Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2302: How to Be a Successful Trainer in 2024 With Jason Phillips

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

How the fitness industry is RAPIDLY evolving. (2:22) How your business should be a DESIRE, not a necessity. (4:12) Why the scale model is broken. (6:42) Why is the quality of coaching going down? (11:55) Understanding your growth trajectory. (18:20) Acquisition vs. retention. (23:21) The difference between a rich vs. poor mindset. (25:25) Understanding a revolving pricing model. (26:27) Exclusive vs. inclusive marketing. (35:00) How the FTC is cracking down on online marketers and how to be compliant. (42:19) How to compete and win in 2024. (51:36) Respecting the journey. (58:00) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit NCI Coaching Con for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump Listeners! ** The event is April 3-6 in Orlando, FL. Secure your spot now – the future of fitness coaching is in your hands! Also, don’t miss our LIVE Q&A while we’re there! ** Visit Entera Skincare for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Promo code MPM at checkout for 10% off their order or 10% off their first month of a subscribe-and-save. ** March Promotion: MAPS Anabolic | MAPS Anabolic Advanced 50% off! ** Code MARCH50 at checkout ** Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest/People Mentioned Jason Phillips (@nci_ceo_jason) Instagram Alex Hormozi (@hormozi) Instagram Taylor Welch (@taylorawelch) Instagram Kevin Nations (@kevinnations) Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is MindPump. All right, trainers, coaches, Jason Phillips back on the show. He trains and coaches the best trainers and coaches in the world. He's like the lead trainer of trainers and coaches. We've had him on before in today's episode we talked about how to be a successful trainer in 2024.

In fact he goes against his previous recommendations and some of the stuff he said in the past because of the evolving landscape. So today's episode you won't want to miss. You got to listen to those, this one. Also, by the way, we're doing, we're going to be at his coaching con in Orlando, Florida next week. In fact, we're going to be there doing a live Q and a, but of course we've got great speakers.

They do these incredible events for coaches and trainers, help them build their businesses. There are some spots still available. So if you're watching this episode when it airs, you might be able to go sign up and show up, meet us and listen to some of the incredible speakers that he has there. So anyway, go check it out.

Go to ncievents.com forward slash cc2024. Now this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Intera Skincare. They use peptides to improve the health of your skin, to help your skin regenerate faster. This is cutting edge science. This is not the stuff you buy at the grocery store. This stuff really works.

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March 50 for the discount. All right. Here comes the show. Welcome back to Jason. Welcome. It's good to see you. So, so we were talking off air and you said something interesting about, uh, All right, here comes the show. Welcome back, Jason. Welcome. It's good to see you. So we were talking off air and you said something interesting about, uh, how different online coaching is already radically different than it was three years ago.

And you brought up the scaling model that, and you gave me some numbers and I was like, wow, that's pretty wild. So maybe explain that a little bit. Yeah. So I just think the whole, the whole industry is changing. Like it is so rapidly evolving right now. I think COVID and all things 2020, it was really good for the industry at the time.

And now we're realizing how bad it perhaps was for the industry in the long run. And so the numbers that we were talking about was just profitability numbers. The model that was taught, just to zoom out, like 30,000 foot view, the model that was taught was like, go online. There's all these people craving human connection.

They're craving health and fitness. And so it's like, well, sell these people high ticket services. And it was like the first time in internet history that I know of. And I've been in digital marketing for almost 25 years at this point. So it's like, it's the first time you were seeing

cold traffic going to a high ticket B2C purchase. And I was always of the opinion it would never happen. It happened for two, three years. And people were like, just sell paid in fulls, 3000, 5000 at a time. And so you're selling these big six and 12 month commitments. And so you're seeing these coaches that are posting up screenshots of I made 60 grand in a month, right?

70 grand in a month, a hundred grand in a month. And not saying they didn't collect that amount of money in a month, but I think when we actually start to unpack it and we start to look at it, did they really make that amount of money in a month? But more importantly, what we're starting to see today is very few of them kept anywhere near that amount of money. So explain make versus, because they collected a hundred grand or 60 grand, but they didn't make 60 grand. You're talking about margins.

Well, if they spent. No, I'm not even talking about margin. I'm talking about cash accounting versus cruel accounting. And so we look at, let's just for simplicity sake, let's call it 500 a month for 12 months, six grand, right? And let's say I sold 10 people on Paid in Full this month. How much money did-

60. I made 60, I collected $60,000. But then you didn't collect nothing. How much did I make? For the whole year? I only sold 10 people, right? And I only delivered services for one month. And the value of the services for this month was 500. You had to divide by 12.

So I only made five grand. But here's what you get. Dude, like when you were young and you made 60 grand in a month, did you only spend five grand? You spent 10 grand, 15 grand. If you're really a douche, you spent 40 grand, right? Now month two, you're operating from the red and they don't realize that.

Yeah. So now like I'm, I'm very big on the whole, like I think your business should always be a desire. It should never be a necessity. I think that like we've all, we've talked in previous podcasts. Explain that. Explain that.

Well, like you guys started this, like when you guys started podcasting, there was no overhead. There was like, you didn't have to pay these exorbitant bills, right? Like your payroll is substantial now and there's things that you guys have to pay for, for being at the scale that you're at today. You didn't have that in the beginning. Right.

You were coming together, you were podcasting, you're like, this will be cool, but like, if it never happened, you were fine. Right. It was a passion project. Right. Your life wasn't ending. I think most coaches start there. I don't know any coaches that are like, I'm going to get rich on day one.

And they're like putting themselves like in a, in a position where they have to produce this like crazy amount of money. There's no overhead when you get started in online coaching. Right. And so now all of a sudden you're 15 K in the red or five K in the red. And it's like, when you have to go make money, if you don't make money, like you're operating from a deficit. So at some point, one month in the next 11 months, you're not going to have cash if you make no more money.

And that pressure, uh, it's hard to not, um, create behaviors or do actions that are not good for you in the long term. They tend to be impulsive. You start taking on the wrong clients. You start changing your price points. Your marketing becomes complete dog shit because now you're literally just asking for clients all the time instead of putting out any amount of value, right? And so there's absolutely nothing positive that comes from operating from a place of necessity versus a place from desire.

But that's just like the first half of it. The second half is what you and I were talking about, which is the profit. Like the average PNL I looked at, and I've looked at almost 200 PNLs probably in like the last 12 months, like really gone into them. The average PNL we looked at is running under 30% margins. So that's profit. Tell me, since you have those types of numbers, what's also, what's, what's gross? So there, what's the average trainer, the average top line. And again, these are, these are largely people who I've

coached or were coming into my coaching program or who started with me like in COVID. And like, I want to put out a disclaimer. I won million percent was like part of the paid in full. Like I absolutely promoted that. Yeah.

And I didn't see this coming as much as anyone else. And so like I own my shit like when it comes to it, like I absolutely promoted that. And I didn't see this coming as much as anyone else. And so like I own my shit like when it comes to it, but I started to see this trend happening two years ago and any of my clients today will tell you like, I'm profit first, like that's the only thing we discussed. So I put that out there to say like, listen, like we all fuck up, like we all own our shit, right?

