Episode 97: Body Positivity, Mike’s Terrible Mood, Being Likable as a Business Strategy, and More…

0:00:11.6 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.6 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael?

0:00:14.3 Mike Vacanti: Bro, do I have a story… I just said the De Niro, we gotta leave the De Niro alone for a little while and you bring the De Niro straight out. Just like I’m a substitute teacher and you’re like, “Oh yeah? Watch this.”

0:00:28.1 Jordan Syatt: Tell me the story. Tell me the story.

0:00:29.9 Mike Vacanti: I woke up today in a terrible mood. Poor night of sleep. The story has an ending to it and a lesson. A poor night of sleep, woke up just kind of irritable, was doing my work, going through the motions, drinking coffee, still not feeling great, chugging water, trying to get my mind right. Just not a good day. Time to go train, got my pre-workout meal in, got my pre-workout, get to the gym. Warm-up’s not going good. Can’t find the right song, can’t find the right YouTube video. Just like not feeling it. Warm-up sets aren’t going well. Barbell bench, like got a little wrist thing going on, which has been non-existent. Like, everything’s been good. Got a little wrist thing. Warm-up sets feel heavy. I do working set number one, feels heavy. I’m like, “This is so brutal.” Laying down for working set number two, and got my grip set, get my shoulder blades set. And all of a sudden, this dude who’s about 18 inches away from me, curling right next to me while I’m benching. And I look at this guy and I’m like, “Is this guy serious right here?” And I literally in my mind, I was like, “I’m going to make him my mortal enemy.” And I had probably the best work set of any exercise I’ve had in a month straight, and…

0:02:00.5 Jordan Syatt: Really?

0:02:01.3 Mike Vacanti: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

0:02:02.6 Jordan Syatt: While he was like 18 inches from you?

0:02:04.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, ’cause I was just pissed. I was like, “I hate this.” Not actually, but I was like, “I hate this guy.” I was looking for anything to use to turn things up in any way.

0:02:16.1 Jordan Syatt: You actually hated that guy in that moment. Yeah.

0:02:19.2 Mike Vacanti: And then like five minutes later, he left the gym and the workout kind of went back to being mediocre. But for that brief moment, there’s something to the brain that… To be doing a 3 by 10 and for as easy as that second set was, like I probably legitimately could have done 20 plus reps of it. But after the first set, I was like, “I was on RPE 9,” but then nothing changed except something in here. And then it wasn’t an RPE 9, it was an RPE 3, 4, whatever. Yeah, there’s something crazy about the brain and I don’t know what it is.

0:02:56.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I wonder if there’s like a massive adrenaline dump and just like anger surge leading to higher force output.

0:03:04.9 Mike Vacanti: So you’re thinking like physiological chemical?

0:03:07.8 Jordan Syatt: A hundred percent. Yeah.

0:03:10.5 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.

0:03:10.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I mean, I think, yes, they’re individual and separate, but like you can’t affect one without impacting the other, I don’t think.

0:03:19.0 Mike Vacanti: Psychological and physiological.

0:03:22.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you’ve got anger surging through your veins, like there’s definitely… And I think you can manufacture it. I think like you can actually make it up. But I also have a feeling that you were legitimately pissed.

0:03:34.6 Mike Vacanti: I was pissed. I was like, “Who does this guy think he is?”

0:03:36.8 Jordan Syatt: If I know you and like going into this work set with everything else going on through the morning where you’re just angry and then that happens, like I could picture you absolutely having a conniption and having a rage blackout where you’re like, “Motherfucker. Oh, you want to stand there? All right, I hope I hit you. I’m going to do more reps right now deliberately to try and hit you with this bar so you never stand this close to me again.”

0:04:02.3 Mike Vacanti: It wasn’t even to hit him though. It was just to show him that I’m better than him. [laughter] That’s purely what it was.

0:04:11.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I believe it.

0:04:13.5 Mike Vacanti: I mean, we’ve talked about anger as motivation a good amount in previous podcasts, and what our younger selves would do to push ourself and like whether you… Intentionally or just happened through the course of our lives. And now in our older, more subdued age, having to manufacture anger for work or if that’s even possible. But this was definitely a moment where I was like, “Yep, that works. I can’t do it on command, but it definitely works.”

0:04:41.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, man, I just… I don’t have it in me like I used to, like I used to be able to just… I used to just be angry so much of the time. Now, it’s just these brief moments where I can feel… Sort of like that, where you have like one moment, and then he’s gone, and then the workout goes back to the way it was, instead of using that for the entire workout. [laughter] Like, “Oh, well, he’s gone, so all right, back to normal.”

0:05:07.9 Mike Vacanti: And I don’t even know if you create yours, I feel like yours come randomly in the form of DMs arguing about certain cultural, religious, etcetera issues.

0:05:21.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. That’s where the majority of the anger comes from. My wife can always tell when I’m debating in the DMs. She can always know. She’d be like, “Are you debating someone?” I’m like, “Yeah,” [chuckle] she’s like, “Alright, I’m just not even gonna try talking to you right now.”

0:05:33.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, just leave him be, let him go. Bro, you have a jiu-jitsu competition coming up in a few days here.

0:05:41.0 Jordan Syatt: Yes, sir. Saturday.

0:05:43.6 Mike Vacanti: Have you been talking about that publicly?

0:05:45.5 Jordan Syatt: No, I haven’t told anybody yet. But by the time they hear this, it’ll have already happened, I think.

0:05:50.9 Mike Vacanti: How are you feeling? Yeah, well, this is… We’re two weeks in advance on this recording.

0:05:55.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah. So yeah, dude, I feel good, man. I mean, listen, at this point, I don’t get nearly as nervous for the competitions as I used to. And I think it’s just because I put in so much work, I do everything I possibly can to be the best that I can be. And no matter what happens, I know that I’m improving and I’m getting better. And so I’m not worried as much about the outcome anymore. It’s much more just like, listen, I’ve done… Like, I know for a fact that I’ve worked as hard as I could. So like, no matter what happens, I’m in a good place mentally.

0:06:30.6 Mike Vacanti: Isn’t it partly outside of your control too? Meaning at a random competition, you could have someone show up who’s a Brazilian who’s been rolling since he was 3 and he’s just like a complete freak, or I guess maybe less of that with the division change, but maybe that does still exist. Like there’s some of it where no matter what you do or how hard you train, certain competition might show up and they might not for a given competition.

0:06:58.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, there’s… I’d say more is out of your control than isn’t, and for so many different reasons. The only thing that’s in your control is your preparation. Everything else is completely outside of your control. Sometimes, the refs are good. Sometimes, the refs suck. Sometimes like, you know, you might have a match back to back and other times, you might have 10, 15 minutes to recover. You know, sometimes the person that you’re going against has been rolling since they were a little kid and their coach has just been holding them back with their belt. So, they should actually be like a brown belt instead of a blue belt. There are so many different things that you can’t control, which I think it took me competing a number of times to realize that, and worrying so much about the outcome was not worth it. So it’s just, train every day, do my best and try to improve. And I’m at a point in jiu-jitsu where it feels really good because I’ve been doing it for over three years now, almost every single day of the week, which is crazy. But I remember when I… Probably like the first two years, it was just like trying to learn a new language, like a completely new language from scratch.

