Episode 90: High Ticket Coaching Nonsense, Clients Who Ghost, Battling People in The DMs, and More…

0:00:11.8 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.0 Jordan Syatt: What’s going on, Michael?

0:00:15.4 Mike Vacanti: Another podcast, baby. Grip it and rip it.

0:00:16.9 Jordan Syatt: Weekly uploads. Weekly uploads.

0:00:20.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s just what we do. We’ve done weeks and weeks and months and years of weekly almost audio uploads, and who knows if there will be more than audio coming soon.

0:00:32.5 Jordan Syatt: Video could be soon.

0:00:34.2 Mike Vacanti: Video. Bro, we might have a YouTube channel. We might… Who knows.

0:00:38.9 Jordan Syatt: There literally could be an entire social media agency built around what we’ve got.

0:00:46.1 Mike Vacanti: Agency. How to become a Vayner Media personal trainer agency, thousand employees, Singapore, London.

0:00:55.9 Jordan Syatt: They might have an office for us on the International Space Station.

[laughter]

0:01:00.9 Jordan Syatt: Who knows.

0:01:01.6 Mike Vacanti: TikTok. [laughter] How are you doing? Dude, you’re a dad.

0:01:05.7 Jordan Syatt: Bro, I’m a father to a girl.

0:01:07.7 Mike Vacanti: You are a father.

0:01:08.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:01:09.4 Mike Vacanti: You’re a girl dad.

0:01:10.2 Jordan Syatt: Girl dad. I’ve been debating whether or not I should put something like that in my Instagram bio, but trying to make it funny, not ’cause all these guys, but like dad, girl dad, husband, which is fine, but I sort of wanna do it in a funny way and I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that. So I haven’t figured that out yet, but…

0:01:26.9 Mike Vacanti: How to do it so that it’s not just like…

0:01:30.1 Jordan Syatt: The cliche girl dad.

0:01:30.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s the word I was looking for.

0:01:31.5 Jordan Syatt: Girl dad times one. Yeah. [laughter]

0:01:36.6 Mike Vacanti: Husband. Girl dad.

0:01:38.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:01:38.8 Mike Vacanti: Wizard.

[laughter]

0:01:41.7 Mike Vacanti: Or what’s your bio? Always black belt in…

0:01:45.1 Jordan Syatt: 27th degree black belt and chugging coffee, which I am back on the coffee train now.

0:01:49.1 Mike Vacanti: Let’s start with that. That’s actually on my list of things. You went a very long time with no caffeine.

0:01:55.6 Jordan Syatt: I did.

0:01:57.5 Mike Vacanti: Or no coffee, very limited, like the occasional half a diet coke here and there, but for all intents and purposes, zero caffeine for a long time and now a lack of sleep.

0:02:08.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and now it’s just like I remember, I think it was like the third day, which is like next to no sleep, I was like, I need something bad. And as soon as I had two sips, I was like, “I’m back, baby.” [laughter]

0:02:23.8 Mike Vacanti: This is so good.

0:02:25.3 Jordan Syatt: It hits so well. [laughter]

0:02:27.6 Mike Vacanti: Michael Pollan, he was on Rogan a long time ago, this guy who didn’t experiment where he went three months without coffee, and he talked about the first… I think he had a cappuccino or a latte, his first drink back and he’s like, “I just wanted to do things.” It hits different than when you’re having it every day.

0:02:46.7 Jordan Syatt: It hits so different. It was just like mental clarity, focus, excitement, happiness, joy, just like everything. I was like, “This is amazing.” I was like, “This coffee is the best coffee I’ve ever had. This is literally the best coffee ever. I can’t believe this coffee tastes so good. Oh my God, I feel so great. I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that. I’ll do laundry. I’ll take her out.” [laughter] It felt great yeah.

0:03:08.6 Mike Vacanti: You had it and you woke up and you were like, “I’m still tired, even though I just woke up and it’s time to start the day,” and you just thought, “I’m gonna have a cup of coffee.”

0:03:15.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I had like a couple hours of sleep and I was just like… I woke up and I… It was one of those wake-ups where… There’s a very famous story where I was asleep in Gary’s basement, and I was supposed to be coaching him, and Gary was like, “Where is Jordan?” and you’re like, “I think he’s still sleeping,” and you came to wake me up and you woke me up and I was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and then I fell back to sleep, but you had already left the room. And then 10 minutes goes by and Gary was like, “Wait, where is Jordan?” and you’re like, “I think he must have fell back asleep.” It’s like what… You say this story better. [laughter]

0:03:52.0 Mike Vacanti: Well, because I was awake and I know the story. [laughter] You’re telling it right. And to your benefit, to whatever benefit we can give you, you are in a pitch black, pitch black, very comfortable room in a very cold basement. So it was optimal sleeping conditions. But yeah, I went and woke you up and I went back out there and some time had gone by and Gary’s like, “I think he fell back to sleep. Go wake him up.” And I was like, “No. No. He’s coming.” Gary said, “Go check on him.” I was like, “Alright.” [laughter] I go in there and you were out cold. I was like, “Jord, you gotta coach Gary. You shot up”

0:04:33.8 Jordan Syatt: Just completely out, yeah. It was like that type of tired where I was up, but the only reason I hadn’t fallen back to sleep is because I was like, “I’ve got a brand new infant baby girl that needs me,” so I was like, “Alright, get out of bed.” And I get out of bed and I’m like, “I need something ’cause this is really bad,” and I make that coffee and I’m like, immediately just like…

[vocalization]

0:04:57.2 Jordan Syatt: “Oh, what a beautiful morning.” Just like immediately. [laughter]

0:05:04.4 Mike Vacanti: Good. And since you’ve had what, like one cup each morning?

0:05:08.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I’ve had one a day. I’ve had one cup a day. Sometimes it’s in the morning, sometimes it’s like when I get back from Jiu-Jitsu. But yeah, about one a day. And it’s still about… I think it’s like 100 milligrams of caffeine, somewhere around there. It’s really not that much. So yeah.

0:05:25.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s not like when you had 1.3 grams in the caffeine hydration challenge…

0:05:31.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh my God.

0:05:32.1 Mike Vacanti: You almost like… You’re like brain and soul went to another universe for a period of time.

0:05:35.9 Jordan Syatt: And I was literally… I was like, “I’m leaving the apartment and I’m just gonna go walk around this block where there’s this, like the… What’s it called? The urgent care. Urgent care. Yeah, I walk around the block of urgent care, so if I happen to have a heart attack and fall down in the street, all they would have to do is wheel me into the urgent care. [laughter]

0:05:54.8 Mike Vacanti: Smart, smart.

0:05:57.6 Jordan Syatt: My wife was like, “Where are you going?” I was like, “I’m gonna go on a walk.” And I just put on stand-up comedy on my phone so I could try and laugh and calm down and just walk around the one block where the urgent care in New York City was on 42nd, I think, so I could just like, God forbid, something happen and I just did that for a couple of hours. [laughter]

0:06:15.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I mean it’s a smart play.

0:06:18.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:06:19.9 Mike Vacanti: Speaking of super high levels of caffeine, I currently… I got a little bit of rotation. You can see like, neck’s not too bad that way and I can go front to back pretty solidly, like I can move it, but if I try and just shift to here or here, man, we need this video…

0:06:40.3 Jordan Syatt: We need this video yeah.

0:06:43.1 Mike Vacanti: No range at all. I have the most standard recurring injury that I haven’t done to myself in over a year. Historically, it was every 3-6 months, I’d tweak my neck. It actually comes from the top of my t-spine. There’s a couple vertebrae in there and I’ve had it looked at professionally, and probably an intercostal strain that I don’t know, hits a nerve in some way, no one really knew, but basically I came to realize that this recurring injury happens when there’s, one, too much stimulation, and two, and then I’m very tight up here and the muscles around that area are very tight, and then on top of that, I try and do things heavy overhead, whether that’s pushing or pulling, that’s when I would hurt it historically. And I’ve been really good about managing that for over a year and I was just in New York with Gary, working him out in person for a few days, and I upped my training frequency, I was having coffee plus an energy drink every single day.

