Barbell Shrugged - Taking Fitness and Personal Training Online w/ Jonathan Goodman, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash- Barbell Shrugged #500

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

Jonathan Goodman is the founder of the Personal Trainer Development Center and author of multiple bestselling books for personal trainers. In addition, Jon founded the first-ever certification for online fitness trainers, the Online Trainer Academy. Originally from Toronto, Jon and his wife Alison spend their winters traveling the world with their baby boy, Calvin.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   What are the biggest hurdles to creating an online training business? How to start an online training business? What should athletes look for in hiring an online coach? Do you have to have a massive audience to be successful online? What is the best way to build a relationship with your online coach?   Online Trainer Show: https://www.theptdc.com/online-trainer-show-podcast   Personal Trainer Development Center: https://www.theptdc.com/online-trainer-show-podcast   Online Trainer Academy: https://www.theptdc.com/online-trainer-academy-certification   Jonathan Goodman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonathan_goodman101/   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram ———————————————— 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   Legion Athletics Whey Protein, Creatine, and Pre-Workout - Save 20% using code “SHRUGGED”   Shadow Creative Studios - Save $200 + Free Consult to start you podcast using code” “Shrugged” at podcast.shadowstud.io   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, John Goodman teaching everybody how to take their business, their training business, personal training business, online, and the best practices for building an online business, which is awesome, because that's what we do at Barbell Shrug. If you want to see all of our programs, make sure you get over to barbellshrug.com forward slash store. That's where you can get strong, lean, athletic, work on Olympic lifting. We've got all of the courses and programs, e-books, nutrition, mobility that you need to get strong. And because you're a devoted listener to this podcast, we have an awesome code.

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Welcome to Warranty Barter. I'm Doug Larson. Jonathan Goodman. We're going to talk about how to develop an online personal training. You have the only textbook in all of personal training, which means I've never read it because I don't think I've ever finished a textbook ever in my life. How did you sit down to write a textbook? That's never been in my repertoire of things I want to do. It's not easy, man. Textbooks are hard. You know what the hardest part about textbooks are? The hardest part about textbooks is actually print runs and distribution, especially when you have, like, we've got students that we know of in 86 countries. You know how hard it is to ship a textbook to Russia? So it's expensive, but you got to do like, like if you have a full color

textbook, that's hard copy and everything like that. You got to do like, like if you have a full color textbook, that's hard copy and everything like that. You got to do print runs of like thousand plus, and even then you're paying 40 bucks book. Wow. So if you can't start with a textbook and then try to build a program. So it's actually, I mean, yeah, it's like hard to write a textbook obviously, but we had a curriculum.

I've been, we've been coaching people how to become online trainers since 2013 the textbook came about in 2016 so we had already worked with people for three and a half years almost four years we had already built a curriculum we already had all this brand we already had all these success stories we already kind of knew what worked and then when it came time to do the textbook, we knew that we would at least be able to get the minimum critical mass to get it out there. So that textbook as well is for people that want to be trainers specifically online. That's the unique component there, right? Yes. Yeah. So people who want to run an online training business, basically everything to have to do with the business of it, but also how to actually train clients effectively online. There's

a lot of very nuanced, but very important differences between the two we can get into them if you want in detail but like how do you assess somebody online for example completely changes because now you've got a favor reliability over validity there's no way that you can be sure that the test that somebody's doing in their home is going to be valid Unless they've got access to like a bod pod or underwater weighing or dexo, which they almost never will. Yeah, those those Bioelectrical impedance is not accurate Like you just have no clue. And so what are Reliable tests from test to test that's what you've got a favor when you're assessing people online not valid test completely flips

From what you might do in the gym. Things like clients ghosting you. Well, how do you get back? So accessing and learning skills like motivational interview becomes way, I mean, motivational interview skills are important anyways, but becomes way more important when you're training people online. Because learning how to ask questions to get somebody to open up when you're training people online, because learning how to ask questions to get somebody to open up when you don't actually have any idea about the situation and you don't have a scheduled appointment for them and you can't see them and you can't read their body language, probably don't have the same type of interpersonal relationship becomes way more important. And then of course, all the delivery and support. A lot of people who work online

find out very quickly that they're working harder for less money than they ever would in person because they have bad systems. So there's that kind of stuff and the actual training of client. And then all of the business stuff, which completely changes

because now you have no location buyers, right? Now you're competing with a girl in Germany and a guy in Thailand how are you going to do that when I guess what is what is like the target goal of your of the coaches that you're training is it high-end personal high touch high-end high touch, high end, high touch, higher price point, personal training? Or is it like giant lead gen, sell as many programs as possible? What's kind of the system that you have found to be the best as far as... It's a good question. I wouldn't say that there's one system that I found to be the absolute best. I can tell you why in a moment. What I can say is that the giant sell a lot on what you've built to date. Like, like what have you done to build a brand and expert status amongst a, a specific group of people already? Some people it's nothing, right? So like your job is to build a foundation.

Other people, they already have that foundation. So your job now is to figure out how to kind of scale yourself and amplify yourself and use technology and use automation as a way to scale your ability to create a personal connection. Technology is not best served to eliminate humans. It's best served to amplify humans. So figuring out where do you need to show up most with your training and how can you automate and use technology to leverage yourself and assistance and other people and stuff like that to leverage yourself as much as possible so that you show up where you need to show up and not in other places. But the only one that I'll tell you, we could talk about all the different models. I mean, I could give you the pros and cons who they're for. Basically, what we do is we coach people and we guide people to figuring out the best model for them based off of what

they want to offer, how much time they have, and objectively, how much money they need to make. Very few people work backwards using goal setting like they do with their training. Like if I know I want to lose 20 pounds, or if I know I want to run a race or compete or whatever, three months from now, that's my goal. I build my plan working backwards. And then I ruthlessly execute towards that goal. And then once I hit it, I decide whether I'm happy or whether I decide to want to build a new yardstick right to get there. With business, very few people ever set that goal. But if you never set that goal, then you're going to do everything that we do in fitness where we make mistakes. We're going to program hop. We're going to jump onto the shiny new thing. We're going to listen to everybody

when you should probably just like listen to one person and figure out what you're doing and put blinders on and execute like fitness. Yeah. But we got to do the same thing with business, but unless you actually establish that goal in the future, which is the money thing and how much time you have to make that money, you can't establish the steps, which means you can't ever be confident in execution, executing. So that's where a lot of people are kind of missing the vision. And it's funny because we preach that vision so much in fitness and the same people who are preaching that vision in fitness are not following it for their business. So there's this really interesting disconnect that's happening. Yeah. It's like they have the model in front of them, but they don't do it themselves.

I mean, achieving a goal in anything is the same, right? Yeah. You mentioned kind of the two ends of the spectrum, like the super high touch, high price, individual one-on-one personal training, and then scale a bunch of programs to as many people as possible. What are all the models kind of in between that? I think those are the two obvious models, but what are the most common successful models that are probably lesser known? Yeah. I mean, the most common model is just like a basic monthly training model. There's the model where, and so that's usually like a hundred to $300 a month,

right. Where somebody is doing monthly. I would almost always advise against that. Like usually a three month minimum and you want to sell somebody on the transformation. You want to sell somebody on a goal, not just, I'm going to train you. You're going to have a hard time charging money in between that. I mean, there's obviously video training, which is hot right now with COVID and the pandemic going on, but it's going to die off pretty soon afterwards because it's just kind of garbage for everybody involved. So it's fine when it's necessary. And like for super high-end coaching, I heard you guys chatting a couple episodes ago about using Coach's Eye and

being able to coach from different angles and being able to get a lot more data in. For high-end coaching, for people who are trying to compete where you're really doing that nuanced technique stuff, it could be really, really useful. But it's best used in combination with a lot of the other tools. So it'd be really, really useful. But the majority of clients are general pop clients, right? The majority of trainers deal with general pop clients who just want to look a bit better, feel a bit better. Even trainers, even most trainers who work with coaches who work with high-level individuals

make the majority of their money from general pop people. And so I think video training's going to go by the wayside pretty quick once this pandemic is over. I know zero coaches that enjoy it. Everyone's just like, God, I have to do it. But fuck, it's not very fun. Nobody wants to do it. It's not fun.

