Barbell Shrugged - 10X Your Coaching Business Through Instagram and Authenticity w/ Ross & Rachel from Trill Media  — The Bledsoe Show #107

Episode Date: November 5, 2018

If you want to grow your Instagram following, pay special attention to this is episode with Ross Johnson and Rachel Bell, co-founders of Trill Media, an Instagram marketing agency that helps brands increase their audience engagement, create a tribe of millennial/GenZ buyers, and become highly influential on Instagram.   In this episode, you’ll learn what’s the drama triangle and what role might you be, how to create organic and authentic following on Instagram, how to generate sales on Instagram with less 4k followers, why you shouldn’t compete on price and follow what others do, how to position yourself in the right way and give valuable content which leads to sales, how Ross and Rachel used their savings to pay a mentor and went from 2k a month to 150k in the 4 months after, and much more.   Enjoy! - Mike --------------------------------------------------- Show notes: https://shruggedcollective.com/tbs_trillmedia --------------------------------------------------- ► Travel thru Europe with us on the  Shrugged Voyage, more info here: https://www.theshruggedvoyage.com/ ► What is the Shrugged Collective?  Click below for more info: https://youtu.be/iUELlwmn57o ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

For many of us, our path leads us to physical training. We introduce the stimulus we need for growth. We introduce the stimulus to tear down old structures that aren't serving us anymore. Tissues causing movement restrictions, as an example. In the beginning, the mind thinks very generally about the body. Get bigger, get smaller. Make this part larger, this part leaner. We get into the gym and we want to

get better at specific exercises. Those exercises we deem important. We start learning about our bodies and we start thinking about our body as a whole. It's no longer just about the muscles. We find out that we can even shape our bones. Our organs, breath, and mindset dictate our recovery. With experience and time, the wisdom starts setting in. And one day, we may even see that the body and the mind are no longer at odds, no longer experiencing the separateness that we have created. We are our bodies, and the only chance we have to be happy is to start accepting every part of ourselves.

Getting to know our bodies, to hear what the body is saying to us when there is pain. The pain isn't the problem, it's an alarm. Time to change. How good are you at listening to your body? Training, movement, breath and awareness give us access to the information. Being with the training from moment to moment will teach you volumes about yourself. I'm not interested in holding your hand every step of the way. This is your journey. I am here simply as a guide. Be humble. Ask good questions. Listen to those with experience while honoring what you know is true

for you. Head over to shrugcollective.com to sign up for 30 days free coaching. You'll get the best from Doug, Anders, and myself and what has worked for us over the years to get to where we are now. Sign up for 30 days free coaching at shrugcollective.com. We're also opening up another round of the Strong Coach program. It's 12 weeks of coaching to get you and your coaching business dialed in so that you can have a greater impact on your clients and live the life that's most fulfilling to you. Go to thestrongcoach.com to apply for the next round of coaching today. Now onto our show with Ross Johnson and Rachel Bell. These two have been in and out of my world for a couple years now, and this past summer, we got deep. I look forward

to sharing with you their story, and I know you're going to find some inspiration amongst all the laughs. Enjoy the show. We'll start with these topics okay yeah i think that uh the suffering comes from avoiding the choice or once someone makes the reality that you actually are in power versus like being poor me all the time because that's why i think that poor me is like oh i'm not going to make a choice i'm avoiding the choice i'm going to let the world make the choice for me. Oh, woe is me. No responsibility. Yeah.

The victim villain. There's a villain. You know about the drama triangle? No, it's a drama triangle. The drama triangle is like in any sort of suffering situation or relationship conflict. Everyone's playing into a one of three roles, sometimes multiple roles one is the victim another one is the villain and another one is the rescuer so yeah this is an interesting thing in coaching i've heard those three but i didn't i haven't heard it as the triangle i want to hear yeah those people will say oh you're in the drama triangle

or that's you being in the drama triangle and so you can identify what role you're playing you. You're either the victim where you're saying, poor me, I'm avoiding making a choice, or I'm not taking responsibility for my role in this. You're either the villain. So that doesn't mean you're intentionally doing something bad to another person, but it means that you're putting yourself in a, I'm the worst. I suck. Yeah. I feel bad for doing this thing because I see that. I think they're suffering. Exactly. And you're not allowing them to take full responsibility for their situation. So you're like feeling bad for making someone else suffer. And then there's the rescuer, someone who gets their fulfillment in relationships from constantly rescuing and fixing the situation.

And that's how they get their significance. And that's how they continue enabling other people to continue staying and suffering. You guys are the rescuers. Mike's looking at me. That's not true. I think Ross used to be a rescuer. Still sometimes. Who knows?

And sometimes I'm the victim. Are you guys still getting drama triangles? Yeah, for sure. Not me. Way beyond that shit. Right. right i guess what is it villain rescuer victim yeah it'll be as simple as like you know for example um saying what you really want to say on your mind and having the other person have a trigger to that or a reaction to that and at the end of the day that might come that might create conflict like sometimes ross says things and i'm like oh my god that pisses me off so much but like my

reaction is not his problem and he doesn't have to rescue and be the villain in that situation because at the end of the day what i need to do is stop being the victim and stop being like that's a personal attack on me and it's easy cerebrally like logically to say this but like when you're actually in the drama triangle it's like like, man, that's a choice. Yeah. Like, man, that's like an in the moment thing. And sometimes I just need to breathe and kind of have space to be like, wow, this is not who I want to be. This is not like where I want to go.

I don't want to reinforce this pattern again. But, you know, it's a good awareness. It's a nice little tool to be like, hey, are you in the drama triangle? Because it allows you to identify your role in the situation because it's a conflict and step out of it. Yeah. I had a conversation with a friend last night and she was telling me about the, you know, where she was not feeling well. She was like being, she was a little, she was sad, a little depressed, and I was simply being with her. And I, and then she was really surprised at how I showed up.

And I recognize that the way I used to show up in those situations and probably how most men show up for her now is she's experiencing some type of suffering. How can I make her feel better? Yeah. Taking responsibility and being a rescuer. Yeah. And so, and then simply showing up and being like, I'll be here as a support without trying to make you feel better. Well, that's kind of what's taught in culture, right? Even in movies and stuff, like the guy always rescues the girl or like someone's upset. And so I feel like for me, I try not to get in that role, but I do sometimes. And I noticed that when I show up differently

as a person, like you said, just being there, it always works out better. I think if we rescue people and try to make them feel better, it's only going to prolong it because they never get to process their own thing out.

Exactly. So it just shows up the next day again anyway. Yeah. You don't give them an opportunity. You actually kind of rob them the opportunity to step up and be a leader of their own life. I forgot this microphone. So it's like not, it's not fair to either person because you're stuck in that enabling pattern. Yeah.

And then they're stuck in that wanting to be rescued pattern because they don't know what it's like to fix themselves. Everyone's in the drama triangle. Yeah. All right. So now that we talked about drama triangles. Right. So Ross and Rachel, y'all are coaches.

Y'all do a lot of things. You're very successful in business. You come from the fitness world. You serve the health and fitness world, specifically coaches. You're very good at what you do. We met, it was two years ago. We met and started chatting, but ran into each other here and there and started hanging out. We started hanging out a little bit this past spring. So I moved back to SoCal and then immediately linked up and had dinner with y'all. And I'm really excited to have you on the show today because I know that the listeners are going to get an incredible amount of value in what you have to offer.

Because the conversations we've had the last six months are enlightening. And even this morning before we hopped on the show, it's been really good. I want you to, can you real quick tell us about what you do for health and fitness coaches, just like the elevator pitch. And then I also want to hear your own personal story of what got you here. Yeah. So our business, our coaching business is called Online Coach Accelerator. And we help online coaches or coaches who want to take their business online, get more clients through social media and build a profitable audience so that they can do that more easily. So Ross, you want

to start out with your fitness journey? Well, this. So Ross, you want to start out with your fitness journey? Well, this is a common, I want to point out this common issue is like, I know so many people, so many fitness influencers that have an Instagram following or they have a podcast. And I get questions all the time of, you know, how do you run a, you know, how do you make a business of it? Or how do you make money money and I know people who have hundreds of thousands of followers who make almost no money yeah and then there's people who have you know what you guys were talking about you had less than 4,000 followers yeah and you were making a lot more money than people who have hundreds of thousands yeah it's like such a common misconception and I see how it's so easy to believe that because you do see the influencers because they're the most forefront in your social media space, probably living the lifestyle you

want to live, having the connections you want to have. And you think that they have so much more currency than you have just because of their social clout, for lack of a better word. They're looking at that one number. Yeah, exactly. They're looking at the vanity metrics and not really understanding what the back end of their life or business looks like. So what we always love to share with coaches who come through our program is, hey guys, like me and Ross, we had an audience of literally less than 3,500 people, like what you said, when we made our first six figures online. And that's just because we learned sales and marketing. And it doesn't matter how big your audience is if you don't know about sales and

marketing, because as you said before, you know know so many influencers who don't know really how to monetize an audience. And when you grow an audience but you still don't know how to monetize, that doesn't fix the problem that you don't know how to monetize. So it's an essential skill that you need to learn sooner or later if you want to be an entrepreneur. So that's what we help coaches do. Yeah, and being in this game as long as I have, I don't know how more often than not, the best coaches I've run into are in some shitty garage somewhere. Because all their attention's gone to training, and they've never shifted their attention into running a business or marketing or anything like that.

