Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 86 - Andrew Coates: Foundations of Good Coaching

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

In this episode, Danny sits down with writer and personal trainer Andrew Coates.Andrew has been training clients in person for over a decade and is well known in the fitness-space for his written work. Danny and Andrew talk about what it takes to be a great coach, coaching in the age of "lockdowns", favorite books and resources for continuing education, an abundance mindset, and much more!Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS: Sign up for the trainer mentorship HEREFollow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Hey, everybody, welcome in to another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. Today, I'm sitting down with one of my good friends and somebody who I really respect in the fitness space. Andrew Coates. Andrew is a personal trainer. He's based out of Canada, but he's also one of the fitness industries, in my opinion, most distinguished and well-rounded intellectuals. The guy's a thinker, he's a writer, he's a creator, in addition to being a fantastic coach. And I think that our space is occupied by a lot of wannabe intellectuals, and I think Andrew really walks the walk. He's one of the smartest, most genuine dudes in our space, and you're going to gather a ton of useful golden nuggets from our talk today. So I will shut up so you can hear my conversation with Andrew Coates. All right, guys, welcome in. I'm here with my friend Andrew Coates. Andrew's a personal trainer. He's a fitness writer. He's somebody whose work I've been quite familiar with for quite some time. And before I hand it over to him to let him do his own intro, I don't want to steal his thunder. I want to share

kind of how I came across Andrew's work and something really cool that happened for me and kind of the full circle nature of this industry. And I had been reading work that Andrew had done on a website called T Nation, which anybody who's been in the industry for any amount of time has most definitely found themselves on T Nation at some point, whether it's trying to lose fat or build jacked calves, T Nation has everything. And I'd become familiar with Andrew's writing from T Nation. And one day I was scrolling through my mentions on Instagram, and I had realized that Andrew had shared something that I had written, which was a moment that for myself as a coach really meant a lot because it was somebody who I acknowledge as a professional in the space. I love the quality of the work that they've done.

And for them to share something that I had done, I had to take pause and go like, oh my gosh, this was so cool. It really meant a lot to me. And it happened on a day where I was kind of having a crappy day. And so it really turned my day around. Andrew and I got to talking after I said, thanks. Now we're on the podcast. But that's something that not a lot of professionals do. A lot of trainers have the opportunity to share other people's work, but they operate more from scarcity.

And so Andrew is somebody who I've always looked at as being really integrous, really intelligent, being a great writer, but also not being afraid to hype other people up. And I think it's really awesome and a great way to intro you as somebody who I know, but why don't you tell everybody how you got into the space and what it is that you do? I'll come back to the intro guys. Pause for a second. What you just said, I think is really important and I'm shocked that it's not more prevalent you know if you take an abundance mindset and you look around you with you know the other coaches who are where you are who are working very very hard to get themselves out there be successful with their careers I have you know I'm just a little over 10 years in my career. So I'm a personal trainer.

Mostly work with general population, some young athletes. I got into fitness writing. I'll tell you a little more about how that happened. You know, a few years ago when I got a website going and then Teenation happened kind of quickly. And that's about two years ago. Had a podcast for three and a half years and dabbled in a lot of other stuff. three and a half years and dabbled in a lot of other stuff. But a lot of that is the product of relationships that I've fostered, certainly in the local community here in Edmonton, Alberta,

and Alberta as a whole. But then about almost four years ago, I started traveling within the industry and meeting a lot of people at conferences. Both the attendees are kind of in a similar space I was in, but not being intimidated by the speakers, big name people. I met Sohee Lee and Spencer Nadolsky and Mark Fisher and a whole bunch of other people on my very first trip. I went to Luca Josevar's Vigor Ground gym and his fitness and business conference the same year, got to meet and sit down with people like Martin Rooney, who I've been reading on Teen nation for a decade and by sharing and supporting what a lot of these people have done you know i'm a big supporter of jordan's site because jordan's been very kind to me he's a good friend now

along the way when you highlight all the great stuff they're doing selflessly without any consideration for what you're going to get back or keeping score on a one-to-one basis with anything or being transactional with how you interact you're also sharing these are all the people who i've learned a ton from be it mike isertel who i absolutely love his stuff um all down the line in the industry i've learned from these people i am where i am in my career either from the things i've learned or from those connections that have opened doors for me. So I want to highlight them and share them with everybody else who's plugged into what I'm doing, my growing following. So I become not someone who's giving away what I'm trying to build with my following and my clientele, but I'm sharing all these other great resources with them. So I've become a curator of the stuff that's out in that fitness space.

And, you know, when I saw your post, I was like, this is fantastic. This guy writes better captions than I do. And a lot of people try to do this stuff and a lot of it's, it's okay. And people have to learn as they gain experience, but this stuff is very well thought out. It's very, very good ideas presented in a very eloquent way. So I'm like, I like this. I'm going to share this with my following.

And I'm very picky about what I share too. And then, of course, as you said, we got to talking. But it's about giving as much as you can to both the people who are plugged in and following you and supporting the people in the industry. And then along the way, you can't expect or predict the things that will happen, but doors tend to open. So, you know, you asked about where the writing came from. I happen to have met a lot of teenage writers in my travels and become very good friends with people like Lee Boyce. I've known Dean Somerset for many years. We've worked for the same organizations two different times. He's here in Edmonton. Brian Cron is down in Calgary. And I get to talk with Brian a fair bit. That list goes on. Tony Gentilcore and I just recently put something together for T Nation.

And he's going to be part of the next article that I'm putting together. So before I lose my train of thought here, in having a lot of them on social media, Facebook, then Danny Sugart, who's one of the longtime contributors and editors for Teenation. I love Danny's writing pops up on a thread on Facebook with someone I knew and I'm just, Oh shoot, Danny. So I sent her a message. I added her friend requested. And of course she accepted me. We got to talking and I very quickly said, you know what? I would love to have you on the podcast. You'd make a great guest.

I've always loved your stuff. So before I'd scheduled her, she dove into my podcast, loved it, came back. She's like, yeah, this is great. And had her as a guest. She was a wonderful guest. And then within a short period of time, because I'd also been writing for my own website and working on this stuff, she turned around and asked me if I would contribute to Teenation. Of course, that's surreal. That's a pipe dream to even imagine as a trainer, you know, first starting out reading this stuff. And I always thought there was sort of two tiers of people. There are us in the gym, Flory, everyday trainers, and this elite group of established people, many of whose names I've already said, who are in this sort of

stratospheric place. And there was no sort of in between. As time has gone on and there's more social media, there's more ubiquity of opportunity in our industry versus this gate kept little community. Then those opportunities happen. And all of a sudden, I'm being able to do those same sort of things. So that was kind of a dream come true. So very cool for someone who started out at 32 years of age 10 years ago, being hired on the gym floor as a regular member, not even envisioning a career in the industry. I'm not someone who came out of high school thinking, all right, this is the passion I want to follow. It was a passion that

found me along the way. And as I got deeper and deeper into this career, I realized it was going into a pretty cool direction. No, I really liked that. And I think it speaks to kind of the authenticity of just wanting to do good work and being patient enough to do good work for a long enough time. I think there's a lot of coaches out there who are probably going to hear this and are like, well, dude, you know, I've written like four blogs and I make like a post today and T Nation's not calling me. And, you know, it's frustrating because there are a lot of coaches in our space and we all want to, everything somehow or another plays out as a status game. And we all wish we got more likes or had more follows or had more clout. And a lot of

