Episode 249: What We’d Focus On If Starting Our Business Today, Fixing Your Brain, Assessing Good Client Fit, and More…

0:00:11.7 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.3 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael? 

0:00:13.3 Mike Vacanti: We’re matching black hoodies. 

0:00:15.8 Jordan Syatt: I’m actually… I think this is your hoodie that you left at my house.

0:00:18.6 Mike Vacanti: I was gonna say that looks very familiar.

0:00:20.4 Jordan Syatt: I’m almost positive this is yours.

0:00:25.0 Mike Vacanti: Fear, anger, and joy levels 1 to 100, go.

0:00:30.2 Jordan Syatt: This is going to seem like it’s impossible. So joy is very high. Joy is like 100.

0:00:39.3 Mike Vacanti: Amazing.

0:00:39.9 Jordan Syatt: It’s just outside with the girls pushing them on the swings. They’re just laughing, just having a great time. Joy is as high as it goes. That’s like literally the greatest. Anger… So you’re catching me literally right as I was waiting for the link to come in. I’m like, of course scrolling on Instagram. There’s this teacher at UCLA. I think it’s UCLA. It’s one of these colleges. It might not be, don’t sue me. I think it’s UCLA, but is literally spreading an old blood libel from something called the Damascus Affair, which is basically this idea that Jews killed this priest and then used his blood, which was proven false. Basically she’s just in a class teaching this lesson, being like, “Yeah, the Jews did this. The Jews drink Gentile’s blood.” So anger is pretty high as a result of that, like being taught to university students. And then also fear is pretty high because the more people are taught this nonsense… And by the way, people can research it, look up the Damascus Affair. It’s very well known anyway. So, yeah, fear and anger are pretty high right now. I would say fear is higher than anger. Anger is like, I’m almost like managing it, like, whatever it is, what it is. But the fear of potential backlash is sort of like constantly elevated. We’d call it Condition Yellow. I’m always in Condition Yellow, if that makes sense.

0:02:17.0 Mike Vacanti: But aren’t you actually always in Condition Yellow?

0:02:20.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, except for when I’m sleeping.

0:02:22.3 Mike Vacanti: Isn’t that what you were taught is like… So now it might even be higher than Condition Yellow right now.

0:02:28.3 Jordan Syatt: Might even be orange.

0:02:29.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:02:30.8 Jordan Syatt: Might just be an orange at all times.

0:02:31.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:02:32.3 Jordan Syatt: What about you? Fear, anger, joy.

0:02:38.5 Mike Vacanti: This isn’t about me, Jordan. Fear, anger, joy segment.

0:02:41.5 Jordan Syatt: What are you talking about checking in about? You’re just… You’re so low. Well, your joy is high and fear and anger are low.

0:02:47.3 Mike Vacanti: No, my… Yeah, fear and anger aren’t even the right words to encapsulate. I would say stress is above average right now. I got a little Bill Burr in me this morning. Not 2025 Bill Burr, but like 2019 Bill Burr.

0:03:02.0 Jordan Syatt: 2019 Bill Burr. Yeah.

0:03:03.3 Mike Vacanti: Push the anger, push the stress down. Yeah. All good stuff, though. All good stuff. But I do…

0:03:10.0 Jordan Syatt: Joy is high.

0:03:12.0 Mike Vacanti: No, I just squeezed a quick workout in before this podcast. Yeah, absolutely. Joy is high. Fear and anger are low. I can’t prove this, but chronic stress has a way bigger role than even the smartest people in the world believe on heart attacks.

0:03:36.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I believe that.

0:03:39.2 Mike Vacanti: Like I can just feel that connection in, like, chest tightness and, like… And I’m not even that stressed.

0:03:46.4 Jordan Syatt: Blood pressure just high.

0:03:49.4 Mike Vacanti: My blood pressure’s always good. I mean, yeah, maybe in the moment it spikes if you’re feeling stressed.

0:03:55.6 Jordan Syatt: But like, if you’re chronically stressed, just blood pressure is just high.

0:03:59.4 Mike Vacanti: Oh, not me in general. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. That’s right. Constantly. Constantly. We started something called sleep training a few nights ago, and so that might be contributing, lack of sleep for anyone is rough, but I’m disproportionately soft when it comes to my sleep, I would say.

0:04:29.9 Jordan Syatt: What? Like, are you… Are you radically changing the schedule?

0:04:33.5 Mike Vacanti: No, no, it’s actually… It’s going much better than I thought it would.

0:04:38.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:04:39.8 Mike Vacanti: Basically, our daughter sleeps great. My wife, I think, is right in her, like, belief that she can’t put herself back to sleep when she wakes up and that we could help her be able to do that by doing some training. And so, you let her cry for a couple minutes, then you go tap her and tell her she’s okay. And my, like, from everything I read, I thought it was going to be kind of brutal, and I didn’t think I’d be able to sit there and, like, listen to her cry, but she did really good, so I really can’t complain.

0:05:15.8 Jordan Syatt: That’s good. That’s great. Learning how to soothe herself is super important.

0:05:20.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah. But if you read about it, there are people who are just like, yeah, just throw them in the crib. Don’t even, like, check the monitor, and they’ll be fine by morning. Hours of, just scream crying.

