Episode 94: Bulletproofing Your Online PT Business, Child Rearing, and More…

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

0:00:12.6 Jordan Syatt: What’s going on, Michael? Welcome back to the podcast. I’m happy to have you here.

[chuckle]

0:00:16.5 Mike Vacanti: Hey, thank you very much. I’m happy to be here. What do you got for us today?

0:00:20.1 Jordan Syatt: Man, well my daughter’s has been super poopy this morning. She’s been very poopy, so she pooped through her diaper. She sized up and so… But she’s just been real… She’s a real poopy girl.

0:00:34.1 Mike Vacanti: She’s making lean gains, I would imagine, at that age.

0:00:37.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, man, she’s on that like the ultimate bulk. You know how you had the ultimate sweat? She’s on the ultimate bulk.

0:00:43.0 Mike Vacanti: I love that.

0:00:44.6 Jordan Syatt: So she’s like… She’s on the eat more, move less diet. That’s really… That’s what she’s following.

0:00:50.9 Mike Vacanti: That’s a good one. She’s doing a lot of neck training, I know.

0:00:53.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, dude so much. And my wife gets… It’s like the classic husband versus wife dynamic with the child where I’m like, “No, leave her there, let her struggle through it.” And my wife is like, “No, no, she’s crying, she’s crying.” I’m like, “It’s okay, let her struggle through it.” So we do tummy time where she’s like on her stomach to work her neck muscles, and she’ll start crying, my wife wants to stop the crying immediately, I’m like, “No, you gotta let her work through it a little bit,” so it’s a good dynamic.

0:01:24.6 Mike Vacanti: And she does, I would imagine.

0:01:26.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, she lets her work through it and she hates it, she hates the crying. Yeah.

0:01:30.2 Mike Vacanti: But she works though it, I mean.

0:01:33.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, she works through it, yeah, and getting stronger every day. So holding her head up nice and high, improving her postural muscles. Oh yeah, everything’s going well over here.

0:01:42.7 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go. I love it.

0:01:44.5 Jordan Syatt: How ’bout you? What’s going on over in the house, in House Vacanti?

0:01:48.3 Mike Vacanti: All things are good, man. Just got a nice training session in this morning and jumped straight to the podcast here, our first ever video podcast.

0:02:00.8 Jordan Syatt: Video pods, baby, let’s go.

0:02:00.9 Mike Vacanti: We’re here, we’re live.

0:02:01.4 Jordan Syatt: I can’t believe it’s actually happening, that’s crazy.

0:02:03.5 Mike Vacanti: I can’t either. I’m excited. It’s a… Look, we’re doing a three-month trial. We talked to David, our audio engineer, set up a system where we’re gonna try these for three months, see how they go, and re-evaluate after three months, so weekly episodes for the next three months.

0:02:21.6 Jordan Syatt: Could be short-lived, maybe we’ll go back to non-video pods, so make sure you get the most out of it while we’re here.

0:02:27.0 Mike Vacanti: But… [chuckle]

0:02:28.4 Jordan Syatt: Make it a good 12 episodes.

[chuckle]

0:02:31.0 Mike Vacanti: My biggest apprehension is that… And I talked to you about this before, that it felt like, to me, before video felt like I was just talking to you, like a phone call, and we were dicking around and having fun like we normally do. Whereas this feels like… And I don’t know if it’s that we’re now investing more money in the entire operation, ’cause that’s part of it, or if it’s the fact that one of the main points of doing this on video is to make micro-content for it, to have a lot of clips for reels, TikTok, shorts. And then rather than just having a conversation where we’re like… Whether it’s goofing around or trying to figure out the truth of something, or even trying to educate deeply on a specific question, now it feels to me like trying to make short-form content that will do well, which is something that… I don’t know. It’s just where my head is right now, even though I don’t want it to be.

0:03:29.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think all we do is exactly what we’ve been doing, and it will happen. We just keep doing exactly what we’ve been doing. ‘Cause it’s funny, even though we’re doing video pods now and they can see us, we could still see each other. For us, it’s basically the exact same thing, now we’re investing more money in it and getting David to get clips for us, so that’s the main difference.

0:03:50.6 Mike Vacanti: I think that’s the right mindset. I still think that someone who listens to a long-form Spotify and listens to every episode is very different than someone who stumbles across a clip, and it feels… Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see if us talking about your daughter being on this shit 15 times a day bulk is something that TikTok wants to hear about compared to a more intentional piece of micro-content.

0:04:19.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, they wanna hear about it. [chuckle] I spoke with TikTok. They wanna hear about it.

[laughter]

0:04:24.8 Mike Vacanti: Good, good news. We’ll find out. We literally will be able to see how that performs.

[laughter]

0:04:30.6 Mike Vacanti: What else is happening?

0:04:34.8 Jordan Syatt: Dude, nothing. It’s the status quo over here, just eating, sleeping, pooping. I’m on a mini-cut while my daughter’s on a major bulk.

0:04:44.6 Mike Vacanti: Day 32?

0:04:44.7 Jordan Syatt: Day 32. Down about six pounds or so.

0:04:48.9 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go. Nice.

0:04:50.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s going well. Yeah, it’s going really well. I know we spoke about this, I think we spoke about this in the last one. I’m not sure I get all confused, but…

0:04:56.0 Mike Vacanti: It’s been a few weeks, by the time this gets uploaded, so cut yourself…

0:05:00.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, just the importance of… The importance of not only talking about things and discussing the science, but actually showing it and taking people on your journey as well, it’s just like it’s so powerful. People like the engagement that I get with people just through stories and all of that, it’s insane. Strongly recommend doing that. And it also shows that you don’t just talk to talk, but you walk the walk as well, so.

0:05:23.4 Mike Vacanti: And it’s so easy because you want to do it anyway.

0:05:27.1 Jordan Syatt: Exactly.

0:05:28.2 Mike Vacanti: You wanted to lean out some anyway, so document that process. It’s how I think about vlogging, although not really good vlogging where you’re pre-planning every single video and having a strategic thumbnail title, etcetera, going into it, but like a documentation-style vlogging. It’s like I’m living my life anyway, I may as well put that on the internet where it will then be something that ends up being beneficial not only for educating your audience, but then further downstream from that is monetizing via whatever avenue you want with that attention that you grow over time.

0:06:04.9 Jordan Syatt: It’s interesting, I’ve been sharing my weight chart, my consistency calendar that are all a part of the Inner Circle App. And I was thinking, man, if I didn’t have the Inner Circle, I would do the exact same thing, just like I would write my own program like I would for one-on-one coaching, and I would share that data as though I was doing it for a one-on-one client. Because the people who’ve been seeing these weigh in charts and the consistency calendars, they’ve been like, “What app is this? I wanna use this. Da, da, da, da,” and it’s been a big push for the Inner Circle without me hard selling it, all I do is just show what I’m actually using. But if I didn’t have the Inner Circle and I was only doing one-on-one coaching, I would make myself a program and I would interact with myself like I was a client to show people how my coaching program worked. So I’d be like, “Oh wow. Where’d you get this chart from? How does this work?” If you have systems to track your client’s weigh-in’s or to track their measurements, or to track their pictures, or to track their programming, you show the program that you’re doing. Showing all of that is exactly what I would do if I was just doing one-on-one coaching and guarantee it would lead to more clients, ’cause they actually see the systems you’re working with.

0:07:09.4 Mike Vacanti: Which again, is so easy because you’re already doing those things.

0:07:13.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly.

0:07:14.3 Mike Vacanti: It’s literally just documenting it. Let’s see what we got here. I got some non-fitness stuff.

0:07:21.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I love that. Let’s do some non-fitness. I’m tired of fitness, man, you know what I mean?

0:07:27.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m actually getting real revved up on fitness.

0:07:30.7 Jordan Syatt: I like that. I like hearing that.

0:07:31.5 Mike Vacanti: Although, you know what? This is great. This is kind of funny, and maybe you wanna tell this story of what happened Thursday morning when we were talking.

