Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Jonathan Goodman on How to Find a Good Coach

Episode Date: May 4, 2022

If you’ve decided you want some help getting fit, finding a coach can be a daunting task. In these days with social media, the barrier to entry to becoming an online coach is lower than ever, and potential clients are left spoiled for choice. Too much choice can paradoxically leave us overwhelmed and exhausted, as we develop decision fatigue and unintentionally start tipping the scales towards maximizing instead of “satisficing.” Unfortunately, with so many potential coaches out there, there’s no shortage of bad coaches either. Or there may be plenty of “good” coaches that simply aren’t a good fit for you and your goals and needs. That’s why I’m talking with Jonathan Goodman in this interview all about how to find a coach worth hiring. Jonathan knows a lot about both good and bad trainers because his business is based on making coaches better at what they do. He created the first-ever certification for online fitness trainers, the Online Trainer Academy, which teaches online coaches how to earn more money and better serve their clients. Jonathan has also written several books on the topic, and is a host on the Online Trainer Show, a podcast full of advice for fitness professionals looking to build an online career. While I’ve built my own online coaching program, there are people for whom my program isn’t a good fit. So whether you want to work with my team or not, the information in this podcast can help you think about what you need in a trainer and start the process of finding a good one. In our conversation, Jonathan talks about  . . . Different places to look for a trainer (and what matters most in finding one) Trainer certifications and qualifications (what to look for and what to ignore) Red flags to watch out for when hiring a coach When you should fire a coach His new (free) tool for sending training programs to clients And more . . . So, if you want some advice on how to find a good coach for you, and don’t mind some marketing, business building, and entrepreneurship tangents along the way, listen to this podcast! Timestamps: 0:00 - Try Phoenix risk-free today! Go to buylegion.com/phoenix and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! 3:31 - How is it like working from home? 10:07 - How do you find a good trainer? 19:39 - Where can we find a trainer? 25:52 - Are a trainer’s qualifications and certifications important? 1:21:26 - What are some red flags when looking for a trainer? 1:28:27 - When should people consider finding a new coach? Mentioned on the Show: Try Phoenix risk-free today! Go to buylegion.com/phoenix and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! QuickCoah: https://quickcoach.fit/ Online Trainer Academy: https://www.theptdc.com/ota Jonathan Goodman’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itscoachgoodman/?hl=en

Hey, and welcome to Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for a new episode, an interview with my buddy John Goodman about finding a good coach, which can be a daunting task because these days with social media, the barrier to entry to becoming an online coach is lower than ever. And people are spoiled for choice and too much choice can actually create overwhelm and exhaustion, paradoxically. And so with so many coaches out there, it can be tough to separate the sheep from the goats, as they say, because there are a lot of bad ones out there, a lot of bad options. Now, there also are plenty of good coaches, but even some of them are not going to be the best fit for you, for your goals, your needs. And so this interview is all about how to find a coach that will work for you, that you should hire. And I wanted to get Jonathan on the show because he knows quite a bit about good and bad trainers because his entire business is based on making coaches better at what they do. He created the first ever certification for online fitness trainers, which is the Online Trainer Academy. And that teaches online coaches how to earn more money and how to better serve their

clients. Jonathan has also written several books on the topic. He is the host of the online trainer show, his own podcast where he shares advice for fitness professionals looking to build an online career. And so in this interview, Jonathan and I talk about different places to look for a trainer and what matters most in finding the one for you. We talk about trainer certifications and qualifications, what to look for, what to ignore. We talk about red flags to watch out for when you're hiring a coach, when you should fire a coach as uncomfortable as it can be, and more. as it can be, and more. Before we begin, you definitely don't need supplements to lose fat, and no fat loss supplements are going to make a major difference in your bottom line results.

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code MUSCLE when you check out and you will save 20% or get 10% cash back. And try Phoenix risk free and see what you think. Hey, John, welcome back to my podcast. Yeah, it's been a little while. It was fun catching up before we started recording here. I feel like we could have done that for a lot longer. Yeah, yeah. Congrats on the imminent well actually i don't know when did you say when the baby's coming but they're pretty imminent like i don't know when this is going out but i might be i might be a father of two by the time that this comes out oh wow so you're right there it's uh it's about a month from when we're recording this okay so who knows when the baby ones decide to come, but about that. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. That's exciting. How old is your, um, your kid that you're, you're.

My oldest will be turning five. My other one is my oldest. Nice. My other one will be turning five in May. Okay. So that's the same as me. I have a nine-year-old and a four-year-old. Nine-year-old and a four-year-old.

Okay. Teach me a way. So how was that gap? I feel like I, maybe I got a little bit lucky, um, because so my boy is, is nine and my girl is, is four and they get along well, they play with each other. They'll have their little spats here and there. Um, but, but they're good friends. And so they keep each other, you know, they give each other company. And so from that perspective, it's been relatively easy. It hasn't been, you know, what I've seen with friends where, especially if it's two boys and two more kind of aggressively minded boys. Right.

