Episode 122: Sales, Sales, Sales. Everything You Need to Know About Sales 101

0:00:11.5 Mike Vacanti: Hello Jordan.

0:00:12.5 Jordan Syatt: What’s going on, Michael?

0:00:13.9 Mike Vacanti: What a great weekend in Dallas.

0:00:15.4 Jordan Syatt: Dude, that was one for the record books, I appreciate you coming out. That was super fun.

0:00:20.8 Mike Vacanti: Really fun.

0:00:20.9 Jordan Syatt: Did a lot of planning for the mentorship, we got a whole new schedule and plan ready to go, but yeah, that was a great.

0:00:29.9 Mike Vacanti: Dialed, locked and loaded. The most fun part was getting to hang out with your child, I must say.

0:00:36.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that was super fun. Got some good pictures of you with her. That was a good time.

0:00:40.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, she’s very fun.

0:00:42.0 Jordan Syatt: She loves you man.

0:00:43.4 Mike Vacanti: Old Abe.

0:00:44.4 Jordan Syatt: She got super excited whenever you would come in the apartment. Yeah, that was great.

0:00:48.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it was a really good time. I also quit three things, I tried three things on this trip and quit all three.

[laughter]

0:00:56.5 Jordan Syatt: Okay, so you wanna go through them?

0:00:58.1 Mike Vacanti: You can guess.

0:01:00.3 Jordan Syatt: No, no, I know.

0:01:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Do you?

0:01:01.1 Jordan Syatt: You quit jiu-jitsu. You came to a jiu-jitsu class with me, and then you were like, “Alright, well, that was the last one of those that I’ll ever do.”

[laughter]

0:01:13.3 Mike Vacanti: You’re starting in the wrong order because, what did I say?

0:01:16.1 Jordan Syatt: Well, no, no, I didn’t know we were doing it in order.

0:01:18.1 Mike Vacanti: Okay. But I wouldn’t even call it quitting. I will do jiu-jitsu before I do those other two things.

0:01:25.1 Jordan Syatt: You will do jiu-jitsu before you do the nicotine pouches, the ZYN-babwes?

0:01:31.1 Mike Vacanti: Bro.

0:01:32.3 Jordan Syatt: The ZYN. [chuckle]

0:01:34.8 Mike Vacanti: A couple of episodes ago, we talked about stimulants. And I said I’ve had a Nicorette gum three to five times in my life, and I think I’ve had one or two ZYNs. This was the third.

0:01:47.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:01:47.9 Mike Vacanti: I’m done forever, and I wanna make a stronger anti-drug claim here on the podcast, ’cause I don’t think it came through well enough at all last time, you and I before one of our planning sessions like, oh, we got this 3mg ZYN, it’s like, yeah, let’s… Why not, right? Get the juices flowing, get the CNS stimulated, get the mind really working. I was on… I mean, I’m telling you, you know this ’cause you were right next to me continuing to do work, I was on the floor for hours.

0:02:17.9 Jordan Syatt: Well, you should… The first 25 to 40 minutes, you were like zooming. You were like, “This is great. This is it.” You were stomping around the office, you were like, “Alright, let’s go.” True mental clarity. You were in the zone. You were coming up with ideas.

0:02:37.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yes. It was a stimulant. It was doing its job. Body temperature was rising, it felt like a greater draw towards activity.

0:02:44.9 Jordan Syatt: You were fake punching me in the face. You doing that thing where you’re like…

0:02:47.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, we’re doing that. Yeah, not real punching, just fake punching. Just throwing it out there. [laughter] And getting on the walking pad, like moving, sure. There was marginal benefit over real life, over normal state. You know what? I would say even above baseline, like it had me feeling more stimulated than baseline, nothing like pre-workout. Pre-workout just dials here and physically…

0:03:13.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh really?

0:03:14.4 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:03:14.8 Jordan Syatt: Man, I’m the opposite.

0:03:17.2 Mike Vacanti: Our neurochemistry is different, apparently. After this brief period of heightened productivity, I thought I was gonna throw up. I felt like I had the worst hangover in my life, I thought I was gonna have a… Like headache up through here, like pounding, I was laying on the ground trying not to puke. Light, like sensitivity to light, I had to throw a sweatshirt over my eyes. You’re writing an email for the Inner Circle sale, you’re getting things done. I’m laying next to you on the ground with a sweatshirt over my face taking deep breaths for an extended amount of time. [laughter] So I officially… I mean, I never really got into it, but I’m officially done with nicotine of all kinds, forever.

0:04:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Wow. Okay. So no more nicotine. I don’t know what the other one is.

0:04:03.3 Mike Vacanti: Well, it was alcohol.

0:04:05.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh.

0:04:06.3 Mike Vacanti: Because I think somehow… Yeah, that was part of it too. We had a couple of drinks during the UFC fights and then…

0:04:12.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I was wondering when did we drink.

0:04:14.9 Mike Vacanti: It felt like not great the next morning, and then the nicotine on top of it, like it was a real bad one-two combo.

0:04:21.4 Jordan Syatt: How many drinks did you have during the UFC fights?

0:04:23.8 Mike Vacanti: I had two drinks and about this much tequila.

0:04:28.1 Jordan Syatt: Got it, got it, got it. Okay, alright. Yeah, so you had like two of the Topo Hard Seltzers, little bit of the Siempre Tequila.