0:07:41.4 Jordan Syatt: You have to know by now in our relationship, I don’t even know what day today is nevermind what we spoke about on the Thursday.

0:07:47.0 Mike Vacanti: The day of when we were gonna podcast, and I called you that morning and was like, “Maybe we rip a video pod this afternoon, like who knows maybe… ” Remember?

0:07:58.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, and the obligatory aspect of it?

0:08:02.5 Mike Vacanti: Uh-huh.

0:08:02.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, do you want me to tell it or do you wanna tell it?

0:08:03.7 Mike Vacanti: You can tell it from your end.

0:08:05.3 Jordan Syatt: Alright, I’ll tell it from my end and then we can corroborate and see if it lines up with what you remember.

0:08:09.7 Mike Vacanti: I like that word.

0:08:12.1 Jordan Syatt: When in doubt, we always go with what Mike remembers, because we’ve realized that my memory is just… It’s so shot. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t remember things as well as Mike does. But so we get on the phone and I’m driving to jiu-jitsu. This is the daily routine. I wake up, I go to jiu-jitsu, and I call Mike while I’m on my way to jiu-jitsu, and we don’t have a podcast planned on Thursday, we were gonna do it on Friday, but schedules got shifted around. So Mike was like, “Hey, so I don’t know, I’m sort of feeling like we could do a podcast later today. Would you be open to doing a podcast later today?” And I was like, “Yeah,” ’cause I’m like always… I’m a P, I’ll just P it up. I’ll just, “Yeah, I’ll do it, I’ll do whatever.” And I forget the words that happened, but as soon… Oh, oh, you know what? Now, I remember I said, “Oh, well, actually, that’s good, because I wasn’t gonna be able to do it on Friday anyway.” And then in your mind, as soon as it became something from “potentially we’ll do it” to, “Oh my God, we have to do it today.” You were like, “Oh man, now I don’t even know if I wanna do it anyway.” [laughter]

0:09:17.7 Mike Vacanti: You’re like, your demeanor changed instantly, my demeanor, instantaneously. And it really did. And it went from something that like, “Oh, this would be fun, like we could podcast this afternoon,” to an obligation on my calendar of like, [chuckle] “We have to do a podcast today,” and I was like, “Ugh, gosh.” And you were dying laughing because it was just like, that switch was so fast. You’d be like, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I actually can’t tomorrow, so let’s do it today,” and it felt locked in. And that, I can’t even tell you how much of an unlock that is for other things that I’ve experienced in life, of whether it’s locking myself into a content creation schedule in the past, whether it’s talking about a specific fitness goal, any… I’ll never forget, Gary used to talk about this. I remember Conor McGregor in his prime or even on the come up and in that documentary was like, “I say things publicly because then I commit myself to them and then I end up doing them.” And a lot of people adopt this strategy. If I ever say anything publicly, I basically never do it. [laughter] I’m like, “I’m going to X.” It just doesn’t happen. You were talking about the obligation of this Instagram series…

0:10:36.2 Jordan Syatt: Series, yeah.

0:10:36.5 Mike Vacanti: That you promised of The Five Best Abdominal Exercises, something along those lines, and you’re like…

0:10:42.0 Jordan Syatt: Yes.

0:10:42.7 Mike Vacanti: “Now I promised it, and I can’t even make other content until I do it because they’re expecting this.” I was telling you a funny story about me promising someone about how to design your own training program article, like long-form, probably like a 10,000-word article that I was gonna put out. And once it became an obligation, I was like, “I’m not doing this. [chuckle] Like this I’m not.” And so this is a real, real, real champagne problem, obviously, because if there was an obligation and you actually needed to do something, if you didn’t do that thing, there would be a negative outcome in your life, of course, you’d do it. But it’s a funny… Once I say something, I’m like, “I don’t wanna do it.” Versus doing it out of love of the game or almost like an impulsiveness, a joyfulness, a playfulness, like part of the adventure rather than a block of time on the schedule where I have to do X.

0:11:38.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it is super interesting how that works and I feel like it depends on the thing. Like for me, my workouts, having them written down, having a timeframe for them actually helps a lot, but for content creation, that actually stifles me. It’s like if I have a content creation time, I can’t do it. It’s like, “Well, now I’m required to be creative and think in this time block?” That doesn’t work for me. Whereas workouts, I don’t have to be creative, I just, here’s my workout, here’s my plan. I just follow the plan and I’m done. So I think creativity on demand is very difficult.

0:12:17.0 Mike Vacanti: I completely agree. It depends on what the thing is.

0:12:20.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:12:21.7 Mike Vacanti: That’s why that maker schedule exists where artists and creatives block off half a day or a full day rather than block off 45 minutes to insert the thing that they wanna create in that time frame.

0:12:36.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly.

0:12:37.2 Mike Vacanti: You block off times for your workouts? You’re like 7:00 to 8:00 PM or when you can do it and want to do it, but knowing that you have to do it sometime that day?

0:12:46.5 Jordan Syatt: I just have general time frames that I know I’m gonna get my workout in that’s based on the schedule that we have right now. So it’s more just like known that this is my work out time. And we have the same thing for my wife, when her workout time frame is gonna be. It’s not like a strict hour, it’s not like “Well, you said you’d be back by now.” It’s more like, “Yeah, within this two and a half, three-hour window is when we know you’ll get it in or I’ll get it in.” But it’s nice to have that there because it’s also one of those things where when I don’t wanna be getting the workout in, it’s like I can start to prepare for it and get myself ready for it. But that’s the thing, is if it was something creative, I can’t prepare to be creative, it doesn’t just work. It doesn’t work for me. That’s why for content, the way I’ve worked out my whole schedule is I can be creative whenever I want. That’s sort of how I’ve built my schedule, I can be creative whenever I want throughout the day because I built that schedule and built that opportunity. But for other things, whether it’s certain calls or meetings or working out, whatever it is like that, I don’t need to be super creative on those, I just need to be very matter of fact.

0:13:56.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:13:56.4 Jordan Syatt: So it’s not difficult.

0:13:58.0 Mike Vacanti: That makes sense. Alright, what else we got here? We got a couple of email questions, and so we’ll probably do a couple of email questions today and then a couple of random Instagram Q&A questions.

0:14:11.6 Jordan Syatt: Cool.

0:14:12.2 Mike Vacanti: Cool.

0:14:12.9 Jordan Syatt: Do I look blurry to you?

0:14:14.7 Mike Vacanti: Maybe slightly, but this is the first video pod. We’re just banging it out. Throwing it out there, we can adjust.

0:14:20.2 Jordan Syatt: Well, I know that there’s a thing above you that says actual recording is higher quality.

0:14:25.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, so in this software, it says that when we’re live, we see it in 720, but when… It’s in 1080, the final output.

0:14:34.3 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Okay. Good, good.

0:14:35.6 Mike Vacanti: I have no idea. I, I mean David highly recommends this. I don’t know if a computer web camera from… I don’t know when I got this computer, five years ago, maybe, is… I don’t know how that compares in quality, yeah, to an iPhone or Android or current day cell phone camera.

0:14:55.2 Jordan Syatt: I’m sure it’s good and your audio quality is just perfect, so.

0:15:00.7 Mike Vacanti: Okay. [chuckle] This is… You know what? Before we get in…

[laughter]

0:15:10.2 Mike Vacanti: This is interesting to me. I thought about this during my lift this morning. Do you wanna tell the story? I’m gonna let you tell it the way that you want to tell it, and with as much or as little detail or… I think we can just tell it completely normally. When you were in the 2012 to 2013 time frame, and I could be off, give or take a year here or there. But I remember you thinking that you didn’t wanna be reliant on relationships with other people in the fitness industry for your business growth and success, but rather you wanted to break out of that…

0:15:56.7 Jordan Syatt: The circle jerk.

0:15:57.4 Mike Vacanti: There we go. [chuckle]

0:15:58.8 Jordan Syatt: The fitness circle jerk. We’re not PC on this podcast. I explicitly said I wanted out of the fitness circle jerk.