And that's something that was pointed out to me, you know, well, uh, around 2009, when I started studying business, I'd been in business for a couple of years, I'd been coaching people for a decade and was broke as fuck. And, uh, I go, well, someone said, well, how much time have you invested in learning about health and fitness? I go, well, all of it. That's been the only thing I've read for a decade. And okay, well, how much time have you invested in learning about health and fitness? I go, well, all of it. That's been the only thing I've read for a decade. And okay, well, how much have you read about business? Oh, hardly at all. How good do you expect to be at making a business work?

And I go, oh, fuck. So then I started studying more business. They're two different animals. And I think that a lot of people think that, a lot of coaches think I need to be the best at what I do in order to make the income that I want to make. And while I think that's an excellent goal professionally, to expand your skills within your career to be the best at what you do and give your clients the best experience, no matter how many certifications you get or how much experience you get, if you don't know how to sell yourself or communicate to your ideal clients

that you have something they need, the clients are not going to appear for you magically. Or if you don't feel ready. I think a lot of people are doing certification after certification and they never really feel ready. Ever. Yeah, a lot of people think that'll solve their problem.

I need another fitness certification. That way I can stand out. Now I'm qualified. That's not your problem. The problem is you don't know how to tell people that you're available to train. Exactly. They keep their offer a secret.

Let's hop into your stories, Ross. I want to hear. You've got some unique shit. Here's the other thing people may not know. The two of you went through training camp for the soul. Yes. The last one that we ran. And now

we're perfect. I have no problem anymore. If you want to be perfect too, for the low, low price of... I know, I've gotten to know the two of you really, really well. Mike knows all my daddy issues.

Don't tell people what we do there. Yeah, cool. I mean, my story, it really started out, I mean, way, way back. Like, I wanted to have a six pack. That's kind of where it started. I was like, man, if I want to get weighed, I got to look this way. That's how my fitness journey started. You and me both. Yeah. every other guy out there right um did that basically did

bodybuilding for a while then i was like all right i got a six-pack i'm fucking ripped now and i feel like shit no chicks no chicks want me still well nothing changed nothing changed with that it was you know it just was the changed with that. It was, you know, it just was the way that it was. But then, uh, you know, I got my goal and that was super happy.

And then I was like, ah, you know, this is, this is like an empty, empty goal. And so then I was like, all right,

I'm going to, well, actually going back even further, I had to learn, uh, how to do that was. How to do what? Get a six pack. Oh yeah. Like how to get in that good of shape. I was like, all right, I'm just learn how to do that was How to do what? Get a six pack.

Oh yeah. Like how to get in that good of shape. I was like, all right, I'm just going to lift weights all the time. And then I was like,

oh, I can't do this just lifting weights. I have to like learn nutrition. And so then I read, first time I ever read a full book

cover to cover. I basically Motivated. I basically fell out of high school. No, Ross, literally, what did you graduate with?

A 1.5 gpa holy fuck i don't know how they let you people that's what she said dude i don't think they wanted me in the school that's what rachel said too she's like she's like how did they let you graduate i'm like no one said anything to me about it they just wanted him out after what i learned about him at training camp for the soul i know i get it they're just wanting them out no i'm just kidding yeah no dude i mean yeah i fucked around a lot in school. I definitely fucked around a lot. But yeah, so then I started reading my books.

And then that year, after I started reading books, I was like, oh my god, reading books is actually fun. This is so crazy how my perception of it with school was that it was this really negative thing. And so I started reading books anyways. I read over 100 books that year on health and fitness. And I was like, I am obsessed with this. And I started eating differently. I started feeling differently.

And I was like, oh my God. I went from like bodybuilding because I wanted to look a certain way to like, oh, now I want to like feel a certain way. And so I was like, oh my God, I feel amazing. I want to go to school for this. I want to like change the world. Other people need to know how I feel like they have to know about it. And so I ended up taking a bunch of money that I made. Um, and I, I went to, uh, basically college or like it was like a six month,

really, really intense training on personal training and nutrition. And it was 500 hours. I worked every single night. When I got home, two and a half hour commute both ways every day. What were you working? What was your job at that time? I was delivering pizzas. Delivering pizzas? Studying fitness?

So I would get up at 5 a.m. Love it. I would get up at 5 a.m. I would drive from- Making it work, man. Yeah, dude. I would drive like two hours in the morning. First day of personal training school, I got in a car accident on the way there.

Damn. Yeah. Then I would go there for like six hours. I'd come home, two and a half hours. Then I would go deliver pizzas for four hours every fucking day. Just imagine Ross being like a ripped pizza boy. I love that thought. Yeah.

How many women thought you were there to be a stripper instead of a pizza boy? Is he really delivering pizza or is he about to rip this off? Yeah. Yeah, so I went to school. I basically was like, everything they're teaching there is just totally fucked up. Because I read so many books, I was like, I just don't agree with this. Like, I think it actually literally said, like, in a workout, in my textbook, you need to be drinking at least two Gatorades. Whoa.

They were like, you need to have at least 50 grams of sugar. What organization is this? I got certified in NASM, but I don't know. It was like National Personal Trainer Institute is the school that I went to. I don't know. Long story short, I graduated. I wonder who paid

for that curriculum. Interesting. It was very strange. It's a brand name. It's quite odd. It was weird. What was weird about it too was the people who were teaching me brand name, it's quite odd. Gatorade. It was weird. Yeah. And what was weird about it, too, was the people who were teaching me was like, oh, yeah, some of this stuff's not accurate, but you're going to need to know for your test. So I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?

I was learning all this stuff in my books, and I've always kind of been a rebel. So I would raise my hand and be like, what do you mean you don't need that much vitamin D? What exactly are you talking about? And they're like, well, the book is not really accurate. It's written in 1989. And you know, but you're gonna need to know for your test. So just remember, I was like, okay. And so I graduated, whatever. I, uh, I got a personal training job. And then I realized how fucked I was afterwards because they're like, so this is what you're going to do. Um, put so this is what you're going to do. Put on this uniform. You're going to sell personal training packages. So what I want you to do,

like three days a week, you got to drive up here. You got to walk around the gym, go talk to people with their headphones in, try to give them a free personal training session. And then afterwards, what I want you to do is get leverage on them. So like ask them tons of stuff about their family, ask them tons of stuff about how much money they make, ask them all these questions. Get leverage on them. At the end, tell them, say, hey, let's just go over how your training session went, come into this room,

we're going to talk about what you thought about it, and basically, I'm going to sell you on a personal training package. And then when you say, now I don't have the money, I got to talk to my wife about it, I'll say, well, I thought earlier you told me that your wife supports you being at the gym. And to me, it was cool. And I'm a learner,

right? But I was like, oh, shit, I'm not a personal trainer. I'm a fucking salesman. And I didn't learn anything about selling when I was in personal trainer school. So I was stuck making like 10 bucks an hour. I never had any clients. Even the people there that had clients clients they weren't making any money even the dude who was my boss wasn't making any money he was like i was talking about different business ideas he's like if you get that thing rolling let me know because like you know maybe we'll go in on it together or something i was like this is so weird and that was like my first real introduction into like the space i was there for like three months or i don't know maybe i was there for longer i don't really That was like my first real introduction into like the space.

I was there for like three months or I don't know. Maybe I was there for longer. I don't really remember. But I ended up leaving and basically like kind of giving up on being a quote unquote like real personal trainer because I was like, I'm not going to make money doing this. And I was doing other stuff for money that was not legal. Like stripping? exactly and um i was a real a real entrepreneur right and i was just like you know what like fuck this dude um and uh so i went back to selling pizzas you know uh but i was so interested in fitness still i followed the whole ito portal path and that was kind of like the peak of what happened for me with fitness was like this very holistic movement-based

thing. I ended up getting an opportunity to go out to Boulder. I ended up training under someone who was like high up in the Ido Portal ladder organization. Trained under him, super broke and yeah, just basically did that for a while but then I ended up getting into business

and learning marketing and sales. What do you mean you just ended up in business? but then I ended up getting into business and learning marketing and sales. What do you mean you just ended up in business? Well, I ended up getting a job, right? I ended up getting a job for an entrepreneur. Okay. And he had a lot of really high-end clients, and so I got to work as a freelancer in lots of different ways.

