ll be like, “I don’t really want that person.” But then let’s say that person starts dating someone else, you’re gonna be like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. What happened here?” And then you’ll start hitting ’em up. And then you’re like, “I don’t even really wanna be with this person, but I don’t like that they’re with another person.” So… And I really liked the attention they were giving me. So I don’t know who we are in that scenario, or I guess we’re the person that you don’t… You might think you don’t wanna be with. But then we start seeing someone else, and that seeing someone else is us taking a couple of week break from podcasting and all of a sudden you’re like, “Wow, I actually… I need these guys in my life. I need these guys, every… With their weekly uploads.” So…

0:02:23.1 Mike Vacanti: And we got… That was perfect. Thank you. We both got so many nice messages, I got a few asking if everything was okay, you know, we haven’t been uploading for a couple of weeks. So we’re happy we were missed, but we’re not breaking stride on weekly uploads here.

0:02:39.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. Feeling good, man. Feeling really good about this.

0:02:42.9 Mike Vacanti: Me too.

0:02:44.7 Jordan Syatt: Where do you…

0:02:45.5 Mike Vacanti: Oh, we have a sale. That’s where we’re starting, and we’re not big sales guys, I don’t even know if we would call this a sale because we’re not posting it on social. We’re not blasting it out to everyone, but just for anyone who happens to be listening to this podcast, we have what may be a one-week sale for the mentorship, 20% off. I’ll let you tell everyone about it.

0:03:08.8 Jordan Syatt: No, I think you’re doing a great job. That we got a fucking 20% off sale that we’re gonna do. We were like… When we were planning this episode, we were like, “Hey, should we just do a sale?” We haven’t been on it for a few weeks. Just do a 20% sale, so, yeah. And before the episode, I was like, “We should pick out what the code is gonna be for the sale so when you go to the website, the link in the show notes, you wanna join the mentorship.” So you know what fucking code to put in so that you know… So you can get the 20% off. And Mike was like, “Let’s all figure it out during the episode.” So I have no idea what the code is, what do you think the code should be, Mike?

0:03:41.8 Mike Vacanti: I got a lot of ideas. I…

[laughter]

0:03:45.8 Mike Vacanti: Something podcast-related. Since this is only a podcast offering, this isn’t getting blasted out to email lists or Instagram or YouTube or anywhere else.

0:03:55.3 Jordan Syatt: Not Twitter, not TikTok, not Snapchat.

0:03:58.3 Mike Vacanti: We’re not putting it on Tumblr, Google. It’s not going to…

0:04:02.0 Jordan Syatt: Pinterest.

0:04:04.6 Mike Vacanti: Sidewalk chalk, guerrilla marketing.

0:04:05.2 Jordan Syatt: Twitch.

0:04:06.6 Mike Vacanti: Bill boards. Banner ads, pre-rolls, mid-rolls, after-rolls.

0:04:11.8 Jordan Syatt: Pop-ups.

0:04:13.3 Mike Vacanti: Scales.

[laughter]

0:04:17.6 Mike Vacanti: Anyone who knows pop-up scale… That’s it, pop-up scale.

0:04:21.4 Jordan Syatt: Pop-up scales? That’s it, I like that. That worked out really well. Should we tell that story?

0:04:26.0 Mike Vacanti: Let’s tell that story. So the code, and we don’t do these… Historically, since we started the mentorship several years ago, we’ve averaged, I think two sales per… I don’t think we’ve ever done more than two sales per year. We average between one and two sales per year, so 20% off using the code…

0:04:44.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. We usually do one or two sales a year, and we also increase the price one or two times a year, so that’s sort of how it works out. So if you wanna get in right now, this is the lowest the price will ever be, because the next time we do something, it will be a price increase and we’ll be letting everyone know. So right now will literally be the time you’ll… The lowest price you will ever be able to get into mentorship, it will never be this low again, because the next time we do a promotion for it, it will… We’re saying that the price is gonna go up. So this sale for the next week is the lowest you will ever be able to get into the online fitness business mentorship, if you wanna do that right now. So we’ll put the link in the show notes. The code will be popupscales in one word, all lower case. popupscales. P-O-P-U-P scales and we’ll tell you that story right now.

0:05:32.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and that’s plural. Multiple scales, because Gary wanted multiple scales.

0:05:37.7 Jordan Syatt: This is the most ridiculous thing you’ll ever hear, so we won’t go into the whole detail about it you know. First Mike coached Gary for two years. I coached Gary for three years, and now Mike has been coaching Gary ever since. It’s been another three years or so right? Since I stopped in 2019.

0:05:54.6 Mike Vacanti: Wow come for us.

0:05:55.9 Jordan Syatt: I stopped June 1, 2019 so yeah it’s been going… Yeah, so it’s basically been ever since, so, during my time with Gary, there was a period of time where… When he started working with Mike, Mike made him send him pictures of the scale every morning because Gary would often lie about what his weight was, so… By taking a picture of the scale, it would help make it more accurate and keep him honest.

0:06:24.4 Mike Vacanti: And that was actually his idea, because he knew that about himself, he wanted that additional accountability, and he said, I don’t just wanna text you my weight, and I don’t want you to look at this app that tracks my weight. I wanna send you a picture of the scale so that you know what my actual weight is every morning, and I said, “Cool, if that helps you feel more accountable? I’m in, let’s do it”.

0:06:46.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so that’s what Gary and Mike did and we just continued that when I took over, and for the first… I don’t know this was like a year in you think? Probably about a year in where this happened? Was it ’17?

0:07:00.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, this… No, this was late.

0:07:02.5 Jordan Syatt: Is it maybe two years in?

0:07:04.3 Mike Vacanti: This is 2018. Yup.

0:07:06.5 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Okay, so two years in for the first year, a year and a half. Crushing it. Great, and then it looks like Gary’s weight is fine. He’s sending me his way every morning, there’s no problems, just staying very consistent. Right around 173 to 175 on a very consistent basis. And one morning, and Gary sends me a text message after we work out, and what was the phrase that he used? I think he said…

0:07:36.0 Mike Vacanti: I know exactly what he said, and by the way, we were together. Oh, we were on…

0:07:41.1 Jordan Syatt: No, I called you ’cause I think I had just left your place and then I went back to your place afterwards.

0:07:47.2 Mike Vacanti: That’s right.

0:07:49.4 Jordan Syatt: What was the… What did he say? He’s like.

0:07:51.0 Mike Vacanti: The phrasing was, I’ve lost my way.

0:07:55.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh my God, yeah, I’ve lost my way. I’ve lost my way. This is like a summer day 2018 it’s beautiful out in New York, I’m walking along the street, and I just got a text from Gary, I’ve lost my way. And so I call them ’cause I’m like, that’s a real text to get… So I call him immediately. And he’s telling me, he’s like, Listen, I’ve lost my way. And basically, he explains that he’s been lying about his weight, and I was like, What do you mean you’ve been lying, I’ve been seeing it. He’s like, No, I figured out that if I put my big toe against the wall while I weigh in, that will take off a certain amount of weight on the scale, and I’ve been sending you that weight. So he had actually gained about 8 to 10 pounds or so, so he was in the low 180s, and he also said that he was sitting in the car just… And if you know Gary, you’d know that he does this, if you don’t know Gary you don’t know he does this, but he always pinches his belly fat like consist… He always will pinch his belly fat, and so he’s like, “Yeah, I’m sitting here in the car and my stomach is just coming over my lap” And he was just like, “I had to tell you, I’ve lost my way.” and I was thinking like. I was like, “Okay, man, well, thank you for telling me.”

0:09:08.7 Jordan Syatt: In my mind, I’m being like, I can’t believe you have this full-time personal trainer that you’re paying with you to travel over the world, and you’re lying to me by a fucking sticking your big toe on the wall, but he’s like, “I need you to carry a scale with you everywhere we go and randomly weigh me in.” Now, there are many things going through my mind right now, first and foremost being, there’s no fucking way I’m doing that because I don’t agree with that just on principle, but let’s say even though I didn’t agree with it on principle, if you’re with someone very powerful, this is your one main client, oftentimes, you might do things just because you wanna make them happy. The reason I wouldn’t do that with Gary is because I actually do think that would help keep him more accountable, to be honest, even though it was a… It didn’t make sense. I do think it would actually keep him more accountable and he would actually enjoy it, but you have to remember, Gary is being filmed 24/7, so imagine being his personal trainer who’s doing this because you think it’s gonna help keep him happy and even though you know and he knows it’s not reminiscent of actual fat gain or fat loss consistently throughout the day, he puts this on his vlog and explains to millions of people that his personal trainer carries a fucking scale around with you, so you weigh him in public like this is just not a good look, and I just, I went hard.