0:07:45.2 Mike Vacanti: I was on flights and in Ubers and driving around and sitting way more than normal, on my phone way more than normal, so the combination of all these things in New York City, a lot of stimulation, a lot of action, and then literally went heavy-weighted chin-ups and heavy overhead press in my lift yesterday which was just so dumb and immediately was like… I felt it go… I was like, “Oh man.” It’s like I’m not gonna be able to move.

0:08:10.2 Jordan Syatt: You knew.

0:08:11.5 Mike Vacanti: The second it… ‘Cause it’s just a… It’s a jolt. It’s like a hard jolt literally in my spine and I was like, I’m not gonna be able to move my head later today. So it’s where I’m at right now.

0:08:22.0 Jordan Syatt: Weighted chin-ups can really do that sometimes, like the combo of both overhead chin-up to an overhead press. But sometimes that weighted chin-up, it’s so hard not to be reaching with your neck, it’s like, that can really, really provoke it.

0:08:34.5 Mike Vacanti: I have some weird theories on what leads to the state for me to be in to hurt this. I think there is slightly more flexion in my t-spine, and I can tell based on filming stuff and just seeing myself recently, coming from a lack of deep breathing. And we’ve made fun of… Don’t do a 59-minute warm-up ’cause you’re 59 years old. But you literally… Every time you’re getting in a deep breath and filling up your belly, then filling up your chest cavity, you’re getting a little concentric, eccentric on your spinal cord, on your vertebrae on every single breath that you take. And if you’re not breathing deep, you’re not getting that eccentric, concentric, you’re not getting that movement. And I think that my upper back is just in a slightly more flexion, a slightly more rounded position, which then trying to go overhead on a grip that I wasn’t a fan of, it was like a 45-degree grip between completely not parallel and not underhand.

0:09:41.2 Jordan Syatt: I hate those. What the hell is the point of those grips? I can’t stand those.

0:09:44.7 Mike Vacanti: I know. And I’m just not… I don’t have the groove greased with my shoulder blades on that angle, and then I was like, “Oh, I’ll just load it up and go bicep-dominant and not go full extension at the bottom.” You idiot, Mike.

0:09:57.9 Jordan Syatt: No. You know what’s interesting about that grip? I love that grip for EZ curls, EZ bar curls. I hate that grip for overhead chins.

0:10:08.6 Mike Vacanti: Me too. So I can’t move my head, but…

0:10:11.6 Jordan Syatt: This happened this morning?

0:10:14.4 Mike Vacanti: Yesterday.

0:10:14.4 Jordan Syatt: How did you sleep?

0:10:17.3 Mike Vacanti: In pain. I took Advil and just… One of those where…

0:10:18.5 Jordan Syatt: You take PMs? Advil PMs?

0:10:22.0 Mike Vacanti: No, no. I’m very off… Ever since I read that book that had this study that the ingredient in Advil PMs, the people who take it consistently led to a 60%, or it might have been more, it might have be a 160% increase in dementia, I remember I called you immediately, I was like, “Bro, we’re done with Advil PMs.”

0:10:40.2 Jordan Syatt: I was on a big Advil PM kick. I was like, “Man, I sleep so well with these.” [laughter] You told me that, I was like, “I’m done with these.” [laughter]

0:10:46.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah yeah. Yeah. And I never… You only were for a month or two. I took them once every 1-2 months just to get a big 12-hour night of sleep, but I never took them consistently.

0:11:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I was taking them consistently for a month or so. I was just like, “This is the best sleep I’ve ever had.” [laughter]

0:11:08.7 Mike Vacanti: But no, you’re right, last night was terrible when I had to roll over, I physically have to grab my head with both hands and then move my head and roll over with it.

0:11:16.7 Jordan Syatt: Dude that is the worst, when you literally have to put your hand behind your head in order to… Oh my God, that’s awful.

0:11:25.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:11:28.3 Jordan Syatt: How long does it take to heal?

0:11:29.2 Mike Vacanti: It depends. I’m smart with it. I’ve got a little hot tub sesh, little sauna this morning, which heat makes me more able to get through the day, taking Advil. I think I’ll be lifting… Today’s Saturday. I think I’ll be able to get some kind of lifting on Tuesday, maybe Monday, but probably Tuesday.

0:11:47.9 Jordan Syatt: Okay. You’re gonna get your steps in and stuff and otherwise, just wait until you lift on Monday or Tuesday.

0:11:52.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s right.

0:11:53.9 Jordan Syatt: Nice.

0:11:54.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s right. I like that you work those steps in there.

0:11:57.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

0:12:00.1 Mike Vacanti: Always getting the steps in. Oh, okay.

0:12:05.8 Jordan Syatt: What?

0:12:06.9 Mike Vacanti: Remember when you talked about lifting, but basically not scrunching up your face, not treating it like it was difficult, almost like convincing yourself that it wasn’t that hard, really relaxing and going through it?

0:12:21.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:12:24.9 Mike Vacanti: Talk about that.

0:12:25.0 Jordan Syatt: Did I already talk about it on the podcast?

0:12:27.5 Mike Vacanti: I think we did, but maybe just a brief recap.

0:12:30.9 Jordan Syatt: You basically just said it. It’s like where, yeah…

0:12:31.4 Mike Vacanti: Or give me an update. Are you…

[laughter]

0:12:35.4 Mike Vacanti: Are you still doing it? Have you noticed anything interesting there? Are you back to really tensing up and scrunching up your face when you’re lifting? Has anything changed?

0:12:47.7 Jordan Syatt: No it’s a conscious thought process that I literally keep track of in everything that I do, whether it’s like heavy lifting or sprinting. If I’m doing sprints or any type of cardio or if I’m heavy lifting or even during Jiu-jitsu, I’ve noticed that if I’m rolling with somebody and going high intensity, I really try and just keep my face calm and relaxed because the more calm that I am, the less energy that I use. It requires energy to tense up. Your muscles are contracting. That’s a muscle contraction. You’re using energy in order to do that. Not to mention the mental aspect of it, of like when you scrunch your face, it’s no… If you’re in a bad mood, but you just force yourself, like smile huge, you feel better immediately for whatever reason. When you take on these, I don’t know the right phrasing, but when you put yourself in that situation when you scrunch and scrunch and scrunch and like, “Oh my God, this is so difficult,” it’s gonna make it even harder, but when you can be calm and relaxed, you can probably eke out several more reps or even more without it being as much of an issue. So I have to catch myself ’cause I very often catch myself scrunching and I immediately stop. But yeah, I try and do it every time.

0:14:04.5 Mike Vacanti: Do you notice this or have you applied this to any areas of your life, not physical activity, fitness-related?

0:14:12.9 Jordan Syatt: Specifically scrunching my face?

0:14:16.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:14:18.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.

0:14:19.9 Mike Vacanti: Sure.

0:14:21.3 Jordan Syatt: Not really, no, ’cause I don’t think I’m a huge face scruncher in everyday life.

0:14:27.8 Mike Vacanti: Maybe not just scrunching your face. I’ll tell you where I’m going with all of this.

0:14:30.9 Jordan Syatt: You’re trying to lead into something else and I’m not sure where you’re going with…

0:14:32.9 Mike Vacanti: I’ll tell you…

[laughter]

0:14:35.8 Mike Vacanti: No, you don’t know where I’m going with this. My buddy, Danny Miranda, shoutout to Danny who’s a listener of the podcast…

0:14:42.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh I know Danny. What’s up Danny?

0:14:44.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. You’ve been on his podcast right?

0:14:45.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I love Danny. Yeah.

0:14:46.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah Danny’s got a great podcast of his own. He had Derek Sivers as a guest, who I only really know is like… He’s done a lot of things entrepreneurially, he’s a musician historically, he has some cool ideas, but he was on Tim Ferriss in 2015 when I was listening to every single episode of Tim Ferriss’ podcast, and he had this story, and I’ll give a very brief summary, basically, he lived in California, like the Santa Monica Pier area, and every day he would go for this bike ride, and it was the exact same ride next to the water, but very competitive dude, was trying to get the best possible time every single ride he went. And so he had the same distance, he had the same route, and no matter what he did, he got down to a place where 43 minutes was as fast as he could go. He’d be gritting his teeth and going as hard as he could and everything, putting everything into it, face, I would imagine, extremely scrunched, even though he didn’t say that. 43 minutes…

0:15:47.6 Jordan Syatt: Squeezing the handle bars is like just… Yeah.

