Barbell Shrugged - The Power Of Journaling with Aaron Jannetti of Endeavor Defense & Fitness - The Strong Coach #4

Episode Date: November 16, 2019

Today we have Aaron Jannetti from Endeavor Defense and Fitness. We get into the power and practice of journaling as a tool to develop our minds, the simple things that hold most coaches back from loving their coaching business, and how to take advantage of everyday opportunities that most people miss. Enjoy the show.

Welcome to the Strong Coach Podcast, Season 3, Episode 4. The show to learn how to be the best coach possible while building a sustainable and lucrative coaching business. For more shows like this, head over to strongcoachpodcast.com to subscribe to over 10 other shows that we've already posted up that you can binge on today. And while you're over at strongcoachpodcast.com, download your free three-step coaching business tune-up. This is something that we're giving away that you can put in place immediately. It'll give you things you can improve in your business. It'll make you more money. It'll make your job easier. It'll help your clients get better results. And make sure to follow us over on Instagram at the strong coach

to learn what's working in the industry right now. We're pumping out easy tips to implement every day there as well. And you can see what our clients are up to. See their wins, see what the things that they've changed in their business that's allowed them to make more money and have more freedom. Today we have Aaron Giannetti from Endeavor Defense and Fitness. We get into the power and practice of journaling as a tool to develop our minds, the simple things that hold most coaches back from loving their coaching business, and how to take advantage of everyday opportunities that most people miss. Enjoy the show. We're waiting on our pumpkin, chip cookie, gluten-free. Gluten-free?

You ever had gluten-free, sugar-free, everything-free cookies? To me, I imagine cardboard or chalk. Yeah, or eating air. It's like, here, you can smell it. Now, I'm going to eat one of these. I was going to say, how many of these are we eating? Yeah. Oh, my God.

As for one we got five pumpkin that's good it's october we eat pumpkin cookies i'm in columbus ohio wow i traveled to columbus ohio wanted to come out here and do a couple interviews pop in for the weekend visit our drew and chelsea and then found out that um you're here Danny goes, oh, my God, you've got to interview Aaron while you're there. He'll be good. And I said, all right, tell me why. And he gave me some reasons why, and I go, perfect. Sounds great.

Let's do this. Let's do this. Great. I don't actually regret it, but I immediately regret telling Danny those things I told him. What did you tell him? Now you've got to tell the whole world. Actually, I think I just told him

maybe 48 hours ago the settling and sacrifice journaling exercise. The very first journaling exercise. Aaron's in the 90-day program. He's in the Strong Coach 90-day program. We're in week two. You're fresh. You're fresh.

Right. You're fresh. The most fresh, yeah. I've been following along for like four months secondhand through Drew. However, anyway. You've been watching him go through the program. Yes. And you're like, oh, shit.

What did you see with Drew? I'm curious. You saw Drew go through the program? Yes. I had met Drew before at the arnold but i didn't really know him yeah so like i only know him post 90 day program what was interesting about at least the way that we were able to follow it was drew and i record every week and so we usually record about things that are on our mind so you guys have a podcast correct yeah so you're recording a podcast

every week and so we come in and we usually just shoot the shit for 30 minutes to an hour, sometimes an hour and a half decompressing from the week, talking about what we've learned, grown, whatever. And so I'm getting firsthand like, Oh man, this journaling exercise fucked me up. Or, Oh man, like, do you know that they want you to schedule me time first? Like they, Oh, that was an amazing week to have that discussion. And so it was a lot of fun because the things that were going through his mind, through the coaching core, through Strong Coach, we then would kind of walk through and like, okay, how am I viewing this from that aspect of it? But then for me, not knowing what you guys are talking about, we'd be able to walk down that

path. So that was fascinating. That was a lot of fun to watch. I know language is always the biggest one. His language has changed completely. Mine has changed completely. And then the way he secures and protects his time now from somebody that's as close to him and sees it, obviously not as close as Chels, but it's very obvious. And it's very impactful from my imagination. Yeah, it's hard to be effective if your boundaries are

non-existent. Correct. Or you don't actually protect your boundaries, which let people walk all over them. And I'm waiting for week three, because that's going to be a fun journey for me personally. But to get back to where we were at. So the sacrifice and settling thing, I had told Danny, Hey man, I would have fronted the bill that I fronted for this for that exercise. You could have been like, here's your one exercise. And I would have been like, boom, that was the realizations that came out of that were pretty fascinating for me. And so essentially the two that came out of that that were really powerful. So growing up, father wasn't present as much, alcohol issues, psychologically, physically abusive. So you can start to imagine that picture. Everybody knows somebody in that category. and obviously had this huge admiration for her sacrificing everything she had to do to make sure

we were taken care of. And I was aware of that. What was interesting was to have to put her and the stories and lessons I learned and the admiration I learned for her directly next to the story with my father. And now you look back at every interaction I had with my father that I remember was a business transaction. And it was, I'm buying you this truck. And in return, I want you to be loyal to me and not your mother. I'm going to pay for this quarter of college. And I want it because your mother's trash and I'm not.

So I always envisioned that. And this, to this point, there was no awareness to this until this journaling exercise of how these two correlated. And so the story I was telling myself for a very long time was it's admirable to sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. It just shows how much you care about something. And business is sleazy. And so my view around asking for money and the value of service and all that stuff was

tied. And there was this huge chunk that until that journaling exercise, so literally one week to today, never explored that to that point. And that in itself allowed me to literally go back and using some of, I went through the 21 day core language upgrade course online from Mark England, and being able just to take some of the word changes and translations and be able to reformulate stories in my head. We haven't even gotten to mantras at this point yet, and be able to reformulate some stories in my head were there. So then, of course, Danny's like, all right, so what's the new story? I'm like, all right, well.