0:10:35.0 Jordan Syatt: I was like, I’m absolutely not doing that. And he is like, “Then I’m gonna find someone who will”. [laughter] And then…

0:10:45.4 Mike Vacanti: And this is after not only did he tell us he lost his way, there were about six different group with D Rock and Ty and everyone, I’ve lost my way, I’ve lost my way…

0:10:55.2 Jordan Syatt: Then he hangs up the phone and he starts group texting you, and he’s already texted me first, then we got on the phone, then he texted you and me, and he goes, I’ve lost my way. And then he texted you me and Ty, and he said, I’ve lost my way. Then he texted you, me, Ty and D Rock, I’ve lost my way. I think there was at least one or two other group texts that he just kept saying, I’ve lost my way, I’ve lost my way, I’ve lost my way. And then so Mike and I got together and we basically came up with this whole good cop, bad cop scenario where we were gonna storm into Gary’s office and be like, “This is absolutely not happening.” And we walk into his office, we make Ty, his assistant at the time book us an appointment with him that day, and I was just livid. I was so pissed. And so we walk in there, we have this amazing plan about how we’re gonna convince Gary that this just doesn’t make any sense at all, and he just runs the conversation. [laughter]

0:11:43.6 Mike Vacanti: Runs us over and then we… Runs the meeting with charisma and energy.

0:11:47.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I really wish that… It has to be on video somewhere, but that meeting is the perfect example of why he’s so successful, and he’s such a good businessman, because we went in there ready to just tear him a new one and he just bulldozed us. But in a nice way…

0:12:04.3 Mike Vacanti: With kindness.

0:12:06.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, bulldozed us with kindness beginning like, Oh, this is gonna be great, it’s gonna be… [laughter] Yeah.

0:12:10.0 Mike Vacanti: And then but he wasn’t even pushing hard for the pop-up scale. He was… I don’t even know what he said in that meeting. To be honest, I just know that I came out of it thinking we did zero good cop, bad cop. Our sticking it to him idea didn’t work at all.

0:12:25.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:12:26.3 Mike Vacanti: But he’s very happy and excited and hopeful about what’s about to happen.

0:12:30.8 Jordan Syatt: The resolution that we came up with was me walking around with a tape measure and tape measuring him every morning. Do you remember that?

0:12:34.6 Mike Vacanti: No, I don’t.

0:12:41.5 Jordan Syatt: That was the… It was the…

0:12:42.0 Mike Vacanti: The compromise?

0:12:43.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that was the compromise. It was, “Alright, I’m not gonna walk around to the fucking digital scale in my backpack, so I’ll walk around with this tiny little tape measure and when we work out in the morning, we’ll do measurements.” And in my mind I was like this is much less weird for people to see, and it doesn’t look nearly as disordered and actually… In my mind, all I would do is I would… I would compare it every two weeks, I wouldn’t compare it to the day before, I’d be like, Cool, so yeah, it’s like two weeks ago, you were this now you’re this. Yes, just an absolute mess.

0:13:22.3 Mike Vacanti: And there’s a big difference between taking waist measurements or any kind of measurements with your coach before or after a workout, compared to being at the office or being in the middle of Manhattan and stepping on a scale that your trainer just rolled up with, pulled out of his backpack and was like, “On now. Accountability.”

[laughter]

0:13:36.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, if it was up to Gary in line at the airport, I would have made him step on the scale, he thrives on that type of weird situational stuff, and he loves to be put in these really awkward situations, and then to explain to people like, Yeah, that’s my full-time coach, he’s really keeping me accountable, so we’re like, when he would go to dinner and he’d have four dinner meetings in a row, and we would just sit there in the restaurant at the bar, he would always be like, “Hey, Jordan, come here, come here, come here, come here”. And he’d wanna introduce me to whoever this business meeting was with, so he could be like, Yeah, this… I’ll never forget there was one time that we went to a sushi restaurant in LA, and I’m exhausted, we got off the plane, whatever it is, and I’m just sitting at the bar answering emails, writing programs, whatever. And this guy that Gary’s having a meeting with, he just keep looking at me and I can see that he’s saying, Who is that guy? And Gary calls me over and Gary goes, he goes, “Do you know why I didn’t have the ice cream tonight?” To the guy, and the guy was like, “Why?” He like, “‘Cause he’s here.”

[laughter]

0:14:34.1 Jordan Syatt: He was just so… You know why I said no? ‘Cause he’s here, that’s why. [laughter]

0:14:41.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s true though.

0:14:42.2 Jordan Syatt: It is true. Yeah… [laughter]

0:14:45.7 Mike Vacanti: Just ridiculous. I forgot about… And that’s like an underrated… The amount of work that got done that probably wouldn’t have in the 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM range because we were like a table over is remarkable.

0:14:57.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:15:02.6 Mike Vacanti: We might… We’ll tell the popcorn story soon. I can hear you through the mic chewing, just so you know.

0:15:06.9 Jordan Syatt: Can you really? [laughter]

0:15:14.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, and I’m only like 7% bothered. I would imagine David’s like 22% and there might just be people listening, so just for the purposes of…

0:15:21.8 Jordan Syatt: I’m chewing pumpkin seeds, I really didn’t think they’re that loud. Do you wanna… You should tell the popcorn story, and then we’ll get into the episode.

0:15:27.2 Mike Vacanti: I don’t even find the popcorn story funny.

0:15:29.1 Jordan Syatt: It’s funny, it’s super funny.

0:15:31.3 Mike Vacanti: You built it up as a funny story. I don’t think it’s funny.

0:15:36.2 Jordan Syatt: How did I build it up?

0:15:40.5 Mike Vacanti: Literally on the podcast. You were like, leave a review and say… “Mention popcorn and we’ll tell the popcorn story because it’s so funny.”

0:15:45.0 Jordan Syatt: Did I say that? I don’t remember saying that. When did I say that?

0:15:47.4 Mike Vacanti: Probably about two months ago…

0:15:50.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh wow.

0:15:50.7 Mike Vacanti: Two, two and a half months ago in that range…

0:15:55.3 Jordan Syatt: Well, so we were doing a mentorship live Q and A, so we do two mentorship life Q and As a month, they are about like an hour and a half each, where we just answer all the questions that people in the mentorship have, which by the way, if you wanna join, popupscales, link in the show notes if you wanna join, popupscales, for 20% off, this is gonna be the lowest price it will ever be, so I’m just eating popcorn. While we’re doing this… And we’re doing it via Zoom, and I can generally be very perceptive of how people are feeling, and Mike, just goes…

0:16:31.1 Mike Vacanti: Hang on, hang on, hang on. Jordan is unbelievably aware of other people’s intentions and you’re like the one seed of understanding what other people are thinking and doing by paying attention to them.

0:16:41.0 Jordan Syatt: So yeah, so that’s definitely one of those things.

0:16:42.1 Mike Vacanti: And I know this because I have no idea nor does it even really cross my mind.

0:16:50.3 Jordan Syatt: So we’re doing this Q and A, I’m thinking it’s going super well, and I’m just munching on this popcorn, and then out of nowhere, Mike just grits his teeth. He has his teeth grit. I don’t think anyone in the mentorship could tell, but because I know Mike and I know how he acts, he just goes, “What are you eating Jordan popcorn? Oh I wish I could have some popcorn and immediately in my head, I know he’s infuriated that I’m eating popcorn right now”.

0:17:18.1 Mike Vacanti: And how did you know that.

0:17:20.7 Jordan Syatt: The gritting of the teeth that… What?

0:17:25.3 Mike Vacanti: But you told me like as a kid.

