Episode 115: If You Knew You Would Die in 10 Years, What Would You Do Today?

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

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

0:00:14.7 Mike Vacanti: Just living. How are you?

0:00:16.4 Jordan Syatt: Good, man. We just got off the previous pod where we spoke about DM-ers, and we had the cold DM-ers, the cold callers on Instagram, the worst.

0:00:27.4 Mike Vacanti: I get a lot of those emails too to all my email addresses.

0:00:30.2 Jordan Syatt: So many emails.

0:00:31.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:00:32.3 Jordan Syatt: And text messages. I get text messages from people’s texters that I didn’t sign up to.

0:00:37.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, there’s a lot of nonsense, a lot of spam. That’s not how to build your business. It’s just like spam as many places as possible.

0:00:43.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s not how you build a reputable business. That is for sure. And it might work in the short term. It might work from the perspective of maybe bringing in some more sales, but long-term, ha-ha, good luck.

[laughter]

0:00:58.9 Mike Vacanti: Ha, good luck.

[laughter]

0:01:03.7 Mike Vacanti: “You think you’re just gonna quit and then go hang around with your drug addict friend and not use? Ha, good luck.”

0:01:12.3 Jordan Syatt: “Good luck.” I wonder if anyone knows that reference.

0:01:15.6 Mike Vacanti: That would be incredible. Email us at info@fitnessbusinessmentorship.com if you know that reference, and we’re just gonna be blown away. That will be outstanding.

0:01:24.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. We’ll be blown away. That’s all. There’s not like a real prize, but we will be blown away.

0:01:30.0 Mike Vacanti: All the respect that I have to give.

0:01:32.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:01:33.4 Mike Vacanti: Let’s dive into Q&A. Let’s just dive in and see where it takes us.

0:01:37.6 Jordan Syatt: Should I open up my Q&A box?

0:01:40.4 Mike Vacanti: Yesh. Let’s open up the Q&A box. And by the way, if you’re listening to this podcast, [chuckle] that’s your baby.

0:01:48.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s my baby.

0:01:49.4 Mike Vacanti: I almost just said her name.

0:01:51.2 Jordan Syatt: People watching on YouTube will get to see my baby right there. That’s my favorite picture.

0:01:56.3 Mike Vacanti: Very, very cute.

0:01:57.7 Jordan Syatt: You’re like, “all right, enough.”

0:01:58.9 Mike Vacanti: No, no, I’m not like, “all right, enough.” Very, very cute. Cute bow. She looks like you. Great smile.

0:02:04.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh my God, dude. I saw the funniest…

0:02:06.7 Mike Vacanti: Real quick. Real quick.

0:02:08.1 Jordan Syatt: Alright, yeah.

0:02:08.9 Mike Vacanti: Speaking of YouTube, you brought up YouTube. We don’t have advertisements. We don’t… We’re not peddling nonsense. There’s no pre-rolls. We’re not wasting your time. This is free, unadulterated. Is that a word. We’re bringing you content every single week. In exchange, could you please subscribe to our YouTube channel? It’s @personaltrainerpodcast, trying to build our YouTube. Trying to reach more people. We’ll call it a little… Just a fair little swap here, a little hand shake deal. We bring you the podcast episodes, you subscribe to the YouTube channel. Thank you. And with that, Jordan, what were you gonna say?

0:02:44.1 Jordan Syatt: I need to find the screenshot. I sent this to my… Oh my God, dude. This is so funny. People watching on YouTube will see this picture that I’m about to show you. So you brought up the bow on my daughter, and my wife loves to put bows on my daughter. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I found this meme on Instagram and I sent it to her and I lost it.

[laughter]

0:03:11.0 Jordan Syatt: Can you read it?

0:03:12.1 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

[laughter]

0:03:13.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. That’s really good.

0:03:19.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s perfect. So those watching on YouTube will see that hilarious meme. And, yeah, if you could subscribe to the YouTube channel. We love YouTube. YouTube is great. It’s nice just because obviously if you’re just listening to the podcast, it’s amazing and we appreciate it more than anything. It’s also, I feel like part of the fun is sort of feel like you sit down and hang out with us. You see us. I think you can develop more of a relationship with someone if they see your facial expressions and all of that, so it’s fun to see that with the YouTube crowd.

0:03:46.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, definitely. You’re in the car. You need your eyes on the road, understandable. We love the audio crowd too, but a sub on YouTube helps massively. Let’s dive into that Q&A.

0:04:00.0 Jordan Syatt: Okay, I don’t know if you’re gonna like this one. We’ll just see how this goes. Itza26 asks how to do things that…

0:04:08.0 Mike Vacanti: It’s 26?

0:04:09.8 Jordan Syatt: Itza. I-T-Z-A 26.

0:04:12.3 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:04:13.8 Jordan Syatt: Itza. Itza. How to do things that appear really hard with less fear and more courage?

0:04:21.0 Mike Vacanti: Oh, man.

0:04:23.0 Jordan Syatt: You don’t like this one…

0:04:24.5 Mike Vacanti: No, I love it, but I just… I don’t have… My answer is rip the band-aid off like just brute force, Nike, just do it.

0:04:35.1 Jordan Syatt: Nike. You said just do it. [laughter]

0:04:36.4 Mike Vacanti: It’s the greatest slogan of any company ever because it’s so foundational to life. Fear is good and normal. Take that first step.