It's not fun, man. It's an energy drain. Like we become coaches because we love people. We become coaches because we're energized by people i mean a successful coach is this really interesting rare combination of uh nerdiness like you got to be a science geek to charisma energy and detail oriented and you've got to be pretty good at business you've got to be pretty good at business. You've got to be kind of an entrepreneur the same way. Like that mesh of natural attributes and learned skills is unbelievably rare, first off. But also that mesh of rare skills and stuff like that,

it's like try getting that person to do Zoom calls six hours a day. Like there's this false belief about, I'm pretty introverted, which a lot of people don't believe. They're like, oh, but you can speak on a stage to 500 people. How are you introverted? It's like, no, you don't get it. Like an introvert is somebody who starts the day with five coins. And every interaction they have with people, they lose a coin.

And when the coins are done, they need to sit by themselves in a hotel room and breathe. An extrovert is somebody who starts the day with zero coins. And every interaction they have, they gain a coin. Most trainers are extroverts. You don't get coins from beyond on Zoom, which means they're just like that introvert who's spoken to too many people at a party who's sitting in a hotel room having to breathe.

What are the other models? I mean, there's obviously program delivery models. There's apps, which I know we were talking about a little bit before. There's apps. There's the high-ticket model, but the high-ticket doesn't necessarily have to be high-ticket, high-touch. We have a level two for Online trainer Academy that's teaches the high ticket model, but it actually teaches a scalable version of the high ticket model.

And what we found is that the majority of clients who actually excel with a high ticket model do so because you can build a community around that program, which actually allows the trainer to scale themselves quite a bit. It's, it's actually less touch what we teach people in level two are trainers who are charging like one to $3,000 for 12 weeks is actually much less time of theirs than the majority of people that we work with that are getting started. Generally, newer online trainers need to be much more high touch because they haven't quite figured out

what their model is and where they fit in. And they haven't gained the confidence yet. When people get a little bit more experience, it's actually lower touch for usually quite a bit more money. But that takes time because you've got to get good. Like anything, you've got to get good. Online trainers aren't good and are pretending like they are because they feel like how easy is this? How hard could this be? And they're making it up as they go and not doing a good job.

Well, that's a big thing that's coming this summer. Gyms are coming back online, but all of the gym owners that just had to go and do Zoom classes realized Zoom wasn't for them, but they also learned that they could very easily take their business online but they're starting at zero so kind of what is the steps for them to really just yes they've probably committed that they or at a minimum they've realized that they need to do something online to protect themselves in case in case covid 19 comes back in the fall and everybody has to go back to zoom again in October, you know,

like they have to have some sort of system in place now for online training. Like how do they, how do they start to grow that side of the business? Well, here's, here's the interesting thing about all of what's going on is that we'll talk about gym owners if you like, but it's across the entire fitness industry. The fitness industry has been broken for a very long time. It's been a brittle business model. The margins were too slim. Too many things could go wrong. And not only that for gym owners, it was simply too hard to find enough good trainers on an ongoing basis to be able to grow. Because again,

I mean, what are the skill sets that make a good trainer in most conventional fitness business models? It's pretty rare, man, to find somebody with that. And by definition, a good trainer has to be a good business person and entrepreneurial, which means that they ain't going to stick around no matter what you do. Paying them $5 more an hour isn't they ain't going to stick around. No matter what you do, paying them $5 more an hour isn't going to get somebody to stick around who's always wanted to run their own business. I mean, it just doesn't even matter how much you pay them. They'll still always want to run their own business. I think a lot of people who were running their own business are going to run back to other companies now because this has shown them how hard it is to run a business. I think there's going to be a rise of entrepreneurs that realize that owning a business for themselves isn't good,

but they want ownership in another company. That's a whole other conversation altogether. I thought this was the best opportunity for everyone to quit. Yes, it is. If you owned a gym and you didn't stop right away, what were you doing? You should have taken all the cash out and ran. But here's the thing. I mean, you joke about that, but it's not not true. No, I'm 100% sure.

Because I owned a gym for six years and I sold it. And now I look at the gym industry and I'm like, you should run. You should get out of that. You should get out. Yeah, because it's very hard to sell that like i i know that battle and what's what's going to make it even harder is think about think about now we have this essential tag i think something that's interesting that not a lot of people have spoken about is is this tag is this essential versus

non-essential business definition is so not essential now that there's but now that it's been defined right pandemics maybe pandemics there's going to be shutdowns that are going to come like in the coming years like this is not the only time especially because there's precedent for this like this is not the only time that this is going to happen well it's not like people are going to have to figure out again what's essential what's not essential. They're just going to go back to what happened last time, which means that now lenders, now landlords are going to start favoring essential businesses because there's inherently less risk.

Yeah. So isn't that going to be interesting trying to get loans, right? Trying to get leases, competing on leases for favorable spots. Isn't that going to be interesting that that's going to come down the pipeline? Getting insurance.

Insurance companies now have precedent and justification for charging more to non-essential businesses. Yeah. That's wild, right? That's wild. Yeah. I feel like all of those business like you know and this this is a great question for or you know you probably have a ton of experience with it it's like there has to be a hybrid model for all gym owners yes there always had to be man there always

had to be everybody's like oh the pivot the pivot it's like nah you're an idiot if you didn't do this before oh let me tell you a story but people don't people that are gym owners most of them and i'm talking to myself from 2011 a year into owning the gym and the gyms were blast off like everything's happening i don't want to go online because online that's not why i got into it what now it's where i live but you know that's not why gym owners open gyms so that they can go create an online presence they want to give high fives to their friends and train and be in the gym yeah but like any business i mean it's a pendulum swinging right like any business the the business the it's a pendulum swinging, right? Like any business, the business, the finances of it, the dollars and cents are eventually going to win out. And so what was

happening in the fitness industry for the longest time is business was dictating fitness. And the problem is, when that is as strong as it was, the fitness suffered, everybody suffered so much. What online, what hybrid allows you to do is reverse that trend, is allow you to actually build a model whereby fitness wins when business wins. You can actually craft the perfect program for you and for everybody that you have. I mean, owning a gym is all about maximizing revenue per square foot, maximizing net profit per square foot. And if you can only serve people locally, well, you can't really do that. You can't really win it. You can't really advertise. You can't really hire the best staff, acquire the best staff because you have no real competitive advantage.

If you've got an online hybrid program, now you can take on referrals. Now you can keep people who move away. Now you can work with, I mean, I, you know, I, I, I trained clients who, who toured like musicians and athletes and stuff like that. Well, one of my clients would go away for three months to tour in Japan. Okay. Well, now I had my 10 30 AM slot Monday, Wednesday, Friday open for three months. But when she got back, you better bet your butt

that I had that slot open for her. Well, that's a big problem for a trainer. It's an even bigger problem for a gym owner who has multiple trainers with multiple clients who are going through this. Gyms always knew that they needed this. Let me tell you a story. We had somebody reach out to me seven or eight months ago. And I won't give like any qualifying details

because I don't want people to really know who it is because you could probably pick it out. But like this guy owned 10 gyms, you know, reasonably big company in Canada, owned 10 gyms. And they reached out to us and he basically said hey uh i know that we need an online training company like as part of what we're doing uh he didn't know all the reasons why but he knew that they needed an online training company he knew that he could add to the profit and stuff like that can you help us build it we've done a little bit of that like like we've had we've had some consultancy stuff spoken to one of singapore's biggest gym chains stuff it's not a big part of our business but um but but we'll do it. It's reasonably straightforward for us.

