Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 681 - Stan Efferding & Matt Wiedemer: How Personal Trainers Can Make 6 Figures Per Year

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

Stan Efferding and Matt Wiedemer have teamed up to help trainers and gym owners make six figures with in person training. Stan Efferding is an IFBB Pro and World Record Holding Powerlifter. His Vertical Diet has transformed lifters nutrition all over the world. Matt Wiedemer is a Coach, Trainer and founder of Beat Personalized Training. He has been devoted to the field of strength and conditioning, and human performance for more than 20 years. He works with all types of athletes from Jon Jones to Steve Bake to average Soccer Moms and Dads. Matt also trained under world-renowned powerlifter and strength coach Louie Simmons at Westside Barbell. Buy Stan and Matt's book mentioned on air: https://stanefferding.com/collections/e-books/products/building-a-successful-career-in-the-fitness-industry-my-vertical-trainer Follow Stan on IG: https://www.instagram.com/stanefferding/ Follow Matt on IG: https://www.instagram.com/beattrainer/ Beat Personal Training: https://beatpersonaltraining.com/ Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 15% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢Bubs Naturals: https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢Vertical Diet Meals: https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your first order! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Pat Roderick family, how's it going? Now, we partner with Vertical Meals, owned by the genius bodybuilder Stan the Rhino Efferding. Now, Vertical Meals isn't your normal meal prep company. We've talked about the amount of crazy options that they have in terms of the food on their website from the classic Monster Mash, Steak and Eggs, Just Steak, Chicken Empanadas, but a cool thing they have on their website is called RX Meal Kits. on their website is called RX Meal Kits. Now, you probably don't know what that is, but if you go to their website and you go to the RX Meal Kits, you can enter in your age, your gender, your height, your weight, if you're trying to gain, maintain, or lose weight, and your activity level,

and that calculator is going to spit out meal options and ideas and packages for you for your plan. No other company does this. It's crazy. Stan has thought of everything. So guys, check out Vertical Meals and Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at verticaldiet.com. And when you guys load up that RX meal kit into your cart, use promo code POWERPROJECT to save 20% off that entire order. Again, so you're going to get rid

of all the guesswork, all the meal prep work, because nobody likes to do that. And you're going to have these meals shipped directly from Stan Efferding's brain straight to your door. Again, verticaldiet.com. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Here we go. Make it official. Bing. All right.

Stan is long-winded, that's for sure. Yeah. Hey, you know what? I got to congratulate you on something, Stan. Was that my shortest podcast interview, the last one? No. No, you did an amazing job on Tom Bilyeu's show. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate it. I don't know if you guys got an opportunity to see it, but anybody listening, as much as I don't want to distract people from our own podcast, you should go listen to that because it's outstanding information. You crushed it. It was awesome. Thank you. I appreciate it. You know what's funny about that? His assistant reached out to me and she says, well, we're going to be podcasting

in the garage. And I thought, what is this guy? Some sort of fake or something? Didn't he sell Quest for a billion dollars or something like that? Why do we have to podcast in the garage? So I Googled the address, $35 million, 20,000 square foot garage in the Hollywood Hills there.

So I figured the garage was, it was actually more like a showcase with a bunch of cars that used to previously be there. He turned it into a podcast studio and it's enormous. It's bigger than my, his garage is larger than my house so it was pretty amazing yeah it's crazy right well it was not wild yeah yeah all those it was wild is i took my 10 minute walk around that neighborhood up there and all those homes that are built up into the mountainside with those big long stilts not me i would not stand on one of the back patios his was in set and it was it was quite

a fortress so it wasn't so concerning. But a lot of those homes are just kind of teetering on the side of the floor. I wasn't with you. It was a week that you were there, but I wasn't. But Jones is like, he's probably an adrenaline junkie, if anything. So we go mountain biking.

Bones Jones. Yeah. And he goes down this hill on his mountain bike. No helmets. No hands. What? And the first down this hill on his mountain bike. No helmets. No hands. What? And the first thing I thought, I called Stan. I'm like, did you do this with him?

He's like, he's crazy. Yeah. Because Stan's very safety. Oh, yeah. I'm holding on for dear life. And John's like, no hands. Going full speed down the hill on one of those electric bikes. He's probably going, he must have been doing better than 40 plus miles an hour.

More than that. With no hands. He's just like this. And I'm holding on for dear life. How long has it been since I've been on a bicycle? Why do you look at me like we're on a bicycle? It's like riding a bike. Yeah, his brain is different.

Yeah. I know we're going to talk a lot about business stuff today in this portion of the podcast. But I wanted to ask you, Stan, how do you stay on task and how, like when you're being interviewed like that, because when we interview you as well, you tend to, you're very calm and then you're like, well, this is kind of, this is what I've learned, this is what I've seen. And you don't get too caught up in, you know,

there's only this one way. You don't get too caught up in, you know, there's only this one way. You don't get too caught up in one way or the other. And sometimes, you know, being somebody that's in the space as well, I find it sometimes difficult to not want to jump on one side because sometimes we get excited about certain diets and certain results and certain studies. But you always do a great job of just coming right down the middle. Yeah, well, you know, I've tried a lot of things throughout my career. And so I do talk about

things in terms of a good, better, best scenario. And don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So my biggest thing is to try and get people results. I'm more interested in them complying and then setting things up in terms of pros and cons. And so if I recommend keto, I'm going to say, well, here's potential downsides for that. And here's the potential upsides for that. And I've done keto many times to compete throughout my career. So I have experience with that.

I try not to talk about things I haven't tried personally. And I try and talk about the things that worked for me or didn't work for me as a result. And I migrate towards what I think worked best for me, but I'm cautious to suggest that that's my anecdote and my experience from testimonials from working with hundreds of great athletes over the years and now thousands of just clients, dad bods and soccer moms. And there's always outliers. So you have to say, well, most people,

or I've experienced this kind of feedback from some people. What works for me might not work for you. What works for most people probably doesn't work for everyone. And I kind of have to preface these conversations with that kind of information. And I often do. One of the first pages in my book goes down this whole list of some of the stuff I just said so that people

understand that this is my recommendation bumped up against the current science as we know it so that they can get comfortable. I like people to have more options. And this is what I've always said that you've done very well. Try keto for a month. Try carnivore for a month. Try vertical for a month. It's like Matt said in the last interview. Maybe even only three days. Just a couple days. Just give it a trial run. See how it fits.

What can you hurt? Matt just said in the last interview, everything works, but nothing works forever. And depending upon the individual, something might work for a period of time and resolve some issues. period of time and resolve some issues and then you can you know with the diet space reintroduce or some things in in the fitness industry or in competitive athletics some things might not translate their performance you've tried it you got a little better at it you tested it didn't translate so you got to go back to the drawing board and find another exercise so yeah kind of veering off topic but but it is difficult to, kind of like when you talk to Lane Norton, he rarely gives a very specific answer.

And it gets frustrating because my clients want me to tell them exactly what to do. And tell me, just tell me exactly what to eat. Tell me exactly how to train. And that's what I do. But then I have to be cautious when I'm talking on a podcast to lots of people. That's not the only way. That's what I'm recommending based on their individual needs. That's why I give clients a pretty detailed questionnaire and find out, well, what's your history like? What are your goals like?

Where are you at now? And some initial interventions I might offer might just be that, might just be triage. Let's try this for 30 days because here's your current circumstance. And then after that, let's see what we can do about creating a lifestyle plan that'll last for long-term weight loss maintenance or sports improvement, et cetera. A lot of these things are going to be like add-ons, right? Like maybe someone could look into eating a little bit more fruit, eating a little bit more vegetables, eating a little bit more protein.

Like I just gave three things that are examples of more, more, more. Maybe you could walk, try to figure out some easy ways to introduce some sort of movement so we got the calories out part going. Try to find some easy ways to lower your hunger because if you're hungry, it's going to be hard to comply. I think some coaches want to be right and some coaches want to get it right. And I'd be leery of the guys who want to be right. I don't care if it's Louis Simmons or Richard Simmons. If somebody can help me, I'll listen.

I'm outcome oriented. You would really get help from Richard Simmons about training? Absolutely. All right. I want to watch that. yeah i'm outcome you would really get help from richard simmons about training absolutely all right i want to watch that yeah and you know that's an interesting thing just what you said there because there's lots of their carts is not far off yeah there's lots of uh i would say professionals in the industry whether they're m MDs or some other credentialed individual, particularly in the nutrition space, that are very specific about what they'll recommend and only recommend that. And they have, as we all do, hundreds if not thousands of testimonials,

people who tried their program and it worked for them. But again, a lot of these folks become zealots and don't understand that it doesn't work for everyone. And the reason why it worked might not just be because, like say for keto, for instance, people would presume to say, or not people, but say the MDs that are big on keto or low carb, they would presume to say that the reason why it worked is because it's low carb.

This is kind of the carbohydrate insulin hypothesis, not because it allowed you to spontaneously create a calorie deficit, which would be a better recommendation because then you could try a number of different diet programs. So people are getting results for their clients. But the reason for those results I think is misrepresented by a lot of folks who become zealous. Stan, I'm really curious about this and Matt too. I want your, both of your intake on this because earlier this week we did a podcast where we, you know, have you guys ever Dr. Aaliyah Crum?

Earlier this week, we did a podcast where we, you know, have you guys ever Dr. Aaliyah Crum? Okay, Dr. Aaliyah Crum, she's done a lot of stuff on mindset. She did a TED Talk where she talked about a study, the milkshake study. Have you heard of it? It was maybe done in 2013 where they had two groups of individuals. Stan's getting upset that he hasn't heard about the milkshake study. Yeah, I'm racking my brain because I watch a lot of your stuff. It's very interesting because what they did is they had two groups of people. Well, they had one group of people, and they gave them two milkshakes in two different weeks.

One milkshake, they said, they told the people it's low-fat, low-calorie. It's 140 calories, zero grams of fat. Okay, whatever, right? And they had them all drink the milkshake, and the ghrelin decline was very minimal. Right. They give them a shake the next week and they call the shake indulgence. Same group of people. And they said 700 calories.

I am familiar with the research. Exactly. Not her specifically, but the science. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Steep ghrelin decline after they drink that shake. But we find out that the shake was the same exact shake yeah but the what they bought into was what like the the story behind the shake

right and it makes me go ahead i'm not sure if you've had him on but someone who does a really good job a deep dive into this is meno henselman we have adam yeah and and he has a book out uh where he talks about the psychology of these things similar similar to like a pre-workout meal. I would always assume that or had often stated that I love to train on higher carbohydrates for performance. When you look at the psychology of it and you look at studies, when you take two groups of people and one has a high-carbohydrate meal and the other one just has a satiating meal, irrespective of the total calories and the carbohydrate load, satiating meal, irrespective of the total calories and the carbohydrate load, that psychologically, it just, they train longer and harder because they're not distracted by hunger. So those are very powerful hormones for that very reason. I didn't mean to interrupt, but you're absolutely right. Psychology of this thing. And I said that, I think in that rant that we put out some four years ago on the obesity epidemic, that it's the hardest part about

weight loss or just making progress in a program. It's about changing behavior and the psychology involved in that. And we put a lot of time and energy into our special diet plan or our special training program. But, and you've heard me say many times, compliance is the science and understanding the psychology behind that and helping people with these behavioral changes, creating these habits, the 10 minute walks, you know, why they're so successful is because they're so easy to comply with and, uh, high satiety foods, protein leveraging, all these things that we've kind of trended towards in the last few years have been more about helping people with those behavioral compliance issues. Having, putting highly palatable foods further away from you or not having them in the house.