0:04:34.8 Mike Vacanti: I’m just not cut out for the casual everyday substance. I have a buddy, I showed you the video. He got an Amazon order with literally 20 ZYN things. Not pouches, like 20…

0:04:48.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, the nicotine pouches. Yeah.

0:04:49.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And so, yeah, I can’t do it.

0:04:54.5 Jordan Syatt: Well, you just use that pre-work out bro.

0:04:56.5 Mike Vacanti: I will continue to use that pre-workout.

0:04:58.5 Jordan Syatt: You got beta-alanine in there, you got caffeine, you got… You’re using those vasodilators?

0:05:10.9 Mike Vacanti: Well, if it’s an afternoon workout, I have a pump product that I’ll take mostly just for placebo, but I still put the beet juice in my pre-workout because it’s tasty, I like the extra carbs and probably need them and additional blood flow. Yeah.

0:05:29.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:05:31.2 Mike Vacanti: But yeah, then what else is in there? I think that Alpha-GPC probably has the most positive mental benefit, and then other standard pre-workout stuff, a little bit of L-Citrulline in there, but nicotine, I will roll five days a week for the rest of my life in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu before I ever have one of those little pillow pouches near my mouth ever again.

0:05:56.5 Jordan Syatt: And I know for a fact you will never ever roll five days a week for the rest of your life doing jiu-jitsu. [laughter]

0:06:03.1 Mike Vacanti: That’s good reverse psychology by you. I know how much you’d like it if I did that, so that’s really well done.

0:06:08.3 Jordan Syatt: Listen, you gotta just do what you gotta do.

0:06:11.1 Mike Vacanti: You’ll never squat and deadlift multiple times a week for the rest of your life.

0:06:17.1 Jordan Syatt: 100% I won’t. Absolutely not. I hate squatting and deadlifting now, for me personally.

0:06:21.6 Mike Vacanti: No, you might.

0:06:22.8 Jordan Syatt: No, I won’t. I’ll never never do it. [laughter] I mean, never say never, it depends. Maybe if one of my kids is like, “Hey, I wanna do a powerlifting competition with you one day,” like I’m not gonna say no to that, and I’ll design the programming, so there’s a chance. But you know what I won’t do is I will not go anywhere near the RPE level that I used to go in powerlifting. I will… Dude, I used to be grinding through lifts, like super heavy, week after week, I’m like, man, I just… I can’t do that any more man.

0:06:57.8 Mike Vacanti: What percent of that is related to your low back/injury potential in general, and what percent of that is related to other factors?

0:07:06.6 Jordan Syatt: I think 98% of it is just, I don’t have that dog in me anymore that I used to have for lifting. Now, it’s geared towards jiu-jitsu. I used to love grinding through lifts and I would be so hyped up going to the gym. I remember I used to finish workouts in the gym, and I would be already looking forward to the next workout in the gym. And I’d just be like exhausted and just, I gave it my all, I was shaking from trying to lift so heavy, and then I just… I couldn’t wait for the next one. It’s all I was thinking about for the next 48 hours is my next lift. And then… And now it’s just like I lift because it’s important, but I don’t go anywhere near that level of intensity at this point anymore. I bring that level of intensity to my cardio and to my jiu-jitsu, but having that dog in you for lifts, I don’t got that anymore.

0:08:03.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s still different just because of the energy system requirements, like…

0:08:07.4 Jordan Syatt: Yes, yeah.

0:08:08.2 Mike Vacanti: Taking jiu-jitsu to RPE 10 or taking cardio, super high intensity in those is so different than high intensity, heavy strength training.

0:08:19.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

0:08:20.4 Mike Vacanti: There’s also the cognitive and full body exhaustion that comes as a result of that style of training that makes life and business and computer work and other things really difficult, which I think is under-discussed.

0:08:39.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s a good point. As you were saying, I was like, man, this is a really good point. Like the mental fog that sometimes you’ll get after a near max or maximal effort type lift in the gym that lasts for essentially the rest of the day, I just don’t have the ability to do work and be productive and like, listen to my wife and pay attention to my daughter when I’m that fatigued from the lifting session. I think that’s why some of the greatest lifters in the world there is young kids, these young men, young women who… They’re probably not in… They don’t have really much else to do except lift, just lift, lift, lift and then fuel that lift and rest and recover from that lift, so yeah, that’s an important thing to be aware of for your clients as well, like you can’t have your… Or you probably shouldn’t have your 47-year-old client be trying to max out RPE 10 their squat and deadlift on a pretty regular basis, unless they’re like, “Hey, let’s do this.” But otherwise, there’s really not much of a reason for it at all.

0:09:44.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, intensity and volume, like making sure that you are paying close attention to who is this client of mine, what are their goals and do they really need to be… Do they need to be doing a two-hour workout or could they be doing a one-hour workout? Do they really need to be doing multiple sets of deadlifts near failure, or could we either pick a different exercise or could we scale back the intensity RPE 7 instead? Yeah, those are important things to remember for coaches.

0:10:16.0 Jordan Syatt: How was your last jiu-jitsu session? You came to my jiu-jitsu academy, Alex Martins Jiu-jitsu. How did it go?

0:10:22.4 Mike Vacanti: It was great, and I don’t even wanna call it my last session because it’s the thing I’m most likely to do again of those three things. Look, I compare it to like… I just don’t enjoy it at all.

0:10:36.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you just don’t… It’s not fun for you.