And so my kids, my boy is more of a, he's just more of a gentle kind of kid. And then my girl is more rambunctious. And, but because Lennox is older, again,'s just more of a gentle kind of kid and then my girl is more rambunctious and um but because lennox is older again it just works right it works out yeah yeah that's kind of my hope it's kind of my hope is is calvin i mean calvin's certainly rambunctious he's he's nuts but uh he's also super super caring and like heartfelt he gets that from his mom. And so I feel like, I feel like it'll work well, but who knows? I'm sure that you'll make it work. Even if they have their kind of water and oil moments,

all kids do. A lot of it has to do with the parents and you've already experienced it. And just you gotta have patience and hold your tongue sometimes. Yeah, I don't have any of that. That's why I told you I'm building an office structure outside of my house on our property. It's going to be my reading room. It's going to be my escape reading room.

I've always wanted one of those things where you pull a book on a bookshelf and some hidden secret room goes down. I feel like this is going to be that. It's just going to be, no, no, no. It's a special code. Only daddy can go in there. So I'm going to put a little cabin on my property. I'm like you, you have some land and I'm building a house and it I'll have an office in the house, but particularly for reading and for writing. Although finally the kids are getting to school, they've been at home working with tutors because there's only one school in this area where we wanted to send them. And we were playing the wait list game. Oh, wow. Okay.

I'm not, I'm not rich, so I was on the waitlist. Yeah, you're not Bill Gates' daughter. Exactly. I figured, you know, what's the threshold? If I were worth probably $100 million or more, then my kids would have gotten in right away. If it were $50 million, it probably would have been like a few months of a waitlist.

Yeah. But having the kids at home, as you know, because you do a lot of similar kind of work as I do, it grates on you because it's hard to focus and to follow lines of thought. Yeah. I can't work at home. I leave the home. Yep. I leave the home. Wherever we go, I rent an office.

You know, and we live abroad because we live abroad four to six months out of the year, every year. When we are going to places that we don't know as well, I actually set, I look for an office space or a co-work space or something like that. And I set that as the pin in Airbnb. And I make sure that wherever we stay is within walking distance to it. the pin in Airbnb. And I make sure that wherever we stay is within walking distance to it. And with the second kid, are you still going to do the half of the year for six months abroad? Yeah, I don't know. We'll do it next year for sure. We're going to go back to Mexico. We go to a town called Salido. We've been at the last four years. We can do that again next year for sure. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I mean, Kelvin's in JK now. He'll be in San Diego

next year once he gets to grade one. Not sure. I don't know, man. Every year that I've done it, I've done it for nine years now. Every year that I've done it, I'm like, we'll try it one more year. We'll see what happens. It was never a plan. It was never...

I started doing this in 2013. Digital nomadery was not a word, was not a thing. It just wasn't cool there wasn't stuff set up for it certainly it definitely wasn't something that people like set out to try to do was just like well shit i could do this nobody else is doing i guess i could honestly why i couldn't do this yeah all right and the next year was like baby you want to go again she's like i guess all right when do you want to leave? Like that was it. I mean, every year.

So I feel like it'll just be that thing. I mean, we've had, we've had nannies, like when we toured around Europe, we brought a nanny with us. Yeah. And you know, we were talking about Jackson, like our nanny, Mexico is actually from Jacksonville. And so teachers wake skiing there in the summer and then spends the winters in Mexico and say, and nannies for us and then goes back and teaches wake skiing there in the summer and then spends the winters in mexico inside leader

and nannies for us and then goes back and teaches wake skiing like it works really well for her so um so we nannies and they're generally educators as well and stuff like that but i i don't know man we'll figure it out i like it i like it unconventional it's always uh fun to hear fun to hear yeah yeah people who who who are willing to make different choices. But let's, let's segue to what we want to talk about. Cause I don't, I know you have a hard stop here at the, in a bit and that is how to find a good trainer. And, and from the perspective of somebody who wants to hire a trainer, somebody, and to give you a specific person. So a lot of my listeners are, let's say in the age range of 25 to 45, and they're more kind of everyday,

normal people in the sense of that fitness is important to them, but they have three to five hours a week to give to it. And they want to look good. They want to feel good they want to feel good but they're not going to be neurotically obsessed with you know tracking every calorie or uh tracking their their nine caliper sites or you know they they want to they want they i wouldn't say that they are unambitious in their fitness but they have a lot of other things going on and they realize that uh there's that you know fitness is not everything like everything is harder if you're not fit, but it's not everything, right? And so, I would say that's probably the lens to view this through. And so, yeah, what does that look like? What does that process look like for winnowing out a coach or a trainer worth hiring? I think the most important thing, first off, to note is that it's changed a lot,

particularly in the last couple of years, in that it used to be if you wanted a trainer, you basically had a choice between people who happened to work at the gyms 20 minutes from your house. Well, now you can choose anybody, which gives you a kind of paradox of choice. It's different. It's better because now you can find the right person for you in every single way. Theoretically. Theoretically. Yeah. If you know what to look for.