0:05:32.2 Jordan Syatt: I’ve heard stories of when that happens, where it’s like, they’re just letting them cry, letting them cry for a long, long time. And it turns out that the baby actually has an issue. Like, a tongue tie, for example, is a really common one. I don’t know if you’ve heard about that, but the tongue is like… I don’t understand exactly how a tongue tie works, but I think it’s overly attached to the mouth, which is one of the reasons why they might be having a lot of distress and discomfort. So, yeah, I mean, there’s a limit to how much crying I think that I can handle as a parent. It’s like, hey, I’ve gotta go in and make sure you’re okay.

0:06:13.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah. And there’s… They give you a schedule like every five minutes and every 10 minutes and every 15 minutes. And I’m just like, nope, we’re going every three and then every three and then every five and then maybe every 10. But we’ll like, and she’s really not… She’s like whimper crying.

0:06:34.6 Jordan Syatt: Okay. So she’s not like super upset.

0:06:36.9 Mike Vacanti: No, she’s like barely crying. She’s just a little annoyed and like trying to get comfortable.

0:06:41.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Got it.

0:06:42.5 Mike Vacanti: Anyway, Jordan, we have a sale for the fitness business mentorship. Black Friday is officially upon us. $500 off of the initiation fee. If you are looking to grow your online fitness business or if you are an in-person coach looking to start an online fitness business or if you’re not an in-person coach and are looking to start an online fitness business, we might have a spot for you. If you apply @fitnessbusinessmentorship.com, you can find out if you’re accepted. And yeah, the sale won’t be going on too much longer. So Black Friday is underway.

0:07:20.7 Jordan Syatt: When is Thanksgiving? Is Thanksgiving in a week or two weeks?

0:07:23.5 Mike Vacanti: Two weeks.

0:07:23.5 Jordan Syatt: Two weeks. Got it. Okay. Man, I love Thanksgiving. It’s one of my favorite holidays.

0:07:27.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah?

0:07:28.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, dude. It’s like one of the best holidays for sure. It’s… I don’t know, it’s like, it’s the times when families get together and they have a bunch of… I don’t know. For me, it’s one of like, in my opinion, the most enjoyable, comforting. Also, it’s a little bit brisk in the air. It’s a little bit chillier, sweater weather. I don’t know. There’s something about Thanksgiving that for me is like, yeah, this is my favorite time of year, favorite holiday.

0:07:55.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I’m with you. I think Thanksgiving’s definitely a top five holiday, possibly even top three, arguably top two, definitely top five.

0:08:09.4 Jordan Syatt: What’s your top one best holiday of the year?

0:08:13.0 Mike Vacanti: Christmas. Christmas is the best holiday.

0:08:15.7 Jordan Syatt: Okay, got it.

0:08:16.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And then, I don’t know. I don’t know that I can rank them right now. I need to prepare for something on that level.

0:08:26.7 Jordan Syatt: That makes sense.

0:08:28.2 Mike Vacanti: But I agree with you. Thanksgiving is great.

0:08:31.2 Jordan Syatt: What do we got today, brother? Do you have a list?

0:08:34.6 Mike Vacanti: Do I have a list? Come on, Jordan. I got a real list over here. Okay. Are we… You think that last week we talked about like the younger generation raw dogging life on the podcast? I still had it on my list. I don’t know if we talked about it.

0:08:52.4 Jordan Syatt: We didn’t talk about it on the podcast. We spoke about it on the phone.

0:08:54.8 Mike Vacanti: Ah, okay. Cool.

0:08:57.6 Jordan Syatt: I think, yeah.

0:08:58.6 Mike Vacanti: I don’t think we talked about it on the podcast. We’ll be brief just in case we did. I came across a TikTok or a Reel or something maybe a week or two ago, probably a YouTube short actually, of this girl, maybe 15, 16, 17, 18-year-old girl sitting in her room, like just sitting there staring off into space. And the words on the screen were… There was a timer on the screen actually counting down from 15 minutes, and it was in like super fast mode. And these youngins are like reverse engineering monk and meditative practices because they realize that constantly being bombarded with stimulus is bad for them. So it’s just like stare at the wall for 15 minutes, and they call it raw dogging, and it’s, quote, to fix their brain, which, look, if I’m going to get behind a mission, that’s up there.

0:09:52.1 Jordan Syatt: I just think it’s amazing that they call it raw dogging because I think about the people who invented meditation and the people who like really practice meditation and like how it’s a very like… I don’t know, it’s almost like one of the most pure things that you could possibly do is just meditation. And they’re doing it. They are meditating, but they’ve renamed it to something that does not have that pure connotation whatsoever, which is just ironically hilarious.

0:10:26.9 Mike Vacanti: Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious.

0:10:30.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:10:32.4 Mike Vacanti: That led me to think of something I’ve been doing lately that I’m going to challenge you to give a try. It’s going to be very difficult.

0:10:42.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, geez.

0:10:44.1 Mike Vacanti: No stimulus car rides. So when you’re driving somewhere, you don’t have to go the whole way. Just start with a few minutes, but no music, no podcast, no audio book, no phone call. Just drive and be present and be aware of what’s going on around you. It’s a real like reset of the brain.