0:04:50.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think what this person is doing, Itza26… It looks like a woman in the picture. I think what she’s doing is she’s making it seem like fear and courage are opposites, and that… Because she said, “How to do things that appear really hard with less courage and more fear,” almost as though as fear goes down, courage goes up. And I think that’s completely an ass backwards way of looking at it. I think courage is doing something when you have fear. If you’re not doing something…

0:05:29.4 Mike Vacanti: Not even that you think that. That’s just true.

0:05:32.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think if you don’t have fear and you do it, that didn’t take courage, right? I think courage is, fear as a prerequisite of courage. So I think it’s not about doing it with less fear or trying to mitigate the fear. It’s about embracing that the fear is okay, but that doesn’t mean you need to stop doing it. It means you need to build up the courage to just fucking do it anyway.

0:06:03.7 Mike Vacanti: And by the way, us saying that doesn’t necessarily make it an easier. In fact, it doesn’t make it any easier. It’s gonna be just as difficult, but 60 years from now it’s, are you gonna regret doing it and potentially failing or potentially stumbling before you got your legs under you and figured it out, or 60 years from now, are you gonna regret never taking action on that thing?

0:06:29.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s exactly right.

0:06:34.4 Mike Vacanti: This reminded me of a newsletter question from the main man Sahil Bloom that was… Gosh, I’m just gonna read it straight because I don’t wanna butcher it, and I really liked it. “If you knew you would die in 10 years, what would you do today?” And he goes on to say, “We’ve all seen the shorter-term version of this. If you knew you’d die in a year, what would you do today?” But he finds that less impactful and basically less relevant, but a 10-year horizon is a little more applicable.

0:07:08.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s a good one. The first thing it brings up in my mind is, “Would I want to know the day that I die? Like would I want to know even if it’s 80 years down the road, would I want to know?” And I don’t think I would. I don’t think I wanna know what day I’m gonna die. But if I was going to die in 10 years, if I knew that I was gonna die in 10 years, then what would I do today? I think I would probably do the exact same thing today. I really don’t think it would change much, to be honest. I think I would probably do… ‘Cause it’s 10 fucking years. [laughter] It’s a while, and I would still want to have a great quality of life, and I’d still want to build a business to support my wife and daughter when I’m gone. And I want to make sure that they’re gonna be as comfortable as possible, and I think one of the best ways… I think about it like, “How am I gonna be remembered once I’m gone at that point, and how are those who will still be living, how will they be living as a result of what I’ve done?”

0:08:20.7 Jordan Syatt: So I think I would still do exactly the same shit. I really don’t think it would change until probably like three to five years out, probably closer to three, to be honest. I think that’s when real changes would start to be made in terms of maybe day-to-day activity, in terms of maybe where I’m living or any of that stuff. What about you?

0:08:44.7 Mike Vacanti: I would stop being such a pussy.

0:08:48.9 Jordan Syatt: [laughter] What do you mean?

0:09:00.0 Mike Vacanti: I mean that I would stop not doing things out of fear.

0:09:03.7 Jordan Syatt: Okay. What right now…

0:09:05.7 Mike Vacanti: And by the way, I think your answer, we can run with this whole thing, but when I hear someone say, “I wouldn’t change anything,” what I hear is, “I’m living perfectly.” Well, we don’t need to go deep, and I should probably align with it.

0:09:19.8 Jordan Syatt: No, we could go deep. Let’s go deep. What I said was, “I wouldn’t change anything about my day-to-day activities.” I’d still work. I think a lot of people, their first sought is like, “Oh, I would stop working or I would… ” whatever it is. I think I have a very good work-life balance right now in terms of I work several hours a day, I’m with my family several hours a day. What you said was more of a mindset shift.

0:09:44.2 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no, no. It’s an action shift. I would…

0:09:49.3 Jordan Syatt: Like what specifically would you do? So not just stop being a pussy, but what action in specific?

0:09:55.1 Mike Vacanti: I’d start saying things publicly that I believe to be true even though I knew there would be backlash or I would lose money as a result of it or who knows, make more as a result of it or be hated because of it. Yeah.

0:10:10.6 Jordan Syatt: Interesting. So here’s what I’m thinking. So for example, 10 years is a long time, right? It is, and it isn’t. In 10 years… So for example, on this podcast, we don’t talk about some things because for example…

0:10:30.6 Mike Vacanti: On the Internet, we don’t talk about something. We do talk about a lot of things.

0:10:33.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, we don’t talk about things because it could potentially impact our brand, our legacy, our business, all of that stuff. So what you’re saying is, if you knew in 10 years you were gonna die starting right now, you would start saying everything? And so, would that mean that you’d make less targeted content towards personal trainers, and you would make content deliberately more just based on how you feel and what you want people to know about your beliefs? What would that look like?

0:11:01.3 Mike Vacanti: Not based on how I feel, but based on what I believe to be right.

0:11:05.2 Jordan Syatt: Right. So right now, we have the personal trainer podcast, which we love.

0:11:10.7 Mike Vacanti: I would continue to do this.

0:11:11.9 Jordan Syatt: You’d continue to do that?

0:11:13.3 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely.

0:11:14.3 Jordan Syatt: Okay, so is that…

0:11:16.1 Mike Vacanti: It would be additive.

0:11:18.5 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Okay, okay. So you would be more active publicly.