0:16:05.9 Mike Vacanti: You posted that?

0:16:07.3 Jordan Syatt: No, no, no, but I told my buddy Pat Flynn, I told him that, ’cause I hired him as my business coach, and now I said like, he was like, “What’s your goal?” And I said, “I wanna be out of the fitness circle jerk, I don’t wanna depend on other people, and I don’t want to have my business success dependent on other people’s sharing of my content or whether I’m aligning myself with their beliefs outside of fitness.” It’s like, I wanna be completely independent of all of these other people, which I think for people who’ve gotten in the industry in the last five years, they might not fully understand it. But back in that time, there was a clear circle of fitness professionals, that was all done on Facebook basically, it was all on Facebook…

0:16:52.9 Mike Vacanti: And blogs.

0:16:53.9 Jordan Syatt: And blogs.

0:16:54.2 Mike Vacanti: There were just way fewer… There were way fewer fitness content creators then.

0:16:58.3 Jordan Syatt: Way fewer, and there were fewer mediums. It was like the Facebook was the medium that we were on, and that’s where we communicated on and shared content and shared beliefs, and I was just like, “This is so far outside of my comfort zone, and I don’t see this being a good long-term strategy at all.”

0:17:17.0 Mike Vacanti: The reason I bring that up is I see… Well, there’s two things, there’s what we talk about a lot, which is when you’re making content, when you’re writing specifically, don’t write your captions, don’t write your articles in order to impress your peers, and use big words and fancy technology, and talk about things that aren’t relevant to your potential client, just because you want to impress so and so person in the industry. But instead, write in a way that’s actually gonna help your client or potential client. Which are two different styles of content creation. There’s not only that, but there’s also this… It’s like, I scratch your back, you scratch mine circle jerk aspect to networking and relationships with peers in any industry. And I go back to Gary when he and his brother were starting VaynerMedia, and in the years shortly thereafter when I was coaching him and he was saying like, “I don’t care at all about what… ” I can’t even think of any of the big ad agencies at the time, but like, “I don’t care what these guys think of me, or I don’t care what these guys think of me, I care about my relationship with my audience. I care about my relationship with my community, what my community thinks of me.” and like the back and forth there rather than your peers, which…

0:18:37.0 Mike Vacanti: And the way that translates into fitness right now that I see it, is people are afraid to say certain things or take stances because they don’t wanna go against people in the same area, and a real like for like, tit for tat commenting on each… Basically, not real friendships, but essentially feeling the need to agree and align yourself with people that you don’t necessarily agree with on fitness or not, and like you said, but even just on basic fitness stuff, because you feel like you have to for your own success, and caring about that way more than you care about your relationship with your audience.

0:19:16.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And one of the things I like about our relationship, you and me, is there’s… We don’t complain or gossip or… So much of our conversation is just about what we actually enjoy and what we value and what we wanna do, whereas I remember when being in that circle jerk, there was just so much complaining and gossiping and talking behind people’s backs. And conniving, and it was a very… And I was lucky because I was… Number one, I was very young. I was 20, 21, 22, and I hadn’t really solidified myself as a key player in the industry at that point, so I like… I was like first… When I was really young, I was like, “I wanna be in that. I wanna be in that group.” As I started to make my way in, I was like, “Oof, this isn’t what I wanna be a part of. This isn’t at all,” because it felt like middle school politics and just like, Who’s the popular kids? And they decide everything. And it was just like, this is not good. So yeah, it’s… I think it just… It was just, I have no interest in being a part of this, and I don’t see it actually being a good business strategy at all, or a life strategy.

0:20:39.5 Mike Vacanti: And then instead of… So I guess you could go on to talk about how you went on to not be a part of it and still succeed.

0:20:50.3 Jordan Syatt: Yes, so I was working with Pat Flynn at the time, and one of the amazing things that I got from working with Pat was understanding email lists and understanding having your own audience that you could directly contact at any point in time. And so when I was working with Pat, this is before I started to really get into social media and use it the way that Gary taught. I just started collecting emails and I put out great information and great content and collecting emails, and I realized I could just interact directly with my email list, I didn’t even need to put anything out publicly. I could just solely write my email list, I didn’t have to publish anything on social media, I didn’t need a huge audience. I had a very small audience at that time, but I had a social media list of people who really, really cared about me and valued what I had to say. And I remember for the first time, and since beginning in the online world for several years, probably for the first time in about 4-5 years, feeling completely independent and being like, “Wow, this is great, I don’t even need to post on social media.” And that’s actually…

0:21:55.5 Jordan Syatt: People ask me now, they’re like, “Are you worried if your social media account gets taken down or whatever?” I’m like, “That obviously wouldn’t be good, I wouldn’t be happy about it, but I’d be totally fine.” Because I have an email list and I have a text list and I have lists that I can contact people directly, and if I never wanted to post on social media again, it wouldn’t be a problem because I could always just reach out to my email list that I’ve spent the last 11 years building. So I think for me, the biggest thing was, and I see this all the time. For example, I’ve seen people doing this, I’ve seen this entire multiple actually like the gurus, like the mastermind gurus saying, “Make a private Facebook page that people can go on and then… And make a… And get all of your audience to follow you in a private Facebook page.” What a stupid fucking idea. All of the time and effort and energy that you’re getting to funnel people onto this other social media platform to a private page is, you could just use that time and energy to get them on in your email list, ’cause on a Facebook page, you don’t control that. You have no control over the Facebook page, you have no control over who’s gonna see it, is why not just get them… And on a Facebook page, there are many positive aspects about community, which is one of the reasons why we have one for the mentorship and we have one for the inner circle, but we’re also very…

0:23:11.5 Jordan Syatt: We have a very unique approach to it, and we’re very clear with the… We make sure that the communities that we build are very positive and uplifting and encouraging, and that takes real work. That’s not something that you do passively. You don’t wanna have this poisonous obnoxious community where people are gossiping and all. That’s what was going on on Facebook back in 2013, 2014, 2015, when I was like, “I don’t wanna be a part of this.” In an email list, there’s no toxicity, there’s no bickering, there’s no gossiping, it’s just you and the person you’re emailing. And if you could have hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that you’re emailing, but it’s still one-on-one communication, and I think that’s really how you build these one-on-one interactions, these one-on-one relationships with people, just with you, not worrying about what other people are saying or other people are commenting. It’s you and them, and I think for me, that was the biggest turning point initially was developing an email list and getting one-on-one contact with people in a real close individual way.

0:24:16.0 Mike Vacanti: I love that. And not to mention, some people might hear that and say, “Yeah, well, you can get banned from social media, but your email service provider could also kick you off the platform.” So do you really have direct access? Yes, you do, because you can export your emails and literally have them in an Excel file on your computer, not in the cloud somewhere, and actually have those list. So if you couldn’t send via your current email service provider, you could send via another email service provider or in many other ways, but you have direct access. And two, some may also say, “Well, you don’t actually have direct access to them because Yahoo or Gmail or whoever else might… Your emails might go to the marketing tab, they might go to the spam tab, they might… Similar to how an algorithm might not show you someone’s content you wanna see. Their email, whatever… Gmail might not let you get into their inbox. It’s so easy. I’m subscribed to a handful of newsletters that I want to read, it’s so easy to see those. Pull it from marketing into the other thing and you’re gonna see it every single time, they know if you’re opening every single time, it’s never going to spam, whereas you could follow someone on Instagram and really want to see their stuff and not end up seeing very much of their stuff over time.

0:25:44.3 Jordan Syatt: You can see it in the data, and Facebook releases their information. All these platforms release what percentage of your audience will organically see it. Facebook business pages are less than 1%. Less than 1% of the people who follow your page will actually see it. Instagram, less than… Definitely less than 10%. It might even be less than 5% right now. Whereas you look at deliverable emails, it’s over 98%. Having over 98% delivered to their inbox. And if you have… If you write good emails, it’s usually between a 25-50% open rate. You can’t argue with that. Not to mention, like you said, you can download all the emails, have it on your computer. Worst comes to worst, I will go to my Gmail account and, one by one, input all of these emails into a BCC and write them all a damn email.