0:11:06.9 Jordan Syatt: That doesn’t sound fun to me at all.

0:11:08.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s not fun. It’s not for fun.

0:11:12.2 Jordan Syatt: I really enjoy audiobooks on my car ride. Like, that’s… That’s like, I really look forward to that. The idea of just sitting there in silence as I’m watching other drivers go by and like sitting at the light watching someone texting while they should be like focused on the road. That sounds so bad to me. I think I’m just gonna be furious. I would rather really listen to a great book.

0:11:37.4 Mike Vacanti: I know you would rather do that. I would rather do cocaine than like, I don’t know, do manual labor. But like, we don’t just do whatever we want at all moments in this life, Jordan. By the way, I’m not a cocaine guy. Never was.

0:11:51.4 Jordan Syatt: All right. What I can do is I can promise I can do like a minute. I can do one minute at the start of the drive and then go into my audiobook.

0:12:01.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that would be a good starting point. That would be better than zero. That would be, floss one tooth, do the first move in your warmup. I like it.

0:12:15.2 Jordan Syatt: That’s like flossing once a week rather than flossing one tooth. Flossing once a week is better than not flossing at all.

0:12:23.1 Mike Vacanti: The car ride, you know what else it is? It’s not just the reset from the constant pursuit of pleasure and stimulation. It’s also a chance to sort through your thoughts because without stimulus, stuff bubbles up that you can then deal with. And maybe introvert versus extrovert differs in how we process things and like maybe it would be less beneficial for you. I don’t know. But I know on like historically young Jordan and even now impulse control level, I know that if you could do this for a few minutes in the car, you would reap benefits.

0:13:07.1 Jordan Syatt: So what, instead of one minute, you want me to do three minutes?

0:13:09.3 Mike Vacanti: I love how task oriented you are.

0:13:11.3 Jordan Syatt: What’s the minimum time frame you would be okay with me doing? What’s like your minimum? You’re like, yeah, dude, I’m proud of you.

0:13:20.8 Mike Vacanti: There’s no minimum. I’d be proud of you if you gave it your best effort.

0:13:25.4 Jordan Syatt: Well, if I give it my best effort, I’m going to do it for an hour and a half.

0:13:28.4 Mike Vacanti: Wow.

0:13:29.6 Jordan Syatt: Because I have like an hour and a half car ride. If I like go like really hard, then I would, but that would be a really terrible car ride and I would be furious. It wouldn’t be good by the end of it. I would be really angry.

0:13:42.6 Mike Vacanti: I don’t think you’d be really angry. I think you would actually feel better, but do it on a 15 minute car ride.

0:13:47.0 Jordan Syatt: We’ll see. I’m not going to make any promises. I promise I will do it for at least 60 seconds, maybe up to three minutes.

0:13:55.0 Mike Vacanti: Good. All right, I’ll take it. Next topic. Ron DeSantis wants to eliminate property taxes across the entire United States.

0:14:06.6 Jordan Syatt: I completely agree.

0:14:08.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I just thought it was interesting because you’ve had a vendetta against property taxes and I’m not a fan of property taxes and the way he framed it was there are a lot of people, elderly people, who don’t have an income who bought their house for substantially less than it’s valued at now, whose property taxes are becoming quite extreme and almost that you don’t actually own the piece of land or your house if you have to continue paying the government a fee year over year in order to occupy that space.

0:14:53.1 Jordan Syatt: That, and whether it’s abolishing them or you’re guaranteed, you don’t have increases in your property taxes. That’s one of the major issues as well where it’s like, hey, you can get locked in at whatever you’re paying right now. I think that would be even better for especially elderly people, but I think after a certain age you shouldn’t have to pay property taxes. I think if you are within a certain age group, yeah, that’s fine, but I wouldn’t even frame it as… Here’s what I think. I don’t even like the name property taxes. I think that is an issue because it makes it seem like it’s because you don’t own the land. I think they should rename it to make it something to the effect of school, roads, firefighters, cops, make it so that it’s more understanding of, hey, this is what it’s going towards and this is the benefits you get of living in this area. Even if it’s called town taxes, I feel like would be a much more understanding, yeah, I get it. I’m living in this town. I want the roads paved. I want the teachers paid. I want the cops paid, the firefighters paid, absolutely. But after a certain age, I feel like there should be a point where you don’t have to pay those anymore. I don’t think that’s outrageous at all, and especially if you’ve lived there for X number of years, or maybe even if it’s… Maybe age combined with how long you’ve lived there. If you’ve lived there for a minimum of 10 years, then you get this percentage off. If you’ve lived there for a minimum of 15 years, this percentage off. If you live there for 20 years or more, you get no payment whatsoever. And then also, yeah, I think that would be actually a much better strategy because maybe someone is 75, but they’re rich as fuck and they just move into this area, and I don’t know if we could just solely go based on age. I think more like, hey, you’ve been here for this long on this property. I don’t think it’s right for us to continue to jack up your taxes. I actually think we should support you and help you stay here without worrying about losing your home.

0:17:07.7 Mike Vacanti: That’s an interesting way to do it. Yeah, would incentivize people staying in an area for a longer period of time. The renaming is interesting. Would you then, because you’re essentially renaming it to the source of the funds or like what the tax goes towards rather than what the tax is. Would you do that with other taxes? Like income tax wouldn’t be called that, sales tax wouldn’t be called that.