the ways that people go about chasing that are relatively inauthentic, where they put themselves in a position where they're jeopardizing their brand, where they're copying someone. And I just have to give you kudos because it seems like you've done what I'd recommend anybody do. And a lot of what I've done, which is just try to do good enough work for a long enough time. And to your point, the doors just seem to naturally open for the people that are willing to do that. I mean, we tell this type of stuff to our clients, you know, do the best work you can, be disciplined, put in the time and the results will come, but you have to be patient. And so it's awesome to hear another trainer who's really bought into that and who has seen the fruits of their labors as a 10-year, 10-year, tenured personal trainer. Like most of our peers won't

make it 10 years. And to work with clients for that long shows that, one, you're doing it for the right reasons, and two, that you're doing it authentically. Because I don't think you can bullshit your way through anything for a decade. bigger facility. The facility, unfortunately, during lockdowns has been closed, but our rules are sort of weird. So I'm actually allowed to train in my home, strange stuff, sort of in a gray area. But one of my clients was here yesterday and she's like a mom to me. I've been training her for almost the entire 10 years. I've trained her entire family, extended family network. And she quite literally finishes trading and then she turns around and I'm getting the next client going and she's literally cleaning my kitchen. That's a kind of funny shit. But she's also in remarkable shape. She's just on the doorstep of 60. It looks like she's in her mid 40s and can run circles around most of my 20-year-old clients. I love that. I'm doing very much what you're doing out here. I just, when our lockdowns in California kicked in, I decided, Hey, you know, I'm just going to fill the garage with all of the gym equipment I've always wanted to have around the house. And thankfully I had some cash on hand, so I was able to make it happen. And, you know, with mask wearing and the ability to be six feet

away, I kind of just picked up what I was doing in my garage. And I have a very similar story, a client who I've been working with for years, who now that she's training with me in the garage, she brought her dog. I'm always, I'm always bagging on her about, Hey, you know, you really need to do some movement when we're not training together. You've got to move on your own. We've all had those clients that they'll show up for every session, but God forbid you ask them to do any exercise when you're not there. It just ain't going to happen. And so she got in the habit of bringing her dog and walking her dog after each session. And now she's, I got a puppy in the middle of this. She walks my puppy. So it's like as simple as she comes in, we work out, she grabs the harness. She takes both dogs for a

walk. And much like the kitchen thing, sometimes I look at it and I'm like, what's going on here? But at the same time, it's just this totally magical thing that happens when you build relationships with people. And I think helping people live a healthier life is one of the most impactful things you can do. And I think a lot of coaches don't realize just how much their clients really care about them because the impact that the client or the trainer has made on the client's life.

You get this funny thing with trainers. Sometimes trainers, and I understand where this comes from, they'll try to establish a fairly rigid boundary about not getting too personally involved with clients. And we also know those trainers who are out there who are getting getting too personally involved with clients. And we also know those trainers who are out there who are getting way too personally involved with their clients. And there's major problems with that. But over the years, many people who are extremely close in my world, as some of my best friends are people who were either clients first, that are just like over time materialized in a closer friendship or i know through clients i have an old friend who started out as a client his name is alan

and through alan i met two of my best friends and uh they're they're a couple they're two kids call me uncle i've been going to family uh dinners for years for every holiday just it's the way it's all worked out through the ether and and the um the my friend mariah she built my website for me and getting that website and she wouldn't take any money despite i said i would pay her she just wanted to do it she's skilled at it so that website is where i was able to start writing and without having that place to start writing what we talked about before t-nation doesn't happen and there's going to be some I'm in conversation with a couple of let's say well-known websites in the fitness space for this year where hopefully I'll be

published on at least two my goal this year was to get two new notable things and once you get to this point these are things you can kind of set as goals and aspire to so and all that all that literally happened because a guy walked up to me, the gym asked me to train him. We just hit it off, became pals. He didn't train with me very long, but we've stayed really, really close friends over the years and other cool things led to it. This other lady I mentioned, you know, she still trains with me to this day and her and her family have fed me and massive pipeline referrals. But her son, who's one of my closest friends, I sat with the family at his wedding years ago. And if there's a social event where the larger family gathers,

I've been invited to that stuff too. And that's enriched my life. So you can't necessarily just do this with every possible client. And you will have clients who they want, they want to hire a friend. And in some cases, that's a perfectly acceptable thing. Like

maybe you've worked in a gym and there's a trainer who spends, we had one certainly at the old gym, who spend most of the time sitting with their client. And while this outwardly doesn't look very great, that trainer was a great salesperson and the clients were getting the experience that they were looking for. And were they transforming physically? That was a bit of a slower process than most of the rest of us would imagine. But those people really wanted that experience. Okay. Sometimes that hopefully you're authentic in those relationships and those friendships that it transcends the hour. The problem with this particular trainer is I think that the friendship

kind of got cut off at the end of the hour most of the time. So there's some issues there. But I really don't think it's worth approaching your fitness business like you're a psychiatrist, doctor, even physical therapist, where they actually tend to have stronger professional boundaries. And in the case of medical professors, there's a damn good reason for it. No, I agree. It's the first time I've actually ever talked to a coach about the importance of, you know, having a defined line where you say, this is the space that I operate in professionally. I'm not going to sleep with my clients. I'm not going to, you know, do anything ridiculous.

But at the same point, you don't have to emulate a medical professional. You don't have to emulate a physical therapist. I think that being able to connect with your clients is really, really valuable. And for me, somebody who got into the industry at a very young age, I started training when I was 18 as I went through college. That was my, okay, I need a job that's flexible with my schedule so I can go to and from school and work in between classes. And personal training let me do that. But I was totally green, not just green with coaching, literally just green in life. I was living on my own for the first time. I had no idea about anything. And I started training general population clients, many of whom were seniors. And pretty much everything that I've been able to accomplish professionally in my life,

I feel as though I'm indebted to the clients for that because they gave me an amount of wisdom. They gave me this level of advice, friendship, mentorship. I was helping them with their fitness. But these were older people between the ages of 40 and 90 who were so invested in my development as a person. By couldn't even, you know, by the time I'd show up, they'd be like, how was your anatomy exam? Did you get an A? And I was like, I did get an A. Thanks for letting me show you the, you know, all the different muscles of the upper back during our last workout. Like there was so much reciprocity baked into these relationships that I would caution trainers from thinking that you need to approach it in the most hyper

professional way possible, because then you miss out on some connections approach it in the most hyper-professional way possible, because then you miss out on some connections. And it's really a two-way street, especially given just how many young people or immature people are in our industry. You're going to get the opportunity to really grow and develop if you connect with the people you're training, not just their body. But go ahead. I think that's a great segue into what we're going to end up talking about anyway. I was going to say trainers sometimes struggle with the idea of asking for business or getting paid for training. They feel like they're doing something wrong. The longer you keep a client in working with you, the more consistent they will be and the better their results will be.