I would say the average person was doing between 30 and 40 K a month. Uh, top line. And so if we're talking 30% dude, like we're talking nine to 12 K. So where's all that going? Where are the expenses? So by the time that most people are scaling, they're burned out. And so like the average coach is taking on a lot of clients at a cheap rate. They're in the position of necessity where they're having to market,

they're having to sell. And so when you go to an online coach and you're like, what's the first thing you don't want to do in your business? You know what they say? Coach. I don't want to coach. And it's like, what the fuck, dude? Like you became an online coach.

Delicately. Now you're just telling me you want to be a business owner. I get it. Like, I think we've all been there. But at the same time, it's like, OK, let's just play this out. When we start, let's just, you know, very arbitrary numbers. We take 10 clients, we're getting $500 a month. Um, we make 5k.

We double that client load. We get to 20 clients still charging 500. We're making 10k a month. We get to 30, we're like, oh my God, I'm overwhelmed. I don't want to be a coach. And what should be, which was 15 K top line, right? But we're paying out, even on the low end, like we're paying out 35% ish to a coach.

I always advocate for a flat rate, but let's just say it comes out to, you know, 35%. That's, was that almost 5 K. And so now we're down to $10,000. Cause you have a coach under you. Cause you have a coach under you. Cause you can't possibly service that many clients. Right now, now you look at the state of the industry where, you know, pre 2020, the way to get clients was actually be good at what you do,

put out valuable content. Well come 2020, all of these whole like internet, like the setters and the DM people, that that was like the rise to fame, which is like, you gotta have a setter, you gotta have a salesperson, you gotta have an assistant. All of these things that like, yeah, big business, yes, you should have an executive assistant. Like, big business, you should have an admin. But like, I'm sorry, if you're making $15,000 a month,

you're not big business. And so these people are like, why, I need an admin, and I need a setter, and I need a closer. Before they realize it, dude, 60% of their cash is out the door. And the bigger they go, the more they have to outsource. And so then it's like, all right, well, in the very beginning,

you have one assistant coach that works for you. Well, you can probably manage that, right? Like, Adam, if you're working for me, you and I, we can communicate two, three days a week. I'm probably gonna be able to manage your client load. If I got five coaches working for me, how can I manage all five coaches and still do the marketing and still do the

selling and still do the management of the team and still keep up with the accounting? And like the truth is I can't. So now I need somebody to manage the coaches. All right. Well, there's more margin out the door. And so before you know it, this scale model that gets you to a hundred thousand dollars a month is really just costing you significant amounts of money. You're making the same profit as you were before, or less. So the question is, and this is what coaches are starting

to realize, is the numbers I gave you, if we look at 100K a month, right, $1.2 million a year, and we realize that the average person's taking home, and I'll be very generous, 30% margins, that means they're taking home $360,000 basically a year. And I'd venture to say most coaches with a single admin could get to 30K a month and have no stress, like very little stress.

And so my next logical question is why have the stress of 100K a month? Why have the stress of a huge staff? Why have the stress of a huge staff? Why have the stress of a huge company? If you're small, you need less people, right? You control absolutely every variable. And then the argument would be like, oh, well, you know, you don't have a company. What if you get sick? What if you get hit by a bus?

No offense. Like we're in a B2C space. Like this is a cash flow entity. You're not building anything of enterprise value. If you own the company and you die tomorrow, your company dies. Like your clients will probably pay the coaches and like sure maybe there's contract value

that you have in the company, but let's be honest, like there's no enterprise value. Like you and I know enough about private equity. There is not a single private equity firm that's coming in and is like, I'm buying the likeness of Sal's coaching. Like they're just not doing it because without you, and if you exit, you should want to be.

Yeah. The only way to do that would be to sell a system or a program. You build intellectual property. That's not you, right? Correct. You know, what's interesting about this, what's most interesting is our space is so passion driven and people get into it because they really want to help people and work with people that if you crush that,

you essentially crush your effectiveness. You crush how valuable you can really be to people by chasing this gross number, which you're saying you end up making the same amount with more stress and now no passion. Now you hate what you're doing, you're bringing in more money, but you're making the same money or less, and you're actually delivering as a result, worse service to people. Dude, exactly what you just said is as a result, worse service to people. So at the end of the day. Exactly what you just said is what's happening in the space right now. Wow. And you're seeing, I mean, let's just call it spade to spade. You're seeing the quality of coaching come down.

Yeah. Like I think we could all agree as the majority, the quality of coaching is significantly lower than it once was. And that's crazy because the education is super hot. I mean, I know it like NCI, you know, we've got Alan Aragon on the staff now. Right? Like we've got really big name education. So I know the quality of education is high, but I just know that like people are in such a quick rush to make a lot of money.

And are you trying to make a lot of money or keep a lot of money? And that's, that's gotta be the conversation. We just had this conversation. We just had this conversation the other day. I don't, I think the quality of the trainer has gone down, not because the trainers are getting worse, but because the volume is scaling at such a fast rate that for every great trainer that comes on board and is educated and learns and does it the right way, there's nine that do it. Yes.

Looking for a quick buck and just trying to make money. And it's like, they're not passion driven. And they're just, I heard that I can make $50,000 a month by coaching people online. So here I am. Bro, I had somebody in my coaching program that their first make $50,000 a month by coaching people online. So here I am. Bro, I had somebody in my coaching program that their first month with us, we made them over $100,000. And then they came to us and they were like,

hey, how can I get my client's results? And I was like, what? I figured out how to get their money. What's happening? I figured out how to get their money, but I did not figure out how to help them yet. Bro, do you know how guilty I felt? Because I perpetuated the problem.

I was like, I just taught you how to sell a hundred K worth of coaching in a month fraudulently. I felt horrible. So I was like, honestly, I couldn't work with that client anymore. I had to like refund their money and was like, go do your thing. But I was just like, man, like this, this doesn't work for me. And you know, I think that I've always looked at business as like three very specific skills. I think that the first one is you have to have the skill of change in our industry, right?

You have to have the skill of change. You need to be able to affect another human and create change for that human. The second one is you need to be able to monetize that skill. So like, obviously you can't, you can't have impact in the world if you can't find clients. And then obviously the third one would be now you need to be able to monetize that skill. So like, obviously you can't have impact in the world if you can't find clients. And then obviously the third one would be now you need to build business infrastructure to support the monetization skill. Well, so I think the key here, because we saw this in the gym industry. I've seen this in many aspects in the fitness industry where you see people enter into the space.

They see that there's money to be made. They don't have the same passion. They don't find the same value in health and fitness, but they see the money. They try to just squeeze the money out and it all goes to shit. We saw this with the organization we started with, with 24 hour fitness. I saw this with curves, which at one point was the largest fitness franchise, fastest growing, actually one of the fastest growing franchises, period in history.