0:17:37.3 Jordan Syatt: I think it would help people better understand it. The issue with like income tax, for example. Here’s the thing with income tax, they are taxing you on your income. With the property tax, I don’t know if they’re not taxing you on necessarily your property. I would say it’s more just like based on… I guess they are technically taxing you on your property, like the size of your property and the value of your property. So I could see that helping in terms of on income tax and all that. The issue is I feel like when we’re talking about a property tax that is going towards your local law enforcement, firefighters, schools, roads, it makes… People will support that. They drive on the roads every day. They want the firemen and women to show up if there’s a fire. They’re like, yeah, I can support that. But with income tax, I’m like, yeah, this is going to pay for the IRS. Well, they’re like, well, I don’t fucking want the IRS. Or like, I don’t want to fund this, what’s ever going on in another country, right? And so I don’t really know if that actually helps be more palatable.

0:18:50.2 Mike Vacanti: You’re saying it wouldn’t be more palatable to rename the income tax, “this goes to a foreign country”… That wouldn’t go over well in this current climate?

0:18:59.2 Jordan Syatt: I really don’t think it would. I really think that might be a negative, a net negative as opposed to just calling it the income tax. Yeah, exactly.

0:19:11.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you’re probably right. It is interesting though, because everyone gets hit. Like it’s not just homeowners who get hit with property taxes because people who rent, if there wasn’t a property tax that the landlord had to pay, your rent would be lower than it is. You’re effectively paying your landlord’s property tax through your rental payment. So it’s not like it’s just homeowners who are paying. It’s everyone who’s paying an additional fee to, yeah. And you know what? It is proportionate to how big a bite you want to take in terms of lifestyle. Like if you want to rent a $1,500 a month apartment compared to a $5,000 a month apartment compared to having a mortgage where your monthly payment with escrow and everything is thousands and thousands of dollars. Like, yeah, I might be going the other way right now. You renaming it might have just swayed me. Now, what I would need to see is an actual financial statements of the state, like P&L, cash flow, balance sheet, and see that like, okay, are these funds actually being used appropriately and efficiently to schools, roads, cops? And how much corruption, how many programs that like I disagree with? What percentage of the money is being used in a way that’s beneficial? Which is subjective. Obviously. But yeah.

0:20:54.5 Jordan Syatt: I know that would be a huge issue because I have a buddy who’s a firefighter and he was telling me… And he’s a firefighter in Massachusetts. Actually, the guy who says eight minutes a day on his phone. Eight minutes. And he was telling me that what like the starting salary for a firefighter was and like where it goes to throughout their tenure as a firefighter. And it was so bad. But then to make it worse, he was telling me about what the people who are not firefighters, but the people who are like in charge of the firefighters make. And because I think it’s all publicly available information. And he’s like, basically the people who are running into burning buildings are on poverty level or barely above poverty level income. Whereas the people who are telling them to go into these burning buildings and who are in charge of these areas are making hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Which is like, if you see that in your, like where the distributions of funds, now all of a sudden I’m gonna be furious and be like, hold on, why am I paying this much for these firemen and women to come into my home and save us, God forbid, but they’re not the ones getting the money? Why is the person sitting behind the desk making all this money and on like multiple vacations a year, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And meanwhile, the firemen and women can’t even afford to pay their rent and they can’t afford to put food on the table. Like that, I think it would be a serious fucking outrage publicly, which by the way, I think it should be. I think that should be an outrage. I think that should be something that people are actually protesting, that people should be very well aware of. But yeah, that would cause a big shit storm.

0:22:47.7 Mike Vacanti: The majority of firefighters in the state of Minnesota are volunteers.

0:22:52.8 Jordan Syatt: I mean, that’s incredible for them to do that. Like what great humans.

0:22:57.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, so not paid anything.

0:22:59.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I would rather they get paid. Like, hey, I want… It would almost be… It’d be nice if they say like, hey, I wanna volunteer. And once they go through all the training and all that stuff, then they’re like, we’re gonna surprise you with this $100,000 bonus check because you volunteer to run into burning buildings to save people. Like they don’t advertise it, but here’s a bonus check. And by the way, you get XYZ insurance covered. You get like all this stuff. You should have, if you’re volunteering to do that, you should be getting some insane benefits.

0:23:33.0 Mike Vacanti: That’d be cool. I’m with you. Mike and Jordan, I’ve been going back and listening to some of your old episodes. Early on, you said this a lot, but I’m not sure I’ve heard you talk about it recently. If you started over again from scratch, would you still go back to website articles as the number one priority and focus? Thanks, gentlemen. Always love and anticipate your episodes each week. Mike C.

0:24:03.1 Jordan Syatt: Website articles. It’s a really good question now. Almost 2026, just very different time. I probably wouldn’t go back. Here’s the thing. We still largely benefit from the website articles, whether it’s from Google SEO or even from SEO that’s done on AI. What I would probably do is, I probably wouldn’t go back to website articles realistically. With all the knowledge that I have, I probably wouldn’t go back to spending 20 hours a week to create one article.