And so I've written in my journal now since that realization every day, my parents did the best they could with what they had. Their story is theirs. Mine is mine. And that's been a big one for me to separate that relationship. And then the service I have to offer is valuable. I am valuable. And that's one of the things that I've been boom, boom, boom, hammering home with journaling, which brought me to another realization week one, which was I really enjoy

writing. I always write for other people. So I always write with the intent of posting. I always write with the intent of sharing. Up until now, I've spent zero time writing for me, like just writing, just getting my thoughts on paper. And again, so that was a, it was a fascinating week one. Week one. Yeah. Week one. Yeah, it's funny. The majority of the writing I used to do was also for other people or for blogs or for posts or something like that. And I made the comment to some friends last week. I was like, you know what? I love writing, but I don't really do it much.

And then they looked at me and go, are you insane? We can't pry that journal out of your hand. I go, oh, I don't really think about that as writing. That's just for me. I'm just writing for me. But I said this at the summit a couple months ago when we had it, which was everything that's coming out of my mouth is for me to hear. It's not always for the other person.

I'm telling you, and hopefully you're getting the benefit out of it, but most of the coaching that I'm giving or the teaching I'm giving, it's for me to hear because I've got to hear it again. I've got to hear it again. Man, that's fascinating because even just now as I'm giving or the teaching I'm giving, it's for me to hear because I got to hear it again. And that's, man, that's fascinating. Because even just now, as I'm thinking about it, when I write, I write what's on my mind, like what's bugged me today. And I'll get it to paper, like stream of conscious. And I listened to the, at least at this time of us recording it, the more recent with you and Mark again on the Unlifted Athlete and talking about the difference between stream of conscious journaling and everything going forward. I write stream of conscious and then I know that I'm posting it for somebody else and for some

other reason. So then I go back and change stuff that I imagine will make it more palatable. Yeah. And that's fascinating because why? If just as you were saying that, like is making me go like, man, I actually go back and change my writing and that's why i consider it writing yeah because i'm trying to make something that's going on in my brain that i really just wanted to get to paper anyway yeah out of my head i've been wanting to do one of the things i want to do in the next year is create a journaling course yeah and because i've been journaling for a while and the older I get, the more I journal. And it's not because I'm becoming more reflective.

I don't think that's where it's coming from. I think I'm becoming more reflective because I understand how to use language powerfully. And so when I journal now, the experience I have right after journaling is of realization, of changing the story, of being more in touch with reality and having a plan to change it in the way that I want to be changed. And so that's a very satisfying place to sit from. I think a lot of people don't journal kind of like training.

Like, oh, I'm not seeing the results. So they get, like, I don't really feel like training anymore or I don't feel like eating well because I'm not seeing the results. But when you get into a really good training program or you finally figure out something in nutrition starts working now it's motivating and so yeah that what I'm finding is I'm becoming way more motivated to journal as I get older and that's

why I can't pry the journal on my hands I got like a little carrying case for it and all this stuff people make fun of me and I'm just like I got my colored pens. But it's so powerful because I get to change. Like if something's coming up for me, if I'm getting some emotional charge around something, like, oh, what is that? Let's journal about that. And if you were to read the journal, I'm pretty sure people would try to check me into an insane asylum. Like, oh, we need to get him some fucking help. He looks like he's doing pretty good, but like what's going on in the journal is a little crazy.

And I like what you're saying. You took the journaling exercise and you started looking at what you learned from your parents. It's such a powerful exercise to do and realizing that a lot of what our parents taught us, we end up taking on the identity of our parents. And our beliefs shape our identity, and, we end up taking on the identity of our parents and our beliefs shape our identity. And then we buy into this identity. And for me, it's been the last few years that I've recognized that I've become an adult. I'm 38 now. And it wasn't until I was 35 that I feel like I even started becoming an adult. Maybe it was a little earlier than that. Like, it's hard to say like at what point, but where I really started taking responsibility for my own identity, like who I am and realizing,

oh, I can actually change this because what most people die with this, they die with what they inherited from their parents. Their parents gave them all these beliefs, which form the identity over between the ages of like zero and 10 or something like that. You could say when we do our training camp for the soul training, we specifically focus on the ages of 0 to 7. Just because that's how consciousness develops is we lack the ability to have analytical tools and logic online and all that kind of stuff. That's why we focus there. But yeah, in the early formative years, like we just take it on. So I like to remind people of how you are today. Isn't your fault. You inherited that and you had no choice in the matter when you were a kid and what you

took on as beliefs, because when you come in and you want, you don't see yourself separate from your mom. It's like, Oh yeah, we're like the same person and then your dad is you want nothing more than your dad to love you so like oh what can i do to earn dad's love and so of course this is going to shape your beliefs there's nothing that you identify more with than your parents and so as we get older i think we take it for granted and we forget we think we're oh i'm making my own decisions now it's's like, yeah, okay. Yeah, you're making your own decisions. Good job. Yeah. And there's a point where it's like, oh, no. I think that until you start taking responsibility for what you believe and putting it down on paper, put down what you believe on paper and look at it.

Is it true? Or is this something that just you've made the assumption that it's true your whole life and you've been running your perspective has been narrowed by this idea. And then you start questioning, is it true? And all this like you've done and it opens up the world of possibility and all of a sudden it's like, oh, I don't have to be that anymore. It really is. Again, journaling to journal, I'm a newbie right now. And I'm excited to start to own that a lot more in the short period of time I've done it. And now when I say short period of time, 10 days. You're 10 days into journaling. You know what I mean?

Dude, I love this. I am loving this. I forget a lot of times. Like, oh, this program causes people to journal. Yeah. That never weren't, you weren't journaling before. No. And in 10 days, I was just telling them right before we had come out here and got set up,

I was telling them we had put up a survey for our CrossFit members to give us a little bit of feedback on how classes were going. And we were leading up to a training that we did on just yesterday. And I made the mistake. I always turn my phone off before I go, like way before I go to bed. I have a business phone and I have a emergency for the family phone. Turn the business phone off. There's no apps on my other phone, whatever. I made the mistake of turning that phone on and checking the feedback really quick just so that I could have some thoughts.

Yeah. Worst possible decision right before I go to bed. Right. So this is Thursday night. I still do that sometimes. I'm like, I know I shouldn't do this. Somebody's pissed. Fuck. Shit. There goes the night. And Friday is my day off, and it's family day, and I don't do shit on Friday.