Exactly. So it's better in that way, but it's also more difficult in that there's a pretty serious paradox of choice. Like, whereas before you just walk into the gym, you have the, you know, 18-year-old salesperson. Whoever gets assigned to you, really, right? And then you just walk into the gym, you have the, you know, 18 year old salesperson. Whoever gets assigned to you, really, right? And then you just get whoever gets assigned to you. And if you have good luck, great. If you have shit luck, too bad. And there's kind of something to that in a weird sense.

Because in fitness, particularly for people who are untrained and who don't have aspirations to stand on podiums, stand up on stages in little banana hammocks or whatever, there are a lot of people and a lot of things that they could do to get good enough results for them. And at the beginning, what actually matters is that you kind of just move any way that doesn't hurt. And then as you start to do that and start to build up habits with that, well, then you start figuring out better ways to do it. You maybe start associating or believing in yourself as the type of person who does a thing, which was really cool. When my clients started showing up at the gym with their own shaker bottle and protein powder, I was like, I yell you in. Because now you actually have self-selected yourself. You

are presenting yourself as somebody who is into fitness, which is really cool. But until you get to that point, I think it's just important to find what's comfortable to you. And the way to do that is to find somebody who you connect with on a deeper level than fitness. that is to find somebody who you connect with on a deeper level than fitness. And this is the part that I want to illustrate here. I'd actually be really interested to hear your opinion on this, Mike, because I actually don't think that the fitness part of it really matters all that much at the beginning. You should find somebody who's not terrible at what they do, but the reality of it is most workouts are going to get you good enough results if you're a beginner. And then as long as you try a bunch of different things, you can

figure out what you want to do later. And so look for somebody who you connect with on a deeper level beyond fitness, or that you believe has some sort of different nuanced understanding of you. I'll give you an example, the trainer that I work with, because I think all trainers should have trainers too. The trainer that I'm working with right now, his name is Brian Krohn. He's great, been in the industry for a lot of years. The reason why I decided to work with him is that he specializes in working with dudes who want to look good, who don't particularly care how they perform. They're not competing in anything. They just want to look good in a bathing suit with their

shirt off, who have been lifting for more or less their whole adult life, who are over the age of 40 and don't want to hurt themselves. Okay. I'm not 40 yet, but I don't know how old you are, but I'm starting to feel about the sound i'm 37 yeah so i'm 36 like i'm starting to feel it and i feel like i feel like everybody under the age of 40 could benefit from maybe lifting like they were over 40 sometimes a little bit ahead of the curve yeah like like nobody nobody over the age of 40 ever regretted Yeah, like nobody over the age of 40 ever regretted stretching too much or doing too much soft tissue. Or leaving that extra rep in the tank on that deadlift or on that squat or bench press. him. I did his podcast when I was out in Arizona. And I said that, I'm like, I can afford to not be

the most ripped, strongest guy, but I can't afford to get hurt. And so I don't push it as much as I otherwise would, because it gets to a point where the benefits of going a little bit harder, of pushing a little bit harder, don't outweigh the potential repercussions. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. In fact, it becomes completely lopsided. I know we're going to have to get off on that tangent, but it is a good point, especially when you, whether it's a guy or a girl, when you've gained most of the muscle or strength that's genetically available to you, let's say there's still a bit left, but you're at the point where if you're a guy, you're looking at one to two pounds,

maybe of muscle gain per year, and you have to bust your ass for that. And for women, it's about half of that. And you have to bust your ass for that. And you look at the amount of volume and the intensity that it requires just to gain those couple of pounds of muscle lifestyle habits that you may or may not be willing to do. Like, I don't want to measure my food. Yep. I just, I know that I could look better if I wanted to do that. Um, I want to stay up a little bit later with my wife sometimes and not get as much sleep sometimes. And like, you can't do that if you're trying to maximize it. So, so to go back to your question.

When you say connect on a deeper level, what, what do you mean by it? Do you mean, cause you gave it, you gave the example of the guy you're working with. Is that what you mean? Just somebody, cause, cause you have that connecting a deeper level or somebody who more fits your circumstances? It could be either, right? It could be either. Where you find someone you're like, I just like this person. I like their perspective.

