Barbell Shrugged - How to be a World Class Coach w/ Mike Bledsoe, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #625

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

Mike Bledsoe is a leadership and performance coach who specializes in developing coaches to actualize their full potential. CEO of The Strong Coach, helping coaches build 6 & 7 figure coaching businesses, and co-founder of Training Camp for the Soul, an emotional resilience training program. He leaves nothing off the table when it comes to creating and attaining the vision for his clients & and himself. Pulling from an eclectic toolset he cultivates leaders through physical, mental, emotional and spiritual practices.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   The 10 Year Anniversary of Barbell Shrugged Lessons learned from interviewing the best coaches in fitness and health The Strong Coach Summit The best way to attend coaching masterminds and summits Why mindset is the number one thing holding coaches back   The Strong Coach Summit   Connect with our guests:   Connect with Mike Bledsoe   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Mentorship Application: https://bit.ly/DDMentorshipApp   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, Mike Bledsoe returns to the microphone of Barbell Shrugged. It's been a couple years since we've had Mike on the show. And for those of you loyal listeners that have been around since 2012, it's a decade ago. This is kind of like the 10 years later experience. It's actually one of the very first things we talk about on the show, which is super cool. Just kind of how far everybody has come from the early days of sleeping in faction strength and conditioning in Memphis, Tennessee, to travel in the world, meeting all these fun people in the fitness space, hanging out with world-class coaches. And Mike Bledsoe has returned to the microphone at Barbell Shrugged.

It's a very cool experience. And he's learned a ton, made some waves in the coaching side of things, coaching coaches with the Strong Coach, and the Strong Coach Summit is happening in March. Doug and I will be down there recording shows. Travis Mash is going to be in the house as well. We're all going down.

We're all staying at this super cool campground, and we're going to learn from some of the coolest coaches in the fitness and nutrition space, as well as just doing a bunch of networking and hanging out with people. So if you are into it, I'm going to put a link in the show notes so that you can come show up to the Strong Coach Summit. It's one of the best things you can do for your coaching career, to be honest with you, is to get around other coaches that are really aggressively attacking success and sharing ideas, sharing knowledge, and finding people in your space. So get into the show notes and check it out. And Mike Bledsoe is back on Shrugged. Before we get

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We have rollback pricing. Whoever knew that that was going to be a thing at barbell shrugged age of smell protein friends let's get into the show welcome to barbell shrugged i'm andrews varner doug larson coach travis smash the return to the show mike bledsoe dude welcome back thank you stoked to be here so exciting uh we have a lot to cover today because uh you have Strong Coach Summit coming up in February, in March, early March in Austin. We are all going to be there. On top of that, we have to talk about the 10-year anniversary of Barbell Shrugged. And what the hell, I'm going to just give you guys all the credit for what's happened to the podcasting industry now.

Even my daughter has one and she's three. So kudos to you guys for starting the podcasting world. What the hell does that mean? Your daughter has a podcast? Everybody's got one. Everybody's got one now. You guys started it. Everyone has access now.

Somebody posted something on Instagram the other day, and it was like nine swipe images of just CrossFit podcasts. It was like, if you want to learn about coaching CrossFit, here's eight shows to teach you about coaching CrossFit. If you want to learn about technique, here's eight shows. It was like this endless swipe of how many just specific CrossFit podcasts they are from the competition to the coaching to everything. It was wild. And then the WODcast podcast guy, Scott McGee, goes, I remember when there were only two.

I was like, yeah, there's so many of these things now. Dude, what are we going to do? We're going to summer camp in Austin. Yeah. It's been a couple years since I put on an event, and I started looking around at options because just doing it in the hotel conference room or doing it in a gym and then having everyone figure out their hotel or their Airbnb and all that kind of stuff, it didn't sit right with me.

So I was able to find a summer camp to rent out. Genius. Right in the middle. In Austin, Texas, there's this really big urban park. It's beautiful. It's called Zilker Park. In the summer, I go out there and just hang out quite a bit. But in the middle of this park, there's this summer camp that's been there for 92 years.

And they've had to deal with the city the whole time. And they've renovated everything. Everything's state-of-the-art. And they can sleep 150 people at this lodge. And I looked at it and I go, this'll be perfect. This is exactly what I want because the last time I held, I've had one strong coach summit before, which was in 2019. You know,

people got Airbnbs that were nearby and people were crashing on couches and, and it was, it was pretty crazy. But as the, as the summit went on, all the magic was happening in between, you know, it's one thing to be there for the presentations where we're learning about business, we're learning about how to be a better coach, but yeah, it's that time in between. It's the time at the meals, it's the time to get and so yeah i look at this and i go wow we can really spend a lot of focused time together and really uh experience the community aspect of uh you know people are going to come in because they want to learn how to be

better coaches and grow their coaching business but they're going to leave with uh a really deep felt uh sense of community. Yeah. I think that's important. Like when we were in the water paliza and you guys rented the big house, it was what happened at nighttime. Totally different learning lessons. What was it going on? Come on. She might not have got it. No, but I learned the most. Miami Beach. A lot of learning going on.

What was the highlight for you, Travis? Because, yeah, we rented out this mansion in South Beach. Keep it PG here. Really, that was the moment I learned about – I wanted to do an online weightlifting team. It was that night because Drew – it wasn't me, too. I would love to say it was my idea. But my wife was talking to what's his name? Your guy.

He was the financial guy. Rob. She was talking to Rob. And he started telling her how you guys did it. Then we talked on the way home. And then, so, yeah, so That's when we started the Master League. If you think about how much money that one idea has brought us,

I could not have paid enough to make it worth it. It was awesome. There's many things, obviously, that our lives have been affected of the last 18 months and the pandemic and all that. One thing that has been just so glaringly obvious and really challenging in the coaching world is I don't hang out with coaches that much anymore. Like we used to go to events every single month and you're hanging out with high performing coaches that are like actively pushing hard to get very good at their job. And then all of a sudden, all events stopped.

And then all of a sudden, I had to set up a Zoom call when I used to just work out with people and then go eat dinner with them and then have a drink at night. And all of a sudden, you have this 48-hour long best friend and great relationship business ideas. And then it just stopped. And I felt like a lot of that learning really stopped. A lot of that just like exposure to new ideas and new people, new ways of doing things. It was so awesome to be able to get all the people together and let that shake out. If you were to kind of look at the coaches that have signed up, is there a specific type of coach or I know you bring a wide range of people. Who's kind of coming to this?

Yeah, a lot of health, wellness, fitness coaches, a lot of people who are really into movement. They're pretty eclectic. They may be into the mace or really advanced in kettlebells or really good at the animal flow type of stuff. As far as the type of movers that we attract, a lot of people are into that. People who have tapped into things like breathwork and value breath work. And then on the nutrition side, we have people that they're a precision nutrition certified coach. And then we have other people who are naturopaths who are helping people heal gut health issues and hormone issues and things like that. and I'd say about a third of our clients end up being, uh, check practitioners. So, uh, people who have gone through the check Institute, uh, V1 doesn't really, isn't familiar

with that. Uh, Paul check runs that and the, the knowledge that these coaches have is extremely deep. Um, and it's almost as if they're overwhelmed with, I know so much stuff. Like, where do I start with somebody? Yeah. Have you reached out to Paul to see if he wants to come out and speak or make an appearance?

Yeah, I'm going to hit him up this week, actually. So I talked to him about a month ago. And, yeah, he may come out we'll see I'm going to put the bug in his ear nice I got to figure out the carrots for that guy you know they're different

they're different for him than most people yeah I'm bringing in a couple hundred pound boulders for you to stack I'm there sign me up. I just need to get some really big rocks and he'll show up. To this day, I actually had an interview. I did a podcast yesterday.

And if there's been – there's probably like – there's a handful of people that have like radically shifted my – like the framework of how I view health and wellness, fitness, how it all plays together. And I literally yesterday – to this day, Paul is one of those interviews, and it was one of the first shows I was doing with you guys that I laid out in that show. I was like, you got to go talk to Paul Cech. Here's the four stages of life. It starts when you're a baby. Then you go into the warrior phase. Then you go into're a baby. Then you go into the warrior phase. Then you go into the kingdom phase. Then you go into the wisdom phase.

And all your actions fit into these things. That guy is like on such a different level of thinking. He's mind-blowing. Mike, I'm curious, man. When I met you, you. Like, you know, you've, you've, um, when I met you, you were weightlifting, um, in the CrossFit, but now you've tried a lot of different movements and a lot of different, um, you know, I guess forms of fitness. What would you say if you had to choose one, you know, what would you say now is your favorite? Oh, um, man, that that's a that's a really tough one um i've really just enjoyed body weight

i mean i i still i swing kettlebells i still do deadlifts and things like that but the body weight progressions that i've been doing uh are uh are the most fun and i and my body actually feels the best doing a lot of the body weight progressions because a lot of them are challenging the joints in different angles. So I'm experiencing a lot less overuse, injuries and issues and a lot more flexibility. And I'm strong in positions that I used to not be strong in, but I'm not as strong. So I'm not as strong in a deadlift anymore, but I am, um, anything that's not a deadlift I'm, I'm better at for instance. I love where, you know, I think fitness is going that, that way.