It's booked out, take the kids, go do some things. And sure as shit, man, the last fucking comment. Again, what's frustrating too is because now I know enough to know this is valuable feedback, this is a perception, this is something that needs, like, we have to look at it, so this is important, but the last thing literally specifically called me out, and the quote was, I find it frustrating that Aaron is on a podcast giving advice while small parts of his gym seem to be falling apart around him, right? And so I'm literally like, it's 11 o'clock at night. You motherfucker. Why did you look at this? Do you know this person?

Well, it was totally anonymous, right? So we let it be anonymous for this. And so here's the deal though. So I have this i have like three struggles going on one struggle is there was a lot of good feedback in the comment the last sentence just happened to be like bam like right there and a motherfucker so then i was like all right we'll calm the fuck down take the feedback the way that you can get it let's try to realize that 99 of the feedback has been positive and good. Whatever, whatever. It didn't matter. This one fucking sentence was just drilled in my head.

Go to sleep. Four o'clock in the morning, I wake up wide-eyed. And all of a sudden, it's anger, self-doubt, disappointment. What's the Kickstart Challenge going to look like? What am I going to do for Arnold sponsorship that I haven't taken care of? This 30-day online program that you're going to do for active shooter? You haven't even started filming yet. Like, and it was out of nowhere at 4am right out of nowhere, but this is great. Right. And this goes back to journaling. So in the past, I would lay there staring at the

ceiling, battle with myself, motherfuck everybody up, down, left, and right, and hopefully fall asleep at some point. And this is the first time that I was like, well, man, you've seen a really lot of benefits from this just idea of writing shit down. So I literally got out of bed at about 4.15. So I stood there and motherfucked people for about 15 minutes.

But I got up, got out of bed, I grabbed my journal, and I wrote out everything that was just spewing out of my head, got all that shit to paper, took some of bed. I grabbed my journal and I wrote out everything that was just spewing out of my head. Got all that shit to paper. Did, took some of the negative talk, flipped it around to affirmations, took some of the soft talk into solid talk. Just translated all of this shit on my own. This is the foundation of journaling right here.

You got to do vocabulary first. Oh man. Once you do vocabulary, that's a foundation for journaling. Yeah. I don't think I could teach people how to journal effectively. Like there's some journaling prompts, but as far as having your own journaling practice where you can go into the rest of your life, got to have that first. Yeah. It's incredible. The shift it's allowed me in my personal life and professionally. And it was, Mike, it was fascinating because it was, I was up for about an hour, hour and a half, just putting thoughts to paper and had a couple in the middle of it was really funny because then I had these like creative thoughts that kind of came to me and I was like, well, shit, write those down really quick. Funny how that happens.

Right? Yeah. You clear the shit out and all of a sudden creativity comes online. Yeah. Yeah. And I go back to bed. It's just before six now. And I fucking slept like a baby.

Like wife was like, Jesus, you were snoring so loud this morning. Like you were out like kicking me to wake me up at nine o'clock. And it was. You got to tape that mouth shut. It was, man, it was fucking fascinating. And so, of course, like that's just one more nail in the coffin. I'm like, yeah, journals going everywhere. And so the,

we had an orientation literally just a couple of hours ago for a six week program we have going on at the gym. The normally the orientation is let's talk about fitness or nutrition steps. Let's talk about the program is going to be, and literally like 48 hours before it, all of a sudden it became a goal setting workshop. And we're going to talk about journaling. I went out and bought everybody journals and they're sitting down there writing shit and orientation. And like, I was just like, this is so different. And so it's fascinating that in about 10 days, journaling has already, and not even superficially has like legit allowed me to see things that I up to this point haven't seen and allowed me to break down barriers I imagine would have taken a long time if not never been broken down to this

point. It's absolutely fascinating. Yeah. One thing I want to point out is that waking up with that feeling. So we have usually what we do is we have a feeling that comes in the body and that generates a belief and the belief starts generating stories. And so you got that feedback and that feedback did it triggered an emotion in you and trigger that feeling. There was a sensation in the body and you were hyper-focused on that one thing, go to sleep. That feeling starts hammering that belief. That belief starts running in your subconscious and then the stories start running. And so that tells me that there's some belief, there's a phrase that's running around your subconscious that has you worrying about all these things, all these things that have yet to happen. I've got to

do all this. What about that? What about that? What about this? And so I just wanted to throw that out there for people to understand is, and I'm saying it like the feeling generates the belief that generates the story, but it also works the other way around. And so the, and the story and the belief is actually of the mind and the belief a lot of times in the subconscious and the story comes to the bubbles up to the consciousness and that's where we usually focus, but we can rewind that too. But you can also take control of your story and unwind it the other direction. So, but having breath and tools and like the journaling and, and use of the language can help you unwind that the other direction. So it's a really cool practice and knowing that like there could be a

hundred things tied to one feeling. It's like one feeling generates one or two or three beliefs that generate a hundred stories. And this is why people end up in having bad days and end up being pissed off all the time. And it's because they're, that's just running without any control whatsoever. We can take control of these things. I mean, I get literally, we could talk journaling forever in the 10 short days,

even as simple as the goal setting stuff. The first time I wrote out the 10 year goals last week, I completely brushed over. I imagine unintentionally, but completely brushed over the, because. And I was just like, 10-year goals. You didn't do the because part. Well, I had skimmed the, I was so excited to write 10-year goals. I had skimmed the, here's how to do it. And I was just like, boom. Okay, cool. It says to do 10-year goals now. So I started writing stuff out. Well, then when you

have to go and actually enter them in, and then read through that and i was like wow and so that was fascinating because it literally changed almost every single one of the 10-year goals because i then had to define the because portion of it and again it's just it's i don't know it's fascinating the time it takes for you to actually write things down process the information sit with it stare at it and how that really changes perception and the way like internally the way you feel. All that stuff. Again, in 10 short days, it's changed the way I view processing information and addressing stories. And I guess reigning in control of the things that I am in control of. Which is something we've looked at from a self-defense perspective and from a fitness perspective superficially for a very long time.