And you had all these people jumping in who had nothing to do with fitness. You saw it as a money maker and it just, it totally tanked. Um, you see this with the current gym industry where, you know, when I started in gyms in 1997, an all club membership with 117 locations was $45 a month, $350 a joint, $49 processing fee. In 1997 dollars, I'm not even adjusting for inflation. That would now be considered a super expensive membership because it's been this chase down.

So, but I think the key then for people like you is to show people, because people get in the space, they want to do it the right way, but then they're always battling the, but there's money, but maybe that's not the way to make money. How do you show them that actually doing this the right way is the right way to make money? I don't think that this is unique to fitness at all.

I think this follows any new market. I think what't think that this is unique to fitness at all. I think this follows any new market. I think what we- It's not unique to fitness at all. Yeah, what we just- We're just finally realizing. Yeah, and part of the reason, whether you all believe that we did this subconsciously or whatever, or intuitively,

we knew it because we followed business principles that we had learned 20 years prior, and then we applied it to a digital online space. It was just because this space was so ripe for the taking in the last four years, because before COVID, it wasn't a big thing. Online coaching wasn't a big thing. So all of a sudden it becomes a massive thing. And what you get is a massive amount of people rushing into a space

all to make money in the pursuit. Dude, people in 2020, they're like, oh, like you, you figured it out. And I'm like, no, like admittedly, I was in the right place at the right time. I had a product that the world needed at the time and it happened to be the best in its class, right? So like the, what I'm proud of is we had a fantastic product. What I cannot, like I can't take credit

for the state of the world in 2020. People desired human connection, people desire to get out of jobs. They hated, they wanted to work from home. Health and fitness was popular. Like becoming an online coach, specifically an online health and fitness or nutrition coach was popular at that time. And like we were in the right place. Like, you know, Alex Formosy has said like with gym launch, like he, his timing was really good and he's always been very open about, you know,

admitting that now he's obviously a savant, he's genius, but like he, the timing of Jim Launch was critical. And so I agree with you. I don't think this is new. But I mean, I think it's more, it's more like service versus product. I guess what I'm trying to say.

Well, no, look at, look at NFTs crypto, same thing. Do you guys disagree that the, that there's not a value to cryptocurrency? Of course there is. Do you not agree that their NFT is going to be the future of how certain things like are going to be like the NFTs are not going to go away, but because it was so new, so many people make so all now it's 90% of it's garbage. It's the same thing that happened to the coach.

Well, what I mean is like product wise, if you and I are selling the same product, a shoe or a cell phone or whatever, well, now it just gets a, it's a price war. I can sell you the same product for cheaper, but this is a service business. It doesn't necessarily work that way. It's the service provides the value and the value determines the price. And then that determines your success. And so again, I think the key is how do we teach these fitness professionals, these new people coming in that they're not conflicting. Making money and doing this the

right way don't conflict. It's not like, oh, I got to make less money because I want to do this the right way. It's actually, you'll do better by doing it the right way. So it's something you said earlier, you kind of said like, oh, there's money. And as if we're leaving it on the table. Right. I have this conversation with our clients all the time. And I'm very big on the principle that I've coined it, like your growth trajectory as a coach. Like you have to call, you have to understand like how much are you trying to grow every month? And the most important rule is do not exceed that.

And so like in traditional business worlds, it would be like, oh, we're 110% to goal. I would argue for most online coaches being 110 or 120% to target is detrimental to the current state of the economy in 2024. Why? So what we're seeing with our clients is getting leads is very easy.

Getting leads to a sales opportunity is not overly difficult. Closing leads that have not been in your ecosystem for a significant amount of time is extremely difficult. And so what we're seeing is like the barrier of trust is very, very high. You have to nurture your leads at a level that has never been seen before.

And so we go back to 2020, it was like, well, I'll send you a cold DM and I'll collect $5,000 in DM. Well, that shit doesn't work anymore. Now you send a cold DM, most of the time you're told to fuck off. So now it's like, how do I authentically get you as a lead? Now how do I actually give you enough value? And so if I go and I exceed my growth trajectory by 20%,

I've now gone into my funnel and I've taken people that were pretty warm, if not hot, gotten them to buy, but I've pulled them out and there's not enough traffic existing in the funnel for me to be able to hit my growth trajectory next month. And so like NCI has become like kind of famous for these like frameworks, these cash frameworks that we have where like we can print money. Like we've taught a lot of people to do it, right? Like we call them scholarships, challenges, webinars, like whatever it is. Like we know how to make a lot of money very quickly. What we've seen in this economy is making a lot of money very quickly.

We'll almost guarantee that you make very little money for the next 60 to 90 days. And unless you're bringing a ton of leads into your funnel repeatedly, which most coaches aren't, right? Then it's going to be detrimental. Would you say it's more than, it's less than about getting as many leads as you can and more about like, here's the leads we have, let's do a really damn good job?

It's not either or. How do you change the messaging? It's not either or though, it's both. Because we could look at a funnel that's full of leads right now, and sure, like we could install nurture campaigns and we could probably get a lot of them to sales opportunities and close them. But then it's like, okay, well now who are we going to nurture? And so if,

if during that process we weren't still bringing new leads in, we have nobody left to nurture, which means now we've perpetuated the cycle. So which one do they typically forget, bringing more leads in or nurture? Okay. So the problem is they're playing a game of or, not a game of and. And so they're focused on lead gen or lead nurture or sales. When in reality, a well-constructed business is always getting leads, is always nurturing leads,

and is always closing leads. And that's why it's a slow study. But you can't do all three at scale. And so if we're hitting these massive numbers, dude, imagine if you've got, you know, in a calendar week, if you've got 20 sales calls, most coaches are like shitting their pants, like that's fucking amazing.

Yeah, but like, when are you marketing? When are you nurturing? When are you fulfilling? You have 20 sales calls and you're closing at 50% and you're actually bringing on 10 new clients a week. Dude, now you got to onboard 10 people next week. Well, 10 onboardings, that's intense. Nobody's thinking about that.

Right, 10, like 10 people that you now have to fulfill. We know, when do the most questions happen? The first week, right? So now you're dealing with those questions in the first week. You still need to be marketing. You still need to be adding value to the people inside of your funnel.

And it's like, at some point, some ball gets dropped. And so these massive levels of scale require infrastructure and we have to invest in infrastructure. So why are we trying to quickly get to massive levels of scale require infrastructure and we have to invest in infrastructure. So why are we trying to quickly get to massive levels of scale if it's only an exercise in reducing margin? It doesn't make a lot of sense. What have you found to be like the most optimal number in terms of like, that's a really good question. The average person that I'm seeing winning.

So coaches like up to about 30 to 40 K a month are taking on no more than like four to five clients a month, which is like one a week. Right. Coaches that are doing in person. What's that? That's pretty close to in person. Yeah. Which is honestly, that's pretty simple. Like it's so easy. It's just like in person. So know, right? It's so easy. It matches in person. Well, mine is just like in person. So weird, right? Imagine that.

Always trying to rewrite the rules. It's like human behavior actually changes digitally. Not at all. We're all the same. You know what this reminds me of? It's like when you get a new client, how many times have you heard this? We're like, no, no, no. I know you want to lose 60 pounds, but we've got to take time.