0:08:01.3 Jordan Syatt: And I’m at a point now where I finally feel like probably in the last six months or so where I know the language, I’m just trying to improve my grammar and vocabulary and all of that, where it’s like, now I can know… I know the conversation, but I need to get better at expressing myself through the conversation, which is so like, I know how to talk and I know how… Like if I speak to someone, they would be able to tell that I’m foreign, but like they’d know exactly what I’m saying and there would be no issues with the conversation outside of just knowing that I’m foreign. So, that’s sort of where I think I am with my jiu-jitsu now, which is great ’cause I think the biggest hurdles are probably over.

0:08:39.7 Mike Vacanti: What does the last few days of preparation look like here? You just do whatever your coach says, or is there… Have you started to become accustomed to like, you know, you roll hard up until a certain day and then you… Is it a day off, two days off before?

0:08:53.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so it’s different for everybody, but my coach, Alex Martins, he wants me to take… So competition on Saturday, so Friday, I’ll take off. So I’m still actually going to work out on Friday. I’m pretty sure my other coach, Alex Viada wants me to test my mile again on Friday. So I think I’m going to do that. But no jiu-jitsu on Friday.

0:09:14.7 Mike Vacanti: You got to go till the fourth beep, not the third beep.

0:09:18.6 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I was so mad. I was so mad. I realized what happened is when my watch… My watch will beep every quarter mile, but it will also beep depending on the pace that I’m running. So when it tells me the pace, so I heard one of the beeps and I thought it was telling me that it had been a quarter mile, but it actually was just telling me the pace that I was running at. So yeah, and it’s hard to actually look at my watch when I’m sprinting at a 10.2. So yeah, so…

0:09:46.9 Mike Vacanti: You’re doing a sub six-minute mile, it’s hard to just to know, “Where am I at… ” [chuckle]

0:09:52.2 Jordan Syatt: Be exact.

0:09:54.2 Mike Vacanti: All right, I got a question for you.

0:09:57.5 Jordan Syatt: For the mentorship, for coaches?

0:10:00.9 Mike Vacanti: No, just for yeah.

0:10:02.0 Jordan Syatt: How cool.

0:10:02.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, absolutely, but…

0:10:04.3 Jordan Syatt: Cool.

0:10:04.9 Mike Vacanti: It’s my question, but it was an unlock that I had yesterday, that you are a natural at, we’ll say. So I’m just going to throw the question out. How big of an asset is being likable for business?

0:10:22.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s probably the biggest asset really. I mean, yeah, being likable is, I think, you know, one of the biggest things in the… In general, for business, for life, like being likable, for sure. We were just talking to Patrick on our call for the mentorship call with Patrick the other day and he was like, “Man, How to Win Friends and Influence People was like a huge game changer for him because he’s like, ‘Man, like it makes a huge difference.’ These are just things that like come more naturally to me.'” The cool thing about being likable though is there’s not one way to be likable. And what I mean by that is, we can look all across social media and you can see very different people. Like, very different people, very different how they act, different belief systems, the things they say and all of that. But multiple different types of people will all be very likable. I do think that the most likable people, they often have similar traits, even if their beliefs are very different. Like for example, we could look at far right and far left politics so just as an example, but like you could have someone who’s super likable on the far left and also someone who’s super likable on the far right. So, polar opposite in their beliefs, but they’re both likable because they have similar traits and characteristics of what they do and how they interact.

0:11:44.4 Mike Vacanti: And do you want to talk about some of those traits and characteristics? And for context, because I think it’s a funny difference between us or way that our personalities intertwine with one another. You used the example yesterday that the way that I think you’re an idiot, for lack of a better term, when you’re counting on your fingers to add up eight plus six, the reverse is when I’m like, as a 35-year-old, I’m like, “Dude, being likable or thinking of how others perceive you, that matters for branding.” And you’re just like, it’s the same as you counting on your fingers, adding. You’re like, “Yep, like I knew that when I was seven.”

0:12:29.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I mean, so here’s what I think. I honestly think the best way to be likable, the number one especially in this day and age is just being yourself. I really think being who you are… And I know there’s caveats to this. Like, I know, like I can see it already coming out. What? What? [laughter]

0:12:50.9 Mike Vacanti: I’m thinking of all of these like hyper argumentative, hyper negative, hyper pessimistic individuals in the fitness industry. Three just came to your mind and I could name them, who like can literally behave slightly differently and probably 2X business in a heartbeat.

0:13:10.8 Jordan Syatt: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. But here’s what I think. So the reason I start with that is sort of like when we have the food pyramid. Remember we made a food pyramid for Eat It, right? And the base of the food pyramid has nothing to do with proteins, carbs, fats. The base of the food pyramid is foods you enjoy. If the base of your likability pyramid is not being yourself, then inherently you’re going to have to pretend to be someone else. And that is way worse than people not liking you for who you are ’cause when you don’t… When you’re pretending to be someone else, when you’re not really actually being you, you can’t keep up with it. You get imposter syndrome, you’re going to burn out and then eventually you’re going to end up not being that way anymore, and people are… The incongruency is going to be… Is going to shake people too much. It’s not going to be good long term. So I think that’s why the base of the likability pyramid has to be, “Be yourself.”

0:14:06.3 Mike Vacanti: That makes complete sense.

0:14:09.5 Jordan Syatt: With that in mind, there are other things that then we can…

0:14:13.0 Mike Vacanti: Build on.

0:14:13.1 Jordan Syatt: Increase likability from there. So I think number one is… Man, this is all off the top of my head. I was not prepared for this. And number one, I’m not saying this is the most important, but number one that comes to my mind is, being willing to be wrong and to openly talk about it. To openly talk about the mistakes that you’ve made, I think is one of the easiest ways. Because when we think about what is being likable, what is likable? I think part of likable is relatable. I think part of likable is admirable, part of likable is honest. So, all of these things make someone more likable. We don’t like someone that is just chronically lying. We don’t like someone that is constantly hiding things from us and not being open and vulnerable with us. We don’t like people who consistently are not admirable.

0:15:15.2 Jordan Syatt: We like people who we admire and we want to be like and we strive to be similar to them, and who have traits and qualities and characteristics that are admirable. So I think admitting when you’ve been wrong is a very easy way to help people like you more, because they’re going to trust you more, they’re going to believe you more, they will admire your ability to say, “Well, I was wrong about this.” Even in a simple… Taking away the social media component, we could just look at this in a one-on-one relationship component. Sometimes all we want our partner, our spouse, whoever, all we want them to say sometimes is like, “Hey, I was wrong.” That’s it. We don’t even need anything else. We don’t need them to rectify the situation. It’s just like, sometimes, all we want in an argument is like, “Hey, I’m sorry, I was wrong.”