And getting results for a client is a big key. But them enjoying the experience and having a relationship that they look forward to returning to all the time, A, it makes your job a lot easier, more fun, and you go into your gym or wherever you're working every day with better energy. It will help you work longer days and sustain a longer career. Two, you're keeping those clients yourself. So they're getting the benefit of the results and the consistency long-term. And you're getting the benefit of having a paying client long-term. And there's nothing immoral about having clients pay over the long term. Because if you think about adding up a client who's trained with me for several years and whatever frequency they've trained, that total

aggregate amount of money will sound like a massive amount of money. But people will find ways to spend massive amounts of money on all kinds of things in their life. Sometimes it's maybe someone goes skiing or golfing routinely every year as much as they can. That adds up to a lot of money, but that's something they enjoy. It's an investment in time. They're active. But then sometimes I've worked at a casino. I've been a professional poker dealer and manager before. And I've seen a lot of people throw a lot of money into poker and other forms of gambling and continue to come back. And I mean, we're also talking about in some cases, something that's an addiction, which is very nefarious on its own,

but nonetheless, they're still throwing money at it. So I don't lose any sleep over the idea of clients paying me very well and earning a comfortable living while I am giving them something that is one of the absolute best things they could plausibly invest their money and their time and their effort into. I think that's beautiful. And I think that that's something I've seen a lot. When I originally got started coaching, I worked at a box gym. And by two years in, I'd worked my way into management. And there just always seems to be a permanent repulsion amongst the bulk of trainers in the idea of selling anything. repulsion amongst the bulk of trainers in the idea of selling anything as if to sell or to transact with somebody around fitness is like inherently bad. Like for whatever reason, trainers are a subset of people that just really don't like the idea of having to sell anybody on

anything. It's a skill that most of us learn to deal with and become competent at. But I think a lot of people just naturally are like, oh my gosh, I really don't like the idea of selling anybody. And I used to tell trainers all the time, you do realize you're like the only person in the world who gets to sell like the best thing ever, which is moving your body, being active and living a healthy life. You are selling quite possibly the most valuable piece of solid gold out there. And for what it's worth and what these people are going to get out of it, it's always going to be worth it. You will never be able to charge enough to break even with the value of giving somebody their health back. If that person lives in a world where their body is constantly in pain,

they don't have confidence, they maybe don't have somebody that they feel that they can take on this really, really intense, daunting journey of losing X amount of weight or building X amount of muscle. If you can provide the stability and the direction for people, you're gonna change their life forever.

And there's truly no amount of money you can put on that. the stability and the direction for people, you're going to change their life forever. And there's truly no amount of money you can put on that. That's the one thing I would always come back to as a novice when I was struggling with training is, I'm not selling a lemon car. I'm not selling some crappy vacuum that's going to break down. I'm selling something that I truly believe in and that I know for a fact will help almost every single person I'm going to cross paths with. Part of the problem is people think sales and then they think of sales tactics and hard selling and this sort of stuff. And we need to kind of break away from that sort of mindset. I mean, sales is quite literally convincing someone to do something you want them to do. And in our case, it's something that they should want to do for themselves too.

I'm a big reader. I share a lot of books on social media. I listen to a lot of audio books. And if somebody, I think trainers oftentimes will steer away from the sales stuff, the business stuff, and they'll dive more into the biomechanics and movements and what have you. At a certain point, there's only so many articles you can read about Romanian deadlifts or macro calculations. So hopefully, if someone's listening to this and they're driving,

well, maybe come back and save this part, but, or you'll list it maybe. But a few books that are actually worth getting into, if you like books, Daniel Pink's To Sell is Human, I believe I got that right. And that one just goes... I know because I've read it twice. And it's quite possibly the most common book I recommend for people who can't sell. Yeah, because it'll shift your philosophy on what selling is. And then Robert Cialdini's Influence. That's a sales Bible, but it really just talks about all these basic principles in how to be a more effective salesperson. Sure. And someone can take that book and be manipulative and dishonorable with it, but at least you actually know how this stuff works.

You've ever, ever go to buy a car. The first time I ever read it, I was in the process of buying a vehicle and the dealership were screwing around and pulling some crap. And I like recognize it from the books. I called them on their shit. And ultimately it worked out in my favor. I'm trying to think of a couple more that are really worth anything. Seth Godin, his book, the practice that's a bit more about kind of consistency and content creation, his book, linchpin end of marketing. These are all really great marketing books, chat homes, a classic, the ultimate sales machine. Now here's a hint. The ultimate sales machine is really about providing incredible service. So a lot of the, what will make selling really, really easy is just providing great

service to your clientele to where, you know, you're generating word of mouth and referral business and word of mouth and referral business. They're coming to you pre-sold. They're going to sit down with you, knowing your reputation, having had you recommended, and it will not be hard to sell them. And there's a phrase I use, and I love this. And whenever someone hears it, like, oh man, that works. And when I'm trying to get someone to buy personal training from me, this gets around feeling salesy. And I will look at someone, I will say, I would love to have your business. Now, does that feel like pressure? Nope. Does it feel intimidating? Is that hard to say? Remember that phrase and use it liberally. But I deliberately say it to someone I'm sitting with if I feel they'd be a really good fit. And I would say,

I would love to have your business. And it really does work. So it can make it a lot less intimidating for the trainer to then turn around and ask for business, which is where they get scared. And if they say, would you like to buy training from me? And then there's a moment of silence, and all of a sudden, the trainer's uneasy. So the trainer will make the discomfort go away by saying,

well, it's okay, blah, blah. And all of a sudden, you've talked yourself out of a sale. And I don't like working through objections. I'm not that kind of salesperson where if someone's got five objections and I, in a very slick sort of way, beat down and break through those objections, I do want someone who's very serious about working with me. It's still not a bad idea to understand what someone's objection really means. Sometimes an objection still is a yes buying signal.

You just have to know that there's this concern that they have, and they're presenting an opportunity for you to give them an answer that satisfies that concern to where they're like, okay, cool. Now I feel like buying. But I'm not interested in pressure tactics or hard selling. And if you were a coach struggle with the sales process, you don't need to worry about that stuff. And some of the books that we just talked about, I think are some of the best things that you can read. Do you have any other classics that you recommend to people? Well, to sell as human is kind of the big one that I go into a lot just because I think it introduces selling as a concept that's not entirely about taking money from somebody. It's about influence, persuasion, and understanding how to, you know, kind of leverage those things to help you get

where you want to be. And I think with everything we do in fitness, we're doing some form of persuasion. If we're trying to get somebody to exercise more, we have to persuade them. To change their nutrition, we have to persuade them. To train with us, we have to persuade them. To change their nutrition, we have to persuade them. To train with us, we have to persuade them. We're always selling. It's what we do as a coach, as a trainer. And so I love the idea of saying, hey, I'd love to have your business because I'd love to work on helping slowly persuade you to change your habits. You're inviting them into your team instead of doing what a lot of trainers do, which is like you said, they get all the way to the last part of their pitch and they go, so do you want to buy personal training? And then they can't stay quiet long enough.

They wait for the person to think, they get so nervous and they blow it. Or they just say something that completely devalues what they're trying to do or undermines their original mission. But to sell as human is really, really good. I'm a big fan of Naval. If you're familiar with Naval, he's a tech investor who's actually got some really good tweets and he's kind of become famous for his tweets. And he put a book together called The Navalmanac, which is an amalgamation of his tweets that then go on and they pull from his tweets and they get his commentary on his tweets. But that's a book that I've read that I think made a really, really big difference. And kind of just understanding how to bring this stuff into a digital space.