0:11:22.3 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:11:22.7 Jordan Syatt: And not just about things like strength training, nutrition, all that. You’d be active publicly with everything.

0:11:29.0 Mike Vacanti: Right now, content for basically all of us. I actually don’t know anyone in the fitness industry who… Yeah, I don’t know anyone in fitness industry. Content wouldn’t be the marketing department of On the Regimen. Content would be trying to have maximal net positive impact on society.

0:11:54.9 Jordan Syatt: So not even just fitness. It is everyone?

0:11:58.8 Mike Vacanti: But it would be fitness plus that because I actually think that fitness is…

0:12:00.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, ’cause you care about fitness.

0:12:02.6 Mike Vacanti: ‘Cause I care about fitness and because truly believe that fitness is at the ground level of each individual’s wellness and physical and mental and emotional and spiritual health and well-being and making you stronger, physically makes you stronger, in other ways and making lots of individuals stronger and better props up all of society. So there would be equal or, who knows, maybe even more focus on fitness. There would just be more of a whole lot of other stuff too.

0:12:34.7 Jordan Syatt: I love that, and I really love like, man, your own personal fitness, and it’s an individual responsibility. And making society better as a whole, as we all know, it starts with making yourself better as a whole. And making yourself better as a whole, the foundation is health. That’s the foundation of it. And whether it’s getting stronger, improving cardio, like maintaining a healthy body fat percentage, all this stuff, it’s necessary for yourself and for a better society as a whole. So I love that you’d still be in fitness.

0:13:08.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s necessary for yourself, for your loved ones, for your family, for your community, for your country, for the world.

0:13:15.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, 100%.

0:13:16.9 Mike Vacanti: We could do a whole episode on this question. This question actually really hit me. I was sitting out in the sun on vacation and read that and like it hit me like a ton of bricks.

0:13:27.5 Jordan Syatt: Really?

0:13:28.3 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm. But I also… Yeah, we can keep going, or we can move on to something else.

0:13:35.4 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I’m good with anything.

0:13:36.8 Mike Vacanti: I’m good with anything.

0:13:40.2 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this on the podcast or not. Tell me if I have. But I very think that organizations like the CDC or a World Health Organization, all that stuff…

[laughter]

0:13:53.6 Mike Vacanti: I love it.

0:13:55.5 Jordan Syatt: Their job is supposedly to help the health of the world as a whole, but even looking at their most recent response during the pandemic, I never saw them mention like, “Get outside an exercise.” In fact, they did the opposite. They closed gyms, and they kept liquor stores open. They said, “Stay inside, don’t go out.” It’s like they never once said, “Hey, maybe we should pay attention to your nutrition. Maybe we should pay attention to your body fat percentage. Maybe we should pay attention… Here are some ways… ” I didn’t see them putting out information on how to get exercise in your home. Cool. You wanna stay at home. Awesome. Give people ideas and access to things that will allow them to exercise at home, that will allow them to eat better. Give them opportunities to improve their health, not just say, “Stay at home, take the jab, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.”

0:14:53.6 Jordan Syatt: And that’s where I feel people in our position, you, me and everyone listening to this, that when I’ve become so much more passionate over the last few years about what I do because I had a huge epiphany being like, “There are government organizations that are supposedly designed to keep us healthy, but really the ones who I think are having the biggest impact are people on social media.” I think personal trainers on social media are having a bigger impact on public health than public health organizations. That’s what they’re supposedly designed to do. And it’s like when I had that epiphany, I was like, “Holy shit, this is more important than ever to be putting information out about health publicly because people don’t know what to do, and the organizations that are supposedly designed for this are not helping at all or at least not helping in the big-bang-for-your-buck, low-hanging-fruit ways of walk more, eat better, stay hydrated, get better sleep. Instead, they’re doing the exact opposite. So yeah, I think it’s more important than ever.

0:15:54.4 Mike Vacanti: Bro, did I tell you I was reading up on, what’s the name of that weight loss drug?

0:16:00.0 Jordan Syatt: Ozempic.

0:16:00.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I was reading up on Ozempic a week or two back, and they linked out to a place on the CDC website where it lists causes and risk factors for obesity.

0:16:10.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:16:11.8 Mike Vacanti: And two of them were not over-eating, nothing related to nutrition, nothing related to exercise, nothing related to being sedentary. Two of the risk factors and causes of obesity were climate change and racism.

[laughter]

0:16:33.0 Jordan Syatt: I think I’ve seen that somewhere. Climate change and racism. What are they doing? Like, what the fuck are they doing?

0:16:42.6 Mike Vacanti: I actually don’t know, which brings me to my actual core belief on this, which is worrying about the government. Unless you’re gonna get involved, unless you’re gonna run for office, unless you’re gonna try to elicit change, it makes more sense to focus on what you can control, which is reaching people directly, impacting people directly. You mentioned the positive effect that personal trainers on social media have had at improving the health of millions of people across the world. Focusing on what we can control rather than what our elected officials are or aren’t doing that is helping or hurting society. And I don’t know if that’s right because I don’t know if you could have more impact if you actually got involved in that arena. I just don’t think I’m cut out at all for that arena.