You know, just little decisions like that go a long ways towards diet compliance, meal prepping. Yeah. go a long ways towards diet compliance, meal prepping, all those things that kind of take the decision away from you because when you're left to making your own decisions when you're hungry, they're generally poor decisions. Do you feel hungry or distracted nowadays? It seems like you have everything put together in terms of your nutrition, the way that you eat.

It just doesn't seem to be as difficult as, I mean, you were a professional bodybuilder, so that's the extreme of all extremes, but there must have been a time where you felt just like weak. You felt sucked in because you weren't eating enough calories and you were maybe doing things just like it seems to me like you've hit your stride. I feel like in SEMA and I have hit our stride with i feel good i'm able to put out some good energy each day and the diet while it yes i might rather eat some pizza here and there or something like that or enjoy a couple things here and there it doesn't feel that difficult it doesn't we've been doing it for so long we're so disciplined we kind of know and i you guys laughed at me when we did an interview some last summer talking about do i have cravings for certain things and and i said that i don't eat

foods i like i eat foods that like me and i make that decision an hour after i eat i've just been doing this so long and i'm even if he uses the word discipline i just know when i see a certain food item that if i eat that i'm going to feel like shit an hour later some of this like years ago and i thought you were crazy i'm'm like, well, that's Stan. I'll never be like that motherfucker. But you understand that. I often say to people, when you stray, you pay. And when you get used to eating foods that you digest better or feel better with,

then you go back and have some of those treats or a fast food, and all of a sudden you're paying're you're paying for it with with indigestion or sprinting to the bathroom i just you know it's really kind of delayed gratification and i was this way back in college when people asked me well you know did you drink or did you eat desserts and i'm like if i had room in my stomach i was going to put something in there that would make me better because my i was such a skinny kid and I had such a tall hill to climb to become a competitive pro bodybuilder or a bodybuilder at all, not even a pro at the time, that I tried to maximize every opportunity from every hour of sleep, from every meal that I ate. And I would not eat something that if I had room

in my stomach for an alternative that would have helped me better my goals. And generally for me, that just meant something higher in protein at the time. So that's kind of how the decision process was made for me, outcome-oriented. Okay. What I'm curious about too then is, based off of that,

you believed in what you were doing. I wonder, you guys mentioned that a bunch of diets work, depending on if somebody is consistent with it over time. Any diet can work for most individuals. But how would you tell individuals to, I guess, buy into that diet? Because, you know, you talked about the program hoppers in the previous podcast, right? The individuals that go from coach to coach to coach to coach to coach don't end up being that successful. But statistically, the individuals that stick

with one coach, and I mean, oddly enough, they buy into what that individual is having them do, they end up being the most successful. It would probably think the same when it comes to maybe whatever diet protocol an individual is choosing, right? So with all the options that people have, how would you suggest coaches help clients buy into whatever diet they're having them do? I think ultimately having them understand the science because they want to come in and they want to see what diet works best. And we hear this from athletes too about what training program works best. And that's kind of where they gauge where they're going to invest their time and energy. And it's not that any particular diet works better.

They all work for the same reason. You create a calorie deficit. Whether you're counting or whether spontaneously, just through some sort of cognitive, implementing some sort of cognitive restraint by eliminating either a meal daily, intermittent fasting, or eliminating an entire food group, keto, you've, by just doing that, created a calorie deficit.

And I'd prefer they understood what the real driver was so that they did have more options. We had a woman at your gym who came in and she had met with her doctor. Her doctor said he wouldn't help her if she didn't go keto. And she was crying. She came in and she was so upset. I remember that, yeah.

Look, Dr. Smelly. There's absolutely nothing wrong with going keto if it works for you, if you're not tired, if it meets, if it satiates you, if it's something, part of your lifestyle that you can maintain. Some people like carnivore. Some people like keto. Some people like intermittent fasting but for those who don't to nocebo them by telling them that's the best option or god forbid the only option now you've you've taken options off the table like well i can't do that and so now i'm just lost i can't lose weight like no you

create a calorie deficit here's many options for which that can be done, many paths to the same destination. Find the one that works best for you. Implement some sort of cognitive restraint that you can comply with. And we're back to protein leveraging, high satiety foods, the kinds of calorie deficit, things that you can create a calorie deficit with that you're not hungry all the time. One of the things Menno talks about in his book is that if you think willpower is what's going to get you through this diet that you're engaged in, you're going to lose that battle because your body's working full force against you. You know, again, it's releasing ghrelin, the hunger hormone. It's ratcheting down your thyroid so you're burning fewer calories at rest.

It's compensating for any exercise that you do by making you more hungry and more tired. It's compensating burning fewer calories for the amount of exercise activity that you're investing in by becoming more efficient at that work. So it's doing everything it can to fight you. And so you have to employ whatever method. So I guess I'm always giving them the education first. I attach little videos or articles or Instagram clips of reliable, I think highly regarded professionals in the industry that they can watch or read,

little slideshow stuff or a video that kind of helps them understand that more exercise does not equal more weight loss. And what's the best diet? The one you'll follow. And just kind of get them comfortable with the fact, okay, well, I need to settle in for this for the long term. And even now, diet breaks seems to be very, you know, very popular or very effective as far as decreasing metabolic adaptation. So, hey, let's diet hard for a month. And when you look back, as we do over our career, just somewhat reflectively, we've done that many, many times, whether it's gaining weight or losing weight. You can only power down so much food for so long, and then you're just exhausted.

And then you're like, I just need to take a month, just, you know, just kind of take it easy and not force feed myself. And this is on the other end of the spectrum, obviously. And the same thing would be true of dieting. I'm just going to quit, you know, being in such a severe calorie deficit. And you just kind of take a month where you just kind of freestyle and not, you know, try and go too far off the tracks. And then when you have the energy and you've, you know've rekindled your goal, then you can do another month. And so that's kind of what we've always historically done, whether it's getting ready for competition and what dieters are recommended to do now, diet hard for a month and then take a month at maintenance. That doesn't mean you go way off the rails and eat everything

you can, but that seems to help not just mentally, but also physically in terms of metabolic adaptation, which is an excessive compensation for chronic dieting. Yeah. World Carnivore Month is January. And somebody, I ran into somebody in kind of late December and they were like, man, it's World Carnivore Month. And I said, oh yeah, it starts in January. And they were so excited. They're like, wow, I was so excited. I started it early. I saw them probably January 4th or so.

I was like, how's it going? How's the carnivore diet going? And they're like, oh, man, I had to stop, man. I did it for a couple days, and I was going to the gym, and I was doing A, B, C, D, all these things that previously they weren't doing. They had all these things they kind of added in that were not previously habits that they kind of embedded into their lifestyle,

and therefore they went off the diet. So not being able to comply with something is always the key factor. And if somebody does feel like they're going to go off plan, just recalibrate and try to get on to maybe a slightly different plan. Like, it's okay. It's okay if it's not what you said about it trying to be perfect. Like, that's going to make it really tough. What my dad always says is that you can't reach the pie in the sky, redefine the pie.

Don't eat the pie, but redefine the pie. You know, one of the things that's important to remember about this whole process is that it's a journey. There's no finish line. Some people think, oh, I'm going to lose this 10 pounds. I'm done. No, there's a long-term weight loss maintenance is where the difficult challenge is. Most people lose weights when they go on a diet. Most of them gain it back within one to three years, and the percentages are disagreed upon, but it's significant.

it back within one to three years and the percentages are disagreed upon, but it's significant. And so if it isn't something that can be sustainable, that's why the cover of my book says a simple, sensible and sustainable lifestyle plan. If it's not something that can become part of your lifestyle, that's sustainable, that you enjoy and you can comply with, then the likelihood you'll have long-term compliance is slim. Don't you think you were talking about how some people are not as middle of the road as Stan? I think people seek affirmation not information too often. So if

you are dug in on a certain diet, whether it's keto or paleo, whatever it is, they get so tied to the indoctrinated, right? It becomes like a religion for them. Whereas I think what's fun about this group is you guys always seem to try to take more, learn more from –

I think Stan's the same way. He's just trying to learn. He's not like married to – You know, I mentioned earlier that sometimes you utilize kind of like a triage situation, an acute intervention maybe to address an individual's current health situation, which could be poor. Maybe they've got type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure and they're 50 pounds overweight. That individual might need some more of a dramatic intervention.

Someone just commented on one of my interviews recently that Stan promotes this McDonald's diet. And somebody didn't listen to the whole video. commented on one of my interviews recently that Stan promotes this McDonald's diet. Somebody didn't listen to the whole video. I've often said 95% of health benefits are realized strictly from weight loss itself, irrespective of the diet. And in these acute situations where individuals are significantly overweight, things like even the McDonald's diet or 7-Eleven diet or a Twinkie diet, when you lose weight, you have significant improvements in all those metabolic markers. Your blood pressure, your lipids, and your blood sugars all go down. We've seen this studied repeatedly. The McDonald's diet is an evidence

of that. And then I went on to say I would never recommend the McDonald's diet. I don't think it's a long-term compliant. The satiety benefit isn't there. But you could even go so far as to say what the research suggests is that the best diet for someone with type 2 diabetes who's significantly overweight is a liquid diet and i wouldn't find anyone out there who would recommend doing a liquid diet for the general population but as an intervention it has the most significant initial weight loss and results in the most significant decrease in blood sugars and blood pressure and lipids. But that's not something then you'd hopefully be able to provide them the education so that they could find and then transition into a long-term plan. I also see people who I highly respect in this industry attack the carnivore diet. And I've been saying for many years, it's the ultimate elimination diet.