0:17:26.0 Jordan Syatt: My mom would grit her teeth when she was super mad, that’s how I knew that I had gone too far with my mom when she would grit her teeth, and so when I saw you gritting your teeth, I was like, Oh my God.

0:17:39.0 Mike Vacanti: Well, and it was completely unconscious, I’m trying to think… This is back in 2020, I think, I’m trying to think through and make a point and articulate it, and Jordan’s like… I actually think you might have been tossing it in the air and catching it in your mouth at one point, at least with a few kernels, I’m really trying to engage. And it was like, “Oh, popcorn, nice.”

0:18:01.9 Jordan Syatt: “I wish I could have some popcorn right now.” So there it is. Yeah.

0:18:10.2 Mike Vacanti: Popupscales, popupscales, 20% off. We get the top tips, business… What are we titling this episode?

0:18:17.7 Jordan Syatt: Top Ten…

0:18:24.9 Mike Vacanti: Top business growth tips in 2022. We have 10, we’re hitting five in depth in today’s episode.

0:18:26.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. So we got five today and then the last five next week. So the way that we sort of planned it out is, these five are gonna be more globally, like global things to look at and…

0:18:39.3 Mike Vacanti: Philosophy, clouds.

0:18:42.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and then next week is gonna be more practical, more things that you can actually do on a day-to-day in the dirt type stuff, but you have to understand both. You have to understand both to be able to get the best of both worlds. So the top five… Top 10 and the first five today and the next five in the next episode, which is next week, ’cause we do weekly uploads.

0:19:05.9 Mike Vacanti: That’s all we do is weekly uploads except during the intermission, but…

0:19:09.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:19:09.7 Mike Vacanti: We’re out of that and… Let’s dive in, number one.

0:19:11.8 Jordan Syatt: Let’s do it. What’s number one?

0:19:13.5 Mike Vacanti: Oh, by… Alright, we’ll dive in.

0:19:15.0 Jordan Syatt: What? What? By the way, what?

0:19:18.4 Mike Vacanti: It has absolutely no bearing on what we’re about to discuss, and I was just gonna say I almost threw up during my leg day today, and that hasn’t happened to me in years.

0:19:26.7 Jordan Syatt: Why? ‘Cause it was so hard? That’s what she said.

0:19:29.2 Mike Vacanti: I guess.

[laughter]

0:19:32.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, there was no other reason. Just leg extensions, really close to failure, high reps, not even an exercise that you would expect to take you to that area.

0:19:44.6 Jordan Syatt: I hate leg extensions. They’re so uncomfortable.

0:19:48.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:19:49.6 Jordan Syatt: They’re a great exercise for building quads, but I hate doing them, it’s my least favorite exercise ever.

0:19:53.6 Mike Vacanti: Leg extensions are your least favorite exercise?

0:19:55.8 Jordan Syatt: I would literally rather do any other exercise than leg extensions, it’s like the most uncomfortable for me.

0:20:02.7 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.

0:20:02.8 Jordan Syatt: That’s why I have tiny quads.

0:20:04.4 Mike Vacanti: No you don’t…

0:20:05.2 Jordan Syatt: I got a pretty small quads but it’s good. I can shove people with my legs.

[laughter]

0:20:10.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s intentional.

0:20:12.8 Jordan Syatt: That’s all. Alright, ready? Number one.

0:20:17.5 Mike Vacanti: Number one, I’ve got the list here in front of me, depth over width…

0:20:23.4 Jordan Syatt: Okay so when Mike and I were planning this out, this is the first one that came to our minds in a world in which there’s so much focus on getting more followers and reaching more people, and literally I saw this happen the other day, there was someone on social media, who literally was so excited that they… That one of their posts went viral and they were like, I’ve been trying for years to make a post go viral, and they made a whole post about how excited they were that a post went viral, and about how much they hope another post will go viral soon. And I think this is very reminiscent and very… This is reminiscent of many people, of many people nowadays, especially in the fitness industry or anybody trying to grow a business online, they want to reach more people, more people, more people… And I get it, I very much understand it, and I’m not saying that’s inherently wrong, there’s definitely a time and a place for width to reach more people, but when the search is always for more people, more people, more people, you end up not paying much attention to the people who are already there, you end up neglecting those people and I think those are the most important people.

0:21:40.1 Jordan Syatt: I mean, let’s say, for example, let’s say you only have 500 followers, which by today’s standards would not be a lot of followers, but imagine if you had 500 followers and all 500 of them… And you know what, fuck it. We’ll say 450 of them because 50 of them could be family and friends and whatever, people who wouldn’t really buy from you anyway, but let’s say 450 people are super engaged with your content, they like everything you do, and let’s say 300 of them become paying clients, 300 paying clients. Are you kidding? That’s insane. You have an unbelievable business that will sustain you and provide for your family and help hundreds of people, not to mention think about… Imagine getting up on stage in front of 300 people, or 400 people or 500 people, most people would be shooting themselves if they got up on stage in front of that many people, that’s a ton of people, but then you post on social media and you got all upset because you don’t have as many followers as the next person, so the reality is, having a business that is built on depth is without question the best type of business you can build, it’s going to… It will sustain you long-term, I think it’s much more realistic and it’s less about…

0:22:57.5 Jordan Syatt: It’s actually more about what actually matters and less about what doesn’t. Followers are like Monopoly money, having more followers doesn’t mean anything. I know many people with hundreds of thousands of followers… This isn’t a joke, this is real. I know people with hundreds of thousands of followers who are struggling with their business, and I know other people who have a couple thousand followers who are dominating their business, and it’s because they’re doing all the right things, so stop this endless chase for more width, more width, more width for more followers for more followers, and really put the focus on who’s already following you.

0:23:31.6 Mike Vacanti: Preach, mic drop. It’s especially true in fitness and as a personal trainer, as a coach, and here’s why for influencers and content creators and internet famous people, people like what you would imagine 13-year-olds want to become when they grow up in this day and age of this new generation, if you’re not… If you’re just getting famous for the sake of being famous, you need a giant audience to make a reasonable standard of living because you’re doing brand deals, you’re doing ad revenue, you’re doing… The way you’re monetizing is through attention, but without any specifics, you’re audible sponsoring a video, you’re running pre-rolls on YouTube. You do need a massive audience to make a living wage, if you are just making stuff and getting quote unquote famous to get famous as a coach, 20 clients, we’re actually… We’re selling a service that is really helping people that you don’t need a lot of people paying to have a full time job, 20 clients, what do you think? 200 or 300, somewhere in that range is probably the average amount that people in the mentorship are charging for coaching between $200 and $300 a month, times 20 clients, you’re making real money and your audience doesn’t need to be… I can think of so many people who have 20 clients in the mentorship who have a couple thousand followers on Instagram.

0:25:17.0 Jordan Syatt: Mm-hmm.

0:25:17.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Not to mention depth over width, when you care about a smaller number of people, or let’s just say when you care about the people who are following you and you’re following up for free and you’re DMing, you’re replying to questions on email without expectation of anything, those people are… Not all of them, but some of those people are going to become coaching clients.

0:25:41.7 Jordan Syatt: Mm-hmm.

0:25:42.5 Mike Vacanti: And that’s where spending your time, like you said, focusing on the people who are already following you and care about you and serving them rather than trying to go viral, have hundreds of thousands of followers, it’s actually gonna benefit you from a business perspective to focus on really helping your quote unquote smaller audience.

0:26:01.0 Jordan Syatt: 100%. I remember before I started coaching Gary, I remember the reason I started the inner circle was because I couldn’t take on any more one-on-one clients, and I had 80 clients at $300 a month, and I had less than 5000 Instagram followers.

0:26:18.1 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.

0:26:19.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s very real. It is, and the majority of those clients actually came from my personal Facebook page at that time, my personal not my professional page, it was my personal page, ’cause I was just posting every day random strength lessons and tips on my personal Facebook page. That’s where the majority of it came from, which is still… It’s still at works today, whether it’s your Instagram, your Facebook, whatever it is, you don’t need that many followers in order to build a great business… And Mike says this all the time. It’s super important. One of the things you’ve always said Mike that I liked was the disadvantage of the person that has a lot of followers is the ability to connect with each person, the advantage of the person who doesn’t have a lot of followers is being able to connect with them being able to speak with them. So where I won’t be able to reply to every comment someone else will be, if you have fewer followers, you can reply to every comment you can DM with every person, so that’s your advantage over someone like me, maybe that has a bigger audience, and I don’t have the time to do that. So use that to your advantage. If… You might as well use that to your advantage and build your business from that and have that personal connection with people.