0:17:42.1 Jordan Syatt: Dude, no, fuck that arena. Nobody in that arena gets to a high level morally and ethically. It’s impossible. And I think about it in terms of… I think Jon Snow is a perfect example, and our brand in terms of if you wanna… The person who’s gonna be in charge needs to be someone who doesn’t actually want to be in charge, so it’s… The person who wants power is the last person you want to actually have power. And dude, it just seems like when they’re saying things like that where it’s like, “Yeah, some of the main causes of obesity are racism and climate change. It just seems like they’re trying to virtue signal to a certain population, to a certain group, left or right, whatever it is, they’re trying to get votes is what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to get votes. It’s they’re not trying to effect change in public health. They’re trying to affect opinion of who’s in charge. And “Oh, do they see our cause?” It’s like, goddamn.

0:18:42.0 Mike Vacanti: It equally pisses me off when I would see woke memes, compared to Biden being old and having dementia memes.

0:18:53.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. Like equally.

0:18:56.3 Mike Vacanti: Like the dopes on the right and the dopes on the left, sitting around throwing slings and arrows rather than being in the arena, I guess it bothers me… At the root of it, it really bothers me because I feel like I could… Or, I know that I could be doing more and I’m not. And I think that’s why, but I just despise that behavior from both sides, and even people I love who do it. I’m like, “Stop, stop doing that.”

0:19:26.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s just people being loud and it’s a way to make them feel productive, and a way to make them feel superior without them actually doing anything. It’s so much easier for them to tear down the other side, than it is for them to actually do anything to bring up… Like to solve the issues that they’re making fun of. And it’s just crazy at this point because it just seems like, now more than ever… Listen, and I was born in the ’90s, you were born in the ’80s. I don’t know if it was a product of me just being younger. I don’t think it was, but I feel like we were not as divided as a country like…

0:20:06.6 Mike Vacanti: 2015, 2016, everything just…

[vocalization]

0:20:12.7 Mike Vacanti: Ramped up.

0:20:12.8 Jordan Syatt: I remember July 4th used to be one of my favorite holidays ever, July 4th with the fireworks and the hot dogs and everyone, Republican, Democrat didn’t matter. We were just celebrating being here or Thanksgiving, what an amazing, amazing… Thanksgiving to this day is like… I’m Jewish, and Thanksgiving is an American holiday, it’s not a Jewish… Like, my favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, about… It’s my favorite holiday. And now, I can’t say that without people being like, “Oh my God, do you know what we did, dah, dah, dah.” It’s like, “Do you know any aspect of history at all? Did you just read this on an Instagram account and a meme or in an infographic, and then you’ve decided that Thanksgiving is an evil holiday when you don’t know anything else that happened in the history of the whole fucking world? You shouldn’t celebrate anything in that case.” It was just like, what a way to live, but I just… I feel like we are so much more divided now than ever, and it’s just people… Like you said, slinging arrows and just getting mad, it’s like, “God, what happened? Why are we so divided?”

0:21:13.1 Mike Vacanti: Do you think that division is… And this would be more “conspiratorial”, but do you think that that is more intentional and designed from some group of elites, or do you think it’s the natural by-product of, I don’t know, other factors?

0:21:33.0 Jordan Syatt: So, I think there are many factors, but here’s what I think. So, a brand new Twitter Files came out, either yesterday or today. That I was reading. And I know…

0:21:43.0 Mike Vacanti: How many of the… I stopped reading after four because there were so many.

0:21:46.3 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know, but every time I’m just equally blown away. But what’s crazy is, you can see emails between Twitter and the FBI, and Twitter and the CIA, and you see emails between these higher-ups at all these… At this social media company and also between government companies, the FBI, the CIA, these… You see the email interactions. And this one was very interesting because it was showing… We’ve all known that there have been Russian websites and Iranian websites and all that, that are specifically designed to try and create division within our own country, whether it’s like… Whether it’s Facebook pages or websites, domains, and in this most recent set of Twitter Files, that I saw, the FBI had been talking about how there had been 22 or 23 domain names that had been bought by Iranian cyber warfare people, to try and create division here in the US.

0:22:40.0 Jordan Syatt: And I think one thing that goes massively under the radar, is the effect that other countries have had on our country, in creating division. I think a lot of the division that’s been created has been ignited by… I think this is a new form of warfare and we’re living through it, and I think our grandkids and great-grandkids will learn about the warfare that we’re currently living through, and we don’t even realise… It’s not nukes, it’s not poison gas, it’s not gunfire. It’s cyber warfare, to create this such level… I mean, the tension that I sometimes feel in society, is what I would imagine the tension would feel like when you were actually in a war, and you don’t know if there’s a spy, you don’t know who’s watching you in a time of warfare, you don’t know who’s… You don’t know any of this stuff. And so, I think that this is a new form of warfare, relatively new, that the seeds have been planted 15, 20, 25 years ago, with the start of the internet.

0:23:42.4 Jordan Syatt: If we don’t think that government agencies, as soon as the internet was created, weren’t immediately looking at ways to know how to infiltrate societies and essentially tear them apart from the inside out, from the ground up, like we’re naive beyond belief. So, I think that a huge portion of it has been deliberately done by other nations, to try to create division, and it’s not just here, it’s not just them vs us, it’s also, I think it happens in the UK, I think it’s happened in Australia. I think it’s happened all over the world, and I think we’ve probably done it to other nations as well, I think this is just a new form of warfare that we’re seeing, and I think that has been a major reason for so much of the division and hatred that we see now.

0:24:21.4 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.

0:24:23.0 Jordan Syatt: What do you think?