It's an acute intervention, at least as I see it, for people who have potentially a host of different things such as autoimmune disorders or skin conditions or digestive distress, IBS, etc. And we discussed on the last show with Sean Baker about it's the least, the fewest food items you can eat that are the most micronutrient dense, highly bioavailable, easy to digest. But they attacked carnivore diet in general,

understanding that that was a specific intervention that even was at McHale, Michaela Peterson and Jordan Peterson said, look, we don't recommend this for anybody else. We did this and it worked for us, you know, for our anxiety, for Michaela's conditions with autoimmune and inflammation and all of that. I've recommended when somebody's been in an extreme condition that they use that type of intervention and then reintroduce over time. Paul Saladino. I was on his podcast two years ago

and I was talking about the vertical diet to him. At the very end of the diet, and I scrolled back to it this morning even just to check, he said, we'll have to get you back on to talk about that fructose. Well, what's Paul eating now? He's eating honey. Fructose or just sugars in general, carbohydrates, benefited his athletic performance, his anaerobic performance. It increased his thyroid function, increased his testosterone, decreased his blood sugars. Because some people, when they go keto, the liver will start, through gluconeogenesis, will start pumping sugars into the bloodstream for you to use. And it may stay elevated. You might be up in the 90s where you could be down in the 80s if you had just taken in your 130 grams a day of whatever type of carbohydrate he found that to

be the case for him mike mutzel who was a fan of uh of low carb uh keto for for many years and stuff fasting yeah he started timing simple easy to digest carbohydrates around his workouts because performance became important to him dr peter att another example, someone who for three years pissed on keto sticks and showed us the numbers on Instagram. I often say, look, I've been at this for so long, competing since the late 80s. I've seen all of this before. I'm just patient. I just wait. And Peter's very persistent. I mean, for three years, he was devoutly keto. And he's more recently starts eating carbs around training because he's prioritized anaerobic training and lean muscle mass growth. And he has seen that has

benefited his performance in the gym. So I don't mean to blather on, but I'm just saying that people who have been entrenched, probably the only exception to this rule is Dr. Sean Baker, who I think is an outlier. He's a freak who just eats meat and still performs at a very high level and maintains a lot of lean muscle tissue at 55 years of age. He's one of the few, I think, that can perform at that high of a level. The others, all just, all the names I mentioned have found that, and you, when you went back into trying bench 500 again, introduced some carbohydrates when you went into competing bodybuilding, introduced some carbohydrates for a specific purpose. And so those, those things are certainly, you know, up to the individual and what their

goals are and what they experiment with and how they feel as a result. And I just, I don't want to write off anybody as being extreme unless they misrepresent the reasons why and presume to think that it's for everyone and not just for those people for whom it works. What are some of these papers you guys got in front of you guys have documents here today? Yeah. You know, one of the things we wanted to talk about today for the audience's benefit was how to make a career in the fitness industry. I'm cautious not to say how to make money in the fitness industry. We think it's more than that. We think it's a career. I've been a personal trainer since college. I worked at gyms in college when I was studying exercise science. I worked at gyms after college. I distributed supplements and drove my little van up and down the I-5 corridor in Oregon and Washington, visiting gym to gym and selling my Beverly International supplements out of the back of my van

or doing the little taste things at gyms and competed. I've been a personal trainer all my life. I still train clients. I've owned gyms. It was extremely hard to make a living at that full time. I worked full-time and then did that on the side, as a lot of people do, because I was doing it wrong. So now, fast forward all these many years, I've run a number of successful businesses and built

them into multi-million dollar companies. And I exclusively run a fitness business now with the meal prep company and online training and seminar appearances, et cetera, and eBooks. And I've been very successful at that. I've been in 12 countries in all 50 states in the last three or four years, done over 200 seminars. I've visited hundreds of gyms, talked to hundreds of gym owners, met thousands of personal trainers, Good Life in Canada hired me to come up and present to their personal trainers and teach them about nutrition and training. But one of the things I didn't talk to them about was how to actually make a living in this industry, which is something I wish

I had the opportunity to do, but they worked for the gym. And so I come across Matt, and I've come across some successful business models over the years, people who were successful in business. The vast majority of them just get by, struggle for a period of time, and maybe just check to check month to month and talk about how difficult it is to maintain their business. And so I come across Matt about six years ago, six or seven years ago, and went out and he invited me out to do a seminar at his gym. And I looked at his business model and started talking to him. And Matt has been training, as we talked about in the previous podcast, since he was 19 years old, working with the University of Pittsburgh and

then ultimately the Cleveland Browns. And then he's been a personal trainer, worked with athletes for many years, but a lot of dad bods and soccer moms. He's owned, built, sold probably, what, 15 or more gyms over the years, owns two in Cincinnati right now. This is all he's done for the last 25 years. This is all he does. It's personal training. This is not click funnels. This is not online training. It's not – and I'm not. This is not online training.

It's not – and I'm not knocking the social media online training stuff. I do that. But I had the advantage of a significant amount of international media that put me in a position to where this – not everybody has that same advantage. I also had the resources to invest and start a meal prep company, hundreds of thousands of dollars to get off the ground. For a personal trainer who wants to make a career, I'm talking about make over six figures a year, own a home, raise a family, put your kids through college. Matt does over a million dollars a year in personal training revenue with his group of trainers. training revenue with his group of trainers currently and this is personal trainers training actual clients this isn't gym memberships or supplements uh and does it very successfully and so and so we we got together and we said you know we should write a book well as it turns out

matt already has an employee manual which pretty much covered the whole thing you're like let me put my name on yeah let Let's do this together. And so we did. Building a Career in the Fitness Industry is a book that we put together, an e-book, and I wanted to give Matt kind of an opportunity to go through. Is it available yet? It is available, yeah. It's at stanhefferny.com,

and it's also at beatpersonaltraining.com. Buy it from stanhefferny.com. So I wanted to give Matt a chance to take a deeper dive into this and just give people the nuts and bolts of it uh if they choose to get the book there's more information in there certainly uh and and so we just kind of want to kick off from the top uh on this career book and i'll jump in i'll throw it over to you matt well the first thing that came to mind is while you guys were talking and i always tell stan i don't know why you know people stan will be like you know what this guy said about me?

Can you believe it? Or like, I'm like, why do you even listen to these losers? And they are. They're internet trolls. I'm trying to respond. Send them an article or a video or a study. Some 14-year-old kid, right? Yeah.

Here's like the thing. Like, for example, Steve's asked me for some help with this next meet. He's going to Perillo. At the end of the day, a lot of coaches that annoy me are the guys who are like, I did this. And I always say, I had a guy I worked with, and I won't say where because it'll be obvious, but I had a guy I worked with who was a pro strength coach. And at one time he was with a very prominent

national championship level team. And he was like, I did this. And I'm like, then why recruit if you're such a genius? Why do they recruit? Why do they spend all that money getting athletes in? If you're the god of strength and conditioning, anybody could come to you and run a 4-3. So when I listen to you guys talk about,

I don't get into the internet stuff. It's funny, like when you guys mention names, I don't know them. I don't care. Two things come to mind. If you have that much time to be into the internet stuff. It's funny. When you guys mention names, I don't know them. I don't care. Two things come to mind. If you have that much time to be on the internet, you're probably not training anybody. I just want to butt in for just a second on that note. The best coaches, you don't ever really know who they are.

When you dig deep with the best coaches, it's rare. Only the people in the profession know who they are. Yeah, I mentioned that Matt had worked for Cleveland Brown under Buddy Morris. Nobody knows that name. Nobody in the social media world knows that name. He is a legend in the NFL. How many insanely good jiu-jitsu practitioners are out there that are coaches that are just kind of underground? There's a ton.

Once you kind of start to think about it, yeah, of course there's people that are famous and people that make a living online and stuff. But a lot of times they're so busy coaching, that's all they know how to do is be on those mats. And you know what? And where I was coming with this is, you know, like I think Jon Jones will win this next fight. And I'm doing his programming and I go out there and train him and stuff like that. And Stan goes out there and trains him and we've been working with him. He's 15-0 in title fights. He's won a couple fights without you guys.

So this idea that, like, I did this, John did this. If I was so good, everybody, even like the guys that, and I'm not saying this to be bad, like his coaches at Jackson Wink, if it was their program, which is a great program, but if it was just the program, then they would have everybody be the best ever. So I think what coaches first have to accept is you're a service, you're a serviceman and you're there to support people and help them.

And you're not the show, you know, like you, you don't get like when Steve goes and Steve goes and breaks the total record, I'm not the show. John Perillo is not the show. And even Steve's the show. Cause if you were so great that everyone would total record, I'm not the show. John Perillo is not the show. Steve's the show. Because if you were so great, then everyone would total 2,600. If you were such a great dietician, everybody would be lean. So these guys who it's like it's Carnivore or it's Lane Norton or whoever. They all have 90% failure rates.

Yeah. You have to give the credit to the people you're helping, and then you have to look at your role objectively, which is I'm not the star. I'm what did Bill Belichick do without Tom Brady so far? Yeah. And how come everybody who's played at Michigan isn't Tom Brady or you got to give credit to the people you're helping and know your role. Kind of why I said earlier about know your worth.

You're there as a provider. It doesn't mean you do value yourself. It doesn't mean you're, you know, you think you're like, you know, take your job seriously, but you're not, if this were a movie, you're not Tom Cruise, right? You're the supporting actor. Might be like a Michael Caine, you know,

but you're, and you should embrace it and be great at it because it's still an important role, but you're not the star. So that's the first thing that comes to mind as you guys talk. You know, and on that note, we talked a lot now about pro athletes and the like. I've often said we wear it as a badge of honor

when we train a professional athlete or a great popular athlete. But that's not a career for the vast majority of people. That's not what this book is about, is how to go out and get a pro athlete. Or even some, what do they call them, high-end clients that the people like to talk about. These $200 an hour clients.

Good luck. Yeah, good luck with the unicorns. And how long. These $200 an hour clients. Good luck. Yeah, good luck with the unicorns. And how long do those $200 an hour clients last? Well, this comes back to we're going to talk about this with beginning trainers, but yeah. So this isn't about training professional athletes or becoming, like you said,

popular yourself. This is a book about how a personal trainer currently working at a gym for whatever's left over from what the box gym pays you when somebody comes in and buys a package. And you're training one person at a time and you're counting their reps and moving their pin for them. We'd like to get you in a position where you're making six figures a year and you're in control of that business yourself. So to kind of segue, there are three types of trainers that we're really talking to, right? So you have a big box gym guy.

You have the independent contractor who might say, hey, Mark, I'm coming to super training. Can I pay you rent to train people here? Or you own a gym. That's your owner-operator of a gym. So the first thing we talk about is for all trainers. I'm going to give you like little tidbits for each one of those trainers. But for everyone, my prerequisites are be professional. So I think in our industry, it's important, you know, like if you had a, you know, like a tax attorney and he showed up with

a Mohawk and a nose ring, you might not hire that tax attorney. For some reason in training, because it's a gym, people don't act professional or dress professional. So you'll come in, wear something with your logo on it, wear nice shorts. I mean, we've had trainers where I'm like, go home. You're like wearing cutoff shorts. Yeah, look like you work here.

Yeah. Represent yourself the best you can. Can you imagine if your doctor walked in with like jeans and like a tank top? It's like, I'm going surfing in 20 minutes. What 20 minutes what's your problem i should tell you guys about my proctology exam different episode i'm mad curious about that oh and for a prostate i got to tell the story now yeah and it is it is the the power project so it fits here so i go in recently to get a psa exam or whatever uh i'm over 50 now and so i go in get

an exam he's been getting them since he was 20 yeah loves yeah it was 24 hour massage parlor so i don't think it counts so i go in and this this doctor comes in and he's just fat as can be and just like i hope he isn't watching the show that'd be terrible but it's just fat old like bags under the eyes guy and i'm like oh great here it comes he probably eats carbs yeah right behind him oh my wife doesn't watch this show so he opens the door and walks in and i'm like oh hey doc and he's like hey right behind him walks in this late 20s asian 120 pound uh girl says, oh, this is my recent... I just hired a new doctor, and would you be okay if she performed the exam today?

And I was like, I'm looking around for the candid camera. I'm like, yeah. I'm trying to get my camera out so I can show Matt. And I'm like, man, 300 bucks for this exam doc. Can I come in next week? So I'm distracting you guys from $300 for this exam doc. Can I come in next week? So I'm distracting you guys from – but that was my story. So about being professional.

Yeah. On to building a career in the fitness industry. Also, it comes down to appearance. Like everybody – you look great. I would love to hire this guy if he ever came to Ohio. Because you have to represent – I always say you're going to pull your client with general fitness population, obviously, a little below you. So if somebody comes in here, you're talking about some of the success stories you've had with people coming in, they're probably not as dedicated as you.

But maybe they go, wow, Mark, if they see, like I always tell my, like I'll see a trainer and they'll say, like, I gave him a couple of cheat meals. I'm like, don't do that. And they're like, why? I say, because if you say for every 10 meals you can cheat twice, that's going to be four. Oh, yeah. So if you say like, yeah, I eat these 10 meals, they're going to cheat twice.