0:26:40.9 Mike Vacanti: Or not even a BCC, write them an email one-to-one like we used to.

0:26:44.7 Jordan Syatt: One by one, exactly.

0:26:45.6 Mike Vacanti: Back in the day, before Jordan and I knew that there was this thing called… I don’t know what you…

0:26:51.2 Jordan Syatt: Autoresponders.

[chuckle]

0:26:52.4 Mike Vacanti: Well, yeah, not even an autoresponder, but when… A template via WordPress, where they could sign up to get your lead magnet, and then you could have a pre-written email that they received. No, no, no, no, no. When they put their email address in there, I would get a notification, and then at the beginning of each day, I would look at all of the people who signed up for it, and I would one on one email each person, attach the PDF of the beginner’s fitness guide, send it to them. Yeah, that was a wild time.

0:27:19.0 Jordan Syatt: Those were the days, man.

0:27:20.5 Mike Vacanti: We were just young and…

0:27:23.2 Jordan Syatt: Hungry.

0:27:23.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Just ready to get dirt under our fingernails and get after it. Very different than where I’m at right now.

0:27:31.3 Jordan Syatt: Email really is… Listen, social media is great, and that’s one of the best things I learned from working with Gary and watching him is the email list crowd, the email marketing crowd is very derogatory towards or pessimistic towards the social media because they always say things like, “Oh, you don’t need social media to make sales. Email’s where all the sales happen,” and I agree, the majority of sales happen over email. But what I realized from building my social is that it’s better to have both than either alone. And if you are more active on social media and you have a more engaged audience, then you’ll have better sales and better open rates on email. So when I wasn’t as active on social media, my open rates were much lower and much lower by 25… They were 25-30%, which is still very high.

0:28:16.0 Jordan Syatt: But now that I’m more active on social, and people actually are seeing what I’m saying and they care, my open rates are between 45-50%, which is… I think is a direct result of they’ve developed a closer relationship with me through social media. So when they see something come through via email, they’re much more interested in what I’m gonna say. And if they see me talking about something on social media or promoting it, and then I send them an email about it, they’re more likely to buy it because they’ve seen closer looks at it on social media. So they both play into each other. But I think having an email list is your insurance policy. It’s your failsafe. That’s your no matter what, you’ve got that. And I think that should be something you’re building from day one, week one, to the day that you’re done with all of this. You should always, always, always be building that and maintaining it.

0:29:00.7 Mike Vacanti: That actually transitions us super nicely into a question from Megan, who’s subscribed to the podcast email list that we have not emailed in probably roughly a year, to be honest, that there’s a very good chance that we start writing a weekly email, now that we’re hammering these video podcasts.

0:29:20.6 Jordan Syatt: Very good?! Oh, man…

[laughter]

0:29:24.8 Mike Vacanti: Obligating us to not do it. Just a terrible move.

0:29:28.2 Jordan Syatt: “There’s a very good chance we’re gonna start writing a weekly newsletter.” I’m like, “Okay.”

[laughter]

0:29:34.7 Mike Vacanti: Think of… [chuckle] The De Niro. There we go. Give me a name for it.

0:29:41.1 Jordan Syatt: Our weekly newsletter?

0:29:42.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Silver Bullet Sunday, Business Bullet?

0:29:45.0 Jordan Syatt: Silver Business Bullets?

0:29:46.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:29:47.9 Jordan Syatt: Silver Business Bullet Sunday? Yeah.

0:29:48.0 Mike Vacanti: Is that what you used to do?

0:29:49.3 Jordan Syatt: Man, I used to have Silver Strength Bullets on Fridays and Silver Business Bullets on Sundays. Yeah. Yeah, those were good. That was like 2016, 2017, 2018.

0:30:00.4 Mike Vacanti: Should we write some Silver Business Bullets? Maybe we do a monthly email newsletter.

0:30:03.8 Jordan Syatt: I like the monthly one. I think once a month, maybe once every two weeks. Something along those lines. It’s just like Silver Business Bullets, a little bullet-pointed list of things to pay attention to.

0:30:14.0 Mike Vacanti: Someone, I forget his name… Someone emailed us and was like, “Guys, I love the podcast. I listen every week. I think I’m subscribed to the email newsletter, but you guys talk about the newsletter, and I’m just not getting the emails. What’s going on?” I was like, “Brother, that’s on us.”

0:30:34.2 Jordan Syatt: That’s our fault. We’ve got the list. We just don’t email the list very much.

0:30:39.2 Mike Vacanti: Yet.

0:30:40.0 Jordan Syatt: Yet, yeah.

0:30:41.0 Mike Vacanti: Just like video podcasts were going to happen, and here they are. You gotta bring that face out. This is actually the first time the… Jordan does this… Jordan’s big on impressions. He does that probably three times a month for the last 18 months, at least. But it’s never made its way into content with Kenzie and Johnny and all of your characters.

0:31:06.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. This is the first intro to my Robert De Niro guy.

0:31:11.6 Mike Vacanti: Oh, you’re testing it. [chuckle] Megan said, “Hello, I’m loving the podcast. I decided to get certified with no real plans. I love the idea of being an online personal trainer, but I stall because it seems daunting starting from zero. What are the first things to establish as a personal trainer with zero clients? Do I set up an email list, grow a following, train a family member, etcetera? Thank you for all that you do.”

0:31:37.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so that’s actually… That’s a great transition into this. And I think based on what we just said, people would think the first thing is build an email list, but that’s not the first thing you should do. The first thing you should do is get really good at coaching, and study, and learn, and read books. Read books, don’t try and learn from Instagram. Learning from Instagram is a waste. It really is. And it’s like… You can learn basic ideas and simple facts, but you don’t learn how to coach, you don’t really learn to understand the whys, the hows, the whats. It’s very surface-level. So yeah, so I would read books, and I would read research reviews. Alan Aragon’s Research Review is such a great place to begin for $10 a month. Strongly recommend doing that. But become a good coach, first and foremost. From there, I think what you can do in conjunction and in that process of becoming a better coach is just posting about what you’re doing, posting out your training. If you’re training any clients, whether it’s for free or not, post about their training. Just start documenting that process now.

0:32:53.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s funny. Someone actually sent me… I forgot to reply. Damn, I feel like a dick. Someone sent me a message on Instagram the other day. He must have spent 30 minutes scrolling through all my posts ’cause he went down to one of my first-ever Instagram posts where I was coaching somebody and I just posted a video of them doing a lift, and it had four likes on it. And he just sent it to me and he said, “I just wanna remind you how far you’ve come. I hope you have a great day.” It’s just such a nice message. He took all that time to do that and I feel like I dick ’cause I saw it and I was like, “I need to respond to this,” and I forgot. But hopefully, he’s listening to this. It’s great to have those things to look back on, but it’s also… That’s how you get started. That’s how you get started with social media and with posting content, is you just start posting, ’cause the first content you make is gonna suck. It’s gonna be really, really bad no matter what. So you might as well start posting content and learning that aspect of it while you’re becoming a better coach than trying to separate it into two different time frames. As you’re becoming a better coach, start posting content, learn those games. And I would say, that should be your… Becoming a better coach is priority number one and posting about what you’re learning and all of that is priority number two for the first 2-3 years.

0:34:06.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, 100%. Not only what you did there, which was posting about coaching your client, but start working with clients in person. Megan, you said you wanted to potentially become an online personal trainer. You become a better online coach by becoming a better in-person coach. And so whether that means an internship, a part-time internship at a gym, whether that means coaching family and friends for free in person with whatever equipment available, go to a Planet Fitness… Whatever you need to do, get reps in with in-person coaching and document that process. And if you aren’t working with any clients in person right now, that’s okay. Document your own training. We started this episode talking about document what you’re doing for yourself on the nutrition side, on the training side, on the rest and recovery side, what your current goals are, and exactly what you’re doing to pursue those because that’s a very good way of educating.