0:24:24.2 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know. And I wish I knew more, or part of me doesn’t, but… Yeah, I’m not sure. I had another thought though, more like meta, back to the original… If you knew you were gonna be alive… Or if you know you were gonna die in 10 years, how would you live differently? And I think to people who I really admire, and there’s a moment on the All-In Podcast, where… What are you thinking, when you do that?

0:24:52.8 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I just don’t wanna die within 10 years.

0:24:54.7 Mike Vacanti: Oh, okay, okay, cool.

0:24:57.5 Jordan Syatt: [laughter] I’m praying, I’m like, “Please.”

0:25:00.2 Mike Vacanti: Where the host, Jason Calacanis and one of the dudes on the podcast, David Sacks, who’s like… One is on the right and one is on the left, basically, leans right, leans left and they’re having a spirited debate about, I think it was Russia, Ukraine.

0:25:19.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:25:19.2 Mike Vacanti: And they’re both just… They’re friends, but it’s a real debate that they’re having, which is amazing, which is why… One of the reasons I love that podcast, and then they go to the fourth guy on the show, he’s kind of like a fill-in, he’s been on there, his name is Brad, he’s a… I don’t know how to… Very wealthy guy, hedge fund manager type, I don’t know his exact job, I think he manages a fund of some sort, really smart, and they kicked to him, they’re like, “Brad, do you have anything to say?” And he just completely, completely like, “Subject change.”

[laughter]

0:25:54.1 Mike Vacanti: And I know, that if I was in that position and I was really educated on whatever… Geo-politics, I, right now, I’d do the same thing that that guy did, which made me hate it even more, made me even more disgusted seeing it and really… I don’t really know anything about him or his situation, whatever, he didn’t wanna piss off his partners, but it made me admire the two dudes, Sacks and J-Cal, for really laying it on the line, knowing that comments from both sides are gonna hate both of them, knowing Twitter replies are like, people on this side are gonna hate him, people on this side are gonna hate him, but they’re still willing to put their opinions out there. By the way, they’re both tens of millions or hundreds of millions in net-worth, so neither of them really need to be doing this, but they’re putting themselves out there voluntarily, which I have deep admiration for, and then to contrast that with this 15-minute spirited debate, and then what do you think? And he just immediately subject changes, it’s like twisting the knife of how I want to live differently. And when I say that I…

0:26:56.3 Jordan Syatt: It was like a mirror.

0:26:57.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it was like a mirror. Except that I don’t actually know anything about geo-politics, but on certain issues, where I might want to chime in, but not, because it’s like, “Do I want the negative feedback? Do we want cancellations here? Do we want… Like, “Republicans buy sneakers too.” Which is just this whole back and forth between, what I feel in my gut is right, and then you can rationalize the money side so easily, it’s like, “Oh, I need to support my family and I need to build this for… ” It’s so easy to rationalize, but I think we all know in our gut… I shouldn’t say that, I believe that I can distinguish right from wrong pretty well for myself in the decisions I make, and I don’t always win that balance.

0:27:46.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, makes total sense. I just don’t wanna die within 10 years. [chuckle]

0:27:53.8 Mike Vacanti: I’d rather die 10 years from now, living righteously, than die meek and cowardly in my bed at 95.

0:28:02.9 Jordan Syatt: 100%, absolutely. And if it’s the choice between those two options, that’s a no-brainer.

0:28:10.6 Mike Vacanti: Sure, yeah. But you’d rather…

[laughter]

0:28:11.9 Mike Vacanti: I get it.

0:28:12.2 Jordan Syatt: I’d rather live right until 95.

[laughter]

0:28:16.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Yes. But if it’s between the two options…

0:28:22.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, if it was between those, die like a Gladiator.

0:28:26.9 Mike Vacanti: You didn’t like Braveheart as much as Gladiator.

0:28:28.8 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I think Gladiator… Gladiator is in my top three ever. Braveheart is not in my top three. Braveheart might be like top 15. I did really like it, but I just think Gladiator was just so good. I just… I love Gladiator so much.

0:28:45.1 Mike Vacanti: That freedom, final scene, when they’re torturing him.

0:28:48.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah. Oh, man.

0:28:50.1 Mike Vacanti: And then the king, who’s dying in his bed, hears him yell freedom, getting tortured, like…

0:28:55.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Which one do you… You rate Gladiator better, or…

0:29:00.7 Mike Vacanti: I think Gladiator is better. But I just think they’re both unbelievable.

0:29:05.4 Jordan Syatt: Agreed.

0:29:07.6 Mike Vacanti: Alright. What else we got in this Q&A?

0:29:10.8 Jordan Syatt: I’ve been talking about jiu-jitsu a lot more lately. Maybe we could talk about that because I am planning on putting something out and we could sort of… People might ask, how are you thinking about transitioning into a new industry, potentially.

0:29:22.9 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:29:23.1 Jordan Syatt: But someone just… Someone messaged me and she said, “Lots of love. I enrolled my kids in jiu-jitsu, just because of you and everything I’ve seen from you.” Which has been very cool. I actually have spent 15 minutes just talking about that at the event I was speaking at in Vegas. I was like… I went on a huge rant. I was like, “Everyone needs to be doing this. [chuckle] I just went off. And then it was funny ’cause one woman, she was very nice and she agreed with everything I said, she asked the question just to hear my thoughts, she said, “Is your daughter gonna do jiu-jitsu?” And I was like, “100%. She doesn’t have a choice.” And the next question is always like, “Well, what if she doesn’t want to?” Which… I’ve gotten that a lot, ’cause any time I answered that question on social media, there are always a big group of people who are like, “Oh, yeah. Okay, good luck. Wait until she’s older. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.”