0:10:38.3 Mike Vacanti: I think Alex is a really good professor and a really good guy based on our interactions and I enjoyed learning from him, and it’s beautiful, it’s a nice facility, and it was fun doing it with you, and there’s just few things in life that are as like, I don’t wanna be doing this than laying their pinned under some dude and just like, it sucks. [laughter] And…

0:11:08.6 Jordan Syatt: But you did super well. I was very surprised at how coordinated you looked, how loose and relaxed you looked. Your breathing was super under control. It was very impressive.

0:11:19.2 Mike Vacanti: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it’s similar to you not enjoying heavy barbell lifting at this time in your life.

0:11:28.2 Jordan Syatt: Especially heavy barbell hip thrust, I couldn’t… That’s just something I just have no interest in doing. I’d imagine it’s somewhat similar.

0:11:35.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, when I say heavy, I mean chasing 535 again.

0:11:40.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just mean, of which lift would I hate to do the most, I would rather chase 535 for my deadlift than do 315 barbell hip thrust once a week.

0:11:52.8 Mike Vacanti: Makes sense. We know you hate hip thrusts. For some reason, I still haven’t fully got to the bottom of this, but it’s harder to load a hip thrust than it is to load a deadlift. I still haven’t like…

0:12:03.3 Jordan Syatt: No, no, no. It’s equally difficult to load it, it’s just… It’s far less comfortable to put that load on your hips than it is to just lift it up holding it in your hands, and it’s just like… Yeah.

0:12:18.7 Mike Vacanti: The benches at your gym are higher than the average bench too, which makes it even more uncomfortable and difficult.

0:12:26.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I don’t like the benches at my gym.

0:12:28.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Should we dive into some Q&A?

0:12:32.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh, do you want me to cover… Because I forget if it was on the podcast or in the mentorship, how I said I don’t do a build up for a flash sale, and you were like, “Dude, why are you doing the build up for the sale?” Do you wanna talk about that or no?

0:12:44.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, we definitely can. So it was in a Q&A and someone… I think it was Chris, Chris Gates, we were talking about his timing of his next launch, and he’s got a baby on the way, and so we were planning the timing and how extensive the launch would be, and you mentioned a flash sale being an option, and I don’t remember, someone asked if you… I might have asked you if you build anticipation for something like that, and you said, “No, a flash sale is just the day of.” And I’m almost certain you had said you had one coming up, but you must have just meant a sale in general, but then I saw you building anticipation for your sale, I was like, “Oh, what’s that about?”

0:13:25.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so I’ll start by saying if you’re like, well, what’s the anticipation? I know everyone knows what anticipation means, but in relation to a launch specifically, in the mentorship we have, and we have many, many, many, many courses that are long, in-depth video courses around what you can do around your business, whether it’s understanding search engine optimization, whether it’s understanding how to structure a sale or a launch, whether it’s understanding client systems and assessments, how to write programs for your clients, we have a lot of courses. In the sales course, we discuss… One of the things we discuss is how to structure a launch for your business, whether you’re launching a product, whether you’re launching your online coaching program, whatever it is. And one very important component of a launch sequence is anticipation, and in order to build anticipation, essentially, for a big launch, and by a big launch I mean it’s not a 24-hour sale, I mean it’s usually at least five to 12 days is you’re gonna be running this launch trying to get people to buy for that duration of time.

0:14:30.9 Jordan Syatt: And there are many reasons why you would wanna do that, but one of them is, on average, it takes about 12 exposures per individual for that person to decide, “Okay, I wanna sign up for this,” whatever program you’re running. And if you just do one lunch and one email and one post, then they might literally only get one exposure, whereas there’s a very famous saying in marketing that the magic is in the follow-up, continuing to follow up, continuing to remind them about it is an important way to get those exposures into where someone… Think about it, let’s say you send an email out or make an Instagram post about whatever it is you’re launching, like, “Alright, sign up.” Well, people looking at the email or reading the Instagram post, maybe their kids are going crazy in the fucking background, maybe they’re like, “Okay, you know what, I’m gonna do this later,” then they just legitimately forget, guarantee you do that all the time with certain tabs open, you’ll forget about it. So a reminder is… A lot of people, especially newer people to selling, think that it’s annoying.

0:15:29.4 Jordan Syatt: No, it’s actually a nice little nudge being like, “Hey, just in case you forgot, there’s only this much time left and I’m still running this, it’s still available.” So the magic really is in the follow-up, but the anticipation phase, which we cover in depth in the video course, is basically designed to, number one, let them know exactly when it’s gonna go live so they can put it in their calendar, but also in a more trying to give you more of a visual, you want the person so excited and ready to buy whatever it is you’re offering, that is, they know when you’re gonna launch it, they know when it’s coming out, they know when it’s gonna be available, they don’t even need to read your sales copy. Sales copy becomes far less important during the launch day and launch week when you build up a really good anticipation phase, because by the time that phase is there, they’re ready, like, “Cool, I’m sold, I’m ready to go.”

0:16:20.3 Jordan Syatt: Imagine you’re doing research on your own about like, you wanna buy a vacuum. And you’re like, you know exactly what vacuum you want. You spent hours researching the vacuum, you know which one you want, and then you go in the store and the person… Like, “Hey, I’m gonna buy this vacuum, I know this is the one that I want.” And the person just keeps trying to sell you on that vacuum. “Well, you won’t believe what it offers.” It’s like, “No, motherfucker, I know what it has. I did the research myself. I just wanna give you my credit card to buy it.” “Well, hold on, let me tell you more about… ” “Shut up. Let me just buy it.” Sales copy becomes far less important if you do a really good anticipation phase, and so the question was, do you build an anticipation phase for a flash sale, something that like, hey, 24 hours and done or not, or do you only say the anticipation phase for the longer sales? I don’t think there’s a definitive right or wrong for this, but for me, usually, if I’m gonna do a flash sale 24 hours and done, I probably won’t do an anticipation phase, I usually rely on just the shock value of, “Surprise, this is it right now.”