0:27:29.0 Jordan Syatt: I won’t be able to have a personal connection with everyone in the inner circle, and I love the inner-circle and it’s an amazing business model I really enjoy doing it, but the major flaw is a lack of personal connection, one of the reasons, that’s one of the reasons why in my podcast I speak with inner-circle members ’cause it’s my way of trying to create more personal connection, but it’s impossible to do it with every single one of them. So your advantage is being able to do that, and again, if your goal is to be famous, then I would question why the fuck you’re listening to this podcast in the first place, and if you really wanna be a coach… If your goal is to be famous, that’s a different goal altogether, if your goal is to be a great coach and to help people and build a business that supports you and your family and helps people like you, stop chasing so many followers. You might get a lot of followers if you do the right things over a long period of time, you post amazing content, you’re consistent, but if your focus on getting more followers is equally as bad as your clients focus on the scale, trying to go down every single day that, if you tell your clients stop focusing on the scale all the time, the scale doesn’t mean very much and you can be healthy and happy without worrying about the number on the scale. The same thing goes for you in the number of followers.

0:28:42.9 Mike Vacanti: I’m gonna give a real… We’ll move on to the next one, but a practical example here of what you just said, so if you have, let’s say, 450 followers or 500, and 450 of them aren’t family and friends, and a way that you can compete and beat Jordan who has almost a million followers, let’s say Cheryl in Tennessee, who’s 46 years old, happens to follow Jordan, and she also follows you, and she follows… I don’t know, 25 other fitness professionals. She has DMed Jordan three times, but because Jordan gets so many DMs, he literally just has never seen Cheryl’s DM. Cheryl also DMed you a question, you could literally give Cheryl 20 minutes of your time for free, whether that’s going back and forth, like really in detail, helping her on a DM, voice memo, jumping on a quick call, whatever it might be, with no expectation. When Cheryl wants to sign up for something, you have the edge because you have the advantage of being able to go deeper with her, than someone with a bigger audience could…

0:29:48.2 Jordan Syatt: That’s exactly right.

0:29:52.1 Mike Vacanti: Number two, dominate one platform.

0:29:55.8 Jordan Syatt: This is a good one. They’re all gonna be good ones, but this is a really good one, I think, early on, especially now, because there’s Facebook, there’s Instagram, there’s TikTok, there’s Twitter, there’s website articles, there’s email list, there’s Pinterest, there’s Tumblr, there’s everything, right? So there’s YouTube, there’s Podcast. It’s… People get so overwhelmed with like which one should I do and how often should I post on all of them? And it becomes so overwhelming. And the reality is, you just need to crush it with one… And sort of the same thing with your clients. Let’s say you have a client come in. They’re severely overweight. They don’t know where to begin. They’re like, Well, listen, I see there’s HIIT, I see there’s Barry’s Bootcamp classes. There is fucking… What’s that, the… What’s that one?

0:30:49.5 Mike Vacanti: OrangeTheory?

0:30:50.2 Jordan Syatt: OrangeTheory. Yeah, there’s HIIT, there’s Barry’s Bootcamp, there’s OrangeTheory, there’s walking, there’s Zumba, there’s strength training, there’s Pilates, there’s Yogalates, there’s all this stuff, there’s fucking…

0:30:58.5 Mike Vacanti: Shake weights…

0:31:00.4 Jordan Syatt: There’s shake weights, there’s hula-hooping, there’s is rollerblading, there’s ice skating. There’s swimming. There’s aerobics. What the fuck do I do? There’s keto, there’s paleo, there’s intermittent fasting… You know like, hey, let’s just do one thing, let’s just get you walking, let’s just start with that, and then make sure you’re staying hydrated, let’s make sure you’re sleeping, one thing, you stack one on top of the other, but you start with one habit at a time. That’s how you have to approach social media… That’s how you have to approach your business. So I think Mike and I actually got in… We were very lucky to get in at the time that we got in because we sort of got in as the industry was progressing. I sort of think about it like the Harry Potter books. I was… Like the perfect age with the Harry Potter books because as the Harry Potter books came out, I could read one and then I had to wait a couple of years, right? Read one, wait a couple of years. So and then every time they would come out again, I would re-read the whole series up to that point, and then… So you really… You only could focus on one at a time, one at a time, than one and two. And then one, two, three, and then one, two, three, four. So you really build up with it. With social media, when you and I first started, it was just like Facebook and website articles.

0:32:09.2 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.

0:32:09.7 Jordan Syatt: That was it. It was just like personal Facebook page, website articles, and the main focus was really website articles for years, that was the one thing that we did, and then after the website articles for a couple of years, then I went to email list, so then I did website articles and email list, and I did that for a couple of years, then I had website articles, email list, then I went hard on Instagram, and I did Instagram hard for a couple of years, so I had website articles, email list, Instagram, and then from there, after that, I went to YouTube, so then I had website articles, email list, Instagram, and then YouTube. And I did that for about a year and a half, and I went from website articles, email list, Instagram, YouTube, podcast, and so you build and you build, and you build, and you look at me now and you’re like, But… You have a website with hundreds of articles and an email list and you have an Instagram, and you have a TikTok, and you have YouTube, and you have a podcast. Well, yeah, so that’s right there, that’s six things, and I’ve been doing this for about 11 years now online.

0:33:03.9 Jordan Syatt: So I spent several years just focusing on one thing at a time, and when you do that, when you build up an audience just on one platform, then you can push that audience elsewhere, and you can help it grow, you could help grow other platforms as well, and then you can also help reach new people. But if you’re trying to do multiple platforms at the same time, odds are, you’re not gonna do very well. You should just be the fucking best on one platform for a couple of years before you move to another one.

0:33:32.0 Mike Vacanti: It’s too hard to try to grow multiple simultaneously, especially when you’re just starting your business, especially when you’re not somebody who has a content production team, you don’t have videographers and editors and writers and people doing this stuff for you, when you’re doing it all yourself, to be successful at growing five platforms at the same time, you would almost have to spread yourself so thin, that quality suffers to the point where none of them grow.

0:34:02.8 Jordan Syatt: Yup.

0:34:04.5 Mike Vacanti: Right? Like imagine posting multiple times a day, cross-platform in six different places as you an individual, even if you were at your hungriest, angriest, most productive, most primed for success state, you basically couldn’t do that.

0:34:20.1 Jordan Syatt: You can’t… You can’t at all, especially when you’re by yourself.

0:34:26.6 Mike Vacanti: And maybe two, right, if you wanna pick a short form that you have some momentum on that’s going well and a long form and focus on two, that’s something that has worked well for many coaches that we’ve seen, but one or two platforms. Rather than trying to do it all.

0:34:42.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. There are, for example, TikTok and Instagram right now go very well together, mainly because TikTok became Instagram’s main competitor, and Instagram is trying to do everything they can to catch up with it and do damage control. So essentially, Instagram has included TikTok on their platform, that’s Instagram is now TikTok. And so if you’re going to make an Instagram video, Instagram reel or a TikTok, you could use them on both platforms… That’s fine. That’s no problem at all. But otherwise, I would just focus on one… What you could do, like Mike was saying, is you could have a… Film YouTube video once a week or twice a week, whatever it is. And if there are two to four clips from a YouTube video that you can then cut down into 30, 60, 90-second segments for an Instagram reel or a TikTok, whatever it is, great, you can then use that on that platform as well. But for me, when things really took off it was ’cause I was posting three times a day on Instagram every day, that’s really when things started to take off from an audience perspective, and that’s all I was doing, it was just Instagram three times a day, every day.