And now the internal story thing is fascinating. This is why I'm excited because this technology, how we use the language, was created outside of the fitness world, outside of the training world. It was designed specifically more for just the cognitive frameworks for better productivity and all that. And one of the things I'm excited about bringing these frameworks to the fitness community and bring it to the coaches is we understand reps.

We understand like there's so many analogies and metaphor to our training that we get it better than most of these other people who are being exposed to it. So these other life coaches or people who would study this type of stuff, they're not as strong. They don't have the reps that we have. And I think that the fact that we have this physical foundation, it's really a stronger foundation than what most other coaches and other industries have.

So I'm excited to be bringing all this in because the entire fitness community is about to go up a level. Because we're getting a whole new level of understanding. And no one's going to be able to catch us. We're going to dominate. Because we got the physical part, which is important. I mean, without the physical, you don't have the mental and the emotional. They all impact each other.

So the fact that we have that dialed in is fucking great. Makes it easier to teach. impact each other so the fact that we have that dialed in is fucking great have you makes it easier to teach have you worked with people outside of the fitness industry and seen like a distinct difference between the two and the way they take it yeah they're less patience so like the analogy of training of like i was talking with drew last night we were talking about goal setting you wouldn't expect someone goes well i want to squat 500 pounds and you go well how many squats have you done and it's like well i haven't done any oh right and and you go well yeah you just start with an air squat just put your ass down and get back up that's where you start and the person who doesn't have any foundation training like that

wouldn't get it they don't understand if they've never done anything that required repetition, then it's a lot harder for them to have the discipline. There's already a lot of inherent discipline in someone who comes from fitness because we know it's like, oh, you want to put on a muscle mass. You want to be stronger. Oh, that's going to take years. Years, not weeks, years. And so the language stuff is really great because it won't take years yeah i've been working on it for years and i'm still getting better i'm very good at it and i saw benefits of it and within weeks yeah and it made it easy to be motivated to keep on it but also understanding like oh this is new yeah and it's like the first guy who started squatting and having squat

competitions it's like it wasn't that like i'm i'm probably like in the mental game i'm probably squatting 300 pounds but no one else is squatting so it's so you're ahead of the game yeah yeah it's like it's like people are just like talking about ideas so they're squatting like 100 pounds but there's a fucking thousand pound squat on. That's going to happen in the next decade. That's a powerful analogy for me. Yeah. That's legit. Yeah.

And the other thing you said, yeah, that feedback. And I think one of the skills of somebody who is a teacher in taking feedback is really viewing it. It's very difficult to not take it personal. And that even seemed like a personal jab, the comment of, like, your gym is falling. What was it? I know you've memorized it.

Yeah. Not letting that one go. I find it frustrating that Aaron's giving advice on a podcast when small parts of his gym seem to be falling apart around him. Yeah. I do want to point out that if you look under the hood of any business, even the ones that are doing really well, you're like, oh, my God, they're amazing. You start getting under the hood, and you're like, what the fuck is going on?

This is terrible. I have mentors where I started getting to know them really well, and I go, oh. Yeah. That part of their business is a disaster. Oh, yeah. It's a disaster. We talked about this two two weeks ago in like perception of others and the way they went. And actually like this was, I believe it was the Memphis trip.

So the first time you and I would have crossed paths, the guy that was running all the seminars that I was going around assisting him, Mark Slane, he was like my original mentor. And I just vividly remember like at breakfast being, all right, so like, what's the plan today? This is my first law enforcement one that I'm going to be involved in. And like, what are we going to do? And he was like, I don't know. I think we'll do this, this, this, and this.

And it literally was like, you haven't, wait a minute. You don't have like a set curriculum. You haven't mapped this out. There's like all these things. You're literally just going to show up and wing it and it's going to work. And like, I literally like, it was from that moment on, I told Drew that I may have taken it too far and just decided that everybody's fucked up and nobody has their shit together. I said, but whatever that belief was, I was like,

sweet. I don't need to have my shit together to do things. And then that spilled that storyline. You can ask Drew about the amount of plans I've taken action on without thinking first. And most of them go in relatively well. I'm that way. I adapt. I think some people are really good at planning. Yeah. And some people are really good at being adapting.

Yeah. And so I'm on the adapt side as well. So I almost prefer not to know what's going to happen because then I get the flex. Yep. But I've also learned to lean on the planners. Yeah. And it's the combination of the two that allows us to go far. He's getting the look.

He's getting the look. Drew's a planner. You go there. Is he? I don't know. I don't know. You're getting the nod. Yeah, but as a teacher getting feedback, we call it feed forward.

Yeah. That way it feels a little better, you know? And it literally is to get in a place where you don't take it personally, because I look at it as someone's feedback or feed forward is their story and they believe their story. And it's only one perspective. It's just a piece of the truth. And so I go, cool. I get excited. Something like that. I get excited because I go, okay, there's something I get to work on something now. And if you're somebody talking to the audience here, if you're somebody who does not like feedback, feed forward, it's something you avoid. That means you're avoiding things in your own coaching practice,

your own business. And it is fucking shit up whether you know it or not. So it's better to know it and be actively working on it and being with reality of what's going on. And I remember running a gym and making changes and like pulling myself out of classes where I stopped coaching and people were pissed and I was getting what would most people would call negative feedback. And then me reminding myself is people were pissed. And I was getting what most people would call negative feedback. And then me reminding myself is people hate change.

Anytime you change anything, people are going to complain. And you just got to brace yourself and know that it's coming. And for me, when people are complaining when a big change is happening, unless they're complaining about the actual service that was delivered sucking, then you did a good job. Right. So we just had that conversation at our training yesterday. And it was like, look, because we're making, we're locking in.