If you're a trainer, yeah, that's the one. I love that. And if you're a trainer who wants to kind of go, hey, I had a place where I want to bring this digitally, the Navalman Act will kind of help you understand the ins and outs of how internet marketing works very, very simply. And that you're going to understand how people look at products, how people look at services, how people look at stuff on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and then how to just bring your message there. But before we move on, because I do want to talk a little bit

about the lockdown, I just wanted to chat about how it is uh that you're operating from home what what your guys's situations like there are all of your gyms closed um or or do you have like certain stuff open so it varies by province obviously it's very much like the u.s and um so like who are west british columbia which is our version of Washington state, if you really want to compare them, it's very much similar to a little bit of California. They have been, they've done a really good job with it. They haven't had too much craziness and they've managed to keep the gyms open. Alberta, which is very much more like Texas north in terms of oil and, you know, it's more ranching, um, agriculture type stuff, definitely a little bit more gun ownership, a little politically tends to on average be a bit

more conservative. And our government is very pro business. So they were, they locked us down for three months early on. And again, gray areas in the rules or whatever. I'm like, you know what? I just ran my gym out of my basement. I didn't wave around on social media. You know, I'm going to make sure I'm taking care of the physical and mental health wellbeing of my clientele, being smart and really careful with it. And, you know, also make sure that I can sustain my livelihood too. And we came out of it, gyms reopened, but they, the government really did not want to lock anything down again.

They even straight up said that it was a mistake. And, you know, I don't want to get into the ideology of this sort of stuff, but you know, I am a little uncomfortable with the idea that we're closing businesses like gyms, where there is very, very poor evidence that there are sources of spread. Someone may want to argue that, say, oh, gyms are dirty. It's like, well, is that really helping? You know, a lot of jurisdictions have kept their gyms open and managed them well, and they haven't had any issues. There's been a bunch of spin studios all over the place that they did have issues in. So that seems to be a bit of a problem.

But, you know, if you have an individual one-on-one, you know, studio training environment, you can manage that very, very safely. So people argue about what the government's done, but I mean, that's a waste of time. You know, you're not going to be able to change this. You better just take care of your own outcome, your own destiny. And if that means going virtual, if that means, you know, being more present in the online space, that means if you have the space resources and can get your hands on gym

equipment and set up at home and within the rules, you can do it. Okay, great. So come the second lockdown, I've been, I continued to go to my daytime gym, um, or my, the evolved strength for the day where I contract. But then a lot of my clients like the idea of being at home in my evening. So I actually split my days, split my weekends and it kind of served everybody. Everybody was super happy. I got to be home a lot more hours to hang out with my cat a lot more. He's cool. And I really loved it. So then when the lock, the next lockdown came,

initially the language was pretty black and white, but then they loosened it up to something that was gray that you know trainers were allowed to operate in homes so it's like okay i can do this fine so i went forward with that and and my clientele not everybody comes but it's enough to sustain things for sure and i used the extra time a reading i've been pouring through i did pns level one again they offered it to me because i have a relationship within them I had a bunch of their people as guests on my podcast and so they're like here do you want to do this again because it was years since I did it they'd revamped it so absolutely so I crushed through that and that's you know as much that's about nutrition it's a great coaching certification

so I actually think it's really worthwhile for anybody who wants to upgrade their coaching skills and I've been reading a ton. I've been writing a lot, podcasts, you name it. And just pouring a lot of effort into, you know, continual brand reach growth. I also prioritize social media this past year and grew it from under 3000 followers to as of right now, it's like 11.6. It's not where you are, but it grew really, really well. And then, of course, I documented showcase the process to where a lot of fitness professionals were plugged into it where now, and I mean,

I'm never going to go hard into that fitness business space, but I do a small mentorship for coaches because some started asking me to do it and said, okay, fine. I put added a small mentorship business onto what I'm doing. I'm never going to make it part of, you know, the main thing of what I do, but I think I'll always maintain it. And the people who've been doing it are loving it and getting a lot out of it. So I feel great. I enjoy it. I actually find it really fun. So diversifying your income stream, but yeah, like ultimately I operated out of my basement. It was very, very careful in how I went about

everything. And it was, you know, I think a lot of people this year really crushed them and broke them. I think a lot of those people will flee our industry for the illusion of secure paychecks, a paycheck that can go from $70,000 a year to zero with one layoff or fell swoop. I think we're really robust and resilient if we choose to take that approach. If you've read any of Nassim Taleb's stuff, especially anti-fragile, I think we're very anti-fragile where you apply stress to our industry and our individuals. You have the opportunity to get better and grow. And I came out of this stuff in a way better position, way more versatile. And honestly, last year wasn't that bad. Yeah, there's a lot of shit that happened and it was stressful.

But I just said, OK, this is the way it is. I don't get to travel. I don't get to go to, you know, in-person continuing education stuff this year. I probably won't see my friends as much as I'd like. I don't get to fly home and travel to Newfoundland and see my family. OK, that stuff sucks. But I spent this year working really hard on setting myself up. So that way, coming out the other side of it.

And we've got the light at the end of the tunnel right in view now where there's a really strong platform my business is very very solid and intact even for in person i'm excited about what this year and going forward is going to bring and and i've been trying along the way to encourage any other coaches who've been plugged into what I've been doing to be as proactive, read, develop your career capital, like long form content vehicles, be it writing, be it podcasting, be it YouTube, whatever you're passionate about a little bit more than just social media to where you can go in all kinds of different directions coming out the other side of this.

No, dude, I, I seriously love that. I couldn't, I couldn't, if I had to capture basically what I would hope people would gather from this episode, you just kind of went over it in like five minutes. And, and it's really important for all the coaches listening, or even for just the hobbyists and enthusiasts, 2020 was, it was a gut punch for a lot of people. It was a hard year. I, I agree with you that I think it might have cleansed our industry of a lot of the people who were maybe just in it to make money or maybe just in it because they liked the title. But when the rubber hit the road and the shit got tough, a lot of them dropped out. But for the coaches out there

who have been staying afloat, doing your best, you're trying to find ways to continue to grow, to continue to develop your business. I think 2021 might have ended up battle testing us in a way we, or 2020, in a way we didn't think possible. And if you're somebody like yourself who said, I might not be able to do, you know, 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. in-person clients anymore, but I can do as many clients as I can see safely, whether that's in-person, on Zoom, at the park, in the gym, whatever your area allows. And then you use that extra time instead of sitting around and feeling sorry about the situation that you're in to develop your brand, to develop your business,

to develop your intelligence, your communication style. 2021 was, in so many ways, the opportunity a lot of trainers have been waiting for. I can't tell you how many coaches I've talked to that have said, well, if I didn't have clients all day, or if I didn't have to spend all day at the gym, I'd finally do it. And 2020 gave so many of us the opportunity to upskill and really improve. And I think you put it about as good as anybody's put it just making that conscious decision to go, hey, originally when this first kicked off February, March of 2020, a lot of us had no idea where the light was at the end of the tunnel, which can be really depressing. It can be really scary. But to say, hey, I'm going to roll

with this. I'm going to do everything I can to find a way to grow. And then look at all the growth that you've done. According to your numbers, you've tripled your social media following. You've put a ton of books in. You have multiple revenue streams. This is the stuff that can happen, I think, for a lot of coaches if they just get comfortable being uncomfortable, which is what we always preach to our clients. So I love that share, man. I think that's beautiful. And it really did turn out to be a good year. And I think for a lot of people, here's something important too. If you made it through this year, okay, even if it was a really bumpy ride, this is probably, and I'm really hoping this is true.