And so we spoke back and forth a bunch, sent him a proposal. The proposal was for $50,000 to go and implement a program across all of his gyms, spend a weekend with him, plus a bunch of follow-up phone calls, train his top staff, build their operations, get them on going with their software and like this would have been 90 bottom line revenue across 10 gyms for all of his staff and uh he decided not to do it because he said it was too much money and then he opened up a gym a few months later for a few hundred thousand dollars. The same person when COVID hit and the shutdowns happened.

All that I see across my Facebook is him complaining that it's not fair. And that the government better intervene. What do you do? What do you do, man? What's so interesting about that, this person knew that there was a problem. This person knew that he had an issue, what the solution was, that he was not immune to it. He didn't quite know what was going to happen. Nobody did. Nobody knew that it was going to be a pandemic. A lot of people, as it was coming, might have been able to be like, yo, we should all

probably pay more attention to this. But I mean, it's a black swan moment. But we all knew, dude, I sprained a hamstring when I was a trainer playing hockey at night, because I'm Canadian, of course, so I play hockey. And sprained a hamstring and had to take two weeks off at the gym and didn't get paid for two weeks how in the world do you think that this is a feasible career business model yeah i feel like i know enough people now that have been running a gym and then started an online component and then very quickly the online component becomes you know higher revenue than the gym itself i'll profit gym itself if not well not even

yeah like profitable for sure definitely but like they're thinking i'm going to add a couple thousand dollars to to total revenue and then all of a sudden their gym makes thirty thousand dollars a month then the online thing goes bam 30 40 50 60 and they start making way more money online than they ever made at their gym and then the gym just turns into, you know, like their, like their laboratory. It's like their clubhouse. They just go hang out. They train people, but they don't have to float all the overhead from money at the physical location anymore. And now it's like the stress goes way down and they can, they can hang out and actually, actually have a good time without, without wondering how they're going to pay their bills every month because they have this online component that is so heavily,

heavily profitable. A hundred percent. It allows them to enjoy and get back to why they love it. We've got, we've got a student actually has been through both levels. We've been through online trainer Academy level one and level two, Dustin, and he owns a obstacle race,

obstacle course racing facility. And so when that was hot, you know, when, when Spartan and Mudurana and all those things were going crazy he was doing really well um it's not so hot anymore so everybody joe de sena yeah feels so bad for him there's not 10 000 people gathering right now right go run mountains and those deposits on those spaces don't you't get them back. And they didn't have pandemic cancellation insurance.

Speaking of, did you know that there were a couple, like all these major events, like sports events and everything like that are all canceled and the organizations are just crushed. Did you know that there's one organization, there might be more, but I know of one that actually had pandemic event cancellation insurance no geniuses geniuses wimbledon oh wimbledon when sars happened whenever it happened wimbledon went to lloyds of london who's their insurance and lloyds of london won't show anything right like they're the ones who like ensure like people like hand bottles hands and they went to lloyds Lloyd's of London and they said, we want to add a rider to our insurance for event cancellation in the event of a pandemic. Because they all had event cancellation, but it was always act of God, terrorist, whatever. And so they added pandemic event cancellation insurance.

They paid a million dollars a year for 14 years. And no, I might be wrong on that. It might have been 2 dollars a year for 14 years. And no, I might be wrong on that. It might've been 2 million a year for seven years. I think they paid $14 million in insurance over the years. And then they got $140 million payout. And so they were the first one to cancel their event. If you actually look at the timeline of when all the events canceled, they were the first ones to cancel the event. Payday. Yeah. They made the same amount of money as they would have made if they were the first ones to cancel the event payday yeah they made the same amount of money as they would have made if they were yeah um but uh but yeah so that's a thing so

like everybody's getting this now but anyway so dustin had uh had you know has an obstacle course racing and that's his passion and um and so when obstacle course racing wasn't as hot anymore a couple years ago because it was a trend. You know, people still do it. His gym really faltered and he was really hurting. And he had actually enrolled into the online training academy beforehand, never looked at it. And he was like one last stab in the fitness industry. Like basically, if I can't make this work, he owned the building where his gym was in. He was like, if I can't make this work of selling the building, I'm going to get a real job. And so he went back into the textbook.

Long story short, pretty quick, online training replaced his gym's revenue, doubled it, tripled it. He actually has all of his income charts because he's smart enough to use software. So you just see them changing and the percentages of revenue changing. And now he still has because he owns the building. He still keeps his gym running and his physical gym operates at a loss but it's literally his as you said anders like it's his place to hang out with his buddies yeah like his clients are his buddies and and he hangs out they still do obstacle course racing they still do this guy he does crazy like endurance all the nutty endurance run stuff that only crazy people

do and uh and he but like that's his passion man well i think one of the reasons many gym owners and trainers don't go online is because their their only source of marketing that they do for themselves is friends telling friends which when you live in a small town works really well. You know, my gym was in Pacific Beach in San Diego. It's really hard to get into Pacific Beach because there's one road that gets out and there's one road that comes in and it's usually filled with traffic.

So once you get in there, nobody wants to leave. Everybody kind of works from home. It's not really a very commuter heavy place. It's just, this is the locals and I'm the trainer. And that was the biggest, I didn't need to be great at marketing. I just needed to be great at kind of charisma. That was, that was the tool and being the fun trainer. But now they have to go into the giant internet and it's like, well, do they start at lead gen?

Do they start at selling? They don't even know the first step to creating a PDF. So let's talk about that. The first step is to leverage what you already have, which is your personal connections. If you actually do the math and figure out how many clients you need have, which is your personal connections. If you actually do the math and figure out how many clients you need, it's actually not that many. You know, everybody's like, oh, I need, I don't have a big Instagram following, so I can't be an online trainer. It's like, well, you actually only need 30 people paying you $200 a month to make $72,000 a year. So you actually only need 30 clients. You really don't need anything other than your initial network.

The first step is to learn how to make a compelling offer. So the first step is to learn how to stand out by making an actual compelling offer. A lot of trainers have been lulled into this false sense of what's the right way to say it? This false sense of belief in their ability to market because they were successful in person, not realizing that exactly as you said, Anders, like, like location bias.

It was easy. You didn't realize it because it might've seemed hard. Also, you spent a lot of time building up to that point of, of unconsciously networking, right. To get to that point. Well, now you start new, but you don't actually have to start new. You start with a network that

you already have. You start with a connection that you already have, and you learn how to ask for the sale better. You know, what's a compelling offer? It's as simple as we call it the 5-160 principle. And that's just like, I'm looking for five people who want to achieve, give me your goal, right? Give me a single quantifiable goal who want to lose no less than 10 pounds, who want to run their first 10K, whatever, but like quantifiable goal in the next 60 days. A compelling offer is who is the specific person you're targeting. And the more specific, the better. And understand that buying a personal trainer, a coach, particularly online, is almost never an actual merit-based decision. And if you market it as if it is going to be a

merit-based decision for your consumer, you're going to be super frustrated because consumers have no idea what to base merit on. And so how do you stand out? We talk about how to figure out your uniqueness and how to stand out, but figure out who you're targeting. Who's this one population that you're targeting? Well, now, once you know who that is, you know where to go to. A, you know who in your already established network is like that or knows people like that. So you know exactly who to ask. You know exactly where to go. So you're not wasting your marketing time. You know exactly what type of messages to produce, what language to use, what imagery to use. And you know exactly the goal that they want to achieve. And then you just create an offer based off of that and you put it out to those networks.

And what you will immediately do is you'll pick off some low hanging fruit in your existing network. And your low hanging fruit, I mean, this is how like we have a challenge that we run people on in seven days. We have an 82% success rate, helping people get at least one client in seven days with no paid ads or phone selling. And it's just this, it's basically that it's just an understanding that basically every trainer who's worth their salt has enough people that they're already connected to that want to improve their fitness in some way. And we just teach them how to ask. Yeah. Once you get beyond that, then you've got to figure out how to generate referrals. And if you want to really grow beyond that, then you might need to get into paid ads. But like the majority of our students, man, never have to use paid advertising.