Again, you go back to just even the idea of soft talk, solid talk. We had laid out protocol standards, all this type of stuff forever. But we had these protocol standards, mission statement, all that kind of stuff. And it was always soft. It was always, well well this is kind of you know that type thing and so it was this reshaping of look this is how things are going to go forward there are going to be changes but we just had that conversation which was there will be pushback remember this is the mission this is the idea as long as it matches

that we're okay and if it goes past something you can't handle let's talk about it and we'll figure it out but when i imagine aaron seven years ago when i opened the new gym had i gotten that feedback i would have hunted that motherfucker down and just it wouldn't have been pretty and so then i what was a lot of fun for me friday as i was kind of digesting that information was it allowed me to realize the space I had created between stimulus and response and my ability to process information. And now, again, this whole new tool of journaling. But it made me kind of want to do like a rewind and be like, all right, seven years ago, 10

years ago when you were teaching and you weren't the gym owner, what would you have done? Now you have to worry about the gym owner and what's that response go? And then seven years ago when you open't the gym owner what would you have done now you have to worry about the gym owner and what's that response go and then seven years ago when you open up your business what would you have done and five years ago what would you have done three years ago what you've done and every single one of them was different you can identify it and so that was a fascinating process too which was like you've been growing you're just that much better at it now and you'll be that much better at it moving forward yeah yeah it speeds up you get good like there's a skill the skill of transformation the skill of letting go of old beliefs taking on new ones there's a skill in that as well and you can girl everyone is a lot more

malleable than they give themselves credit for yeah most people are like i can't change i'm like to me that's why are you even here? Yep. Like that's what you're here for. You literally came here to do that. You want to keep things the same? Like that's death. Yeah.

Like that's, why would you do that? what is, uh, now that I've gotten all dark on everybody, that little bit of that journal starting to spill out. I was reading a book i'm reading this really great book it was talking about the samurai yeah and like making death your friend like being a

warrior and that is knowing the true warrior knows that he or she is going to die and it can happen at any moment and that's the person who really embodies the warrior spirit fucking takes action and does shit now because every moment is precious and the warrior spirit is action if you're having trouble with taking action tap into that everybody has that archetype living inside of them and that that's a lot of what you do. You work with warriors, right? Yes. What book is that? King Warrior Magician Lover. It's a study of the masculine archetypes that men go through from, it covers boyhood psychology, adult psychology, and then there's four different areas of the boy psychology that ends up when mature and healthy is able to transform

into the adult male or adult masculine archetypes. And so each man has the opportunity to fully develop as a king, warrior, magician, and lover. And it's a really good book. That type of reading is my favorite. Yeah. Cause because for me that is human development if you don't have that if you don't have your own that is your foundation if you don't have the foundation of like what you're here to do and what are you embodying from moment to moment do you have that discipline do you have control over your own life are you a nurturing adult are you taking care of other people appropriately are you doing it for the right reasons? What's your intention?

And these are all the things that, who the fuck cares what you're doing in the gym if you don't have that? Like, because I have that, I show up in the gym completely different now, way healthier, and I'm having a lot more fun, and life is good. Life is good.

I'm not, I don't train out of, because I've done that work, there's no training out of insecurity. I can miss a training session and be like, oh fuck man, I'm going to get fat. I'm going to, my arms aren't going to be as big and the girls aren't going to look at me, you know, like that's all in the past. And it feels good to train from a place of like, I really enjoy taking care of my body and I'm much more likely to listen to my body, which means I can become a much better athlete faster because I'm actually in tune with what's going on. And I don't have to like look at a piece of paper. I don't have to outsource. There's actual feedback going on.

I'm actually paying attention to feedback loops in my body because I honor it. And so I used to not be able to honor my body. It was just, I have to dominate this thing, just like I dominated everything else. It was like, oh, and I took pride in that. That's a fascinating line, the whole, because I've done this work, I don't train out of insecurity. Because that's a lot of the conversations and goals and why, like the why is people are in the gym that they get confused upon it man falls back on that so i'm gonna go back and quote you on that one that's why we created and lifted yeah we created and lifted because i look at everything that led to my injuries everything

that led to all the bad stuff that happened in my life. The bad stuff, I'm labeling it bad. Most people would look at it and go, oh, you got that injury that was bad. You had that falling out in a relationship that was bad. They were all gifts. They were all gifts. And they put me in a position where I could create something like Enlifted. And so there's the gift in that. And yeah, looking at, oh, the reason my life was so difficult during that period of my life is because this is how I was thinking.

These were the phrases running through my head. This is where my mind was at. And I got to shift that over time. And I go, look, in 21 days, we can shift this dramatically. And so that's the impetus for that. That's a good starting point. That's great. Yeah. We took a lot of the vocabulary stuff as the foundation for the Unlifted.

Yeah. And I had a chance to work through some of that leading up to waiting there, twiddling my thumbs for three weeks before our admin call. And it was great. It was really fun, too, to be able to look at. We don't let you get bored, folks. If you sign up, there's something to do. Yeah, there's plenty to do. It was a lot of fun, though, having gone through core language upgrade, then seeing how it was getting applied to Enlifted and then specifically into the fitness community. I was taking the pieces from Procabulary and figuring that stuff out. And then two things were happening. One was like this, like, oh, okay, I was on the right direction, like how to take these things and put them into these positions. And then it also allowed me to look at a completely different way that I would have never looked at it. And so that was also kind of fascinating too.

I would imagine that if I had just gone into one of those individually and not seen the, like all of the inner workings, that there are these little things that at this stage of my life with the experience I have with coaching and everything, that's really fun to see. Like, how does all this stuff blend together? How did it come about? I had no idea. He came back from the summit and was like, Hey, this guy, Mark England, super powerful. It was amazing. And I immediately was like, and purchase and went through that. I had no idea you guys even knew each other. And then all of a sudden it was like, Oh, that's what it lifted is. It's like, you know what I mean? And seeing a lot of the inner workings

and how it related is so powerful and so fascinating going through the lessons and being able to have that, like, okay, this language stuff is as important as I perceived it was as I was going through the program. Yeah. I don't know. It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks in the most positive fucking way I could ever even assert. Where have you gotten clarity?

Like where's your business or where's the business been in the last, say a month ago and where have you gotten clarity? And I also want to put the statement out there of you're three weeks in. Yeah, not even. So in another 60, 70, 80 days, it could look different. So putting that out there so everyone knows that there's a lot of shifts happening inside the program.