This is probably the worst thing that will happen to you in your career and your ability to operate as a personal trainer. If you made it through this, you're laughing, especially if you did the stuff that we talked about to improve your, your career circumstance. I think a lot of trainers worry about where the next client's going to come from. We have this fear that all of our clients are going to just one day,

just not renew and our entire business will be gone. If that didn't happen during COVID, then it's never going to happen. Right? So going forward, hopefully you're pretty confident in your ability to take care of your clientele and at least sustain, if not grow. And I suspect a lot of those people did a lot of things to grow. I agree. It's funny because so much of my career as a trainer, I was petrified of taking a vacation as though if I took any time away, the minute I came back, I'd step into the gym and, hey, all my clients decided they didn't want to come back after a week off. And it was hilarious

because I had to go on like 10 vacations before I finally broke free of the shackles of that fear. I got to the point where my clients were like, honey, you need to take a vacation. I've got a vacation house in Maui. You just buy the tickets. You can go. You look tired. And I was like, Karen, I can't take a break. You guys need me. And they're like, we need you fresh. And I just love it. I think that you're right. I explained a lot of what this year might end up being or 2020 might've ended up being as adjusting your trajectory. We're always, we always want to go, go, go, go, go and keep moving. But 2020 kind of forced us to pause. But if you use that time instead of wanting to jam forward, to upskill, to grow your knowledge, to diversify the way in which you deliver your business, whether it's becoming an online coach,

training on Zoom, training out of your garage, you might have not gone forward as much as you'd like, but you adjusted your trajectory so much higher so that when the shit finally does settle, where you're going to end up is going to be so much further than where you would have had this largely unfortunate occurrence not happen. So I think that there's, you know, fitness enthusiasts, trainers are kind of pragmatic and optimistic by nature. But I do think that there was a lot of good that the ones who made it through this are going to look back on and go, man, had that not happened, I never would have made that change with my business or made that adjustment as a professional.

And it ended up being one of the best things that ever happened to me. You hit on something there too. You know how we all think about like, oh, if we could just somehow go back in time and change. and not to say i try to avoid saying anything offensive but you see the meme where it's like you get you get the guy who's eating the bat soup and you know someone's standing behind him with a shotgun and just just view that in a humorous light hopefully someone doesn't get pissed off at that that image but i look at this past year and all of the good things that happened and yeah, in the grand scheme of the universe and how terrible this all has been for like a lot of

people, you know, I think morally I would just have to be able to like hit the reset button and, and have us all avoid it. But for me personally, in terms of what's happened and all the cool stuff in my career, I struggle with the idea of what I really go back and change it all. stuff in my career, I struggle with the idea of what I really go back and change it all. And I hope that makes sense. I, you know, it's, it almost sounds like selfish in a sense, because in truth, I really wish we could have prevented this all from happening, but I'm not so sure I would have liked to have had at least a personal, a personally different outcome given what's happened. And I wonder if I would have had all the same sort of things transpire, made the same decisions if we didn't go through the year that was. So interesting

thought experiment, because clearly we don't have a DeLorean to be able to go back and mess with stuff. No, dude, I actually think it's a really good point. And never be afraid to bring up something that might be taboo here. Again, things as far as like countries go, I don't think it's been worse anywhere than right here in the States. Like, you know, it's not just about the spread of the virus, but it sounds selfish, but 2020 was a really enlightening year. And it was something that a lot of the trainers who I was really close with guys that I hired years ago that were still working at the corporate gym I've moved on from many years ago, they got to break free. They were like, Hey, the gym closed and I can't train my clients anymore. So I'm training them all on zoom. And, you know, I was afraid to quit the gym, but all my clients came with me and I'm making way more money now. And like, this was honestly the craziest shit ever, but it ended up being a blessing in disguise.

deeply, deeply sad for a lot of people, especially here in this country. But a lot of people got the opportunity to take a jump or were forced to take a jump rather that they otherwise might not have taken. And I think that, you know, COVID made us all very uncomfortable in the fitness space early on because it was truly, truly like nothing we'd ever seen before. And nobody really knew how to handle it. But when I look around the landscape now and I look on my social media and I do podcast interviews with other coaches or other experts, it seems like all the good ones made it through. And the ones who really deserved that success, it's starting to trickle in and it makes me happy because our industry is full of charlatans and people who just want to make money. And we all know that coaches who are really, really awesome people,

but maybe they're a victim of their own insecurity or they fall into the trappings of being afraid to leave the box or being afraid to go online or make a post, whatever. And I feel that 2020 really brought those people a challenge and a lot of the good ones met it. And if you're listening as a coach right now, you can continue to meet any challenge that's going to come in 2021 because I doubt it will be as difficult as what we just went through. Nothing to add, just waiting for where you want to take this next? No. So I actually want to talk a little bit about your mentorship because I think it's really important to chat about what it is that you think coaches who want to develop an upskill should be working on. Cause it's something that I think a lot of coaches just kind of beat their head into the wall. They're like, you know, I know I need to

be a better trainer and I've done, you know, some coaches have done 10 plus certifications. I know I have, and there's nothing wrong at all with doing certifications. It's always a great way to spend your time. But what are some of the things that if you don't mind sharing, if it's not proprietary, I'd love to hear what you have your students focus on because anybody who's listening to this is going to gain something. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your

Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. The way I approach it, first of all, I don't have a quote curriculum or a set of cliched things that you'll pay a high ticket. You start hearing the phrase high ticket, and I want that to be a red flag to you as sort of a warning flare about proceed with caution from certain people. Or if you get Facebook friend requests from usually it's guys, sometimes girls who look like they're about 16 years old and they're standing in front of a car that they almost certainly don't own. And then they're saying, I coach trainers to build seven figure businesses, you know, through high ticket,

you know, attracting high ticket clients. You see that kind of language. And that's, that's, that's nonsense. These people are, are the charlatans you're talking about. You do have some really good, you know, business coaches out in the fitness space. You know, again, I mentioned Luca Josevar is someone I really like plugging into because I just like his media. I find he's really, he's not a motivational figure per se, but I find him motivating. I like his energy. I like his work ethic. You know, you get a guy like Mark Fisher or Pete Dupuis who own businesses. Mark owns a gym in New York. Pete is one of the owners along with Eric Cressy of Cressy Sports Performance, and he's the business mind behind it.