I did graphic design. I built websites. We wrote emails. Me and Rachel both did this. This was right around the time where we first met. And yeah, it was just, I ended up learning a lot about that. And after a while, like getting good at it and starting a business, we started our Instagram agency. Before that you did a handstand course though. That was a trip. Yeah. Tell us about the handstand course. Yeah. So yeah,, we went down the whole Russell Brunson funnel thing,

and I thought I knew tons about business. Tell people about what that is. I imagine the majority of people don't know who Russell Brunson is or ClickFunnels or any of that. Well, for all my business, there's something called a sales funnel. It's basically just a process to turn a prospect into a customer. And it's just like a series of web pages. And so there's this big idea out there right now where it's like, all you need is a perfect series of web pages and offers, and you'll be a millionaire. And so I was super intoxicated with this idea.

And yeah, I built a course and that's where I thought I should start. And I was like, oh my God, I know how to do handstands. Like I learned it so well. I'll build a course. I'll be fucking rich. All I need to sell is a thousand a month and it'll be so easy.

Dude, I actually like- 2,000 different people. I could do that. I really thought that was, I really thought it was going to be easy. Here's the thing about business. And I think everyone who has been an entrepreneur as long as we have has fallen into that trap. Because the only reason we got in is because we thought it was going to be that easy.

And then you wake up one day and you go, this is fucking hard. If I knew what it took to get to where i am now man i don't know no i'm glad i've done what i've done but you would have started earlier i think that's you know what i mean like people are like i don't know when to start it's like man you better start now if you plan on being an entrepreneur in the future start yesterday yeah there's a point on doing anything it's a very good point i was listening to, I don't listen to many shows, but one of my roommates was talking about Andy Frisella. And I don't really, I listen to a handful of his shows,

not really my vibe. But he has some good stuff in there. One of the shows that he talked about that really resonated with me was just one little statement he made, which is, I was in business for a decade before I figured out the money thing. And I go, interesting, because I know how to make money. But the management of the money on the back end

and how to make it, how to really grow a business with the money that's coming in, that was a challenge for me. And I think most people, their big challenge is making the money in the first place. So I think if you can figure that out, like you guys have figured that out, it's a lot easier. But I've been in entrepreneurship for 11 years now. And it was around, it was in the last year where money now make, it looks completely different to me than it used to. It's not even the same conversation. I go, oh, I know what he's talking about now. So to your point that you better get

started now because there's only, look, conferences and books, they've all done really great things for me, but for get a really holistic view of what a business is, I really believe it takes a good decade of being in business to understand business. So yeah, start now because you're not going to, I think people are waiting until it's perfect. Yeah, exactly. Or they have the perfect idea or they have enough capital or something like that to start a business.

It's so much easier and more possible than ever today to start a business. All you need is easier and more possible than ever today to start a business. All you need is like 50 bucks. And not even that. Yeah, and at least like with a good mentor, you can probably get to where you need to be in order to invest in a mentor by just following their free online advice.

You know, there are people who will read some of me and Ross's online material. They'll come on a sales call and they'll be like, oh my gosh, I implemented what you said. I got a couple of clients. I was able to do this and that. It's really just available to anyone who wants it, but you just need to start. Yeah. All right, Ross. Oh, we're back.

So what happened with the handstands? Dude, so my situation was this. I moved from Massachusetts to Colorado with 5,000 bucks. It was everything I had. I had no plan. I had nowhere to live. I moved there. I stayed with Hunter for a day. Our mutual friend. Hunter used to do a lot of work for me.

Shout out to Hunter. What's his Instagram? Hunter O'Brien. Hunter O'Brien. I think it's Hunt O'Brien. Hunt O'Brien. You can find him. You can find him. You'll find him. He's good. A lot of good photography, videography. Hot chicks.

Not so much anymore, but definitely. There was a period. He's like, I'm in LA. Scroll down far enough. That was my situation. I didn't want to stay with Hunter. I felt like a burden staying at his house for more than a day. So I went on Craigslist, found this house,

and moved into everything seemed cool. Awesome plan. Everything seemed cool on the forefront. This girl's like, hey, yeah, this is my boyfriend. He doesn't really live here. He just comes here sometimes. I move in there. This dude totally lives there. Everyone in there had been to jail multiple times.

They beat their dogs. They were doing crystal meth. Like, dude, after three months of living there, I had negative $5,000. I just met Rachel. And I was staying over.

I was like, I'm down. Hanging with the meth heads, huh? You wouldn't even believe some of the stories. Like I met, I met a girl like when I first moved to Colorado and I hung out with her one time. Hanging with the meth heads, huh? You wouldn't even believe some of the stories. Like I met a girl when I first moved to Colorado and I hung out with her one time and then she comes over to my house.

I find out she's there after I met Rachel. She is having a threesome with my roommates. And I'm there at the same time that she's there one night because he's like, come on in. And I was like, okay. And he's like, oh shit, this girl that I went on a date with is here. And I was like, oh, no problem.

We'll just probably be friends. And I walked in and this girl looks at me and she goes, you're so beautiful. And then later, later she was like, I'm not wearing any underwear. And I was like, I feel like we should leave. You wouldn't believe it, dude. So what was tough about it was once I started figuring all this shit out, because look, I couldn't keep a job. I worked there for a day. I was like, I fucking quit. I'm out of here. I worked at weddings. I did weighted tables and stuff. It just wasn't working out for me. I had a $10 an hour job. I had to park. It cost $2.75 an hour to park. They were taking $3 out for fucking taxes. I was making like five bucks an hour, three days a week. It was tough. It was

tough, but I was training like four or five hours a day with this dude. You were training. I was training like all the time. Cause what I was like, I was like, all right, if I just invest enough time in training, I'll get so good. And I'll mentor this dude. He's going to open up a gym. Eventually I'm going to get a job there. And this is like my passion. This is what I wanted to do. So I sacrificed basically everything. And yeah, I did meet Rachel. And then I went thousands of dollars in debt. But the problem was with that was, for some reason, I wasn't so worried about it at the time.

But I couldn't move out of this house once I found out these people were on crack, basically. And it was such a negative environment. And I was trying to be so positive and change the world and be healthy. It really just did not match. So all the time, I'd be working in there, building my website, and creating my handstand course, and trying to find a way out, and thinking I was going to be a millionaire this year and shit. Immediately.

Immediately, basically. I'm going to publish this. It's going to make printing dollars. Right. And I made a few hundred bucks. Good job. But it didn't move the needle and it all come came down to uh i found out later it was just like dude i don't know anything about marketing and sales like if you are trying to make any money that's pretty much where you start like if you just know about marketing and sales you can make

a few hundred thousand dollars a year without really knowing that much about like business as a whole like you don't need to know that much about finance or you don't need to know that much about like operations operations like if you're just really good at selling and really good at marketing so yourself you can make some money i had no idea how to do that um and it really bummed me out that they never really taught me that in personal trainer school because it's so tied to the profession like you have to know that kind of. So we ended up working for this entrepreneur together. It was 20 bucks an hour. It was my fucking dream job because I was like, I just want to work for my laptop anywhere I want.

I'm a millennial. Um, and yeah, it was like virtual assistants kind of, but it was like really high level virtual assistant. It was like, they had some really big clients. And so I got to work on a lot of stuff, see what I liked to do. And then eventually Rachel and I, after a year or two, were like, let's do our own thing. We got really into Instagram.

When you were doing the virtual assistant stuff, is that where you picked up the majority of your skill set around building the back end of businesses? Definitely. A lot of operations. A lot of operations. A lot of operations stuff. Can you describe to us what operations is? Yeah, just like processes, systems for doing things.

Their whole thing was optimize, automate, outsource. And so it was like, well, okay, what are you doing? Let's write down every step of what you're doing. Okay, let's optimize it into as few steps as possible. Let's automate the steps that we can automate. And then the things we can automate, let's outsource it. So we were on the outsource. We would do the work for that.

Sometimes we would optimize and automate their systems first and then do the rest. Yeah, and so I learned a lot about how to think about that type of stuff. And just seeing like what the people were outsourcing to me and like how much they weren't doing. Like I did like someone's entire podcast and like they literally ever, the only thing they did was like show up to the thing and like get their headset on and talk.

And then that was it. And I was like, wow. These entrepreneurs aren't doing what I thought they were doing. And their mindset around business and everything was just so interesting to me at that time. I had no idea. So I learned a lot of stuff. And I still didn't know tons about how to implement it

myself. I really had to learn that afterwards. Rachel and I, we started an Instagram agency because we basically started growing Instagram accounts for fun. It worked out. We grew a couple of accounts to like 100,000. And then people started asking us about it. We started posting about it on Facebook, uh, kind of like we mentioned earlier, we only had like, I had a thousand Facebook friends, Rachel had a thousand Facebook friends. I wasn't even really, we were a little bit on Instagram ourselves. Not really. Um, we just started posting about it and like really positioning ourselves in the right way. Um, by just like giving like content, like valuable content,

people just started started following us and then it got bigger and buying stuff from us. And I really started learning a lot about how to market myself from experimenting and also from that job because I got to do a lot of experimenting in there. And that's really where I figured out, oh, personal trainers,

it gave me a lot of clarity on my past. It's like, oh, like personal trainers, like it gave me a lot of clarity on my past. It's like, oh, like I didn't know marketing and sales. Like I have to know this to make money. So we really focused on that. Um, until eventually now we're kind of turning around and I'm going back to the personal trainer, back to the fitness coaching community and being like, I want to help you make money because a lot, a lot of like personal trainers, a lot of coaches don't know how to make money, but they're fucking experts and they can change lives. And that's what I'm finding now is it was the same thing for me. Like I was like, oh my God, I just want to help people, but I can't help people until they're like my client.