0:15:50.5 Mike Vacanti: Everything.

0:15:52.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:15:53.7 Mike Vacanti: Could never beat 43 minutes. And then one day decided, “I’m not doing this competitively, I’m not like doing triathlons or bike races or anything. I’m just gonna go enjoy the ride today. And I’m just gonna go for a nice, easy, casual ride,” was paying attention to the waves out there and the ships out in the ocean and smiling at people who walked and went by in the other direction and saw some birds going over at one point, and I think he said one actually shit on him and it went in his mouth, which is like…

0:16:24.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh my God. [laughter]

0:16:26.6 Mike Vacanti: It was just a very random part of the story, but a bird pooped in his mouth. But he was noticing things and just really enjoying and going for a very casual ride. And when he got done. It was 45 minutes.

0:16:39.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, not that bad.

0:16:40.7 Mike Vacanti: And so…

0:16:40.8 Jordan Syatt: Just like two minutes off of his best.

0:16:40.9 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:16:41.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:16:41.9 Mike Vacanti: Exact… So literally pouring everything into it, blood, sweat, tears, like physically and mentally exhausted afterwards compared to this extraordinarily casual, enjoyable, like refreshing ride. And it was basically the same thing, 43 or 45 minutes. And he summarized that by saying, relax for the same result. And the area that I have noticed this in is interestingly enough, computer work. Because you and I used to really gear up for like email sessions, program design sessions, like all the caffeine, Monster, staying up late, putting headphones in, angry music, whatever it takes to get in this hyper-tense state to goose egg, to do work, to get it all done, to grind. I have noticed that if I just casually sit down at the computer and, “Oh, what’s here in the inbox?” like, “Oh, this is… There’s many, many paragraphs here back-to-back, a giant wall of text that I need to reply to, but I’m just… Rather than having to gear up and have a Monster and… I’m just gonna nicely, easily reply.”

0:17:54.8 Mike Vacanti: It ends up being the same result. I actually find that I can get more work done in a smaller amount of time that doesn’t have like the build-up and the letdown after by just relaxing for the same result. Which is why I was asking you if you had applied that principle of relaxing in the gym toward anything non-fitness-related.

0:18:16.1 Jordan Syatt: No, it’s funny, I hadn’t even thought of it in that… I hadn’t extrapolated it like that before to other aspects of my life. I was just like, I couldn’t get my head off the face scrunch. I was like, “No, I don’t think I face scrunch.” I’m like, “Do I face scrunch when I drive? Do I face scrunch when I’m eating?” No, I’m not a big face scruncher. [laughter] But I think I’m usually a pretty relaxed guy. I’m pretty go-with-the-flow, so I’m fun.

0:18:43.0 Jordan Syatt: I think… Yeah, I think I’m usually pretty go-with-the-flow. So no, otherwise where it’s like when I get into that competitive mindset, that’s when I really… I struggle with it, whether it was work or whatever. So I have not thought about it elsewhere. But I will try and carry that over now. I like that.

0:19:01.8 Mike Vacanti: Let me make an example of something that you maybe are doing without even having realized it. When you would go to battle in the DMs, I would imagine that was like a very fight-or-flight, like competitive, high heart rate, high cortisol kind of state compared to I envision you now not going to battle in the DMs, but being on Instagram, making a story, and now, not just being the last week, I guess, but over the last several months or a year-plus, kinda still being productive, but maybe more casually.

0:19:37.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah but I had a real big battle the other day.

0:19:40.8 Mike Vacanti: You went to battle. Was this about parenting?

0:19:43.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, I went…

0:19:43.9 Mike Vacanti: Alright, let’s hear it.

0:19:45.0 Jordan Syatt: ‘Cause about fitness and nutrition, I don’t care, I don’t care about those battles anymore, like politics and stuff, I rarely care about that stuff anymore, but parenting is new to me, so like, “Oh man, this woman just fucking set me off.” ‘Cause I’m posting pictures of my daughter…

0:20:04.3 Mike Vacanti: What’s her handle? What’s her handle?

0:20:05.3 Jordan Syatt: Want me to blast her out? I’m not…

[laughter]

0:20:08.3 Jordan Syatt: Everyone, go bully her. [laughter] No, I’m not gonna do that. She blocked me, which I was very proud of. But God, it was so annoying. So I’m like posting pictures of my daughter, super excited, and I’m not telling anyone her name ’cause I don’t want crazy people to know my daughter’s name and stuff, and 99% of people are cool with that, 1% of people are like, “I don’t know, why don’t you just tell us her name? It doesn’t matter.” And I’m like, “Alright whatever. Fuck you.” This one was like… I cannot believe she asked this. She goes, “Well, did you get her consent to post pictures of her?”

0:20:45.0 Jordan Syatt: And at first I thought she was joking. So I replied with laughing face ’cause I was like, “Haha, no, she’s only five days old.” [laughter] And she replies so aggressively, she goes, “Yeah, no shit. But what I’m saying is, is that you’re acting all high and mighty that you’re not releasing her name and that you’re such a martyr for doing it, meanwhile, you haven’t gotten her consent to post her pictures.” And I was like, “Oh my God, this woman is serious.” And I just… I went off. I just went off on this girl and we had a couple back and forths, and then she just ended up blocking me. And I was like, “Thank God,” and I was like, I don’t want this person to follow me at all. But yeah, I got in a real heated one with this one. [laughter]

0:21:36.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah I can understand why that would piss you off. Not to mention…

0:21:38.3 Jordan Syatt: She was like, “I don’t know why you’re taking this so personally.” I was like, “Did you read what you wrote?” [laughter] There’s a much better way to approach this discussion.

0:21:50.6 Mike Vacanti: There’s a much better way to approach this discussion, and why is she even having the discussion?

0:21:55.1 Jordan Syatt: Yes.

0:21:55.9 Mike Vacanti: Why is it her… Why does she have a position… Maybe not why does she have a position on what you do or how you do it, but why on earth is she voicing that position to you as one of 850,000 people who are following along?

0:22:13.1 Jordan Syatt: If she had approached it like, “Hey, I really appreciate that you’re not sharing her name. Do you think… Have you thought about potentially her maybe being upset about you sharing pictures of her in the future? What about that scenario?” I would’ve been happy to have that discussion where I’d like, “Yeah, if she doesn’t want that, I’ll remove the pictures. This is why I don’t share her name so that she still has anonymity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” But the way she came at it so aggressively, I was like, “What… You need to read How to Win Friends and Influence People. This is not how you approach this discussion at all.” It was literally the way she approached it. And that was part of the, because she pissed me off so much, I was like, “You need to find something to do with your time.” I was like, “You’re spending your time…

0:22:56.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s how you went back at her?

0:22:58.6 Jordan Syatt: Well, that was like later on, at the end of it. I was like, “Social media is my job. I interact with thousands of people on here every day. This is what I do. What the fuck is your excuse for trying to tell someone else how they should be doing their parenting?” and that’s when she ended up blocking me. But I was like, “You’re spending… ” She was like, “I have… ” I said, I was like, “You need to get friends in person and like real hobbies.” And I was like… She was like, “I don’t know why you’re saying this.” I was like, “Because what are you doing? Why are you putting so much time and energy and with such hatred and vitriol? You should actually do things in person with real people.” And she was like, “Well, what are you doing?” I was like, “This is my job.” I was like, “What the fuck is your excuse?” And then she blocked me. [laughter]

0:23:43.2 Mike Vacanti: “I have a personal brand, it’s in the marketing department of Syatt Fitness, Inc.

0:23:47.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And then your accountant, Tyler McBroom, not… Is he an accountant?

0:23:51.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:23:52.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, he messaged me, he was like, “Bro, you need to get your daughter on the payroll,” because then if I’m posting pictures of her on my business account, apparently that counts as like like a model or something for your business.

0:24:06.7 Mike Vacanti: Child model.