And they are good people to follow and listen to because they will share useful stuff. With the people who've sought me out for the mentorship, you know, a lot of times we're talking about they're interested in growing their social media, their content. Sometimes it's about, you know, how they're engaging with the people they're trying to attract and build their business. It's all very individual to each person. I'm trying to think of some specific examples. Well, I think that's really bright. I think it's the best way to do it because the, hey, I've got the ultimate formula for every coach to make seven figures, just drop six grand on my mastermind course. And every coach is different. Every niche is different. The people they want

to work with is different. So I like that you have, it sounds like you have a fairly individualized approach to the people that you work with because it has to be that way, or else you're not putting authentic coaches into a marketplace that right now more than ever is demanding authenticity. So one thing that's very cliche is with high ticket people, the big masterminds or whatever, the cliche piece of advice is they just keep telling you to raise your rates, raise your rates, raise your rates. And that's one of the hallmarks of that. But one of my people in my program was charging far too little. So we talked about, all right, how can we get you to, you know, he lacked confidence in some stuff and he knew it. So we had a lot of conversations to build up his confidence and he's taken off.

confidence in some stuff and he knew it. So we had a lot of conversations to build up his confidence and he's taken off. So we wanted to get him to increase his rates and he needed to increase them by at least 50%. He's at $40 per trading session. So we agreed that, okay, in June, he was going to increase his rates to 60 a session, at least for now for his existing clientele. He was going to give them a runway of five months to say, hey guys, this is what I'm doing. I'm worth this. But I'm going to grandfather you guys for another five months. So your current rate still applies. But for any new client that's coming in, they're immediately paying $60 a session. So if someone sent a referral, they would know that the new clients coming in are at 60. And he felt good about this. So the new clients coming in wouldn't know about the fact that there's a 50% increase in his rate. So it's not like there's even an

issue there. They're not going to feel like they're being quote cheated. And with the existing clientele, overwhelmingly, the existing clientele thought, okay, cool. I've got some time on this. Thank you. This is really cool, but you're totally worth this. So I'm on board. And then he had a couple of clients who were pushing back against it and were upset that the rates were going up, let alone five months in future. And here's an interesting correlation. And if anybody listening has had people who've tried to haggle on price or negotiators, so your rates are too high, or if you've ever had a client who you're on, have an ongoing relationship with who's asking for discounts they're almost invariably the clients who are the biggest pain in the ass okay they're

they're thinking they think in terms of price and if you discount yourself or you compete on price you are making yourself a commodity versus a standout individual, unique person who offers a unique service. So with the one guy anyway, again, it was about him having the confidence to say, hey, listen, I'm worth this amount of money. And he's feeling great. He's feeling way better about this whole process. That's just one example. But I still think that the raise your rates thing, it's kind of both universally true that a lot of people don't undervalue themselves. But I think it's also this cliche thing that people take a bit too far. You better have a premium offering and be in a sort of a premium place to then turn around and charge premium prices.

You can't charge a premium price to establish a premium service. The service has still got to be there first. No, I agree. And I really like that because when I think about issues that coaches go, hey, I have this problem. This is what it is. That's one of them. There's two big ones.

The first one is I've locked myself into this kind of crappy situation where I have these clients that I really love and I love training them and I train them for free, but I know that I'm worth more than in this case, $40 per session. And I'm scared shitless to ask my clients to pay me more because I don't want to scare them off. And I think you kind of hit on it. Most of those clients would gladly pay you more because you're bringing value into their life that is exponentially more than any dollar per hour amount.

And the ones that are going to fight you on it, like, hey, let's be honest, if you're going to lose a client, you might want it to be that one who's kind of annoying and fighting you over, you know, 10, 20 dollars. And you'll more than likely fill that spot in no time. which is getting into social media and finding a way to use it. I, for one, am somebody who kind of resents it. I use it as a means to an end. I understand it's a great way to reach people, but in many ways, I resent social media, what it is, what it has turned people in society into, especially here in America.

But for people who are like, coach, I want to get an online presence. COVID has really shown me that training people in person is great, but I better have a presence online. Do you have any advice or tips for people that are struggling to do that as somebody who's had a lot of success recently? And that's something that does come up in with several of my people in my mentorship as well. There's a lot of elements to it. I mean, there's the basics, uh, consistency, consistency is important, right? Old Jordan side stuff with infographics started blowing up in 2017, you know, post three times a day on Instagram. I think once a day is fantastic, but I also think that you can't flood social media with mediocre stuff just to

post it every day. If you can create great content three times a day, quality still trumps quantity, but I think consistency still matters. The quality of what you're doing, and I opened up this with talking about how great I found your ability to write concise, interesting ideas. So one of the great things about this sort of Twitter graphic that I use and you use is you're limited by the character number on Twitter. So it forces you to edit and be concise with your language. I'll write things and then I'm like, oh, shit, I'm over on characters. And I'll chop out superfluous language, extra words that don't add anything to it.

And you end up with something that pops even more if you want to grasp a very simple concept. Because if you try to write the entire caption on something that doesn't have a character limit and stuff it into an Instagram graphic with no white space, then someone's going to see that and it's like, oh, it's a wall of text and they're going to move on. But they can see three, four sentences that are broken up with something like, oh, shit, that really resonates. So we're going for shareability. We need also something that has a familiar pattern to it. And the Twitter ones work great for this because and so do infographics, because we know that these are things that are popular in our space.

So that's something that, hey, I know that pattern. That's familiar. I can share that. It's like listening to music. Why does all pop cult pop music sound sort of similar? Why are all the songs, you know, the same length? Why do they have chorus verse and the same song structure? And then you go and listen, like, I'm a big fan of tool. And why don't you hear 10 minute tool songs on the radio? Right? Because they don't fit that pattern. Now tool is still one of the best fucking things in the entire universe to me, but they have a cult following. They still don't

get the same kind of airplay as, say, Beyonce does, right? And I don't even think there's a comparison between the quality of the two. So Tool crushes Beyonce on quality, but people still love their Beyonce. So Queen B, cool. Have at her. So something that's a familiar pattern people will plug into. It's like movies. I talked about this recently on another podcast appearance, but you know, there's the whole hero's journey of, you know, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars and Harry Potter and a handful of other fairly significant, you know, things that are out there, intellectual properties. They're really all the same kind of story.

You know, Bilbo and Frodo and Luke and Harry are the same fucking character archetype, Dumbledore and Gandalf and Obi-Wan. And it's the same sort of thing. It's all the same character archetypes and the same sequence of stuff happens along the way. I had an article recently, um, for true coach and it was a really popular one. And it talked about this concept. And I opened with describing this. He's like, have you ever seen this movie where you have a young police officer who goes undercover into this really cool subculture world? And he's trying to catch a band of thieves who are pulling these high stakes heists.

So he comes across a really charismatic leader of a group who are into the subculture. He gets involved with a girl who's part of that group. And as things progress, things heat up. And then there's ultimately a second group that they're antagonistic with, who the cop thinks is the group that's pulling the heists they get busted it's not them it's the charismatic leader in his group all along so there's a big showdown at the end where during a heist the cop is exposed there's a there like shit goes off with the girl and then there's at the very end the cop lets the charismatic friend of his go instead of arresting him.