And I'm curious, where were you a month ago till today on where you want to focus your business and your attention? Yeah. So that's actually a really, really interesting question. And to look at it from that angle, like where have you seen clarity? I know the way that I imagine it, the way I'm translating it is the, up till this point, my lack of understanding the importance of communication, the power of words, and then how to better, I guess, control those words, or at least the ones that I'm in control of. That has been an area that has bled into not just business, but into my personal life,

into the way I interact with my kids. I have a two-year-old, a three-and-a-half-year-old, the way that I approach even the internal dialogue moving forward. And as I look at it, my story behind communication was always, I'm just a bad communicator. Let's adapt around it. And the biggest shift without a doubt in the last month is taking vital steps first and foremost to me getting better at language communication, holding myself to that, changing the story from I'm just bad at communication to I am good at communication, I'm getting better at communication, all that type stuff. Even just that simply and then actually implementing better communication into the business has been by far the biggest shift. We're doing other things.

We're putting missions in place and we have set plans and I'm exploring goals specifically with my business partners and stuff like that. And all of that stuff is going to make an impact in the biggest ways. I know that the biggest issue that I absolutely know that I led everyone into was this sense of communication. I have two business partners and they're fantastic. I have been the prominent figure in the business since day one. They came in about two years ago when my other business partner and I split. And I'll tell you right now because of communication issues. So I was the one that this was the system. This is the way things worked. And so now to be able to go back and be like, you know what, that stops today.

To this point, that was where I was at. No longer. This is how we look at communication. This is what I'm doing to improve it. These are the things we're going to implement. That in itself has cut out just massive amounts of friction and resistance and misunderstanding. And that was trickling down into the way we were operating classes. I know this source of information. I'm not clearly communicating it to team leads. They're not clearly communicating it to instructors. And obviously the instructor's not clear communicating to athletes. And then in the back of my mind, I'm going like, why the fuck aren't we doing this? And it's going like, well, you need to communicate things. And so from that perspective of what's the biggest thing I think you've gained clarity of, or where were you one month ago? And what's the

biggest shift? Communication, being clear, honest, and then also upholding and changing my story around how I am as a communicator. And that's business personal and internally has been massive. And it's been very, very exciting to see like, oh man, like A, I'm in control of making these changes. More importantly, the progress in a short period of time that's already exponential, right? Where this process used to take this long because we dilly-dallied around.

Now it's, nope, this is it. Hey, where are you at? Oh, now that I know where you're at, because we've clearly communicated goals and how we're feeling and all that type shit, we can approach the next thing that much better has been mind-blowing for me personally. I imagine there's somebody out there that's like, well, yeah, no shit. Well, for me, that was fucking mind-blowing. I've studied language for years. And's like, well, yeah, no shit. Well, for me, that was fucking mind-blowing. Yeah. You know what, though? I've studied language for years, and when I came across, when I started working with Mark England, and we started one-on-one, and he's hammering on me the soft talk.

And the soft talk that's laid out in the online course is obvious to everyone. You know, oh, like, kind of, probably, maybe. But then there's also a lot of other soft talk that people overuse. I'll overuse the word actually. Or I say like a lot or something like that. Case in point. And when I started plucking those words out of my vocabulary, I put a rubber band around my wrist.

And every time I used soft talk, I would snap my wrist and made it sting a little bit. See, a little bit. Yeah. Made it sting. Made it sting. Made it sting. I remember on stage, and instead of saying I'm going to get rid of all soft talk, we would pick out two words at a time. So I'd be on stage, and one of the words

would come out of my mouth, because it's a lot easier to spot if you're only focused on one word. And I would snap my wrist as I'm speaking on stage, and Mark's in the background pumping his face. Yes. And we have fun with it. We have fun with it. And I noticed

when I started removing soft talk, everything in my life started happening faster the speed at which things happen and it didn't seem like i was doing anything else different in my life it seemed like magic yeah because all i was doing was removing one or two words at a time and then i would master that word being out of my vocabulary, and then I would take on another one. I'm still doing it. Oh, yeah.

I'm almost three years into the work of annihilating soft talk. Yeah, man. It's been a journey. And shit goals, things that I say are going to happen. Yeah, it's wild. There's a metaphysical shit going on. Metaphysical shit. Y'all don't even fucking know yet yet and i'm all again like i'm 10 days in officially i've been watching drew for about four i think i read non-violent communication three months ago that's

what kind of got me on the oh shit words do matter two months ago is when I started Procabulary and that one it was like, oh shit, words matter. And then 10 days into like, oh shit, when you write words down, shit really matters. I can tell you right fucking now, if you would have the 10 year goals that I've

been working on this week, especially as you do like the chunks down and in, with the soft talk and the stories that I had. Cause so going through core language upgrade, the two most obvious that jumped out were the word don't specifically around my kids. And that was huge. And you talk about, well, we identified two words to take out. All I focused on was don't, that was it. And it was anytime that I stop, think, what do you want them to do type thing. And that was mind blowing on a communication with a toddler level, which is insane. But soft talk internally was, oh my God, it was insane. It was just absolutely, when I'm doing the journaling exercises on core language upgrade,

I'm going like, motherfucker, like this is crazy. And the 10 year goals as I'm writing them out this week, I'm imagining myself three months ago, you couldn't have, I would have had zero buy in three months ago on any of these goals, not even being unreasonable, but being even possible. And it was... You said goals. Yeah. Three months ago would not have been possible. Never would have happened. If you would have asked me for 10-year goals three months ago, the way that I would have approached those goals, I would have strategically set them up in a manner

that I could have constantly pushed them back further and further and further because I'm safe that way. And I knew, again, you bring up survival mode, creation mode, you know, in that even just that first week right out of the gate. And I'm a fucking master at survival mode. You can give me a problem, doesn't matter the deadline. I'll solve that shit. And everybody around would be like, oh, motherfucker, like he crushed that shit. And I'm like, yeah, what's next? Like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. If you would have told me, look, 10 years ago, I imagine I would have had a lot of difficulty and I would have sold myself significantly shorter just three months ago.