They're like, no, I'll lose it all fast and I'll worry about keeping it off once I lose it. Do you get people like that? I was going to say, do you get people like that? They're like, look, I know what you're saying, Jason, to go slow, onboard four clients a month, but I'm just gonna crush and then I'll worry about the rest later. Yeah, all the time.

Yeah, and then they're not around 90 days later, and I'm the devil. I'm the asshole 90 days later because they're like, oh, shit didn't work, and I'm like, well, it did if you would've done it the right way. I've been saying this for the last eight years about the social media space

has perpetuated this whole thing that in business that acquisition is more important than retention. Amen. And it's not true. That's it. And we are, we are so fully there right now. Like it's not even close. Yeah.

Like I would argue during COVID you could, you could get away being better at acquisition than you were retention and you could still be very profitable and very successful. If you haven't indexed on retention right now, dude, you're fucked. You're toast. It's only a matter of time. And a lot of sentiment in the online space right now is if you survive 2023, good job, because 2023 was a bloodbath. I'm of the opinion 24 is only going to be worse. Oh, I think so too. And I think, I mean, the craziness in the world. Now I think there's going to be moments of brilliance.

I think there's going to be times to capitalize this year, but I think that there's also a massive opportunity to capitalize for online coaches. And so like when, when we say that the space is different this year, I don't think it's worse. I actually am of the opinion. Most people, if they just commit to a new model, will be significantly happier and they'll have significantly more money. The problem is just like everything else, you know, when the four of us get together and we're not on a podcast and we're talking about money, very rarely are we talking about

making money. We're actually talking about investing money. Like we're talking about using the vehicle of what we've already made to produce greater wealth, right? So like we were talking about homes and we were talking about cars and, you know, doing events and shit like that, right? Like that's an investment of our resources

to continue arbitraging wealth. The average coach is taught that they're gonna earn their way wealthy. And so it's like, yeah, no wonder they think they have to get to a hundred K a month. They're like, oh, it's a million dollars in a year. Like I have to get there. And it's like, you could probably make 250 a year

and invest wisely and become a millionaire. Like you think about like these nice neighborhoods. Like I live in a pretty nice neighborhood and I live, you know, I'm a member of a pretty nice country club. The average person there is making like 300K. Did you see the Jim Rohn post I did yesterday? No, it literally speaks to what we're saying right now.

The difference between rich people and poor people is not this income like everybody thinks it is. The rich people invest their money first before they spend any of their money, right? So the very first thing they do, whether that's they get $1,000 a month or they get $20,000 a month, they take a portion of that money and reinvest it. Whether that's reinvesting in themselves and growing their skills or investing into markets that are gonna make money on top of that money.

But that's they've trained themselves to do that even when they weren't making a lot of money. And then over time, they've acquired more skills, more experience. They've started to grow that inflow of cash, and then that's just growing. But that's the real big difference between the rich and the poor, is that the poor has that poor mindset where it's like, they first pay their bills, spend their money, and then what's left over, maybe they invest.

That's maybe one of those. So, I mean, to add to that though, I think pricing models have changed as well. So, like, explain old pricing model versus the new one. So, the old pricing model was painful. Collect all the cash, right? So six months, whatever your packages. Six months, three grand, four grand. Very common price point at this point. Terrible idea in my opinion.

You have to sell people multiple times. I want to sell you one time. I never want to have to talk about selling ever again. And so I think that pricing models now should involve a cash element and a predictability element. And so I'm very big on an should involve a cash element and a predictability element. And so I'm very big on an enrollment fee plus a monthly recurring fee.

There's so many reasons that that model is so good. Taylor Welch calls it a revolving pricing model. I've never heard that term before, but Taylor's really intelligent, so shout out to him for that. But I think that you should always have cash, right? So you should always know, A, what's yours or what you can invest. And then you should always have cash, right? So you should always know, A, like what's yours or what you can invest. And then you should always have predictability

in your business. And so like your budget should never exceed what's predictable in your business. And so coaches that are big on MRR, like monthly recurring revenue, they can budget 60 to 70% of that towards expenditures and know they're gonna live on 30 to 40% profit of what's guaranteed to come in. And so anything that comes in above that has now taken the profit margins to 45, 50, 55%.

One of the hardest things for trainers always has been, because this is even for in-person personal training was you would sell packages. So kind of like the paid in full by 10 sessions, 20 sessions. You sell sessions. Right. The challenge for trainers always has been they'd collect all this money and they wouldn't stretch it out and go, well, theoretically, if I train this person consistently, this $3,000 they gave me is going to be to train them for the next five months. Instead, it's like $3,000 right now.

Bingo, let's go spend it. Right. So what I used to tell Mike, what I used to teach my trainers was the amount of money that you made, forget how much you collected, look at how many sessions you serviced, look at your per session rate. That's what you consider that you collect. A hundred percent. And then the rest of the money doesn't even count.

That's just standard accrual accounting. Yeah. Because again, trainers don't have this and I think they're just not taught this. They're not taught how to budget, you know? I mean, dude, have you picked up a Naslim textbook? There's no fucking accounting. Yeah. Right.

Like have you like pick up like any PT manual pick up? I mean, even in the nutrition world. Well, I always thought that was interesting about our space. I mean, it was, I was never that great of a trainer from, you know, biology and nutrition and stuff like that. I just had the business acumen and I saw that nobody was teaching trainers like how to operate a business. My, my claim to fame early on was I was just willing to connect

harder than anyone else. I was like, Lane Norton's forgotten more than I'll know. Alan Aragon's an absolute genius. Those guys were out there. They were in the space when I was making more money than them. And it's because I was willing. It's because I understood psychology,

and I was willing to connect with humans. And that was always my thing. I think I was above average intelligence. I don't think I was not a bad coach by any means. I mean, I worked with pro athletes and all that stuff, but like it, I certainly was not them, right? And, but I also had the business acumen. I also understood like what I was building

and I was willing to make mistakes. And so I just think a lot of, a lot of these people are taught things that are so wildly inappropriate. And I, and you know, I mean, dude, right before we recorded this, uh, Facebook and Instagram went down to that. And so now they're, they're teaching people to build businesses that are reliant on other platforms.

Like nobody even understands what they're building. They're just like, well, here's a list of tasks. Do it. And so like, if I went to the average person, even if they've got a $20,000 a month business and they're acquiring all their customers on Instagram, and I'm like, okay, well, explain customer acquisition to me. They're like, oh, I'll post on Instagram.

And it's like, that's not customer acquisition, but like explain to me, like what happens if Zuck wakes up and he's like, oh, you know what? That was kind of fun. I like fucking with the world. Like I'm gonna shut it down again and again and again. It's like a lot of people are pissing their pants. They're like, what am I going to do? And I think if you have a business, like you're not relying on someone else's

platform. I had a buddy that was making three quarters of a million dollars through Facebook ads and then Facebook changed their algorithm. And he went from making a three quarters of a million dollars to making 75 grand. I believe it. It was like overnight. Overnight, overnight because they changed the algorithm and he was totally caught with his pants down because he realized he didn't own. He wasn't the only one, dude.