0:24:07.5 Jordan Syatt: I was like, “Oh man.” He’s like, “No… ” I thought he… I was like, “Hahaha.” He was like, “No, I’m serious. You could actually do that,” which I need to look into the legalities of that and how that actually works. But…

0:24:16.6 Mike Vacanti: He knows the tax law back and front.

0:24:19.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. But overall, everything’s really good. [laughter] But that was one battle I had the other day. I was just like…

0:24:27.3 Mike Vacanti: A recent battle.

0:24:27.9 Jordan Syatt: And I’ve basically come to the point in my career where I’m like, if people are gonna give me shit I was like… For fitness stuff, I don’t care. For politics stuff, I don’t really care. But if people are gonna come in and do parenting shit and be really like… I will go after you. I just don’t care. I think that fatherly instinct is really kicking in.

0:24:50.2 Mike Vacanti: I’m surprised it’s only been one person.

0:24:52.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. I mean maybe I’ve missed some ’cause I’ve had a lot of DMs, ’cause they’re like, “Oh, your daughter’s so cute, it’s great.” But like, man, yeah, I think that fatherly parental instinct of protection is just like, I will destroy you at this point if you say anything.

[laughter]

0:25:10.5 Jordan Syatt: “I am a blue belt with multiple stripes. I’ve got… I’m two-stripe Jiu-Jitsu blue belt, alright. I will destroy you.” [laughter]

0:25:22.8 Mike Vacanti: It actually brings up something I was thinking about today that I wasn’t planning on talking about here, but the idea of spending a lot of time on social media when it isn’t…

0:25:38.9 Mike Vacanti: When it isn’t content marketing, when it isn’t part of my business is so foreign to me, and there’s a couple of elements to this, I see a few groups, I see people who are making content for the purposes of supporting themselves and their family… It’s literally content marketing. Then I see people on the far other end of the spectrum, and I think of some of my really good friends’ wives, my buddies I grew up with, who have 47 followers and their pictures are… Everyone who follows them is like their mom, their aunt, their cousin, their… And all their pictures of their family, like, “Oh, it’s her second birthday and here’s her eating cake,” like those… And which is so wholesome to me. ‘Cause it feels like the original intent of social media, you’re literally sharing pictures kinda unfiltered, not really thinking too much about it with people who you actually know in real life.

0:26:37.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:26:39.0 Mike Vacanti: And then there’s this middle ground of like, it’s not part of business, but it’s clearly people are posting to be validated whether… And usually it’s more followers, but there’s no business on the backend, maybe they’re creating a business with that, I don’t really know, but it’s clearly very hand-picked and for the purpose of PR-ing themselves to the world. And when I say world, I mean like the 50 to 100 to 150 people they know in real life, but then thousands of people they don’t know. There’s no business attached to it. It’s like, why are you spending time doing that?

0:27:12.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s very odd. It’s very odd.

0:27:16.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And I was thinking about that today. And on the consumption side of it, I guess different people just… We’ve talked about this with real style content and how effectively you can really be learning from consuming that sound bite compared to watching an hour lecture, reading a 6,000-word article or reading a book, like places to get deeper knowledge, but also on the consumption side, as it pertains to education, ’cause entertainment I get, I can see you just wanna mindlessly scroll, cool, but if you’re actually getting educated… It doesn’t seem like a good place for deep education.

0:27:58.7 Jordan Syatt: On Instagram or TikTok? Yeah, absolutely not.

0:28:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Or that style of content. And granted, give the people what they want in order to give them what they need, you build an audience there, and then they find your YouTube, and then they find your website, and then they find your places where they can deep dive and learn more, incredible, but for the population who spends, I don’t know, a few hours a day consuming only that style of content and never branches out to anything else, and I think of the younger generation, because I’ve been interacting with some 8-15-year-olds, like family friends, like different people recently who, and I’ve even noticed this with people in their early 20s, don’t watch movies, don’t like movies, find movies boring, can’t… Don’t…

0:28:49.5 Jordan Syatt: How crazy is that?

0:28:51.1 Mike Vacanti: In my mind, like… “How can you find a movie… ” Because they just want bang, bang, bang, bang.

0:28:54.2 Jordan Syatt: Cut, cut, cut, cut cut, cut, cut, cut. Yeah.

0:28:56.6 Mike Vacanti: Fast, new, don’t like this, swipe, new idea, oh, it stimulates…

0:29:00.7 Jordan Syatt: That’s so crazy.

[overlapping conversation]

0:29:02.5 Jordan Syatt: Movies to them are like what books were like to us when we were kids.

0:29:05.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:29:05.7 Jordan Syatt: I don’t wanna read a book. I wanna watch TV or movies, or whatever. And now they’re like, “I don’t wanna watch a movie. I wanna go to TikTok.” Yeah that’s crazy.

0:29:13.9 Mike Vacanti: It’d be interesting, it’d be interesting to see how that shapes the future generations to come.

0:29:22.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, things just get faster and faster and faster, and faster and faster. It’s just like… Yeah, we’ll see. And it’s very old man of us to be like, “This is gonna ruin them. This is… “

0:29:32.1 Mike Vacanti: It’s gonna ruin society.

0:29:32.9 Jordan Syatt: “This is ruining society, all this stuff.” It’s so funny. I see old… I forget which video I was watching from… I think it’s from like the ’70s or ’80s where this guy was talking about just being like, “This is it. This is ruining our society, the fabric of our culture, all the stuff,” and every single generation says that over and over and over and over and over again. I will say, you know what’s really interesting about… Sorry, keep going, keep going.

0:29:56.8 Mike Vacanti: I was just gonna say, in a sense, it does though. Ruin is the wrong word. Changes.

0:30:00.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah changes. Yeah.

0:30:03.0 Mike Vacanti: It changes culture.

0:30:05.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:30:06.8 Mike Vacanti: So the old… The grumpy old man isn’t wrong when he says the new generation is like changing things. It’s just…

0:30:13.8 Jordan Syatt: The question of whether or not the change leads to destruction or… Yeah yeah.

0:30:18.7 Mike Vacanti: Better or worse outcomes.

0:30:20.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah yeah.

0:30:21.0 Mike Vacanti: We’ll see. We’re watching it unfold.

0:30:23.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s been interesting though, so my content used to just be purely content marketing from the perspective of it’s just fitness content. That’s it. Like when I first started right?

0:30:32.9 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:30:34.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s all it was for the first many, many, many years, I’d say for the first 6-7 years, it’s all it was. And then slowly I would add in a little bit of personal stuff, but still like 90% was just fitness, fitness, fitness. And slowly, it’s like gone more to probably about 50/50 and maybe now it’s even more personal and less fitness at this point. But I’d say it’s at least 50/50 fitness to personal stuff right now. And it’s really cool for me ’cause when I post a story and then people reply to that story, if I look back, if I reply to their DM, I can scroll through our whole DM history and see everything they’ve replied to, everything… All the conversations we’ve had. And it’s been really cool to see, with the birth of my daughter, a lot of congratulations, it’s amazing. And I’ll look through these messages and the number of people who have followed and they saw my wife when we were just dating, and they were like, “Oh, you two are so cute together.”

0:31:31.3 Jordan Syatt: And they saw the story where I proposed to my wife and the engagement. “Oh congratulations, that’s so exciting.” And then they saw where we got married, “Oh congratulations, that’s so exciting.” And now they see the birth of our daughter. And you have these people who are following for years and I can… For me, as the person making the content, it’s a one-sided relationship. They feel connected to me, I don’t know anything about them, so I don’t feel much connection. And so I wonder, how can they feel this connection? But then I look back and I’m reminded, I’m like, some of these people have been following me for years and they’ve seen the growth of my relationships, of my family, and it’s actually very cool to see that, how that depth style content, how that personal content can really help people and really create a bond with them, even though it only goes one way. It really shows like, man, they can really create a real… They really care about you and they have this bond with you, which is cool for me to scroll back and see, “Wow, this person replied when I got engaged,” or “This person replied when I was in Atlanta with my wife and we were just dating and we were in the car,” like, “Oh, I’m so happy to see you happy.” But… And it’s just like… It’s really… It’s very cool to see that play out and look back in those messages years ahead now.