0:17:22.1 Jordan Syatt: It gets the most out of striking while the iron is hot, because if I say, “Hey, in a week, I’m going to have a flash sale.” Well, now they have the time to think about it, they have the time to, “Uhh, maybe I don’t want this, am I really gonna use it or not?” But if you just say, “Hey, right now, this is your opportunity, 24 hours and done, this is it,” often times, we’re like, “You know what, screw it, I’m just gonna sign up.” And that can be a good way to do it without the anticipation phase. Whereas if you’re doing a big launch for five to 12 days, like a huge, huge launch where you’re selling over multiple days, having the anticipation phase I think becomes drastically more important, in which you really wanna get them to build up the excitement so they’re essentially drooling and ready to buy from the moment that you launch it. So that is why I don’t do anticipation phase for a flash sale, but for a longer, larger launch, I will absolutely do an anticipation phase.

0:18:19.0 Mike Vacanti: What does this launch look like for you, the one you’re in the middle of right now?

0:18:23.8 Jordan Syatt: So… That’s a great question. I’ll start by saying, so it’s an Inner Circle launch. It’s for my Inner Circle membership, it’s for my fitness program, but I’ve done this when I was doing one-on-one coaching, with group coaching, like this, you could replicate it based on whatever it is your selling. So if you’re doing one-on-one coaching, you don’t need a group membership in order to do this, it’s the exact same thing. When I was doing one-on-one coaching, the main thing that I would talk about on social media or on my email list or on YouTube or podcast, whatever, was my one-on-one coaching program, that I would just… In terms of soft mentions, I would just, “Yeah, so I was talking to a one-on-one coaching client, and this is what we were talking about,” or, “I was talking to my online fat loss coaching client, and this is an issue they were having.” Now, those mentions are relative to my Inner Circle. “Hey, so I was talking to my Inner Circle members, blah, blah, blah. I was doing my Inner Circle live, one of the members had this question. Hey, an Inner Circle member lost 15 pounds over the last three months. Here’s what they did, da, da, da.”

0:19:17.2 Jordan Syatt: So, the first and foremost thing is before I even begin the launch or even the anticipation, I’m constantly referencing it, rarely selling it, but constantly referencing it so they know exactly what it is before I even start selling it. They know that it’s my membership group, they know that there are workouts in there every month, they know that there’s nutrition guidelines, they know that there are tons of manuals in there, so that by the time I decide to do a launch, it’s like I don’t have to go through as much of an education phase, it’s more of just a… I don’t have to tell them as many facts about it, I can just go in on the benefits of it. And so as of right now, I’m talking about it everywhere, I’ve sent an email, I’ve done an Instagram post. I did an entire Q&A on my Instagram story where I would answer people’s questions about it and also share some testimonials from current members, which I think turned out to be very, very helpful. So, today, I’m not gonna post anything about it anywhere, because I know there are a lot of people still seeing my Instagram posts from yesterday, there are people seeing my email from the day before, they’re still trickling in, so I sort of like to give people a little bit of time just to catch up, and then tomorrow I will send another email out, just a quick reminder.

0:20:29.7 Jordan Syatt: I’ll probably do a little FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions, in that email, who it’s good for, who it’s not, and then I’ll continue to share about it on my stories but it’s not going to be all my stories are made up of. I’ll do Q&As, I’ll share my normal stuff, but I’ll just slip in random reminders, “By the way, 30% off if you join for the sale, da, da, da, da.” I don’t… Well, personally, I’m not gonna do another feed post on my Instagram just because it’s… I don’t like to bombard my audience with it anymore. If I didn’t have as much of a… If my business wasn’t where it was right now, I probably would do another feed post in a couple of days, but for right now, I could stop the sale right now and I’d be happy with how it did, even though I’m about 45, 48 hours in. I don’t need more, but I will continue it just for the sake of it. So I’m mentioning it on my stories, gonna write probably over the course of the next week, another two to four more emails about it. I think the most important emails are really the 24 hours left, within the last 24 to 36 hours, I’ll send out an email. If you’re on my email list, you’ll see it, it’ll say like, “36 hours left, 24 hours left, 12 hours left.” Those, I think, are the most important ones. Those get generally the biggest response.

0:21:42.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s when people are like, “Alright, there’s only this amount of time left. Do I really wanna miss out again because… ” It’s funny, I’m going through my DMs and I can see people who are DM-ing me about it, they’ve DM-ed me about it before when I’ve done previous sales and in those previous messages, they’ve been like, “Hey, I can’t do it this time, I’m gonna get it next time, I promise.” And they keep doing that over and over and over again, so those people do exist. The cool part is to see those messages where, if someone said the last time, “Hey, I’m gonna join.” And then they’re like, “Hey, I just did it, I saved enough money. Thank you for letting me know.” That’s another benefit of the anticipation phase, they can set aside money for when they know it’s gonna happen. If you can tell them two weeks in advance, “Hey, I’m gonna be doing this sale.” A lot of people, they don’t have that money lying around. Even though it’s not outrageously expensive, it’s like hey, they might not have that money laying around, who knows what’s going on, so they could save up for it in those couple of weeks so they have it ready and available. So yeah, that’s pretty much what the rest of the sale is gonna look like.