We have something weird in common. We got a student of our online trainer academy. His name's Alex Pfeiffer. His thing is barbells and brews. He loves craft beer. He makes craft beer. He has a whole community around craft beer. And so his whole thing is dudes who are into craft beer who want to look good and lift weights and still be able to drink craft beer. world, he might be a good guy to work with for no other reason than A, he kind of understands that he's not going to give you a diet that doesn't include beer, for example, because he knows that's important to you because it's important to him. He looks good. He's a fit dude. So he clearly

understands what it takes to look good and still enjoy your beer. And you can talk to him about stuff other than that. I mean, I used to, I was a 21-year-old personal trainer, fresh out of university, studied kinesiology, but fresh out of university. My clients were, you know, the Associate Dean of Medicine at the University of Toronto, the Chief of Psychiatry at one of the biggest hospitals, real estate magnet, a construction magnet locally in Toronto. I had to connect with them on a deeper level than just fitness. And so I got a newspaper delivered to my house every morning and I read the headlines so that I could say, hey, did you hear about so-and-so?

I like reading books. I mean, it wasn't fabricated, but I like reading books. I like reading a whole wide variety of books. And so I started just leaving the book that I was reading books. I mean, it wasn't fabricated, but I like reading books. I like reading a whole wide variety of books. And so I started just leaving the book that I was reading on my desk. So then they'd see it. And so then I started connecting with my clients on books, on reading. I'd ask them questions about fatherhood. As a trainer, I think it's important to recognize that. But as a client, it could be either. It could be you've got some aches and pains. You want to make sure you work with somebody who understands that.

Could be you have some lifestyle preferences. Or it could be just you've got weird interests and it's just kind of fun to have somebody who understands your uniqueness in a way that you can talk to them about something other than should you do six to eight reps or eight to 10 reps you know the end of the day fitness is reasonably simple like in terms of what you're actually told to do it's executing it that's hard what are your thoughts on where to look for a trainer? So somebody is like, all right, that's it. I want some help. Do I start poking around on Instagram? Do I go to the gym and see who they assign me? Where do I go?

I would first take stock of the type of support you think that you need. So are you the type of person who wants the accountability of somebody standing there beside you. If that's true, then you're going to want somebody locally, which means, yeah, find a place that's convenient to you. So I've got a book that I want to write at some point. I mean, all the chapters are laid out, but basically it's like, okay, here's what actually matters in getting your fitness in check. And here's the order of importance. And number one is convenience.

Because the reality of it is the capital B best workout, the importance of that pales in comparison to whether you're actually going to do it or not. And so take stock in the routines that you already have in your day. Can you figure out a way to work in the fitness into your existing routine? What's the most convenient way to do that? Instead of looking for the best trainer on Instagram, do you happen to have a gym that's outside your office that you could pop down to for half an hour over lunch? If you do, that might be whoever the heck works there might be the best person in the world for you for no reason other than it's convenient. Do you think it would be worth looking into

other people in the area? Like social so so so yeah sure you could um you could just work with somebody at the gym or there could be a trainer who lives in the area who can meet you at the gym maybe you know yeah maybe depends what the rules and stuff for the gym are most gyms have rules pretty strictly against that. Condos, maybe you could bring somebody in. The question would be, how do you really find them? Or maybe their home gym, so to speak, is five minutes that way or 10 minutes that way. Right. So that's the case. I mean, despite my best efforts for the last decade, the reality of it is most trainers

in this world are pretty shit at marketing. So you might not even be able to find them if you wanted to. I mean, sure, ask around if anybody has results, but look at what's already there. Figure out what works with your routine. Now, if you are the type of person who wants somebody there with you, or you might be the type of person who really likes more of a community type feel. So I like that every once in a while. I go to an F45.

I mean, my routine right now is three to four days a week in the gym with a program for my trainer who trains me remotely. And then one to two days a week at an F45. And I just like the atmosphere in the F45. And I just like, I just, I just like the atmosphere in the F45. I think the programming is pretty asinine sometimes, but I don't really care. You know, it gets me moving. It's cardio. It's a different type of training than I do. I know enough not to hurt myself. It's exercise more than training, but that's fine.

Sure. It is. It 100% is, but it's, it's, it's, it's still fun. Right. And so I do 30 minutes of cardio every day, but it's just exercise. Like I don't have a program I'm following. I'm not tracking my wattage. I'm not trying to, I'm just maybe trying to increase the resistance, like keep the speed and the duration kind of the same. And if I can increase the resistance a little bit over time, you know, getting a little bit fitter, or maybe I can pedal a little bit faster at a certain resistance, that's fine. That's fine. Maybe. But you're not measuring it.

Correct. Yeah. You're not actively measuring it and trying to progress it. Or there's, I mean, there's also, if you like that atmosphere and you want to think progressive, there might be a great small group training atmosphere. Or you might be the type of person who's like, just tell me what to do and get out of my way. Because I train like that. I would never want a trainer to be with me by my side. Never. Sure. Be with me to make sure I do something right if I need that. But I don't want you there. I mean, to me, my training is meditative.