That's a good coaching tip in general. They're always going to cut the corner a little bit. And I love the Zig Ziglar story. You guys know Zig Ziglar? Yeah. He talked about – have you heard his Tupperware story? So he was a young door to door Tupperware salesman. He was killing it.

And he had a buddy and he was doing the same thing. He goes, I can't sell this. He goes, come over to, I'll come over tonight. Let's go over your presentation. So he goes to his buddy's house and he says,

all right, get your Tupperware out. The guy goes, oh, I don't have our Tupperware. It's too expensive. He goes, that's your problem.

So if you don't really, I tell my traders all the time, if you do not believe this is the best $400 or $450 somebody could spend, you shouldn't be here. If you don't think that you're life-changing, if this is the best thing, I really believe that. If somebody said, man, I only have $450 left a month, I'd say spend it here. You should.

You know, Matt's told this story, embarrassingly so to me, but I've built a number of successful businesses, Somebody said, man, I only have $450 left a month. I'd say spend it here. You should. You know, Matt's told this story embarrassingly so to me, but I've built a number of successful businesses. And one of the businesses that I built up was the cooler. I was on Shark Tank and I had this cooler. And the cooler kind of fizzled out for a host of reasons. The cost of goods went up. The shipping with Canada got more expensive. The tariffs with the trade war with Trump, whatever. So I haven't purchased the cooler

in over 18 months. I've kind of discontinued it. But Matt said another thing that was interesting to me. He goes, you don't use your cooler. And he's right. I'm the shakes are for fakes guy, right? Eat steaks. He never saw me carrying my cooler around all the time because I don't do shakes. I do food mostly. And he was absolutely right. And as much as I loved it and as much as I thought it was a practical solution for a lot of people, I didn't use it on a daily basis. Even though I upgraded it twice and redesigned it and all this other stuff, I just thought it was a fantastic idea. But what I should have gotten into was a thermos, the little 24-ounce thermos because I use those every single day. But that's important that you need to learn and use and be. They'll sniff you out.

If you're not authentic, they'll sniff you out. Yeah. And if you are going to go down the road of trying to make something or even just explore like a specific avenue, like let's say making supplements or something like that, better make sure that you love it. And think about it like, am I still going to dig this in 10 years? Am I okay with like haw dig this in 10 years? Am I okay with hawking this in 10 years?

Am I okay as a person that has other obligations to push this forward if I'm the only one left? Because that can happen, right? Yeah, that's well said. Yeah, and I think if you dabble in this, you're not going to be successful. That's important. This is not a part-time job. You have to commit to it. Yeah, so it's funny kind of coming back, and I'll lay off this,

but I used to hate the T-Nation articles because it's like, oh, you've never trained anybody. It's so obvious. It's like, here's what I do with my clients. I will bet you anything you don't have a client. Yeah, and that's another thing about these programs as well. It was difficult for me to kind of get involved in this is because you always see those people in front of Ferraris or a yacht or an airplane talking about

none of those people trains people. None of them have a successful business currently. And I'll say this from the get go that not only is Matt successful at what he does, and obviously I've been very successful, but I don't do personal training one-on-one now. And this is what this book is about is about what Matt, the business he's created and how lucrative it could be, not just for him, but for all of his trainers. Um, but at the same time, it's, you know, it's about the clients and none of his

trainers are, are running around and Ferraris and whatever else he can actually open up his books and show you, and we've invited people, many people, and they've already been out over the course of the last many months that we've released this. If you want to hop on an airplane and fly out to Cincinnati and go shadow match trainers, because part of what's important about being successful as a personal trainer

is understanding how to properly personal train more than one client. And that's a skill that you need to learn big skill matt has offered you can come out and you only pay our trainer what their clients pay them yeah he's not trying to to you know rake people over the coals here and he's not asking for a percentage of anybody's this isn't one of those things where you know we give you a click fund when we take 10 of all your revenue we don't want that it's not what this is this is just information in a book books 100 bucks if you want to fly out and meet and work with Shadow, one of Matt's trainers, and go to his gym. Matt has a gym that currently, a real gym training with real trainers training real clients right now

and has been for 20 years. And he'll be happy to show you the revenue. Ask another one of these, you know, get rich quick online training gurus with click funnels or social media programs to actually open their books or let you come shadow them and show you how you actually can train people. Uh, it, it, I don't think it's out there.

It's not. Another thing I tell people is, you know, everybody wants, everybody wants basically to be lazy. They want to be, I want to be an online trainer, send people workouts,

sit on the beach. Guess what?, I want to be an online trainer, send people workouts, sit on the beach. Guess what? If you want to be an online trainer, you have the whole world as your competition. So like just today, there's three people in here who would be better than anybody watching this podcast. Like Stan, Andre, Steve. So it's like, well, I'm going to be a powerlifting coach. Great. You got to compete with Josh Bryant.

Are you a better coach than Josh Bryant? Probably not. Are you better than Eddie Cohen? No. But Josh Bryant can't train any of the clients that are within five miles of your location. Your advantage as a great personal trainer is like, if you hire Stan or you hire one of my trainers,

if you're in Cincinnati, one of my trainers can do a better job than Stan, even though Stan's more accomplished, knows more. We see this in the research as well, when you look at the nutrition research. MDs and registered dieticians, I talked about this in one of my rants as well, when you study who gets better outcomes, it's not those people. It's the frontline people. It's the personal trainers that are engaged with the individual on a regular basis. We talked about how important it is to have those personal relationships to create a sense of responsibilities

so that your client comes and sees you three days a week. That's, you know, you build a relationship with them and you help them comply. That's what the big piece is here. So these, a lot of people in the industry now, particularly the academics, I see them do it all the time, they insult these personal trainers, these big box gym personal trainers with their weekend certification. They're the ones getting the best results. They're the ones on the front line. Don't insult them. Try and, if anything, you should be encouraging them if you can provide them information to maybe improve their message. Or education is obviously important, as Matt does with his clients,

or his trainers. But the most important thing is that they get the best results. These guys on the front lines are getting the best results. They're keeping people on track, getting them to lose weight for the long term. And when I say long term, I was going to send a clip of a video today that you could air up there, but I couldn't find it in my phone. But when I went out to Matt's place, he has a chalkboard on the wall, and he writes the names of his clients and how long they've been with him. One year, three years, five years, ten years.

Twenty. Twenty years he has clients on the wall. These are friends of Matt's. These are people whose kids were born while Matt was training them, and he attended their high school graduation. These are that kind of client. Also, and we might get to this as well, but the board on the wall with your clients, is that something we're going to get to? I'd like you to talk about that. Yeah, for sure.

So we talk about the other thing with being professional is just knowing your audience. I won't embarrass you, but remember, I was so excited when Stan, Stu McGill and Ed Cohen come out. So there's a lot of women who struggle with their weight. And I'm like, this guy, and I believe this, is the best in nutrition. I've never met anybody who knows more. He's going to help you. It's awesome. So Stan kind of comes out and he gets into like, you know, I took Brian Shaw.

He was 420 pounds. I dyed him down to 390. Now he's 450 and lean. And these women were like – and I was like, hey, Stan, tell the women. He's like, oh, it's a calorie equation. They were gone. The next day they're like, we're not doing that diet. It's for 400-pound men.

And so I talk about this. You know, like if the squat – a set of 10 on squats could make you a better athlete, right? Like getting better. It could make you leaner, stronger, bigger. If I'm talking to a 40-year-old woman and it's like, all right, we're going to do a set of squats. This is going to make your thighs huge. It's like, they're done. So knowing your audience is a big part of this.

We get into this in the next talk about curiosity. Curiosity to me is the number one thing in our core values. I think it's the most important. And the number one thing I talk about is doing a book report on your clients. As I grew, a lot of this came out of the fact I couldn't handle what I was doing. So I had so many clients. I'm like, I am maxed out. Then we had another trainer.

My head trainer, Jason Harbin, came in. Who was a D1 college football coach. Yeah, Kent State. Taking half, a third of what he makes now. Yeah. Maybe a quarter. They've offered him – he's been offered multiple D1 jobs. He turns them down.

Yeah. Because the other thing is people think training athletes is all great. It's not always the best. Yeah. A lot of times somebody who trains consistently and you're getting the most out of them beats somebody who's really talented and maybe you're not getting the most out of them.

To me, it's for a lot of strength. A lot of our coaches have found it's just as fun to help somebody pull 400 as it is to watch somebody pull 550 who could pull seven. I have a quick question. I don't mean to derail, but you were mentioning that some of your trainers train more than one person at a time.

So what's, what's the max amount of people that these trainers train within a one session? Well, our guys are training like over a hundred sessions a week. Over a hundred sessions a week. Yeah. A hundred to 150.

So, so you mean that's like, like four to five at a time, four to five at a time. Yeah. Okay. Wow. So you got to figure if you knew what, if you want to make, let Like four to five at a time. Four to five at a time. Yeah. Okay. Wow. So you've got to figure if you want to make, let's just throw some numbers out here.

So if you. Say 40 bucks an hour. If you book a client, say $400 a month for 12 sessions, which is sustainable for them. It's certainly less than what you pay at a big box gym, usually $70 an hour or the like. So you're on 35 bucks an hour. Now if you're training just that client for an hour, you've limited your income to $35, right? If you're counting their reps and moving their pin, that's that you're topped out. But if you could train three of those

clients in a given hour, now you're doing a hundred dollars an hour. So if you have 20 clients paying you $400 a month, that's your hundred thousand dollars a year in income from personal training. month, that's your $100,000 a year in income from personal training. 20 clients is not a big ask for you to go out. If you follow what Matt put in here in terms of his marketing, which is something he expects of his clients, and we'll go over that, but a very big piece of this book is understanding that you need to go get your clients. That's a constant, as you know. And you've got some drop off.

You've got to get some new. Marketing really becomes as big a piece as the training component. Yeah, you're in a sales job. You're in a sales job. You're selling an annuity. You're selling it every month if you think about it. Yeah. So in that scenario, you know, the person's not getting like that normal one-on-one that they're used to.

It's actually better. They'll also pay a different price, but they'll also get used to it as well. Like it's, it's kind of what we're used to, right? So the one-on-one, uh, you know, maybe somebody at first is like, man, I wish this person was just with me the entire hour, but now they might get a slightly reduced rate, but they're going to get a great workout because the coach or trainer is still going to be floating around to them or are they trying to make all three people do a similar workout?

No, that's the beauty of it. Number one, I'll give you four reasons why it's the best. Number one, you're not limited to a time. I'm very – I think you need to be – young people in particular are very focused on their side of the plate, if you know what I mean. I think it's very helpful in life to be aware of the other person's side of the plate. And I always tell people it doesn't mean you have to give up your rights or respect, but like if a client is running late, probably because they had a bad day at work,

their kid threw up, husband or wife got in a fight with them, the last thing they need is their trainer like, you're 15 minutes late. Get on the bike. We're going to have to skip your warm-up. That would nauseate me. So it allows some flexibility in scheduling, number one. So if you run out – that's kind of how it started honestly is a guy came early and he's like, oh, I'm early.

I'm like, I'll just come in. I asked the other client, do you mind? It's kind of navigating from that. Number two, I found it helps clients because a lot of people don't believe they can do something. And especially this is where like looking like how we look might work against you. They're like, I can't do that. I'm not you.