0:35:08.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and there’s so many things you can do. Maybe you’re not a young kid anymore, you’re not in your early 20s. I don’t know where you are, Megan, but for anyone else listening, maybe you’re not super young, maybe you’ve got kids, maybe you’ve got other obligations so you can’t go get an internship at a gym, that’s fine. I remember when I was younger and I was living on the beach, I would go to the beach, I’d fill up these drawstring bags with sand, and I would just do beach workouts with sandbags with people when I was living in Israel. If you have a pair of dumbbells, have people go over your house, work out in your garage, or go to their house in your neighborhood. You go to their house, you bring the dumbbells, you put them in the trunk of your car. I used to do that. I used to drive around with stuff in the back of my car and drive to people’s houses. I used to take them to the local high school. And we would go to the high school and we would go to the playground, and we would do workouts on the playground with some bands and stuff that I had in the back of my car.

0:36:00.4 Jordan Syatt: I remember I used to take people to the parking lot. And this is all just coming back to me now. I used to take people to the parking lot and put the car in neutral, and do car pushes with my little hatchback, just a super ugly little car that I had. There’s so many things you can do. I remember one of my favorite things is doing outside workouts in the winter, in the Northeast. In the winter, being outside, you get all dressed up, you got your snow boots on, you got your snow pants on, your hat, your gloves, and you go outside and you just trudge through the snow. You just walk through the snow. If you’ve ever walked through wet snow with all that stuff on, it’s difficult. And then you do a set of 10 snow over the shoulders with a shovel and then walk, then snow over the shoulder with a shovel and walk. Just getting people together to do that, you’re gonna learn a lot.

0:36:50.5 Jordan Syatt: I remember watching… There’s this amazing coach, Ross Enamait, I think is how you pronounce him. He was doing the craziest stuff outside in the snow. Dan John is always doing amazing stuff outside in the snow. You’re only limited by your imagination and even if you just have body weight, that’s great. But if you get a couple of dumbbells, some bands, maybe a kettlebell, you can do it out of your garage, out of their garage, out of their basement, in your basement, outside in the parking lot, at the local school, high school playground, whatever. Just start coaching people in person. It’s gonna help you so much.

0:37:22.1 Mike Vacanti: What year was that that you were doing sled pushes with the hatchback?

0:37:26.6 Jordan Syatt: That was 2011.

0:37:30.3 Mike Vacanti: Man.

0:37:31.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, 2010, 2011.

0:37:33.7 Mike Vacanti: So in 11, 12-year window, you went from driving a hatchback to a Bugatti. That is crazy, man.

0:37:38.2 Jordan Syatt: I’m not driving a Bugatti, all right?

0:37:39.6 Mike Vacanti: Come on, tell the people.

0:37:41.4 Jordan Syatt: I’m driving a Toyota Venza, which is a very nice car. I really enjoy it, super comfortable. But you know, I’m not a money spender like that. I don’t buy Bugattis.

0:37:51.9 Mike Vacanti: No. No, you don’t.

0:37:53.2 Jordan Syatt: Gets me from point A to point B. You were in the car, right? Did I take you in the car?

0:37:57.2 Mike Vacanti: I haven’t, but…

0:37:57.7 Jordan Syatt: Did you get in the car?

0:37:58.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, Jordan doesn’t have a Bugatti. That was just a joke and me looking for…

0:38:01.2 Jordan Syatt: Toyota Venza. So it’s a great car. I’m a big fan of it. Not sponsored.

0:38:10.2 Mike Vacanti: [chuckle] Toyota’s giving you a… Sponsoring this episode?

0:38:13.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh man, they’re getting some real free advertising right now.

0:38:18.2 Mike Vacanti: In addition to becoming a great in-person coach, a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that they need to create content everywhere. Jordan, for example. They see someone who is creating on Instagram, on YouTube, has a full website. You’re making content all over the place and there are so many places now, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube Shorts, YouTube Long Form, podcast, etcetera, and they get overwhelmed because they feel like they need to be everywhere at once. Pick one short form and one long form and focus only on those two for a very long amount of time as a place to start. A place to start isn’t trying to repurpose and literally be everywhere. It’s pick one place, whether it’s Instagram, whether it’s Facebook, and one place for short form, one place for long form, which would probably be a website, getting your website up and writing long form articles, and to focus solely on those two as far as content creation goes for at least six plus months, potentially longer.

0:39:29.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and I think… One of the biggest things that prevents people from coaches… Or people who wanna be coaches from posting content is they don’t wanna post something that’s wrong, and they get worried about someone calling them out saying, “That’s wrong.” I think one of the best things you can do early on is not present yourself as an expert. Now, they’ve got video post, people can see the air quotes. If you’re not an expert, stop pretending to be an expert. You don’t have to be right about everything. And if you pretend to be an expert and have all the answers when you don’t, and when you aren’t, then A, you’re gonna look like a schmuck if you do post or B, you’re not gonna post because you’re gonna be scared about being wrong.

0:40:14.4 Jordan Syatt: So when you post, I think it would be a really good idea to say things like, “Listen, I’m still in the process of becoming a coach. I’m learning. I very well might be wrong. I’ve been wrong in the past and I’ll be wrong in the future, but based on what I know right now, this has been working really well for me and my clients, so here’s what I’m gonna say.” And when you start with that, you take away all the pressure to be right all the time, because number one, no one is right all the time, but number two, this relieves the stress of feeling like you need to be right. For example, the other day, someone asked me, why am I doing tummy time with my daughter? And the first thing I said, I was like, “Listen, number one, you have to remember, this isn’t my specialty. I’m literally just parroting the things that I’ve heard and I’ve been told.” Number two, I was like, “This is why we’re doing tummy time, and it seems to make sense to me, but I don’t fucking know, I have no idea.”

0:41:02.7 Jordan Syatt: And I got some people being like, “Oh, tummy time is great,” and other people are saying tummy time isn’t great. I was like, cool, well, I don’t know, I’m just doing what my doctor and all that stuff told us to do with our daughter, so that’s it. So as long as you start by saying, “Listen. I’m in the process of learning and this isn’t my specialty yet,” then you can’t really go wrong and you remove the impostor syndrome and you can just express what you’ve been learning.

0:41:25.7 Mike Vacanti: I love that. I think that applies to… I actually see people who are great coaches use a lot of caveats too, right?

0:41:34.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:41:34.7 Mike Vacanti: Especially around nutrition, especially around things that we either aren’t currently or just can’t be 100% certain of, prefacing what you’re saying with, while the current body of research suggests, or I think it’s very likely that insert, rather than having these black and white 100% zero binary statements, which do way better, which perform way better, which are more enjoyable to consume, but are less technically accurate.

0:42:09.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.

0:42:11.7 Mike Vacanti: So not presenting yourself as an expert or at least… I don’t wanna say hedging, but just actually articulating the truth rather than being hyperbolic when you’re presenting ideas is something that benefits not only new coaches, but anyone making content.

0:42:32.0 Jordan Syatt: Hyperbolic. Now, that is a good word. That’s a really good word. I’m just Googling it.

0:42:37.2 Mike Vacanti: Don’t Google it. You know what that means.

0:42:39.7 Jordan Syatt: I’m Googling it. It’s relating to hyperbole, exaggerated.

0:42:42.7 Mike Vacanti: Hyperbole.

0:42:43.7 Jordan Syatt: Hyperbole. Hyperbolical.

0:42:45.7 Mike Vacanti: Dude, no. This may have happened before. In the first 20 podcast I said hyperbole and you said, “Hyperbole, good word.” And you Googled it. This definitely happened. And then when we were writing our book, Jordan, this is like weeks after, used the word hyperbole. You write it and you’re like… You ended a paragraph with hyperbole was in the last sentence of the paragraph, and then you said something along… And then you said, “Hyperbole, good word. Tell your friends they’ll be… ” Something like that.