You look at like the knees over toes guy, like the, he doesn't allow the body weight stuff and like through extreme ranges of motion, but being stable in those ranges of motion, which I think is what's so new. Yeah, being strong in each piece. I mean, that happened in CrossFit. They were encouraging full range of motion. But what I noticed, everyone was moving so fast all the time that people got really strong at the top of the range of motion and strong at the bottom of the range of motion. But everything in between was there there was there was pieces missing and filling in those pieces uh i mean i i think you got now you have longevity and and can express even more strength over time

i would think weightlifting does the same thing because they you know the crossfit and weight lifting they rely on the nervous system to to move a lot of times because they use you know the stretch reflex they'll bounce out of something and so therefore you know the muscles really aren't doing a whole lot the muscle spindles are and so yeah i'm i'm excited to see a lot of this i need to find the new forms of fitness i cannot deadlift 700 forever. You'll be able to do 600, though. That's the good part. You get to do 600 forever.

But you're trying to do 700. I find it's almost impossible to stay at that peak level of strength like you're saying, but to stay at 80% as strong, as long as you stay doing something, you can maintain most of your strength. If I deadlift 500 at my best or a little bit over, to deadlift 400 is like basically a given as long as i'm doing some type

of training and that's like and that's that's plenty strong enough to get by in day-to-day life that's what like freedom feels like when you know you can do that like when we interviewed ed cohen and he was like yeah most of my training is 80 to 85%. You go, oh, I can be jacked like you. Maybe not like him, but that's really the sweet spot of where he spends his time. So that's where we should all spend our time. Dude, I actually want to go back to the summit though. What does the three-day weekend look like? Just kind of like the high-level structure of the breakout rooms.

How are you setting everything up? Sure. So, you know, everyone's going to come in on Thursday, late afternoon, evening, and we're going to just have a social. So I'll be bringing in really good DJs every night. I'm a music nerd. I know a lot of the strong coaches are also music nerds. So we'll have really great music every evening. Um, we're going to be served, uh, I'm bringing in paleo chefs. So, uh, all the meals are provided. Uh, we're going to be eating together, uh, Friday and Friday and Friday, Saturday, Sunday mornings. We're going to start off meeting up at there's a, there's a trail that leads to these springs.

And so there's this huge spring fed pool in, uh, in Zilker park and it's about 50 yards wide and 200 yards long. And, you know, it's a natural spring. So there's even fish in there and things like that. You can swim down to where the water is coming up out of the bottom. We're going to go over to this beautiful park where I spend a lot of time already. If you look at my Instagram, you can get a peek at what that looks like. We're going to do some type of movement, breath work, and then go swimming in the spring.

The spring is around 70 degrees year-round. And so, you know, it's the beginning of March, so it'll be a little chilly. So it won't quite be a cold plunge, but it'll be a cool plunge. I'm all about cool. That's perfect. Yeah. Cool is cold for old men. Yeah, cool is cold. So we'll do that to kick the day off. Then we go back and eat our breakfast together, drink. Yeah, cool is cold. So we'll do that to kick the day off.

Then we go back and eat our breakfast together, drink some coffee. And then we're going to spend a few hours talking about business. We're going to talk about what it takes to improve your coaching business, how to plan for the year, how to execute the things that successful coaches are doing to grow their practice. And so we're going to do that until lunch. We lunch together. And after lunch, we're going to have workshops. And so the workshops between lunch and dinner are going to be provided by coaches who have something to share with other coaches.

So they may be teaching things like how to grow YouTube channel, but it may also be a movement workshop, nutrition workshop. And there's going to be a lot of variety there for people to choose from. Because I know that any time we create one of these gatherings, the coaches end up sharing really amazing stuff with each other. And for me, I feel like I'm the luckiest guy, you know, if I, because I love movement, I'm the luckiest guy because I'm surrounded by all these amazing movers of this, who have discovered like this new way to do this thing and, uh, and, and feel good doing it. So, uh, we're going to be filling the afternoons with, with those types of workshops, uh, have dinner together. Evenings is going to be very social.

So we'll have DJs set up to create some chill vibes. And the scene that's there is going to be set up in a way where we're encouraging a lot of connection. So that's going to be on friday and saturday is the workshops on sunday we have a a special thing called sacred savashana which uh i know you guys uh i think doug is super awesome i think doug's experienced this yeah have you i did i remember the term i can't remember doing it though yeah our friend we did it yeah, our friend Jogananda. We did it. Yeah, this was Jogananda, right?

We did it. It was in Carlsbad. You set it up. I don't think Doug made it. Yeah, I met them at Burning Man. They did it at Burning Man. So I was wondering if Doug had done it there. Maybe not.

I don't think I did. And so they're coming in, and it's basically three hours of breath work and movement and all sorts of things that ends in like a 45-minute sound bath. So it's a really, really beautiful experience. A lot of people have – what was your experience of it, Anders? It's so funny to ask that question now because I live in a place where the whole idea of that would be so foreign to so many people that I hang out with now.

When I lived in sunny San Diego, a three-hour yoga breathwork session just seemed so normal. It's fantastic. I think that there's very few opportunities, especially if you're 38 years old and have two kids, where you can truly block off three hours to just totally downregulate and just process and go into a different place. And that's – yes, I was able to do it more frequently. But even like an hour-long yoga class just doesn't like sit as well. Yeah.

And the guy is obviously very professional. It's not like his first rodeo where if you go to a yoga class and you think you're going to, you get kind of like the stock, stock yoga class, stock poses, five minutes at the end to breathe a little bit. Like it's a full hour by a very professional person to kind of guide you down this experience. And I love, I can't wait to do it again. Yeah.

Yeah. And the word you use, uh, it's a really beautiful time to process. And so one of the reasons we're putting everything we're doing is very intentional. We're putting it on Sunday afternoon because there's going to be a lot to process. And so getting in that movement, that breath and really being able to connect with yourself and really parse out, you know, look, I heard a lot of things. You're not going to it's going to be so much that you're not going to use everything that you learn, but you'll be able to figure out the things that you can focus on next. So the intention is that everybody has a very solid plan by Monday morning.

They know this is what I need to do to, to achieve, uh, the vision I have for myself. So at the beginning, actually I have Michael Cashew speaking. He's opening it up and he's going to be talking about vision and possibility and purpose and how to go from, I'm not sure what I want or, you know, I think I want this, but being able to expand that into something that's so much bigger. And then, so starting the week off with, let's put ourselves in a, in a place of possibility where we can do anything. And then by Monday, knowing this is exactly what I'm going to do. And this is how I'm going to execute it. Yeah. Uh, when people come into this, when there is so much, what is like, what is your recommendation for a plan of attack? When you're walking into a room and there's 150 coaches, the experts you're bringing in, there's a good chance that people come in thinking that

it's just too much. How, like, how, how do you, how would you recommend somebody actually process the weekend or like get, get in a mind space to be able to be prepared for it? I really like, uh, coming in from a place of, I'm going to take care of myself. So if you're feeling really worn out and you need some quiet time, pull off to the back, make sure you have a journal with you at all times to do some of that processing. And just being okay with not getting everything, you know, people, people really suffer from FOMO and, uh, you can really experience FOMO. Yeah.

Some people are more susceptible to it than others. Some people are like, eh, and other people want to dig in everything. I personally try to expose myself to as much when I get in those environments as possible and I ended up being exhausted at the end, but it's totally worth it. But yeah, one of the things I've learned is all I've got to do is take one thing away. Exactly. That's the only thing I'm going to say. Yeah, because I've been to the conferences and seminars and workshops that I've been

to where it made the biggest difference in my life. I was able to distill it down to one new thing I was going to do that made a huge difference. Totally. Yeah. One thing with a plan of execution and there's not amount of money you could have paid that would have been of value is that. Yes. One big plan.

Another thing that I think I've learned in going to events like this or being around is you go in and if you have any expectations, just have expectations of learning and meeting cool people. And then somehow the room kind of shakes out. You end up meeting the person you're supposed to meet if you just allow it to happen and don't force things. You end up in the right conversation with the right person at the right time just because all those people are in the right place. If you're specifically interested in just meeting casue and you have to have a great car, it's not going to work out. You're forcing it too hard. That's probably not the person you actually need to be with. Just go. Learn. Be open. Let it all come to you. By the end of it, you'll know that you're in the right with the right person to learn the right things.