0:32:44.8 Mike Vacanti: Very cool. One thing, you said “My content used to be purely content marketing ’cause it was all about fitness, and then it shifted to more personal.” It’s still content marketing.

0:32:56.6 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:32:58.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s still amazing. And guess what, you might just like to share because you like to share, still content marketing. You posting your daughter and you posting and all of the stuff you’re doing that isn’t, any individual piece of content that doesn’t have a educational fitness component to it, doesn’t matter, still attention eyeballs on you, still a higher percentage chance of someone signing up for the inner circle, still driving revenue at the end of the day.

0:33:25.5 Jordan Syatt: Correct. You’re right.

0:33:27.9 Mike Vacanti: Arguably more than the… If you’re to post… I don’t know, I’m trying to think of like a more lukewarm type of fitness content that you could post, something that most of your followers know, maybe something calorie deficit-related, something along those lines compared to what you’re posting now, I think what you’re posting now brings you more attention, allows you to do more things, allows you to be like, “Oh, free workout on the text list.” It’s still content marketing. If you were doing this and there was… And you just had a 9:00-5:00 job as an accountant, then I’d be like, “That’s interesting that he wants to share this with all these people.” But the fact that it is all still content marketing makes sense.

0:34:08.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you’re 100% right. Yeah that’s exactly correct.

0:34:11.9 Mike Vacanti: I think of the OG YouTubers, like OG fitness YouTubers, I’ll throw Maxx in that crowd and Guzman and… They… If you look at their 2013 stuff, I’m just picking a random year, but it was very fitness-focused. If you look at their current day stuff, not really at all. Maybe some, I don’t know, I’m not following them closely, but it’s mostly not fitness stuff, it’s mostly lifestyle, it’s mostly sharing what they’re doing, whether it’s buying cars, houses, like clothes, and those guys are making more money now than they ever made when they were posting exclusively about fitness.

0:34:49.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you’re right.

0:34:49.8 Mike Vacanti: So it’s…

0:34:50.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s like more…

0:34:52.9 Mike Vacanti: It’s like…

0:34:53.3 Jordan Syatt: Vlog-based yeah.

0:34:54.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. When Gary told me… I got pissed in 2015 because this kid on Snapchat asked me if I had a hair product recommendation, and I remember Gary, I was like, “This kid’s wasting my time with hair product stuff. I’m here and I can teach him, I can help him lose weight, get stronger, build muscle, live longer, do all these amazing things. He wants to talk about hair gel, like… I was not… ” And Gary’s like, “Answer it, answer him. You’re adding value in a different way than you want to be, but you’re still helping him.”

0:35:27.3 Jordan Syatt: That’s so funny. I could see that where you’re like, “Why are you asking about my fucking hair gel, bro? Who cares? [laughter] Go to CVS. Pick whatever one you want.” [laughter]

0:35:36.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah yeah. But it’s…

[overlapping conversation]

0:35:38.8 Jordan Syatt: “Did you see my most recent content about fitness? Did you see that? How many times did you work out in the last month?” [laughter]

0:35:43.0 Mike Vacanti: “Are you applying it?!? Yeah yeah, yeah that’s… Dude that’s exactly where my mind was. That’s exactly right. But all attention is good. All helping people is good. They’re all jabs and you don’t have to be exclusively making fitness content to have a successful fitness business.

0:36:03.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you’re right.

0:36:05.2 Mike Vacanti: And the non-fitness content helps.

0:36:08.0 Jordan Syatt: Well said, brother.

0:36:10.0 Mike Vacanti: If it gets your attention. You wanna pick a few questions?

0:36:11.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I can go through my Q&A. Let’s see. Oh wow, this is a really good one.

0:36:18.1 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go.

0:36:20.0 Jordan Syatt: I did not expect this. This is a great one. Okay. So Coach Jennifer Bass, she said in my Q&A, “As a coach, how do you not take it personally when clients don’t follow through with their commitments?” This is a great question.

0:36:35.6 Mike Vacanti: This is something that I feel like in the last couple of Q&As in the mentorship, and even we talked to Jeff about this, he won a challenge and we had a call with him yesterday, we talked about this some, it’s a very common question. Do you wanna lead us off?

0:36:51.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, sure, I can lead us off if you want. Okay, so how do you not take it personally when clients don’t follow through with their commitments?” So there are so many ways we can go with this, but the first one I’ll say is… There’s so many aspects and so many avenues to this. Number one is, no matter what happens, no matter how good of a coach you are, you’re gonna have clients that don’t follow through.

0:37:16.6 Mike Vacanti: Yep.

0:37:17.1 Jordan Syatt: No matter what. No matter what. No matter how… You could be literally the best coach in the world, you’re gonna have clients that don’t follow through. And it has… I’m not gonna say it all the time, but I would say probably the majority of the time, it has literally nothing to do with you. The majority of the time, it is not anything to do with you, anything you could have done better, it’s just there are some… Even though someone takes the time to sign up, even though someone takes the time to reach out to apply for coaching, get on the phone with you, go through all the preliminary stuff, send you money on a consistent basis, it’s not something that you could have done better. Oftentimes, they actually just weren’t in a place in which they were ready, willing or able to follow through.

0:38:01.9 Jordan Syatt: Now, I will say sometimes it is the coach’s fault and it is a pretty large percentage of the time, especially if you’re a shitty coach. But for whatever it’s worth, and obviously I’m biased, but I think the people… The coaches listening to this show are probably at least, at the very least, good enough to not give stupid fucking programs where you’re doing hit every single day like…

0:38:22.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I was gonna say, give examples of times when it would be the coach’s fault.

0:38:26.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, like if you’re trying to have them do hit workouts every single day, you have them in gym for three hours at a time, you have them on a meal plan where they’re having 800 calories a day and rice cakes, and that’s all they’re… Rice cakes and Tilapias are all they’re eating and they can’t go out and they can’t enjoy themselves, they’re not doing flexible dieting. That would be stupid. I don’t think there’s anyone, I really hope there’s no coach listening to this… Actually, you know what, I hope coaches who do that are listening to this so they can realize that that’s fucking stupid. But I would imagine the long-time listeners of this show are not doing that.

0:38:58.0 Jordan Syatt: So if you’re giving a great program and you’re helping them try and be progressively more and more healthy and fit and making sure they’re trying to get their steps in, they’re on an appropriate training program of somewhere between 2-4 times a week, and they are flexible dieting, just because you give them a great program, and even though you’re there to motivate them and you’re there to help them, does not mean they’re gonna take advantage of it, and it doesn’t mean they’re gonna follow through for any number of reasons.

0:39:22.8 Jordan Syatt: So I think oftentimes as a coach, you’ll take it personally… I’ll give another example. And Jordan Peterson talks about this all the time. It was so interesting when I heard him talk about it because it really rang true and it reminded me of fitness where doctors will give patients prescriptions, doctors will prescribe their patients medicine to help them get healthier, medicine that they need, and a tremendous amount of time, a super high percent of the time, the patient will not take the medicine. It’s literally the pill. It’s not going to the gym, it’s not working out, it’s not eating, which takes a lot of time and effort and energy. It’s literally the “magic pill” that we talk about, and people still aren’t taking the fucking magic pill when a doctor prescribes the medication.

0:40:10.9 Jordan Syatt: Interestingly, and Jordan Peterson talks about this, he’s like, “If you give that same person medication for their dog, they will make sure their dog gets the medication on time, on a consistent basis, they’ll go to pick up the medication they need to. They’re much more likely to take care of other people than they are themselves or other animals even, than they are themselves.” So you have to understand it’s not…

0:40:36.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s usually not about you as a coach, assuming you’re doing a good job, and you don’t even have to be doing a perfect job, assuming you’re doing a decently good job as a coach, it’s usually not you, it’s usually about them, even if you’re there to support them and encourage them and motivate them and they’re on a decent plan, there’s usually something going on in their life. And I think one of the most important lessons that I learned is that, let’s say you have someone ghost you, you have a client who’s not responding, it’s not because… It’s almost never because you haven’t done a good job. It’s almost always because they’re ashamed because they haven’t been following through. They feel guilty, they feel like they’re letting you down. And you shouldn’t be mad that they’re ghosting you. You should feel empathetic and be like, “Oh shit, they’re probably not following through. They probably feel really bad.”