[laughter]

0:43:22.4 Mike Vacanti: And when we got the notes back from our editor at that, she X’ed out all of it. She’s like, “This isn’t impressive. Hyperbole is a normal word.” She didn’t even have a comment, ’cause usually there was a comment in the side bar. We had lots of comments. It was just like strike through eliminated from the book.

[laughter]

0:43:44.2 Jordan Syatt: I remember that now. I forgot about that. That was so funny.

0:43:46.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:43:47.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you’re not including this in the book.

0:43:49.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, but we actually… Gosh, we had so many… We had a lot of battles that we won, that stayed in the book.

0:43:58.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah. I think the majority of battles, I think we won.

0:44:01.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:44:02.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, listen, this is this is staying.

0:44:04.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:44:05.2 Jordan Syatt: Putting our foot down. Putting our feet down.

[chuckle]

0:44:08.9 Mike Vacanti: Alright, next question here is from Ciaran. I think I’m saying that right.

0:44:19.9 Jordan Syatt: Good thing I turned my phone off. I just did that thing where like when you’re bored for a second, you look at your phone, I went to go look and just phone is off. Look at that man.

0:44:27.7 Mike Vacanti: That’s well played.

0:44:28.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:44:31.2 Mike Vacanti: That’s crazy though. The amount of… The lack of boredom in our society is wild. The lack of an ability to be bored…

0:44:39.5 Jordan Syatt: It’s really bad.

0:44:41.3 Mike Vacanti: With short style content and cell phones in general is just crazy.

0:44:47.9 Jordan Syatt: Bro, I struggle with it so much.

0:44:49.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:44:50.2 Jordan Syatt: I noticed that when I’m… I could be on my phone in my apartment, and then I put my phone in my pocket, I walk out my apartment door to go down to my office, which is where I’m in right now, it’s just a couple floors down, and I noticed from when I put my phone in my pocket to walk out my door, and by the time the door closes behind me, I wanna take my phone out again. It’s maybe seven seconds and I’m like… And I catch myself, I’m like, “Just get to the elevator without using your phone.” And then when I get to the elevator, I’m like, “Just wait until I get on the elevator.” And when I’m on the other room, I’m like, “Just wait until I get to the office.” And dude, it’s hard, ’cause this whole thing takes maybe a minute and a half, or it’s like if I’m going to the car, it’s like, “Can’t I just focus on walking to the car without having my fucking eyes in this phone?” Geez. I really struggle with it. It’s really crazy.

0:45:46.0 Mike Vacanti: Are you getting stimulation from hyper-enjoyable content you’re consuming, or are you getting stimulation from positive feedback on your content?

0:45:55.7 Jordan Syatt: Much more in the DMs, especially right now with the mini cut, ’cause every day I’m getting so many messages, “This is so helpful. Thank you so much.” And so it’s much more of that for sure.

0:46:07.3 Mike Vacanti: Dude… I… We just talked about this, right?

0:46:11.2 Jordan Syatt: I think yesterday or the day before, I think.

0:46:14.1 Mike Vacanti: I caught my… I literally recorded a six-minute voice memo that I might upload to YouTube while I was driving because it was such an epiphany I was having. I would…

0:46:22.8 Jordan Syatt: Today?

0:46:22.9 Mike Vacanti: No, I recorded it on Thursday, I believe.

0:46:24.5 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:46:24.6 Mike Vacanti: I was scrolling, and I know this isn’t safe, I don’t recommend this. Dislike the video because this was terrible. I was scrolling while driving with Shorts going.

0:46:38.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, man.

0:46:39.6 Mike Vacanti: Like, I wasn’t reading them. I just had it off to the side and getting the audio but rather not reading, not watching. It was just like my phone was sitting next to me, but then once it would loop and repeat itself once or twice, I’d scroll to the next one, and in my head, I was like, “What am I doing? I can’t… The radio isn’t even as enjoyable anymore. A podcast isn’t even as enjoyable anymore.” And so when I asked you if it was on the consumption side or the creation side, you said creation side, which I said is better is because if you’re letting yourself get addicted… And it’s not just dopamine… If you’re letting yourself get addicted to the dopamine of consumption of like, you’re not learning, you’re kind of vaguely being entertained, but you’re not retaining it because they’re 15 to 30 seconds per clip and you’re consuming a lot of them, so most of it’s not sticking.

0:47:26.3 Mike Vacanti: You’re basically in this drone-like state, and if you’re letting yourself get addicted to that positive feeling of getting that, that’s just like wasting life, and I say that as someone who’s fully addicted to that stuff. That’s wasting life versus the addiction of positive feedback in posting and getting feedback, wanting to post more, wanting to grow audience followers, that kind of gets demonized. At least the back end of that is like food on the table for your family. It’s revenue, it’s building a business, it’s… You’re doing something productive when you get addicted to the process of growing a business on social media, whereas being addicted to social media enjoyment, entertainment, consumption, it’s like gross. It’s just a waste.

[laughter]

0:48:13.6 Jordan Syatt: Getting addicted to other people’s hard work.

0:48:16.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Literally. And it’s not… Like the stuff that is hitting my YouTube Shorts, ’cause it’s been YouTube Shorts for me recently, is micro content from a podcast that someone else pulled that puts some of the most emotionally stimulating best music ever layered on top of it with this impactful message. It’s like the best 16 seconds of the podcast, and it’s right there and it’s like, boom, it’s… I’m trying to think of a… There’s definitely an analogy between eating a potato and eating something sugary. It’s like they’re both carbs, but one of them, your body handles differently and one of them… Your body handles both of them differently…

0:49:02.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. They might have the same number of calories, but how those nutrients affect your body is two different things.

0:49:08.9 Mike Vacanti: And satiety and leaving you wanting more of one versus the other one, they’re vastly different. And so that’s great that even though you’re addicted to your phone, addicted, you’re doing it in a productive way, replying to DMs, helping people out. It’s better than the bad kind of phone addiction that I think the majority of people are sucked into.

0:49:31.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, agreed.

0:49:34.1 Mike Vacanti: And option C is like, I don’t know, I guess some people can just use their phone responsibly and have complete control over their actions as a person, like good for you, if you’re on that level. But then my mind goes to option three of take the apps off the phone, which I think is the second best of the three.

0:49:56.2 Jordan Syatt: My goal is to get to a point where I can just have a flip phone. I wanna go back to having a flip phone.

0:50:03.8 Mike Vacanti: I put $50 million in your bank account right now, you do not stop posting, you do not go to flip phone.

0:50:10.8 Jordan Syatt: Ever? In my whole life?

0:50:12.0 Mike Vacanti: What do you mean, ever? Like, no, today. Like I… Wired $50 million in…

0:50:16.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, if you sent me $50 million right now, you don’t think I’d stop posting?

0:50:19.6 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:50:20.7 Jordan Syatt: I think I could.

0:50:23.8 Mike Vacanti: Well, yeah, could. Sure, but you wouldn’t.

0:50:27.2 Jordan Syatt: Why?

0:50:27.4 Mike Vacanti: It’s just not in your nature.

0:50:30.5 Jordan Syatt: Man, if…

0:50:32.0 Mike Vacanti: And by the way, I think that if you sent me $50 million… It’s hard to say, “stop posting,” ’cause I’m not really…

[laughter]

0:50:44.5 Mike Vacanti: But I think if you sent me $50 million and I never posted another thing on the internet again, I would hate myself for it because it means that the primary driver was money, and that if that stopped it, then I would hate who I am fundamentally as a result of it. Whereas I actually think… I think it’s a good thing to want to continue to educate, entertain, inspire, put stuff out.

0:51:11.8 Jordan Syatt: That’s a good point.

0:51:11.9 Mike Vacanti: Not just for the money. The money is a by-product of it.

0:51:14.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that makes total sense. Yeah, that makes total sense.

0:51:18.1 Mike Vacanti: So I wrote this in my notes the other day: Security is a weak goal. Like, safety is a weak goal.

0:51:28.5 Jordan Syatt: What do you mean?