0:24:42.0 Mike Vacanti: But we’re assuming you don’t have that knowledge yet. Just a heads up. Like you don’t have your brain now. You’re restarting. So think of yourself as more like beginner coach.

0:24:53.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I thought that I would have that brain. I thought like with all the knowledge that I have, if I had to start over completely, what would I do now?

0:25:02.0 Mike Vacanti: Maybe he meant it the way you’re understanding it, but I’m just gonna change it. Like you don’t get to… You’re not you now, you’re you back then, but in today’s landscape.

0:25:14.0 Jordan Syatt: What I’ll say is this, I’ll sort of play both. I’ll say aside from the SEO benefits and aside from the organic reach benefits, the main benefit of writing website articles is how much you learn from writing website articles. You learn way more from spending 20 hours a week thinking, researching, writing, and publishing an incredibly depth website article than you do from making an Instagram video. You just learn way more. Having said that, I’m now gonna answer like with the knowledge that I have now. And what I would say is rather than website articles, what I would probably do is do a lot of research, but do more podcast focus, which is still very long form. And I would record them both audio and video and get the transcript. I would put all the transcripts into article format so that I get the entire article essentially written for me from my audio, publish those on my website, but then also be able to distribute clips from the podcast across platforms. And what’s nice about that is many things, not least of which ironically enough, going back to the beginning of the conversation, when people are driving, when they’re cleaning, when they’re working out, they can listen to you. They can hear what you’re saying. And here’s the thing that you have to understand about a podcast in this format. It’s not go on and just randomly shoot the shit.

0:27:04.8 Jordan Syatt: This is a preparatory podcast where you have the idea of what it is you’re gonna talk about and you clearly outline, this is the topic of conversation. These are all of the points that I’m going to bring up and essentially outline it in the same way you’d outline an article. You have different subsections, you discuss the nuance. It’s very clear and straightforward, and you educate people through that. I think it actually does create a deeper connection with the listener and it provides more people with an opportunity to learn from you without them needing to sit down and read a 10, 15, 20-minute article that they would have to take the time to do that. So you still get the benefits of learning and studying and researching and preparing without needing to necessarily spend as much time editing, which I do think is important but not as important, and without as much time formatting, which is just obnoxious in website articles. There are some times I’d spend a couple hours trying to format pictures. It was really annoying. But you get the benefit of using today’s mediums more efficiently than you would solely from the website articles. So if I was going to go back wanting to build my knowledge up on fitness and coaching while also what I believe to be maximizing my ability to reach people where they’re at, I would probably start with very in-depth, long-form podcasts with a lot of preparation ahead of time.

0:28:37.0 Mike Vacanti: I like it. I like it. One of the benefits that you highlighted is it’s easier to repurpose podcast, like a video podcast, into shorter form clips, reels, et cetera, than it is to repurpose concepts from within an article into short-form content. You still can. There’s going to be five to seven ideas, bangers in there, whether it’s for tweets or a reel that you can make on that specific part of it. But it’s more seamless to do from podcast. Now, that being said, a few important things. Podcast doesn’t mean what you and I do, where we just sit here and have a conversation. The podcast you’re describing are like writing an article in the amount of effort and research and preparation that goes in before, and then you’re delivering on podcast. Two, I’m not 100% certain of this, but I think personality and strengths and demeanor and certain facts about you, the individual, matter in what you choose. You, for example, are extremely talkative, extremely extroverted, extremely enjoy conversation, enjoy listening, or at least you’re good at listening. Whereas I know many people who not only wouldn’t be as good at it, but also wouldn’t want to do it and would be stronger with the written word. Yeah. What would I do? I would still write long-form articles. The number of hours a week I spent writing long-form articles, if I was doing it in 2025 or 2026, would certainly be less than it was in 2012, 2013, 2014, because I would be spending time creating on other platforms more than I was then. But I would still have a baseline of like, I don’t know, three to 12 articles per year. And a lot of that writing too would go into like, whether it’s longer form Facebook, longer form Twitter, captions, like a lot of the writing you’re doing can be repurposed to short form social media. Yeah, it’s a good question. People who are like, SEO’s dead, like they’re not getting that traffic like they were. And even, what was it? What was the name of the Google service where you could like track the rankings of websites that they did away with in the last year or two?

0:31:52.2 Jordan Syatt: Was it AdWords?

0:31:54.7 Mike Vacanti: Maybe I don’t… Maybe. Even if traffic is down on Google because people are asking Grok and ChatGPT and Gemini and whatever these questions, if you’re consistently making good content, these bots are scraping your content online, which is why Jordan recommended having the transcripts from a podcast go on your website, because that’s the same as SEO. That’s the same as someone typing it into Google and finding you, they can do that through AI now.