0:16:03.9 Jordan Syatt: “Alright, cool. I really appreciate you saying that. Thank you.” That’s all we need sometimes in order just to remove the anger or whatever. And this also holds true on social media where if you be like, “Listen, I used to say this, but I was actually wrong. And here’s why.” So I think that’s a huge component of it. What else? I think, listen, I’m going to say this and I hesitate to say this because not everyone can do this very well, but it’s the truth. If you can bring humor, if you can be funny, people are going to like you more. They are. Bringing humor to things will lighten the mood and it will make… And it doesn’t have to be… I think someone who’s actually a really great example of this, who is not… I don’t think he’s classically funny, as like, ha ha ha funny, but his humor is so dry that it’s actually hysterical, is Ben Bruno.

0:16:57.4 Jordan Syatt: Ben Bruno is a very… I think Ben Bruno is the perfect example of everything I’ve just said, in a way that most people don’t expect. He is who he is. He’s exactly who he is. He doesn’t pretend to be anyone else. He’s very dry humor. He’s not overly eccentric. He doesn’t try and be anyone he’s not, and his humor is so dry and like it’s… And it gets a great response and people absolutely love him for it. But he’s not doing what I’m doing, like he’s not putting on wigs, he’s not like… ’cause that’s how I am. Like I am that person, I’m doing accents and I’m very exuberant and over the top and he’s the complete opposite where he’s much more dry and relaxed. And he says these really funny things with a completely straight face, that it just… I think it’s jarring.

0:17:42.5 Jordan Syatt: But being able to bring humor into it. And sometimes the best way to bring humor into something is just to make fun of yourself. Sometimes just to make fun of yourself, like be self-deprecating is a very easy way to bring humor to it. So the next thing I’d say in order to be likable, and this is something that I actually can’t believe I waited until this point to say it, is being optimistic as opposed to pessimistic. I actually am very surprised it took me this long to say this. This might be the most important, number one, outside of just being yourself. If you’re complaining all the time, you suck. Like, I hate you. Like, no one likes it when you’re a complainer. And I see this all the time and I’ve seen this a lot of times, especially with people who they blew up on Instagram, they blew up on social media because they were like making really good content on their feed. But now, their engagement has dropped dramatically because like as their audience grew and then things started to slow down, their personality started to come out in their stories and more of like who they are. People are like, “Oh, like you’re just complaining all the time.” Like if you’ve lost followers, don’t complain about losing followers. If your engagement isn’t going well, don’t complain about engage… Like what are you complaining about?

0:18:56.6 Jordan Syatt: Just complaining is so not the place if you want people to like you. It’s just not. There is nothing worse… Think about this. If you’re in a conversation with someone and you say, “Hey, how’s it going?” And they start the conversation by being like, “Ugh, not good.” Like, immediately your stomach drops. You’re like, “Fuck it a… ” Now, I’ve got to listen to this whole complaint again.”

0:19:21.3 Mike Vacanti: I completely agree. There definitely are people whose relationship, like friendship and not relationship, but friendships are built on venting to one another.

0:19:35.3 Jordan Syatt: Yep. But they also complain about each other and… [chuckle]

0:19:38.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, no, no, no, I mean complain… Literally, I mean they take turns complaining and hearing each other out and waiting until the other person gets their turn to complain, and they listen, and then I complain and then, yeah.

0:19:48.8 Jordan Syatt: But no one wants to… That friendship is interesting ’cause I’ve seen that as well. I’ve seen that as well where the person A will complain about a topic and then person B will complain about a completely different topic. And then person A will go back and complain about either the same topic they were talking about before or something else. And person B will complain about something else. So they’re both venting. Neither of them are addressing the issues. They’re literally just using the other as a soundboard. But if you’re doing this on social media and you’re talking to your camera, the other person doesn’t have the opportunity to then vent to you. It’s like all you’re doing is using everyone as a soundboard. And yes, some people reply and be like, “Oh, yeah, you’re the best. Don’t let it bother you.” But if you do that even like 10-20 percent of the time, like you’re ruining yourself. People do not want to stick around to listen to you complain at all. Your friends don’t want to stick around and listen to you complain, never mind people who you never met in person. That’s why even with all the Kanye stuff, if you’ve noticed, everything that I post ends on a positive note.

0:21:00.2 Jordan Syatt: Even for example, I missed the mile, I made a stupid mistake. But silver lining is, X, Y, and Z, da da da da da. Or, the Kanye stuff. Listen, like yeah, it really sucks that he’s anti-Semitic and it sucks that he’s going to be promoting anti-Semitism. But here’s what I think is positive about this whole situation, da da da da. And I think not only is this a good strategy for being likable, it’s also a good strategy for your own mental health where it’s like, if you just consistently stop at the negative, then you’ve just stopped in a… Like you’ve stopped in the deep end. You’ve stopped in a position where now you have to try and tread water and keep yourself above water. And it’s really, really difficult. If you can continue to push to the positive side of it, find the positive, work to find the positive and make that a habit, you’re bringing yourself to the shallow end. You don’t have to fight to keep your head above water anymore. It’s much, much, much easier to find the positive when you make that a habit. And it’s going to make other people like you more. And it’s going to help you just find the positive in things that you otherwise wouldn’t.

0:21:57.8 Mike Vacanti: One other thing, and then we’ll move on from this, is, you seem to almost never criticize. This might even be straight out of How to Win Friends and Influence People. But give compliments, don’t criticize. Both in like public facing, obviously, but also in one-on-one interaction.

0:22:20.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I mean, so here’s what I do. I will often… If I criticize, it’s usually criticizing a thing, not an individual, right? So I have a whole series on a stupid exercise you shouldn’t be doing. And for whatever it’s worth, that doesn’t make me super likable to… ’cause some people get mad, I get un-follows, da-da. But overall, people, I think, really enjoy it. But if I’m speaking, I will never directly criticize an individual. That doesn’t look good ever. Ad hominem attacks do not look good ever and it makes people lose respect for you. It’s very different to criticize an argument or a discussion or an exercise. It’s different to discuss the thing as opposed to the person saying the thing.

0:23:09.0 Mike Vacanti: Correct.

0:23:09.4 Jordan Syatt: So yeah, that’s a super important part as well. Because I mean, and I’ve personally learned a lot from… And this is why I keep bringing it up, is I’ve learned a lot from watching politics. I’ve learned a lot from watching politicians who might have really great policy, but watch the world turn on them because of how they present themselves and because of what they say and how they say it. And it’s so interesting because you can see these politicians who might have terrible policy, like awful, awful policy, but the way that they present themselves is super likable. And people are like, “Well, I like that person. I really like that person.” It’s like, “But do you know what they’re going to do if you elect them?” Like they’ve told you, but you’re only focusing… I think one of the best ways to look at politicians is, the person who you’d really like to grab a beer with at a bar is probably the person that’s going to be elected to office, ’cause that’s the person that you trust the most, that you like the most.