But then the other old lady does it and they're like, oh, I guess I can do that. And then three, there's camaraderie. You know, I think there's a lot of fun because I've always said this is like hosting a party. Mark, you got to do this all the time because you have all these people coming to your gym. I felt even bad last night, like me, Steve, and Jimmy coming in. I can tell you of all these people. You can't just rely on like you. So you got to say, oh, Matt, you should meet Stan.

Stan's also a powerlifter. And Simeon, he's an athlete too. And you've got to kind of work the room. But people then are attached to the crowd and not just you. So actually, I think they like it better. That comes to the community. And then I think for the fourth reason, I think we've had interns come in and the trainer, like the client will come up and be like, tell this guy to like lay off because it's almost awkward. Somebody's like,

how's that feel? How's that feel? Seven, eight, two more, nine, especially in like 10, like if you're doing a one arm row,

it's not like somebody's got to be like, come on, pull it elbow. It's like, all right, it's a one arm room. And mind you, this isn't a group training session.

Everybody doesn't come in and get together and do the same thing. This is, this is an 18 year old wrestler in high school and a 64-year-old car accident rehab lady. And you give them their independent individual programs. But, again, this is why I say this is where it's a skill where you have to learn to give all four of them all of your attention. And that's where Matt trains his trainers. They're also learning because they're doing some stuff a little bit on their own. Like they're – tell them what to do, but they've learned it from previous sessions. And you graduate from one to two, two to three as you learn the skills.

Like let's say I was training the three of you and then Seema's on legs. So – and Mark, you were doing back and Stan's doing chest. I would know if you're squatting, I better spot that. If you're doing back, that's, yeah, I can say that. That pull down doesn't need a spot. Right. And so I might, you know, like while he's doing flies, I'll spot you on squat.

But when he's benching, I might have you do walking lunges. Yeah. So I can move around the room. And if you think about like in a workout, it's not a jazzercise class. I mean, when you train, you know, it's not like it's like, you do take breaks and you do, the big thing is to never make anybody feel

they always should have an instruction on what to do. I always tell my clients, if somebody's sitting, you are, you screwed up. They should always have something that they know they're going to do. But group training is great. But I come back to that book report, I think it's the most important thing.

You learn so much about your people and it's got to be genuine. I love people. I think people are fascinating. My clients are really – it's interesting to see. Like even Mark, like your story is fascinating. Zima, you've got a really interesting story. Stan's got – I don't know if you – you've been around Stan a lot.

Do you ever notice it's like, oh, Hawaii? I spent – when I was 10, I spent a summer in Hawaii. You're like, what? Like anywhere I've been, Stan stands like, oh, Antarctica? Yeah. When I was a younger man, I did some drywalling. It's like Forrest Gump. Yeah.

But he does have an interesting story. And I know my story, so it's not that interesting to me. But the better you get to know your clients, the better, one, you get to know how to motivate them. The better you know, you know, the things they like, things they don't like. And it's better for referrals because if I know your day, it's like, man, you always talk about your friend, Julie, why don't you bring her in? It's like, yeah, I should bring her. It's funny because Matt still, he'll go to his trainers about a new client and say, oh, so, you know, and start asking him the questions and they're like, oh, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And Matt knows. He's like, why do you, why don't you know? Yeah. Matt took me up to a board.

We'll talk about the board and the importance of the board later. But it had just like 30 clients on there at least. More than that, yeah. More than that. And Matt stood there in front of the board and told me every single client's name, their wife's name, their kid's name, where they work, and a host of other interesting things about all of them. One after the other, as did Jason. Jason comes in, oh, and this one, bing, bing, bing, bing. Staying to the same thing, oh, and this one, bing, bing, bing, bing. They ended the same thing.

Ironically, everybody's named Biggs. Their wives, their kids. Yeah, they're all Biggs. Biggs kids. The third thing in curiosity doing a book report, number two, obviously lead by example. So you've got to compete. To me, that's competing.

All my trainers have to compete or have to have a lot of competitive background to work for us. And the reason that is, if you think about it, it doesn't mean we're right. But in my gym, which is very similar to this gym, almost identical,

we're solving your problems with a barbell. You know, somebody's like, my back is killing me. Great, we're going to teach you how to deadlift. My thighs are not as toned as I'd like for a woman. Great. We're going to teach you how to squat. We're just, that's just what we do. So if you're not proficient in the barbell, you're going to struggle. And I had a, it's actually a pro baseball player for the Reds. And like, you know, he would always say like, oh, this kind of bothers my knee.

And I'd like, oh, push here, put your foot here. And he's like, how do you always know this? But it's because I compete. So like you guys all know, it's like, I've had that knee pain, I've had this. And you know the fix for it. If you just read the book and you take the NASM exam, I promise you don't know much.

I don't care if you can like name the rotator cuff muscles. You really don't know how to fix the rotator cuff. And if you don't compete, I promise, you know, like there was a strength coach who once said to me, I won't name his name, but he drove me nuts.

Cause he said, you know, he goes, I never power lifted. So one dimensional, like, well, well,

so sprinting, you don't knock you saying, well, why don't you try powerlifting? There's such snobs about it. You know, it's like try bodybuilding. See how easy it is to get leans or see how easy it is to get really strong.

And I promise you, because that's why I make them continue to compete, you will hit a wall. It's like, oh, I did a meet. Well, I did two meets. It was easy. It's like, oh, yeah? You squatted 315, then you went to 365.

Wonderful. Keep going. Yeah. Because you went to three 65. Wonderful. Keep going. Yeah. Cause you weren't, you were headed for an injury and you'll probably get injured and you'll be able to reflect as to why. And you'll have to rehab. And when somebody comes to you with similar circumstances,

you'll be able to help. And we deal in extremes. Our head trainer, he talks about Jason. He, he squats seven 80 raw. And he, he's the one who went from six and a quarter to 700.

And when he squatted seven 60, he hurt his back. And he's the one who went from six and a quarter to 700. And when he squatted 760, he hurt his back. And like bad. I was like, oh my gosh, this guy's early 30s. He's got two kids. He would get out of his car like that, you know, that. Been there. And I'm sitting there going like, he might be like trouble. Like long-term.

Forget powerlifting. He rehabbed it. He did inversion tables. inversion tables he did you know he did modalities he came back and squat 780 so and i and i know everybody out here is listening it's like well should he be squatting 700 pounds maybe not but guess what if you are a normal person and you're like, I have a bulge disc, and if Jason can go from barely getting out of the car to squatting 780, he can help you get pain-free. I mean, it's a joke, right? Just like you guys get so lean.

I've never got as lean as you guys. But it's like if somebody said, like, Stan, I just can't lose this last 10 pounds. You're like, I was a pro bodybuilder. 10 pounds, same for you, Mark. You're like, I did a pro bodybuilder. 10 pounds, same for you, Mark. You're like, I did a bodybuilding show. You want to lose 10 pounds? That's easy. You have to scale it back.

You have to. You have to be better than the client. It can't be an impossible task. It can't be like, oh, you want to squat? And I've seen trainers, and you can tell when they know they're out of their realm. And that's when you're not good. You've got to be above your client. So they have to compete.

You lead by example. You become proficient with barbells and diets and fixing out injuries. Stan talked about starting out. I recommend everybody start out at a big box or a gym that will pay you something for your time. So I think it's a terrible idea to start out and try to make it like on commission only. You know, go big box gym. They usually give you some sort of hourly rate. And then you want to start somewhere where, you know, you can maybe learn something from somebody.

Get some experience. But the one thing, you know, like I said this earlier, all these guys know your worth and all these buzzwords on social media. Your worth is what you're worth. You know, like I know your mom and all these buzzwords on social media. Your worth is what you're worth. You know, like I know your mom and dad told you you're special and you're special to them. But to everyone else, you're worth, you know, if somebody wants to come in and say, hey, I want to stock slingshots. You're like, probably great. That's 12, 15, whatever you pay.

But I know my worth. I'm worth 50 an hour, you say, not to stock slingshots. You know, you're worth whatever somebody will pay you, and you have to create your worth. So these trainers early, Mark said it so well, quit calculating your fucking hourly rate. If you have a dream of doing this, quit talking about my hourly rate. It's going to suck. Stop worrying about it. If you want to do this business, stop.

Like any sales job. I got friends who are lawyers. If you want to own a gym especially. Oh, my God. Don't even start there. That's the amount of hours that you are probably going to end up there and the amount of hours you're going to think about it. You're going to pay to work.

When Matt started, he was training people at 4 and 5 o'clock in the morning and again at 8 at night and it was on their schedule. 100%. It wasn't until you developed enough clients to where you could start to maybe kick them off to another trainer and then start to pinch your schedule down. But that's from the fruits of your own labor. That's not where you start. And think about it.

I did, or I would have clients where I'd say, hey, especially I had multiple gyms at one time, and I would do like three days in one gym, three days in the other. And then I got to the point where I said, hey, I'm going to hire people for this gym. I'm going to work in the other one. And then clients, some clients drove 25 minutes, but I created that value because I give them awesome workouts. And they're like, well, we don't want to train with another trainer. I'm like, great, come on down. But I created that. Or if I said, hey, I'm going to start not working Saturday mornings. Can you come in on Friday or whatever, you know, whatever the schedule change.

But I gave them such a great service on their time that they're like, yeah, I can make that work. But if you come in guns blazing, like I don't work weekends. And I like to, we had a guy, do you remember getting him? I'm going to call him out a little bit. Jimmy Cannon. No. He's a pro bodybuilder out of Cincinnati. We interviewed him.

He's like, well, I need my nap at this time. I'm like, yeah, this isn't going to work. And he's like, well, I'm the only pro bodybuilder out of Cincinnati, and we interviewed him. He's like, well, I need my nap at this time. I'm like, yeah, this isn't going to work. And he's like, well, I'm the only pro bodybuilder in Cincinnati, and I got no clients. It's like, nobody cares. Nobody cares. Nobody does. So when you start out, big box gym, everyone's your client. The advantage of the big box gym is you got a room full of people, whether it's EOS or LA Fitness, Crunch, doesn't matter.

But you have to get out there and work. They're not going to come in the door and be like, wow, that guy is so impressive. I'm just going to walk in and give him money. You've got to get out there. And so how do you do that? What's your technique? I always, again, ask questions. Don't come out and say like – even like Steve.

Steve called me. I'm like, well, what do you think you need to work on? Ask questions. Don't come out and say like – even like Steve. Steve called me. I'm like, well, what do you think you need to work on? If I came out guns blazing like, Steve, you're upper back's weak. It's like he'd probably be like, whatever, douche. You bench 430. I bench 630. But if I ask him questions, I might come out on the floor and say like, man, you are working hard.

Mark, right? What are you working on? Everybody has something. I promise you. Everybody has something they want to get better at. But it's your job to let them tell you what their problem is. Kind of like Dick Hartzell, right? I know you got something. But if you came up to somebody and said, man, you got a huge gut.

Let's work on that. That's not going to go well. You can let them tell you, but they'll have something. So everybody's your floor. One thing people don't think about is be a good teammate. So when I worked at a big box gym in college, I had all the like floor guys. I would train them for free. I would give them these tips. I had them so excited. Like, Matt, we got you another client. Like we told the slate, she's got to train with you. And I kick them a little extra on the side, like get people, be a good teammate.