0:32:33.3 Jordan Syatt: The other thing that I would do is, you have to remember, I think many people who listen to this podcast are very Instagram-dominant. Instagram, TikTok, they’re very video-dominant, but we have to remember there are many platforms that are very text-dominant. For example, Reddit, which is one that I almost never use, but I have a number of close friends who use Reddit all the time, and they’re always talking about, I’m on Reddit, I’m looking at this, I’m looking at that. What I would do is I would write the article, and then I would go to a platform like Reddit or Substack or whatever it is, and I would probably be sharing it there as well. I would be sharing it across numerous platforms, and I would also be, in something like Reddit and Reddit Fitness, I would be in there making yourself known as a coach, and not being like, hey guys, I’m a coach, making yourself known as someone who’s knowledgeable. When someone has a question, I would be the first one in there answering questions with your name should be your fitness, your coaching name, and your bio. You should have your website, you should have all that stuff there. I’ve been on Reddit maybe five times in the last two years, but one of the things I see is the top comment will have a ton of upvotes. If you’re consistently becoming a top commenter that people are seeing over and over and over again, who’s providing great information and answering people’s questions, I would imagine people are going to go to your profile, want to learn more about you, and I would be sharing articles in these forum formats.

0:34:16.0 Jordan Syatt: If you have a Substack in addition to your website, I would just share it there as well. Maybe even share the first half of it and be like, continue reading, and then link to your website, continue reading the article here. Right at a point where people are probably most likely to want to continue reading in the same way when you’re watching a YouTube video, the ad pops up right when people are going to want to see what happens next. For example, if you’re doing a calorie calculation, you do the intro, you explain calories, all right, cool, here’s how you calculate your calories, continue reading, boom, tap there, and then they want to go read the full article so they can get that calorie calculation. But I would be all over text dominant platforms if that’s your strength, if that’s what you prefer, and don’t forget that text dominant platforms are some of the largest platforms. Just because we might use more video-based platforms doesn’t mean there aren’t hundreds of millions of people still using text dominant platforms. And you can do it on Facebook as well. You can share very text dominant posts on Facebook. You can share very, like on LinkedIn, you can share very text dominant posts. I would be there sharing essentially the… If it’s not the entire long form article, it would be at least a quarter to a half of it and then continue reading here. And then making yourself very visible as someone who’s very kindly and professionally answering questions to help people who are struggling.

0:35:43.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, really, really well said. I mean, you might be thinking, well, are people really reading compared to consuming video? One, yes. Look at the size of these platforms that are text dominant. Two, back to our earlier conversation, Generation Alpha is raw dogging life. They’re going to be reading books better than we ever did in the next few years, possibly, potentially. You also mentioned an important thing, and this’ll be the last thing I say on this question, which is insert yourself in the community and genuinely try to help the people and form bonds and relationships in that community. Don’t make every post about you or every post a link to your stuff or be promotional or go for right hooks or sales. Genuinely try to help as many people as you can and form connections with these people for free in these places and good things are going to happen over time.

0:36:45.8 Jordan Syatt: So I just quickly looked up, I Googled this, I said, what are the biggest text dominant social platforms? So a bunch came up. We’ve got Facebook with over 3 billion monthly active users, 3 billion, and people say Facebook is dead. It’s not, I’m on there relatively frequently. People are always going off, and actually, it’s funny, I didn’t think about it, but now that I’m processing it, I read a fair amount on Facebook. Someone will write a long post, I’ll read it if it’s interesting to me. WhatsApp has 3 billion monthly active users. And then we have WeChat, we have Telegram is a huge one. I get people talking about it all the time, and I don’t use it, but I know one billion monthly active users. The next one is Reddit, 765 million monthly active users. I mean, the idea that text is dead is wrong. And if you prefer not doing audio, not doing video, go to a text-dominant platform. It provides you many, many benefits. But one of the biggest ones, especially with something like a Reddit or a Facebook, is you have your own profile where you can post what you want so people can go there and see it. Whether it’s linking back to your website, your coaching pages, your YouTube, your podcast. I mean, if I was going to start over again with the knowledge that I have, that would absolutely be something that I do. If I didn’t have any clients and I was looking for ways to get clients, I would go to a forum-based text app and be helping people for free, making myself become one of the top contributors of when people have a question, they eventually want to tag me because they want to know what I think about their deadlift technique or about their calories and macros. Is this the right amount? I’d be going in and helping everybody for free. So eventually people are like, I want to know what Jordan Syatt says about this. And that process can take a year, two years, three years of you showing up every single day. But that would be the… I actually think that would be the quickest way to get new clients is by being a very active individual on one of these text-based platforms.

0:38:58.3 Mike Vacanti: Scale the unscalable, 100%. Could not agree more. I can’t believe that Telegram has more monthly active users than Reddit.

0:39:05.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, dude. I was shocked when I saw that, but everyone I talked to, not everyone, a lot of people I talked to, hey, you’re on Telegram? Are you on Telegram? All the time. And I have the app, but I don’t use it. I’ve never logged in.

0:39:18.5 Mike Vacanti: Isn’t Telegram just like an encrypted messaging platform?

0:39:23.5 Jordan Syatt: No, that’s what I thought too. Telegram has your own channels, chats, text messaging. So I know a lot of people use Telegram as a way to post… Like essentially you could post your own shit on there. So you could have your own profile and post your own stories and your own posts, all of that stuff. So it’s far more in depth than I think we realized.

0:39:49.3 Mike Vacanti: Wow. I don’t think I need another app in my life. I think I’m closer to smashing my phone and living outside than I am to adding more apps to my life. But maybe I’ll check it out.

0:40:05.4 Jordan Syatt: I might fuck around with Telegram.