0:41:19.9 Jordan Syatt: And you need to reach out to them and let them know, “Hey, listen, whatever is going on, I’m here for you. Even if you haven’t worked out in two months and you haven’t hit your calories, and even if you gained weight, whatever it is, it’s okay, I’m here for you, no worries,” rather than being mad, “You haven’t gotten back to me,” ’cause then that’s gonna push them further and further and further away. So you have to understand that it’s not about you. Taking it personally is more of a selfish move. It’s like… It’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s what’s going on in their life. And maybe they’re not at a time and place in which they’re ready for it. And that’s okay. But yeah, that’s probably the best advice I could give. What do you think?

0:41:51.5 Mike Vacanti: I think that’s a great answer. You hit the nail on the head. I like that you backed up to more of like a 30,000-foot viewpoint and were like, “You know what… ” Because I operate under the assumption that anyone listening has their client not on an 800-calorie diet, has their client not eating five meals of Tilapia and broccoli and rice five times throughout… On very reasonably intelligent training and nutrition protocols.” And so I’m glad you pointed out that in instances where the coach sucks, it can be the coach’s fault, but for almost everyone that we’re ever talking to here in the mentorship, it is on that client and it’s a function of something, and this is speaking from many, many, many, hundreds, if not thousands of anecdotes, situations where something is going on in the client’s life, whether big or small, extreme or not extreme at all, that is preventing them from being ready to follow any kind of regimen, any kind of program, twice a week, 40-minute full-body workouts, can’t even do it, do them at home, we’ll go body weight, we’ll make this as using the lowest amount of time possible to get a decent ROI and the type of training you’re doing, cut it down to just walking, increase calories like, “Oh, you don’t wanna track. We’ll go with a different method. Oh you don’t wanna track macros. Just try and hit at least this threshold of protein in this range of… “

0:43:34.3 Mike Vacanti: “Oh, you don’t even wanna track calories. Okay, here’s the only thing we’re focused on. You weigh 225 pounds. I just want you to hit 100 grams of protein a day. If you get more than that, incredible. But if you hit 100, that is a win for the day.” Can’t even do that, won’t even follow up on an email to that, there’s only so much you can do when you’re offering online coaching services. You’re not offering for $300 a month. You’re not offering like, “I’m gonna hold your hand and slap every doughnut that you reach for and make sure you make the right decision in person for every moment of your life.” It’s not what you’re offering. You’re offering an email, online-based service that requires a little bit of yin and yang. It’s not all yang. It’s not all coach. Client needs to meet you halfway. If your method of communication is email, and when you email your client and ask questions or for whatever reason, they don’t respond ever, which you know…

0:44:28.6 Mike Vacanti: People listening to this are probably like “That doesn’t happen.” ‘Cause we have a lot of non-trainer podcast listeners right now.

0:44:35.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh really? Oh cool.

0:44:37.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I mean when I say a lot, I don’t know…

0:44:39.3 Jordan Syatt: 20%, 15%?

0:44:42.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, I would imagine. Yeah. At least people interested in just our takes and also fitness enthusiasts and clients, I’d imagine some people in the inner circle, I know clients of mine, many of whom are probably surprised, they’re like…

0:44:58.3 Jordan Syatt: Like, “Why would you do that?”

0:44:58.8 Mike Vacanti: “People that pay you? And then they keep paying you, but they don’t reply when you reach out to them?” “Yes. And what I am saying and trying to reassure the woman who asked this question as well so many other coaches who experienced this, is that you can only do so much. If you’re offering an email-based service and you’re reaching out and that your client won’t even respond, and I love what you said, which is a reach-out that’s like, “Hey, I don’t care if you have gained 20 pounds, I don’t care if you haven’t worked out once in the last two months, these things happen, they happen very often. You’re not alone. I’m not upset at all. I’m here for you. I’d love to help.” Anyway, if you’re reaching out with that kind of empathy, you’re most likely to get a response. And if you’re still not getting a response, there’s nothing you can do.

0:45:42.9 Mike Vacanti: And it sucks because especially when you’re first getting started and you have fewer clients or maybe just one client, you really wanna help that person, so it’s hard when they’re not in a position where they can be helped. Redirect that energy of wanting to help into your free content. Because one, you are gonna help more people there, and two, it’s gonna lead to more coaching clients and many, most of whom will be following the program, at least more than this person is.

0:46:12.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and that brings up another point and a common question people have is like, well, coaches will have a… “Well, what do I do if they’re not responding, but their payments are still going through, I’m sending them their workouts and I’m trying to reach out, but they’re not replying?” And if you feel guilty ’cause their payments are still going through, what you have to remember is they’re paying you to keep you on retainer. This is really important. It’s sort of like if you’re at a big company, you’re at a big company and the company has a lawyer on a retainer, they’re not gonna use the lawyer every single day, even every single week, maybe not even every single month, but when something happens and they need that lawyer, boom, lawyer’s there, right? That lawyer might not work for them, might not do anything for months at a time, and all of a sudden, boom, “Hey, we need you,” boom, the lawyer’s there.

0:46:58.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s how it works. So if you’re sending the workouts every month, you’re checking and you’re doing everything, as… Even if they’re not replying, as soon as they do reply, you’re there. You’re there to help them. That’s what they’re paying for. There’s no reason for you to feel guilty about it because you’re doing it as long as you’re sending them their programs, you’re doing your check-ins, you’re going out of your way to try to interact with them, you’re a coach on retainer, and if you know that as soon as they reach out and like, “Hey, I’m ready, I need help,” cool, boom, then you’re there for them. That’s fine.

0:47:28.6 Jordan Syatt: And they’re paying to hold their spot because essentially, even if you only have a couple of clients, that spot is being taken up by them, whereas you could be spending more time, the time you’re trying to reach out to them doing their programs, you can spend that time making content, you could spend that time interacting with other people, getting on sales calls, all that other stuff, like that spot is being paid for and held by them or otherwise, you could be doing something else. So there’s no reason to be… Feel guilty about that because you know as soon as they reach out, you’re there for them. So just think of yourself as a coach on retainer if that guilt is starting to seep in.

0:48:10.8 Mike Vacanti: Great. I actually have a question here we got via email from a podcast listener.

0:48:14.9 Jordan Syatt: Okay, cool. Let’s do it.

0:48:18.4 Mike Vacanti: Kelly says “First, thanks for the podcast, entertaining, practical and educational. Jordan, congrats on the baby girl. What do you guys think of sales calls? I absolutely hate high-pressure tactics to get me to sign up for a high-ticket business coaching. I feel uncomfortable in both sides of the conversation, so it’s putting up a road block for me. I totally think the connection piece is valuable, but the rest of the tactics feel slimy. I’m trying to make the pieces of the sales call on my own. What are you telling your clients? Is there a certain price point? This applies to my high ticket is very low compared to others I’ve seen, but that’s a whole different conversation. Thanks for your time. Even if this doesn’t make the podcast, I really appreciate the content.” So what do we think of sales calls, I guess, and then if either of us feel the anger or desire to go on a little riff or rant about high-ticket coaching.

0:49:18.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah I was about to just go off on that. Number one, I love sales calls. We’ll talk about that more in-depth. Number two, you’re not high ticket. Stop calling it high ticket. If your “high ticket” is significantly lower than the other “high tickets” that you’ve seen, then you are not high ticket. High ticket is disgusting. I hate when people are like, “Oh, yeah, I have high ticket coaching.” Shut the fuck up. You’re a personal trainer. And if you’re charging $5000 a month, then you’re just an asshole. No, it’s not high ticket. It’s like, you’re an asshole. That’s it.

0:49:52.8 Mike Vacanti: Price-gouging.

0:49:52.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:49:52.9 Mike Vacanti: I remember I had a client who worked with me for six months, eight months, I remember, younger dude, mid-20s dude, and maybe a year or two after we were working together, I got a random DM from him. I don’t remember if he was trying to sell me on it, or if he was like, “Dude, you could make so much more money if you do the high-ticket coaching, 5 grand a month compared to $350. That’s… High ticket’s where it’s at.” And I… Just visceral anger for the reasons that you just mentioned.