0:51:30.2 Mike Vacanti: I mean, first of all, there’s no such thing as security. We’re all gonna die. We’re all mortals. So there’s… At the end of that line, there’s no full security, there’s no full level of safety. Further, you could have a billion dollars and still be at risk of… I mean, to use something topical, and we don’t need to… Let’s actually not go into this, but it’s the first thing I came to mind, still be at risk of like if there was a nuclear war, you’d be in trouble. Your billion dollars ‘ain’t gonna save you, your security, your weapons, your training, your anything you have. And so I’ve… Naturally based on my personality, a lot of the reason why I saved a lot and spent very little and worked hard over the course of my life was for the purpose of security, but it’s just… It’s a weak aim for a life versus… Versus doing it because you genuinely want to help other people, regardless of what you get back in return to do it. I don’t know. For other reasons.

0:52:47.7 Jordan Syatt: There are more virtuous goals.

0:52:50.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yes. Well said.

0:52:54.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, there are goals, that often security will come from chasing those goals as opposed to making security your foremost, your aim. Whereas when you chase the goal of helping people and being a positive contribution to society and being good individual, then security will often come with that or heightened security. But…

0:53:15.0 Mike Vacanti: Yes, some security will come as a byproduct of it. You can’t get…

0:53:18.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that makes sense.

0:53:20.3 Mike Vacanti: Maximum security, that’s very well said. It shouldn’t be the top of your value hierarchy, it shouldn’t be your pinnacle aim or… When I say shouldn’t I’m basically yelling at myself, I’m saying when… Like, when you put security at the top of your value hierarchy, that’s weak, that’s plain scared, that’s a bad way to live. That’s… If you reflect back on life at 88, and that was… If most of your actions were driven by that end, that’s disappointing.

0:53:49.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s also makes me think of that book that you recommend… That you told me about, Die With Zero.

0:53:55.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, Bill Perkins.

0:53:55.8 Jordan Syatt: Where it’s like, if you’re so focused on just security, security, security, and you end up dying with millions in your bank accounts, it’s like you didn’t even enjoy it. You didn’t even like… You just… What’s the point of dying with all that money in your bank account if you can’t even use it to enjoy it.

0:54:13.7 Mike Vacanti: Or… And…

0:54:14.4 Jordan Syatt: And then that money goes to people who didn’t earn it, and that can really fuck with their head.

0:54:16.8 Mike Vacanti: Well, some of it goes to… You’re thinking in…

0:54:19.4 Jordan Syatt: To the government, yeah.

0:54:20.4 Mike Vacanti: Terms of inheritance?

0:54:20.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, inheritance, yeah.

0:54:23.7 Mike Vacanti: And the other hand… I’m almost certain in the United States, the estate tax is 50%, so half of it’s going to the government.

0:54:30.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s insane, Jesus.

0:54:33.2 Mike Vacanti: And then, yeah, you’re… It’s so hard to say this because someone who’s in poverty right now is like, “Easy for you to say.” But having a trust fund, inheriting millions of dollars, I would imagine, is just like… It takes the fire out of you, for a lot of people. It’s like that quote you keep… Some boxer said, “It’s hard to go running at 5 o’clock in the morning when you’re sleeping in silk sheets.”

0:55:03.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly, yeah. Man, it’s funny, Gary speaks about that alot. Gary talks about how there’s a huge advantage in growing up with nothing. And I very much believe that ’cause I didn’t grow up with much money at all, and I very much believe that, not just from a wealth perspective, but from a happiness perspective, from a fulfillment perspective, from a, how you view life perspective. The people who are born into wealth, not all of them, but if you’re born into wealth with a huge inheritance, I think it can be very difficult to find what you love and what you’re passionate about. I think it can actually be much, much, much harder, whereas when you come from nothing and you’re forced to find ways to make ends meet. And you’re almost coming from the perspective of, “Well, I’ve got nothing lose.” You’re willing to try so many more things. You’re willing to experiment and explore and put yourself out there and meet new people. Whereas when you’re just given this from the very beginning, you’ve got something to lose from right off to get. You got a lot to lose. You’ve got other people’s opinions and expectations to live up to. You’ve got actual tangible wealth to lose. You might not fully understand the value of that wealth and invest it poorly in yourself or in other people, and haphazardly. I mean there’s so much more…

0:56:34.0 Jordan Syatt: I think you start off being more timid, oftentimes, because you don’t want to lose it, whereas when you start off with you got nothing to lose, you’re not scared. You go out and you try and you try and you try, ’cause worst comes to worse, you can’t be worse off than where you are now, so you just keep on going. I think there’s a huge, huge mental advantage in that. Which as a father now I struggle with, like “What am I gonna do with my kids, I don’t want them to… ” Here’s the thing, there is a… I think I have partly an unhealthy relationship with money because of how much of it was an issue in my house. It was just always like every single day, it was like, money’s an issue, money’s an issue, money’s an issue to the point where it… I have anxiety around money, even when I shouldn’t, it’s still there. So I don’t want there to be like the constant ever-present worry about money, but I don’t ever want them to think there’s an excess of money. That’s where I struggle now as I’m trying to plan for the future. How do I essentially trick my children into not knowing that we’re comfortable. Does that make sense?

0:57:46.1 Mike Vacanti: 100… Dude, I used to think about this very often. You remember what Gary said that his… Here’s what my rich friends say.

0:57:53.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:57:54.9 Mike Vacanti: They say, “I’m rich. Daddy’s rich, you’re not rich, daddy’s rich.”

[laughter]

0:58:06.6 Mike Vacanti: And so… That’s how… And I don’t know at what age like you know there’s… Yeah, how do you fake scarcity, how do you… It seems near impossible, but I think there are probably some things that you’ll be able to do. We both know the cliche of a 20-something girl who moves to Manhattan and has everything… Has dad’s credit card, right?

0:58:34.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.

0:58:34.8 Mike Vacanti: And paying 5000 a month in rent and da, da, da, da, da. Don’t do that.

0:58:39.7 Jordan Syatt: Don’t do that. [laughter]

0:58:40.2 Mike Vacanti: When your daughter’s like, “I’m gonna move to New York City and I wanna live in SoHo and I want this… I wanna be on the 17th floor of this sweet building and I want da, da, da, da, da.” It’s like, “Oh, okay well…

0:58:49.2 Jordan Syatt: Good luck there.

0:58:50.4 Mike Vacanti: “Good luck. I’d like to come visit.”

0:58:52.0 Jordan Syatt: What job do you have?

[laughter]

0:58:55.1 Jordan Syatt: You must have a great job, that’s all.

[laughter]

0:59:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Exactly. But I think about it more in terms of pre-18-years old versus people who are helping their children financially into their 20s or even 30s that we sometimes see. And I don’t know how you fake that. If you wanna go on a nice vacation, when… Are you gonna not go on the nice vacation because you want your kid to have this artificial sense of not being rich?

0:59:29.7 Jordan Syatt: So I’ll give you an example here. So obviously, you know I love going to Israel. I like to go to Israel a couple of times a year. Only in the last year or two did I start going first class because it made sense and because it’s way more comfortable. It’s a 12 to 14-hour flight, I can get a lot of work done on that flight and there are so many reasons why I would do that. But if it was me and my wife and three kids, that’s an unbelievable cost for a flight. There’s no way I can picture myself being like, “Yeah, each… ” As soon as I go on and I see entire families with young kids getting their own first class seat and I’m like, “They have no idea what it’s like. They just don’t get it.” And so in my mind, I’m like, “What, do I go first class, and then the kids sit in coach?”

1:00:24.1 Mike Vacanti: No, you all…

[laughter]

1:00:25.9 Jordan Syatt: Could you imagine? No, it’s like no, we’re all gonna sit in coach the whole flight. It’s like that’s what you do. And I’m sort of… This is me asking what your thoughts are. I’m not saying, “This is it,” I’m saying, “What do you think?” In my heart and soul, I feel like a part of me dies at the thought of bringing my kids on a first class international flight. Even if it’s first class flight period, part of me dies thinking about that being like, I don’t think I could subject them to that, because I don’t think that would be doing them any good. Do you know what I mean?