Cause like I need to put food on the table. And like, if I need to put food on the table and I can't get clients, it means I need to have a job a job and like that means you can't work with clients which means that i can't help people because i don't have a lot of time and so there's like this big problem going on that we see which is like you don't learn how to do marketing and sales in personal training school you go to a gym you kind of get locked in there you don't make probably a ton of money. Even if you open up your gym, a lot of times people don't make a lot of money. Um, and it's just like, like, basically you're kind of like one of the best types of people on the planet because you're helping people get healthy and like health right now is one of the biggest problems in the world. And so we figured like, you know, I have this background in, in this, and I'm really passionate

about health and fitness. Right now, what I feel like my talent is, is more on the business side of things, but I would love to help the world get in better shape and be healthier and live better lives. And the way we're doing that is through helping fitness coaches make more money and get more clients so that they can change the world nice love it yeah it's such a ripoff like honestly i'll just vibe on that for a sec um it's such it's such a tragedy to me that health and fitness professionals especially people who are actually good at what they do and expand their own education and put it into practice and literally try to optimize their own functions as a human as much as possible aren't one of the highest paid people in the health industry as a as a whole like doctors everything like why aren't

we investing just as much money into prevention and optimization as we are into fixing problems and like everything like that so well psychologically people don't invest and they invest the most in things where it's the most painful and preventative care is not painful. Yeah. You know, it's painful when you go in the doctor's office and go, Oh, by the way,

we're gonna have to put you on five medications cause your heart's completely fucked up. Yeah. But you could have completely avoided that. Had you hired a coach to coach you on your health. Yeah. Or specializing as well. Like even if you're not in a significant amount of pain yet, but there are so many types of people on earth like you and I and Ross who want to optimize in a very specialized way.

And coaches can help us do that. And I think that every coach has a unique point of specialization that they can capitalize on and actually communicate to the right person with and then make the income they want and deserve. But yeah, so anyway, my story. Yes, your story. Give you a quick rundown. Starts off like many females with an eating disorder,

which is not hilarious, but it's definitely like a real one. We'll laugh anyway. It was like, it's ironic to look back now because I'm so far away from that, that it's like, wow, who was that? But I started off by saying, okay, I'm really like not skinny enough because for some reason I just like thought that I wasn't. And so I was like, okay, well, I didn't know anything about nutrition. I didn't have time to know anything about nutrition. Cause I was going to a private school that loaded you up with like eight hours of homework per day. Like I was stressed out. And the only way that I knew was

like, the only thing I knew was that if I eat less, I'll probably weigh less. And so I started out eating less and less and less and less. And then I started like binging obviously, cause my body was like, I need something I need something cupcakes anything get them in here and so I would binge and then feel really bad about it throw it up like I was going through this whole anorexia binging purging cycle and I remember like on my birthday one year my mom made me a cake and I was looking at it like I cannot enjoy this and so I did that whole cycle with the cake. And that was my turning point where I was like, I'm not living life.

And this is so not sustainable. Like I can't, it's only been like a couple of years that I've been doing this only. Um, and I was just heartbroken that I couldn't enjoy a gift from my mother. And because like, I was so insecure, I thought that was really fucked up and I just wanted to change. How old were you?

I was probably 16 or 17 right now at this point. That's a, that's a lot of awareness for somebody that age. Yeah. It, well, it was, it was just my, my parents were always like really loving, like sure. Like we had disagreements and everything, but I, I never really didn't think they loved me. And so, um, and they just wanted to help me too. And I knew that deep down that finally I just had that moment of clarity and I was like, something needs to change. So what I decided to do was how do I eat more food, but still be skinny. And I followed all these bodybuilder chicks on Instagram actually, when I was like 17 years old and they were so lean and like healthy looking and that's what I wanted. And so I was like, all right, I'll just

do bodybuilding. I'll download, I'll go on bodybuilding.com and download a fitness plan for six weeks and eat chicken and rice and vegetables for six weeks and eat a lot of food. And it was, it was amazing. I actually got addicted to the gym and that was a much healthier expression than obviously starving myself, but it still wasn't coming from the right place. It was still coming from insecurity and self-hatred at some level. And so I went through that phase and, um, and then I started basketball and that taught me a lot about like developing skills and was a lot of fun. And then after high school, I kind of just didn't do anything except a little bit of acid. And, um, then I was like, okay, like I actually had

a lot of awareness around how damaging I had been to myself through those experiences. And I decided to fall into the category of like yoga and self-love. And I became really, really passionate about reversing that way of thinking that I had gone through for my high school life. You think acid was a... Well, yeah, it was psychedelics. Psychedelics was a part of your turning point. It was the first experience that I'd had of something spiritual other than Christianity, which is highly rooted in guilt. And for me anyway, my experience of it was rooted in guilt and shame, and you're just never good enough and you have to always be making up for it. And that was running

my life. And it had run my life up until training camp for the soul, where I finally had awareness around that and I was able to change it or at least choose something different. But yeah, it was my first experience of something spiritual and cosmic and healing that I had ever had outside of like church. And I'd never really resonated with religion anyway, which is hard for a girl going to a Christian school. And so that was like my first. It was a Catholic school? Christian school. Okay.

Yeah. Not Catholic. Not Catholic, but close. And so, yeah, I would say definitely that was part of the big healing moment in my life. And from there, then I was like, wow, I need to change because there's so much amazing life that I'm not experiencing that I'm blocking myself from because I'm just focused on what I look like. And so I went a whole year without makeup. I did the whole thing. And it was really amazing to discover myself in that way.

But fitness and health was so important to me. I went three years. I was a vegan. I tried like all the different health stuff. I did juice cleanses. I did three years. I was a vegan. I tried like all the different health stuff. I did juice cleanses. I did water fast. I did everything that I could to optimize my health because I knew that this is the only vessel that I had. And I was kind of also trying to make up for how damaging and mean I had been to my body just because it didn't look the way that I wanted it to look.

That's been a lot of my motivation. A lot of times people ask me why I'm so extreme about my health. I go, I go, there's 20 years of my life where I completely, you know, it, it, I look like I was healthy, but I was, I was like dominating my body. And I, because I didn't think it was good enough and I didn't like it. And I was putting supplements in my body that I now look at and people go, Oh, do you do these supplements? I'm like, no. Like, yeah, they may get you to squat five more pounds tomorrow, but what holistically, what's that doing to your body? I'm like, I gotta, I now have the opportunity to really clean out all the, all the garbage that I put in in my younger years.

Yeah, mentally and physically. Yes. So much garbage. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm really glad that I went through that phase as well. But, you know, at this point in time when I was going through my yogi phase, like self-love, no makeup, everybody take off your makeup, I was like 18.

So I was still like, all right, what am I going to do for my actual life though? Like, what am I going to do for a career? I either wanted to be a personal trainer or a life coach. I couldn't imagine me doing anything else. And so I was like, well, I guess I have to do something. Cause at the time I was living in Australia on an internship unpaid and I had to make some money cause I only had like 80 bucks total. And so I started doing some online freelancing cause I had done graphic designing when I was younger and 80 bucks total. And so I started doing some online freelancing because I had done graphic designing when I was younger and things like that. So I started utilizing some of my skills, going through life, moving back and forth from Australia to the United