0:30:10.3 Jordan Syatt: And I just can’t relate to this because living under my mom’s roof, if she said I was gonna do something and I said, no, I would… Dude, it’s like… I don’t even know how to put into words, what would happen if I defied my caretaker… If I defied my mom, the person who put a roof over my head, who was giving me food. I would get the shit beat out of me, and I wouldn’t be… Like no phone, no car, no nothing. And that’s only when I’m later stages of high school, but no going out, you’re not going to parties, you’re not doing this, you’re not doing that. Good luck. If I say no, okay, we’ll see how long that’s gonna last. For me, it’s just like… If it’s my kid, they’re gonna do what I say, and it doesn’t mean it’s gonna be easy, there might be arguments, there might be repercussions, it might be a… But I’m not just gonna give in. I think that the job of a parent and especially about something like self-defense, it’s like, “Yeah, my daughter is gonna do jiu-jitsu, you better fucking believe it.”

0:31:20.0 Mike Vacanti: Well, is it stemming from a place of a different parenting style, where they give the child autonomy to make his or her own decisions?

0:31:30.0 Jordan Syatt: Maybe, I don’t know.

0:31:30.8 Mike Vacanti: ‘Cause that wasn’t the way that I…

0:31:32.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That’s not how I was brought up. [chuckle]

0:31:37.3 Mike Vacanti: My parents had final say in our household, and to be fair, they gave me a lot of choices… Or what sports I liked or wanted to play, or what type of activities, or… There were freedoms, but there were rules, and if you broke the rules there were consequences.

0:31:53.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh, 100%. [laughter]

0:31:55.7 Mike Vacanti: You get grounded. You can’t say that, you are out doing this, when you’re not supposed to be. You need to be home at this time. If you’re late… Yeah.

0:32:06.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.

0:32:06.4 Mike Vacanti: Do you think parenting styles have changed over the years, which has led to maybe that question? Or do you think there were always many different ones, but we were only exposed to how we were brought up?

0:32:17.8 Jordan Syatt: I think there were always many different ones, but I think they’ve changed now, less because… I think the reason they’ve changed now is because of societal norms and the fear of your child going to school. Dude, I used to get spanked like nobody’s business.

0:32:34.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:32:35.5 Jordan Syatt: Now, a child says that they’re getting spanked and the teachers are gonna put in a request to Child Services and the child could be removed from the house, and now I think people are far more… Parents are far more worried, and rightfully so, because there have been horror stories of kids being taken away from their parents because of… I don’t know. I think if a kid deserved to be spanked, that kid’s gonna gonna get spanked. [chuckle] That’s how I was brought up.

0:33:00.9 Mike Vacanti: Well, there’s even more extreme examples of what you just said.

0:33:07.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah, yeah.

0:33:07.9 Mike Vacanti: Not just spanking at home, but like, calling my son him or deadnaming my 12 year old child…

0:33:17.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

0:33:17.7 Mike Vacanti: Leading to a lawsuit against the parent, for misgendering.

0:33:23.3 Jordan Syatt: Right. Like, I’m not letting my child get a surgery that could change their life forever, when they’re eight years old.

0:33:30.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:33:30.8 Jordan Syatt: It’s like, “What is going on?”

0:33:33.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:33:34.7 Jordan Syatt: It’s crazy. If you… Would you let your child get a tattoo at eight years old? It’s like, probably not. So, let’s wait until they’re 18, so they can make their own decisions on that front.

0:33:46.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And your point, living under my roof, you’re gonna do what I say.

0:33:50.7 Jordan Syatt: 100%.

0:33:51.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:33:52.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, so… I like seeing people get into jiu-jitsu.

0:33:56.9 Mike Vacanti: It’s funny, hearing Jordan go, “Everybody…

0:34:00.4 Jordan Syatt: What?

0:34:00.5 Mike Vacanti: Everybody has to do jiu-jitsu.”

0:34:02.7 Jordan Syatt: Everybody.

0:34:03.4 Mike Vacanti: Because when Mark gave us that a few years back, it was such a good speech and he’s throwing out public figures, he’s like, “If he did jiu-jitsu, he wouldn’t be in this position ’cause he’d be stronger.”

[laughter]

0:34:16.4 Mike Vacanti: Which, by the way, of a lot of those same benefits… And I can’t speak from personal experience, but I know a lot of the benefits that he espouses come from lifting, as well.

0:34:27.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, of course.

0:34:28.8 Mike Vacanti: Without the same level of self-defense. Although, there is something to be said about having a solid physique, which makes you less of a target, better posture, more muscle.

0:34:40.0 Jordan Syatt: There’s that, and I will say… I mean, there was a crazy video, I shared it on my story, of a woman in a gym, I think it was her apartment building gym, did you see this? Where there was a guy knocking on the door and she let him in because she just thought he must have forgot his key or something. Did you see this?