0:50:20.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. You know what I hate? I think a lot of this, it bleeds into it. A lot of personal trainers, online coaches, they consider themselves entrepreneurs. You’re not an entrepreneur. You’re not.

0:50:34.4 Mike Vacanti: Technically, you are, but not…

0:50:36.9 Jordan Syatt: No you’re not.

0:50:37.4 Mike Vacanti: But yes…

0:50:37.6 Jordan Syatt: No you’re not… You’re not.

0:50:38.3 Mike Vacanti: You have your own business.

0:50:39.9 Jordan Syatt: You’re a personal trainer. And I’m like, I wanna make this very clear, you are not an entrepreneur because you have an online fitness business that… No, you’re not. We need the video. We need the video so they can see.

0:50:54.9 Mike Vacanti: Not in the traditional sense of the word. I get the point you’re trying to make, but the blood is red in me just can’t let this fully slide.

0:51:03.2 Jordan Syatt: No, you’re not.

0:51:04.9 Mike Vacanti: Alright. Make the point, make the point. Go ahead.

0:51:06.8 Jordan Syatt: You’re not an entrepreneur. And I wanna make this so clear because as soon as you make the shift from personal trainer to entrepreneur, you start doing stupid shit like high-ticket coaching. You got into personal training because you wanna help people, not so that you can make as much money as possible and do high-ticket coaching and all this stuff. There’s nothing wrong with making a lot of money. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as you’re doing it in a really good way and you’re helping people. But when you shift your mindset from personal trainer to entrepreneur, you start doing stupid shit, you start spending ridiculous amounts of money on Masterminds and all this stupid, stupid stupid stuff. Don’t think of yourself as an entrepreneur. Think of yourself as a personal trainer. That’s it. High-ticket…

0:51:51.4 Jordan Syatt: There are many issues with it… Sorry, keep going, keep going.

0:51:54.9 Mike Vacanti: And what do you… ‘Cause some people I’m sure are like, “Actually, I don’t really wanna help people. I did get into this because I thought it was a lucrative business and I just wanna get rich.”

0:52:03.4 Jordan Syatt: Then stop listening to our podcast and change careers. [laughter]

0:52:06.7 Mike Vacanti: And good luck, buddy.

0:52:09.1 Jordan Syatt: Good luck. [laughter] If you only got into this because… And you don’t actually like coaching people, stop. What are you doing?

0:52:20.1 Mike Vacanti: Not to… There’s no value that you can offer in online coaching that justifies a $5,000 a month sales price.

0:52:27.2 Jordan Syatt: No, no.

0:52:28.5 Mike Vacanti: None.

0:52:30.2 Jordan Syatt: Not at all. Unless you’re there in person and it’s not online and you’re following them around every single day, like no, that’s… That would be fine. That would be worth it, but not online coaching where you’re communicating via email. Even if you’re having phone calls with them, you’re not worth $5000 a month as a personal trainer, online person, you’re not.

0:52:50.9 Mike Vacanti: And you can’t build brand and your business can’t have longevity if you’re offering $5000 a month high-ticket fitness coaching because the value of the service you’re matching cannot match that dollar amount, meaning you’re not providing enough value to charge that, meaning you’re not gonna get referrals. Maybe you can… If you’re a really good sales person or very charismatic, like you can get a sale or two in the short run and you can make a little money, it’s not gonna last.

0:53:18.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and I’ll never forget, someone tried getting me into high-ticket coaching, I think it was like… I’m not gonna say his name ’cause he actually helped me a lot earlier in my career and I do like him, but I think it was like 2014, 2015, this guy was like, “Hey, I’m shifting my business to more high-ticket stuff, charging like… ” I think at that point it was like he was saying $2000 or $3000 a month. And he’s like, “And this is great ’cause I only need 10 or 12 clients and I’m good.” And I was like… And he was like, “You should start doing it.” I was like, “No, I’d rather not.” Because I was like, “What happens if you lose three clients at once? That’s a massive hit to your… “

0:53:55.0 Mike Vacanti: 9K a month.

0:53:56.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s a huge hit. And he was like, “No, I think you should be okay.” And literally six months later, he was like, “This is really… ” ‘Cause as soon as you lose one or two clients, you’ve gotta scramble. You’ve just had a huge hit to your income and you’ve gotta scramble to try and find more people who are willing to spend that amount of money. It’s much, much, much, much harder to do that than it is to get people for 200, 300, 400, 500 a month, which are much more reasonable amounts to pay for online coaching, depending on where you are, like somewhere between 200-500 a month. That’s plenty. And if you wanna do a little bit more, great. If you wanna do less fine. But somewhere in that range I think is a really good amount.

0:54:32.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah so if you got a guru that you’re paying all sorts of money to that’s telling… And they’re promoting their high-ticket coaching, stop paying the guru and just start taking our free advice.

0:54:42.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, we use guru in a really negative sense here on this podcast and in the mentorship. It’s funny.

0:54:49.2 Mike Vacanti: I don’t have the tonality that you have.

0:54:51.0 Jordan Syatt: The guru. Like when… In the mentorship, we have new challenges every month. So literally yesterday, we got on a call with the winner, every month we pick a winner of the challenge, and they get a free call with us for an hour. Yesterday, we spoke with Jeff Pachtman, who won a recent challenge. But the way that we score these challenges is that you get the challenge, and then the first and the last level are bad. So the first level of like if you… Whatever the challenge is. If you get this… Let’s say we have a challenge for getting people on your email list, getting people on the email list subscribers. If you don’t even have an email list, then you’re in… The level is called mom’s basement. You don’t even have an email list. You don’t wanna be living in mom’s basement as an adult right? You don’t wanna be doing that. And then from there, then we have intern, and then from there we have specialist, and then from there we have coach, and then on top of that, then the last level’s guru, and gurus were like for the email list, we’ll say maybe you paid for email subscribers just to get those extra subscribers that aren’t even…

0:55:56.2 Jordan Syatt: They’re not real people, which is… It might sound stupid, but actually a lot of people do this.

0:56:00.7 Mike Vacanti: People do it, yeah.

0:56:02.1 Jordan Syatt: People do it. It’s really stupid. So you don’t wanna be living in mom’s basement and not even trying, but you don’t wanna be a guru either and doing stupid shit, just try and bolster your numbers. You wanna be intern, specialist, coach in that middle range, doing the right things, working really hard, putting in the effort, and that’s, again, what we’re really pushing the mentorship. But when we use guru, that’s not good. It’s not a good thing to be a guru.

0:56:25.0 Mike Vacanti: Guru’s bad, very bad.

0:56:26.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:56:26.8 Mike Vacanti: Don’t pay money to get 10,000 new email subscribers in one month, which is an insane amount, but 9,997 of them are bots in India and three of them were legitimate sign-ups.

0:56:41.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:56:43.3 Mike Vacanti: That’s pure ego. That’s not beneficial.

0:56:44.6 Jordan Syatt: So now that we’ve covered high ticket, let’s talk sales calls. When you don’t have a… I’m sorry. When you do have a relative significant amount of time on your hands, I love sales calls, sales calls, assuming you are a good conversationalist, you will have a much better conversion rate than just doing it all via email. And it’s sort of a pretty big caveat ’cause some people are not good conversationalists and they’re not good on the phone, and you might actually have a better conversion rate via email, which is totally fine. But I would say if you are at least somewhat decent on the phone and talking with people, which is a pretty good skill to have if you’re a coach, you’re probably gonna have a better conversion rate on the phone than you are solely via email. Not to mention on the phone, you get the opportunity to speak to them, hear their voice, have them hear your voice.

0:57:39.1 Jordan Syatt: And this is what I did from 2011 all the way to 2017, where I did sales calls for one-on-one coaching. In 2017, I got too busy, it was taking up too much time, so that’s when I called Mike and I was like, “How do I do this solely via email?” ‘Cause Mike, you only did it via email, you didn’t do sales calls before. And so Mike explained how he did it all via email, and then I essentially took my entire sales pitch that I did on the phone and I wrote it out in an email format and I did that. Now, when I would do sales calls, 9.9 out of 10 people would sign up with my online coaching. Well, if I got someone on the phone, they were signing up.