Yeah. I remember the first mastermind event that Doug and I went to down in Miami. And I won't speak for Doug. He can let me know if he agrees with this. But I went in nervous. I'm about to walk into a room with 150 people where everybody has a lot of experience in business. I personally felt like I was very new to this. And a lot of the people that were in the room had written books or had created courses that we had taken. And like,

we knew who they were. They were, you know, the famous guys in business. And I remember, I remember just the whole week leading up to it going, Oh, you know, I'm expected to be able to contribute. And, and this is all high level people a long time. I don't know what I'm going to be able to contribute. And I was really nervous. And then by the end of the first day, Doug and I get back to our hotel room and high five. I was like, oh, man, I actually had a lot of stuff to contribute. I met people that were amazing. It was nothing like I imagined. It was way, way more relaxing, way more fun than I imagined it was going to be.

And I didn't feel like I was on the spot. And that was when I really began to learn how to understand that I'm going to have expectations for an event and they're going to be completely incorrect. And it's, it's usually way better than I was imagining. Yeah. Yeah. I'm totally with you on that. Like I felt like I had like imposter syndrome showing up a little bit, like, like they don't know, they don't know that I quote unquote, like only run a small run a small company with however many dozen employees. And there were many people there that were famous. And I knew that they were making way more money than we were and had way more success than we were.

But once I ended up in conversation with people, I went, oh, we've read the same books. We've studied the same concepts. We're trying to apply the same stuff. Sometimes there's some scale differences. This guy's been doing it for longer and has made more money or whatever but like all the ideas are kind of in the same in the same category we're all trying to work toward the same the same goals so to speak we all have similar challenges with with leadership and and whatnot and once i was in conversation i was like oh like we're all kind of cut from the same

cloth like we're all but we're all in different places along the journey. But everyone there was, was really, you know, really nice. And we're happy to share all the, all the things that they knew. And, and once I got there, I realized, oh, I, I am, I, I belong in this group. Like I'm a part of this, of this thing, just like everyone else is. And not like all those people knew each other. So I wasn't walking into this room of a hundred people that are all best friends. And I was like this one outsider. I realized that many of those people were feeling just like we else is. And not like all those people knew each other. So I wasn't walking into this room of a hundred people that are all best friends.

And I was like this one outsider. I realized that many of those people were feeling just like we were feeling there. They were there. They didn't necessarily know everybody. They were trying to make, trying to make friends. They're trying to be accepted,

et cetera. And by, by the end of the first day, I was like, Oh, this is, this is totally fun. I should do this all the time.

Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of those people that we met in 2013, I'm still friends with a lot of those people that we met in 2013 i'm still friends with a lot of those people so and and done a lot of cool stuff with and i would have never imagined that i would be mixing it up with them at any point down the road yeah speaking of 2013 let's go back two years before that we're coming up on the 10-year anniversary of Barbell Shrugged. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. We launched it, what, January 2012. I think it was. Yeah. Yeah, so next year. We're coming up. We recorded episode two, like, right then. Yeah, I don't remember when the very, very first episode was recorded,

but I remember our second episode was posted with Rich, and that was at the Arnold Classic, which is the beginning of March every year. So episode two was very early March 2012. So I'd imagine February or so. Yeah. Yeah, February 2012 was my best guess for episode one. Your second episode was Rich Froney? Yeah.

Yeah, very fortunately. Way to go right to the top, yeah. We're at a party at the Arnold Classic. Go ahead. Yeah. I felt like we were pestering him. I was like, oh, man, I'm going to go pester this guy. He's surrounded by people.

And we talked to him real quick. And you could tell that he couldn't wait to get out of there. He's like, can I just get away from all these people i'm feeling i would love to just go back and talk on a microphone i only have to talk to three other people that sounds incredible yeah um i'd love to hear kind of uh specifically you mike like uh the creating uh what you guys created in 2012 all the lessons learned obviously you know you probably recapped that on many shows but um and then the journey out and then really like where you're at now and reflecting on all the lessons learned and um being away from it for three and a half, maybe four years now. I don't even know how long it's actually been.

But yeah, when you kind of – yeah. I know when I left the gym or my gym, at the time I was leaving, there was like a completely different set of feelings than I have now four years years later on, on the processes, the learning, the lessons learned and all that. Um, what does kind of that reflection look like and feel like to you now? You know, uh, the process of, of starting Barbell Shrugged, uh, was, was such a big lesson in itself. And, and really it was, I mean, we recorded, I probably recorded a dozen things and sat down with mics with different people. Doug, Chris, Mike McGoldrick, some other people. Like we set up a little recording studio in my garage. It was totally shitty.

And we recorded a bunch of things that really didn't become barbell shrugged. There was, I would say there was at least a dozen shows that we practiced doing podcasts. And I imagine there were some people that were, you know, that were around me that go, you know,

all right, Mike's just screwing around with the microphone, these guys. But when it took, cause I know that Chris Moore and I started doing something in like October, November. And then, so from that time until we go barbell shrugged episode one was a lot of practice and we didn't know what we were doing.

And there was a lot of trial and error and we weren't sure if, you know, what we had to say was worth hearing and all these things, but we just did it because we loved it and we wanted to, it was something that we, we saw we could do. And then when we decided to pull the trigger on it, we really, uh, went all the way. We said, all right, let's get high quality video, high quality audio. No one's, you know, hardly anyone's doing high quality audio and high quality video. If we do that, we're going to stand apart on just quality. And so, yeah, one of the big lessons I've learned is,

is to really appreciate the process. I remind myself, you know, I've been an entrepreneur for 14 years now. It was November, 2007 that I opened up CrossFit Memphis. And it was really appreciating the process and enjoying the process because I'm in that same process today. I'm creating new things. I've got all these ideas. I've got a chalkboard back there behind me, and it's got all sorts of notes on it and some of it will never see the light of day and some of it some of it will be the basis for something that's really cool that's that's created in the future yeah and and just relaxing into that and saying you know what i just enjoy this process i enjoy the process of parsing through all this information and trying to figure out how to

help other people and and the thing that there's this thing that happens with a lot of coaches and entrepreneurs is a lot of times, like we have this, this feeling like we want to create something and we want to put something out in the world and we want to do all this stuff. So we have all these ideas and we make our ideas really, really important. But when the real magic happens is when we can take our ideas and we shape it around the audience member. We shape it around our ideal client. We shape it around who it is that we're serving and it transforms. It's a dance. And so it's beautiful to have your own, like in your head, this is what I want to do. But when you, when you really get into that place of being of service, that's when things

pop off. And so one of the big lessons for us was we knew in 2012 when we started Orbital Shrug that we wanted it to turn into, Doug and I were talking early on about this is a great place to market and get new ideas out there and potentially sell products and services. But, and we did, we sold some things and it did okay. But it was, it was when we, um, CTP and I went to a conference and we, we go, wow, we really just, what do they want? Is really started talking to people on the Facebook page back when you could actually do that.

And they wanted a muscle gain challenge, you know? So we launched muscle gain challenge in 2013. And that was really the moment where we met the audience, the clients right where they were at. And we were able to bring what we did well and meet them there. And that's when it became, I would say, became really magical. That was when we were able to not have to rely on the gym to produce our income. And we started being able to pull a good income from Barbell Shrug. But you know, it took like,

it took at least a dozen practice shows to get the first show up. We podcasted for a year and a half before we made any real money. And you know, it's, it's, it's the process. Yeah. The,

uh, how hard is it now that you're coaching coaches to get that message across where you go like i i can't even count the number of years where i was like i know and you need this but they didn't want it it takes a long time you go why don't i think about what you want and then i'll have my idea and i meld my idea with what you actually are looking for. And it's going to take a lot of time. That dance. Yeah.

Yeah, we got to get our attention off of ourselves and our own ideas. And I have a process for this. I allow, I give students a month. We have a four-month program. We give them a month of really have a four month program. We give them a month to really focus in on what they want. They have a whole month to really figure that out. And we have really cool ways of doing that. And then after that we go, cool, we're complete there. You know what you want. Now what do they want? And then we dig really deep into there. And anytime anyone starts talking about their idea, we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Go talk to your ideal client. And so we have interview questions. People go and talk to the person who would be their ideal client. And they just mind them for the pain that they're experiencing, the problems that they want to have solved, any frustrations they may have, the goals that they have, and really getting in touch with what is the best thing this person can hear or the best service they can receive in this moment to move them to the next step. Not 10 steps forward, but the next step. And I know that a, I know that a coach has done it well when they put together some type of program

and they're working with clients and they go, wow, that was way easier than I thought it was because we, we create these magnificent, uh, pieces of art in our head that we want to deliver to the client. And then the client's like, I just want, you know, a stick figure. I don't need Monet. Uh, and so, uh, I remember when, uh, was it, when we put together, uh, the muscle gain challenge, we were making, uh, videos to explain the workout every single day for, for six months. And then it turned into a year. And then we had people that want to stay in longer i did i did like 500 videos

of how to do this workout programs it wasn't just muscle getting challenge you did it for like four programs it was hard every day for a couple years for four programs it it was it was one of those things where and then we realized that no one's even watching the videos. And here I am making all these videos and don't even need them. And we go, oh, we should just make one video a week that explains the, all the workouts ahead of time. You know, that's five minutes. And so it's, that's an example of, we think that that needs to be way more complex. And we, we tend to associate effort with success. and that happens in fitness too right there's like the more effort I put in the more success I enjoy and that does work

until it stops working yeah yeah and then you have to get smarter and so the same thing happens with this is just because it requires a lot of effort from you doesn't mean that it's valuable to your customers. So really being in touch the whole time. Like I said, there's, I know a coach has done it well when they go, wow, I taught like a third of what I thought I was going to teach in that, that 90 day program that I took these clients through. And I've got like level two and level three to go now. So coaches, coaches have way more knowledge than they think they do. There's this assumption of knowledge of other that is just not true. Like, oh, everyone must know about this. And everyone knows about macros or everyone knows about gut health or you should drink this kind of water and not that kind of water. So there's all these things that people make assumptions about.