0:22:36.8 Mike Vacanti: Cool. Good overview. I think that’s really helpful for people. I think it’s also important for everyone to know that your business success doesn’t hinge on these couple sales a year, it hinges on the 10-plus years of free content that you’ve made and…

0:23:02.3 Jordan Syatt: Exactly.

0:23:02.9 Mike Vacanti: And layered in there, first it was all soft… You mentioned soft mentions, soft mentions about coaching, and soft mentions about the Inner Circle, leading to people continuing to trickle in throughout the year, in addition to the couple of launches that you do.

0:23:17.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And that’s a really good point that I wanna hammer on, it’s like my launches tend… Thank God they do well, not because the sales copy is unbelievable, which I think it is very good, but it’s not because of that, it’s not because of the sales copy, it’s not because of a certain strategy, it’s because I give so much free content when I’m not selling. It’s like I’m unbelievably consistent posting helpful content, whether it’s on Instagram or Youtube or my podcast or whatever it is, I’m constantly giving free information away, with slight mentions of what my offer is. So after six months, seven months, eight months of no sales, no sales, no sales, no launches, when I finally do it, people are like, “Yeah, that’s it. I wanna join.”

0:24:02.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Okay, this is from Imee. I-M-E-E. “Hi, great video in not having to chase, if you focus on what you are passionate about and interested in, but I can’t figure out how would you find the audience to watch, read, listen to my message. Doesn’t whatever gets put out kind of just only reach the audience you already have? It doesn’t really go further than that.” She follows up by saying, “I’m a stressed and anxious person desiring to be an online nutrition plus trainer, but I’m terrible at marketing, selling, talking and being inauthentic.” And then she follows up and said, “I truly would love having guidance on the marketing or selling side of things, probably one of my weaknesses.” And one of the reasons I really like this question, because you just did a really good job at giving a high-level overview of launch structure, is I’ve never done a launch, I’m terrible at selling, and I don’t like hard selling, I’m not comfortable with it, and somehow was able to build a business without ever hard selling.

0:25:19.3 Mike Vacanti: So Imee, my advice to you would be, you don’t have to hard sell, and it might take longer to build your business to where you want it to be, as we’ve seen with everyone in the mentorship, generally speaking, in that first one, two, three year window, having launches on some kind of, maybe twice a year, maybe three times a year, over that two, three year window is gonna lead to more total business and more clients than not having launches, but you don’t need to launch to build your business. And that’s where we talk about soft selling or we talk about soft mentions of whatever service you’re offering, is a way of notifying everyone of something that you offer without making it a giant right hook, without making it a real direct ask for, “Buy my service.” And as long as you’re okay with slow and steady growth, you don’t need to hard sell ever to grow a business.

0:26:25.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s a super good point, you really don’t need to. And like you said, it might be a slower growth, especially earlier on, but I think it will often be more sustainable. And the other aspect of this is, I gave a pretty decent overview, we go much more in detail in the mentorship, if you wanna sign-up for the mentorship, link is in the show notes, but I gave a decent overview of a general launch structure, but you can’t really overlook how much good will you’ve built up just by giving away great free content, and if you wanna do a launch, you could literally just say like, “You know what, screw it. I’m gonna put it on sale for 10, 20, 30% off if you sign up over the next week.” And that’s all you have to say. You don’t need any of the other stuff, you could literally just do a sale and make that your launch, and you don’t have to say anything specially, you don’t have to have a fancy sales copy, all you have to do is be like, “Listen, if you’ve been following me for a while and you like my stuff, this might be a good fit for you. So for the next week, I’m gonna put it on sale for 20% off, if you wanna join, cool, if not, great. Period, end of story, link in my bio.” And that’s it. And that could be your launch.

0:27:35.3 Mike Vacanti: It doesn’t have to be super complicated.

0:27:37.0 Jordan Syatt: Correct, it does not have to be super complicated at all, I don’t think it should be. There was something that… It’s Imee, right?

0:27:44.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:27:44.4 Jordan Syatt: Imee said this? Did Imee say, “I’m bad at being in-authentic.” Was that written there?

0:27:51.7 Mike Vacanti: I’ll just… “But is terrible at marketing/selling/talking and not being unauthentic.”

0:28:00.3 Jordan Syatt: Got it, got it. Okay, so here’s the thing. I think that stemmed from Imee saying, “How are you supposed to reach more people because you’re just essentially putting stuff out to your audience.” Right?

0:28:14.5 Mike Vacanti: Yes. So, that was kind of the first part of the question.

0:28:17.4 Jordan Syatt: So, it seems to me there’s a misconception that you have to be someone else in order to reach new people, like you have to pretend to be someone different, you have to put on a whole fucking face or speak in a certain way. It could not be further from the truth. So, this begs your question, how do you reach new people? How do you reach new people with social media? How do you get new people to see your shit? There are many different ways. I’m gonna… There are many different ways and many different subsets of each way, but I’m gonna say there are two general ways right now, like two overarching. Number one is through paid advertising, which you do not need to do, and the other is through organically getting more people to see your stuff, cool. So, let’s go into the organic method. How do you organically get people to see your stuff? Well, number one is, I think the most overlooked way is just getting people who already follow you to share what you’re posting, because if someone who already follows you shares what you posted, any one of their followers who sees it is essentially getting a referral to you, that’s what that means.