We're going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors over at Legion Athletics. I'm so stoked that Legion is a part of our Shrugged family. I've been taking their products for a very long time. I'm incredibly excited that they're a part of it because Legion products are the most tested and clinically effective supplements out on the market today. I need to tell you about the last time I was at Olympia. It was absolutely terrifying to see how many products are out there. You heard the call or the podcast last week that we did with Mike Matthews launching this beautiful partnership. And the reason that we have partnered with Legion is because all of the products are clinically tested. The doses that they give you in the nutrition facts and the amounts that you're getting are clinically tested

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you don't hear these stories because they're not published. But the majority of online trainers are not the people who are twerking on Instagram. Twerking on Instagram. That's what we need. That's what we need more of. So when I hear that model, yeah, well, one, I don't hear the model. I'm not twerking, Doug. I'm sorry, bud. I don't care about our Instagram that much.

It's a good thing this is a podcast. That way nobody can see Doug doing it. Doug's doing it right now. Doug's doing it right now. Doug is doing it right now. And the worst thing is he's got a strobe light. I don't know where he got the strobe light from. Buddy, Doug turned on a strobe light.

It's so – you know, this is the thing about podcasts, guys. It's so – I'm so sorry that you don't get to see this right now. Yeah. I feel like when you lay that model out for me, though, I don't want that model. I don't want to have to take on five clients and run them all through assessments and personal trainer, like I like creating content for thousands and thousands of people to digest it and then create products that those thousands of people can solve that problem with. And that's the model that we run is like we run a ton of lead gen. We play email like traffic. Like that's a.

You are you. A, you guys have been doing this a long time you're very very good at it there's a reason that your podcast and your brand is as successful as it is because you guys are good you're relentless you're really good at execution you're extremely consistent you've been doing it for a long time and you build a tremendous amount of trust. You're also good marketers. The majority of trainers have very little interest in, and they say that they have interest in marketing, but they don't. And so what, I mean, a hundred percent, what you do is great, man. Don't change. Don't do, don't do what i just said five i couldn't take on the five i think about doing the five all the time actually don't do it there's times where i'm like

ah i would love to can't do it can't do it your life's think about if you took on the five then you wouldn't be able to be podcasting right now from your wife's bedroom that she grew up in exactly um you might have to be you might you, you know, you might, you might not have been able to drive across the country. But like, but the majority of people that we work with, the majority of trainers out there in the world are not the type of people who have years of brand, are not the type of people who can build or have any desire to build what you have. And even if they are, there's got to be a first step. And a lot of us unconsciously, like I unconsciously took the first step.

I started my first blog in 2007. I started the PTDC, my website, in 2011. I put out my first product in 2013. That's a six-year gap, right? When I was learning, when I was building connections. For the record, that's exactly a very similar story to mine. I put out my first blog to try to do online something in 2006, tried it for a little bit, didn't work, kind of restarted in 2011 and then didn't make any money at all until you know like their first single sale until middle of 2012 so it was really six years before i made any money at all

that's the exact i actually put up my first book in 2011 it's not quite true the first online sale like like digital product sale that i made was 2013 like the first affiliate sale dean somerset's post rehab essentials shout out to dean oh yeah because i always i always tell him that i used to read dean stuff all the time i gotta get to get that guy on the show dean's great man he's awesome you want to speak to a burly canadian there's a burly canadian he's a straight up phone boy from edmonton i actually think that that's a really cool thing that you say that because we're talking about Ben and he was one of the big voices on T Nation. And all of the people on T Nation that I used to read in early 2000s, is that what it was? Like 2005 to 10, 11, something like that. Back when they were doing their digests and all of that.

Yeah. All of those names are still big names. Right right i don't know who's on t nation anymore but when i as i got as t nation and the articles and the writers and all of those people became kind of like cementing their name and then i opened my gym and i was kind of trying to cement my name um there's a long process i think that that's a lot of people think they're going to go online and just like create the coolest content go viral and now all of a sudden you have a product but it's it's a really long process and it's probably harder online to get traction and momentum than just being cool in your hometown and being friends with people. It's funny because it's harder than it ever was

and easier than it ever was at the same time. It's easier than it ever was because the tools are easier to use. When I started, I had to teach myself how to code. I had to teach myself Photoshop. There was no Canva. I had to teach myself Photoshop. There was no put up a Squarespace or Wix. You had to like code your own stuff, man. And I had to teach myself that. So it's easier. The tools are easier, which is great because you

can get something up. The result though, is now there's so much more noise. There's so much more competition, but there's also so much more comparison. And there's a lot of people who are doing well. There's also a lot of people who aren't doing well, but make it look like they're doing well. And when you're starting, when I started, I was so optimistically ignorant. I had no clue what else was out there. When I was 24 years old, I wrote my first book to educate the personal training industry. Who in the world was I to write that book? I knew so little. I knew so little,

call it blissful ignorance, about why you shouldn't do something that I didn't even know the questions to ask. I didn't even know who to look to. I didn't even have the inspiration that you need, that I just did the thing. And then I did it and I figured out how to do it better and better and better. But I was doing that from a place of I've already done this thing. A lot of people are making decisions these days based off of reflections and mirrors, based off of comparing their bloopers to others' highlight reels. And they're making decisions with zero context because you actually have no clue how well these people are doing. You could see somebody who's got a great looking brand and you,

you really don't know what they're doing. I know a lot of people on Instagram who have a lot of followers that are waitresses or waiters on weekends to make ends meet. Yeah. I mean, but you would never know that. So you're copying what they're doing, right? Because you have no context versus if you just do the thing,

then you'll eventually figure it out. So like, I actually, there's a book that I want to write one day called Optimistic Ignorance. I call it the ignorance quotient because I'm fascinated by this idea of knowing too much about something that it's a hindrance. So at what point do you know enough about something where you'll not make a catastrophic mistake? Because I think that's the line. What is the definition of a catastrophic mistake? We got to think about fear. We got to

think of overcoming fear. Seneca once said, if you wish to stave off all fear, imagine that the worst that can happen most definitely will happen. If you want to get over your fear, a lot of the time, the things that we fear are actually considerably worse than the worst case scenario because we've never actually defined fear. If you define the worst case scenario, most often you'll realize that it ain't so bad. But if you never define it, you'll be so scared that you'll never act.

So the first step is defining the worst case scenario. And then you can say, okay, what is a catastrophic failure? You never want to be taken out of the game, no matter what. You never want to take a big loan. You never want to, all these big business coaches are like,

yeah, just take your credit cards and take a $10,000 debt because, you know, pressure breeds time bigger risks than I could back in 2011. And I can make bigger bets. But what is that line? And I would love to know that. Will you know enough about something that you can confidently act on it? And any more information will actually force you to ask so many questions and think so much and compare yourself so much that it's a hindrance to actually taking action on that thing. Yeah. Where is that line? What's that goalpost?

I think it's really funny because I would say almost all, I shouldn't say almost all my friends, a very large majority of my friends that started this life in 2000 or, you know, 2010 ish, give or take two or three years. We were all very broke. And if you play that scenario out, you're like, what is the very worst case scenario? You're like, well, I'm going to lose all my money and go, well, I remember having none and that was kind of cool. Like we were having a blast.

It wasn't bad at all. Yep. And it's like, well, and then I won't have like a car. Well, I'll end up sleeping in the gym. You're like, those were actually awesome days. We were grinding. That was super fun. I don't know if it's like the 37-year-old version that I want to be,

but once you've kind of like gone all in and you make that commitment, you're like, we survived. We did great. It was a blast. We were hustling. I love the idea of courage. I think courage is fascinating. And because for two reasons.