0:24:09.8 Jordan Syatt: Very few people have actually spent the time to go through the policy and see what it is exactly they’re going to do and understand how that’s going to impact them and their community. But so it’s so interesting to me how you might not agree with what that person is doing, but because of how they’re presenting themselves, you might actually vote for them and like them, or think that you like them. So that for me has been a huge aspect. And you can see in political debates, if someone’s acting like a jackass, and you don’t like how they’re actually supposed to have a civil debate, like that could completely turn you away from them, even though that might be someone that you’d prefer to have in office. So that’s been a huge case study for me, is watching politicians and how they act and saying, “Well, look at how this person acts, look at how this person acts,” and the differences based on their policy and also based on their personality.

0:24:57.2 Mike Vacanti: Good example. Alright. I have something that’s very underrated. Chairs with low backs. Let me tell you why.

0:25:16.6 Jordan Syatt: Okay. [chuckle]

0:25:17.3 Mike Vacanti: The number of times, and I’m not sitting all day, but when I worked as an accountant and I was sitting 12-hour days, working busy season, grinding half days on Saturdays, working from home all the time, basically sitting in this position at my computer all the time, I didn’t have this. Having a short back that hits basically like at the bottom of my thoracic spine, maybe like a vertebrae or two up on my thoracic spine, and simply being able to do this, like I don’t know, 6-12 times per hour has been so beneficial for how I feel compared to having one of those like gamer chairs that comes all the way up and like has a headrest but leaves you in like slight thoracic flexion for hours and hours and hours at a time. Yeah.

0:26:08.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Bro…

0:26:08.7 Mike Vacanti: Get a chair like this. Yeah, I see you have it. You already know. This is like Dale… Like, you just know, you were born knowing that, you’ve probably never…

0:26:16.8 Jordan Syatt: No.

0:26:16.9 Mike Vacanti: Sat in a high back chair in your entire life. You probably don’t…

0:26:18.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I’ve sat in high back chairs.

0:26:19.9 Mike Vacanti: I doubt it.

0:26:21.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I have.

0:26:25.0 Mike Vacanti: Alright. I just had to get that off my chest…

0:26:27.3 Jordan Syatt: I like that. No, it’s good, clip that…

0:26:29.8 Mike Vacanti: Buy a low back chair.

0:26:31.8 Jordan Syatt: Clip that, low back chairs.

0:26:31.9 Mike Vacanti: That was actually my thought. That’s why I added this on here. [laughter] I want to make it… Look, let’s actually talk about this. What is a good clip? What does well as someone who’s consumed many clips in his day and paid attention to this, here’s what doesn’t do well: Pondering, saying “like” and “umm,” thinking, look like literally talking in the conversation style that I enjoy the most, which is two people mutually trying to figure out the truth of something together and doing it honestly and like upfront. It’s not a power grab, it’s not like a… It’s not even like a… It’s doing literally what I’m doing now, which is trying to reach an answer rather than presenting, trying to reach an answer and like stumbling through thoughts and ideas doesn’t do well in short form.

0:27:27.8 Mike Vacanti: Standing there and being like, “Do you want to lose body fat? You need to be in a calorie… ” like, that does… Here is the best exercise that you can possibly… “Do you want to grow your biceps?” These are things that perform better on TikTok and in all short form, not sitting around, thinking like, trying to reach something. So within these episodes, I’m making it a point, starting, I don’t know, this week, maybe next week, I have some ideas for this, but of having pre short form ideas to give it a punch, have a little list of those to David, so we at least have a few set aside, because I care about the performance of our personal trainer podcast handles that are now live with daily content across the board.

0:28:07.7 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I love that. Let’s do it right now. What is one thing… What are your thoughts on clean bulking?

0:28:17.3 Mike Vacanti: See, my thoughts on clean bulking… I’m going to sit here for three minutes and I’m going to think through things. If I want…

0:28:23.8 Jordan Syatt: I’m going to phrase it differently, how important is it if someone’s going to go into a bulk?

0:28:23.9 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no, no. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. I need to sit, think about it, and then like I can present it and maybe it takes a couple takes, but it’s not in a podcast. You can ask ’cause I’d love to talk about clean bulking with you, but I’m still not going to give a banger.

0:28:39.4 Jordan Syatt: Dude, you’re going to bang it.

0:28:39.9 Mike Vacanti: I can’t just give a… I can’t give a banger on the spot. I’m not an ESTP like you. Go ahead. Ask the question. Clean bulking, I’m all about it.

0:28:46.8 Jordan Syatt: Alright. You know, I’m going to try…

0:28:48.5 Mike Vacanti: By the way, yesterday was Halloween. Had some candy last night. Night before, I had… My wife left these M&M cookies on the counter and I walked by them like 37 times throughout the course of the day before I finally gave in and had like four before bed.

0:29:02.7 Jordan Syatt: Ugh, M&M cookies are the best.

0:29:03.8 Mike Vacanti: Insane. Like kryptonite, drugs, cocaine, meth, and it’s just game over. Can’t win there. Heroin, literally. The day before that, I had basically hit my protein and somehow had an unbelievable amount of carbohydrate and fat left. I was like, “Oh, what should I do with this precarious position I’ve left myself in?” And so I went and got a pint of ice cream. So I actually think part of why I wasn’t having the greatest morning, I was too off the clean bulk, I was too dirty.

0:29:40.3 Jordan Syatt: You got off the regimen.

0:29:41.8 Mike Vacanti: I’m off. I need to get back on the reg, like ASAP. And I have today.

0:29:45.5 Jordan Syatt: Bro, what’s up with Rotisserie chicken? Why is Rotisserie chicken so good?

0:29:51.1 Mike Vacanti: I think it’s overrated.

0:29:53.2 Jordan Syatt: No way, dude. Are you kidding… Are you… You are high. You’re so off the regimen that you think Rotisserie chicken’s overrated. Why do you think that’s overrated? Give me your thoughts.

0:30:06.7 Mike Vacanti: First of all, the wing on every Rotisserie chicken I’ve ever eaten is like, I can’t even… There’s basically no protein. It’s basically bone. There’s no real wing to it. The bird was so small that the wing is like nothing. And it almost looks like, it looks like carcinogenic, like literally looking at it, I’m like, “That thing is going to make me sick and die early.” The thigh and the drumstick part of it almost feel like uncooked. Like the inside of the thigh, because I don’t know, or not the thigh, the drumstick, you know, the circular part is almost like translucent on the inside of it. Unlike if you had a more well-made one that you cooked yourself, it’s got like pink in there and is almost slimy at times. It’s like the amount of cooking required to get the breasts cooked wasn’t enough to do that part of the animal. So that part, I’m always either like, “Okay, I’m going to get some kind of disease or food poisoning or this ain’t going to go well.” And yeah, the breast is good. I mean, look, the skin is delicious. Layer it on the breast, which is super high protein, low fat. Like that’s great, but I feel like I’m wasting a good amount of the animal. I don’t know.