1:01:00.7 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely. I think that you just provided a good example of a way to artificially create like… Look, when I say artificial scarcity, it’s like, Oh, you have to fly coach on your international vacation. Which obviously…

1:01:13.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s ridiculous, I get it.

1:01:18.7 Mike Vacanti: But I think that’s a good way to impose some more reality into their lives. Now, there’s also a part of me that’s like, I don’t know, if you’re gonna subject your kid to that, obviously you’re all back there, but then when you’re flying as an individual, you’re talking about flying first class, I don’t know, it’s… I don’t know what the right answer is, but I think not… If it feels right in your gut to have the family in coach, I think that’s the correct thing to do, to not spoil your kid.

1:01:50.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, not spoil them. Yeah, and not think that they’re better than other people, that’s a big one for me. I see a lot of people who are either born into wealth or people who have wealth. Even if they weren’t born into it, they accrue it themselves, and this level of entitlement that they feel to treat people poorly, it’s disgusting and I just can’t really comprehend it, and I don’t want my kids to grow up like that at all. And I think about punishment, I think about now, like spanking and all this stuff, and I’m getting more like… I was fucking… Dude, I got spanked like crazy as a kid.

1:02:26.3 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely.

1:02:27.9 Jordan Syatt: My butt was like red and oh man, I got spanked bad and I couldn’t… Now, I see all these politics around like, no, you don’t do that to kids, da, da, da, da, da. And I’m like, Bro, I think that your kids need to get spanked if they do something wrong. I’m pretty sure that’s what you need to do, but I don’t know. You know?

[laughter]

1:02:47.6 Mike Vacanti: I think it’s different for every… You’re really venturing into hot topics, and I love it. Video pod episode one. Hey, if you’re watching on YouTube and you made it this far, give the video a like, thumbs up, leave a Spotify review, Apple review. Spanking, I was spanked. I wasn’t spanked like… I wasn’t hurt when I was spanked. It was more of…

1:03:09.4 Jordan Syatt: I mean it hurt though.

1:03:12.1 Mike Vacanti: Well, maybe you got spanked harder. I remember the fear of the spanking being worse than the actual spanking.

1:03:17.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh really? Oh lucky you.

1:03:20.5 Mike Vacanti: It wasn’t…

[laughter]

1:03:24.9 Mike Vacanti: It wasn’t like the belt comes out and like…

1:03:29.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:03:29.9 Mike Vacanti: This isn’t something like…

1:03:29.9 Jordan Syatt: No. No belt involved. Yeah, that’s different level.

1:03:35.4 Mike Vacanti: I remember… Yeah, gun to my head, I’m slightly on pro-spanking side, but I also think there are a lot of things that happen before it. I don’t think it’s just like, Oh, kid did something wrong… By the way, I haven’t thought this through at all. Kid did something wrong, like spanking, that’s the automate… I think there’s probably like…

1:03:58.6 Jordan Syatt: No, there’s a build up. Yeah.

1:04:00.2 Mike Vacanti: No, don’t do that. Yeah, there’s levels to, I don’t…

1:04:03.1 Jordan Syatt: Don’t do this, don’t do this. Don’t… Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:04:06.0 Mike Vacanti: Oh, take away this privilege. Oh, you can’t do this. It doesn’t work, doesn’t work, doesn’t work. Alright, get over here.

1:04:14.4 Jordan Syatt: Or if they do something just like let’s say they just out of nowhere, they start bullying a kid at school. It’s like for no reason they do something obscene, they bully a kid, whatever, it’s like, “Alright, you wanna bully a kid, let’s see what it’s like to get bullied.” I think there’s a level to what it… I don’t know, if they stole a cookie from the cookie jar, [laughter] that was the crime.

1:04:40.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah.

1:04:42.3 Jordan Syatt: The punishment’s got to fit the crime, yeah.

1:04:44.0 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

1:04:44.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stealing. Right.

1:04:45.4 Mike Vacanti: Keep us updated over the lifespan of your daughter, keep us updated on your thoughts on this and we can fly… Maybe it’ll be a recurring segment on the podcast.

1:04:54.9 Jordan Syatt: Parenting tips with J and M.

[laughter]

1:04:58.8 Mike Vacanti: How to become a parent podcast.

[laughter]

1:05:05.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

1:05:05.4 Mike Vacanti: Dude, this was very fun.

1:05:07.5 Jordan Syatt: Dude, that’s my goal with these conversations is I wanna make sure you have a good time. You know what I mean?

1:05:12.6 Mike Vacanti: You are Dale Carnegie reincarnated truly, [laughter] so bless your soul. I do wonder what kind of micro-content will come from this. We are…

1:05:21.2 Jordan Syatt: Probably not much. We’re not putting spanking content up on Instagram, that’s for sure. You wanna learn how to be a personal trainer? Spank your kids. Don’t let them be entitled.

1:05:34.1 Mike Vacanti: We should actually… Let’s talk strat live here on the pod. So should we come in with three to seven really good topics that are fitness or business-related that we know is going to be the micro-content, and then hit those, but then also do what we normally do, which is just goof around and talk about whatever for the first X minutes of the podcast?

1:06:00.7 Jordan Syatt: So here’s my only… I personally like that idea. I don’t think you’re gonna practically like that idea ’cause as soon as it’s obligatory and like, hey, we have these definitive things we need to discuss, I have a feeling you’re gonna be like, “No, I don’t wanna do this.” [laughter]

1:06:18.1 Mike Vacanti: What is the recruitment of the anterior deltoid on the Turkish get-up, through the…

1:06:23.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

1:06:26.9 Mike Vacanti: Okay, but what you’re saying is you don’t… Okay, so you don’t think us talking about money, us talking about parenting, you think that non-fitness, non-business subjects won’t make good micro-content?

1:06:39.2 Jordan Syatt: I don’t think so, personally, I could be wrong. I think the good micro-content’s gonna come from the fitness and business talk, the email list talk, the social media talks, the business strategies, the client psychology, all of that, which this brings up a good point. If you have any questions about coaching or business or whatever, email us.

1:06:53.1 Mike Vacanti: Info@fitnessbusinessmentorship.com.

1:06:58.7 Jordan Syatt: Info@fitnessbusinessmentorship.com, Michael, collect all the emails and then that way we’ll have more specific questions from you that we can answer. And then I think the goofing around stuff is more just for the fun for the people who listen and who over the last couple of years, they’ve gotten to know us better and they enjoy our banter and all of that. I don’t see, and I could be wrong, but I don’t see this stuff doing very well standing on its own, the goofy banter stuff.

1:07:24.2 Mike Vacanti: When do we ever have an answer to a fitness or business question that is short enough to be a good piece of micro-content?

1:07:31.4 Jordan Syatt: You could take a 90-second clip and post that as a reel, that’s totally fine. Or even if it’s longer, even if it’s like two and a half minutes, it can still be uploaded.

1:07:44.9 Mike Vacanti: We need social accounts and we need to shout them out. You know what we should do? We’ll email. We’ll email the list. We might email the list. We need to get the social accounts made.

1:07:58.1 Jordan Syatt: But once it’s up, I’ll share it on mine, and I know you’ll share it on yours, and then we might email the list as well. We’ll definitely… We’ll actually email the list when those accounts are up. Yeah. Maybe that’ll be a part of the fitness silver business bullets is like, “Hey, go watch this clip. Go watch that clip.”

1:08:13.0 Mike Vacanti: Hmm. Thinking.

1:08:16.9 Jordan Syatt: Some email strategy for you right there.

1:08:19.0 Mike Vacanti: I like that, distribution. Well, sweet. Everybody, have a great week, have a great weekend, we hope you enjoyed this first… If you liked the episode, give it a thumbs up, give it a review wherever you’re watching and we appreciate you. We’ll see you soon.

1:08:34.2 Jordan Syatt: See ya.