I also don't want to think about what I do in the gym. I could build my own workouts, but I don't want to think about it. So for me, the perfect situation is, okay, well, I want somebody who I feel really knows me and understands me, Okay, well, I want somebody who I feel really knows me and understands me, who can write me a program so I know exactly what to do every time I go in the gym and I never have to think about it. And then basically give me a virtual high five afterwards and say, yeah, I saw that you did that good job and be there if I have any questions or whatever it is. So the second part of it is, what type of person are you? And what type of support do you want? Because if you're the first where you want somebody with you,

then you're limited to location. If you're the type of person who just wants to do it yourself, but have the guidance, then it becomes really important. I wouldn't say important, but then it becomes more valuable to try to find somebody who perhaps can connect with you and maybe has walked in your shoes. Somebody who's been through the transformation that you're going through, somebody who has dealt with extenuating life circumstances that you've dealt with. And so how would you find them? Well, I mean, it was always for like Google, Instagram, look for, I mean, you could probably find articles on how to drink beer and still have a six pack,

track it back to the authors who write it, See if you connect with the rest of their stuff. If they do, I'm willing to bet that they'd be happy if you paid them a couple hundred bucks a month to train them. What about qualifications, certifications? They're all nonsense. I don't know. What's your opinion? Elaborate. Oh, geez.

How much trouble am I going to get myself in? Certification in the fitness industry is complete and utter garbage. There's no regulation by anybody. The only scope of practice is a scope of practice passed down by a private organization that's run by other venture capital or private equity. That's primary fiduciary responsibility is to their investors. And so they sell trainers what makes them the most amount of money, not what the trainers actually need. And so as a result, they're not actually preparing trainers for the realities of the job and individual operations like myself have had to come in and basically build independent education companies as accessories. I've said time and time

again, my company should not have to exist. There's not much more to it than that. I've had many trainers reach out to me over the years and say, hey, I learned more in your books and articles and podcasts than any of the certification work I did. I read, I'm sure you know, Brad Schoenfeld sent me his most recent book. Oh, jeez, I should remember the name. His most recent book about muscle. I mean, Brad's like the hypertrophy PhD. He's brilliant. And he sent me his newest book,

and I'm looking through this. I'm like, this is an entire college curriculum in weight training in this one book. And it's crazy to me that people are signing up for all these certifications with these companies. It's like, okay, well, this book costs $27 on Amazon. The first 30 pages is the leading researcher in this subject telling you all about the physiology of muscle and how muscles grow. And then he's talking to you about different periodization principles and the realities of using them and what's good and what's not good and how to use them. Then he has full workout plans based off of that. Every single exercise has pictured administrations with all of the guidance. And like, you just, like, I used to take these things and take pictures of them and

send them to clients. Like those are, I mean, people are buying like exercise video libraries, like buy a book on Amazon for $27. It's crazy to me how much education there is out there actually in general consumer box. And so to answer your question about what certifications, qualifications to look for, if somebody just has a basic personal trainer certification for many of the big registering bodies in the United States, NASM, ACE, ISSA, it doesn't mean that they're necessarily bad, but it certainly doesn't mean that they know anything. There are a number of additional education qualifications, like certification does not equal qualification. There are a number of additional qualifications that show that if the trainer's done them,

they kind of show that the trainer is the type of person that goes out of his or her way to gain additional knowledge. I could walk into a gym and I look at their wall of trainers and they've got 10 pictures of faces and whatever, and they have their qualifications. And inevitably, there's one person on the wall. Every single person is like CPT, CPT, CPT, CPT, and then one person has all of the other ones, right? Has all of the, they've done nutrition and post-rehab and all of these other things. And inevitably, every single time I go into the gym, that's the trainer who's busy.

And I never see the other people. Like, they're just never there. And so, there's certainly varying degrees of seriousness that exist that you could pick out pretty quickly based off of how much it looks like somebody has continued to invest in their development beyond their initial certification. But initial certification, unfortunately, in the fitness industry means so little. It's laughable. And I can tell you from, I mean, I run, I put together the first step of certification for online fitness. I wrote the textbook on it.

And when COVID hit, I had deep conversations with all of these companies worldwide, not just in the United States to license it. We ended up licensing it to ACE and I like ACE. I think out of all the companies that they're the best one. They're also a not-for-profit which i like um but god man these people don't give a shit they just want to make as much money as possible despite all of the nice things that they say remember you're speaking to somebody who who owns a sports nutrition company. So it's the same thing, right? I could probably see that and raise you. And all of them have these, you know, beautifully pithy

mission statements. And I don't know if you saw it. So I think it was yesterday was like National Women's Day or International Women's Day. And there was a Twitter account that I loved it. That was, I think it was at gender pay gap. And I don't know how this person did this, but it was supposedly a bot that whenever a company tweeted some sort of support for International Women's Day, the bot would retweet it and respond

with how much less the women at that organization make than the men. That's clever. It was like, we support women. Although there is controversy, not to go off on a tangent, but there is controversy over when you look at that data and then you control for time worked and time off and so forth. But that's clever.