0:31:21.4 Jordan Syatt: Man, I don’t know where you’ve been getting your… I don’t know what they’ve got in Minnesota for Rotis but…

0:31:26.1 Mike Vacanti: Costco and Cub Foods.

0:31:28.9 Jordan Syatt: Alright, Costco and Cub Foods in Minnesota, they’ve got to up their Rotis game, because… You know what? In my house, I’m going to have a Rotisserie and we’re going to rotisserie chickens together. And we’re going to…

0:31:41.2 Mike Vacanti: I would love that.

0:31:41.9 Jordan Syatt: Do our own. Alright, cool. And then there’s going to be homemade rotisserie and we’re going to see how that goes.

0:31:46.5 Mike Vacanti: I’m not…

0:31:46.9 Jordan Syatt: We’re going to clip content of us rotisserie chickening.

0:31:49.5 Mike Vacanti: What were you going to ask me about the clean bulk?

0:31:53.6 Jordan Syatt: I was trying to figure out what question would lead to the best clip for you where like you’d really go off. So here’s what I’m going to say. Do you think that too many people use bulking as a justification to eat like shit and gain too much fat? And if yes, what should they do instead?

0:32:16.3 Mike Vacanti: I think that it’s a real rookie move. And I think that it’s a mistake that most people only make once. I don’t know, it’s such a smaller… The segment of the population of people who have fitness goals and are intentionally spending long amounts of time in a calorie surplus is a very small percent of the total number of people who have goals. Like we have an obesity epidemic. Most people are trying to lose body fat, a fraction of people are intentionally spending 6-9 plus months in a surplus. And so, yes, that is a common mistake is to dreamer bulk, basically not track, end up eating foods that you really enjoy, get enough protein and make the mistake of thinking that if I eat more calories and I gain weight faster, that I am gaining muscle mass faster. You actually are gaining muscle mass slightly faster, but you’re gaining so much more body fat when you’re adding two pounds of scale weight per week, rather than 2-3 pounds of scale weight per month, perhaps, or 2-3 per month, that the addition of all that body fat puts you in a place where you’re going to have to cut your bulk off sooner, start a fat loss phase sooner, that you’re losing out on all those extra months of muscle gain progress, which is why it makes the most sense to be in a smaller surplus and gain scale weight at a slower rate to maximize the amount of time you spend in a muscle gain phase.

0:33:57.5 Jordan Syatt: Clip that shit, bro. That was great. That’s what I was looking for.

0:34:02.0 Mike Vacanti: Thanks, thanks. We got there.

0:34:03.1 Jordan Syatt: Nice.

0:34:03.4 Mike Vacanti: We got there. Short form content. It’s been a while, you know, it’s been about five years. [laughter] I got a good one, but I don’t think… I think we need to save that for next week.

0:34:19.0 Jordan Syatt: Why?

0:34:20.8 Mike Vacanti: We just need to. We’ve…

0:34:21.9 Jordan Syatt: Mike does this to me all the time. Like when we’re on the phone, he’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m going to tell you… I got something great to tell you.” Like what? He’ll be like, “I’ll tell you when I talk to you next.” [laughter]

0:34:34.3 Mike Vacanti: It’s not time for that one. Here, I got one for you, though. I got one for you. Jordan, what are your thoughts on the body positivity movement?

0:34:45.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh, man. [chuckle] All right. Here’s the deal with the body positivity movement. We’re going to go off on this. Alright? You ready for this, Michael?

0:34:56.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m ready.

0:34:57.0 Jordan Syatt: You’re ready for this, podcast listener? You’re ready? Alright? Here we go. Number one, starting off with the good. I think the body positivity movement started off with good intent and good reasons. I think that there’s no question that generally speaking, people who are… Listen, generally speaking, people who are severely overweight struggle in many areas of society and culture. There’s no question about it. There is prejudice against them. There’s so many things. Absolutely. There’s no question. I think there was like, “Listen, we want to be treated more fairly. We want to be less stigmatized,” all of that. And not to mention, I think that the fitness industry has led people to believe that being shredded equates to being healthy and that anyone even with a slight amount of body fat must be unhealthy because they’re not shredded.

0:35:43.7 Jordan Syatt: So, making more… A slightly higher body fat percentage and understanding that if you’re still in a healthier range, you’re good, that’s really, really important. And I think that’s where it started with those two things. I think it’s also important to mention that people who are severely underweight are also stigmatized and they have issues as well. Ever heard people be like, “Oh, eat a goddamn hamburger,” or something like that? That’s same thing at the end of the spectrum. With that being said, like I’ve said a million times, the fitness industry runs on a pendulum of extremes. And it started off with good intent and a relatively moderate idea, and it swung way too far.

0:36:20.7 Jordan Syatt: And it’s gone way, way, way too far, I think leading to the whole health-at-every-size idea that you can be healthy at literally any size, which is so fucking stupid and short-sighted. And I actually think it’s going to end up killing people and ruining lives in the long term. No one would ever argue that you can be super, like unbelievably underweight and still be healthy. You can be severely, severely underweight, malnourished, have real, real, real health issues. So you can’t be healthy at any size, especially if you’re severely underweight. And it goes with the same, severely overweight as well. There’s no question that being severely overweight, having too much body fat is like the number one cause leading to heart disease, leading to cardiovascular issues, leading to diabetes, to so many health issues along the road that people are dying from. Not to mention more recently, if we look at the people who were most vulnerable to COVID, it was people who were not exercising and they were severely overweight.

0:37:18.7 Jordan Syatt: We can see that very clearly. This is not even news anymore. We know the people who were most vulnerable were the people who were severely overweight and not exercising. So yes, you are vastly more likely to be unhealthy at higher body fat percentages. That doesn’t mean like using the BMI, generally the middle ranges, like in the middle ranges, you’re good, but on either end of the extreme, there’s real health issues there, whether it’s too, too low or too, too high.

0:37:48.4 Jordan Syatt: I think there’s just no question that body positivity movement has gone too far at this point, and it’s actually very scary to see… I mean, I get DMs from people every week, multiple times a week, people being like, “I really fell into that health at every size movement. I ended up gaining 40 pounds and I’m way worse than I was before. Now, my cholesterol is high, my blood pressure is high, this is high, that is high.” I think one of the easiest ways to look at this is, how many really old, really fat people have you seen in your life? Like, how many people have you seen who are like super, super old and very, very overweight? And the answer is probably none, because the oldest people that you see are all pretty small. Like they’re all like relatively small. Like, there’s a reason why, like there’s a reason why bodybuilders have a relatively low lifespan. They have so much mass on them, it’s too difficult for your heart. It’s not sick. You can have excess body fat relatively and be healthy, but there’s a certain point where excess body fat becomes way too difficult for your body to handle. And it has so many negative downstream health effects. So yeah, body positivity movement started off with great intent and it’s gone way too far.