But then I would help them out if they were clean and I go help them clean. If you're kind of a prick, you know, you get your, like what's the Paul McCartney, you give what you get or get what you give it. There's truth, you know?

So, um, be a good teammate and get people excited to help you. And then, um, the other thing I always say is you're always being watched. And I tell my traders this now, and you guys got to appreciate this. I'm sure like even at family functions, it's like, you know, my family won't like this,

but like, you know, we got some people who are heavy, like some people are heavier. And they're like, if I have like anything, like if I put barbecue sauce on chicken, it's like, oh, there's sugar in that. It's like, whatever. Like, you know, they just ate like four slices of pizza or whatever. It's like, you know, Diet Coke has aspartame. You're like, yeah, I get it. How was the chili dog?

Exactly. But you are always on display. So I tell my guy, I had one trader, and he's young and he could eat what he wants, the dropper he does, but I'd say, like, don't eat donuts or like a Dunkin' Donuts sandwich in front of the fucking clients.

Because two things are going to happen. One, they're going to think you know nothing about nutrition. They're going to say, you're a young, lean guy. Like, you'd be a good example of this. They'll say, and Seema, you don't know, you don't know what it's like to be a middle-aged woman. You're naturally lean. So it's like, I would say in Seema, you can never eat junk food in front of a client because

you're always on display. They're always, it's amazing I would say in SEMA, you can never eat junk food in front of a client because you're always on display. It's amazing how much is watching. One time I had a – I forget what – it was like a protein drink or something. And I had put it down and I remember my client like looked at it. It was actually another person's client. They picked it up. It was like – what was that? Chernobyl and a hot tub time machine.

They were just like, what? What's he drinking? It was like somebody bought it at a gas station, but they're always watching. And the other thing that's funny is even like, I'll see this now, clients are listening, you know,

cause I'll have like trainers like, so what's the deal with that? Or clients will say like, what's the deal with that trainer? What's the deal with that client? They're listening. So you're always on, if you're going to do something,

you know, watch what you're doing. Be professional at all times cause they are watching you. yeah there's one thing uh i would also because like when i used to personally train people man uh as a male trainer don't do not shit where you eat do not fuck your clients like just real talk man because like when i was when i was trying to like uh on a box when i was younger like there's this trainer i'm not not going to say his name. But he had the reputation of fucking a lot of his clients. And he had a wife and kids at home. So don't do that.

How about just – That's a terrible idea. I had a friend that did that and he'd complain that they'd stop paying him. Like, what did you expect? They still want to train and they don't want to pay me. You just got lifetime payment already. We have a whole section in the book on owning a gym. We'll take a deep dive into it now.

But Matt, he gets frustrated because people come to him all the time who want to sell their gym because they failed. It's like if you had just called me a year ago, I could have showed you how to be successful. And Matt and I offer that opportunity as well, like a gym makeover or whatever. If you're finding that you started a gym and you're not doing as well as you think you can or you read our book and you come out and visit Matt and you don't want to replicate his model, Matt and I can arrange to spend a week at their gym in their town and show them how to market it correctly and how to set it up.

We have a couple ways to help you. So if you go to our beatpersonaltraining.com on my page, I offer a six-month and a 12-month help you. So if you go to our beatpersonaltraining.com on my page, you can get – I offer a six-month and a 12-month coaching package. It's a one-pay. And I do that because I don't like – if I'm going to help you, I'm going to help you. It's not going to happen in six weeks.

But you can also buy – I recommend buying our book. And then you can do The Shadow, which again, like Sam said, is usually about $200. But you come out and sit and watch our trainers, ask us anything. We'll show you our book. I mean We'll show you anything you want to know. We're not hiding anything. Let me throw out the big rocks here because a lot of them have listened to all this. And in the book, Matt has a pretty huge section on marketing, on creating scripts, rehearsing them so you're comfortable with them.

So you can approach clients because sales is huge, whether it's B2B, whether you go to a tanning salon or a chiropractic office and you create relationships with the business. By the way, let me piggyback that. This all works for chiropractic. If you're a physical therapist, a chiropractor, if you have a massage clinic, this is all the same. I mean, it's all the same stuff. Like if you're a chiropractor, I got a buddy. If there's any chiropractors, he's asked me to hire some for him. So if there's any chiropractors out there, reach out to me. But

like this place, I remember they've had a couple times where their chiropractors don't work out, but they're not into it. And I said, it's the same thing. If you, and it's not to get down this road, but like if chiropractors generally hate chiropractic works and that's how we fix things and we're no

medicine, whatever. But if you're like, hey, you shouldn't take medicine, do chiropractic, but that's how we fix things and we're no medicine, whatever. But if you're like, hey, you shouldn't take medicine and do chiropractic, but then you're going and taking like penicillin for everything and you don't move and you don't work out, you're probably not going to sell chiropractic. If you don't really believe it, you're not going to sell it. So go ahead, Claire. Yeah. Well, I mean, so I'm going to give some people something to chew on, some practical advice. We talked about a little bit of it here, but let's break it down. Kind of the top five things, I think. We talked about one, and that's that

if you're currently training one client, that is not a long-term plan to make a career in the fitness industry. So you have to get yourself the skills necessary to train more than one client at a given hour. Setting up recurring auto pay

is huge because the clients will ghost you if they – Well – They just won't – they don't pay with the frequency if you have to go and collect from them every month. Here's the other reason like auto pay is I don't want a client – like let's say I want to work with you for 12 weeks on the keto diet and you're going to train me, Mark. I would rather just tell me what that price is and let's get it out of the way.

I don't want to say, hey, if I call you, it's $30. And if you come out to super training, it's going to be $38. And then it's like, what does it take? Kind of like, say you're going to have your kitchen redone. Just tell me. Don't tell me what it is per cabinet. Don't tell me. And I feel like the same way of training.

I thought it was better for the client and the trainer because it was just like, look, you're gonna pay four 50 a month. Come anytime you want. I don't care. You can come unlimited. Whereas before,

if I sold them like a, you know, 50 sessions, it's like, well, I was a little tired and I didn't want to waste a session on a day. I couldn't go a hundred percent. It's like,

Oh my God. And then you're a calculator. Then do you do the personal training? Yeah. I couldn't go 100%. It's like, oh, my God. And then you're calculating. Do you do the personal training? Yeah, I remember that. Oh, I remember like, I thought I had three left. It's like, no, you got to go back and like, you came this day. Like, are you sure I came that day? Like, oh, my God.

Yeah. That was the worst part of the job. You don't have to audit it. You get 12 sessions a month or, you know, and if you come 10, that's the same cost. And if you come 14, you know, I'm probably not going to bitch about not going to bitch about it okay i'd kind of like you to be there anyhow and also if if you take a vacation in december and you only show up three times that month i'm still getting paid i don't end up with no money in december you know weather is bad whatever you can make it up another time but you get into that almost like a membership mentality and he hit on number three and that

that is that you don't have to necessarily schedule that time. If somebody comes, you know, say, well, I have to cancel and I'll reschedule. It totally eliminates all that. I'm going to be here from this hour to this hour. And you can buy any time. And if you can't make it then, then hit me tomorrow and we'll fit you in. We'll bring you in. So those are big.

Multiple clients at a time, the monthly recurring charges and not having to schedule every single client like that. What I find for gym owners – so I started this coach. This is not my intent. I'm not an internet guy. This is like not – I'm doing this because Stan was like we should do this and help these gym owners. By the way,

let me tell you what doesn't work for all you guys like out there posting like your, your training log. Like here's week three of my accumulation block. I promise you. Nope. Like I've never had a personal training client call me and say like, Hey,

I just was calling your trainers using bands and chains and I'm a raw lifter. They don't know like this world that we live in, Ed Cohen came to a seminar. I had people who were like, who is that? Nobody knew, and he's the best ever. And I'm not saying that to put Ed down. What I'm saying is they didn't know who stayed. Like people – my one client was like, well, I Wikipedia'd Ed. He's pretty good, but he got caught for steroids.

I'm like, yeah, like, no. You know? And, but they just don't know. So all these people, you're marketing to other meatheads who don't have any money. They don't live in your area and they, they're not going to help you. So this idea, like people spend all this time posting, it's like, here's my breakfast. Oh, here's, you know, here's my third set of hypertrophy beds. They don't care.

You need to get out and get into the community. Matt's a magician at this. Every time we go to a restaurant or a grocery store, even a stop at the gas station, Matt's striking up a conversation with somebody at any of those locations. The big thing is, is Matt never hands him a business card. It's not like, nobody hands him a business card no it's not like nobody responds to business card matt engages in a conversation with him always asks them questions gets them to disclose something about themselves and like the lady at the grocery store was like oh yeah i put on like 10 pounds during the tour you're like oh really what do you you know you got a you got a plan for that or you know because i want jim to be happy to help you

and she's like, oh, really? And Matt's immediately, he's like, yep, here's my phone. Go ahead and give me your number. I'll bring you out. He'll also ask for the sale or at least set an appointment. That's what we've learned in any business is that initially, at least, you want to set an appointment. And then at that appointment, you want to ask for the sale. We talk about all this in the marketing portion, in addition to the scripting and all of that. But Matt says, what's a good time? Weekdays or weekends?

Weekends, mornings or evenings? Evenings, five o'clock Saturday? Just like that, he's got them pinned down to an appointment time. He goes, here, give me your number and I'll go ahead and give you all the information and have you come by. And then text them the day before,

hey, looking forward to seeing you tomorrow, with a link to the address. Get some in. Also, the B2B business stuff is very important. Most of your clients are going to be within about a five-mile radius of you. And so you're going to want to hit the businesses around you. And Matt will build relationships with the key individual of that business. Maybe it's the lady that works the front desk because they're the most hours and sees the most customers. He was,

he'd look, you get free training. Can I put a fishbowl here? And then almost what's interesting is the statistic that you gave me one time, not only will he give free training, the person at the front desk, but he'll offer the individual that, uh, uh, the fishbowl, he'll offer them say a free month. He says 95% of the time, the business owner or the person at the front desk will probably not utilize the service. Sadly, no.

But 95% of the time, he'll convert the free 30 days with the client that patronized their business into a long-term client. And so if you're worried about, and with this model of having more than one person per hour, you can bring in folks that aren't paying initially and then try and transition them with the quality of your work. Well, I'm going to give you an example.

You can't be scared to – you're going to take a lot of no's and you're going to get a lot of whiffs. But what's funny is every client at the end of the day is worth about five grand a year. Yeah. It's an interesting – think about it. Four dollars a month. That's a $5,000 conversation you're having there at the end of the day is worth about $5,000 a year. Yeah, it's an interesting – think about it. $4 a month. That's a $5,000 conversation you're having there at the grocery store.

So think about like Louie Simmons. There's a million dollars under a rock in the parking lot. I may pick up every one. But that's kind of the same philosophy. If you don't have the – so we were at a – we had a work party at a nice restaurant and my newest trainer, I'm embarrassed a little bit, Logan, he's sitting next to me and the waitress is like, you guys all look pretty fit. I'm like, hey, Logan, like tell her.

And he's like, no. And my office manager is like, Matt, oh my God. Because, you know, she's like, he's always asking for a sale. I'm like, where do you train? You know, she's like, oh, but long story short, I made Logan get her number. And he called me the other day. He goes, she signed up. Yeah.