States and kind of just floating around and not really knowing what my purpose was. And it wasn't until I got this job that Ross mentioned and we met that my passion for all of this stuff was reignited because of how passionate he was. And when we met, I was like, man, this dude, he doesn't have any money. That's fine. But he has passion. He has fire. He loves what he does. And I used to train with him. We used to go to the park and do handstands together and pull-ups. And he would teach me how to do pull-ups and stuff. And I just thought that it was so amazing that all he wanted to do was teach people how to be stronger. And I loved that about him. And so I became really, really wrapped up in helping him succeed because I noticed how beautiful it was that I was changing

and becoming even more secure about myself and learning how to use my body in different ways, learning how to become aware of my structure and like how to use my strength and my body that I was like, everyone needs to know this, obviously. You know, when you discover something, you're like, everyone needs this. That was basically the phase that we went through as well. So, but what was heartbreaking about watching him go through his journey was him not making money and him having to look for other jobs and him having to spend a few hours at his computer per day when he could have been helping other people in the gym and I guess I also was kind of living vicariously through him because I was like you have to make an impact on the world Ross you have to do this like this is something that I've wanted to do but

he actually has the skills and like the certification and everything that he needed in order to actually create an impact on someone's life. So from that place, I think we were both really motivated to find out how to make it work full-time. And that's when we got into the funnels and everything. And I just spent so much time trying to help him and like myself create a business online so that he could help people full-time, but it just was not happening because we knew nothing about business. And so that's where a lot of my passion for the coaching that we do now comes from was watching Ross, such a beautiful human with a beautiful purpose and a strong calling to help others not be able to simply because he doesn't know anything about sales and marketing. And so I kind of use that as my motivation to give back now,

because I think that, you know, if we can help the world as a whole, avoid such damaging patterns with their health and their fitness and the way they think about themselves and their body, the better we can get as a whole community collective on earth. And so the coaching business is really kind of like our way of going deep down into teaching our coaches how to have better relationships with their clients and how to get more clients that can help more people full-time and the world becomes a healthier, happier place as a result. So that's our story and how we basically got here. And I'll just add on to that. Something we love about health and fitness coaches in particular,

part of the reason why we're really selecting that market to work with, in my experience, everybody likes money, right? But in my experience, health and fitness coaches want to help people first. Like they want to like see people succeed. They want to see them healthy. They want to like really help the world. Like they want to make an impact.

And I fucking love that. I like love that. Like, cause they're just good people, like almost always. And it's like, I want to help people who are good people. Like I want to help people who are good people, help more people and create, that's an impact to me. What, uh, what's the most common things you see when, when you're working with people, people who are attracted to, uh, hiring you as a coach? What is, what are the most common first step problems?

They definitely come to us thinking that they need Instagram help. I need more of an audience. I need more growth. I need to get myself out there more. I need more eyeballs on my stuff. And I think that's the first point of awareness that most people come to when they realize something's not working is they think they're just not in front of the right people because there's no response. But what we've learned through that is, I mean, through our own experience in helping other coaches from like literally just a hundred followers or just a small network of Facebook friends, there are people out there in your circle today who need your help. I mean, look around you in the world. 99% of everyone needs your help if you're a coach that helps people get healthier and happier. However, it's hard to understand how many people are waiting for your help when you're

not actually making your offer clear to those people in a way that's compelling and that it's simple. It's irresistible because it's very tangible. And so that's where we first start. Like when people come to us, they're like, hey, I need more Instagram growth. We're saying, well, you already have a well-oiled machine that you're using to convert followers into customers. If not, we need to start there because there are people who need you now. Yeah. I want to add onto that and take that point a little bit deeper. It's, I think it's really about people not feeling ready. Like they need something else. I need more Instagram followers or I need, you know, I need this thing and it's no, no, no, you're ready right now., but there's always things that people think they want. So it's like, they want more followers on Instagram.

They want to get clients, but what they need is to think about it differently. Right? They don't feel ready. They don't feel like they deserve it. They don't feel worthy. All these different things that come into play and it comes down to kind of what you talk about. And like, well, a lot of stuff we learned at training camp for the soul is like just around worthiness and feeling deserving of it and

feeling good enough and feeling ready. And like, are you holding yourself back in some way? Almost always. It's almost always that. Yeah. When, when people, when people come to you and they don't, I want to hear about the people who don't work with you. Maybe they show interest, they check out your stuff, and then maybe they get on the phone with you, but then decide what are the reasons that people don't want to take the next step. And a lot of times it breaks my heart because we actually offer similar services in a way.

They're very different. We've looked under the hood of each other's stuff, and what you guys offer is amazing. But at the same time, it breaks my heart. I know it does for you all too because you see somebody who's so good at what they do, and then they won't take – it's just one little step that will become a snowball if they do it. It all comes down to belief, man. Do you believe in yourself enough to bet on yourself? In my opinion, you know, I do a lot of the sales calls. I do a lot of the conversations where we were just having a conversation about this before the podcast too is,

you know, for me doing the sales for this type of business it's not even really sales i feel like it's just me helping someone right like i'm like if i make the sale i get to help someone that's what sales means to me i think people have this negative connotation towards selling someone something but if i don't sell someone something i feel terrible like i didn't i don't get to help this person now like they're not and the thing about it is people need to financially commit or they need to commit.

Because if I do it for free, you're not going to show up for the calls. That's a really good point. And so it's not like sales, we have a very interesting perspective on pricing. Charge a lot, make someone commit, and when they don't have any other outs, they will succeed.

Yeah, we only charge as much as it'll take for them to take it seriously. That's like how we price things. How much will it take for this person to completely 100% commit? Yeah, I noticed that over my career. I've seen somebody. I really want to help them, so I'll gift them something. I will gift things on occasion. Some people can do it.

And I get a read on somebody. Some people can do it. And I get a read on somebody. Yeah. But I'm with you. I have to charge. In the past, I've made things free. You want an empty room for a workshop, make it free. Yep. Yeah, people need to have some skin in the game.

That's an Instagram quote right there. Oh, shit. Maybe that'll go. Somebody put on Instagram for me shit's hard yeah uh but yeah i mean there's so many times i uh i was talking to my friend about putting on a workshop uh here in encinitas and they're like what should we charge go, well, for what we're doing, all this, the entire reason for me making a pricing decision had everything to do with what's going to get people to commit. They're going to actually show up and then they're going to pay

attention because I mean, they may show up for 20 bucks, but they may not pay attention or stay the whole time or show up on time. Those who don't pay, don't pay attention. Yeah. Another Instagram quote. Somebody quote me. Yeah, so that's our philosophy on pricing. And, you know, I even tell that to a lot of the people that we work with. Like, you know, I want to work with, like, this person.

I only want to charge them $30 a month because I want to help everyone. I'm like, well, that's why you're not making any money. And that's why you're not helping a lot of people right now. It's because if someone, like we get different types of people that want to join our program. Some people are like, I don't have the money. And I'm like, okay. And then some people are like, I don't have the money but i'm gonna fucking find it yeah and then some people are like i have the money you know it's a big commitment the people who find the money get amazing results because they don't have other options for me like the times that i've never had any other options in my life i've done shit and i made it work almost always every time i've jumped I grew wings every single fucking time

and here's the thing too people are like well what if you know this is a big coaching thing it's like well what if they're not successful in my coaching what if they do pay a lot of money and they don't get a result that's part of their journey to being successful sometimes failure is a part of the journey to be successful

it's getting out of the drama triangle like not being the rescuer as a coach, which is so hard, so hard as a coach, because you think your responsibility is to provide results. But at the end of the day, everyone has their own script that they're running about how successful they think they can be.

And you really can't make a client more successful than they want to be. Yeah. At the end of the day, you can be the best coach in the world and you can charge the right price and you can do everything. And at the same time, like, although it's awesome when you get a great client testimony, only post it on your Instagram and you're like, Hey, check out my client. But at the same time, you have to release responsibility completely for their results and their journey, because even if they didn't make their investment back, or even if they did fail,

it's part of their perfect journey. I mean, I've invested so much money, like probably over $20,000, $50,000 in mentorship that did not give me results, but gave me an amazing lesson on my life, myself, or something else that looking back now, I can say that was worth the investment. Yeah. I've had that happen. I've invested in things some of my biggest investments have been a flop yeah where the the ROI to the bank account didn't happen but the lesson I got from it was something that I'll never fucking forget that that cost me a hundred thousand dollars not gonna forget that lesson yeah dude um there you go I'm never doing that again and then because you're not doing that again that's it was you're not doing that again, that was a change you needed to make.

Yeah, some lessons are simply expensive. Yeah. But I also think in entrepreneurship, I want to hear if this happened for y'all, is my first big investment in education for entrepreneurship made me a lot of money quickly. And I think it might be the same with gamblers. You know, someone who is addicted to gambling, usually they won the first time they walked into the casino.

So, like, I wonder if there are people who made a large investment, $5,000, $10,000, and it didn't work. You know, they didn't make their money back, and they're like, oh, this doesn't work. And they stop investing in themselves. It is. And so, and so for me, I remember my first big investment was I went to a marketing conference. I was doing okay in business until about 2013. And I had been consuming online content and, uh, the guy had been following

was putting on a conference, uh, Eben Pagan. And, uh, it, it was, uh, I was going to watch his webinar because I was going to learn like how to sell like, Oh, I've been watching his online stuff. We're going to watch his webinar so we can learn how he's going to sell his conference coming up. Not planning to buy the conference. I'm not, you know, we're not buying this. 45 minutes into the webinar, I'm calling up my business partners. We need to, like, scrounge up $7,000. Find $7,000.