We did. We built a calculator at our company. And when we built it, it was actually very hard to control because, you know, our company was a small organization. At that point, we had 25, 30 people working for us. And so it was a small company, and there was very rarely two people doing the same job. And so you can't compare one job to the next. So then you're looking at industry averages for roles. Well, a lot of the roles are loosely defined

because it's a small business. A lot of people are wearing multiple hats. It's actually really, really hard to do. But yeah, we did. And then you've got to control where you live too with remote work. Somebody in San Francisco, like in Toronto,

you basically can't pay somebody less than $75,000 a year. You just can't. It doesn't matter what they do. They're below the poverty line if you do. Whereas if I were to hire somebody in Saskatchewan, Midwestern Canada, Midwestern Canada, $75,000 is a pretty healthy living where they're at. So it's very hard to do. But anyway, this Twitter account was funny because

this company's coming out with this beautiful statement from some PR rappers and they're like, and this thing just retweets, it's like, women at this organization make 34% less than men. But it's the same shit. That's the art of publicity and propaganda. Oh my God. But you can't do that anymore, which is the best thing. Because there's companies like

yours who come out and you're like, hey, let's call out all of this nonsense. In the supplement industry, there's companies like mine where I'm like, I hate that my company has to exist. Like legitimately, I hate that it has to exist. But nobody else is doing it. I had the VP of marketing at one of the major certifying bodies literally say to me, to my face, the people who come through our organization are genuinely a little bit dumber and they haven't

completed college and so um we target them by building cheaper easier to complete certifications that we put on sale all the time marketing marketing mastery that's the that's that's the market yeah yeah it's just a very it's a very it's a very mercenary approach to business. It's where you lose sight of, are we supposed to be ultimately helping anybody here? Or are we just trying to make a pretty P&L? make a pretty P&L. It gets, well, there have been a number of people that I've known over the years that, because I've seen this happen now in a decade of being in this business,

I mean, 17 years in the fitness industry, but in a decade of being in the online fitness industry now, I've seen a lot of people, a lot of people I know well, some very good friends that have gone on to become pretty big successes and sell their business. And then I've seen what's happened to their business afterwards. And not every case, but in a lot of cases where the person who built their business is like you, Mike, just like genuinely really good person who's super smart, who worked their butt off, who built something great, caught some lucky breaks, but also did a lot of really good things, built something great for all the right reasons. And what they measured often, their KPIs were very customer-centric.

And then they sold a controlling interest or the entire company to a private equity or to an investment fund or venture capital or whatever. And all of a sudden now, everything that's measured is financially driven and just everything changes. And their statements, their mission statements and everything are the same. But how they operate seems to really change. Doesn't have to happen, I don't think think but that's what happens it doesn't it doesn't have to you know i i would say that you're the people you're thinking of they bear some responsibility as well because you know i've spoken with um a number of people in the pe world not i'm not looking to sell

legion but do you did you sell do you own 100 of what what you do? Do you have investors? Yeah. No, I have no investors. So it's just me, 100%. Oh, cool. And I've spoken over the last probably six to 12 months. I've spoken with a fair amount of people, not because I'm looking to sell the business, but I would be interested in a growth partner. Someone who could provide not just capital. I can get money if I just need money, but really, ideally, it would be more, there would be some strategic synergy there.

They would have expertise or connections in, take retail. I'm still 100% e-commerce. That's a mistake. My international distribution is nowhere. That's a mistake. I can only build the business. Well, I'm doing my best, but it can be done a lot better. It's a mistake. There are there. I can only build the business. Well, I'm doing my best, but it can be done a lot better. It's a mistake.

But because you focused on those things, you've been you've got to the point where you're boasting at the seams. It's true. If you try to do all this. There are certainly consolation prizes, but I've seen. You don't have to put it that way, man. You've done okay. You know, I've seen to put it that way, man. I'm just saying I've seen I've seen now I've seen some very professional business builders operate.

I'll just put it that way. And and and seen I've seen now what what can be done if you come into something with the right team, the right amount of money and the right plan. You put those things together and a little bit of luck, as you mentioned, timing, of course, plays into it. But you can build a pretty big business pretty quickly. It gives you space to move. Like, A, you liquidate a little bit and get some cash. But also, it gives you some space to move. I think about, I mean,

your business is bigger than mine, but I think about, you know, we've got a lot of cash in the bank. I'm fine. Business is generating enough, but we can't take a lot of big risks. And, uh, and I don't want to right now, which is fine. But if I wanted to, we wouldn't be able to do it. And so it's like, okay, well, is this a bet that we can put $2 million out and be perfectly okay if it misses? Well, it's hard to do that if you're generating $10 million a year or $20 million a year and your EBITDA is four, let's say, it's hard to do that. You might be able to justify it, but it's hard. It's a lot easier to do that if you've got a $50 billion hedge fund behind you or investment fund behind you.