0:35:47.0 Jordan Syatt: And then from there, you can push elsewhere, so that’s… I think just focus on one… Just really just focus on one at a time. Now, the question here is, well, which one? I’ll start by saying this, I don’t think if you have no audience or a very small audience, I don’t think podcast is the way to go from the beginning, it’s very hard to grow a podcast if you don’t have an existing audience, which makes sense. Most podcasts are 30, 60 plus minutes and they… The only way they’re gonna find out that they know you is if they like… Are… You know what, I’m willing to dedicate 30 to 60 minutes to this one person who I don’t know, like it’s very difficult to convince someone to do that, but if they follow you on TikTok or they follow you on Instagram or they follow on YouTube or they follow your website and they trust you, then they’ll be more likely to go to it, so I would say you could choose… You could start with website, articles is a great option. You could start with Instagram, you could start with TikTok, you could start with YouTube. I think any of those would be great options to begin with, and then push later on to your email list and to your podcast, but any one of those website articles, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, I think those are really good ones to begin with.

0:37:00.0 Mike Vacanti: I completely agree. I think you made a good point about places where you can create content and then put it in two places, like posting a Reel and a TikTok and having it be the exact same thing, so you’re getting two for one there, and then either website or YouTube and that kind of depends on your strengths…

0:37:22.0 Jordan Syatt: Mm-hmm.

0:37:22.6 Mike Vacanti: Are you a great writer or do you really… Are you very extroverted and very animated and enjoy being on video, if you have a strong preference there, picking either website or YouTube and going hard on making those really strong long-form SEO-able educational pieces of content.

0:37:40.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That’s exactly right.

0:37:42.8 Mike Vacanti: Number three. How you doing, Jordan?

0:37:46.3 Jordan Syatt: Dude I’m great. I’ve put all my pumpkin seeds back in the container, so they’re not… I’m not tempted to have any.

[laughter]

0:37:53.6 Mike Vacanti: You’re getting that fiber in though.

0:37:54.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah. Yeah, I’ve got probably 35 grams of fiber in today already.

0:38:00.8 Mike Vacanti: You’re a fiber machine.

0:38:01.3 Jordan Syatt: I’m trying, man, I’m really trying. I can’t believe there are so many people out there, I know you’re not really consuming much content lately, but there are some people out there who are just trashing fiber, trashing vegetables, like CarnivoreMD fucking nonsense.

0:38:17.6 Mike Vacanti: I was literally just gonna say, is there anyone who isn’t a Carnivore advocate who is trashing fiber?

0:38:23.9 Jordan Syatt: No, it’s all Carnivore nonsense.

0:38:25.8 Mike Vacanti: Okay, so it’s people who are advocating just eating meat?

0:38:29.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I’m actually super scared about it. So this is interesting, there’s an amazing, amazing wrestler that I follow, I’m not gonna say his Instagram just ’cause I don’t wanna call him out, but amazing wrestler, world class, on the Olympic team and I followed him for years, and I saw him put on his page that he’s gonna start doing the Carnivore diet, and I think a lot of coaches struggle with well, how do you approach this? Telling someone that you really care about or whatever it is that you don’t like what they’re doing? So I actually left a comment on his page and I was just like, “I’m a huge fan, followed you for years. You’re a huge inspiration of mine.” This is a world class wrestler, a truly an incredible, incredible wrestler. And I was like, “I hope that you enjoy it and that it helps your performance and makes you feel good. Please just make sure you go to your doctor and get consistent check-ups on your colon health and all that, and blood work done to make sure everything’s okay because this is, it’s very scary to me to see a lot of people doing diets that completely lack fiber whatsoever.”

0:39:29.2 Jordan Syatt: And he ended up, he followed me immediately and DMed me and was like, “Hey man, thank you so much.” And I think it’s because I didn’t say, “This is fucking stupid,” Or like, “You should… ” I was just like, “Please just make sure you go to your doctor and get consistent check ups and otherwise, I really hope that you enjoy it.” And it ended up having a great conversation, this guy, a huge audience and very well known in the wrestling and mixed martial arts world, so who knows if anything will come from that, but when you’re trying to speak with someone who’s doing something you don’t like, coming at it from the perspective of, “This is fucking stupid,” Is not a good idea, especially if it’s someone that either is someone that you’re really close to or someone you don’t know at all. If there’s someone in between there, maybe you could be joking around like, “Yeah, that’s fucking stupid.” But if it’s a spouse, usually not a good idea to be like, “This is fucking stupid.” And if it’s someone on social media, terrible idea to take that route, especially in a comment on their post, but I thought that was interesting.

0:40:25.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s well handled. And so it’s like an important PSA.

0:40:31.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:40:32.3 Mike Vacanti: Eat your fiber.

0:40:34.2 Jordan Syatt: You track your fiber, Michael?

0:40:36.3 Mike Vacanti: No I don’t track my fiber numerically.

0:40:40.3 Jordan Syatt: Interesting, how do you track it?

0:40:41.9 Mike Vacanti: Intuitively, I’m an intuitive fiber eater.

0:40:44.4 Jordan Syatt: Got it, got it, got it. That’s our next book, intuitive fiber eating.

0:40:48.5 Mike Vacanti: Intuitive fiber…

[laughter]

0:40:54.4 Jordan Syatt: Book is doing well by the way, thank you to everyone who’s bought a copy or more like a huge thank you, we’re still number one on Amazon in exercise and fitness. I just checked, but…

0:41:01.7 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go.

0:41:02.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s crazy. And thank you to everyone who’s left a review. If you haven’t left a review yet, it would mean the world to us, especially if it was a five-star raving review, that would just be amazing, if it’s anything less than that, just you keep it to yourself, but… [laughter] But yeah, thank you to everyone who’s bought copies and who’s left a review, it means the world to us.

0:41:22.9 Mike Vacanti: It means the world, and the five star Amazon reviews do really help us a lot.

0:41:28.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:41:29.1 Mike Vacanti: And so thank you. We’re super appreciative.

0:41:31.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, what’s next?

0:41:34.2 Mike Vacanti: Number three, story telling.

0:41:37.9 Jordan Syatt: So this is one that we could go in multiple directions with ’cause there are many ways to tell a story. For example, we could use even this podcast as an example, we have the popcorn story, we have the pop-up scale story, which by the way, popupscales 20% off, link in the show notes, but people always connect to a story, that story-telling is super, super helpful. And again, this, you could use story-telling to grow your audience, but I think storytelling is the best way to go in depth, to get more depth with your audience, your current audience, even just the simple stories we’ve told today, whether it was the popcorn story or the pop-up scales, whatever it is, it creates more of a connection, it really does build a deeper connection with your audience, they feel like they know you better, they can relate to you a lot more. I’ll never forget one time I was in high school and I went this conference with my synagogue, I was in 10th or 11th grade, and they sent a few delegates from every synagogue to this conference in Baltimore, and I was one of the delegates and I went and there was, it was a huge conference, thousands and thousands and thousands of people were there, and this super, super old Rabbi walks up to the podium, like super old, the most cliche-looking Rabbi you could ever imagine, walks up with a very slow walk and he gets up to the podium, and he gives this most compelling speech I’ve ever heard.

0:43:01.1 Jordan Syatt: And I was enthralled and I was just, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. And the entire place, thousands of people was quiet, you could hear a pin drop, and at the end of it, he went, he told. He was like, “Listen, the reason you’re all so engaged right now is because I’m telling you stories.” He’s like, “If you really wanna get people’s attention, tell stories. If you wanna help people, tell stories.” And that stuck out with me ever since, and again, there are many ways to tell stories, and Mike will go into some other ways to do story telling outside of simple ones like the popupscales and popcorn stories, but even what I just told you, it’s a story. I used a story to get that message across to explain why stories are so important, and it really is, it’s also… It’s fascinating to me from the human element of it. Storytelling is the most human thing that we do, for thousands and thousands of years, what did humans do? They sat around a fire and a village, whatever it is, and they would sit there and they tell stories, and they would tell stories of mythical figures or of real people, and that’s how people bonded and connected after a long day of work. And it still holds true to this day, whether it’s on social media or whatever it is, or a podcast, people connect through story telling, and you can tell your story, you could tell client stories, you can do any number of types of stories, but telling a story is very powerful.

0:44:22.5 Mike Vacanti: We learn through storytelling too.

0:44:24.0 Jordan Syatt: Mm-hmm.