Definitely a month ago or definitely a year ago. I mean, just fascinating. And it was identifying the way I would master and manipulate words to make myself okay with procrastination and make myself okay with pushing deadlines back and make myself okay with I'm fine where I'm at. It was a fucking skill. Like, I owned that shit. And man, going back through and picking that out and being like, okay, you're really fucking talented. Let's just use that skill for better. and let's formulate words in a better way. That in itself, Mike, was I would love to go back six months

and ask that guy to do 10-year goals and then look at what we've been working on establishing this week. It would have been mind-blowing. Well, this is what's cool is people that come in the program, they've been working hard already. People have already been working hard. There's been a lot of resistance, right? And so what we do is we remove the resistance.

But because you've been working hard for so long, you're very strong. You're very good at what you do. You're very strong already. We lighten the load. We just pull that load out, and all of a sudden you blast off. I think that's why people started calling it the rocket ship yeah they're like oh you're doing the strong you mean the rocket ship and it's because yeah we take the governor off there's a governor on the engine

and then we start dismantling it yeah yeah it's fun it really is it's fascinating another like coming into it i would be interested to see how had I not done some of the lead-up, had I not talked with Danny on the discovery call, had I not done a little bit of the language work, I would have loved to see the stories that I would have fucking had week one, three months ago. You know what I mean? And so it's, I don't know, it just, to me, it's enlightening to literally look at it and be like, look at all of the things you've done in a positive light in three fucking

months. Now, all of a sudden you start talking about 10 year goals and it's like, yep. And I like, there's, there's a couple around like finances where the first time I wrote it out, I think I had written like, I don't know, 200,000. And then I went and did it like the second time and it was like 400. And then like, I went back to do this last one where now we're breaking it into threes and ones. And I'm going like, you can do that in three three years and all of a sudden that number keeps going you know what i mean it's i don't know it's just it's fascinating now i do know and it is fucking fascinating yes tell us about your business so the we are i own endeavor defense and fitness here in columbus ohio

so hilliard and so 50 40 nike drive that's where we're at in Hilliard, is the house of our program. It's also the house of Project Lift. It's also the house of Abby Wallace, who is a neuromuscular therapist. It's also the house of Unicorn Nation Apparel. So I always had a goal day one of establishing a facility where other places could grow inside of it. And it was a place of just growth. I always had this idea of, I wanted to call it originally And it was a place that of just growth. I always had this idea of, it was, I wanted to call it originally, what was I going to call it? Oh,

the Academy of Defense Fitness and Growth or something like that. So that's our facility. We have a CrossFit program and I use CrossFit with quotes because anybody who's been around, especially 10 years, 11 years, 12 years, hopefully, I imagine if you've made it this long you've done way outside of just what's inside of that right so dns and rehab and physiology and ever working with everybody uh evolving folks it is evolving yes like we're even talking about language now what strange wait a minute you mean actually understanding language inside of the gym might affect the way that you perform? Fucking crazy.

But we do have a CrossFit program. We run a powerlifting club a couple times a year. We have yoga. So we have a yoga program. We have a self-defense program. We have a Brazilian jiu-jitsu program. We have kickboxing, like bag classes. You mentioned like a nine-round or a title boxing.

It's an adult playground. It's literally, I tell, like I always, as I'm walking people and touring them around, like bag classes you imagine like a nine round or a title boxing it's an adult playground it's literally i tell like i always as i'm walking people and touring them around i go we have literally anything an adult could want to relieve stress get better at life and just be awesome in general so we've been able to develop this play space over 12 years now and then for about four years ago drew and chelsea developed project there. And the shit they're doing is absolutely fascinating. So that's the brick and mortar. Inside of that, with my team that's been with me for a very long time, we developed Active Shooter Response, which is the program we do, where we actually go out and teach people hands-on.

A lot of the stuff in that industry is uncomfortable to do. So you talk about uncomfortable from a getting under a barbell perspective. It's severely uncomfortable to sit down and talk about, Hey, we're going to make you fight somebody. You're not a fighter, quote unquote, you are a fighter. You have to like, we're going to do it and not just talk about it. Like we're going to make you fight. We're going to make you apply tourniquets. We're going to make you go through these drills. We're going to make you map out plans. We're going to make you apply tourniquets. We're going to make you go through these drills. We're going to make you map out plans. We're going to make you, you talk about the things we're changing. We're going to make you identify the stories in your head and start

pulling those things out and how they're affecting your ability to protect yourself. We've done that since 2009. And in 2015, San Bernardino happens, Paris happens pretty close to each other. And one of my instructors videotaped and created a documentary with his troop around the program we did. That blew up like crazy. It was like 38 million views in a month. It was insane. And so you talk about speed of implementation and also adapting relatively well. We were getting hundreds of emails, tons of phone calls. We want this program with this program with the firm. We never taught this on the road. And in 2016, I taught over 80 seminars in 23 different States. Whoa. It was more than one a week. That's yes. Yeah. There were some weeks we would do like every day. There

was days we were doing two back to back but that was awesome because you talk about immersion and learning from the people you're training and words that at the time i had very little respect for other than like as a ploy to i want you to do a thing so let me make sure that you're doing the thing i want type thing if you would have seen the program 2015 when that video came out to three months later, to six months later, to nine months later, to 12 months later, completely different. We had people that were taking it once a quarter that, you know, so it matters. Yeah. And the experience of it, and it's still evolving and changing. Like I said, like I wrote out a 30 day curriculum for

an online training program and you know what? I haven't made this realization until this moment. I mentioned earlier that I struggled with the idea of having an online program for this because my belief, the story I told myself was this has to be delivered in person, right? And a part of that was I have invested so much fucking time in learning everything there is to know about this. From the physical attributes, the medical attributes, the psychological attributes, the aftermath. There's no way I could portray this online. Sales is sleazy. Doing it in this long term, if I'm not going to come out and dedicate and do my time, is that.