And you have people who have input in the $2 million plan. They like it. You have people who are going to execute. It's all lined up. Yeah. So I agree. There's a lot of advantages there. I actually really like, I mean, this is off on a tangent of how to buy a trainer or how

to find a trainer, but I actually really love like half a million to $2 million businesses. I think the next stage of my career is basically just stacking those because I think, and I mean, I've done it a few times now. I think that you can build these days with a strong personal brand, multiple half a million to $2 million businesses at a 60 to 70% profit margin with basically no staff. It depends on what you're selling um as far as oh yeah you gotta pick you gotta pick the right business model that's that's the key um like in supplements you can't have 60 gross margins and that and great products you can have shitty products and 60 gross margins books and mentorship and digital learning and software, you can. Yep.

100%. So what do you think I'm doing? So, you know, with basically a chief of staff, like I like all the majority of my staff. But once you get above that, things start to break. Maybe not with software. Depends. But once you get above that, things start to break right and uh and so i just i i don't know i'm really excited about call them micro businesses but like you have three or

four you know million one and a half million dollar businesses working for you yeah um that are that are highly profitable that are highly profitable. That are highly profitable, that are super, super low stress and headache. And that don't just make you, exactly. Oh, God. I mean, your inventory and everything is, I mean, you're big enough now that you can have people to manage it. But the growth of that before you were as big as you are now, I can only imagine. I mean, you're having to stock for six months from now and put out cash for six months from now, right? Yeah. And I can give credit to the people along

the way who have managed that. I personally, I was not involved in inventory for long, for maybe the first year or so. And then from there, it was different people. And now I have somebody who is a real pro at it. He came from a very big sports nutrition company running their global supply chain and logistics. Oh, wow. How many SKUs do you have? I actually don't even know. It's something I should know, but I don't.

So I'm going to guess, let's see, there's probably 15 to let's say 15 different products, 60 to 80. I'm just kind of throwing a number out there. That's quite a bit. So why did you decide to go that route as opposed to a, because I would guess, tell me if I'm wrong, I would guess that there's a disproportionate amount of sales per product. 80-20. I mean, 80-20, right? 20% of the SKUs generate 80% of the revenue. So why do you have the other ones? Why do you decide to do that model versus

the Athletic Greens model, for example? the ones why you decide to do that model versus versus focusing versus like the athletic greens model for example right or they they have one thing they package it two different ways and they've got hundreds of thousands of people that get it on auto ship every month i like i like the the athletic greens model if you have a product that warrants it i don't like how athletic greens promotes their product at least least the last time I looked at their marketing, a lot of it is dishonest. They're selling it. It's a greens. It's a fruit and vegetable powder with like some probiotics and other junk. And some stimulants, which I was surprised at. That I didn't even, I haven't looked at their stuff. Well, it's not like stimulants,

but like some hobo kind of stimulant stuff. Which probably just means caffeine. I mean, sure. No, it's not caffeine. No, no, no. It's not caffeine. I can't remember. Because sometimes, you know, there are herbs and it really is just caffeine, but it's a natural kind of caffeine. Let me see.

Let me see. But while you're looking at that, I'll just say that if you're just going to sell one product, then I think it needs to be one really outstanding product to carry a brand. And Athletic Greens has done a good job on the marketing front. They obviously have smart marketers. But again, the last time I looked at their product, how it was being sold is basically a replacement for eating vegetables, for eating well. Even if that wasn't explicitly stated, that was clearly the pitch. Like, look at all the servings of vegetables in this vegetable powder, and it has all these other things too. And again, the implication is you don't like eating vegetables? Here, just drink this powder every day. And I know that that's why a lot of people buy vegetable powders, fruit and vegetable powders, because they don't want to eat fruits and vegetables. And I fundamentally

disagree with that. Uh, my greens supplement, it has no fruits and vegetables in it. It's only green because it has spirulina, but it has re mushroom it has maca it has other things it's not your traditional greens supplement and so um i can appreciate what athletic greens has done from a business standpoint and a marketing standpoint but i think it's it's a dishonest i think it's fundamentally a dishonest business and so yeah like they've got green tea extract they've got ashwagandha. So those are fine. Those are fine ingredients. I mean.