0:44:25.5 Mike Vacanti: Meaning, it’s hard to learn just by giving someone… So let’s say someone isn’t familiar with the concept of loyalty or the concept of honor, and we can use a child as an example. Giving the definition of that word isn’t sticky, like having them read it out of the dictionary isn’t going to have the same impact or last as long or have as much of an effect as telling a story, which can be fiction or non-fiction, and if you compare just like, “Alright, Jordan, here’s the definition of the word honor,” Compared to watching several seasons of Game of Thrones, for example, and watching the character arc of John Snow and understanding on a much deeper archetypical level, what honor means compared to just what the dictionary says. It’s a way to make it stickier, to make the concept stickier. And so how does this apply to your business, to your content creation? Many ways, like you just said, telling any stories is gonna improve, I don’t know, attention or enjoyment…

0:45:36.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:45:37.3 Mike Vacanti: Of what… Of the content. Just simply adding personal detail, meaning what you’re doing either from a fitness or a nutrition perspective, from a life perspective, including stories about yourself within your content, including stories about clients over time, for example. So we know that testimonials are effective for having new sign-ups for a coaching business, but then continuing to tell stories that teach lessons and educate about clients of yours. An extreme example of that was The Ultimate Sweat, when I coached Jaime and Matt Staples for a year and they had weight-loss, weight-gain but bet, people were, $150,000 bet, people were very invested in that story, which is why I had Ben come out and we really documented a lot of it, and there was a lot of new audience as a result of it, and your storytelling doesn’t need to be that extreme obviously, there just aren’t that many opportunities for that extreme of storytelling, but any way that you can work stories into your content is gonna be a beneficial thing for you and for the audience.

0:46:50.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I know one of the things that people tell me is that they’re just not a good storyteller, and they’ll often be like, “Well, you’re a good storyteller.” Well, I have a lot of practice and my early stories weren’t that good, but… So, in this, I don’t know, your clients might be like, “Oh I’m not good with working out or exercise, or I’m not good with counting calories.” Yeah, you fucking practice. You tell more stories. You try more ways. I think the thing for me, the thing that I noticed, there are many things that I’ve noticed among good storytellers, but I’ll give you two. Number one is they give you detail about what’s going on. So for example, I told you the story about when I was a delegate in 10th grade, I very much could have just said, “Oh yeah, there was this one guy who… He once said to me, he was like, “It’s really important to tell stories.” That’s a fucking terrible story, but I was like, “Yeah, when I was in 10th or 11th grade.” So now you know my age. “I was sent to this… ” I think I said it was in Baltimore, “There were thousands of people in the room, and you could hear a pin drop, and this old Rabbi walked up, the most cliche Rabbi you can imagine, walks up, and… “

0:47:56.8 Jordan Syatt: And I’m giving you details, so that you feel like you’re in the room. You can draw up an image. I think one of the best people in the world at this is JK Rowling. There’s nobody in the world that I’ve ever experienced who has been able to make… She’s literally created an entire world out of a story, she’s created an entire world, an entire cult that I’m a part of, by the way, that I was in the airport in Heathrow in London, and they had a whole Harry Potter shop, and they had all these wands, I almost bought a $50 wand, just… It’s a fucking piece of wood, but I was like, “I really want this wand.” It looked amazing. That was because of her story that she told, that got me so involved in this other world, it’s… The more detail you can give, the better generally speaking, the more you can make them feel like they’re really there. So that’s number one. And the other thing is, and this is easier said than done, but the way that you tell you… I’m gonna say it, again, it’s easier to have done, this comes with practice, you’ve just gotta be confident with you telling the story, you’ve gotta understand, this is something that’s really interesting, and I’ll use a dating analogy to get this across.

0:49:08.3 Jordan Syatt: If the person that… You go on a date with someone, first date and someone… You say, “Well, what do you do for work?” And they’re like, “Oh yeah, I work in tech.” “What do you do?” It’s like, “Well, geez. That fucking sucked.” But if you say, “What do you do for work?” And like, “Well, yeah, so I work at this tech start-up, super excited about it. Right now, what we’re trying to do is to get people to understand the concept of… ” Whatever it is, you, they go in. Now all of a sudden, I might know nothing about tech, nothing about what they’re talking about, but because they’re excited about it and because they’re passionate about it, I’m all ears. I love listening to people talk about something they’re passionate about, we all do. I would listen to someone talk about watching paint dry if they were really passionate about it. And they could tell a story about it. So if whatever it is you’re talking about, whatever it is you’re telling a story about, be confident and be passionate about it. So I think one of the easiest ways to do that is to start by telling stories about your clients. If you are a coach, odds are, you are vehemently passionate about your clients and helping them, and so let’s say one of your clients, I don’t know, dead lifts 200 pounds for the first time, tell a story.

0:50:17.3 Jordan Syatt: “When so and so first came to work with me, they were petrified to go in the gym, they were super nervous, they thought everyone in there was gonna be judging them and looking at them, and we had an entire conversation about how are we gonna get her into the gym. It took a lot of pushing, finally she got in there and on day one, she almost walked right out, but she went to the bar and she put it on, and the first one, she was nervous, she was nervous she was gonna hurt her back.” And see, already I’m making this fucking story up, it’s a fake story, but you create engagement and people get excited to hear about it, not only will people be excited to read and will they learn from it, but the person you’re telling the story about is gonna love you forever. You’re gonna be featured on their page and they’re gonna see how passionate you are about them and about helping them, they’re gonna share that with their friends and their people, and then they’re gonna wanna work with you storytelling, and there are so many ways to story tell.

0:51:04.4 Jordan Syatt: Sort of like Mike did with The Ultimate Sweat and the Staples Brothers, like I did with the Big Mac challenge, that was a way of story telling, there’s an extreme example. Every time I do a cut, I’m cutting for a Jiu Jitsu competition or whatever, I document it. Documenting is another way of saying storytelling, it’s you’re telling a story and you get better at it over time. And tell more stories and invite people into your life, that’s really how you can build more depth and reach people who are already in your community.

0:51:32.8 Mike Vacanti: Preach. Be excited and passionate. And I think what I’m pulling out of this also that you didn’t say explicitly, but that is beneficial is read great fiction, which will improve your ability to storytell just by what you pick up along the way or what you can mirror or glean from that.

0:51:52.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I really think reading Harry Potter helped my writing and story telling because when you read something like that, you realize there are so many details that aren’t necessary to the story, but they’re necessary for connection, they’re necessary for you to create an image in your head, for you to relate to the character or to what’s going on. You could tell the story of The Sorcerer’s Stone without having a lot of these extra fillers and these extra details, but those details are what make you connect to the book, those details are what makes you not able to put the book down, that you need to keep turning the page. It’s the details that create that. You don’t need to hear about Voldemort’s eyes, how they looked like a snake eyes or that he, his slits for nose, you don’t need to know that, but that’s how you can start… You start to feel disgusted and scared of him, and you create this fear, you don’t even wanna say his name, because you can feel the fear that people have and how dangerous that he was, it’s that stuff is what really creates a great story.

0:53:01.8 Mike Vacanti: Number four. Hard work.

0:53:05.8 Jordan Syatt: I’m gonna let you start with this one.

0:53:07.8 Mike Vacanti: I think you can start with this one. You’re an extraordinarily hard worker.

0:53:11.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, but you got really passionate about this one this morning.

[laughter]

0:53:16.8 Mike Vacanti: The reason why… The thing I love about hard work, is it’s a decision, it’s purely a choice, and like I said before, some things aren’t a choice. Having, I don’t even wanna go into genetics, but we all have natural strengths and weaknesses as a human being, being extraordinarily physically attractive, either as a man or a woman, gives you a leg up in life, in the all else equal obviously, you can improve your physical attractiveness to an extent or to a degree, but gives you a leg up in life, in everything, and you don’t have any control over that.