Now, what movie did I just describe? I don't know. I don't watch a ton of movies. I'm probably the worst person ever to ask this question to. So a lot of people are sitting there listening and they're going, well, you just described Fast and Furious. I just described the Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze early 1990s classic Point Break, right? Fantastic movie. What we've done is you've just taken, you've substituted Paul Walker and Keanu Reeves, Vin Diesel and Patrick Swayze and underground car racing and surf culture, right? So if you

haven't gone back and seen Point Break, it's fantastic. Here's the funny thing. Fast and Furious, the very first movie is the script of Point Break repurposed. They're actually the same script. Even credited that way, just characters are redone, subcultures redone. And what happened with Fast and Furious? It was crazy popular. It spawned into what? A ninth people plus a spinoff. There's a $5 billion franchise. And there's nothing original at all about that first movie and people loved it because it was really familiar right yeah so being with social media stuff if you try too hard to be really different and out there you're probably going to miss the mark so you want to find shareability because the more people find

your stuff because someone's story is where i found yours it's like hey i like this cool all right bam i gotta go and share this myself and then now we're here doing this so quality consistency um shareability in the format you're using these things are all really important but underpinning all this i think there's two more things one is the relationships that you have and you build with people in the industry. You have to have people sharing your stuff and supporting you, right? So if you go approach this with abundance mindset, like we started, and you share and support people, no keeping score, but a lot of the stuff tends to come back around you. And over the long run, this has been one of the main drivers of a lot of the shares that have blown up my social media. Mike Gizertel, on five separate occasions within two months, took one of the main drivers of a lot of the shares that have blown up my social media.

Mike Izzertel, on five separate occasions within two months, took one of my posts and put it on his wall. Okay. Mike Izzertel, owner of Renaissance Periodization, who has 140,000 followers. And that cumulatively probably gave me about 2,000 additional followers, which really accelerated the pace of all this stuff. And then you get big names like from one of those shares, like Matt August started following me and Matt August has got like 600,000

followers. I'm looking like Matt August is following me. Holy shit. Okay, cool. I got to follow him back. So just this stuff mushrooms up over time. And then almost lost my train of thought there. So I got to bring this back is career capital. So having something more than just your social media if you're working on building a social media turn around and choose whatever format works for you podcasting's not bad it can work you and i've both seen that i really like writing and i think that writing is a skill that every trainer and coach needs

to develop whether it's writing instagram captions or your sales copy is certainly an important skill in the long run. You know, just your communication, be fucking texting with clients. The better you actually communicate with people, you can make a difference. You know, if you are on Facebook at all, you need to have that skill writing. But I think formal writing is still a really valuable skill. And I like the idea of people writing blogs or articles. And then people will say, well, nobody has an attention span anymore. Instagram, TikTok, blah, blah, blah. People

still listen to Joe Rogan, three hour long podcast. There's plenty of attention span for shit that people are genuinely interested in. If they like your stuff, they'll listen to your podcast. They will read an article that takes them six minutes to read. So that's a bullshit excuse. read an article that takes them six minutes to read. Okay. So that's a bullshit excuse. And then just focus on becoming a great editor, a good writer, but a great editor and really polish the quality of your writing and study

this stuff. Read the book on writing. Well, by Zinser, I tell everyone easy book to read fantastic resource, apply it, become a merciless editor, and it will improve the quality of writing.

And if you combine all these elements with the last most important thing, fucking patience, this shit will take some time. I only started really applying myself in my 10th year, right? I'm on year number 11. I've been in the industry 10 years. So in my 10th year is when I said, okay, let's see what we can do with Instagram. Let's get consistent. The first four or five months were quite slow going.

I just established the behaviors and polished quality. And then the last seven months of that year, things really started to mushroom up and grow and spike. And all those things sort of came together to lead to spiking over 10,000 followers. And yeah, there are people in the industry who look at that and go, 10,000 isn't a really big deal. But how many people listening are like, you know, I 10,000 followers. And yeah, there are people in the industry who look at that and go, 10,000 isn't a really big deal. But how many people listening are like, I've got 800 followers. I've got 2,000 followers.

I'm struggling with this. I really wish I could have 10,000. And honestly, it is challenging. It definitely is going to take some serious work. But even if you get started and you're consistent and you... I track my following all year long. That sounds nuts, but I track every single day. Where's the growth. And let's say you gain five new followers a day. Okay.

So five new followers a day, if you're really working hard on creating across a hundred days, that's 500 new followers. A lot of people would do really well with gaining 1500 followers in one year versus the people who aren't working at it who have gained maybe a hundred okay if you gain 1500 in one year and then the next year you gain 2000 and let's say you started with a thousand where are we now we're at 2500 we're at 4500 after two years that's still better than sitting at a thousand okay so. So get some momentum going and work on it. It is worth it because all of the cool stuff that's happened this year, growing my social

media was the single most important thing after doing all these other sorts of things to a lot of the cool opportunities that have happened. I've been asked to appear on what seems like a 25 podcasts in the last six months, right? appear on what seems like a 25 podcasts in the last six months, right? This is a second one I've recorded today. And I had another one that a friend wanted me to appear on that he released today. So I shared that on my social media. That's kind of ludicrous. I never imagined shit like that. And those almost entirely were because of connections through social media like this one is. No, I literally love everything that you said. The only thing that I would add to that is much like yourself, I was somebody who I trained for about five years before I grew the

balls to start posting on social media because I was genuinely petrified that people were going to make judgments about who I was through the content. And so if you're one of those people who you've listened to everything Andrew said, and you understand that you want to reap the benefits of having a social media audience, it doesn't have to be 10,000 followers. You know, 10,000 is a great goal, but maybe you'll do fine with 5,000 followers or 3,000, or you just want to get started. The first thing I would say is don't let your fear of other people's judgment get in the way of creating content, because those people, the people that are most likely to diss you or make fun of you or whatever, one, you shouldn't really let those people hold your life hostage and your growth hostage. I think it's

really important, too, to realize that there's probably fundamentally a lot less people out there doing that than you think. I think a lot of people live in the fear of being judged by their peers or by other professionals. And, you know, I can say as somebody who takes a lot of time to curate content and create it, that when I see content that sucks, the first thing on my mind isn't like, let me bash this person or let me make fun of... I move on. I'm not going out of my way to bash you. And if you're just doing it

with the goal of getting better and improving, it's okay to make mistakes and for your content not to be perfect. The one mistake you don't want to make is let the fear of being judged or getting started get in the way of creating relationships, creating connections, creating an audience that can carry you for a really long time. Because to your point, I have the opinion that all of this stuff compounds. So if you get five new followers a day, that means every day there's five new people who might share something of yours to the myriad of people who they follow

or that follow them that have no idea who you are. And so every follow you get, every time you make good content that gets shared, you're compounding the impact you're making. So don't judge your initial results too harshly, because if you do that, there's a very good chance that you won't reach your goal. So I'll take that thought and I'll add a little emotional piece to it that will really drive it home. You think about the people in your universe who really love what you're doing. Every coach there, there's got to be at least a few

clients and some followers who will share everything you do. They really like you. They'll message you and you can tell that they're fans. I know that word sounds kind of goofy, but they exist. Would you let those people down who want to see more of your writing, more of your content, out of fear of the people you described who aren't very common, who are negative? They're an easy delete and block. Just get rid of them anyway and be merciless with that. You are not under any obligation to entertain abusive, disingenuous, attacking type behavior from someone on social media.