And then when they start interacting with their clients, they go, oh. When I talk to people and they ask me for fitness advice, I used to, you know, be like, okay, let me see you squat. That's not my first question now. Someone asked me for fitness advice and I go, oh, your what are you doing the first 10 minutes of your day uh you know it could be drink a glass of water and go for a 20-minute walk without your phone if you do that every day for a lot of people their fitness would would improve dramatically if they did that one thing oh yeah that's great advice for me anytime you could you could you can flip-fl can, you can, you can flip flop where, where you're the student in,

in an environment where, you know, very little, you pay attention to the person who's, who's teaching you or coaching you. Even if it's not like a coaching setting, like, like I'm thinking about getting my kitchen renovated.

And when the guy was here, like explaining all the details of, of what the options are and how, how it could possibly be done the The whole time I'm like wanting to jump in and just tell him what I want, but he's not listening. He's not concerned about what I want. He's just telling me everything that he knows and I'm getting frustrated, but he has no idea that I'm frustrated because he's just telling me, he's just trying to like, let me know how smart he is and that he can do anything that I want, but I don't care. I just want to tell him what I want and he can go,

okay, I can do that. But he's not asking me any questions. Like the salesman, the sales portion of his presentation was very poor. But as that, as the student in that situation, I'm looking at this guy going,

Oh wow. Like this is what it's like when a new fitness person comes into the gym and the, and the trainer is just going to like try to like wow them with physiology knowledge and whatnot. And they're just like, I don't fucking care about anything you're saying right now. How about you actually ask me what I want? So if you can be a student and pay attention to how you're being coached whenever you really don't know what's going on, go take a snowboarding lesson or a surfing lesson or whatever it is.

Like get in an environment where you know nothing and then just go there and purely pay attention to how you're being coached. And that will help you be a better coach because you can see the other side of it. This is great. I feel like a lot of coaches miss that too. I feel like in life people miss that one. They just want, when they get to a certain level,

they want the world to know I'm so dang smart. You know, like look at me. And then they don't even care about the person that's actually in front of them. If we would just talk. You know, like look at me. And then they don't even care about the person that's actually in front of them. If we would just talk, you know, what is it? Selling ain't telling or telling ain't selling, you know, like listen to somebody like it would be good even for just a coach who,

you know, they're not actually, you know, I have the coaches of Lenore. I mean, my athletes, Lenore Ryan, the more I just listened to them, the more our community is starting to click versus like, you know, me assuming that they knew X and assuming they wanted X for me as a coach. Like it's totally changed from what I thought. I'm 48 years old. I'm still learning from these young kids. So yeah, you're the student, the coach, the coach is the student that the client is waiting

to teach you about them. And, uh, we got to give them the opportunity and uh Doug what you were saying that that go take a lesson uh that's actually an exercise that we have people do in our program is we look if you've never been to a dance class go take a dance class we call it the always be a white belt exercise from Zach Evanesh. Zach Evanesh, always be a white belt. And yeah, just use that quote and people got to go do that. And I go, okay, that's how you're going to feel or that's how your clients may feel when they come see you.

It is very enlightening. That's great advice, Doug. When you kind of look back, or I should say, in working with the coaches that you are working with now and kind of reflecting on Shrugged, the transition out, I think that many people, and it kind of relays into like trying to be the smartest person in the room instead of just listening, but the identity piece, um, how hard was the identity shift for you? Uh, leaving shrugged, building the strong coach, becoming an expert or not an expert. That's a terrible word, but becoming the coach to coaches now where you were shifting out of kind of the strength conditioning piece. Yeah, it was very difficult. Because I didn't actually leave Barbell Shrug to do the strong coach.

I took a break. I didn't actually know what I wanted to do. All I knew is that I was experiencing, I think some would call it burnout. But yeah, I was done. I didn't have the energy to keep going anymore. And I had no idea what I wanted. And that's very common amongst people who, if you've put everything into something and then you go, oh, I want to do something else. You don't even have the space to consider where that other thing could be because you're so focused in on this one thing. And I, I had been focused in on Orbel Shrugged for, uh, five years at the time, five, six years when, when, uh, it was about six years when, when I made that decision and it was, um, and I made

a decision because I was just really, uh, unhappy with the way that I was living my life, the way that I was, I was doing things. And, uh, it required me to take a break from everything in order to get that. And so when I away from Barbell Shrugged was really difficult because I went from Mike Bledsoe, host of Barbell Shrugged, walk into a room, people recognize me. And then so much of my identity being tied up in that guy and then saying, you know what, that's not who I am anymore. And then there's this fear that comes in that guy and then saying, you know what, that's not who I am anymore. And then there's this fear that comes in that says, well, you're not going to be good at anything else. You really

hit the jackpot with this one thing. And, you know, that would keep a lot of people doing the same thing. And I just go, you know, it's not worth it. I don't care if I'm poor and living under a bridge somewhere. I just need to really get in touch with, uh, with living, uh, the life I want to live. And so it was a six month period. And during that six months, I was willing to take a year off from, from doing anything. But six months of that, it was a slow progression of that six month period of just letting go and being okay with just being me. And, and I traveled around and I, and I visited with people and I hung out and I crashed at people's houses. And I was actually here in Austin, Texas,

when I was staying with Michael and Adi Cashew. And I happened to float tank here in Texas. And I had gotten to the point where I was simply relaxing. I had no concern about what anything was happening for anybody. And I was enjoying myself day after day after day. And I got in a float tank. And the idea of the strong coach comes flowing in. And I go, oh, cool idea. You know, when I'm in a float tank, I have a lot of ideas that come in.

And then I let them go and they're just, they're just flowing. But this idea just kept getting stacked in the float tank. So for 90 minutes, it was, yeah, do this and launch it like this and do it like this and do it like this. And this is what the coaches are wanting and so on and so forth. And so for me, uh, me, it was the identity piece was difficult, but starting something new, it was as if I couldn't stop it. And so I had really set myself up for success by giving myself that space. Yeah. Why was that idea the one that stuck? You're not the one for having a small number of ideas. Yeah.

You have the vision already for anything that could be 10 years down the road. I often find if someone has a good idea, I'm like, I could write that business plan for you in literally eight minutes if you wanted me to. It's the doing it part and it actually being a valuable idea that you're interested in. That's the really challenging piece. You know what? I was really committed to not building anything in 2018. And what it was, was I only wanted to behave out of inspiration. And so up to that point, I recognized that a lot of things that made me unhappy is that I was taking advantage of opportunities because the opportunities were so massive.

And I was like, oh, I could do that. Oh, I could do that. Instead of going, instead of going, what is it? What, what really inspires me? What, what's, what's the thing that I just couldn't stop myself from doing? And so, you know, I could make up stories about why that, that one stuck. You know, one of the stories I could tell about it is I was, when I was traveling, I found myself surrounded by coaches and some of the people in which I had coached previously that had been in the mastermind, uh, when we had barbell, uh, uh, business and things like that. And, and I go, wow, in my free time, when I'm doing the things that I love to do and I'm just living and loving, I'm surrounding myself with coaches and, uh,

hanging out with people for when I would, I would organize little gatherings where we would just kick it and work out and stuff. And I was surrounded by coaches. And then I, what I noticed, the reason the idea came in is I saw where coaches were suffering. I saw that they weren't experiencing, they weren't listening to their clients. They weren't experiencing the type of connection and intimacy that a coach could have with a client that really helps them achieve their goals. And I really saw that as something that I was very good at being able to teach someone how to do. I go, oh, it's a very easy thing to teach. This is the problem I see. Well, A, these are the people I love. I love coaches. This is the problem I see that they

have. I have a very specific solution that will help solve that problem. And so I threw a course together thinking that it was just going to be a course. I didn't really think about it being this, you know, the thing that I dedicated everything to. I just thought, oh, this would be a great course to put up and, you know, the coaches that need to see it will buy it. But I wasn't interested in making money at the time and I wasn't interested in growing the business. So what I did was I, I got it off the ground. I got a couple of classes through and then my, one of my first students, Danny Rios, he, uh, you know, by the end of the, he was in the first class. He's like, how can I help? I was like, I don't know. I, uh,

I was thinking about just making this a course, but if you want to coach it and come in, we can work it like that. Danny pretty much ran the show for a year. So I started The Strong Coach, and then I went back. I spent a few months getting it off the ground, and then I went back to screwing off and went back to having fun. And so it's not like I was hit with this inspiration. I was like, I'm going to take

this business and I'm just going to go for world domination. It was like, yeah, I started a business. It generates some income. That's cool. One of the things I realized when you have the experience and you know what to do and you identify a pain point like I

did, you can make – running a business that makes $250,000 to $500,000 a year doesn't have to be a full-time venture. You don't have to break yourself. Once you know what to do and you have the tools, it's not that hard. It's way easier than a lot of other businesses if you're an entrepreneur. And there's always a learning curve if you're coming from the corporate world and you're trying to become an entrepreneur. There's a lot more personal development work that's required for somebody who's never run their own thing before. So they learn how to lead themselves. But yeah, it was one of the reasons I started is because it was easy and I had avoided easy

things in my life up to that point. I'd always gone for the most hard thing you could do. Right. No shit. Yeah. So, so it was, it was actually a, a, a refreshing thing for me to go, yeah, I'm just gonna do something easy. I'm not going to put much effort into it.