0:54:02.0 Jordan Syatt: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:54:03.9 Mike Vacanti: Your ability to sit down, to smash the keys, to write long-form articles, to communicate one-on-one with people, to dollar eighty strategy, to give your two cents all over the internet, to take up that real estate in various comment sections, to help people from other people’s comments sections, to go out there and build an audience from literally nothing, is a choice. It’s a choice, it’s if you want to. And this is, somewhere interesting where we could take this discussion is that first two to three years of getting your business off the ground, because it requires a disproportionate amount of work compared to the level of work that it will take to maintain your business. But the reason that work ethic is on this list is because, one, it’s a choice unlike many other things. Two, it will directly impact your success and the speed of your success, and three, we’re just living in a time, and we’ve touched on this in various points in recent episodes, but we’re living in a time where hard work is demonized, where hard work is, whether it’s workaholic, whether people bring in like, you’re promoting mental illness or you’re pushing people into depression. No, no, you’re not. When…

0:55:27.4 Mike Vacanti: Think of the average office worker, think of the average person who drives their car to an office to sit down for a 9.00 to 5.00, they have Becky at the cubicle next door and they have Larry at the next cubicle over who they stop behind. I’m trying to do Jordan storytelling, and I get some details, Larry who has thin grey hair, and you have people you’re talking to throughout the day, you go to the water cooler, you go get your hour and a half lunch with, how much time are you actually spending doing real work, real, sit down, focused, knowledge work? In other industries, like if you’re a construction worker, I mean, yes, there are breaks you’re taking, but the amount of work you’re doing is much more trackable, much more visible and whereas if you’re sitting at a computer, you can be… I could be playing chess for 20 minutes because I want a little break here, I’m scrolling Twitter. How much time are you actually spending working? I would venture to guess I think it’s much lower than most people think, I think three hours a day is extremely, extremely generous.

0:56:35.0 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:56:35.5 Mike Vacanti: I think it’s less than three hours a day. When that is the competition, putting in six, seven, eight, nine, 10 hours of real focused work a day almost every day for a couple of years, getting things off the ground is gonna give you a substantial leg up and massively increase your chances of success.

0:57:01.1 Jordan Syatt: Preach. Mic drop. I love that story too. Those details were good, the water cooler, Larry with the thin, gray hair. That was great.

0:57:10.0 Mike Vacanti: All right, Dale. All right.

0:57:10.9 Jordan Syatt: No, it was. I felt like I was in the office. Yeah.

0:57:15.7 Mike Vacanti: Flickering lights.

0:57:17.7 Jordan Syatt: Wow.

0:57:17.9 Mike Vacanti: That fluorescent light that you feel like is just eroding your soul, and that old carpet that’s 30 years old, and not quite moldy, but you definitely don’t wanna spend time in there and…

0:57:28.0 Jordan Syatt: Ugh, yeah. Fuck that.

0:57:31.5 Mike Vacanti: The snack draw with all the high fat, high sugar processed stuff that you… It’s just there, so you’re gonna go for it.

0:57:38.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, Chips Ahoy.

[laughter]

0:57:42.5 Jordan Syatt: I loved those Chips Ahoy. Yeah. I don’t even know if there’s much more to say about that. You’ve just got to fucking work hard, that’s really it. And you also have to understand how hard do you need to work for your goals. Let’s say you’ve got 35 to 45 clients right now, between $200 to $300 a month, and you’re happy, cool. Like, take a chill…

0:58:06.6 Mike Vacanti: Amazing.

0:58:07.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. You don’t need to keep grinding just for the sake of grinding. I work way less hard now than I did five years ago or four years ago, way less hard. I’m far more relaxed, I sleep in more, I do more things that I enjoy. I watch TV with my wife. I never used to watch TV, and I used to wear it like a badge of honor for some reason, I go, “Yeah, I don’t even have a TV. Haha” Like, “Who cares, fuck face?” No one cares. But now… Have you seen The Terminal List? I’m watching The Terminal List right now. It’s amazing. It’s super good. It’s with Chris Pratt.

0:58:43.0 Mike Vacanti: It’s not related to The Terminal with Tom Hanks, is it?

0:58:46.0 Jordan Syatt: No. That’s an amazing movie. That’s a really good movie. But it’s a completely different topic. Chris Pratt plays this Navy SEAL who’s a part of a mission that… I don’t wanna give it away, but amazing show, you should… You’ll love it. You will really, really love this show. I think it’s brand new. It’s awesome. Definitely watch it, so…

0:59:04.7 Mike Vacanti: I’ll check it out.

0:59:04.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, watching that with my wife, wake up a little bit late. I do more things for me and my family now than I did before ’cause before it was just me and I just worked and worked and worked and worked and worked.

0:59:18.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s one reason because it was just you and now you have a family, but the other reason is because you were still building before.

0:59:25.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:59:26.3 Mike Vacanti: If you worked as hard as you are right now in 2013, you wouldn’t be where you are right now.

0:59:33.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s exactly right.

0:59:34.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s a fact.

0:59:35.8 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Yep.

0:59:36.8 Mike Vacanti: You have to work… It’s like… Adding muscle is probably a good example. If you think about an intermediate lifter adding muscle, it takes a lot of work to add muscle, it takes a lot of intent sets to add muscle over time, it takes a lot of consistency, but to maintain that lean mass is so much easier and requires so much less volume and intensity.

0:59:57.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Same thing with nutrition. When you first start learning about nutrition, you gotta read about it, you gotta learn about calories and macros, you gotta Google search, alright, how many calories in this? You gotta weigh and measure the food out so you know what the portion size looks like, and then you gotta change what you’re eating and change the portions. And then after a couple of years, you could eyeball it and you’ve got your schedule down and your habits down and you can sort of maintain it without having to think about it as much. Whereas before, when you’re trying to figure out how much… I don’t know, trying to figure out how much 6 ounces of chicken weighs, like you’re weighing it out, you can’t really have a conversation while you’re doing it ’cause you’re so focused on it, now you can just look at it on a plate and know, “Yeah, it’s between like 5 and 6 ounces,” and have a full-on conversation without really needing to take some time to concentrate on that chicken to figure it out. So anything that you want, you’re gonna have to spend, especially in the beginning, a front-loaded period of time of very, very hard work.

1:00:48.5 Mike Vacanti: And even more so in building a business.

1:00:51.8 Jordan Syatt: Yes.

1:00:52.7 Mike Vacanti: You can learn how to… I love the analogy, but even the difference in hours worked is so much bigger in those… In building from zero to a full-time job, we’ll call it…

1:01:06.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.

1:01:07.3 Mike Vacanti: Is night and day compared to the effort it takes to maintain it, especially if you’re delivering, getting client referrals, doing a good job, like… We could do a whole episode on that, but we won’t.

1:01:18.8 Jordan Syatt: Number five.

1:01:20.8 Mike Vacanti: Number five might be… I’m not afraid to say this, I’m actually really happy we are because this is something that I point… This is something that is innate in Jordan Syatt’s DNA, down to his absolute core, he doesn’t…

1:01:34.3 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know what number five is, by the way. I have no idea what… You did this one yourself.

1:01:38.4 Mike Vacanti: I’m gonna build it up. Jordan was given a copy of how…

1:01:42.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I know. Yeah, I remember it. Yeah.

[laughter]

1:01:45.7 Mike Vacanti: How to Win Friends and Influence People at a young age and was like, “This is stupid. How do people not know this? This is all very, very obvious.” And most of the population does not have that reaction when reading that book for the first time. This is something that I think is… Feels slightly manipulative to someone like me.

1:02:10.0 Jordan Syatt: Mm-hmm.

1:02:10.8 Mike Vacanti: It is…

1:02:11.9 Jordan Syatt: But it is. It is manipulative. It’s 100% manipulative.

1:02:14.3 Mike Vacanti: And it’s absolutely true. Number five is make people like you.

1:02:18.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s manipulative, but I think usually we use the word manipulate in a bad or negative way. I don’t think it has to be… And I remember getting in a huge argument with my buddy David about this when I first read that book. And he got really mad, he’s like, “It’s not manipulative.” I was like, “It is manipulative.” But it doesn’t have to be bad. Think about this, the whole reason someone is making content on social media for fitness, they’re listening to this podcast is so…

1:02:46.3 Mike Vacanti: To help people.