0:29:29.0 Jordan Syatt: And I personally, am not the biggest fan of saying, “Hey, please share this.” I’m not the biggest fan of that. Ironically, recently, I just did that on a post, I’m actually gonna read this caption to you, I’m gonna read this caption, and this is gonna be legitimately the most authentic thing you’ve heard in this caption. So I shared a post, I thought this was a genius post. So basically, because I have a baby and I see so much baby content, my Explore feed is filled with baby content. And if you’re watching on YouTube, you’re seeing this little clip right now. If you’re not watching on YouTube, and you’re listening on the podcast, please leave us a five-star review with a written review on the podcast ’cause we appreciate it, but if you’re… You wanna watch us and see our faces, definitely look on Youtube. Anyway, you can see this kid moving all over his parents. So the parents are trying to sleep, he’s moving all over the place, and I made a video being like, “If you’re ever wondering why you used to be able to eat so much and not gain weight, but now you eat the same amount and you are gaining weight, well, this is one reason why. When you’re younger, you’re moving a lot more.”

0:30:32.4 Jordan Syatt: I’m going to read you my caption, it’s a very brief caption, and I just wrote, “If you’ve ever wondered why you used to be able to eat whatever you wanted without gaining weight, but now you so much as look at a carb and gain 20 pounds, watch this whole video, don’t skip around.” And then I wrote, “Leave a comment telling me how much you loved it, I’m needy. Share it on your story and tell your friends and family they need to follow me because I’m a short funny bald guy who tells it like it is. Thank you.” So, I rarely ask people to share my work or to leave a comment because I think it’s obnoxious when they do, but when I do do it, I’m also very honest about it. The reason you’re asking someone to leave a comment is not because you’re like, “Oh, I’m so interested in what you have to say.” You’re asking them to leave a comment ’cause you want more engagement. So, when I said, “Leave a comment, tell me how much you loved it.” That’s really what… I’m saying I’m needy, “Please, do this for me, I’m needy. And then also share it on your story.”

0:31:29.0 Jordan Syatt: And when you ask people to share it on your story, you’re not just saying like, “Hey, just share this without any… ” You’re saying share it on your story so that you can tell people how great I am and how much you love following me, ’cause you want then their followers to follow you as well. So, I literally… I made a joke about it, but I literally said exactly the reason why I wanted them to share it and why I wanted them to comment, which I think is just the pinnacle of… It’s like you’re being yourself, you’re just being truthful with them. Listen, I could have just been like, “Hey listen, if you could leave a comment, it’s really gonna help my business, and if you could share this, that would also help my business.” I could have said that, I tried to use humor as a way to break the ice a little bit, but I was still very upfront and honest about it, so I think the best way to organically get more people to see your content is to get people to share it. And one way to get people to share it is to ask like I did, but you can only do that so many times ’cause it’s gonna lose its uniqueness very quickly if you just do that every single time.

0:32:26.8 Jordan Syatt: So the other great way to get people to share your content is just to make really good content. And I know it’s very annoying to hear that, but it would be like… I think a lot of coaches approach making content like people who go to the gym consistently, but don’t really put in the effort struggle to get results. There are some people who go to the gym, maybe it’s a client, maybe it’s just someone you see at the gym, they go, they run through the motions, but really they’re just talking to people the whole time, they’re talking, they’re starting up conversations, and that’s amazing. They’re having a wonderful time, it’s a great part of their day, it’s a good community, but if that person was also complaining that they’re not getting stronger and complaining that they’re not losing weight and complaining that their cardio isn’t improving, and all this, you’d be like, “Well, listen, you’re chatting for 54 minutes and you’re actually working out for six, so of course, you’re not actually getting results.”

0:33:24.9 Jordan Syatt: I think that’s how a lot of coaches approach their social media. With their social media, they’re really not putting in as much effort as they think they are. Yeah, they’re taking the time to post, they’re making a shitty tweet post or whatever it is, or maybe you’re sort of essentially plagiarizing someone else’s shit and you’re gonna try and put it under your own name, but you’re not really spending time making it great content. And I think the platforms don’t lie. If it’s really good content, the platform knows it’s really good content ’cause people are watching it, people are consuming it, and so if your shit isn’t being shared, odds are it’s just not good content, and you need to do it really consistently and make great content.

0:34:01.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And two things here, one, when Jordan says really good content, what he means is content that resonates well with your audience and a potential audience. There was a big controversy in the poker world recently, and I was listening to this Twitter Spaces, and one of the guys is a content creator, and they were talking about, “Is good content something that, from an artistic perspective, that you feel like is an honest expression of who you are and what you are?” ‘Cause that’s where one guy was coming from, in terms of definition of good content, but the guy who’s kinda under fire is like, “This is a business, I make content for my business, so I measure good based on views, based on reach, based on watch time, based on engagement, based on how people react to it.” This content is an arm of the business, so when Jordan says ‘good’, how it’s received is the metric of good versus bad.

0:35:00.5 Mike Vacanti: And two, another reason to make really good content is not only because people will want to share it even without being asked, but these apps are going to prioritize it for new audience. So if you make something really good that people are hammering the like button, people are watching entire videos, people are sharing it a ton, not only will it pop up for the people who it’s being shared to directly, right? I post something, Jordan puts it on his story because he thought it was so good, and then people who follow Jordan, see it. Sure, that’s one method, but also Instagram’s prioritizing it, putting it in front of people who don’t currently follow you. And that was Explore and now it’s within the main feed as well. So taking a lot of shots, you’re not gonna score goals if you don’t take shots, putting a lot of pucks on net, and then getting… Becoming better at shooting through that process, are ways, Imee, that you’re going to reach new audience with your content.