And then the thing I put the least amount of effort into ended up taking off and, and doing really well. I don't know if I could say it was the best, you know, most profitable thing I've ever done, but it, well, I would say it has been the most profitable because the amount of effort I put in and the amount I've gotten back out is that, that ratio is super high. That's what I'm into. Yeah. Not having to die. You know, I have too many, I have four kids.

You're going to have to die at some point, Travis. Yeah. But I'm going to try to put that off a little bit. I feel like the last two years I've tried to see how close I can come. Let's see if I can push it to the edge, you know, 48 and 48. So yeah. You working on a PhD. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you know, the thing is, I love that. It's just like, I'm starting to see, you know,

a lot of things I'm not in love with anymore well I mean even my I told my athletes that in 2024 that's a wrap for coaching at that moment it would be if I can make it to then you know but yeah just things have changed and like I really love to teach I love I do love school I just don't love you know how little time I have you know I have to stay you know I don't sleep, basically. Something has to get me to sleep. Mike, so right now you're running the Strong Coach and you're running this big upcoming summit there in Austin at that cool camp. Are you coaching anybody one-on-one right now or small groups? What are you doing for coaching yourself as an

individual? I have a handful of clients that I have in my mastermind. So I coach them. It's not one-on-one. Sometimes they get some one-on-one attention, but mostly small group. So I coach a couple hours each week. But aside from that, Is it a virtual mastermind or is this something in Austin? What's the mastermind? It's virtual. Yeah. Yeah. We meet on Zoom and I just coach them up as a group. I know where everyone's at in their business. And each week we come in and check in and they tell me where they're at and we move what needs to be moved. We advise the way we need to advise.

So it's myself and another one of my coaches. There's two of us that man that call. And the people I'm coaching, they're making between, I'd say, like $20,000 and $60,000 a month. And they're, you know, we're just working on moving into the next level for them. That's the only coaching I'm doing right now. I'm not doing a lot. Most of what I'm doing is running the business and then making sure that, you know, we have three full-time coaches with Strong Coach. And making sure that they're completely dialed in. They have everything that they need, that they're happy.

You know, they've been, some of them have been coaching for over three years, some for two now. And the things they now bring to the table, you know, they, I'd say as a, as the skill of coaching, they've surpassed me. Now the skill of teaching, that's a different story. That's, that's more of where I'm interested in being as, as teaching, not necessarily coaching and facilitating. Yeah.

How hard have you found it kind of in the way that your brain works with lots of ideas. We could say that you may get slightly bored with things easily once you've built it. It's like being the leader of it and kind of getting other people to take over the reins of the business to being focused specifically on this project and this business and staying interested in it? Yeah. Well, I think that I've built some really cool things. I've been part of some teams that have built some really cool things several times over and had that experience of getting bored.

But something that's happened over the last few years, I really recognize how changing vocation or changing businesses every few years really kept me learning at a surface level. a million, 2 million, 3 million, like going through that process a few times to really understand that to a degree where I'm like, okay, if I want to go say, if I want to build a business that goes to 10 million, what do I have to learn now? And realizing that, well, part of it is you have to, you have to stay focused on it once it gets to that point, right? So, yeah, there's like several levels to what's helped cause me to be much more focused. And for instance, I'm three and a half years in to the Strong Coach. And the level of inspiration that I'm experiencing in delivering the best service possible is higher than when I started it. And I don't think I could say that for anything else I've ever done.

And there's a few reasons why. One is I have a plan for financial sovereignty. I have a plan for financial freedom. And that is I want to generate enough income through passive revenue, which means I need to accumulate certain amount of money in assets that create passive income. So say, rental properties or something like that, or having stock in companies that are paying out dividends and this sort of thing, that requires a certain amount of income over a period of time to get there. And so one of the things that have been really helpful for me is instead of,

I think one of the reasons I got tired of some businesses before is because I didn't see how I was going to make $100 million with them. And now I realize I don't need to make $100 million. I need to make a lot less than that. And I just need to manage what I have really, really well. And so realizing that and I go, oh, the Strong Coach doesn't have to be a $10 million brand. It can do $2 million a year. And it'll be way more than I need. And I can.

So, yeah, I have my number. I know how much I need to invest each month for a number of years so that I can be completely, like all my work becomes optional in 20 years, you know, by the time I'm 60. Now, am I doing 10? So what I realized is because I'm very in touch with my numbers, which I used to not be as in touch with my numbers. Once I got

really in touch with my numbers, um, my motivation, I go, Oh, if I do this, then that moves me up two years. So I start making decisions to go, okay. And I started looking at my business, not as the source of my wealth, because that's the mistake that most entrepreneurs make early on is they think all my wealth, you know, I'm going to reinvest in my company. And then my company is my best investment that I can make. I have the most control over it. And this is, I mean, I bet Doug can remember, I used to say that. And now I treat my business as an income producing activity so that I can then go invest in things that create passive income. And so it really takes the pressure off of the business. And so that's one aspect of what's helping me stay focused is I know my numbers and I have clear goals. The other one is I'm interested in having a family now. Whoa. Yeah. Don't do it.

Everything you just said. Back it up. Yeah. You sounded so happy a second ago. Don't do it. Everything you just said, all those numbers you were just talking about just tripled. Oh yeah. The record scratch on the podcast.

Yeah. Yeah. All the diesel nads are yelling at you. Whoa. No. I think it's hard. I love, I like.

Yeah. It's awesome. It's all jokes. It's all jokes. Yeah. awesome. I love, I like. Yeah. Also, it's awesome. It's all jokes. It's all jokes. Yeah. I'm really interested in having a family. And I want to be, I want to have kids. I want to be present with them.

And if I want to be present with them, that means I really need, you know, the better I do right now, the more focused I can be right now, the more present I can be for children in the future. And so that's, that's a, I would say that's my main, that's the thing that's driving everything. I had dinner with somebody last night that was trying to, there's this, there's this startup and they're trying to get my attention and they want to bring me in as a consultant. And I'm just like, look, man, this is what I want to do. And this is what needs to happen. So if you want this, it's going to cost something. It's going to cost a lot because to get my attention off of the thing that's producing the income, that's allowing me to make the investments I want to make so that I can have time with my family, it's going to have to pay well. It doesn't have to just be exciting and new and shiny like it used to be.

When I wasn't thinking about family, it was like, yeah, let's do some shiny shit. I can put my self-worth into that and it'll be fun. I appreciate your brain for doing that because I have a similar brain and now Doug has learned the lesson to go pump the brakes, bro. Let's just get good at that thing. That one thing's working. We don't need to do the next cool thing. Let's just keep the main thing, the main thing. And, uh, we don't have to go build a new shiny one. Doug's very good at that. Yeah. He's had a lot of practice. He got all the training with me.

It's like... He goes, I think that's a great idea, but I think we should just keep doing what we're doing. It's working. I go, oh yeah, it's working. We could do more of that if you want. You don't have to change it. And get even better at it. Yeah.

You got to find a balance there, though. You got to try new stuff at times, but then you also need to recognize when things are working. If something's working, in my mind, that's a special thing. Things don't work automatically. That's true. Mike was talking about meeting people where they're at. If you match what someone needs to what you know and what you have, that's special. And you should find a way to scale that thing.