One is when you try something, it is virtually guaranteed that it's not going to work out the way that you planned, but it will work out in a way that you never could have possibly anticipated if you didn't try it. Yeah. And what's also fascinating about courage is that courage builds as you try stuff and fail, because if you try a bunch of things, you're inevitably going to fail a bunch of things. Like it's just going to happen. Like things are not always going to work out, but the more you fail, the more confidence you gain in yourself that you're going to figure it out no matter how bad things are. So many things have gone wrong

in my, in my business career and my, you know, trajectory, like it ain't a straight line. I mean, anybody will tell you that it's, it's ups and downs, but I, I have such an insane amount of confidence in myself that I'm going to be able to figure it out because I've tried so many things that it allows me to move so fast and make decisions so quickly. And I've got filters and objective filters by which through which I make that it allows me to move so fast and make decisions so quickly. And I've got filters and objective filters by which to which I make decisions on. Yeah. You know, one of them is what's the worst case scenario?

So I always define the worst case scenario and we always try to plan, you know, if the worst case scenario happens, what's our next move? But but even then, the best asset I think that you can have in business is gaining courage. And the only way to gain courage is to fail and figure it out and gain more and more confidence that you can figure it out. I think that's a really hard thing for people to – if you're not in the world and you're not like really fully committed and you give yourself like a little bit of an out, you're screwed. Why? Because the worst case scenario is going to show up at some point.

Like because you're going to get it wrong. Like it's going to be bad. It's going to be bad. But do you think the worst case scenario will ever show up? Well, maybe not the worst, worst. You can always make it worse, I guess. But like, um, I think one of my, one of the things that I am the most proud of, maybe in myself and all the people that I am surrounded with in business and friendships and everything

is like, all of them have been curbed at some point. Like all of them had something, something happened, it went away. And more or less, they were just, they just got hammered by some stuff outside of their real, like their knowledge,

like whether they ended up sleeping in gyms or they were homeless and they had no future and they, you know, lost some business bets that they made or someone didn't pay them or whatever it is and we always just go well i don't have another choice i have to just get up and keep going and doing this fitness thing because like you're gonna be in business for 30 40 years and not get just hammered a couple of times. It's just not a reality. And as soon as you give yourself like an ounce of like, no, just go back to the corporate world.

It's cool. Like I've had that self-talk before where it's like, it's really hard. And you're like, in your brain, you're like, ah, like,

man, things are getting tight. Like might have to, I don't know where that level is, but I got kids. I got a kid to feed. Like, am I going to have to go don't know where that level is but i got kids i got a kid to feed like am i gonna have to go get a fucking sales job and then do the do the thing at night again and like but i never really give myself that out i'm like no i'm not doing that i'm not selling out and going back to the car i have to go grind i have to go grind. I have to go. I'm committed. This is my life.

I'm a hustler. Think about how good the highs are. Human beings don't experience feelings objectively. We don't all, none of us experience an emotion the same way. You can't feel the highs if you've never experienced the lows. And the lower the lows, the higher the highs. All that we know, all that we feel, we only feel in relation to something else we've already experienced yeah it's this there's this beautiful concept called sonder s-o-n-d-e-r which is which is this the

deep understanding that every single person's life is just as complex and nuanced and interesting and individual as yours. And it's beautiful. I mean, it's almost poetic, the idea. And I think all of us understand it intellectually, but walk down the street and start to really think about this idea of Sonder. You get wronged by somebody and starting to put yourself in their shoes of like, I don't know what their experience is, but everything that I'm feeling is my own projection of my own reality. Right. And in order for you to have happiness,

in order for you to have joy, you have to have gone through that shit. Like the first thing I would do when I was managing trainers in the gym is I would teach them how to make a bed out of mats and towels in the break room. That was lesson number one. Yeah. When I onboarded a new trainer that I hired.

Lesson one, bro, you're going to be in deep for a while. This is going to be shit. You're going to need to take naps. Here's how you make a nap. Here's how you take a nap out of a mat and a towel in a noisy, crappy break room's and then when that same trainer you know makes it and they're rolling and their clients are doing well and they're doing those like eight nine ten client days and they're they're training 35 40 hours a week consistently and people asking them how they're doing what they're doing and i mean that's why it feels so good because you know how hard it is you know you started at the bottom um i when when it comes to a lot of the and we were talking about social media earlier do you run social media classes because it kind of turns into a content game and how you're generating um interest in what you can

teach and how you can help people. And one thing I have noticed as all of the gyms have shut down is that the thing that I take for granted and an ability to quickly create what I consider to be standard, normal content for Instagram or YouTube or whatever it is. I'm actually miles ahead of people because I didn't like, you get a bunch of gym owners that tried to protect the walls of their gym and had no interest in social media. And then all of a sudden they have to turn the cameras on and they got heads out of

the frame. They got all kinds of funky stuff. Do you teach people to how to kind of take that first leap into not really? No. I mean, I wrote a not really no i mean i i wrote a book on social media theory i wrote a book in the psychology of social media um and what's interesting is that i wrote this book it's called varinomics i wrote this book in 2013 and it's more relevant today than it is when i wrote it which i take a lot of pride in i believe very strongly and this is the entire theme of the book it's it's the subtitle is how to get people to want to talk about you. Because I believe that the buttons matter much less than why people push them. Why do people use social media? What's the psychology behind it? How does the filter

bubble work? What's the psychology behind why people share? People share because it's an act of selective self-representation. I call it the IIIF drug. There's a lot of research behind this. It's the nucleus accumbens in the brain. Dopamine gets sent out when you get a hit of feel good on social media. I call it the IIIF drug. Every act that somebody takes on social media is an act of selective self-representation.

They're doing it because they feel like it makes themselves appear interesting, intellectual, intelligent, attractive, or funny. If you can make somebody feel like they appear that way, they will then interact. They will then share. Now, what's particularly interesting about that is it's it's all us trying to improve our perceived self-worth right that's all any of us do on social media it's just basically all of us just beating our chest and so how dare you in the middle of what's going on in the world right now oh you're gonna play that card huh well the fortunate thing is there's social virtueing out there trying to feel so good right yeah is this is a podcast. There's social virtuing out there trying to feel so good. Right.

Yeah, well, this is a podcast. Nobody knows we recorded it, so we'll just pretend that nothing's going on in the world. We're in the middle of all the riots right now, people. Ah, you're a jerk. There it is. But here's the most interesting thing about self-worth, perceived self-worth. Yeah. How I actually appear is completely irrelevant to my own self-worth. What matters is

how I feel I appear. So as I'm talking about this, as long as I feel like you, Doug, and you, Anders, think that I'm smart, I feel pretty damn good about myself. You guys could be thinking that I'm a complete idiot. It's completely irrelevant to me. And so social media, getting back to it, I mean, this is what I'm – and the book is like a super fast, like fun read through this, but it's really a deep exploration of that. And it's interesting because it's created this like underground movement. Like I've never really marketed the book because it's not personal training or anything like that, but it's got like this deep underground movement

of like high-level marketers who look at this as their Bible. I just had the chief marketing officer of like one of the biggest financial marketing companies in Canada, like recommend it, right? This is whatever, seven years after this book has come out. And it's because really when you think about everything that goes on in social media, right? There's always going to be new stuff. There's always going to be changes.

So whenever you're trying to win at business, what you look for are things that don't change. That's always the key. That's the key with investing. That's the key with building a business. If you want to be around for a long time, what doesn't change? Social media will always change. The platforms will always change. And if you chase after the spikes, you might hit a spike. You might not. But the reality of it is

all that time you spent chasing after the spike, well, you might lose out long-term because somebody else is just kind of going slow. You know, like my totem is a total. Like I'm just going to play the long game, bro. I'm not on TikTok. I wasn't on Periscope you know i'm not i'm not go for about three months that was cool like there's nothing wrong with those platforms right but if you but if you never if you never

take the time to keenly understand why people use any of the platforms yeah then you'll never know how to decide what to use and what not to use and what material to produce and and so what i see to answer your question and why we don't teach social media is because i'm like just read this book and you'll know why it's it has so little to do with with creating the best content at the best time that's's why Guy Kawasaki, Gary Vaynerchuk, read their books three months after they come out. They're out of date. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it. I actually think Gary Vaynerchuk has a lot of good stuff

that has a lot of longevity to it. But the actual examples he uses and stuff like that are all out of date. So where, when people are creating this content, should they put it if they don't have an email list with however many thousands of people and they don't have a YouTube subscription and like where, where do they distribute it? If I mean, social media has given everybody a free platform to tell, to spread your message. So where do they go without social media?