He didn't know. Yeah. He didn't want any of those customers. All right. So what would be an example of that pricing structure? You said before, very common three to four grand for six months versus you pay a fee and then you pay monthly. What would that look like? Yeah. So let's look at, so somebody that does 3k for six months, yeah. Effectively $500 a month. Right. Um, let's just say you're willing to do it for 400 a month. Yeah, so let's look at, so somebody that does 3k for six months, effectively $500 a month. Let's just say you're willing to do it for $400 a month. I would probably charge an enrollment fee of anywhere between $1,000 and $1,500 down. Now, there's a lot of benefits, like I said, there's cash. So like if you're near capacity

in your program, you 1 million percent, you always enforce the enrollment fee. But in the gym space, did you have to enforce the money down? That was always where you could put the sales. That was in the gym space, did you have to enforce the money? That was always the, the, the, where you put the, that was the commission. Yeah. That was right. So like if the sales guy wanted his full commission, he was charging you the fucking enrollment fee. If he didn't care and he was just trying to hit contract volume, he didn't charge it to you. Right. Okay. Well, as a coach, you got to do the same thing. So if you have an enrollment fee, you know what you're willing to do. Some people they'll waive it.

Some people they'll cut it in half. But imagine this, imagine you're on a sales call right now and I'm trying to pitch you on $400 a month. Like that's kind of expensive, you know, for a lot of people, especially in this economy. But if I tell you, well, it's normally 1500 down and then 400 a month. But if you want to get started today,

I'll just go ahead and wave the 1500. Now all of a sudden, 400 seems way less. So it serves as an amazing price anchor. Well, the one thing I believe is coaches should never devalue their services. I don't think you should ever discount your service-based business. So if you ever want to run a promo, how do you run a promo?

With $400 a month. You can't. You can't drop 400 to 300 enrollment fee. With an enrollment fee you can. Interesting. You can cut it in half, you can waive it. So it literally checks every box of everything you would need.

Now here's the crazy thing in the B2B space, right? Because I use that model now with like higher ticket clients. If I get somebody and I'm like, man, this person really has potential and they legit have no cash. Like, hey, I'm not a big fan of financing anymore. Like that happened a lot during the pandemic. That's gone away. Dude, I'll prove my worth to them in the sense of like,

all right, like you start your weekly or your monthly payments now and I'll punt that. I won't wave it, but I'll punt it and I'll go 90 days. You show me that you're willing to do it. I know if you do what I tell you to do in 90 days, you'll make money. Then you can just start paying me that enrollment feedback. And so in the B2B space, it has merit.

Gives you a lot of flexibility. Tons of flexibility, dude. How are they collecting the monthly? I'm assuming it's EFT, so they have some kind of system. EFT, yeah. And most of them are using like Stripe or Wave or something like that. But like, think about this, man, like just do the

math on it. If, let's just call it a thousand dollars down and 400 a month. If we go month one, we do, we sell four clients, we charge you enrollment fee, we made 4k. Yeah. Right. Month two, we're starting at 1600 recurring.

Right. We do the enrollment fee. We made 5,600, right? 4K plus the 6,000. Month three, we're at 3,200 plus the four. We're at $7,200, right? Month four, 16 weeks in, we're still only taking one client per week.

Month four, we're now doing 4,800 base, and then we get the 4K on top. 8,800. We're now at a six figure run rate in four months. We never had to do like ridiculous sleazy marketing. We never had to stress ourselves about onboarding, because I only onboarded one client a week. We never had to hire an assistant coach.

And that's how many clients is that 16? That's 16 clients. And you can service 16 clients with really good service, really good value and do exactly what you, you know, why you entered the space in the first place. Here's the thing, let's say month five, you want to fucking go on vacation, right? So we sold four, we were at 4,800,

so now we had another 16, it was at 5,800, 6,600. Month five, you want to go on vacation, you're still waking up 6,600 bucks. And then you come back, month six, you're still waking up to 6,600 bucks, and you sell four more, you made 10 grand that month. The model just works. We understand churn.

You're not creating churn events. So that's the other thing. If you have mass influxes of clients, so you get 10 clients in a week, well, those 10 people, they all started at the same time. If they're all paid in fulls, they're all finishing at the same time. So while it was an amazing capital injection into your business, it's going to be a massive capital exodus of your business in six months, right? Or you're going to have to work hard to resell those people,

which means distraction from marketing, distraction from nurture, distraction from sales, distraction from fulfillment. So the model just holds up. Like it's very bulletproof. Like we've tested it. I've been using this in quiet for like the last 18 months. And I got a text today right when Facebook and Instagram went down and he said,

it's actually an influencer online that I work with. And he's like, I'm so glad that even though I have a big platform, I'm not reliant on Zucks. And he was like, I'm waking up close to $20,000 recurring revenue and I have zero fucking stress about anything that's happening. Wow. So the future of the online coaching

is moving away from the volume model. Yes. And so now you need, if the goal was just to get one client a week now, we don't need nearly as many leads, but we want higher quality leads obviously. Oh yeah. So what does the advice look like that's different today than maybe before on capturing those leads?

Yes, so this is what I call exclusive marketing. I believe the last four years has been categorized as inclusive marketing, which was put a net out and anybody that's under the net, take them and sign them up. Like if you fucking have money and you're overweight and you wanna lose weight, I will take your money. You are there, right?

And so, dude, I was sitting in a room with this big business group. Maybe you know them, Kevin Nations. I know the name. Okay, so like OG online, right? And Kevin asked the question to a group. He says like, how many clients is too many clients? And I was like, man, that's a tough question.

Like I was at 167 at my peak. I'm like, that was too many, right? And he was like, no, he's like, the answer's one. I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? He's like, that was too many. Right. And he was like, no, he's like, the answer is one. I was like, the fuck are you talking about? He's like, it's one motherfucker. And I was like, oh, okay. I get it. Right.

Because we've all been in that room and there's that one motherfucker. Right. There could be a hundred people in the room and that one motherfucker makes it a terrible room. And then you could be at 10 people and it's an amazing room. Right. So like that one person brings it down. Well, it's the same as a coach.

Like how many times would you guys have a client in person? There was that one motherfucker that you were training and you're like, Oh, that bitch is on my books today. Like, I don't want to have that. You're like, you're like texting them. You're like, are you sure you want to come today? Like, are you sure you don't want to reset? Like, dude, I mean, I had it. What you're talking about is something that I don't think is talked about enough. Um, in fact, I don't think we talk about this enough, which is a part of the formula of the success. There's a lot of, a lot of ingredients to what

I'm about to say, but there's one ingredient I don't think we cover enough, which is do you, is it a good match between you and the client? Yes. Now that doesn't mean, by the way, for people watching and listening, that you as a coach are going to pick the easy clients. So the clients that like, oh yeah, they're

going to do everything I tell them. Right. This is a good match. You know when it's a good match. You jive, you connect. Oh wow, this match. You know when it's a good match. You jive, you connect. Oh wow, this is, you know, she's a young mom. I'm a young mom too. She's got two kids.