0:39:00.7 Mike Vacanti: Well said.

0:39:01.9 Jordan Syatt: What do you think?

0:39:04.5 Mike Vacanti: Listen, I think you hit the nail on the head right there. I like that you approach it from the perspective of where we were previously, why it started and what the problems within fitness were that led to it starting: The unrealistic expectations, the magazine models, Photoshop, dehydrated, unhealthily lean, etcetera. And that becoming like the gold standard norm target that people should aim for. And on top of that, the mistake of associating peak aesthetics with peak health, which are not the same thing. Let’s just call it… Aesthetics are different, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but like we’ll call it like bodybuilding aesthetics, equal optimal health. There’s a reason that no one ever in history walked around stage lean for an entire year or multiple years.

0:40:05.3 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:40:05.5 Mike Vacanti: And if they did, they suffered substantially as a result of doing so. But yeah…

0:40:11.0 Jordan Syatt: There’s something else that…

0:40:13.2 Mike Vacanti: And then just to cap that, like you said, being very overweight, being obese leads to a host of health issues down the road. That’s a scientific fact, leads to… Let me be precise with my words, leads to an increased risk of many diseases that end up shortening lifespan and reducing health span and quality of life. And maintaining a healthy weight, a healthy body fat percentage will increase average lifespan, as well as what you can do, and your health span is the Peter Attia term of like basically how much you can enjoy those years. Not only are you alive, but what can you do with your body during those years?

0:41:00.6 Jordan Syatt: I saw a woman recently give a whole talk on the body positivity movement. And I really like this woman a lot. And she hates the body positivity movement. Like, she went off on it, and she said… She had some real thoughts on it, and she did not hold back. But she brought up some really interesting points. And she was saying, “Have you noticed that the body positivity movement has only applied to women? You see very, very, very heavy women on these magazines and all this stuff. You have never even once seen a super overweight guy as part of the body positivity movement. It’s still… For men, it’s still chiseled abs, big chest, big arms, jacked superhero. Never once have they put a guy who’s super fat on one of these magazines and say like, ‘This is health.’ Nothing. It’s only women.” And she went off on this. And she was saying things like, “Listen, the body positivity movement is mainly run by women. It’s mainly driven by women.” And the way that she said it, she… I think Bill Burr has a whole comedy skit about this, but she was like, “Listen,” it was… She thinks that it was driven by women who are like… These articles about body positivity are being written by women who are super skinny and who are super lean, and who are just saying like, “Oh, yeah, just eat whatever you want and get as big as you want.” And it’s like their way of driving down the competition.

0:42:26.6 Mike Vacanti: No way.

0:42:27.1 Jordan Syatt: So it’s like… I swear to God, yeah. She was like… That she was saying that, you know…

0:42:30.0 Mike Vacanti: Wait, is there evidence that there’s body positivity content and body positivity propaganda, body positivity created by lean, healthy women?

0:42:41.4 Jordan Syatt: No, I mean, not that I know of. But that’s what she was going off on. But like, it’s the conspiracy theorist in me, and I’m not a big conspiracy theorist, but I’m like, “Man, that does make sense.” Right? [laughter] And Bill Burr has a super funny skit on this whole thing. It’s like, it’s… I’m not saying that’s what’s happened, but it is very interesting to know, like, it is mainly run by women for sure. And we never see any men involved, like as part of the body positivity movement at all. It’s mainly, a large part of what I see is like very fit women just saying, “Yeah, keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it.” And I’m always like, “Well, hold on, but you’re still very focused on your health and your weight.” It’s something to think about as part of that movement.

0:43:30.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, something else that you and I used to speculate on, maybe this was a couple of years ago now at this point, was essentially people hijacking that movement to make money, like selling…

0:43:44.1 Jordan Syatt: Yes, yes.

0:43:44.2 Mike Vacanti: Body positivity courses or sign up for my body positivity coaching. Or it’s like, “What… “

0:43:51.0 Jordan Syatt: What are you talking about? What are you selling? Are you just selling like, “Hey, just feel better about yourself?” Like, you’re just going to make an entire course about how you should feel good about yourself?

0:44:01.1 Mike Vacanti: That’s the punchline to me. And I actually wrote this in an article in 2014, on Medium article. It was like, I don’t know, a few hundred words of just like blog… What I was thinking, which is basically, you can and should like who you are and respect yourself and ideally love yourself while also simultaneously working to improve yourself. Those two things… It’s not one or the other. You don’t have to hate yourself to want to be trained. You can like who you are now, but also want to improve and get better. And that’s the crux of it for me.

0:44:36.6 Jordan Syatt: I also think the idea of telling someone, “Just love yourself” is like telling someone who needs to lose weight, “Well, just lose weight,” right? It’s like that telling people you should love yourself, but what if you don’t love yourself? What if you’re severely depressed or like what if you have some mental health issues or what if you’re just going through a rough patch and you don’t love yourself? Telling people, but you should just love yourself, that’s going to make them feel even worse. It’s like, but I don’t, I don’t love myself. And you’re just over here telling me, but I should, but I should, but I should. So I’m just reinforcing something’s wrong with me altogether. It’s the people who say, “Well, you should just love yourself” are also people who say, “Well, you shouldn’t just say, ‘Just feel this way, just feel this way.'” But meanwhile, here you are telling people to feel a certain way. It’s very hypocritical and it’s very short-sighted. And yeah, there are a lot of issues that I have with much of the shit going on with that end of the industry.

0:45:35.2 Mike Vacanti: This is a weird transition, but it just came into my mind and we don’t have to go super deep on this, but I thought it was very interesting when it happened to me, and I wasn’t expecting it. And I didn’t know that I ever… Like I didn’t on the surface ever think that I didn’t like myself. I remember in 2018, I was listening to a podcast, a poker podcast, Joe Ingram had Garrett Adelstein, this like big time Los Angeles poker pro on. Great dude by the way. He’s actually like involved in this cheating scandal right now. He was allegedly cheated. I’m not going to get into all that, but basically they were on this podcast. This Garrett guy was like talking about…

0:46:22.4 Jordan Syatt: He was cheated or he was cheating?

0:46:24.0 Mike Vacanti: Cheated. But I don’t know, people are like getting sued for saying that, so he was allegedly cheated. [laughter] And he said something on Joe Ingram’s podcast. He’s very open about struggles he’s had with depression, etcetera. And he said something about not liking himself. I don’t know. I was walking through Wall Street at the time. I’ll never forget it. And I realized I was like, “I really like myself.” But I was like, “When did that happen?” Because I remember not too long ago, I didn’t. And there was never a switch. I never realized like, “Oh, I like myself now.” But there was some switch in there in like 2017, 2018. And I firmly believe it was when I started actively trying to improve my character and like actively trying to make decisions that were aligned with the person I wanted to be rather than any other motivation. It was around the time of like stumbling across JP’s content and like really trying to become a better man, that it was like… I don’t even know if anything had actually changed about me, but within that vacuum of trying to be a better person, was like, “Oh, I actually like who I am right now,” which is weird. And it hasn’t changed since.