And yeah, you need, just like Mike bailed on Shrug because he just needed something new in his life. Sometimes you do just need something new. Even if it's working and it's cool, you just need something new for yourself. That's cool too. All these things are happening at all times. And it's hard to You just need something new for yourself. That's cool too. All these things are happening at all times and it's hard to find a balance between them. But yeah, we've definitely made the mistake before of having stuff that's working and then gotten distracted on the next cool thing. And then the thing that was working starts to suffer and you're like, oh shit,

I thought that thing was just going to work automatically forever. I guess that's not the case. So now, I traditionally have been like the guy who's been able to focus, but I found over time, especially working with Mike, that like he started to get better at focusing. And at the same time I was getting better at being like, I don't know, this other thing, it looks kind of cool. Let's go to this other thing. It's like we kind of crossed over each other for a while. And then, and then we,

During that crossover, that's when everything went to chaos. Everything got crazy. Well, uh, you know, I have a lot of creativity. I have a lot of ideas. And one of the ways that I've harnessed that to something that's actually beneficial instead of destructive is not only do I say, how do I bring this idea into my current business, but how do I bring this idea to improve my current product? And so that really helps me do that because I have, like I said, I've got a chalkboard full of ideas and a percentage of those actually make them

into my products. I go, man, I really want to teach this. I'm like, okay, well how does that fit? How do you, how do you enhance, how does this make your product more valuable to your customers? And so that using that as a, as a frame to go, okay, great. I give myself the freedom to have ideas and, and all that. And what's the context who, who is going to this valuable? And is it your current customers? And can you provide it inside the current product? Because I look back on Barbell Shrugged and we had an incredibly successful launch of the Muscle Gain Challenge.

And I tell people all the time is that if I had Barbell Shrugged to do over again, I would just do the Muscle Gain Challenge and keep improving the program, improving the marketing and just keeping on improving it all the time. And so, you know, that's, that's, that's what I do now. I go, yeah, let's not create anything new. Let's keep improving what we have. And so keeping track of everything that is systemizing everything in the business. So we know which, which is the next thing that needs to be improved. And we go, oh, well, everything's going really strong, but this is our weak link. How can we improve that?

And so we go and we improve that, and we just methodically go through the business making improvements, and I get to use my creativity to do that. I think you said something huge for a lot of entrepreneurs out there. I think a lot of us have a similar story. Like I started in a gym. The gym did really well. Then I went to a lot of us have a similar story. You know, like I started in a gym, the gym did really well. Then I went to this online, then I focused totally online and never once along the way to decide to systemize everything perfectly and like have it

really, really running to a point where I can step away. So what would happen? I would go from a really good business to another really good business. And I wasn't accumulating several businesses. I was just, because I never really systematized it like I should. But it's all part of the process. I think like when we don't realize as coaches, especially, I mean, I'm 11 years into being an entrepreneur now. At the time, in that 11- 11 year process like the first one works and then the second one works kind of and then you realize like the third one kind of work like

whether it's opening gyms whether it's online products whatever it is like the first one works really well because you're like so focused i I have to survive. You're all in. Either go bankrupt, homeless, like you're all in. And then you have success, and then you open your second gym, and it like kind of works, but you don't realize going from one to two is a total, total different business. Like that, everything changes in that.

And now business one suffers a little bit, business two does okay, and now all you've done is double your problems, but not double the revenue and double the systems and everything that goes along with it. But you have to kind of go through that. And that's just, I think it's just a part of really being in it and playing the forever game. I just have to go figure this thing out. And then one of the proudest moments I had in 2020 was Doug and I realized we went from having our weekly team meeting to having a product meeting

where we just focus on making the product better like every week. And I was like, I feel like we're like real. I feel so cool right now. We're having just a specific meeting on one piece of the business. And then we have a lead gen and marketing meeting. And where are the leads coming from? Can we make them better? Like being able to go from like just that one big one of what's everyone doing? Okay, cool. Go

to like, let's focus on the individual pieces and then as things grow and get better you can break those into individual pieces and components uh that to many people like you never even get to the we need the individual component meeting now to make it better to make that to focus on that piece and what are we all what rock are we moving forward this week uh that of all the stuff like that that really was like one of the more proud moments of the year for for me specifically was like i were truly focusing on these core components that make everything better right in a room with um dave spitz at the senior pan games. So you have two people who have very similar lives in general.

And come to find out, you know, I'm sure he's on the West Coast. I'm on the East Coast. I assume a lot about him. He assumes a lot about me. Come to find out, we had done the exact same thing. We had this awesome gym. We had a lot of great athletes. We were doing really well.

We decided we'd play around with this online thing. The online thing blew up, took all our attention away. And, like, with me, I know because I was first of doing the Weightlifting Team, you know, if I would have really thought about the product, like you're saying, Anders, if I'd really decided, hey, let's don't just kind of do this Weightlifting Team. Let's do it better than anyone ever could. And then I wouldn't have, you know, basically all I did was give a great idea to Dave Spitz,

Juggernaut, to all these other people. So they just, oh, it's a great idea. I'll just do it really good. And so I wouldn't have really thought about it and said, I'm going to crush it from the beginning. I wouldn't have like, you know, opened those gates up for those people. Yeah. All this stuff though, it just takes time time and you have to go through the failures.

Uh, I actually wonder, uh, Mike, when you're, when you're talking to the coaches, it's a four month program that's taken you 14 years to put together. Yeah. Like when people meet you along the way, how far are they into their kind of entrepreneurial or coaching career? And then, you know, they've got to be around you to kind of pick these pieces apart. Because in four months, you really build like the core of a program. But massaging it into their ideal client and who they're actually serving and meeting people where they're at, That's a long process. What is the shape of your program that allows

them to get that core offer and then really helping people find the messaging to massage it to their audience? Well, by the end of the 16 weeks, they should have launched their program to their beta group. So we identify, they have their ideal client by week eight. They're conducting interviews. They know who they are. And then, you know, we have them practice writing headlines that are specific to the problems that they've discovered during their interview calls. We also create an offer. We create an offer that solves all the

problems that they heard about when they were doing their interviews with their ideal clients. And then we create a webinar, a masterclass. We have them create a masterclass that we can, they can get people into, get them on their email list, things like that. And, and one thing I remind the coaches as they go through the program is we are giving you the tools. You, you just keep doing this process. The strong coach goes through our, our own process. That's how we improve our business quarter after quarter is by just using our own processes. We're just teaching what works for us. And I remind people is this, this doesn't end, you know, coaches want to believe that, you know what, I'm going to learn this one marketing trick and then I'm never going to learn anything else about marketing and I can just coach, you know, but that's not the reality

of it. And as much as we want that to be true, it's just not going to be true. And so first, you just got to get real about that. And if you can swallow that pill, then you realize that to me, marketing and coaching, it's all the same thing. It's how do I reach these people? And I'm always improving my marketing and I'm always improving my product. And it's just, you know, I go from marketing to product. I just go back and forth. So one quarter, it's very focused on the product and the next quarter it's focused on improving the marketing. And we're just, uh, waving back and forth. And, you know, in a, in a three year period, the, the, what we're doing and what every

coach should be doing three years down the road is unrecognizable to what you were offering a few years ago. You should be improving your product three years later. You should be improving your marketing. Everything should be improving. And if anyone should understand how this works, it should be coaches because that's what we do for our clients. We take them through progressions. We, they, they get better by repetition, by practicing. And so building a business and building a coaching business is no different. You know, you said earlier that you, you know, that some of the people that work with you are better coaches, but you're a teacher. Can you talk about the differences in being a teacher and being a coach? Yeah. So I'll try to do this without sounding too woo-woo, but-

I'm good with woo-woo. I love your woo-woo. Yeah. All right. Cool. Yeah. Well, you know- It's a good woo-woo. A coach, the first thing about a coach is they've got to be able to hold the space for the client. And it's not just when you're on a call with those clients or whatever. It's for the duration of the relationship. As long as that client is your client, they're taking up space and you're having to hold that space for them.

You're thinking about them. You're keeping up with what's going on in their business. And there's only so many people you can hold space for. And some people can hold more space than others. There's emotional space that needs to be held because a client may be, you know, I don't think we've ever had a class where we didn't have somebody practically have a nervous breakdown at some point because they're just having to shift so many things and they have a freak out moment moment and our coaches are completely cool with that you got to hold that space and be like cool i see that you're freaking out we're all safe so creating a creating a container of safety and holding that so you know a lot of our clients are working with

us for four to 18 months at a time. And that's, that's space that needs to be held for them. I personally am not interested in holding that space, uh, for the clients. I, I'm interested in holding the space for the business and for my coaches. Um, and then, uh, the coach is also a facilitator there. They have, They have certain methods and techniques that they're using to shift the mindset of the clients. And so they're in real time interacting with the clients. They're tracking things that are happening in their business and that's happening for them. And they're making recommendations. And these are all things that I could do, but I personally prefer to be the one that creates the frameworks in which the coaches then go use on the client.

And so, yes, I need to be coaching to a this point in the game, what I've learned is I've got way more knowledge to share than the students have the ability to consume. Uh, and so, uh, for me, it's about how do I, I'm not as interested in, in improving as a coach until, uh, a client really challenges me to a degree where I need to grow in order to meet them there. I'd 100% agree with you. I've been coaching since 1997. My first athlete was this Jenny is her name. She was a volleyball girl.