So, oh, we're totally going to connect or, oh, I see that this person is ex-military. So was I, or this person really struggles body image issues. That's something I'll work well with. I think I can make a strong impact here. I think that piece of the formula we don't talk enough about. Any other guide-based industry, business, therapy, whatever, there's got to be a match. Otherwise there's a lot of subtleties that go into this. Like, so I mean, that's where I say exclusive marketing, right? Like, you know, for me, um, I've recently changed our consulting model and there's just certain things I don't want to deal with. If you're

somebody that you feel like what you're trying to buy from me is my time, we're not a good fit. Now, I've also started delivering more of my time than ever, which is ironic, right? So my clients know they can text or call me 24 seven. I don't regularly schedule calls with anyone, but I'm like, if you want to talk, call me. Like there's a really good chance I'm in the gym,

I'm in the car, or I'm golfing. As long as you're cool with me being in those environments, I'll be hyper-focused on you. As long as you're cool with me being in one of those three environments, you can call me whenever you want, right? You know what's crazy? They never fucking call.

It's kind of like the gym. It's like they open up the gym access all the time. You know what's crazy? The people go at the same time every day, or they never fucking go, right? And it's like you go open up the gym access all the time. You know what's crazy? The people go at the same time every day or they never fucking go, right? And it's like you go to use the gym. You don't go to the gym just to fucking hang out. Like you don't book yourself a meeting at the gym

every Wednesday at 10 a.m. because you pay a monthly fee to the gym. You're like, oh, I'm gonna go to use it. Well, that's kinda how I wanna see myself, right? And so I've kind of created all these qualifications of people that I really enjoy helping. Now, not saying, like you said, it's not the easy clients, dude, I got a lot of very difficult business problems that I'm trying to solve for people, but it's like, we have to fundamentally

jive. I have to really want to work with you. And if that's the case, then- They trigger that passion out of you. Dude. And I'll tell you, my clients, like ask anybody right now, like, I don't know what today's date is, like March 4th or 5th, something like that. And my clients will tell you as of today, I am, I'm at an all time best, like definitively I'm at an all time best and it's because I started excluding the people I just don't want to work with. I am like, I'm very much a believer in the exclusive marketing.

And so like, we're teaching people that. And so, you know, what does that translate to in terms of tactical things, right? Well, a lot of sales pages, I believe you're gonna start seeing like, you know, this page is designed to get you not to buy, right? Like the average person that's reading this right now is- It's not for you.

They're thinking they need another diet. If you think you need another diet, stop reading right now, right? And it's like, if you're still here, okay, cool. Like, let's keep talking. Like, I'm still gonna try to get you not to work with me. And it's like, if you're still here, okay, cool. Like, let's keep talking. Like I'm still going to try to get you not to work with me. And it's like, I think that you had kind of have to approach things that way. And, and so that means you're not chasing people as much.

So we're not sending a lot of cold outreach. We're we're not endlessly trying to do massive amounts of follow-up. And like I just sold, I don't know, 10 or 12 units of a $8,000 package through Messenger. And it literally, like the whole premise was like, hey, watch this video, let me know what you think. And people were like, holy shit, like, you said everything I'm experiencing.

And I'm like, yeah, dude, it's wild. And I was like, well, I'm like, you know, good luck. And they're like, wait, like, can you help? And I'm like, yeah, I probably could. And they're like, well, can you tell me more? And I'm like, sure, here's another one And I'm like, yeah, I probably could. And they're like, well, can you tell me more? And I'm like, sure. Here's another one page document as to how I could probably help you.

And they're like, dude, that sounds amazing. Great, here's the link. And that's it. I don't want motherfuckers that I gotta chase because if I gotta chase you to sign up, I probably gotta chase you to do the work. And I'm at the point in my career where I'm not here to do that kind of work.

And to get more specific, again, it's not necessarily easy clients because I mean, I trained people for over two decades and there was a certain clientele that inspired my passion. And those are the people I want to work with and they were not the easiest people to work with. They rarely are. They were just people that I enjoyed working with. Now for me, it turned into advanced age individuals. I just, for some reason, they just invoked so much passion in me, what I did.

And I liked working with people in the medical field. They also invoked a lot of passion in me. That brought out the best in me. So I think that's the message here as a trainer or a coach, when you're working with people that match well with you, how do I know if they match well with me? Are they easy? Do they have a lot of money, whatever? No, no, no.

Do they make you want to be your best or they're the ones that invoke that passion and then you're going to deliver the best service. I started asking three questions when I meet any coach that's potentially wanting to work with me The first question is how much money do you want to take home every month? Like can I actually build that for you net like net profit? What do you want? Number two is like what what do you want to do? But most importantly, what do you not want to do? We need to build a box and we need to operate inside of that box And if I don't think I can operate with you inside of that box,

I'm just going to tell you, I'm probably not your guy. But most of the time I think I can. And then it's who do you want to work with? But again, most importantly, who do you not want to work with? And it's like, if we start and we reverse engineer the whole process, most people are working from the front to the back. I like to work from the back to the front. If we reverse engineer from how much money do you want, what do you not want to do and who do you not want to work with?

Then it's like, we're probably going to end up in a place where you're very fulfilled in what you're doing. And if you're fulfilled and you're doing the right things at the right speed, there's a very low probability that you don't win. Yeah. And you'll love it the entire time. That's it.

And that's what makes trainers good is when they love what they're doing. You brought up another thing that I didn't even consider, which was the FTC is now getting into the online coaching. Yeah, man. How so? Okay. So, cause it was like wild west, unregulated, nobody gave a shit. Yeah.

There's, so there's several cases. There's two that recently went really public. Um, I won't say their names, just out of respect to them. I'm actually good friends with both of them. Um, one was sued for, I believe 16 million. The other was sued for, I think a little over 2 million sued by the FTC, which ironically, as you come to find out, the FTC does not monetize. So every dollar they sue you for goes back to all the people.

It goes back to all the clients. They don't keep any of the money, which is completely wild. And so. What did they get sued for? Basically making, I mean this is gonna sound like a gross generalization. They're technically sued for making false claims. Yeah, financial claims, saying you will make X amount of dollars, right? I think like a better way to say it though

because people are gonna hear that statement and they're gonna be like, oh, people are lying. I don't think most people were lying. I think they were sensationalizing. And when you actually dig into it and you start studying it, we're not lying. You start studying it though. And you just realize the way it was being done

just didn't match FTC guidelines. And I think as online marketers, we don't even think about the FTC existing. I don't even know what that looks like. So explain that. So I gave you one what that looks like. So explain that. So I gave you one example that is disgusting. Okay. So I missed that.