He goes, we don't have $7,000. I go, there's $7,000 somewhere. And we had to, like, move money around and put it on a credit card and max it out. And it was everything we had, everything that we had. And at that time, my gym was making enough money to pay me an income enough to live. My wife and I weren't making a shitload of money, but you know, we had a house and we could eat and we had, you know, cheap cars and live simply. We still live simply. And, um, my online business is making, I think

around a thousand dollars a month. So enough to pay for the things we were doing, paying for the website stuff. Like it wasn't really putting any money in my pocket. And so $7,000 was a big fucking deal. We could have spent $7,000 on a lot of different things. Exactly. And then we spent $7,000 on that. And then it's the conference is out of town.

We're staying at the hotel. And I decided to stay at the hotel and we dropped another two or three thousand dollars on hotel and food for the week so it was a ten thousand dollar investment and I show up and during the conference I mean the seven day it's a lot of content I got you know you know, I probably, you know, absorb 5% of it. And I found something that, that worked for me. And we went from making a thousand dollars a month to, I think within 60 days of doing the conference, we were making $30,000 a month. And so it was, it was one of those things that because that happened, the same guy goes, oh, by the way, I'm partnering with this other thing for a conference.

And it was two months later. So the conference was in August. There's this other conference in October. This one, you know, the first one was in Chicago. This one's in Santa Barbara. I've never been to Santa Barbara. I go to Santa Barbara. Man, this is staying at this beautiful hotel.

I feel like I'm this guy from Memphis, Tennessee, who's running this CrossFit gym. And I have this podcast. And the next thing I know, I'm staying at these swanky, like the best resort, the highest end resort in Santa Barbara that I can barely, you know, that I could not have afforded to do, you know, two or three months prior, but only because I had applied what I learned at that

conference. And then now I have enough money and I go, well, I could either pocket this money and just keep doing what I learned or, you know, the last time I invested money, I made more money. Right. Let's do it again. Sure. So I went again. And then because I went to that conference, I showed my face enough times. I got enough face time.

And I even, the Eben was doing this pitch thing. He said, if you want to stay the day after the pitch and you have an idea for an app or software that you want to pitch me, there's like 30 spots available to do a 10 minute pitch. So I go, well, so I built this whole, I was like, I'm going to need to come up with an app or software idea to get in front of this guy. What was it? Oh, I had this, my idea was this app that would video your movement. You could do a movement assessment with video. It would track your joints and tell you where you are susceptible to injury.

Interesting. Oh, if your knees are doing this, your lower back's going to do this. So I was thinking about using the software from, what's it, at the time, it wasn't Xbox. Maybe it was Xbox. Oh, it wasn't Xbox. Maybe it was Xbox. Oh, it was something that tracks your shadow or something. It tracks your body. I was thinking, okay, that exists, so we could do this. So I built out this whole presentation about this app that I had no intention to build.

It's a good app idea, though. I don't know who's going to build it, but here it is. Yeah. I mean, you know what? Had someone said, you know, here's $2 million, I would have done it. I would have found some developers and I would have done it, you know? But you didn't. That didn't work out.

And now here you are. Well, the thing is, is because I got, I sat down, because I pitched, I got up there and I pitched because I was just throwing shit on the wall. Because I pitched, I got to have lunch with him. And because I had lunch with him, I get a phone call with him a week later asking me to join the mastermind that he holds. Which the mastermind, I spent another $10,000 on that to go to this mastermind. He got you, man. And I go, he did. He got you, man. And I go, he did. He got, he had me. Because he got you results. He got me results. And so like,

well, the thing is, is the conference I went to in October, I made even more money. I made 50% more money after that conference. I go to the mastermind and I sit at a table full of guys who I'd been reading about, like these really, what was his name? The guy out of Colorado, as an example. Jeff Walker. Jeff Walker. I'm sitting down having lunch with Jeff Walker, and I use Jeff Walker's launch formula to sell online training programs. And then I start giving him advice on podcasts and YouTube

because, well, it's 2013 2014 and these guys have all been relying on old internet tactics and then here I am like the new guy with that that's younger that understands YouTube that understands podcasts and I was teaching them and I was like oh shit and after I left that I mean I think the year that investment was that year I went to a few more conferences. We added up, it was close to $100,000 in investing in education in a year. And that education got us to a point where we were making over six figures a month. And so, like, and it was because I kept saying yes.

And I was fortunate that my first investment gave me a positive ROI. Yeah. That's very rare. It's very, it's, it's rare. So I want to point that out as like, maybe your first investment doesn't happen like my first investment did. And that's okay. Uh, because you need to apply.

And the, the thing I really thing that really sticks out to me is people who are successful usually have this thing called speed of implementation. They learn it and they apply it. The people who it doesn't it didn't work for me. What did you do with what you learned? They also have a grit. They just keep going.

The number one thing for me with success is I never am going to give up. I never fucking plan to give up. I don't give a shit how many times I fail. I will literally fail a million times until I'm 45 years old until I'm successful. I made that decision a long time ago. Yeah, the give up conversation doesn't even enter my mind. It doesn't even enter my mind.

Give up at what? What are you going to give up? What else am I going to do? You said something super interesting. You said, that's $7,000 you you going to give up? What else am I going to do? And like you said something super interesting was you said, that's $7,000 you're going to spend on so many other things. I have calls sometimes people are like, I can make this investment or I do need a new roof or I need a new fence. And I'm like, you've an option right now to change your life and never live that life again, where you got to make these decisions about your

roof and your fence, or you can not make the investment because you don't believe in yourself and you can continue to live the life that you already know. But you're on this call with me right now for a reason. Do you need me to push you and believe in you and get you to believe in yourself? A lot of times I can get someone to do that. And it's that investment, that, that commitment is them saying, I believe myself enough right now to fucking put it on the line.

And I have so much respect for people who do that. So much respect. Like even, even the people that come there, I have, you know, I took this program, that program happens a lot of times and they go, uh, but I'm ready to, I'm ready to do this again. Didn't work out the people that come, they're like, hey, I took this program. That program happens a lot of times.

And they go, but I'm ready to do this again. Didn't work out the first two times. I'm ready to do it again. I'm like, God, dude, like I fucking love you. And I have so much respect for you. And Mike, like our journey is very similar to you. We had $6,000 in the bank. Not even.

We literally had like 5K in the bank. We had 5K in the bank. And we didn't have, we had jobs and they were fine. It was that entrepreneur job. We got a mentor, very expensive mentor, said he would work with us for five grand. I said, good. He knew that we were going to go somewhere, but that's the only reason. It was literally a bet. He was like, you're going to blow up. I'm going to help you blow up. He's like, you're on the way there. How much money do you have? And I was like, five grand. He's like, cool. I will take that. Give it to me. He's like, you two are going to quit your jobs basically within the next couple of weeks. And we did. And within the next three or four months, we went from making basically zero dollars, I think like $2,000 a month to making over $150,000

by the end of the year, which is like three or four months later. And then same thing that happened with you. He goes, hey guys. Got this new thing. Got this new thing. We're at his house. He goes, it wasn't even created yet. He breaks out a whiteboard and goes, here are

eight bullet points on what I'm going to give you. It's $60,000. I said, I'm fucking in. Let's do it. And same thing. Six figures per month now. No money yet again. It's just like.

So now he's coming in now. He's like, hey, want to do one-on-one? He's doing it again. Oh, shit. He's going to take our money again. This week he's doing it again. He's like, how about we take the next step together? Or he's like trying to partner with us or something.

And it's, I'm like fucking awesome. It's like, do it, dude. Because it's doing it again. He's like, how about we take the next step together? Or he's like trying to partner with us or something. And it's, I'm like fucking awesome. It's like, do it, dude. Because it's the same thing. The more money I've invested on mentorship specifically, more money I've made almost every time. However, courses, I spent over $25,000 on courses. What conferences? Courses are not bad.

They're not bad. But here's been my experience with it. I never finish them. I never fucking implement because I'm not committed because no one holds me accountable and no one really is like there. So what happens is I get shiny object syndrome by that course, by this course, implement that,

read this book, download this guide. I'm all over the fucking place and I'm getting nowhere. That was the first three years of entrepreneurship for me. I didn't make a fucking dollar online. I got this book, that book, this podcast, that podcast.

Yeah. Cause you can get a course for 500 bucks or 300 bucks or whatever. I bought them all dude. But coaching, you have the accountability. Yeah. And the belief, like I said earlier,

it's all about the mindset. Courses can't really, they can for some people, but in my experience, I have not had a huge mindset shift. Like I've had people, even with you, like a training camp for the solar,

you're like, up, up, up. That's fucking bullshit. What you just said right there, do you actually believe that? And I'm like, oh, fuck. Now I know,

I got back into a corner and I go oh fuck that's exactly why I'm where I am right now right and it's happened so many times the mentors were like dude do you actually think that about money that's totally fucked up you know what I mean I'm like okay I'm gonna start thinking what you think about money. I'll make way more money instantly. It's crazy. A lot of people ask me when I start talking about this conversation, because as we're talking about right now, like, yeah, I found this one mentor. He made me tons of money.