Number one, you always have to have a home base. So the key to any traffic generation anywhere, be it social media, be it SEO, be it paid, is always to generate traffic. Partner traffic is all, even podcasts, what I'm doing. It's always to generate traffic from somewhere else and bring it back to your home base so that you own that traffic.

Always. There's no other reason why you ever do traffic generation. And so that's an email list. That's probably a direct mail list now. But really like start with an email list. And then potentially your own community. I like Facebook communities a lot, even though they might go away. I think, you know, Facebook, if you understand the priorities of a platform, you can kind of guess where they're going. Facebook is going to keep pumping towards groups for a long time. So even if it might go away in a couple of years, it's going to be pretty good for a while. So you always want to go somewhere and bring it back to community.

So you've got to have that community. You've got to have that home base where you bring people to. And then what you do is you basically say, well, first of all, what am I good at? What do I like to do? You bring it back to community. So you've got to have that community. You've got to have that home base where you bring people to. And then what you do is you basically say, well, first of all, what am I good at? What do I like to do? You might not know that yet. You're going to be shit at whatever you do to start.

So try it all and kind of figure out what you like. You know, if you've got a face for radio, be a guest on a lot of podcasts. Don't start your own podcast because trying to build your own podcast audience from scratch is like the hardest thing ever. So be a guest on a lot of podcasts. Don't start your own podcast because trying to build your own podcast audience from scratch is like the hardest thing ever. So be a guest on a lot of podcasts. Bring the traffic back to you, right? Be intelligent about that. If you want to do video,

obviously YouTube, build a YouTube platform. What's interesting, and then obviously Instagram, and I think Instagram is quite useful, but the key with all of these are whatever you choose, dive in for six months, and that's all you do. Because if you try to scattershot, if you try to buckshot your efforts, you're never actually going to take the time to figure out that platform because figuring out the platform is that, A, you got to learn the technical skills of how to create content for that platform. Maybe video editing, photo editing. You've got to be a pretty good writer for everything. So I think you should always just get good at writing.

Yeah. But if you want to do YouTube, for example, well, you know what? Go take some improv classes. Study stand-up comedy, right? You've got to gain those skills. Yeah. What's the networks that you're going to dial into we'll build russell brunson um you know i love his i love his his his work he runs a click funnels i

love his marketing work i hate his software but i like his marketing work and so um he talks about the dream 100 it's a concept from chet holmes uh originally who like ultimate sales machine is fantastic book by chet holmes talks about This idea of whatever platform you want to get better at, identify the 100 people who you want to work with, who are the dreams that you want to work with. So I'm trying to build up a podcast right now, The Online Trainer Show. So what are we doing? We're building a list of the 100 podcasts that I want to be a guest on. And I'm making a rule that I want to be on three podcasts a week. And so I'm going to try my best to be on three podcasts a week, right? Because the best way to grow an audience on a platform is to find people already on that platform. It's very hard to bring somebody over from Instagram to podcast. Yeah. And so whatever it is, network within that

world that shows you who to reach out to, right? That shows you how to build relationships with, who to give gifts to, who to get introductions to, what events to attend. And then the final piece of it, and perhaps the most important that a lot of people miss, what are the conversion mechanisms of that platform? How you convert somebody from traffic to own traffic changes on every single platform. So that's where your study comes in. That's where your networking comes in. How are the best people in that world converting their traffic into owned?

How are people taking people from a podcast and bringing them onto their email list and selling them? How are you doing that through YouTube? How are you doing that through Instagram? How are you doing that through Instagram? This is where you study that dream 100. And it's going to be different all over the place. That's your job for six months. And if you do that on one platform, I promise you, you will win.

And at the end of six months, you might say, okay, now I can add another platform. I've operationalized this enough. I've got this going pretty good. Now I can add another platform. Or you might just be like, yo, this is going pretty good. I'm just going to double down on this and be Joe Rogan. Do you suggest having email as a base since that is a list that you own and you can keep and you can transfer, etc.? Yes. If you're just 100% on Instagram and then all of a sudden your account gets shut down, you're done.

You're out of the game like you talked about earlier. I mean that's what it all comes down to, isn't it? It's how can you make sure you're not taken out of the game no matter what? And a lot of the problems that people are having with COVID right now, a lot of people are going to be taken out of the game because they didn't build the necessary resiliency and robustness into their business that they need. They never owned their platform. They never built in the requisite additional streams of income or options. I mean, how many gym owners have email lists that they respect

and communicate to appropriately? I actually hated the idea of sending emails when I was, when I owned the gym. Like I was, I was like, I, these people come in, they give me the hour. This was like in the early days of it where I was like,

I didn't even know that I had started a business. I think for the first two years of owning the gym, like I didn't know what a blog was when I started a blog. Yeah. I just, I was like, not an uncommon story, bro.

I mean, this is, I just wanted a place I ever heard of was me being on a blog. Yeah, I just, I was like, not an uncommon story, bro. I mean, this is evolution, right? The first podcast I ever heard of was me being on a podcast. That's really funny. That's awesome. Yeah, I just, I wanted a place that

I trained with people like me and there wasn't one around, so I built it. Right. And that's how the best businesses are always formed. What do you wish you had but can't find yeah and then I just kept doing that and then one day I was like oh man we've got like overhead and coaches now and I should probably let people know how to come to the gym

more and the people that don't go here anymore that probably want to come back I should probably communicate with them and then you have to start kind of building out the systems. But that's, yeah, it was like those people are already giving me 60 to 90 minutes of their day to come here. I don't want to pepper their emails. I hate emails. But now it's like that I quickly learned that that's your communication vehicle to, you know, getting people in your door. We respect our email list a lot so for example right now i mean not right now because when you're listening to this it's not right now but right now when we're recording this we're doing a promotion to our email list

basically to our email list who hasn't yet invested in the online trainer academy but has already seen the messaging for it at least once right so we're doing a promotion to them basically like a limited time offer to them and uh because we have mentorship, that's like an add on. So we're basically saying get 30 days of mentorship of the add on for free if you sign up this week. But what what we're doing is we're sending out emails this week and we're sending out email every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. In every single email, there's a highlighted section right near the beginning of the email that says, we respect your inbox. This week, we have a special promotion going for the Online Trainer Academy.

We think that you'll love it. But if you know 100% that you're not interested in OTA at this time, click here and you'll be removed from this promotion and you'll get our Sunday Digest email as normal. Yeah. You know, it's a really good idea. Perfectly cool. I don't want you to, I mean i mean a for email deliverability reasons i don't want a whole bunch of people not reading my emails or clicking spam um but also just respect you got to respect the people you're communicating to in every single email we send i

love these emails that like hide the unsubscribe. There's even this tactic by shitty online marketers where they press enter a bunch of times at the bottom of their email to leave a ton of white space so that the unsubscribe button is way at the bottom. It's like, I put the unsubscribe button highlighted at the top. It's like, if you don't want to hear from me, I want you to click this button and not spam. If you don't want to hear from me, I want you to click this button and not spam. If you don't want to hear from me, I don't want to talk to you. You know, I think I have great stuff that could really benefit you. We deliver a lot of content. So like gym owners should be communicating that way. Yeah.