But, you know. You don't get anything you don't ask for. Yeah. And this comes back to, though, I don't feel like I'm scamming anybody. You you know, you don't get anything you don't ask for. Yeah. And this comes back to though, I don't feel like I'm scamming anybody. You believe in what you provide. I feel great about what we do. They disclosed a problem.

You have a solution. You offer them an opportunity to, to resolve it. And, and you follow through with your word. The biggest thing I think with, um, I don't know how much time we got left,

but the one thing I noticed, so I got these gym owners calling me and they're the easiest part of this job. If you're, if you've done the basics is training people, wouldn't you agree? Yeah. So most people struggle with getting customers. A lot of gym owners has overcome that hurdle. They're like, I have clients, but now I got, I got married. I have a wife, I have kids and I can't work the hours I used to,

and I can't get anybody to work for me. And so I just made a little note I have a wife. I have kids. And I can't work the hours I used to. And I can't get anybody to work for me. And so I just made a little note of owning a gym. The first thing I noticed is don't purchase a job. So when you set up your business model, think, Mark just said it, in 10 years, what are you going to do? So we just bought a gym a couple years ago from a guy. And he's like, and I gave him an offer he didn't love, but he said, well, I made 40 grand last year. I said, no, you didn't. Cause you worked it. So you had a, you have a $40,000 a year job.

I don't want your $40,000 a year job. Your business made zero. Cause if you had to replace yourself, you had to pay yourself someone at least 40 grand. So the business made net zero. Your business is essentially worthless, worth the equipment and that's it. And it's a harsh thing to say, but you have to understand you're an investor on one side and you're an employee on the other.

And so you have two different hats and you need to understand them. Probably like you could sell this business, I imagine Mark, if you want. And, and somebody could run this business without you, correct? Yeah. A good friend of mine who's a really good business guy, he said,

you know you did a good job when you can walk away successfully, when you can remove yourself. He goes, that's when you did good. And another thing I think people are, and I went through this, you're so used to doing everything, you feel guilty when you're like, oh, I'm making money and my guys are training people. But then you have to think you took all the risk. If something

goes bad, like Mark says, you might be alone again. So you're entitled to a return on an investment just like you buy a stock and you're entitled to that stock going up. The other thing, people don't protect the entity. So I see gym owners and they skim on things they shouldn't.

So if you take care of your business, it will take care of you in the business, supersede your needs. I see people abuse their business. They're buying cars they shouldn't buy, or they're buying, you know, taking out loans on the business they shouldn't take. If you wouldn't do it for your employee, pay yourself as an employee and don't pay yourself more than that employee would make and start to get used to having that discipline.

Because if you spend everything you make, you're going to be in trouble. And then hire professionals for serious matters. So like non-competes, leases, any sort of LLC you're forming, get a really good attorney because those things, when they go down, they really matter. I imagine you were in a lawsuit, weren't you, with Slingshot? Were people trying to copy yours? Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.

Patent infringement. Yeah, we have a patent attorney. It's important, isn't it? I mean that's not something you're like, oh, my cousin's roommate was like pre-law. Get somebody good. And it's okay to – and hire to your weaknesses. Like I'm not a – I don't like certain things, and I hire people who do those things. They're better than I am.

But invest in your staff. And this is the one I hear people – they do one of two things. They either way underpay their trainers or they pay them in a manner that doesn't align interest. So I hear people say like, well, I pay my trainers $6 an hour. It's like, well, that's why you got bad trainers. Like $6 a session or whatever it is. Well, you said and educate them as well. All the names that Matt's mentioned in the previous podcast and this one, Chad Wesley Smith, Mike Isretel, and Chris Duffin and myself.

And he's had out of his gym doing seminars for his staff as a learning opportunity. Absolutely. And I pay for all their certifications. I pay for them to compete. I pay for them if their clients compete. And I'm telling you, we showed up to like the SPF pro-ams with like 12 normal people in a room full of goons. You know, Donnie Thompson.

I think one Donnie Thompson has squatted his big total. And you bring in some 54-year-old guy who was in a car accident a year prior. Yeah. But they're thrilled. I mean, all their squats are good. If a 160-pound, 60-year-old squats 315,

I think that's pretty good. Yeah. It's awesome. Yeah. And just to look, just a peek into how Matt's able to retain these clients. He talked about, you know, doing the, you know, creating the, what do you call it again? A book report.

Oh, yeah. On your clients so that you know everything about them. I mentioned the board earlier. Matt has a board on the wall. Yeah. You go into most gyms and they have the record board on the wall. Yeah. And it's usually just the strongest guy in the gym.

Matt has all, I mean, there's like 40 people on the list. And it's not just bench, squat, and deadlift. There's like 15 exercises on the wall. And it's usually just the strongest guy in the gym. Matt has all, I mean, there's like 40 people on the list and it's not just bench squat and deadlift. There's like 15 exercises on this board. So we have like two, you know, board press, floor press, bench with chain, regular bench,

six rep max bench. Six rep maxes, all that kind of stuff. So every single time a client comes in, they have an opportunity to set a PR. Absolutely. And that's kind of the goal. And it gets them engaged.

Also with weight training, just in general, it tends to, I think it lends itself well to hook people, to retain people when they come in and they try a deadlift,

even if it's a trap bar deadlift or something off of a block or something initially. And they come back two days later and they're able to do 10 more pounds. And they come back two days later and they're able to do another 10 pounds. That kind of thing is addicting.

And we know that it's neural adaptation. It's just coordination initially that's giving them that. They don't. Okay, the clients don't know. But they don't. See, he's got dad bods and soccer moms. They're not watching the Power Project. For the most part,

it's kind of the same reason why these CrossFitter women in particular are filling most of the female spots in the powerlifting meets is once they start touching a heavy deadlift it's kind of life-changing you know and you see the progression of it over time plus people hate the endurance shit anyhow uh that's that's deep water sucks think about for powerlifting is a great adult sport because for most people they don don't – even like crossfitting requires probably six days a week of training. The top crossfitters are going like twice a day. I've trained Ironman guys.

That seems like – I don't know how you – they're like, well, I do 20 hours of this and 10 hours of swimming, marathon, all that running. Powerlifting, I can tell somebody three to four days a week, give me an hour, hour and a half, and you'll get really good relative to your – Yeah, and it's a really low injury rate as far as hours participated when you look at that compared to any dynamic sport, whether it's soccer, sliding into second base in a weekend softball game game or rolling your ankle in basketball. It has a really low injury rate and a great return on your investment in terms of lean body mass and controlling blood sugars, et cetera. So you guys have talked to Gabrielle Lyons about the importance of muscle tissue, kind of the organ of longevity and the sink for glucose,

and so we promote all of that as well. Yeah, they love it. And that's what I keep coming back to. I hate almost talking like it's like, hey, these are these tricks to get people in the door. No, I just believe in it. And I try to think of the things that made me successful. With owning a gym, when I had to switch as I grew, I had to treat my staff like my clients

because essentially my staff are my clients now. They touch the clients. So I work with them and I think with trainers or gym owners, they don't put enough thought into their staff. We talk about aligning interests. So our bonus structures, I'm sure everybody has been in a gym. It's like a car lot. If somebody walks on, everybody is racing to like, oh, well, can I help you? Can I help you?

Our bonus structures are team-based. So, you know, Mark and Seema would be happy if Mark got a new client. Whereas in most gyms, it's like, Mark got another client. What do I care? It's like, well, Seema, you're going to get more money for Mark doing more business. Stan's going to get more money when you do more business. Stan's going to get more money when you do more business. So you have to align your interest. I see like the worst

thing in our industry is a salary. Here's a free tip you have to pay us. If you have trainers on salary, stop. Because what's their incentive? I've talked to a number of gym owners and they're like, yeah, this isn't working out.

I pay this guy 50 grand a year. And I'm like, what's his incentive to do more? He gets 50, and that's it. It just doesn't work. Our guys do. We have a short-term salary when they first start, and they know they're going to commission. But I always tell my trainers, we're aligned. If I make more money, you make more money.

You make more money, I make more money. Everybody's aligned. If the client's happy, you'll make more money. Client's unhappy, you make more money. You make more money, I make more money. Everybody's aligned. If the client's happy, you'll make more money. Client's unhappy, you make less money. And you also know that within a certain, just a few months, three to five months, your trainers are generally doing north of $80,000, $90,000, $100,000 a year in gross revenue. You know that very quickly. And if they can't achieve that, probably not a good fit.

Not a good fit. The other thing I think with, and I've had to learn a lot of this, and I've hired professional coaches. I mean, one thing is be explicit. And then the other thing is like we talked about with training, a lot of it relates, you know. Be explicit with what you expect in terms of like what is a good performance. You know, what gets measured gets done.

You know, we measure things like obviously monthly billing, but we measure client retention. Because I always tell you, Stan talks about if somebody doesn't show up, we still get their $400. Well, they're not going to keep paying you $450 a month to not come. So I'll tell the trainer, where's this person been? It's like, oh, I don't know. It's like, well, you better figure it out because I promise

they won't keep sending you money. Yeah, you'll text them the next day after a big workout. How do you feel? How did that go? And try and discuss with them about their progress. Another thing that Matt has been very adamant about is that your gym shouldn't be all things for all people. Do what you're good at.

You can't have a CrossFit, powerlifting, bodybuilding, aerobics box just because you heard that some people might be interested if you become so many more things. So do what you're good at. That's not to say a CrossFit box is a crossfit box but uh that's what it should be well when that crossfit craze and i know it's still popular when i kicked up everybody's like you should go you should become a crossfit but we don't do that yeah and i'm not knocking it by any means just like pilates got popular i would never do pilates i mean it's just not what i do um you have we have three core values and we always try to come back to those.

And if we are, if the things we do don't match those core values, we don't do them. Yeah. Simple. How do you have your people have compliance, the people that are training, the clients? I think the biggest thing is, well, number one, this is why I kind of laugh at people. It's consistency is number one, right? So if you come, if you just come training, get them in the door, I think money helps, you know, at people. It's consistency is number one, right? So if you just come training, get them in the door. I think money helps. You know, like people – I remember we used to sell memberships up front.

You had to pay like three 90 days or 60 days up front. And people would say like, why do you ask for our money up front? I said, because you're more likely to comply. So the fact that they're giving us money helps. It's getting in the game. It's getting in the game. I think everybody's a little different. But I was listening to you guys talk about who's successful and who's not.

You know, the one thing we try to tell people is you're going to have to change something. You know, I hear people like, well, don't make too many changes. That can't be too drastic. But at some point it's like, hey, you're going the wrong way. You're going down the wrong street. You have to turn around. So I think giving people options of what's going to be best. So you're right.

Like if you said, hey, here's what a carnivore diet would look like, is that something you would, you know, some people there have an eating portion problem. But we have some people that are like, I'm not eating meat. You know, we have to accommodate them. So I think you make a good question. I think it's just want to and encouraging them. I think sticking by them. We make them send pictures of their food, food logs, asking them.

I think that's the biggest one maybe. It's a great question because I wasn't prepared to answer. But I think that's the biggest one. If I know – it's even funny. Doing this podcast, I was like, well, I'm going to be next to a bunch of jack dudes. So this week I ate really well. If I knew I had to be on this podcast every week, I'd probably never eat a pizza. I mean, there's something about.

Speaking of which, he says, his legendary bar. What did you think of the legendary? I loved it. Tasty pastry. That was really good. Yeah, you devoured it pretty quick. Is that a high protein bar? Is that what that is? Yeah. 20 grams of protein, tasty pastry. That was really good. Yeah, you devoured it pretty quick. Is that a high protein bar?