He was awesome. Like, yeah, this mentor. But a lot of people are sitting in their room like, how do I find my mentor? That's a question that comes up a lot. What do I do? Yeah. So what's your answer to that, Mike? How do you define a mentor?

Someone who's like, I got to grow my business. I don't know what to do. There's so much information out there. I like what Mike says, but there's no way I can afford this or something like that. Where do you think they should start? I think you got to find someone who really resonates with you. When they speak, it calls to your soul. Not just your mind? Yeah. Yeah. I've hired coaches and things like that from, wow, what they presented was really intelligent. I see the companies that they've worked with, they've helped them make a lot of

money, this or that. And I, I've made that decision and then it led me down a road that was not where I wanted to go. And then the people who I followed, who I really connected with, like my heart connected to, to what it was that they were saying. And this is the person I want to sit down and hang out with. That's when I've gotten the most benefit because there's a lot of people making a lot of money out there that could teach you how to do it. Like I could go,

I'm sure I could figure out a way to get in a room with Tai Lopez, but motherfucker doesn't speak to my soul, right? Motherfucker doesn't speak to my soul. It's a t-shirt, man. So many quotes. And, you know, I would much rather learn from somebody who's making less money than that guy, driving a less fancy car or whatever and and really and and really get there so I want to be with somebody who I enjoy being around and a mentor who challenges me so I don't mean I and I want to make sure that people don't get confused because your mentor should make you

uncomfortable yes so this isn't somebody you're comfortable with. It's someone you're drawn to, but they create discomfort for you. And I'm a big fan of, you know, a 10 to 20% discomfort. You know, if there's somebody who like, it's like, like, I can't even stand to be around them. Discomfort, maybe not the right mentor for you, but somebody who's going to get you 10 to 20% there. And I think really good coaches know how to show up for somebody.

Like I know how to show up for somebody to make it their 10%. Totally, yeah. And so that's a sign of a really good coach or a really good mentor is their ability to gauge you where you're at and then show up the way you need them to show up in that moment.

I always call it the scary and exciting factor. Like if it's scary, it probably means you're going to grow a lot because you're like, whoa, my hands are sweating. Yeah. My knees are shaking. And then you also need it to be exciting though so that it feels in alignment and you know you feel called to it, but it's also scary because if it's just exciting, then it's something in your comfort zone probably.

You know you should do it. And if it's just scary, then it's probably not something that calls you, which means that it may be out of alignment. But if it's scary and exciting, you know that's going to let you level the fuck up. And you're going to be like, whoa. I learned that from my NLP certification instructor. His whole company is called Scary and Exciting. And I love that.

Because literally, when we enroll people into OCA, we have them fill out this one hour application. And that is all about what is your past? Like, what are your beliefs? Like, where do you come from? What are you like in pain with? And like,

let's really get real. We got super fucking real. And then we asked them like, do we have, like, are you committed to leveling up and do we have your permission to hold you accountable to your higher self and call you out when we notice you making mistakes or making excuses, not mistakes,

and hold you to that higher standard of being. And if they say yes, then they can join the program. If they say no, then sorry. Yeah. You know? All right, so I want to talk about coaching. Yeah. Okay.

A decade ago, if you had asked me what makes a good coach, I'd say, oh, they know how to write programs that will get clients results and they understand movement and they can motivate their clients. Right. I think that's the majority of trainers out there would classify. You know, you have the instructor. I used to classify coaching like this. You're either an instructor or a cheerleader or you're a technician. Interesting.

And so that's how I thought about coaching. Someone walks in my gym, and I always identified myself more as an instructor, technician, and not so much a cheerleader. And I think the cheerleader is the easiest. Like, I'm excited about what's happening here! Go! Is it easy for you, though? Is it easy for you?

No. I think that's more of a personality trait for people. It's like they... Because I don't well there you go good point but that gotcha you got me but it seems so temporary yeah it's like i can excite you for an hour well what's going to happen after that but have you ever had someone believe in you and all they did was say mike you can do it yeah but that's not a cheerleader

what is it is that instructing is that technician oh that's not a cheerleader. What is it? Is that instructing? Is that technician? Oh, that's none of those. But I didn't, I wasn't aware of that. I'm talking about 10 years ago. Oh, okay, gotcha. This is my perspective 10 years ago.

And now my view of coaching is completely transformed. And my view of coaching transformed when I started working with coaches that were not fitness coaches. Because inside the fitness industry, I think it can turn into a really big circle jerk, right? People want to learn business from other people in the fitness industry or they want to, you know, in that I'm going to copy what the other personal trainer is doing. What are the people charging?

What's the business model of the gym down the road? Oh, we got to do it like that. We can't be different. And so when I started, because in the fitness industry, I mean, this is what I want. This is what I want to transform in the fitness industry right now is people think of themselves as instructors, cheerleaders, or technicians, right? Is how I think most people see it, and that's how I used to see it. Then I looked outside my industry and anytime I've experienced innovation in my business,

it wasn't because I found something that was something didn't give me an idea from inside the fitness industry. I was looking at the dating industry or I was looking at the automotive industry or whatever, or the cryptocurrency, whatever. I don't know if you can call it industry. It's a thing.

Bad thing. Bad thing. The ether. So when I started working with relationship, I had a leadership coach. I've had a business coach. I've had a relationship coach. All these coaches really started showing me

what accountability looked like. And I think that's one thing that's missing in the fitness industry is people's understanding of accountability is very superficial. Yeah. And I think part of it is, man, if you're paying me so little money, I can't afford to hold you accountable. If I'm only making 20 or 30 bucks off a client a month, I don't have the time or the energy to hold that many people that I would have to hold accountable. And so what I'm seeing and that's transforming in the industry right now is, like Ross, you were just talking about this, is you can buy the curriculum, you can buy the training programs, but who's holding you accountable? Who's coaching you? And so that's, that's what I'm, when I start thinking, but you've talked about doing NLP, you know, there's, that's a whole, that's a whole method that you can bring into your coaching that most

fitness trainers would never even consider, but might be one of the most powerful tools that you could adopt, right? I think that's the single most helpful thing that I've done in my own personal development journey, aside from training care for the soul, which does incorporate a significant amount of sign up, use the code Rachel. Yeah. Go ahead and try to use that code. That code does not work.

Is there even a code? There's not a code. We don't, we don't give discounts. It's not, you know, if you want to sign up, do it.

That's it. Training care for the soul. Do it. Um, but yeah, I think want to sign up, do it. That's it. Training Care for the Soul, do it. But yeah, I think that that with Training Care for the Soul has been like the single most helpful thing that I've done for myself, my own life, and also my clients. Like, I think that coaches need to understand that your healing heals others. And the more you discover yourself, and the more you heal yourself, the more you're able to give that gift to your clients. So it's not a waste of time to invest in your personal development. It's the most important thing you can do as a coach who wants to help other people.

You can only help people as much as you help yourself. And so trying to attack, you know, this accountability issue that a lot of fitness coaches are struggling with, their clients staying on track and everything. Well, where does that show up in your own life too and where are you playing out these patterns that your clients are struggling with and how can you heal that for yourself first so that then you can give that gift to others yeah i think that's the most important thing to realize about issues that arise with your clients have you healed that within yourself yet if not maybe look at that yeah i want to go go back to something you said earlier too, Mike, that I'm like just so passionate about is this comparisonitis. All the personal trainers are

only charging $7 a month. I'm going to charge six. Like, no. And then it totally fucks you over because you can't look at what other people are doing. Focus on your goal. How much support do you want to provide? Cool. What's that cost? It might not cost what everyone else's costs. A Bentley doesn't cost as much as a Mercedes does. They're doing something different.

Right. It's a totally different car. Exactly. And it just drives me nuts because people are like, well, I got an e-book. I'm going to start selling a $19 e-book. I'm like, do you know how many e-books you have to sell for the rest of your life for $19 if you want to make a living?

Like you want to not have a job? So many. It's crazy. And so we're always trying to tell people, just don't look at what other people are doing. You know, it's an industry that constantly, I think,

lowers its price. It's like this competing on price. You should never compete on price. There's always going to be Walmart. Always. And they're going to win. They're going to win. The low price game.