Most people I gave it to them off, but off the podcast, but like most, uh, most online coaches have a Facebook group. Most of them will go in and they will screenshot something from the Facebook group and they will post it as marketing material. Sure. Like someone who says, oh my God, I made, oh my God, I lost X amount of power. Oh my God. I made this amount of money. That's illegal. Really? Wow. That's illegal. Wow. So a, you don't have consent from the person. Okay. You have to get consent,

but hold on B. Can you justify that? It's typical of your program, the result that they achieved, which is why you always see those warnings. This, these results are not typical at the bottom. Results vary, right? C, can you document exactly how they did it and show that they used your product? Wow. And four, do you have like a signed affidavit from them?

Wow. Saying that they were, in fact, the client and that you can use it. Well, that's going to mop up everybody. So how many people do that already? So I have everybody, everybody. And so the question is like, are like, and the majority of the time when you get an FTC lawsuit, they've been like targeting you for over a year.

Yeah. And so it's like, there's people out there right now that are being watched like that are, that are coming. Yeah. And so it's, it's scary because every day I look online and I'm like, that's illegal. That's illegal. That's illegal. And like, I'm, I'm very aware of it now.

Um, I can tell you the biggest companies, like the big players all have compliance departments. So all of them, that's been like the biggest trend in 2023. Anybody that was doing north of three, four or five million dollars, probably consulted with somebody on compliance. And so the crazy part is one of the guys, and again, good friend, but you can look him up. He, uh, he took this FTC thing and he actually started a compliance company. And like, so the hell that he went through and did like both of them again, like good friends, both people that went through it can tell like, just were like, it was absolute hell.

It was the worst nightmare. It was nearly 24 months for both of them. Yeah. And they said it was the worst thing they've ever been through. Did they get sued for the amount of money that they made or was it just a number of the claims? So like, like if, if I went out and I said, you can make a hundred grand with my program, that's illegal. Now I've made a lot of people a hundred grand,

but that is a misleading statement. And the bet now, what, what can they come after you for that claim? A hundred grand or is it like anybody that bought the program under that premise, I now could get sued for that amount. So if you've, if you made a million dollars of people buying that exact program, you're promoting for that amount. Right. So if you've, if you made a million dollars of people buying that exact program, you're promoting with that strategy. This is like,

this is like the before and after when before and afters got, cause now when you look at a before and after, if you don't want to get yourself in trouble, there's always that disclaimer at the bottom. Results not typical. Results not typical. This is not the, yeah,

whatever, whatever. And that happened because before and afters were like that. They were. So the example that I was actually given of a company that crushes it from a compliance perspective was Beachbody. Of course they do. And so of course they've got a massive compliance department.

But apparently in their onboarding forums, you sign your affidavit basically saying that they can use anything. Right when you become a heart. All of their check-ins are documented and recorded. So now that's them documenting the journey, right? They literally have data on their whole thing so they can show you what typical results are. And like everything can be, you know, brought back to it.

And so it's like they check every box like and they do, they smash. So someone listening right now is like, I don't have the money for a compliance department and that's one of the best ways I get new clients. How do they intent? So you don't pivot. You just start always having the right intent. And so you have to ask yourself when you make this post, what's the intent of this post?

Is it wild claims? Is this to intentionally tell the truth or is this to potentially persuade in an exaggerated format? And if you're close to the exaggerated format, it's probably not compliant. And dude, it's scary as hell. I sat in a room, I had 40 of my clients in a room, and I had one of these guys zoom in and do a whole training for 90 minutes. And I thought my whole room was gonna cry.

Everyone's like, what the fuck? I can't do anything I'm doing. And I'm like, I know. Like that's the problem. Yeah. And like, dude, it's, but I wish I could say we were so cheesed in the way we did all that. You know what I'm saying? By not doing that. It's like, but it was not for that reason. We know we did. We did. Well, actually we did it for kind of what you're saying.

Like we've never used it before and after we've never used any, any of that, but it wasn't because we were afraid of the FTC or afraid of lawsuits. It was because that was the right wrong. Yeah, it was the wrong message. We don't want to glorify body obsession or glorify the end result of a journey that's so valuable and so unique and individualized. Yeah. So that's why we've never done our mark, by the way, every marketing team we've ever worked with or anybody who ever does internet

marketing, we're stupid, but we think we're doing it the right way. All those agencies are now gonna require a compliance department. And I think it's gonna change the agency game too. I'm telling you the ripple effects are going to be. I wanna talk to the guy who created the, who pivoted, talk about such a great- Dude, he should come on the podcast.

Yeah, no, I would love to have him actually in the- I'll intro you guys after this. I don't think this- He's amazing. I don't think this is the end of this kind of business. I just think that- No, this is gonna clean it up I think this is right. Yeah, listen. I'm a fan better for the consumer. I'm such a fan of the majority of what's happening I actually think that the Wild West was so bad for the consumer like I view the Wild West like the last three years

Yeah, I I think it was so bad for consumers and I think this is actually the start of cleaning up the industry I'm very much a fan of this. I think the coaches that win are going to be amazing coaches. Do you have like an example of like language or anything like that you've changed in terms of like how you're promoting something now that you have that in mind, like, like. Everything I, everything I do is data driven. And so like, if I share anything in an ad, I'm saying like, based on a sample size

of this number of clients in our program from this period of time, here's the average revenue created. Here's the average. Because you can prove it. Because I can show you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, I have sworn affidavits from all of my clients that I can use their shit.

I can document, like, so now internally, we have weekly data capture for all of our clients. So if you came to me and you're like, can you show me that it was your program that created that result? Yes, I can. I can show you the data every single week. And so like, yeah, we've been working on it

for the better part of a year. I knew this was coming, again, because I'm friends with the two individuals that went through it. So we've been working on it for a year. Would I say that we're perfect? No, like admittedly, like on a podcast, we're not perfect. You know, if the FTC is listening, we're trying.

And I think that from what I'm told, if you're not out there trying to fuck people over, they're not coming after you. I think that're going to get the gross offenders. Don't consider that. Everything is intent. Yeah. Like that's the word that they continue to use. Anytime you're in the business of teaching people how to make money, that's the most scrutinized,

regulated whatever in government. Like you saw what happened. You brought up crypto earlier. You saw what happened to crypto. Like when you're teaching people how to make more money, at some point, they're're gonna come down on you. Pretty hard if you're not really, really good. I mean, there's a, you know,

there's a couple of guys that are huge on the internet that have been around for a very long time that have had run-ins with the FTC that weren't as big as like the last two, but they've had it and they've had to pay fines. And so their, whatever they went through was strong enough for them to completely change the way. Like I'm thinking of one in particular, um, I'll

share with you off because you probably know the name, but he doesn't do what he used to do. And it's, it's very noticeable. It's to me, this, uh, although people in the space were like, oh my God, what are we going to do? I, I saw during COVID the, the part that troubled me was I saw a lot of people for the first time ever, I'd never really seen this before, enter into our

space, not because of being passionate about health and fitness, but because they were passionate about making money and they like to work out. Viz-op. I'd never seen that before in our space. Our space was never driven that way necessarily. Because you couldn't. In large scale, all of a sudden all these people, I'm like, wait,