Is that what that is? Yeah. 20 grams of protein, 180 calories. There it is. Five net carbs. Five net carbs. Yeah, it's fantastic.

It's fucking amazing. That's good because I don't go over six. Five and a half net carbs. It would have been out. Yeah. It would have been too much. Yeah. Thank goodness.

Power Project family, how's it going? I want to tell you guys about the legendary tasty pastry. And we've talked about Ben and Jerry's and snacks and stuff on the podcast, but those can go against your goals. They can be too calorically dense and they can really make you crave more bad foods. But the crazy thing about the legendary tasty pastry is that it's 20 grams of protein and five grams of net carbs and 180 calories and they taste amazing you guys need to check them out they have tons of flavors andrew how can they get it yeah and the other thing they

pass the kid test kids love these things as well head over to eat legendary.com and at checkout enter promo code power project to save 20 off all the tasty pastries all the nut butters all the almonds everything again eat legendary.com links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes let's get back to the podcast. I think that's the biggest reason. I think you have to encourage people. Look, even when somebody's encouraging you, it's not easy.

Here's what I want to know from both you guys. Especially Stan, because I know your story more. Where did you guys fuck up and what did you do? How did you transition out of that in terms of business because i know for you you downsized years and years ago moved to vegas kind of shrunk down a bit i think in terms of some of the stuff you were doing because i remember you had a rolls royce and you had

this and that and you had a beautiful home uh on the water in washington with uh all kinds of cool toys and shit and things like that. Yeah, that was involuntary. That was a real estate market collapse. I was fully vested in multifamily, single family, and commercial real estate at the time. I had multiple apartment buildings under conversion into condo conversions. I had a 40-lot subdivision that we were constructing. We had 20 homes built, and then the real estate market collapsed underneath us. And so everything devalued. The banks came back and wanted a 20% debt to equity ratio paid up in cash. And so I just had to liquidate everything and my two and a half million dollar, 10,000 square foot home on the lake and my Rolls Royce and Bentley and all those other toys, my Sea-Doos and boat and sold two other homes that I owned.

Was that hard for you or you weren't that attached to them? I wasn't that attached. I didn't grow up wealthy. My pops was a government worker and mom was a stay-at-home mom. You just got them because. And people were like, why'd you spend that much money on this, that and the other? And I was like, well, I was making $10 million a year, $60 million in real estate equity. But that was something that was unpredictable. And so, yeah, I had to kind of start over. And I was able to start and build three more multimillion dollar companies since that time.

But that's been, what, since 2008. But I decided not to leverage myself. Now I hold on to more. Plus, I had kids. I have an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old now, and I'm more risk-averse. I won't sign my home or a personal guarantee on anything that I invest in because I don't want that to ever, as I was exposed to previously, I had personal guarantees on all my real estate investments. And so they owned my home if the real estate-

You got a prenup? No, I'm just kidding. Actually, my wife's doing better than I am with her new Bi Kalani clothing line. She's born and raised in Samoa. We've talked about it many times. And she started one of those lives on Facebook, and now she imports clothing. A prenup can work either way, right? It can work both ways, yeah. I'm tapping on her door for this.

She's just been killing it. That's great. That was probably, and it wasn't really a mistake necessarily. The mistakes that I've made in business is I've invested in businesses that I wasn't personally operating on a daily basis. I invested in other people who were running companies

and those notoriously fail. So that I wouldn't do again, but those were small in comparison to what the real estate market was. Those are unpredictable, it seems like. I think a lot of times we think that we have a good feel for these things. And I've found out the same thing that you found out, that I'm not very good at that. Unless that individual has skin in the game, then if you're payrolling the whole thing and they're on payroll, then there's really no incentive. Like we talked about incentives in terms of clients prepaying packages so that they're at least compelled to complete that investment.

And so I don't do that anymore. I certainly – I get lots of propositions for companies. But if that individual can't put in an equal tender, then it's of no interest to me. And if they don't have a particular skill set in that area that I might not have as a value add, then I certainly wouldn't invest in it. If they haven't proven themselves prior, there's a reason. If somebody's unsuccessful, generally there's a reason for that, that you'll soon find out once you put your money in that direction. So besides that, you know, everything's been going great in business. You know, we've been growing. The

meal prep companies has grown beyond my expectations. And, you know, I'm happy to be in this fitness industry full time. I kind of didn't like real estate or my telecommunications work. I had over 100 employees and and, uh, that can be a big headache and it wasn't something I was passionate about. I just did it for generally for, you know, it was a good business opportunity and I was able to build that into a successful company. But, uh, nowadays I'm really more interested in, in doing things that I enjoy. And I'm, you know, I'm busy every day, all day. I have clients, I answer, you know, I've answered probably over a hundred thousand DMS in the last four years from people all over the world, and I stay in touch with folks.

So I still stay really busy, but I'm not interested in – like previously, I would take big risks. I was more than willing to go double or nothing. I'd roll all the dice, mortgage the home, sell this, that, take on debt, get a loan, and dump it all into a project. And now I won't do that. I've kind of got a line trying to protect the assets that I have. I'm 54 now, not 35. And so time's working against me in terms of my ability to re-earn that if something were to go awry. So I like doing these ventures that I do now because we help a lot of people. The feedback that I get from the vertical diet and from this book here, which actually has been out for some months and we've gotten extraordinary

feedback and people visiting Matt's gym. A lot of them I, you know, I like it's rewarding to, I think to, to help people. And you know, when you get that kind of feedback,

it's, it's reassuring that you're doing, you're doing the right thing. When was the last time that you didn't have multiple jobs? I can't remember. Yeah. I've always been. You were, even when you were a teenager, right? Yeah. I was 12 years old. I was working at seven 11 almost full time. And then I took a job at a pizza place two nights a week. And yeah You got fired because you were replacing the seed oil with – With tallow. Yeah. No, I was – in college, I worked as an apartment manager for free rent,

painting units and cleaning them and renting and also doing construction and also doing personal training when that opportunity presented itself. So I just – I've never had less than two jobs. Was that in Living Color, the Jamaicans? Nine job. She only has two job. But I've just, I don't know. I tend to, you asked me how I keep track

or organize all this. And I've always been pretty compulsive about keeping a real rigid schedule and repeating these behaviors. And so I've got my notepad, I've got my calendar, and there's just certain things I do consistently every single day that lead to successful outcomes. And I try not to get too distracted by or carried away with things

that I don't return on what my goals are. I said you could be great at anything, but you can't be great at everything. So I stay pretty – there's a lot of things I'm interested in that I'd love to dabble in. But I just don't have the time to do it and it might hurt my core goals. For you. So you mentioned there's just certain things that you do every day, like certain habitual things. What are some of those things?

Yeah. Well, the routines, the foundation is going to be the sleep. I've just, I mean, I'm, I'm bed 10 o'clock like clockwork every single night. I take my 10 minute walks like clockwork after every single

meal. I, I, I make sure all my meals are prepped every day. Like when I came up here and I brought meal prep or thermos and I travel still a lot. And so even we just got back from a trip to Hawaii. I took the wife and kids to Hawaii and I took a rolling Coleman cooler with 30 meals. And so I knew that I had food while I was down there on a regular schedule. So those things, uh, I've got my yellow pad. You guys heard me talk about, I, I, I've got that pad all the time with my little, I cross things off my little checklist and, uh, I just make sure there are certain things that I do every day, um, that, uh, that continue to grow my business or continue to maintain or, you know, as much as is possible at my age,

continue to develop my goals in physical fitness. You know, I want to kind of mention too, like we, we eat a lot of vertical meals too, but I think people underestimate how much of a benefit it is to already have something there ready because like, you know, when you have to go figure out what's my next meal going to be, you have to count it out. You have to figure out a way and cook it. Yeah. There's meal prepping that you can do, but those meals take out the headache

of having to deal with that all. And it saves you a lot of time to be able to do other shit. That's actually important. Then that saves you time. You're right. And you know, I've always said that meal prep, whether we prep or you prep in my book specifically breaks them out. If you want to order them from us, great. If you want to make them yourself, here's two separate menus for you to do that. Uh, But meal prepping in general, whether you buy it or make it yourself, is the number one predictor of diet compliance. And so that's something that we harp on. And more so than all other methods combined. And a lot of it is because people, when they're hungry, will go to the refrigerator and open up

and make a decision at that moment to eat something they're hungry for. And then they'll overconsume it. Or if they go to a fast food place, it's just overconsumption. That's really what it comes down to. And if you've got it prepared and you eat it kind of on a regular time pattern, your body gets accustomed to that. I also talk about this in terms of food reward. When you tend to eat the same things every day, you eat less of them. And I know people are like, well, I don't like to eat the same thing every day. Well, that's fine. But the downside of that

is you might overeat if you're always eating things that, new things or things that you're hungry for, it's a difficult challenge between enjoying your diets and overeating. But a cool thing that I was like, I mean, I know like eating the same things does make things easier, but the vertical meals, there's a lot of fucking options

on your website. We have over 50 meals now. We do. We expanded. Initially, I rolled out just the vertical meals and they were low FODMAP and made with bone broth. And after a while, particularly when COVID hit, a lot of people reached out to us for, say, their parents.

And we started working with a larger elderly group. And those are all FDA meals that are lower in sodium. We have some that are like for kidney patients. I mean, there's a whole host of medical requirements that we have to meet to serve an elderly clientele. And so we did create an entire another menu for those folks that we call our comfort line of foods. And so there's more to choose from.

Yeah, the guys in the break room today were eating lasagna and they were loving it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, lasagna is ridiculous. The chicken empanadas are really fucking good too. And we try and meet some of the general criteria and I try and meet a two to one protein to fat ratio in terms of total grams is a big one for me. And some of these are lower in calorie. You know, the vertical meals, I tried to do a good price point for cost per calorie

so that people could get 600, 700-calorie meals, which a typical bodybuilder, powerlifter, athlete of any significant effort needs to get in 3,000-plus calories a day. They're going to be hard to do on your typical 400-calorie diet meal that you'd get from a lot of companies. Andrew, want to take us on out of here? Sure thing. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode.

Please drop us some comments down below and make sure you guys like this episode. And make sure you guys are subscribed and turn on all those bell notifications so that way you guys don't miss another awesome episode like today's. Follow the podcast at MarkBell's Power instagram at mb power project on tiktok and twitter my instagram and twitter is at i am andrew z and sema where can people find you also how can people get vertical meals oh yeah you guys got to go to vertical diet.com load up a cart full of uh let's go let's go at least two weeks worth of meals how about that vertical diet the vertical diet.com thank you sir and check out yeah check out enter promo code power project to save 20 off your order don't let stan know that that actually still works or else he's going to get

very upset. But yeah, links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. I didn't see many on Instagram and YouTube. I didn't see my yin yang on Tik TOK and Twitter. Matt and Stan, where can people find you guys at Stan? Efforting is my Instagram.

Stan efforting on YouTube and a standard for ding.com is my, uh, website. Got a beat personal training.com or a beat trainer on YouTube and stanefferding.com is my website. Go to beatpersonaltraining.com or beattrainer on Instagram. And the book? The Vertical Trainer. You can probably get it at stanefferding.com or beatpersonaltraining, either one.

Amazing. I'm at Mark Smiley Bell. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later.