0:58:20.5 Jordan Syatt: It was such a high conversion rate. When I switched to solely via email, there’s about 2 out of 10, 2-3 out of 10 people would sign up, which if you don’t have many clients, that’s a huge difference.

0:58:33.5 Jordan Syatt: And it would make sense to get on the phone with people. But if you have a full client roster and a waiting list and you have new applications coming in all the time, 2 out of 10 is great. That’s… ‘Cause oftentimes, you get 10 applications a week, if not more. So you get two clients a week just from that? Great. That’s fantastic. So it depends on where you are. But sales calls, especially earlier on in your career, they’re great, but it’s not a smarmy or a guru-y tactic or like… It doesn’t have to be “high ticket” to do a sales call. You don’t have to do stupid shit on a sales call, or grow stuff or backend things to try and make extra money in a weird and shady way. A sales call is just a nice conversation where you’re informing them of what you offer and you get to know them.

0:59:20.2 Jordan Syatt: And I should have said that in the other order. First, you get to know them and then you inform them of what you have to offer. That’s all the sales call is. You don’t have to be like, “Alright, so here’s the special deal that I’ve got and if you sign up in the next seven hours, then you’ll save 40% on this $5,000 a month high-ticket coaching, which is better than my low-ticket coaching. You don’t wanna be a net group of peasants. You wanna be in my high-ticket group.” It’s like, No, just…

0:59:44.0 Jordan Syatt: And that brings up the whole other discussion where it’s like, how many different offers should you have? One offer. You don’t need like, “Here’s my high ticket, here’s my low ticket, here’s my… ” “This is what coaching with me is like. I don’t care what this… This is it. This is how much I charge. This is how much we communicate. This is when you get your new programs. If you have questions, this is how you talk to me.” That’s it. One offer. You don’t need 17 different offers.

1:00:05.4 Mike Vacanti: Mic drop. I’m gonna… I agree with all of the above. I’m gonna give a slightly different perspective to this too. If you haven’t heard Jordan and I talk about coins, sometimes Jordan calls me in the morning and, “Hey, what’s up? Is anything happening? What’s going on?” He’s like, “I just need some coins. I just need some coins.” I was like, “Alright, alright. I’ll give you what I got.” There’s an expression of story that introverts wake up with five coins in their pocket, and throughout the course of the day, every time they have a social interaction, they give the person a coin, give the person a coin, give the person a coin. At the end of the day, they don’t have any coins left, and then they spend that time alone to recharge. Extroverts wake up poor. They wake up with no coins in their pocket. And for every social interaction they have, they get a coin.

1:00:56.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s me.

1:00:57.7 Mike Vacanti: Talk to this person, get a coin, talk to this person, get a coin. Yes. And so… I mean it’s even evident from this podcast. How long are we even going? A little over an hour.

1:01:08.1 Jordan Syatt: I’m feeling so good. [laughter]

1:01:10.4 Mike Vacanti: Jordan, I can tell his eyes are a little bit like wider, he’s into this, he’s… The ratio of him talking is more over an hour in. I’m fading. I’m fading hard. I’m thinking about what I’m eating next. I’m like, “This is our last question.” I’m drinking water. I’m like focused. Whereas the first 20 minutes of this, I felt dialed. I felt like great and Jordan would look a little sleepy over there…

1:01:33.7 Jordan Syatt: I was yawning, yeah.

[overlapping conversation]

1:01:36.7 Mike Vacanti: We’d be able to see that this… It could be a thing. I never did sales calls because I didn’t wanna have a 45-minute block in the middle of the day where I was having a social interaction with a stranger who I didn’t know, which would be exhausting for me, which I could do, but would be exhausting for me. I was open to taking the reduced conversion rate of email-only selling and using that extra time and massive amount of extra energy to do introverted creative work like write articles or scripts for Facebook, YouTube videos, etcetera, etcetera, create. And so we’re in agreement that once your business gets to a certain point, you’re getting a lot of applicants, then it makes sense to go email only because that time… You basically just can’t do that many sales calls a week at a certain point and you’re okay with taking on fewer clients just to kind of maintain or slowly grow your client roster, and then use that extra time to do other things like making content. So those are a couple of the…

1:02:41.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s kind of the balance between sales calls versus email-based selling, and a couple of things to consider, how much you enjoy or how good you are at selling, as well as whether or not you need the extra or want the extra conversion that comes from jumping on a call.

1:03:00.6 Jordan Syatt: Dude it’s so funny that I just realized something. Like before I… Let’s say I’m hanging out, I’m alone in my apartment, or it’s just me and my wife or whatever, it’s pretty low energy, and we’re gonna have people over for dinner. Before they come over, I’m like, “Oh man, I don’t wanna do this,” but by the time they leave, I’m like, “This was great. I feel so good.” [laughter] It’s so funny. Whereas I would imagine for you, it’s probably reverse where it’s like when you’re alone, you’re like, “I feel great. This is awesome.”

1:03:29.7 Mike Vacanti: I feel amazing.

1:03:31.7 Jordan Syatt: And then as soon as they come over you’re like… By the time they leave you’re like, “Get out.” [laughter]

1:03:39.3 Mike Vacanti: There’s a, yeah, long social interactions like… Yeah, there’s definitely a point in time, and it depends on many variables, but…

1:03:50.2 Jordan Syatt: Who it is, yeah.

1:03:51.5 Mike Vacanti: Who it is, what happened that day, caffeine. Is there other stuff… Maybe it’s an hour, maybe it’s two or three hours, but there’s definitely a point where I fall off a cliff and I’m like, “That’s why I don’t do that much like… I don’t go to parties very often at all, let’s say, or big group, hyper-stimulating scenarios.” But I haven’t said goodbyes in big groups like that in years because I just… The Irish goodbye is so…

1:04:21.0 Jordan Syatt: So powerful.

1:04:23.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah it’s like, “Oh, I hit a wall.” I’m like, “I’m out.”

1:04:26.3 Jordan Syatt: “See you. “

1:04:27.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. [laughter]

1:04:28.2 Jordan Syatt: “I’m gonna go outside and get some air.” [laughter]

1:04:32.0 Mike Vacanti: Well, and it worked better 10 years ago when they were more like party-type situations of people drinking ’cause no one cares, no one remembers, no one even… Yeah. Yeah, it’s important to get to know yourself and then lean on your strengths in business and in life.

1:04:49.7 Jordan Syatt: I used to do that in college, where I used to be like… That was my line, “I’m gonna go outside and get some air,” and it got to the point where my buddy Sean, as soon as I said that, he’d be like, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” [laughter]

1:05:00.8 Mike Vacanti: He figured you out.

1:05:03.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. This is good, man. This is a good pod.

1:05:05.9 Mike Vacanti: Great episode, great podcast. If you’re enjoying the podcast… If you want video podcast, maybe just leave a quick little five star, little fiver guy, little Cinco, Spotify, Apple, anywhere podcasts are hosted, a little review, and who knows, maybe in a week or two, we’ll see like, oh, we got 10 extra stars with reviews and people are like, “Video, video, like TikTok, give us some more.” Maybe all that will be coming your way. Who knows?

1:05:27.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, be like right in the comments, be like, “Hey, I love the podcast, literally the best podcast in the world. Everyone should listen to this podcast. I can’t wait for the videos to come out.” That’s gonna be… That might motivate us to really get these video pods out there, which could be coming, maybe not, who knows.

1:05:42.0 Mike Vacanti: I mean, let’s keep a close eye on the reviews and just see.

1:05:48.2 Jordan Syatt: Super close. Super, super close eye.

1:05:51.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m gonna put it on my Excel spreadsheet schedule and every day… When’s this pod drop? Tuesday, September 6th? Yeah. So 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th of September, we’ll be keeping a real close eye, daily communication around the reviews.

1:06:07.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah put your Instagram handle in your review and we’ll shout you out on here. We’ll be like, “Hey thanks to so-and-so.” Just put your @ on the thing and we’ll shout you out on here. And who knows, video pods could be a thing.

1:06:22.6 Mike Vacanti: I love it. Thanks for listening. Have a great, great week and we’ll see you soon.