0:34:56.8 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:34:57.3 Jordan Syatt: And I shared it on my story, this kind woman, working out, lets a guy in, and I had a huge conversation with my wife about this, being like, “You do not let anyone into this room. In any room, if you’re in alone and someone’s knocking… If they don’t have a key, like, ‘Hey, sorry, I can’t let you in, you don’t have a key.” I would rather them… You be wrong, and then they just literally forgot their key, than you let someone in and attack you. And this guy, he tried to rape this woman, he tried to rape her in a fucking gym, and it didn’t look like she had any martial arts training, but the message that I loved from Hener Gracie, who is one of the greatest jiu-jitsu competitors and greatest jiu-jitsu teachers, comes from the greatest jiu-jitsu family of all the time, was talking about it and sort of examining the altercation, which, thank God, eventually the guy gave up because she didn’t quit.

0:35:48.3 Jordan Syatt: She didn’t stop. He pinned her down, he held her down relatively easily, but she didn’t stop, she just kept fighting and kept fight… And made it very difficult for him. And that, to me, is… That’s why fitness is so important. Yes, martial arts training could have maybe de-escalated the situation even more quickly and she could have gotten… Maybe there could have been less trauma, potentially, who knows? But the fact that she didn’t quit, prevented it from going to the end scenario, that would have just been the worst of the worst of the worst situations. Where raping and potentially killing. It’s like… But she didn’t quit. And that’s where… Because she’s fit enough, because she lifts weight, because she’s in shape, she was able to make that happen and be able to put up a fight for long enough to get him to stop, where it’s like, yes, I think…

0:36:40.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that strength and endurance that allowed her to do that.

0:36:42.0 Jordan Syatt: Exactly. Yeah.

0:36:43.9 Mike Vacanti: What a absolutely horrendous and helpless and terrifying feeling.

0:36:50.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh my God. Yeah.

0:36:52.3 Mike Vacanti: I can’t even… I literally cannot imagine.

0:36:55.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly. But I think fitness, strength training, all that, goes hand in hand with martial arts training, it’s like, they should be done together, sort of like strength and cardio, it’s not one or the other. You should do both. I think everyone should have… I’m pretty sure… In Dubai, I’m pretty sure Mark Cerrone told me this, I didn’t look it up to see if it’s true… But let me Google this real quick. jiu-jitsu in Dubai mandated. Let me see. Yeah, so quick Google search, Brazilian jiu-jitsu is part of the required curriculum in schools, in Dubai, it’s like… I think that should be part of childhood development, in addition to learning about finances, in addition to learning about saving your money over the long term, in addition to learning how to change a tire on your car, in addition to… Kids should be learning jiu-jitsu from a young age in our schools, 100%. So…

0:38:00.1 Mike Vacanti: The way we think about fitness and activity and movement, is all wrong, where our lifestyle is sitting hunched over at a computer, so much knowledge work, so much inactivity. And I get it, people are exhausted, so then a lot of the leisure work is sitting on a couch, laying in bed, there’s just so little movement, and we think about fitness as this tiny little bucket of two or three hours a week out of 168 hours, and don’t do too much because you don’t wanna over-train, you don’t wanna over-exert yourself, when in reality, what’s optimal… And I’m not saying this… This definitely isn’t easy, especially with the lifestyle so many of us live, and I do think it’s a societal problem, like you and I as individuals, because of the positions we’ve got ourselves in and because of the way our businesses work, we can carve out way more time for activity in a week than the average person can.

0:38:52.8 Mike Vacanti: But the average person, because of the way things are, isn’t doing nearly enough activity to be learning different martial art skills, strength training, inadequate amount, getting steps in cardio in to… I don’t even wanna say optimize, but just to be healthier and perform better and be more competent in different arenas and be stronger and be harder to kill and be just… Which is gonna lead to those mental benefits as well.

0:39:18.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:39:19.2 Mike Vacanti: And it’s too bad that we’re in this position because we have so much prosperity, relative to all other times in human history, and yet we’re suffering from these problems of abundance. These problems that…

0:39:31.6 Jordan Syatt: So true.

0:39:32.3 Mike Vacanti: We’ve never, in the history of our ancestors, our lineage, of our species, had a problem with over-consuming calories, like we have now, in the last 100 years or less. These are brand new problems. And we also… We have this higher base-level of need, and I don’t know if that comes comparison or comes from… I don’t know what it comes from, but we get in these jobs that grind us to the bone, so that we can make… Call it 100,000. When you’re spending 80 or whatever… 60, whatever it is, you’re not saving enough, but you don’t need to be spending that much. And if you think about the quality… The better quality of life you could have, if you had a little smaller house, if you had a little older house, if you spent a little less on this, if you didn’t buy that hand bag, if you didn’t buy $100 dinner compared to $20, all of these places where we could make these different decisions as individuals, that could free us up and maybe then we could work a little less and then be at the computer a little less and then do these other things that are good for us and feel better.

0:40:42.3 Mike Vacanti: I saw a tweet along the lines of like, “You can be a poor… ” It was directed towards dudes, it was like, “You can be a poor dude and still eat steak and ride a cheap dirt bike and go swimming in the ocean and go for a run through the woods and whatever. Like these things and be happier, than someone who’s rich, and has a yacht and has this and has that.” But we don’t need those things to live a good life, and I think so many of us get confused and think that we do.

0:41:12.7 Jordan Syatt: Clip that. Clips-nation right there.

0:41:16.2 Mike Vacanti: How to become a personal trainer.

[laughter]

0:41:21.4 Jordan Syatt: This was a good one, man. I like this episode.