0:47:50.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s awesome. I love that. I think it’s an interesting phenomena, because sometimes, I like myself, and sometimes I’m like, “God, I’m such a piece of shit.” [chuckle]

0:48:03.4 Mike Vacanti: Well, in the moment, sure.

[laughter]

0:48:07.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s… I think that’s very normal.

0:48:11.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, but on the whole, knowing that you’re trying to be the best that you can be for yourself and for those around you…

0:48:23.2 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:48:23.6 Jordan Syatt: For sure. Yeah, yeah. It was funny, and this is another weird transition. I understand if you want to cut this or not I want to talk about it. But someone recently asked me on social media, they’re like, “Do I believe that the only way to go to heaven is to be Jewish?” And I said, “No, absolutely not.” Because for me, and for what I’ve been taught with Judaism is, it’s not about as much about what you believe, as much as it is about who you are and how you act and how you live. And there’s funny phrases, you get two Jews in a room, you’re gonna have three different opinions, and that’s very much part of Jewish culture and reading the Torah, and it’s debating and reading and you’ll never… It’s never just like, “Well, this is what it’s supposed to mean.” But one of the ways that I was brought up with Torah and reading and studying was that… A lot of people ask, like, “Is there heaven and hell in Judaism?” And yes, there is. But that’s not a major focus in Judaism. It’s much more… In Hebrew, it’s called Olam Ha Ba, it’s like the world to come, that’s like heaven or hell. But it’s not a big focus of the Torah or what we read. It’s more about the world we’re in now, like the present world and how we live and act here. And I even remember when you and I and Pat Flynn, we were all doing this Bible study at the beginning of COVID. I’ll never forget we were reading a verse from the Bible.

0:50:00.1 Jordan Syatt: And I forget if it was the New Testament or the Old Testament, but it was something to the effect of, many people who say that they are believers in God will not actually go to heaven, in that like they say they believe God, they say they believe and they’re believers but they don’t act right. They don’t actually… In this world, they don’t act and live in a way that is right or is good. And that for me always stuck out, because it’s like it doesn’t matter what you say you believe if you’re not acting the right way, then you’re not going to get what you want. And so for me, I think in terms of overall liking myself aside from those moments here and there where I’m like, “I’m just a piece of shit,” I think similar to you, it’s knowing that the majority of the time I’m really doing my best to act and live in a good way and in a fulfilling way, in a righteous way. And that could be as simple as making good content to help people for free, showing up for myself, my wife, my daughter, my family, whatever. Like consistently doing that as opposed to necessarily chasing pleasure or chasing things that won’t actually be leading to good outcomes, is I think probably… Definitely how I’ve been able to better like myself as well.

0:51:28.0 Jordan Syatt: While also still understanding having those little moments where you’re like, “I’m a piece of shit,” whatever. But still, that for me is like, I was thinking about religion and those verses that we have read, and about like, “Well, how do you actually start to like yourself?” And I think, you know, leading back to living in a righteous way, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be religious, but righteous, doing the right things on a consistent basis, the things that you know are right, taking care of your body, working out, eating well, getting enough sleep, paying attention to your family, helping people, like that’s what’s going to make you like yourself when you know you’re doing the right things. I mean, very few people are just like eating like shit, staying up until 4:00 in the morning, watching bullshit stuff, and like really loving themselves, like, “I’m so proud of myself.” Like why would you be proud of yourself if you’re not doing the right things?

0:52:14.3 Mike Vacanti: A hundred percent. I could take this in so many directions. Do you want to dive in harder on that? Do you want to transition off?

0:52:19.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, bro, let’s go. Yeah.

0:52:21.6 Mike Vacanti: Something that always bothered me growing up was around this definition of believe and how believe somehow just meant like, utter words with your tongue. Like say,” I believe,” say anything. In Christianity, say like, “I believe Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, and please forgive me of my sins,” like boom, slate washed just like that. And to use an extreme example, I would think about somebody who lived their entire life as… I mean, I don’t even… I don’t know how extreme I want to go with this example. I’m going to go very…

0:53:00.2 Jordan Syatt: Go child molester.

0:53:01.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, literally raped and killed a child a day for your entire life. And then like at age 93 on your deathbed, you utter some words and somehow you get this amazing eternal life. Like that never made sense to me, and theologians, religious scholars, millions of people way smarter than me can probably break this down and explain it to me. Compared to somebody who lives in a remote part of the world where they never had exposure to God or to religion, in… And I don’t know, I don’t want to be cliché, but in some tribe where they never had access to this knowledge, lived a really good life, meaning like an upstanding person and made good decisions and acted out a moral life without even knowing exactly what they were doing, maybe based on tradition, maybe based on family, what they saw around them, what they learned, but they never were intentionally doing this. They never uttered words to anything.

0:54:06.0 Mike Vacanti: And then that person spends eternity in hell because they didn’t believe, ’cause they didn’t utter the words. That never made sense to me. And that was actually something several years back when I… I don’t remember if it was Shapiro, I don’t remember who was talking about it, but essentially talking about the definition of believe and then getting into existentialist philosophers, and do you believe what you say you believe, or are the actions you take better proof of what you believe? I don’t know, but that is something that always I wrestled with in my youth and probably still do to a degree to this day.

0:54:50.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I mean, it’s… ‘Cause I was speaking about that and I got a bunch of people who were sort of upset, like, especially there were some very devout Catholics who were like, “Nope, the only way to go to heaven is if you believe in Jesus and accept him as your Lord and Savior.” And I was like, “That’s fine. If you believe that. It’s totally fine.” But I presented that to them. I was like, “Well, so what if you have someone who’s been molesting children, and then years later, they say they really regret it and they really do. And they turn to Christianity and all this stuff. Like for me, I have a very hard time believing that that is like… That God’s going to be like, “Okay, you can come in now.” Like, that’s just for me personally, versus…

0:55:35.6 Mike Vacanti: You’re an Old Testament guy.

0:55:37.9 Jordan Syatt: Even what you were saying, like the tribe, someone’s in a tribe, right? And they don’t hear about… But nevermind the tribe, nevermind… Like what about someone who literally knows of this religion, but they have a different religion, they’re Jewish, they’re Muslim, they’re Bahá’í, they’re Hindu, whatever it is, but they lived an amazing life and they were a great person here on this earth. And this might be my ignorance, and I know many people will disagree with it, I have a very hard time believing that at the gates of heaven, God would look at someone who lived a really great life and turn them away just because they never believed that that was God. You know?

0:56:21.7 Mike Vacanti: I’m literally looking up a verse right now that I… Exposing myself and my lack of knowledge, but…

0:56:30.8 Jordan Syatt: Is it from John?