0:40:06.6 Mike Vacanti: Hi, Mike and Jordan. I’ve been a silent listener for years. Love the podcast. I was having a conversation with a potential client about what they were looking for in a coach since they asked me what my coaching style was. They said they want a coach who will change things up on a weekly basis if needed if they aren’t seeing progress. They have fired several coaches who told them they need to wait up to four weeks in order to know if a change needs to be made. I did tell them that they would probably fire me because I would most likely say something similar depending on the situation. I was surprised by this because they seem to have a good head on their shoulders regarding everything else we talked about. This just seemed like the one area we didn’t see eye to eye. I’m just curious if you have any insight on how to handle this sort of pushback. Thanks, and I appreciate you both. Rachel.

0:40:57.2 Jordan Syatt: Great question. It’s funny. We spoke about this on last week’s Mentorship Live Q&A. To the effect of how do we know if someone’s going to be a good client to take on or not? And like the weeding process of we ask a number of questions to figure out if they’re going to be a good fit. One of the main ways to know if someone’s going to be a good fit or not is if they say they’ve had numerous coaches and like they talk shit about them and they’ve fired all of them. And especially in this situation, you fired all of them because they said you have to wait, God forbid, four weeks. Like, I want a coach who’s going to change it on a weekly basis if I’m not making progress. It’s a misnomer. You don’t know if you’re making progress on a weekly basis. That’s insane. So I wouldn’t take this client on because that would be… I would say if I didn’t need the money, I wouldn’t take this client on. If every cent is massively important to you right now, which is very valid to many people, and that stress of taking on that client is worth it, then I would. With that being said, that client is also more likely to be the one who says I want a refund. Then you got to fucking deal with that nonsense. I would be outrageously forthright and say I’m going to be very honest with you. I think your prior coaches were correct. I’m not changing things on a weekly basis. We don’t measure progress on a weekly basis. And I would say, and just so if we decide to work together, I will not be doing that.

0:42:31.5 Jordan Syatt: It will be on a month to month basis, and I do not offer refunds. So if you want to work with me, and this is what we decide to do this together, there is zero chance of a refund. I would make that so abundantly clear at the very beginning because I don’t want you to have to suffer through that horrible situation. And then from there, there will be some head-butting and being like, I told you, we’re not changing things on a weekly basis, not on every two week, not in every three week. And quite frankly, four weeks is still pretty damn fast to be changing things. But I also want to be tracking your consistency, right? So if it’s not working after four weeks, but you haven’t once sent me pictures of what you’re eating, you haven’t been tracking your calories. I told you to get a food scale, but you haven’t sent me a picture to show me that you’ve actually gotten a food scale. Like you haven’t shown me like when you’ve been eating out seven times over the last two weeks that like what the meal was. It’s like, I’m not changing it if you haven’t been communicating with me and telling me what and giving me what I’ve requested of you. So I’m not going to change stuff just because you say. If you want to work together, you are handing me the reins to make the decision that I decide is best. In other areas of your life, you might be the boss. But right now, sort of like with Gary, I’m the CEO of your body. I’m telling you what to do. And if that doesn’t sound like a good fit, great. Find another coach. I’m sure you can find someone willing to take your money who will do whatever you want. But that’s probably not going to be the coach who’s going to help you achieve the results that you want. So that would be how I handle that situation.

0:44:11.2 Mike Vacanti: I think that’s perfect. I think that’s perfect. It’s very rare. And speaking from decades of experience, it’s very rare to know with certainty when someone applies for coaching what kind of client they’re going to be. I used to think it was more predictable than it is. It’s not. Some clients you think are going to be incredible and they’re difficult. Some clients you might come off as difficult during the application process and they end up being incredible. This is one situation where we know for certain this is going to be a difficult client. So if that is worth it for how much you’re charging and knowing the amount of headache that is going to happen down the road for you, cool. You can absolutely take this person on. If you’d rather not, then don’t take them on. But yeah, making all of that clear up front. And by the way, clients requesting refunds is extremely rare.

0:45:15.2 Jordan Syatt: It is rare. But with this person, with this upfront, I’m like, this is the one who’s going to ask.

0:45:21.4 Mike Vacanti: This is the type of person who would do it. Absolutely. Yeah. So I think you do throw just context though, like most clients don’t. Yeah. This is the type of person who would. Honestly, I’d be shocked if this person worked with you after you make it abundantly clear that you are not going to do the thing that they’re asking for and that they fired all of their previous coaches for doing, which is having you stick with a set program for at least a few weeks to measure your progress rather than just change it up on a whim because you… I don’t even know what that means. I’m not making progress after one week. Like, does that mean that you don’t see visual changes in the mirror? Does that mean that you didn’t like double your… Like how much you’re lifting from Monday to Thursday? Like, what does that mean? You’re not making progress in one week. Does that mean you… Your period’s coming up, so the scale’s up a little bit. And so that must mean that this program isn’t working. It’s… Look, you know what? I’m going to do a 180 now. There’s part of me, not at this stage of my career, but at some point where this challenge might have been appealing to try to help this person understand that you can’t measure progress in one week and to reduce a lot of the neuroticism and anxiety around like however they think they’re micromanaging or assessing their own progress and then trying to make changes, day to day and try to get them in a proper headspace and understanding of what needs to be done on a programming perspective for them to make actual progress. But yeah, up to you. Up to you if you want to take this person on. I think I’m going to take this Gen Alpha thing and I’m going to… I’m going to… Instead of 15 minutes, I want to do like two weeks of raw dogging. I want to reduce my sensory input so massively and reset my baseline. I think it’s going to happen.