In 1997, my first person. I'm getting to the point of I don't have the space for the emotion. You know, I just, I would rather create a framework and like let the new coaches. So, I mean, I used to feed off that. I mean, I'm sure you guys did too. I wanted to be in there and be a part of it. I wanted to know everything about their life because I wanted to make this real change, but I've done that now. And so like now I need, my family needs that space, you have a two-year-old

daughter. I'm 48. I need to give her as much space as I can because who knows? I want to be around as long as I can for her. Things have changed. I get what you're saying. There's also a hierarchy to the coaching side of it.

It's like all the technical pieces of squatting. I don't want to teach that anymore. But I used to love that. I used to love blowing someone's mind when they found their glutes. You're like, see, I told you. That trick works, doesn't it?

I told you you would feel them. They're right there. You'd never met them before your whole life and now you know where your ass is. Incredible. And now i don't want to teach that anymore because you do it thousands of times in a gym you do it over and over in a day and then you realize there's like there's a way there's a much there's a next level

to to coaching and getting into the mindset behavior patterns and then even when you when you kind of get tired of that and you go let well, let's talk about all of the habits in your life or the framework to which you approach things, the language that you're using on a day-to-day basis. There's so many levels to it that you're allowed to go from the technical pieces and train a coaching staff to handle that so that when people encounter the next level of problems, which you're obviously going to hit the roadblocks. You're obviously going to get to a place where the technical pieces just don't, they work or you've mastered them and you don't need them anymore. We have to, we have to bump up the scale. And that's a, I think that that's just, there's in a way like, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, Michael, like getting coaches to actually understand their value and meeting coaches where they're at, because some people need to be in that technical space. Some people need to be in kind of like a more mindset space, but working themselves up the hierarchy, how are you meeting them where they're

at and then giving them the value so that they can go charge more or solve larger problems for people? Yeah. I mean, people come from all different levels of coaching and experience and some people are really new and they go, I don't have, I've had a few people come and have no clients. I don't advise doing the program. If you have no clients, I really like people who the coaches that tend to do really well with us, they're, they're at least coaching 10 people and making a few thousand dollars a month. If you're doing zero, you'll see improvement, but the people who are doing that are going to see a 5X return is really what we're looking at. I get real with people. It's all about the results

you're getting your clients. In the beginning know, in the beginning you may need to be one-on-one and charge 50 bucks an hour, you know, charge very little, you know, we've had people come in that were charging 25 bucks an hour for their training. And I, I was like, I don't care how good you are. You got to raise your price on that. Uh, you know, you, you, you got to have money to invest in getting better. Uh, so, um So yeah, really getting people in touch with the, the demand for what you have to offer will, will tell you when to raise your prices. And so I know a lot of really high school coaches that don't understand marketing that should be charging more, but because they don't know how to communicate the value to the customer or the client, they're just not going to get that person to pay. So there's, there's the real value that a coach has. And most coaches,

uh, they, they see themselves as less valuable or their services as less valuable than they actually are. And then they don't understand that it's the perceived value of the client that dictates the price. And so what ends up happening is they may go, I have all this information. I'm afraid to charge more because I don't value myself. But also because I don't value myself, I don't know how to communicate in a way that connects with the clients. So they see me as valuable. And so what you end up having is you have a lot of people in the industry who are really good at marketing that have a poor product. And then coaches associate, well, if you're really good at marketing, then you probably have a poor product. I don't want to be that guy.

So people have this identity thing, like I don't want to be the guy or the girl who is putting out all this crazy information and then telling people I can get them results. And then they're not sure about themselves. So, you know, there's most of this is solved through repetition is working with a lot of clients. And I like to say, look, I'll be I think I've got less than 10 percent of people that come through are charging what they should be charging. Ninety percent need to raise their prices in some way. And and one of the things we do is we make a map of everything that they offer their clients to solve their problems. Once you get in reality with the problems that the client is focused on, and then you're able to create an offer that matches that perfectly,

then the coach a lot of times see the value of what they're providing to their clients and get excited about charging more. But it's a repetition thing because if you're new to coaching, maybe you charge a little so that you can get more reps in. And sometimes if you've got a lot of experience, you just need to raise your price and also know that sometimes you're going to raise your price and you're going to sign more people up. So the price is not going to dictate. Most people think it's a counter intuitive type of approach to raise your price and get more clients. But the truth is you can go from $100 a month to $200 a month and you could sign more people up the next month. People associate value with the price of something.

They do. of something. The money conversation and what the charge is a very, it's a big conversation that we, we approach very methodically there. We have to look at what are the stories that you have about money? What did you learn from your parents about money? How is that impacting your decision-making around money now? Are you associating your own, you know, how, how much do you value yourself? Do you, do you believe that the business is, and the service you provide is indicative of your own personal value? Because these are not the same thing. One of the terms that I, I really, that makes me cringe in the coaching industry is when people say, charge what you're worth.

I go, really? I'm going to charge what I'm worth. Well, you know what? I think I'm worth a million bucks. I've got really high self because there's going to be exchange for your labor, a piece of your life for that, uh, that service. And so it, I really like to get people to divorce the idea of their own personal value, how much, how, how their self-esteem is doing and connecting that. Screw your self-esteem. If you have low self-esteem, you need to deal with that, but that has nothing to do with how much you're charging. If you're focused on your self-esteem in regard to how much you're charging, you're being very, there's a lack of empathy. There's an inability. It's a very selfish place to be in. You have to...

Prideful, arrogant, all the words. Yeah, yeah. You're being very arrogant. You got to connect with the client and what you're going to provide them and how much they value that service. And when you get outside of yourself and you really allow the potential client and the client to tell you how much things are worth, and they'll tell you by how much money they give you. And you have to ask for different amounts of money and figure out what that is. So there's a conversation that's happening through transactions.

And it's a process. I'm going to charge this. Okay, next round, I'm going to charge this. So I can push these boundaries. I can charge more or less. I've raised my prices once and then lowered them down. One time I raised them and then I lowered them down. And that's because I had one sales guy and he had a psycho-emotional block around asking for anything above this particular number.

And I go, you know what? I'm not lowering it down because I think it's less valuable. I'm lowering it down so you can build your confidence in the sales process. So we lowered it back down. And then guess what? We had two people go through a program that had spent more money. Who got the best results out of the whole program? The two people who spent the most money.

And he goes, Mike, let's raise the prices again. I said, perfect. Because he realized that he was doing a disservice to his clients by charging too little. Because most of the time, not everybody, but most of the time people will invest, their financial investment will be matched by their energy and attention. And that's what we really want as coaches. In order for our clients to get results

is they have to invest their time and attention. And if you spend a certain amount of money, I guarantee you, your time and attention will be given to that thing. I don't go to conferences that cost a couple hundred bucks. I need to spend a few thousand bucks to know that I'm going to, I really want to be there and I'm going to be surrounded by other people who really want to be there. You're vested. Yeah. Mike, what have you done to examine and or improve your own beliefs around money? You were talking about people like they get their beliefs kind of consciously and unconsciously from their surroundings growing up, from their parents, et cetera. What have you done to proactively improve your beliefs around money?

Wow. Okay. techniques, there's emotional trauma techniques, there's language techniques that you can apply to any area of your life in order to disassemble what is and then reassemble the way you want it to, right? And whether that's happening mentally, which would be your mental structures are made up of primarily like symbols and language. And then you got your emotional structures, which is a much, well, it's less of a structure and much more of a flow. But also learning to navigate the emotional waters and being okay with any emotion that comes up, which most people aren't okay with that. People avoid, people think they avoid situations. They avoid situations because they're afraid that situation

is going to make them feel a certain way. They're avoiding a feeling. And so the practice of understanding and being in touch with how I'm feeling when I check my bank account in the morning, if I got to check my bank account, some people just don't check the bank account. They avoid it. I used to avoid checking my bank account. I don't want to know how little money I've got. And what I realized is I was just avoiding a feeling. I know that if I check and I see that number, I'm going to have this feeling. So you know what? I'll just ignore it. So I took a lot of practices that were psychological, a lot that are emotional.

I looked at my patterns of behavior, the reality, the results that I had gotten with money up to that point. Um, and I, uh, there, I, so that that's, that's the framework of some of like the broad strokes of how I've approached it in the past. Um, I took a, uh, landmark, took a landmark. You guys are familiar with landmark curriculum. It's a leadership training. I took a 10 week money course, which is all mindset stuff. It was pretty good. I would say that was the thing that was 2017. And then the, I did a lot of like childhood emotional trauma work back at the end of 2017 as well. And I really saw the impact that how I witnessed my parents when I was like two, three, four, five, six years old impacted how I viewed money now. So, I mean, it taught me how I viewed a lot of things now,

but it became very obvious to me that everything that I believed was not true. And so I really like to approach things from a position of, you know, is it true or not? Almost nothing we believe is actually true. It's a story that's been passed down. And then asking myself, well, what's useful to believe? So if I can come from a place of saying, look, you know, I don't know if this is true or not. Because, I mean, when you look at something and you say, is this true? And you say yes or no. Some people are like, well, of course it's true. I've got all this evidence. It's like, okay, well, how do you know it's true?