you don't, this isn't your passion. Yeah. You just like to work out and now you're here just to make a lot of money. This can't necessarily. That's because that, that again, back to the social media thing, that's it changed, it changed, it created a new market. You couldn't have a trainer who had no experience, couldn't really help people actually

make 50 million or $50 million and you're like, you could do that. Like you had these examples and we'll go back to when we first started the show, when we were picking on the shreds guys. And when the shreds thing imploded, as far as the supplement hustle they were doing, all those coaches that were underneath them, they

pivoted to coaching online and they made millions of dollars, not because they were good trainers and coaches, because they never were, they were just bodies that Shreds was using, because they had so many leads. And so they made millions of dollars. And so you couldn't do that in the old model. Inside of a gym, you couldn't all of a sudden overnight be, you know, millions of dollars in training. Like you had, if you were, if you made a million dollars,

just $1 million as a trainer 20 years ago, you were the elite. Yeah, you were the elite. You were training. You just said something though that I think is really important that I think is one of the opportunities moving forward is you talked about the shreds guys

and all of them having, you know, millions of followers. And, um, I think that to compete in 2020 to 2023, you had to have some social following. Like you had to have some pretty, you didn't have a decent amount of organic. Like you didn't, you didn't have to be great, but you had to have some. Sure. I think that the beauty moving forward is you don't need nearly. I agree. I agree. And now that being said, if you came to me and you said, how should I market? I would steer you away from paid with everything in me. And I would tell you to triple down on organic.

And so, but the beauty is you don't need a ton. The more that you get, the easier it becomes. And I would actually argue anybody that has some organic right now, the game is so easy for you. Because as we've been talking about, what you need in terms of game is so fucking easy for you. Because as we've been talking about, what you need in terms of clients is so minimal. Yeah, I think that's because the consumers

are getting wiser. Back in the just three, four years ago, the consumer would see a rip body, two million followers and go, oh, this is authority. Consumer now is becoming privy to that. Oh, wow, just because this person has a great physique, and who knows, might even be doctored, right?

Cause that's so popular now, right? Doctoring your own photos like that, or doing a photo shoot once a year. So that note, that's all thrown out the window. You know what I would love to see is like data and I don't have this. I don't, maybe you do Sal. It's like the average number of diets

that somebody had tried going into 2020 and now at 2024. Because my gut says, because obviously this has all been promoted crazy. I tried going into 2020 and now at 2024. Because my gut says, because obviously this has all been promoted crazy. So like think about January of 2020, right before the pandemic. Like being a nutrition coach,

like my own mother questioned me. Like she's like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, what are you doing with your life? You know, like I always tell the story from stage. Like when I made my first million, my mom's like, when are you doing with your life? You know, like I always tell the story from stage. Like when I made my first million, my mom's like, when are you gonna get a real job? And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? And she's like, you know, one with benefits.

And at the time- Like a five benefits mom. Well, at the time I was paying for 100% of benefits for all of my staff. And I was like, my mom's like, nobody does that. And I'm like, well, I do that. She's like, oh, okay, I guess you got a real job, right? That was the defining moment.

Fuck a million dollars, but you know, benefits. But back then it was very like a fringe thing. It was like, you know, oh, you're like a nutrition coach. And you know, yesterday I was telling you, I golfed with like Ryan Panetta and David Nurse and our friend, Drew Cooper. And you know, Arkady, who's playing golf on like the, you know, like the mini tours basically he got like PJ tour of Latin America.

He's telling me how like he's lost some weight like the last night of days because he got a nutrition coach. And I'm like, golfers didn't have nutrition coaches, but like regular people didn't have nutrition coaches. So like now, 2024, if someone's like, what's your career? You're like, I'm a nutrition coach. You're like, oh, that's cool.

Like that's valid, very legit. Like my mother probably would not question you about the validity of your career. And it's like, look what we've done in four years. And so in four years, if that's become a valid career, think about how many people have touched that. And think about the experience that the majority of people have had, probably not like overwhelmingly positive, which means the number of dietary attempts has probably increased, right? The number of improper coaching

sessions probably increased. So if you're really good at what you do and you can, back to what you said earlier, keep your clients, not just focus on new clients. Like it's a, it's a cool time to, to become a nutrition coach. I think it's also important to communicate that even those examples that you guys

used about who people, people had tons of followers and made millions of dollars that was point one percent of anybody attempting to do it anyway it's not a yeah that is a terrible business approach if you're trying to be a successful coach and your approach is I'm gonna get a million followers on Instagram good luck like it's a failing approach it's not gonna happen very very very very very few people can do that and then those that do oftentimes don't even know how to build a business. Or they just buy them. Or they just buy them and it's not real.

So at the end of the day, the same business rules that applied 25 years ago, 30 years ago, when we started in the space, still apply. You got to be a damn good trainer or coach. You got to have passion for what you do, provide tremendous value for the clients that you service. It is not a high volume business. Like you said, you got to have passion for what you do, provide tremendous value for the clients that you service. It is not a high volume business. Like you said, you get four clients a month. You're not looking to get 40, 50 clients a week or something like that.

And that's that. And it's not a fast explosive growth. It's rather a slow but compounding growth. No different. This is what I find the irony of this. It's no different than the conversation these coaches have with their clients who want to get results in the gym or to lose weight. It's no different than the conversation these coaches have with their clients who want to get results in the gym or lose weight.

It's the same damn conversation. Sorry, Mrs. Johnson, it's not gonna happen in 30 days. It's a slow process, but it is a snowball. And it starts to speed up over time. And you just have to be consistent. We build upon what we built upon. What we built upon. It's the same damn thing.

There's so many parallels between the person's journey and their business journey. It's wild and I think we're running up against time, but like we were talking about ball before we started this, right? Like the sneakers. The thing about what Shaq was told when he came in the league, right? He literally would spend every single paycheck he got. Magic Johnson finally went up to him and he's like, bro, he's like, when are you going to

realize it ain't about how much money you make, it's about how much money you keep. And like my message to all the online trainers is like, it ain't about how much money you're making, it's how much money you're keeping. And it's like, you need to be fulfilled on, I think all of us are at a stage of life, family and whatnot, that we have to respect the journey as well, so if you're fulfilled in the journey, you're taking home profit, like, life's pretty damn good.

Yeah, well here's why we like you, Jason, because you're always ready to be honest and call things out, call yourself out. And it's gonna be interesting to see how many people now start echoing exactly what you just said. All I can tell you, it's already happening. We've been on this message for 12 to 18 months, and you're already starting to see it happen.

Welcome to the club. Yeah, right. We all know it all too well, bro. Hey, at the end of the day though, I think that's the thing we all share in common. Like we wanna improve the all too well, bro. Hey, I mean, at the end of the day, though, I think that's the thing that we all share in common. Like, we want to improve the space. That's it. So I don't think anybody, I don't give a shit

about the credit of us saying whatever first. It's like, if we can make the space better, ultimately we're gonna help more people get better results, and that's ultimately what all of us wanna do. We got here to change the world, we're gonna keep serving it. Let's do it. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

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