0:56:32.1 Mike Vacanti: No, it’s not from John. I want to say it’s from Isaiah, but I don’t…

0:56:33.9 Jordan Syatt: John 13?

0:56:34.8 Mike Vacanti: Think it actually… You’re just making something up, “Is it John 13?”

0:56:38.6 Jordan Syatt: I’m pretty sure I’ve heard you reference John 13 before, I don’t know why.

0:56:40.3 Mike Vacanti: No, I reference Matthew all the time, because the Sermon on the Mount is the greatest piece of story-teaching literature, and I mean like written words of all time. That was what we covered with Pat last. There’s a verse somewhere, I don’t remember where, about non-Christians going to heaven, and we’ll have to put that in the show notes or something.

0:57:06.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:57:09.2 Mike Vacanti: Oh, I got a PSA. I got a PSA. I got a pre-planned TikTok. I got a PSA. Let me get ready here. PSA time. [laughter] I’m seeing a lot of business gurus on Instagram talking about how anyone can make $30,000 in 30 days or become a millionaire in a year if you follow my program or my system. And we’ve talked about this. While I do believe that you can, anyone can be a successful online fitness coach, anyone can be a great personal trainer and help people, whether it’s in person or online and can earn enough money doing that to support themselves, support their family, what we’re not realizing when we make these promises of like, make all this money in a short amount of time is that a hyper minority of people can do that. And the analogy I want to use is the person who their first time ever deadlifting, like pulls 315 with perfect technique, or the person who has unbelievably symmetrical abs and like has a ton of muscle despite never lifting weights and is genetically in an unbelievable position and is an outlier to have an amazing physique, to have amazing strength. In the same way, there are people who are so charismatic, so hardworking, so good on camera, so… High IQ probably matters, even though people don’t want to hear that, where they are outliers in their ability to grow a business fast.

0:58:39.4 Jordan Syatt: And the reason I want to say this is because I don’t want to set people up with false expectations of how long it takes. It took us both a very long time to build a business that actually provided a full time income for us. And I think when coaches see this and potentially sign up for programs or even just start trying to build a business with the thought that, “Oh, I’m going to be making six figures by the end of this year,” many aren’t, probably most aren’t. And you can’t compare yourself to the one out of a thousand case where a person in six months already has exploded and has this giant business, because that’s not the norm. That’s my public service announcement.

0:59:26.3 Mike Vacanti: Clip that. Clip that. That’s exactly right. Yeah. And you know what else is interesting? Is now, it’s easier now than it ever has been before in history to make money, ever. It is easier now than ever. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy and it doesn’t mean it takes a very short period of time. It’s funny, you talk about how it took you and I a long time until we really had a sustainable income from our online businesses. Relatively, it wasn’t that long compared to if we were starting brick and mortar businesses, right? Because we started 2011, 2012. By 2014, 2015, we had our own online businesses that were sustainable, right? That’s not that long, especially if we compare it to a brick and mortar business where oftentimes they’re not even profitable for the first five years of business, never mind really making significant income. So I mean, we just have such a completely warped idea of how much time and effort it’s actually going to take. And people associate vanity metrics such as follows and likes with income. And they just assume that because they’re not getting the follows and likes, that they can’t have a successful business. I mean, my business was very successful before I ever had 3,000 followers on Instagram, ever. And so I think people are conflating follows and likes with success and not understanding that creating more depth within a smaller community can actually lead you to have more success than you could ever imagine.

1:00:53.9 Mike Vacanti: But also understanding like you’ve got to fucking work every single day. Here’s probably one of the biggest parts about owning a business that most people don’t understand and they don’t want to know, or they’re not ready to hear this yet. If you don’t want to work every single day, then work for somebody else. If you want your own business, then you better be ready and willing to work every fucking day. Period. End of story. The benefit of having your own business is that you get to choose your hours. Yes, you get to choose, but you’ve still got to put those hours in. You can do it ideally from wherever you want if you’re online, you can make your own decisions. You choose what you put up. You choose what you write. You choose the phrasing. You get to delegate. You’re the one who makes the choices. You don’t have to follow the leadership of someone else that maybe you don’t like, but you’re going to work every damn day. Whereas if you don’t want to work every day and you’re okay working for someone else and taking their… What they say is your… “This is how we’re going to do it. This is like how we’re going to lay it out. This is how you have to say it,” then work for someone else. But that’s the choice that you have to make for this. And that’s the decision you’re going to have to make. That’s really what it all boils down to.

1:02:08.7 Jordan Syatt: Bang.

1:02:09.4 Mike Vacanti: Clip that shit.

1:02:10.6 Jordan Syatt: Good episode. Great talking to you.

1:02:14.1 Mike Vacanti: Video pause, baby.

1:02:15.4 Jordan Syatt: We’re rolling. Weekly episodes. Good luck in your competition this weekend.

1:02:19.3 Mike Vacanti: Should we title this, “Are you going to heaven or hell?” [laughter]

1:02:25.3 Jordan Syatt: Probably not. Probably not. We’ll just leave that as a little Easter egg for our regular listeners.

1:02:32.6 Mike Vacanti: We’d get censored. We’d get censored…

1:02:34.9 Jordan Syatt: No, we wouldn’t.

1:02:35.3 Mike Vacanti: They wouldn’t promote us on… [laughter]

1:02:36.6 Jordan Syatt: No, we wouldn’t. But I just don’t think it’s that… The reason why I wouldn’t want to title it that is because I don’t think it was that enlightening of a conversation around that subject matter.

1:02:48.9 Mike Vacanti: I think it was a good and open conversation…

1:02:51.8 Jordan Syatt: It was…

1:02:51.9 Mike Vacanti: Not necessarily like teaching people, but it was like honest and it was real.

1:02:55.3 Mike Vacanti: A hundred percent. But it would be like if I clicked on something where like… I don’t know, like a seventh grader with no exposure to fitness did a podcast and titled it, ‘How To Set Up A Rapid Fat Loss Protocol And Do Reverse Pyramid Training.’ He doesn’t know. Why am I gonna listen to this guy? [laughter]

1:03:17.6 Jordan Syatt: These aren’t theologians, these aren’t philosophers, what do they… Alright…

1:03:21.7 Mike Vacanti: This guy talks about his clean bulk every episode, and this one over here makes this weird De Niro face. Who are these two?

1:03:28.2 Jordan Syatt: He keeps telling us about his jiu-jitsu, which we don’t give a shit… [laughter]

1:03:35.1 Mike Vacanti: Great episode, bro.

1:03:37.7 Jordan Syatt: Alright. We want to… We hope you enjoyed the episode. If you do, please give us a five star review. Nothing less than five stars. If you have less than five stars, just don’t leave it at all, or just give us a five star review. Thank you very much. We’d love to see you in the mentorship. Link is in the show notes. Have a wonderful week. Talk to you soon.