0:47:33.6 Jordan Syatt: What’s that look like practically?

0:47:34.6 Mike Vacanti: That means no social media consumption. That means no TV or movie consumption. That means minimum effective dosage of caffeine. Like, very little caffeine enough to… I just… I’ve done zero caffeine. I don’t… I’m not great on that. I wouldn’t be enjoyable on the podcast. We’re not going to do zero caffeine, but that will be like a little bit of my enjoyment. What else? Doing harder things, reading. What else? Yeah, training hard, getting steps in, pursuing hard dopamine rather than cheap dopamine.

0:48:36.6 Jordan Syatt: Good for you, bro. That’s incredible. I’m just not there.

0:48:42.7 Mike Vacanti: Don’t “good for me” yet. I haven’t done anything. I’m not there either. I just said the words. I could have said I just ran an hour 45 marathon. I didn’t actually do anything yet.

0:48:56.8 Jordan Syatt: Just the fact that you’re there.

0:48:58.2 Mike Vacanti: I’m not there. I just have an idea that I’ve had 15 times in the last five years. Maybe more.

0:49:05.3 Jordan Syatt: Have you been meditating at all? Have you been raw dogging?

0:49:07.5 Mike Vacanti: I have been doing some raw dogging. I’ve been meditating.

0:49:10.6 Jordan Syatt: That’s amazing.

0:49:11.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. My prefrontal cortex, I don’t know if it was always unhinged, but it definitely has become so basically since COVID, I would imagine. Basically since vertical video was introduced and mindfulness practices have been proven to increase gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, just give you more impulse control. So I’ve been doing a little bit of that. Nothing crazy.

0:49:41.4 Jordan Syatt: Do you keep your eyes open when you meditate or closed?

0:49:45.2 Mike Vacanti: I close my eyes.

0:49:46.3 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:49:47.0 Mike Vacanti: Is eyes open meditation a thing?

0:49:48.9 Jordan Syatt: I mean, I’ve seen some raw dogging posts where their eyes are open. And like there’s walking meditation where like you’re walking while you’re meditating. So I would imagine they’re keeping their eyes open while they’re walking. But yeah.

0:50:05.8 Mike Vacanti: Hard reset. I’m seeing a real… I think people are really struggling in the environment that we are in these days. I really do. I see screen time up across the board, absent GLP-1s. I don’t even know what obesity would look like in the US right now.

0:50:33.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, dude. People are struggling. Listen, I’ve said this a fair amount over the last few years. I think we are, from a country perspective, populist perspective, I think we’re more divided now than we were immediately pre-Civil War. I’m actually… I’m watching this great documentary right now about the lead up to the Civil War and like what the arguments were. And it’s funny, like it was serious. Obviously it was serious, but it wasn’t… Slavery was obviously the driving force, but there were also major economic issues that were driving, that ended up leading to the Civil War, like major, major economic issues. And what’s crazy to me is that the vast majority of people, the overwhelming majority, agreed that slavery was bad. It wasn’t even like it was 50-50 that were like, hey, 50% believe this. That wasn’t the case. There were even, I think it was like 15% or less of Southern citizens were slaveholders. And a lot of that was driven by poverty. And often because… I mean, if you have quote unquote free labor, well then, which by the way is slavery, if you have free labor, then you don’t have to pay people in order to work, which means that the other people who are living there who are not slaves have trouble getting jobs to get paying jobs because the other, the slaves are working for free. So there were major economic issues, but the point being that the vast majority of people, especially the vast majority of people who were not in power, didn’t agree with slavery. Now, bring that to today, the disagreements are vast and dramatic. There are numerous vitriolic disagreements that people have that are just… People are furious about them. And so I believe that the only reason we aren’t in a civil war is basically because it doesn’t make sense to be in a… At least not in a civil war in the way that it was executed in the 1860s. You could say we’re in a civil war, like a propaganda war, a virtual war, but like an actual fighting war, it doesn’t make sense demographically, geographically, I mean. I think, and this is only one aspect, but to your point, people are struggling because it’s constantly in our faces. These disagreements are just yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, right in your face. You’re evil, you’re evil, this da, da, da. People are struggling. I completely agree. It’s really bad.

0:53:51.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. I like the angle you took because I agree with you, and that is another way they are struggling. I was thinking more in terms of loneliness/overconsumption of tech/ultra-processed calorically dense foods and that whole whirlwind of screen time, overeating, time by yourself, not being in community. But what you describe is another way that people are also struggling.

0:54:29.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it just all compounds. It’s not like just one or the other. It’s all compounding on each other.

0:54:35.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, we got a mentorship Q&A in four minutes. That’s where we’re leaving off for this episode. The mentorship is officially on sale. Save $500 on your initiation fee. You can apply at fitnessbusinessmentorship.com. We’ll be back next week.