0:41:23.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Me too. More coming. More fire.

0:41:28.6 Jordan Syatt: Should I look for another question?

0:41:30.8 Mike Vacanti: Sure.

0:41:32.5 Jordan Syatt: Alright, let’s see what you say about this one. I’m not gonna say the name. She said, “I’ve been strength training for five plus years, no matter how lean I get, I always have love handles. Should I get surgery?”

[pause]

0:41:55.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m sad that she’s asking this question. No, you shouldn’t get surgery, and I could contextualize this, if I knew more about this person and if we were having a face-to-face conversation. But we are so much more, as humans, than the way that we look in the mirror, and having a little… I rode an article many, many years ago called “The Heroes Abs are Irrelevant”. Where, it basically was like, “What makes us great, isn’t the tenths place in our body fat percentage, it’s not our lower ab fat, it’s not a four-pack versus a six-pack, it’s not these little aesthetic minute differences, that only you notice, that nobody else notices about you, that’s not what makes you a person, what makes you amazing, it’s all the other stuff.” And so I don’t know exactly how, but helping her… No, I wouldn’t recommend the surgery and finding ways to…

0:42:57.2 Mike Vacanti: And guess what, I’m not putting this on her, we need to have less of a… I don’t know, vanity around probably… I would call it vanity and even over-sexualization, in content and on the internet of… There’s too much attention on this stuff, that doesn’t matter, it’s are you healthy? How are you performing? How do you feel physically? Like those are the things that really matter, not if you feel like you have a little bit of extra, around your obliques.

0:43:32.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. There’s too much focus on how you look, and too much of a scrutinization of every centimeter of your body, it’s not “perfectly” the way that you want it, and it’s sad that the first response is… I’ve been doing this for five plus years, and that just must mean I have to cut myself open and pay for a surgery to take these things off, that are just… It’s a part of me, it’s not unhealthy, it’s not bad. It’s not doing any damage. Realistically, nobody probably even notices, except for you. And surgery is a big deal. Surgery is a big fucking deal. To go under the knife, to cut yourself open, you’re literally wounding yourself, you have a literal wound and not like a paper cut, they are literally cutting you open to change… What? To remove a little bit of love handle? It’s crazy.

0:44:38.4 Jordan Syatt: And again, not against this individual for saying it. It sucks that that’s where so many people are, in terms of they think like, “Alright, well, let’s just get surgery.” And they think that that’s gonna change their life, it’s gonna change everything about them, and the sad reality is, that’s not gonna change how you really feel about yourself, it’s not. ‘Cause then once the surgery is over, you know what? You’re gonna be… You’re gonna look at the scars. “Oh my God. Now the scars, I don’t like how they look. And people are gonna be like, “Oh my God, did you get surgery to remove your love handles?” Then they’re gonna judge me for that and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.” It’s like…

0:45:05.4 Mike Vacanti: Good point.

0:45:07.6 Jordan Syatt: There’s always gonna be… And even though you might not see the love handles anymore or other people might not see them as much, now you’re gonna be focusing on something else, focusing on something else, and it’s a never-ending pursuit that will never… You’ll never get to the end of the… There will never be a finish line, where it’s like, “Okay, I no longer have any insecurities.” Which is why I think it’s so much more important to focus on what you can do, as opposed to little things like that, where you store body fat here. And again, I’m not talking about a 350 pound person who needs to lose weight ’cause they’re a diabetic and all that, we’re talking about someone who’s already lean, already healthy, already fit, you’ve been lifting for five years and you’ve got a little bit of love handle, so do I. [chuckle]

0:45:45.0 Jordan Syatt: Right, so do I. And I’ve dieted myself down lean enough, to where I didn’t. And I hated it. It sucked, it wasn’t fun, and I was still able to find things that I didn’t like, I was still able to find things about myself that I was insecure over, and so that’s why it’s like, focus on what you can do, focus on the things that make you better, that make your family better, that make you a better member of society, that allow you to impact yourself and more people, whether it’s your performance in the gym, how much you can lift, your chin-ups, your push-ups, your deadlift, or what you’re doing with your job, or what a great mom or dad you’re being, or kid you’re being, focus on the things that you can do, that actually make a positive impact, not the… What can I do to get a little bit more pec separation?

0:46:26.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And this isn’t some body positivity bullshit, that we’re feeding you, we’re not about that life. We’re not telling you, at 300 pounds, that you’re okay, just the way you are and that you don’t need to change.

0:46:38.2 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:46:39.8 Mike Vacanti: But you wanting to lose four pounds off of your love handles and it not happening, and so you wanting to get surgery, that’s the other side of the pendulum.

0:46:51.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, this is… We’re about body negativity.

[laughter]

0:46:57.2 Mike Vacanti: Clip that, clip that and cancel this man.

[laughter]

0:47:04.1 Mike Vacanti: “I used to follow you, but I unfollowed now, Syatt Fitness.”

0:47:08.1 Jordan Syatt: “When you said you were all for body negativity.”

[chuckle]

0:47:12.9 Mike Vacanti: Great episode. We hope that you enjoyed, more coming, weekly uploads.

0:47:20.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, let’s do it.

0:47:22.5 Mike Vacanti: Little five-star review, with a comment, maybe just to off-set a couple of the one stars we got in the middle there, but please, that would help us massively, greatly appreciate it. And yeah, coming in hot next week too. See you.