1:02:47.9 Jordan Syatt: To help people, but so that you can build a business off of it. No one’s posting on Instagram every day just because they enjoy it, they’re doing it because, well, hopefully, it will help people, but also they’ll come to me and they’ll pay me for my services. You’re doing something specifically with the end goal of trying to get them to take the action to then pay you for your services so that you can then make more money and support your family and all that. And yes, you’re doing it in a noble way, but that’s manipulative, it is, it’s just not bad. I don’t think manipulation has an inherent bad connotation to it. You can be manipulative in a bad way, you can manipulate people to do things that you want that are bad or inappropriate or wrong or immoral, but the whole reason that someone is gonna be making fitness content online is to get people to pay for their service, so it is manipulation in that sense, but I just don’t think it has to be seen with a negative light.

1:03:40.7 Mike Vacanti: I’m with you, but I’m just telling you how it feels internally in my guts.

1:03:44.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

1:03:45.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, persuasion can be good or bad. Absolutely.

1:03:47.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Agreed, agreed.

1:03:49.7 Mike Vacanti: But the reason why it has to be in this top five is because… And we’ve… Not business coached, but we’ve helped a lot of coaches build their business, and we have seen very, very knowledgeable, intelligent, great coaches who aren’t as socially apt, don’t have a great aptitude socially or don’t have a great ability to make people like them, we’ll say, or just don’t have a super quote unquote likeable personality, not do nearly as well as coaches who might not be as intelligent and might not know the research as well, and just might even not be as good of a coach, who are much more successful because they embody this trait.

1:04:38.0 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Yeah. That’s exactly right. And this isn’t just for building a business, this is like, if you go for a job interview and the people at the job interview, the people who are picking who’s gonna get the job are not only gonna pick someone just based on how smart they are. Gary talks about this all the time. He’s like, “He’s not gonna pick someone just because they might be the best, he’s gonna pick someone who fits in with the community, who’s gonna be a good team player, who’s a good person. I think people in the world generally tend to pick people, whether it’s a partner or a spouse or a co-worker or an employee, or someone that hires a fitness coach is they want someone that… The cliche is they don’t care about you until they know how much you care about them. Right? And the reality is a lot of times people liking you comes down to knowing if you care about them, and that is going to come from how you act and from what you say and if they can tell that you really care about them. And sometimes making sure people know that you care about them is… It’s not just about giving good content, it’s not just about being right and having good… Having correct information, it’s about how you interact with them and how you interact with that information, how you deliver the information.

1:06:00.7 Jordan Syatt: These are the things that will get people to be like, “Oh, I really like that person. I really like you.” Not because… I know, actually, of some people who are unbelievably smart and who… I’m not gonna name them ’cause they’d probably be a little bit offended, but they’re super smart, they’re… Just from a by-the-book perspective, they would be a great coach, but people fucking hate them because they just don’t like their demeanor, they don’t like how they act, they don’t like how they interact with people, they don’t like how it’s so much…

1:06:36.9 Mike Vacanti: What do they do specifically that makes people not like them? Argumentative?

1:06:39.6 Jordan Syatt: Very argumentative, very negative. Very negative all the time. Oftentimes, very show-off-y, all they do is just show off what they do. It’s just like, “Look at me, look at me, look at me.” They pick a lot of fights with people. They’re, I would say, very disagreeable. Very disagreeable. Right? So to the extreme…

1:07:01.8 Mike Vacanti: On the Big Five Personality… Big Five Personality Test Traits, agreeableness, very disagreeable?

1:07:08.0 Jordan Syatt: Correct. Like, too much. And I think a certain amount of disagreeableness can actually be something that people like, they like to see it. They don’t want to watch someone just get walked all over, that doesn’t… It’s not something people enjoy seeing, they don’t admire that or respect that.

1:07:21.8 Mike Vacanti: You’re talking like 98th percentile?

1:07:23.7 Jordan Syatt: Correct. They’re to the point where everything is an argument. Imagine… I think we’ve all been in a discussion with someone where no matter what you say, the person’s like, “Well, yeah, but… Well, yeah, but… ” It’s like, “Shhh.” It’s one of the things that really annoys me, when people are like, “Well, yeah, but… I’m like… And I actually… I’ve gotten in arguments with my mom about this ’cause we’ll say something… Well, we’ll have a conversation and I’ll give my point, and then she’ll say, “Well, yeah, but… ” And then she’ll give her point and her point agrees with my point, and I’ll be like, “But why did you say, ‘Yeah, but’? That means you’re about to disagree with me, but you just agreed with everything I said.” She was like, “Yeah, I know. I was just adding this.” I was like, “But don’t say, ‘Yeah, but.’ Be like, ‘Yeah, and.'”

1:08:05.5 Mike Vacanti: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

1:08:07.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s a simple thing that… I don’t know if other people think about this stuff, but that stuff pisses me off. And I think that even if you don’t actively think about it, people feel it in how we communicate. And this is one of the things I love about language, words are really, really important. The words you choose to use and how you choose to use them and how you say them, it matters. It really does matter. And I think I’m very lucky it comes naturally to me, but I’ve also enjoyed studying it and looking into it and saying like, “Wow, this stuff on a subconscious level plays a big role in whether or not someone is going to be drawn to you and to like you or not.” And that… People are way more likely to hire someone that they like even if they’re not the best coach than they are to hire someone who might be the best coach but they don’t fucking like them, because it all comes back to, do they care about you? And that’s really what it boils down to. If they can tell that you really care about them, they’re gonna like you so much more. So you have to make that a really big part of what you do, make sure they know that you care about them and that you appreciate them. I think that’s the number one way to help people really get a connection with you and to like you is they have to know that you care about them.

1:09:17.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. At the core of it, that’s the feeling, the philosophy, the… Yes. Real quick, to play devil’s advocate, some people will say, “Well, this person is super successful and they’re very disagreeable and very argumentative and pretty cynical and very like, needs to win every argument, needs to be right. It is my opinion that that person is successful in spite of that behavior and that if they implemented more Dale Carnegie, that they would actually be more quote unquote successful”.

1:09:53.1 Jordan Syatt: So there are people like that. I agree that they would be successful in spite of that, but I also know these people, and I know someone that we’re probably talking about, we’re probably on the same page with this right now, and these people tend to be very unhappy. And so they’re perpetually unhappy and angry people even if their business is doing very well, they complain all the fucking time. They’re angry, they’re mad, they’re comparing themselves to other people, and it comes across in their content ’cause in their content they’re angry and mad and upset and pessimistic and very disagreeable. So if we’re only defining success as how well is your business doing, then yes, some people will be able to succeed in spite of this, but if your successes isn’t solely relegated to how your business is doing but also includes your happiness on a whole, your health, your mental health, your emotional health, work-life balance, all of that stuff, then life is much easier if you don’t… If you’re not just a pessimistic, negative piece of shit all the time.

[chuckle]

1:10:55.5 Jordan Syatt: It’s much easier and far less stressful.

1:11:00.0 Mike Vacanti: Uh-huh. And far more enjoyable and just…

1:11:00.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

1:11:01.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

1:11:02.8 Jordan Syatt: People hate listening to people complain. It’s the worst. No one likes listening to someone complain, it’s the fucking worst. So be very cautious. This is why I tend not to do the videos, like calling people out about their fitness content, because it’s so easy for it to come across as complaining and just being a whiner or jealous. These are all things that people don’t like to see. Someone who does it very well is James Smith, he does a very good job of making it funny. He makes it funny so it doesn’t come across as complaining or whining, it comes across more as like a stand-up comedy act. And that’s funny and people… If you can be funny, then great, not everyone’s gonna be funny with it, but if you know you’re not a funny person and you’re doing these call-out videos, be very aware that it’s probably looking like complaining, and that is not a good look.

1:12:00.4 Mike Vacanti: We’ve got a sale, 20% off, popupscales is the discount code at fitnessbusinessmentorship.com, you can get there in the show notes. Thank you very much for listening. We’re back from the intermission, weekly uploads infinitely into the future.

1:12:16.8 Jordan Syatt: Until the next intermission. Who knows when that’ll be. So for right now, to get in at the lowest price that you will ever get for the online fitness business mentorship if you want help building your business, if you want us to teach you step by step what you need to do to help more people or reach more people, build a business that can support you and your family and your loved ones while helping people achieve their fitness and health goals, go to the link in the show notes, popupscales for the 20% off discount code. And we’ll see you next week.

1:12:42.0 Mike Vacanti: Goodbye, everyone.