And then can you sit down with a journal and say, well, this is how I know it's true because of this, this, and this. And you got to be able to point at it. You know, it can't be like a – anyways. And then you can ask yourself – this is a Byron Katie questions from the work I really like. So the first question is, is it true? How can you absolutely know that it's true? So I like the absolutely word in there. How can you absolutely know that it's true? How can you absolutely know that this is true? So I like the absolutely word in there. How can you absolutely know that it's true? How do you behave when you believe that

thought? So you're acknowledging that it's just a thought. And what's the behavior that comes from that? Do you isolate yourself? Do you lash out at people? Whatever it is. And then the last one is, who would you be or who are you without that thought? And then those – you journal out those four questions and that really will get you – if you do that honestly, some people are a little stubborn. If you do that honestly enough times, you'll start seeing the fiction that is creating your financial reality. And so once you do that, you can then ask yourself, well, what's a useful way to believe? And so one of the things I like to do is look at people who – I like to learn from people who lead by example. And so people who I know that are really wealthy, I ask them things about money. Like I listen to how they think about money.

I listen to what they say about it. I go, you know, I'll try that on. I'll pretend that that's true for the next couple weeks and see what happens. Sure enough, you know, it's like, oh, that was a really successful test that actually worked. I'll keep believing that's true. But because I've already disassembled it previously, I'm not too attached to it, but I'm just going to act like it. Because I mean, the truth is, it's all an act. Some of us are just think that it's not. Do you have any tangible examples of beliefs that you've intentionally discarded and replaced them with more useful beliefs? What's funny is when it gets into this beliefs work, it's a little tough.

Because for me, once I've let it go, I kind of forget about it. It's hard to recall because it's not just not present for me anymore. But, you know, people may believe that money is truly scarce. You know, they may have heard money doesn't grow on trees. So there's this energy of scarcity that people don't want to spend money. People believe that people don't want to spend money when people love spending money.

People are spending money at the most rapid rate in history. Ask Amazon. Yeah, people love it. They love spending it, yeah. Yeah, I think beliefs around how much money I'm worth, going back to the tying financial value to a human life, that comes up for people. Yeah, I'm having a little trouble remembering which one specifically. I have people ask me this every once in a while. It's kind of the same answer.

It's like, yeah, I don't really remember too much about what I used to believe. Seems like a very distant, like a different, it's like a different person was having that experience. Well, like people, all people have like ceilings. They always think, you know, I want to make a hundred thousand. Why? You know, or I've heard people say, you know, at a quarter million, 250,000, I'll be good. It's just an arbitrary thing to say. Like, why do you say that? Why, why have a ceiling? Like this conversation is something I've been having with

athletes since I've been, that's one of the things that I realized early on is that what you believe is just some arbitrary thing that you piece together over time, growing up with your family and your circumstances with your genetics. Like, you know, I might think I can, you know, I want to, I want to qualify for the American open might be my big goal. Why is that your goal? You know, why, why not the Olympics? Like why have ceilings? It's just arbitrary mess.

All of it. Yeah. Yeah. like why have ceilings it's just arbitrary mess all the way yeah yeah i think that's like so obvious at at a place like lenore now but was your your gym it's like in my gym if you squatted 450 you might have been the strongest person that was only because we knew that there was a ceiling at 450 that the strongest person had done if you walk into your gym when you're 13 and there's a guy squatting 800, you go, well, the number's just different. And the expectations are just different. Yeah, for no reason.

There just happens to be a guy that didn't believe what everybody else was doing was worthy and went and did it. Right. Totally. Arbitrary. There's a – I was going to change subjects. Go ahead and finish up.

I'll give you two examples that I think are relevant. I sent out an email that said something about, you know, learn how to make $10,000 a month or something like that in your coaching business. And one of the responses I got back in the email was like, you could tell the guy was really upset and triggered. And he goes, I'm barely making $4,000 a month and I'm working 40 hours a week. How the hell do you expect me to work more hours? And this guy had – he was – his view was so narrow that making money –

like it was obvious that he thought he could – A, he had to charge by hour. Hourly rate is not the best way to make money. I promise you that. So he's charging by the hour. And then he probably believes he can't charge more than something per hour. So the idea – he probably doesn't know any coaches that are making whatever. He may have this belief that if you're making more than this, you've got to be ripping people off. And then not actually providing value. So that's one example of where people tend to get stuck is they don't even know

what they don't know. He doesn't know that there's another business model that exists that the client actually gets better results and you make more money. Everybody wins. and so that's one example um yeah but yeah there's another one that i've lost now but who knows maybe it'll come back yeah yeah um go ahead doug you got a question yeah as the show's coming to a close here we're all stoked to come out to strong coach summit here uh early march uh for for the shrugged audience are there going to be any kind of, I'll call them like shrugged, shrugged friendly people that have maybe been on the show before, or people that are in this world that people might recognize that if someone was to come out to,

to the event, they might, might hope to meet basically who are the cool kids that are going to be flowing around. Wow. Shit. I'll be there. You guys will be there.

And yeah, I'm talking to Max. Michael is going'll be there. You guys will be there. I'm talking to Max Shank. Michael Cash is going to be there. Michael Cash is going to be there. Max Shank. He and I have been doing a podcast together. We're about to launch. Nice.

Max, he'll probably come in. He's so much fun to hang out with. Who else? Who else? He's going to fun to hang out with. Who else? Adi's going to be around, I imagine. I imagine Adi will stop by. She'll probably root her husband on. Yeah, I'm trying to think of who else might be around. I don't know.

I'm still shaping up the speakers list. So I've got a handful that I've really nailed down. It's going to be a solid crowd. We've got some people that have several hundred thousand YouTube followers. They're going to share what they did to get

big on YouTube and how that's impacted their business. We'll have people who... I'm going to try to get David Weck out there too. So I'm going to reach out to him. I know Doug, you're a big fan. Um,

I'm a big fan. You let me punch him in the face on camera. We could do round two. I'm down. So, uh, yeah, I look that one up on YouTube folks. that's a good one uh i remember watching

being there for that one that was fun to be a part of uh yeah there'll be some characters running around i i i don't know exactly uh i don't remember off the top of my head who will all be there but i uh well i'm working on the uh the guys from LifeAid So Aaron Hind and Orion They're really good DJs too So I'm trying to get them to be spinning on Sunday night It'll be fun Yeah, it'll be awesome We got him back on the show coming up in January

Perfect The damn pandemic I used to see Aaron I feel like every two months And then all of a sudden it was like two years went by You gotta go to his house I miss you. I miss you. Come back in my life.

Where can people find you, the summit, everything you're working on? Yeah. You know what? For the summit, go to the strong coach.com slash shrugged. And you know,

you get a little special something if you come in that way. slash shrugged. And, uh, you know, well, you get a little special something if you come in that way. So the strong coach.com slash shrugged. And, uh, you can follow me on Instagram, Mike underscore Bledsoe. And, uh,

yeah, I think you'll find everything you want from there. If you want to listen to podcasts, I've been doing max. I've been posting that to my blood. So show channel. I haven't been posting the blood. So show as the blood.

So show in a while. Uh, but Max and I started doing a show. We just named it Mondays with Mike and Max Monday morning. Yeah. Monday morning. Yeah. It's uh,

we're going to own Mondays. And the idea is that, men can listen to this show on Mondays to start their week off with a little bit of philosophy and a way to improve their life. So you can catch that right now if you just go on Spotify and look up the Bledsoe Show. Beautiful. I'm going to check that out. Trap Smash. Mashe show. Beautiful. I'm going to check that out. Trap Smash. Mashlead.com. It was good seeing you again, virtually,

but see you soon. A few months. We'll be hanging out. Yeah. Doug Larson. Are you coming out to Wadapalooza too, Mike? Yeah, I'll be at Wadapalooza. Oh, sweet.

I'll see you. Yeah, we're going to hang out next month. Wait. Now I want to ask you totally irrelevant questions like do you have a house yet? No. We're getting ours. Where are you staying?

Not for the podcast. Sorry, friends. We'll circle up after. We'll do it after the show. Yeah. Right on. You can find me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner.

We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Get over to DieselDadMentorship.com. That is where all the busy dads are getting strong, lean, and athletic. And get over to your local Walmart. We're in 2,200 stores. And if you're at a Walmart, you don't see my face on a box in the performance nutrition section, get out of that Walmart. That's the one you don't want to be in. You want to go to the cool one. We're on that. Three products on the shelf with our friends over at AzoSmale Pro-T. You can download the Pro T Challenge, which I wrote and it's on the box.

You get it for free when you buy it. Make sure you get over to thestrongcoach.com forward slash shrugged. That's where you can get signed up for the Strong Coach Summit. We will be out there likely running workshops and hanging out, doing shows. And it's great to have you back on the show, dude.

I appreciate you coming on. Had a blast. Love you guys. We'll see you guys next week