They're going to win the low price game. Who wants to be Walmart? You don't want to play that game anymore. You want to play the game where you go, I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to help people how I want to help them. And it's going to cost this amount of money and make sure it's enough money that you can actually do it. Like fill your own cup up. And if people aren't committed to it, that's fine. Some people will be, but that's their thing. You know, it just comes down to what we were saying earlier. People will find the

money for our program if they believe in themselves. It's the same way with fitness. People are like, wow, people are going to pay $300 a month for online coaching? I don't think so. Who would pay for that? I'm like, would you pay for that? They're like, no. I'm like, well, that's why your clients won't pay for it. I would pay for my own training 100 times over. That's why people pay for our training. We have people who join and they're like, I don't know, like I can't get a person to commit or I can't get someone to invest. And I'm like, well,

if you are like that in your own life, you're going to attract other people who aren't committed. They don't want to commit. And they're like, oh, fuck. And also like within that trap, like what Ross is saying about people who, you know,

they're thinking in terms of nobody's going to pay for that. So I have to be cheaper. I have to be more accessible. But when you cheapen yourself, number one, you remove the amount of energetic like space that you have to hold that client in a container that's fully accountable, fully supportive, unconditionally like into their life and their progress. So you limit the amount of support you can actually give them, which means that their energetic exchange of that sale is not going to

be like, they're so proud to be your client. They're so excited because they're buying something that's cheaper. Like if I brought in two cars and I was like, here's a Bentley, it's $400,000 or whatever. I don't know how much Bentleys are, but let's say that it's 400K. And then here's the Bentley. This one's 20K. They're the same. It's like, you'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What's wrong with the Bentley that's 20K? What's wrong with that thing? Like, I need to know. And they wouldn't feel awesome about buying it. You wouldn't trust it. You wouldn't Instagram. Yeah, exactly. You wouldn't trust it because you're like, there's something wrong. If these are the exact same, they're the same value. Why is this one cheaper? People are very skeptical about when you cheapen your services and you're saying how valuable it is.

Don't put your shit on clearance. Please do not because you know your own value. And when you cheapen it for other people to get their approval, people know that, I think. Nobody's Instagramming the fact that they went to Walmart and they're so stoked about going to Walmart. They're Instagramming the fact that they bought a new Gucci purse and they're so proud of their purchase to buy something that's so expensive and valuable to them. They feel good about that. One more thing on that is people justify large purchases. They want to make themselves feel like they did something right. Oh, I spent $7,000 on a purse because X, Y, and Z. Like you justified other people, you justified yourself.

But if you buy something that is 20 bucks, like I buy two chargers online for my cell phone, right? One's six bucks and it breaks. I go, of course it fucking broke. Six bucks. Yeah, you start looking for everything that's wrong with it. But if I buy something that's, you know, a hundred bucks, 200 bucks,

I'm going to be talking about all these amazing features bucks, 200 bucks, I'm going to be talking about all these amazing features that come with it. I'm going to be justifying it to you and bringing it around and fucking showing it to people. And even if it breaks, you're going to be like, what did I do wrong?

What did I do wrong? It's always like that. And people want to pay a lot of money for stuff and they want to justify it and they want to feel good about what they bought. And so you just got to let people do that. And you got to provide a service that makes them feel good about that. There's a lot of people out there who will pay you what you're worth. Yeah, you touched on something important there, which was having a service that you're really

proud of and creating an offer that you feel like the world needs. Because then there's no shame in selling. If there is shame in selling, then look inside and see what do I think I'm not worthy of still, even though I have a valuable thing to provide, which is a whole other conversation. Go to training camp for the soul. But yeah. Yeah, the shame in selling is huge

because people are like, oh, even if someone, it's their last $500 that they're spending on my fitness coaching, I feel bad about taking that money from them. But then you're in the drama triangle again where you're trying to be the rescuer and you're trying not to be the villain,

taking someone's money and you're putting them in the victim's space. But that's their choice. Hopefully you're not holding a gun to their head and saying, you better invest in my fitness coaching, bitch. That's hopefully not happening. And so that's really their choice and their responsibility to invest and you just saw a t-shirt with rachel with the gun you better invest bitch believe in yourself

yeah i just want to go back to your question about what makes a good coach because that's kind of how we got into this whole conversation um i think there's so many things that can make a good coach right but i think think fundamentally what makes you a good coach is someone who fills up their own cup before they start trying to serve other people. You've got to be there. You have to have energy. You've got to have enough money.

You have to have the mindset where you're like, look, I have enough for me, and now I'm ready to give to other people. If you're coming from this place, you're not making enough money. You're not charging what you're worth. You don't feel like you deserve it. You don't feel like you can help people. And there's nothing wrong with that. Everyone goes through that phase, I think, in their life where they got to overcome some of these mindset things. You got to serve yourself first. Like you have to charge enough for the program

so that you're excited to make the calls. You're excited to help the person. You're excited to, if it takes a little bit of extra work for you to hold this person accountable, you can do it. You have the space to do that because you're allowing yourself to make enough money. So I really think that is one of the major things that I think, you know, lots of times

people have like some of the fundamental things going on for coaches. They got the education, they know how to help someone get a certain kind of result. All these kinds of things, I feel like are the baseline for being a coach, but to be a really good coach, I feel like, yeah, you got to serve yourself so much, take care of yourself so much that other people are just like, this person's got it going on they're really there for me i never feel like a burden to them i never feel like they don't want to show up for the calls or they don't have the time or they're always rushed you're just there you're there to give i really think that that's one of the main things yeah

comes down like i think that from what I understand about Strong Coach, your program, is you teach people how to have better relationships with their clients so that they can attract more of the clients they love working with. And what I learned at Training Camp for the Soul is that the relationships, I want to give credit where the credit's due. Like, this was such an awakening experience for me. So thank you, Mike, for giving that to us as a gift. Like that, not the experience, but like being there and facilitating and and that was like really eye-opening for me

realizing that the relationships i have with others start with the relationships i have with myself like what relationship do i have with myself like ross said you have to be filling up your own cup people don't want to feel supported or they feel bad being supported by someone who is not supporting themselves like if i had half of a cup of water and i was like hey mike you want this water and that was the only water i had you'd probably feel like no that's fine you can keep your water because you need it that's your sustenance instead of giving from your overflow like water's literally pouring out of my cup i need to give this to someone it's just so much of it that's a completely different experience for the person receiving yeah and i'll point this out is that this whole giving from a cup that overflows is some,

I, there's layers to this, you know, there's, there's layers to all of this. And I, I've even had realizations in the last week for myself around that of where am I not filling up my cup? And because there's all these different aspects of your life too. It's not just one area of your life yeah these things so it's um that's an incredible conversation to be having and it keeps sinking in and i'll note that the process with training camp for the soul it can take like 12 18 months for definitely like there's there's layers that are that are. Even for me, when I facilitate sessions,

I'm having my own revelations in those moments. And yeah. So anyone who thinks that they've got something figured out, just wait. There's layers of this shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so true.

But where can people find what y'all are up to? They want to hire you. They want to be coached by you. What do they do? Instagram is probably the best place to go. You can follow me at Rachel Bell and you can follow Ross at Ross Johnson. Yeah. Yeah.

That's where we really talk about what's going on. We give tons of free trainings. I do a weekly Instagram audit where I help health and fitness coaches optimize their Instagram bio to make it very clear about what they do, what they offer and help them attract followers and clients more easily on Instagram. So that's something I do for free every week. Um, and that's the best place to kind of get in the loop. Yeah. Reach out to us. Feel free to send us a message. Let's connect. I tell everyone in the strong coach in the middle of the strong coach, I go into this whole, it's like the first half is personal development.

Second half is professional development. And we get in the professional development side, I go, go check, go follow these two. They're going to, these are good examples. Thank you. Thanks, Mike. We give people the same advice. Like, listen to the Strong Coach podcast. Listen to Mike.

Like, just go there. Do it. What we're doing is very synergistic. Yeah. Very synergistic. I imagine if you did both, you'd have a very holistic view of what to do next as a coach, for sure. Strong Coach.

Absolutely. Like, get your, you know, education in order. Do Strong Coach. Do OCA. Like, things will be much easier in that order, I think. Well, the people I talk to come through Strong Coach. Like, they fucking Like things will be much easier in that order, I think. Well, the people I talk to come through Strong Coach. Like they fucking know who they want to work with.

Yeah. Big time. Like they know. They're like, I want to work with this exact type of person. Yeah, that's what we do during the process. Halfway, about halfway through the program, they go, oh, that's my client. Yeah. That's so important.

It's the most important discovery process in business. So yeah. Thanks for having us, man. Awesome. Thanks for having us, bro. Thanks's so important. It's the most important discovery process in business. So yeah, thanks for having us, Mike. Awesome. Thanks for having us, bro. Thanks for joining me. And then saying such, you know, like you said, look, do Training Camp for the Soul. Go to trainingcampforthesoul.com. I don't talk about it enough.

Yeah. And I'm glad that you guys brought it up. And anyone who's interested in that program, trainingcampforthesoul.com. And I enjoy seeing that you guys brought it up. And anyone who's interested in that program, trainingcampforthesoul.com. And I enjoy seeing you there. Thanks for joining me today. Later, guys. Bye.

All right. Since you love the show, go over to iTunes, Stitcher, wherever it is you're listening from. Go give us a five-star review, positive comment. That helps us be found by more people. And I think, and I think you think, that is a really good idea.

Remember, go to shrugcollective.com, sign up for 30 days free coaching. And if you're a coach, go over to thestrongcoach.com to apply for our 12-week program. See you on the other side.