You know, we really want to serve you outside of your time in the gym. We're going to be delivering you. I think expectancy is really important with email. So instead of just sending stuff when you feel like it or sending stuff when you have a new article or podcast, we send out a single digest email every Sunday morning at 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. It's a rock. We've done like 53 editions or something like that. And the email is set up and formatted the exact same way every single time. And people know what to expect.

Right? Again, that's just a matter of respect. They know that they don't have to read that right then and it's going to escape. We have people who just filter our digest into a folder in their email because they're super valuable. And then they get to it when they have time because they know that we're not going to email them again that week until Sunday at 6am. And they also know that every Sunday, they can pick up the coffee, right? And they can, they can sip their coffee while reading an email first thing Sunday morning. It's a bit of a ritual. It's just a matter of respecting your list.

I think a lot of gym owners can can do a lot of good with that. And if people don't want to hear it, hey, you won't be your trainer can still communicate with you. But like, and if you tell me that you don't understand the automation tools to how to do this, like, learn it, man. It's easy. It's cheap. There's no excuse. You're not above it.

Like, I just uploaded 1000 pieces of content to a social media posting software. We have a team of 24 people and I did it. You know, it's like, you're not above it, bro. Like get your hands dirty. You can learn it.

It ain't hard. Well, also if you're running a gym, there's so many things you can do to promote your gym and do the in-person things that will let you practice for doing it specifically online. Like part of the reason that barbell shrug ended up being successful where it wasn't successful back in 2006, seven, eight, when I was first trying to do online stuff. And then I then I ran the gym for a number of years, I was doing so many social media related YouTube related and email related promotions and marketing that I was like, why

I'm doing all this digital stuff? Like, why am I just doing it for the 200 people in my gym, I could be doing it for everybody. And then we just scaled it up but i already had that skill set i already knew how to use you know customer management soft uh software and um in a variety of other tools where um skipping or moving to online rather it was really quite easy because i didn't have to learn any new skills so if you run the gym you already have the ability to practice. Well, and I, you bring up, I love that you brought this up, Doug, because I think that this is such a super interesting point. There's the vice president at Ogilvy and Mather, which is a huge advertising agency in the UK. He runs Ogilvy Change, which is their behavior change. His name is Roy Sutherland. He's basically my hero. A lot of people feel so much.

Oh yeah, his talks are fantastic. Oh my God, he's my hero. He came to Toronto. I saw him three times in two days. We had breakfast with him. I took the biggest, like goofy selfie with him ever. It was great. But one of his, one of his quotes that, that I, that I always go back to is the most interesting shit that's happened in any industry is not in any industry. It's in the intersection between industries. And anything, fitness included, marketing included, is inherently uninteresting and unvaluable by itself. But when you start to mix those things together, fitness by itself, cool, you're a little bit better at a squat.

That's great. But once you get to a certain level of proficiency at that thing, it's getting a little bit better. We always laugh. It's like people are like, oh, I'm going to take another nutrition certification. It's like, you haven't read a single book on business. Why in the world? And you're complaining that your business is suffering. Why in the world do you think a specialty in some obscure area of training is going to move the needle for you? I'm not saying that you shouldn't always strive to get better at this, but you got to complement it. And there are certain industries, there are certain schools of thought that you can complement skills for. Basically, what I believe very strongly is you need to be really good at one thing. And then you've got to be good enough to be dangerous

at a few basic transferable skills that are complementary skills. You've got to be good enough to be dangerous in understanding the psychology of persuasion. You've got to be good enough to be dangerous in writing. And you've got to be good enough to be dangerous at understanding why people use media. If you mix any of those with a high level of proficiency in any hard skill, call it fitness, gym ownership, whatever it is,

you're going to win pretty big. And it doesn't mean, you know, David Epstein talks about this in range. It was super, actually, I like a lot of what he talked about, but what I'm seeing is a little bit different from his main theory of the book. But one of the things that they found, one of his findings in there was that basically you could have 10 people who are absolute experts at 10 different areas of study, and they will be less effective pooled together as a team than one person who is good enough at all 10 things. Because that one person who's good enough at all 10 things can see connections. The 10 people who are so good can't.

What you'll be able to do once you build this high level of skill and fitness and combining it with all this other stuff is you're able to see connections and do interesting shit that nobody else can. And that's what's valuable because nobody can replicate that. I mean, that's how you become, you know, Seth Godin's linchpin, right? In another business. Our director of marketing, who basically like him and I are like co-marketing heads. His name's Jason Maxwell. Great guy, known him for years and years and years. He is a literal trained rocket scientist. He's an aerospace engineer,

turned personal trainer, turned online fitness marketer, who started his own business, made a few hundred thousand dollars a year, realized that, you know, he wanted to be part of something much bigger. He wasn't the person to lead the ship, but he wanted to be in it

until he came and joined our company. And like, he makes a lot of money. But think about that combination of skills. If you want a data-driven marketer in an online fitness company. You found him. You can't just create that, right? You can't just create that. That's what's valuable. That's why

this guy, I mean, I won't say how much he makes, but that's why this guy, you know, I will be quite happy to pay half a million dollars a year for him to be a director of marketing with me. And I can MBA in from a business school and you know or a business degree or a personal trainer or whatever and like you know pay them minimum wage like

it's that different it's a combination of skills that you need with your online you have your big curriculum, you have your, you have your textbook. And I'm, I'm assuming you can comment on this, that there's, there is some type of like semester, so to speak, that you're going to run people through,

but to help them through all of the content in, in your very large textbook. Do you expect people show up when they show up to have a high level of expertise in fitness and nutrition and you're mostly giving them the good enough to be dangerous components of business to to launch them or is it is there a heavy component of teaching fitness and nutrition we don't we don't teach fitness nutrition at all i don't teach biomechanics i don't teach physiology i don't think anybody should train anybody online if they're a brand new trainer. I believe, and so like we put our foot down, we say in our marketing, like you should not train people online. And we don't want you to take, like other people will

teach you, like other people will take your money. We don't want to take your money if you're a brand new trainer. We say you should have a minimum of years experience in gym. It's not quite that cut and dry. We get a lot of people who are career changers, for example, who were nurses, accountants, lawyers, teachers, who are, you know, when they were entering their career in their 20s, fitness wasn't a career. And now they're in their 40s, maybe 50s, 60s. And they're becoming personal trainers. It's like, they've been in fitness their entire life. They built programs for their friends, for their family. Like, you're fine. If you've worked in fitness a lot, basically, if you have the core competencies to program, you're fine. What we do is we teach you how to take the skills that you already have and transfer them online so that

you're dangerous online, so that you can take great care of your clients online like like module three is taking care of clients you know how do you really take care of people online but i'm not going to tell you how to write a program like if you don't know that you got to learn that first but if you know you should be able to crush it online so yeah i mean our curriculum like we have an option where you can do it digital or you can get the physical textbook. Basically, you can buy the physical textbook if you want. But we offer digital too, just because shipping to the United Arab Emirates is a bit of a nightmare. And when you join, it's self-paced. So material unlocks as they go.

So we used to do cohort based. Basically, I did cohort-based for five years. And what cohort-based really allowed us to do was it allowed us to take in a cohort, look at the data, assess the data. I mean, we've had independent auditors for our program. Like we had the senior course developer at Yale University do an independent audit

on the actual learning of the course. We're just finishing a massive research project right now using the jobs to be done framework actually. So we're continually doing that kind of stuff. PhD in distance course learning design, that type of thing. But it also allows us to follow cohorts. When we did cohort based, it allowed us to follow a cohort. Look at how successful they were.

Look at what they did. Look at what they didn't do. We use a lot of survey. We use a lot of phone calls and we followed our students and watched what they were doing and what they weren't doing. And then we went back and basically revised the program every single time. So we're in version 2.0. Actually, we're in version 3.0 of the textbook now.

I don't even know what version of the course we're in. But we've just iterated on it over and over and over again to the point where now it's available all the time because we don't need the cohorts to basically take in that data anymore. We've done it. It's been seven years, eight years of that process. So we don't need anyone. What is an average roughly for people that go through that course? It's self-paced, but if someone wants to sign up, roughly how long should they expect to be in that course?