0:35:58.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And keep in mind, imagine if you have a client who is doing the 54 minutes of talking horseshit and then 6 minutes of…

0:36:07.4 Mike Vacanti: I think 54 minutes of watching CNN in the gym and six minutes of some kind of lifting, but keep going.

0:36:14.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. And they’re never really like… They’re RPE 4 when they’re lifting and just never really going hard, and then all of a sudden they start going to the gym seven days a week for a month, seven days a week, and they’re working hard the entire time…

0:36:27.8 Mike Vacanti: Turn the TV off. Have music in.

0:36:30.4 Jordan Syatt: TV off, headphones in, just working super hard. They’re not gonna see insane results in that month, even though they’re going every day, their nutrition is dialed… It’s not gonna be like, “Oh, my God, you’re a new person.” If you go hard posting three times a day every day for a month, and you only gain four followers or maybe you lose seven followers, that doesn’t mean anything wrong, it’s like, yeah, you’ve gotta make good content, not once, not twice, not 30 times, not 90 times, 1000 times, over and over and over again, consistently, 2000 times, 3000 times. So, you might be doing a great job, it’s just, you haven’t done it consistently enough yet. So there’s nothing that infuriates me more than a coach who’s like, “I just, I’m not growing.” And I’ll be like, “Oh, how long have you been posting?” “A month.” “Okay, good luck.” That’s not how it works. That is not how it works. You gotta keep posting over and over and over again, very consistently.

0:37:28.5 Mike Vacanti: What is a timeline that you would allow a coach to judge him or herself on? If one month is not an appropriate timeline, what is?

0:37:36.4 Jordan Syatt: A year. I would say one year of consistent posting, an average of seven posts a week, and they’ve gotta be great posts. If you’re spending 15, 20, 30 minutes on your post, there’s no way they’re a great post consistently, it’s just they take a much longer time than that. Usually my caption will take me 30 minutes, never mind the actual post. So it’s a long process, and it’s very difficult.

0:38:07.3 Mike Vacanti: That’s been one of the fun parts in the mentorship about the one-on-one private consult calls with Challenge winners where we’re deep diving on individual pieces of content and giving feedback, and then seeing that switch, the way you just mentioned, even like mediocre posts. Seven X a week mediocre posts, we’d rather see three really good posts a week than seven mediocre posts a week.

0:38:29.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Yeah. And if you don’t have time to make three really good posts a week, you’ve got some time management issues. “Stop watching Lost.”

[laughter]

0:38:45.4 Mike Vacanti: “Stop watching the whole seasons of House of Cards.” Dude, I was thinking about that at the gym today. That was such a good era of like… I think we’ve hit on this three to five times on this podcast, how the anti-hustle culture movement is so soft and whiny, but yeah, those… Some of Gary’s one-liners between 2013 and 2017 were really good.

0:39:12.4 Jordan Syatt: Classic. “Stop watching fucking Lost.” [laughter]

0:39:17.2 Mike Vacanti: And then he clarified that “if you’re a complainer,” which is true.

0:39:20.9 Jordan Syatt: Yes, which is true, exactly.

0:39:22.0 Mike Vacanti: And it really resonates with people who are generally young, hungry, and not even young in age, but young in the stages of their business and wanting to do whatever it takes to succeed, that mindset really resonates. Now, I like watching seasons of shows, but then, absolutely not.

0:39:44.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I didn’t have a TV from 18 to 29, just not watching anything. It was just work, work, work. And now, every night, my wife and I are watching Ted Lasso right now. Great show. We always watch something at this point. Just watch TV, have a glass of wine. But that’s it, it’s… I think the clarification is, if you’re complaining about not growing, but then you’re spending time watching TV, stop watching fucking TV.

0:40:12.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:40:13.9 Jordan Syatt: Dude, how are you liking your full body lifting?

0:40:16.3 Mike Vacanti: Oh man, if we tell the podcast, I’m gonna have to quit. I’m gonna have to quit and move to a different split.

[laughter]

0:40:24.7 Jordan Syatt: Different programme, body part split.

0:40:25.3 Mike Vacanti: Different programme. I’m gonna have to go to… Yeah, it’s going good. It’s really hard, like compound moves, seven, eight exercises a day, hitting full body three days a week with reasonable RPE’s, it’s exhausting. Earlier in the episode, we talked about it being difficult to work or brain fog was the term that you used after really intense strength training sessions, and that’s absolutely the case. There was a morning during my first week of random full body program where I ate a big breakfast because I was like, “I’m gonna need it with this level of volume and intensity,” and then trained for nearly two hours and then, I don’t remember if it was a Q&A or a podcast that we did, but I was dead.

0:41:20.9 Mike Vacanti: And so since then, what I’ve been doing, and this is a ridiculous schedule, I can’t believe that I’m doing this, but I’m doing the first two movements, like the two big moves, in the morning and then we record for an hour two hours, three hours, whatever it is, and then I’ll go do the other four to five moves where it’s still a couple of compounds and then some accessory work in the afternoon. So I’m essentially doing two a day lifts just because it’s the only way that I can not be completely dead for multiple hours of the day.