And then not only that, but I was doing the majority of it for free, if not at cost. And that was exhausting on my family and everything else. Right. So I'm literally, as we're on the microphone, having this realization that I genuinely believe the story work and language work that I intend to put into this program is one of the things that will easily push me over to be able to say, this is what's going to make it meaningful online. Because I was playing with some of these stories on a very superficial level in person. And now I have been empowered with this way to get people to analyze these through journaling and through story work that they'll actually put in the time and effort that I never imagined they would. And that literally, as we're talking. I just went like motherfucker. That's the piece that was missing this entire time. And you just didn't know it until now.

You're welcome. Yeah right. Remember. I'm such a good coach. You're so good at this. You're so good at this. And this is the first time we've officially talked. I'm so powerful.

I am getting into people's brains. Without even meeting them first yet. So, you know, you're about to do the same and that's the objective, man. And it's, so that's fascinating. So then I wrote a book on it. So then I have the book, which has a lot of great, that was the first time I ever committed to a long-term project and actually sat down and it wasn't a hundred page book. This was like a, I think it ended up being 82,000 words or something like that. I mean, it was a, it's a decent book. How many pages is that? I don't know. There's a copy in my truck that I could, oh, it's more than that. Yeah. It's a bit, it's a little, we'll look at it. Yeah. We'll look at

it. It's a couple of hundred. Not important. Yeah. It's like 300 or something like that. So then, yeah. So I got that out. And that's another fascinating thing because I, holy shit, this is so much fun. You go back to the story about me viewing businesses sleazy because my dad was sleazy type stuff. I'm fucking up to this point have had no respect for the value of the amount of time and effort and energy invested in creating that book to the point to actually feel comfortable promoting it outside of this will help you. I'll give it to you for $12. Here's a free copy. I hope you get enjoyment out of it, like that type stuff. And then looking at it and going like, look, man, they're not willing to pay $20 for the book. Probably not going to read it and put time and effort and energy into it anyway. And that's a whole nother... I find that when I give people shit for free, they don't even consume

it. I'd rather not even do it. Yeah. And so, so that's been a fascinating journey. And then now I've started, you guys have really put the deepest mission I've always had in self-defense is I imagine a lot of this, and I don't, I haven't explored it to this point, but I imagine a lot of my passion, because I'm really passionate about self-defense. I love fitness. I really do. I love teaching. I love sharing with people and getting them to grow, because I'm really passionate about self-defense. I love fitness. I really do. I love teaching. I love sharing with people and getting them to grow. But I'm really fucking passionate about self-defense, like people protecting themselves. I imagine

some of that goes back to my dad hitting my mom and hitting us. I imagine a lot of that comes back to some of the areas. I didn't grow up in a terrible area. However, there was plenty of violence around us at the time. And I have an issue with the ego and the way that self-defense is generally sold, which probably half of it is're getting their community, that I can actually do the thing I want to do, which is make this massive impact in the way that people approach learning personal protection and self-defense. And so I've spent the last probably about three weeks reaching out and having phone calls with every gym owner and self-defense

instructor I can, asking them the questions. What are your biggest pains? How often are you working? What do you do for play? When do you get into these things? Do you imagine that this could be different if you did that? When you sell, how are you selling? And trying to get as much data on, okay, these are the way that I've viewed it. How's everybody else viewing it from their own story with the intent of packaging that up and getting this to make an effect in that industry specifically. So yes. Yes. That, that if we want to find your book. Ah, yes. If you go to Aaron genetti.com, a A-A-R-O-N-J-A-N-N-E-T-T-I.com, the first thing you have an opportunity to do is sign up for a mailing list and that'll give you actually the first three chapters of the book for free in a digital format. And then you'll find links to get the book there directly. You can find it on Amazon, How to Survive an Active Killer by Aaron Ginetti. How to Survive an Active Killer. The best is...

That's a scary title. An honest look... I have to buy it now. An honest look at your role in the age of mass violence. Your role? Your role. In the age of mass violence. That was me before I really understood words, trying to get people to take ownership.

Ah. Yeah. You think you could do it better now? Do a better job? I know. Yeah. That's on the... because I'm still, I'm making a very valiant effort to make sure my attention stays where it needs to be in there.

It's down here, but there will be a second edition with a lot of language play. Rad. Yeah. So if someone's in the Columbus area and they come by the facility, and I recommend it. I haven't been there yet, but I mean, we've got Drew

and Chelsea have been through the strong coach. You're in the strong coach. And we just got someone else from the facility. Michelle. She actually just texted me a little bit ago. So, we know the coaches there care. They're digging in, so I'm sure the environment

is top-notch top notch no it's terrible it's severely abusive especially on the project list side i don't know what it is it's uh what was it i saw the clip is it diego that's filled with puerto rican rage what was enrique my bad my bad i am sorry to mess up your stereotypical. We're going to get into that. We're going to get into that. I'm going to interview Drew, and we're going to talk about Enrique, who is his Billy.

And everyone who's listening is going, what is Enrique? What are they talking about? Yeah. You have to stay tuned, folks. Yeah. Come check it out. If you're in the Columbus area for good, sign up for a discovery session, come in, check it out. Nice. What about the workshops? Are you still doing those workshops, the self-defense stuff? We are. There'll be some shifts going into next year with the new insight

that we've gained and the way we're going to approach it. We do have one on the books for 2019 still. So it'd be November 23rd. It is a four hour at our facility. And if you want to bring the training to you, you can reach out at Aaron genetti.com and we can discuss what that looks like. Yeah. I imagine if you go to the website and you get the first three chapters of the book, that'll start an email conversation where you can dig into anything you have going on. Yeah. And I do a, like a weekly newsletter that's got information and stuff. So yeah. Nope. Thanks for coming on the on. Yeah, and I do a weekly newsletter that's got information and stuff. So, yeah. Nope.

Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, man. Yeah, man. Oh, we know you love the show. So go over to strongcoachpodcast.com to subscribe to the channel today. There's a lot more shows over there than what you can hear right here.

And you also get that coaching business tune-up over there as well. So go check that out. Give us a follow on Instagram. Give me a shout out. Shoot me a DM. We'll have a conversation. Talk to you next week.