It takes people in and around 25 to 35 hours to get through it some people run through that in a week if they have time other people take months there's no time limit to complete it you get lifetime access to all the materials i mean we have people who especially when covid hit like students who bought it five years ago went back jumped on a phone call with us um you know basically built a new accountability plan, jumped in where they needed to, got a refresh. So generally we find people get through in anywhere from three to four weeks, but you can do it at your pace. And some people get through faster. If you've already got the basis, I believe very strongly that you should approach everything with a beginner's mindset.

Even if you've been training for a long time, it's still worth going through this. I mean, we've helped over 30,000 people in 86 countries, 40 plus people put together this curriculum. Like you're going to learn something that you didn't know. I don't care how long you've been doing this. Like you're going to improve somewhere. So it's worth going through the whole thing

and more experienced online trainers, like they just patch up holes. They're like, oh yeah, that's why I was miserable. That's why this person wasn't responding to me. Oh, that's why I didn't make that sale. You know, this is how I could have generated these referrals. This is how I could have celebrated my clients better publicly. Yeah, there's always ways to improve, right? You've mentioned a couple times that like, these skills that make you dangerous, like writing, for example, I can't remember the exact book that it's kind of annoying when you have it on in your brain, and you can't remember the exact title of the book to um it's kind of annoying when you have it on in your brain and you can't remember the exact title of the book to get them but they talk about as an author i hate people like you yeah

it's like just say the name of my book so people buy it um but they talk about developing super skills and writing being one of them that doesn't really matter like where you're at but that skill as you mentioned is like dangerous skill when you was this part right was it his book uh ryan franklin last safe investment that one last safe investment um very good book go buy it great job thank you because it's a phenomenal book it's like yeah yeah Brian Franklin Brian Franklin yeah the last safe investment go do it but you do you guys teach copywriting

yes there is in the we have basically like a bonus module so we have core curriculum that you got to go through to become certified but then we have a bonus module that's basically pick and choose and that's basically pick and choose. And that's just like uplifting your skills. So it's got unbelievable sales training.

Copywriting is in there. Email marketing is in there. And we basically leave that optional. So it's there if you want it, but it's not part of the curriculum. Like it's not going to the curriculum like it's not going to be on the exam put it that way but uh but yeah man i like you talk about like get dangerous at one or two skills like for me it's writing and copywriting you know fitness is secondary i'm good

enough at fitness and i was a trainer for eight years like i'm good enough at fitness but I'm pretty far removed from it now I mean you guys had wiped the floor with me on it maybe but I'm a copywriter so like I write a lot but you know enough about copywriting isn't yeah copy I write about fitness but I want people to take action because I tell them this is a good way to do it right and. And you're persuasive because you understand the power of telling stories. You understand the power of... I just enjoy writing too. Communicating well. Yeah.

The most fun part about writing is you realize how poor your thought patterns are until they go onto paper and you have to figure out how to say something effectively yeah like if you read something you know social media is a great place to go read it and like somebody's just like rambled thoughts and you're like whoa settle down you get emails sometimes and you know it's it's yeah these are all so let me let me give you an example of what we teach in the online trainer academy so support is a nightmare for most online trainers they're like yeah i'm gonna get unlimited support and all of a sudden they're like now responsive to their email they're responsive to their clients it's like the worst thing ever

so what we teach people is this is just one method there's a lot of methods you can offer support but we tell people it's like, Hey, you can still offer unlimited support, but here's how you do it. You tell people that they can send you one email a week. Okay. That email needs to be point form. Each point is no more than three sentences. Each point is one question. You can have as many points as you want on that email.

And I'll get back to you, pick a time, Sunday morning by 10 a.m. What does that allow you to do now? Well, what that does, it's Richard Thaler, right? That's a nudge. It forces a certain type of action. It still allows you to support people in this unlimited amount of way. And you can tell people, you're like, look, if there's an emergency, 100% call me. Like, here's my phone number. But people respect that. And so then, now, there's no wall of words.

You're controlling how people are going to send you information, which means you can digest it better. You're forcing them to be succinct in each point. You can always message back and say, tell me more about that or buzz them back and say, tell me more about that. And in telling them that they can send as many points as they want at the end of the week, everybody's going to then basically collect a list instead of just firing you stuff whenever they think about it. Now everybody, any rational human being looks at that list and says, there's a lot of stuff on there. That's going to suck for that person. And then they eliminate themselves, the things that don't matter.

Like this is just one idea of just like, how do you run an intelligent business with just these little tweaks, right? That just makes your life better and allows you to be more for more people. Way better. Because now you can live your life and not be responsive to your phone. You can turn off your phone. You can go paddle boarding with your wife. You can go for a bike ride with your son and not worry that your client is going to send you a text or an email

and you've set a precedent that you're going to get back to them right away. Yeah. Now you can set a block in your schedule and say, this is my block for listening to old school hip hop and responding to client emails. And that's good. Like, like,

yeah. Old school hip hop's great. That's just one example of like, you got to build intelligent systems that work for you for the kind of life that you kind of want. But going back, going back to your story about writing, I love it. I don't know if you guys have, I've heard his name. Lou Shuler is our editorial director and Lou's, I mean, incredible.

He's, he's, he's been around for decades, you know, previous jobs. He was, he's been editor of men's health, muscle and fitness and teenation, all of them. Yeah. I used to recommend his books. I bought my brother's, both of my brothers, his New Rules for Lifting book many, many years ago. I was like, this is super basic, very straightforward, easy to follow. I enjoy reading it myself. So I bought them copies back before I was writing training programs for everyone.

Back before you were doing it? Well, actually, I cycled from high school writing lots of training programs for all my friends in college, realizing that none of them were actually going to do what I wrote, uh, which is partly my fault now in retrospect about how I wrote those programs and how I actually figured out what they wanted, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But, but by the time my brothers were asking me, uh, I was like, well, I don't really want to put in the effort here. This guy has already done it take it right and he's great yeah so like he's been so so he's been working as our as our

editorial director for three years or so um and uh and i always laugh because he's just like you want and how the one way that i know somebody is immediately a shit writer it's when they tell them that writing is easy it's like if somebody tells me that writing is easy i know that you're writing a shit because it's not easy for anybody i mean the entire process of reorganizing your thoughts in a way that somebody else with no prior or if you're in copywriting like you have to know the state of awareness. How much does this person know about me and know about the problem? But organizing your thoughts so that somebody else who's not you, where you can't control where they're coming from, understands those thoughts, man, that's hard.

And if you want to get good at understanding something, teach it. This is why I think everybody, everybody in the world should be a teacher. You should have time dedicated in every single week of your life to teach somebody about something that you care about. Because the sheer effort of you teaching them about that thing makes you understand that thing better. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta boil things down to the essentials. Where can people find your course, man? This is a, this is really cool. I think that where the state of fitness is right now,

people need to learn about this and, and go through a structured progression to moving more online and learning about these skills. The course can be found. I mean, it's called the online trainer Academy. You can Google it online trainer.com slash a chat slash Academy. You can find it.

And if you're interested about like podcast about online training, we've got a really fun show too, called the online trainer show, which is just online trainer.com slash podcast. So basically, onlinetrainer.com slash academy, onlinetrainer.com slash podcast. And the podcast is fun. My co-host and I have a lot of fun. You'll laugh, you'll learn, you'll recognize just how bad at podcasting we are. And I hope that gives you some permission to take imperfect action of your own by listening to it.

Totally. Just go out and do it. Doug Larson. Doug Larson. Follow me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged.

You can find us at barbell shrugged.com forward slash store programs, eBooks courses, come and hang out with us. Let's get strong. We will see you guys next week. Radical friends. Make sure you go over to barbell shrugged.com forward slash store. That is where you can use the code shrugged to save 10% on all the programs,

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