Sure, it happens. But even at a following of my size, it's fairly uncommon. And I'm pretty swift with getting rid of it when it does. And I don't let it affect my emotional well-being. That's really important. You guard that. But don't let the people down who really would love to see more and more of your work. And it just makes no sense that you would

lose the opportunity to grow your own business and your own brand and do something fulfilling and reward the people that love what you're doing out of fear of a few people that don't matter. And to piggyback on this, because it's another important element, I think actually was a really essential part of, of how I managed to do a lot of the stuff I did this year is engage with people. While I can't catch everyone, of how I managed to do a lot of the stuff I did this year is engage with people. While I can't catch everyone. I actually do like to send messages, welcome messages to a new follower. If I see someone's jumped on and I'll often send them a voice message,

say, Hey, listen, I really appreciate that. You, you know, you took the time to follow me and I know everybody's time is really valuable. So, you know, thank you. Please reach out anytime. And that's often spurred very, very quick conversations where someone has asked about my podcast right away and all of a sudden they're listening to it right off the hop or you want to you know see articles of mine or whatever like sometimes they don't even reply and who knows you get to follow on follow games okay fuck fine but you've opened a gateway to interaction if someone shares your stuff thank them like don't

just go oh there's a ping and all right you know ignore that stuff you're not too good to do that and it's astonishing how much like when when i reach out to someone and the shock and surprise wow i've never had anybody do that before i'm shocked i mean what the fuck is the point of social media but to be social right christ and and the people every pet follower is a real living human being except for the bots and bullshit and those real people oftentimes they feel like especially if you've grown a bit of a following oh this person established they'd be horrified even like bother you they feel like they'd be annoying you so they'll just sit there quietly so but they they're just one more person a living breathing caring person that you can create a connection with.

And maybe they follow 20 different fitness people. And if you're the one who's like saying hi to them and being interactive versus everybody else, well, they're going to be far more plugged into what you're doing. And do it not because, again, it's transactional. You think, hey, what can I get from this? Don't go in there and try to sell someone out. Hey, do you want to do my mentorship? Hey, do you want to come train me? Fuck that shit.

Gary Vaynerchuk, straight up, just endless jabs. You know, I don't even throw a lot of hooks in the grander space, but people will find your way, their way to you when they are ready. I had a client that I trained today. He's a young trainer, really nice guy. He's been following me.

We've interacted a little bit. I've never tried to sell him on anything. And he reached out and said, hey, I'm looking at hiring a trainer. And I was hoping that I could also be mentored through it all. He was interested in both. So I just took him on as a client. And our conversations during his training are also a lot of training concepts, a lot of business success concepts. And he's been really great to work with. And again, he was just someone I interacted with without any expectation that he would even want to come and train with me. And anyone who's come train with me now during slightly leaner times, because again, I don't have access to all my clients at the gym, main gyms closed,

that's super appreciated. So that was kind of cool. No, I love it. And one thing I'd add to that, and we'll just kind of constantly be adding to each other's stuff because that's what happens when you are on the same page. But don't necessarily concern yourself with how many followers you have so much as the relationship you have with the people who follow you. I have a decent amount of followers, but I have been very profitable in the online space with less than 10,000 followers because I was really plugged in with the people that I was interacting with because I was the one account who did say, no, I actually do check my DMs and I will answer

this question. And again, you don't want to transactionalize everything. You should be a nice person to be a nice person. You shouldn't go into every fucking conversation or comment reply or DM reply with your MO being, how can I turn this person into a client? or a, you know, a, you know, dictated text message, that person is going to be exponentially more likely to follow you for a long time, share your stuff. And they might end up referring a friend to you for coaching, like all of that stuff truly does work. And paying it forward works, even if you have a small following. So don't be somebody who's like, I need to get to X number of followers. And then I'll be no, if you just do the right work and you have the right relationships and interactions with people online, I think most of you would be very surprised at how much good stuff starts coming your way that you never thought it'll start coming out of left field.

Whether it's like you said earlier, opportunities to write or network with people at live events because you were, you know, ballsy enough to say, hey, I'm going to talk to this person who I deitized on social media instead of sitting in a corner and being scared. And now all of a sudden you write for the same website or, you know, you have 5,000 followers and you're really nervous to make this post, but you make it and it gets a bunch of shares and you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I was nervous to post that. And I got two coaching applications. oh my gosh, I can't believe I was nervous to post that. And I got two coaching applications.

Nothing's going to happen for you if you're too outcome oriented, but it's also not going to happen to you for you if you're too afraid to take any action. And I think that a lot of coaches get into that space, but I think that's probably a good place to wrap it, Andrew, man. I'd love for everybody to find you on all of your social. So plug the podcast, plug the website, plug the Insta, plug the Twitter before you do that. Now that I remember Twitter, I think that writing 140 character tweets is a very good way to craft your writing skills. So even if you don't want to post your tweets, guys,

make a Twitter and just, if you're thinking and grappling with a fitness concept, try to fit it into a tweet., if you're thinking and grappling with a fitness concept, try to fit it into a tweet. And if you have to hack stuff off and you're left with this one really poignant sentence, that stuff makes you a better writer over time. So practice that too. But Andrew, go ahead.

Podcast, Twitter, website, Instagram, all of it. I agree with you on the Twitter part too. It makes you a really good editor. So all roads go through Instagram. That is the best thing right there. So at Andrew Coates, C-O-A-T-E-S, fitness. And if you have questions, reach out to me because I, like Danny, I will always respond to DMs.

So that's important to me too. My Twitter, I couldn't get the same name because it was too long on Twitter. So it's at Andrew A. Coates, which is by middle initial. Some asshole had the name without the initial. Couldn't get that either. I really do want to, I wish I could change that because that's the image that shows up on Twitter, but I have an idea that I'll reveal eventually when I get around to it. The podcast is the Lift Free and Diet Hard podcast. But again, I always share links to that on my Instagram. I obviously write for Teen Nation

and I'm working on some other stuff, but I will reveal my website, www.andrewcoatsfitness.com. I have been neglecting writing for it. That is going to change. I'm going to get right back to it. So we'll see about that in the coming year. But despite all the other things, go and check out Instagram. That is where to connect with me. I write on Facebook sometimes too, but Instagram is where I'm active. Oh man, hey, thank you so much for coming on guys. Again, give Andrew a follow, subscribe to his podcast. I'm subscribed, I follow him.

It's information that even though I've been doing this for eight years, I find to be extremely valuable. And again, his ability to just put stuff into a tweet. Sometimes that one tweet that I read, what a refreshing, very poignant concept. And I end up sharing that stuff with my clients all the time, sending it to them via DM or just talking to them about it during our session. So somebody who I look up to, and I'm very grateful you came on today, Andrew, thanks for coming.

Have a good one. My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks again, everybody for listening. That was my awesome, amazing friend, Andrew Coates. Do me a favor and follow him on Instagram. All roads, like he said, to his content flow through his Instagram. He's totally worth a follow. Very, very smart guy. Very integrous.

If for nothing else, follow him for the book recommendations. Andrew is dropping the best book recs ever. At the time of recording this outro, I have already listened to two of the audiobooks Andrew and I discussed after we stopped recording. So I know he's worth a follow guys, a genuinely great human being. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share it and tag me and Andrew. It helps both of us out, helps us both reach more people and helps our respective podcasts get out there and influence more people to live healthier, better lives. Have a great day.