0:41:54.3 Jordan Syatt: I love this for you for so many reasons, namely because you love lifting. You absolutely love lifting. And if there was one way to make you happier than doing one lift a day, it would be doing two lifts a day. And I feel like this is the perfect schedule for you, out of all the different schedules you’ve tried and everything throughout your career, I feel for right now in life, this is perfect. You get to wake up, get a nice little breakfast in, hit two heavy compounds, then get some work in, and then you go back to the gym for round two refreshed, ready to go, and then you get to hit it again and it’s like… I think that’s the perfect schedule for you, and I think it’s also nice because you deliberately plan it on days that we’re going to also work and do a podcast or do a Q&A with the mentorship. You can join the mentorship link in the bio, just gonna be pushing it hard this episode.

0:42:55.2 Mike Vacanti: I love it.

0:42:56.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s just so smart because it makes you feel really good and you’ve gotten to a point where you can decide what your schedule is gonna be like. After years and years and years and years of grinding and working for super long, it’s like, “Cool, now I’m going to split this workout up in whatever way suits me best, and also I’m gonna fit it right in.” And when you’re here visiting in Dallas, we literally split your workout up with a trip to Chic-Fil-A, which is just… It was super fun. I love it. I think that it’s cool to see. And I think this is one that you’re gonna be doing for a long time.

0:43:26.1 Mike Vacanti: It’s hard for me, there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance, I think, around talking about it publicly, holding the position that this does not make sense for most people, it’s unnecessary and it’s impossible for most people’s schedule. Holding that position and wanting to educate people on what works best for them, while simultaneously holding the position that this is awesome for me. A couple of episodes ago, we talked about how white collar jobs are essentially not the optimal way to live, you’re in an office, you under a fluorescent light, you’re in deep hip flexion, just sitting all day, nine hours, five plus days a week, like hunched over like this, not good. We should have more movement and activity, and so doing 45 minutes in the morning and then doing an hour, and this is only three days a week, but doing an hour in the afternoon and having that opportunity built into my schedule to move around more, has me feeling really good.

0:44:30.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, and I think for most people, it wouldn’t work for many reasons. Number one, most people don’t love lifting like you do in the world. There’s a small subset of the fitness industry that absolutely loves it, and that would be great, but even among the subset of people who love it, most don’t have the freedom that you’ve built in order to make that schedule work, and if the people who have kids and other extra responsibilities, there’s no way that they can make that work. So for right now, based on your schedule and what you have, I think it’s absolutely perfect.

0:45:11.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. You are on a similar schedule, just not with lifting.

0:45:15.7 Jordan Syatt: I put myself in the same box as you, in which we’ve built this ability to really structure our life around the things that we most love, which is amazing, but I think 99.8% of people are not in that box.

0:45:31.3 Mike Vacanti: Correct.

0:45:32.7 Jordan Syatt: Yet. But if you’re listening, you’re on your way. You could be on your way.

0:45:37.3 Mike Vacanti: You have the capacity to be on your way.

0:45:40.4 Jordan Syatt: I don’t care what age you are, what race you are, what sex you are, I don’t care. You can build it, you can absolutely build it, now more than ever, more than any point in history, you can build this shit which is just… It’s unbelievable.

0:45:54.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. We have the internet, it can work against you, you can sit and consume content all day, like I do very often, or you can use it to create and to reach new people and to build a business like, yep.

0:46:09.4 Jordan Syatt: You didn’t used to consume a lot though ever.

0:46:11.4 Mike Vacanti: Correct, correct.

0:46:11.8 Jordan Syatt: You barely consumed for like 11 years.

0:46:15.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, well, maybe not 11, but for many, many years. But now, Tim Cook, not even Tim Cook, I don’t know who to pin this blame on. I’m trying to externalize it myself as who I should place this blame on.

0:46:27.4 Jordan Syatt: Who’s Tim Cook?

0:46:28.2 Mike Vacanti: The CEO of Apple.

0:46:30.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh, got it. Yeah, yeah.

0:46:31.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Hyper-addictive vertical video, and just all of it, it’s… Yeah, I need to start meditating again, that’s what needs to happen. I might smash my phone today.

0:46:44.1 Jordan Syatt: Smash it?

0:46:45.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:46:45.8 Jordan Syatt: Throw it at the wall?

0:46:47.0 Mike Vacanti: No, no, I don’t wanna damage the wall, I’d go outside and throw it on my driveway if I really wanted to smash it.

0:46:53.3 Jordan Syatt: That would be great for your neighbors. [laughter] They’d call the police. “Excuse me, my neighbor is having a mental break down.”

[laughter]

0:47:05.2 Mike Vacanti: I really do yearn for a time with less technology though.

0:47:08.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, it’s a give and take. There are pros and cons. Without it, I don’t think we’d have the freedom that we have, but with it, there’s also the question of like, do we even really have as much freedom as we think we have because we’re so addicted to it, so dependent on it, there is no privacy with it, it’s just… Yeah.

0:47:28.4 Mike Vacanti: We’re also just… We live in such a consumer culture that when you highlight the benefits, when you highlight the fact that it has allowed us to build a business on our own and have freedom on that front, we wouldn’t even need that if we didn’t inflate our lifestyles to a degree into that income.

0:47:51.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:47:52.2 Mike Vacanti: And this, I’m talking about you and me, but it literally applies to so many more people. Anyway, we’ll wrap it up here. That was a good way to finish. Thank you very much for listening. We’ll see you next week.

0:48:02.7 Jordan Syatt: Have a good one.