Oh, there's nothing wrong with them. Again, it has been some time since I looked at their pitch, but it very much at the time I looked revolved around all of the servings of vegetables, quote unquote, that are in this powder. I see what you're saying. Right? right and and it is not true that at least we can say that that there's good evidence to the to the contrary that you can instead of eating fruits and vegetables just drink powders and get all of the same benefits that you will be totally fine in terms of hitting your nutritional yeah that's still their pitch yeah of course that's why people buy them. Yeah, their website says,

welcome to foundational nutrition, is their big headline. And then it's, you're going to need a smaller cabinet. Actually, that's an odd. Yeah, they say you're going to need a smaller cabinet, comprehensive nutrition, every AG, because they're AG1 now. Every AG1 scoop is like nine health products in one, giving you the equivalent of multivitamin, minerals, probiotics, and more. So basically it's a replacement for everything. But they have one product, right? That I actually don't mind. I think that if

you're pitching your greens, again, I haven't looked at their stuff recently, but if you're pitching your greens as a replacement for a multivitamin, And I do think that a multivitamin, a well-formulated multivitamin is justifiable to sell and to take, even if you eat well, especially when you have certain nutrients that it's actually hard to get enough of. Take vitamin D, take K1, K2. And then if it's a good multivitamin, it can have other stuff like ashwagandha

and other ingredients that you're not gonna get in your diet. I think that's totally fine. So maybe athletic greens has pivoted a little bit in their messaging, in which case what I said might not apply to them currently. really the theme of the marketing that I was seeing, it was more about how there are so many servings of vegetables in just one or two scoops. And again, the pitch was basically like, you don't need to eat all the vegetables.

You can just drink our powder. And, but a single product approach certainly can work, but you better have a really good single product and it better be very profitable. Because to answer the question that you asked me, where the SKUs, the products that make the most money for me are protein powder and pre-workout. Those are also the products that get me the most new customers, right? And so my product, my company margins are quite a bit lower than a lot of my competitors. They should be better. We were working on getting them better than COVID hit and now they're kind of stuck. So my gross margins right now are 39% or so. That's not very

good. Like anybody who understands- Yeah, that's tough to grow a business on. Correct. And well, grow it- That's direct to consumer. That's e-commerce. Correct. Yeah. And but my marketing spend is 15% of revenue. Yeah, right. So, you know, I've been able to do it because of that, because I do not need to spend as much money as a lot of my competitors.

But regardless, just from, you know, business finance 101, business health 101, that gross margin to be respectable, it should be in the mid to high 40s. And that can be done as Legion continues to grow. And if some costs of things come down, like creatine is out the roof, whey protein is out the roof, even a couple of ingredients in pulse are out the roof. And what I'm hearing is, assuming the world doesn't end, that prices are going to come down. They're not going to come down to pre-COVID levels. Everything is just more expensive now, period. That's not changing. But they are going to come down from where they're at now. So, are you saying some of the back catalog stuff then that maybe

doesn't sell as much is more profitable? It more profitable even though even though i still spend a lot more take my multivitamin normally multivitamins are that's a profit center for a lot of sports nutrition companies oh absolutely um your your average sports nutrition company they'll spend five to six dollars a bottle producing a multivitamin and absolutely 100 yep okay and, if you're generous, you're going to spend maybe seven or eight, right. And then you're going to sell that for, um, uh, if you're spending $4 a bottle, maybe you'll sell it for 2025. Maybe if it's a dollar or two more, you might go up to 30, 35, maybe even 40. My multivitamin costs me close to 13, 13 to $14 a bottle to produce. And so the margin is better there, but it's, it's, um, it's not as profitable as multivitamins generally are. And

that's true of all of my products. And just because the ingredients are high quality or what? Yeah. Higher quality ingredients, more ingredients, larger doses, and all natural ingredients. It costs me $3 to $4 a bottle to flavor some of my powders. If I were to switch to artificial ingredients, $0.50. Because you're using natural flavoring versus just sucralose or whatever? Exactly. And so I pay a premium for, but now what we're talking about, though, is this is really Legion's, this is its value proposition. This is its unique selling proposition, right?

Do you think that stuff really, maybe I'll ask you this not being recorded. Do you think all that stuff really matters? Like, do you think it's really a problem flavoring a protein powder, let's say, with sucralose? I mean, I get it as a sales proposition. It's a fantastic sales prop. Yeah, yeah. So if we're talking about artificial flavoring, and I actually don't even comment on it on Legion's website, I don't think there's any issue with artificial flavoring. Now, artificial sweeteners and food dyes, if we're talking about one or two servings a day, certainly no problems. I'm not an alarmist about any of these chemicals. However, I know from doing this for a bit, and I was one

of these consumers before I had this company, that many fitness people are, they're going to have anywhere from two to four servings of protein per day. There's going to be a pre-workout in there. There's going to be a post-workout in there. There might be an energy drink or two in there. There might be a green supplement or some other powder intro workout in there, maybe some BCAAs, right? And so it's easy for a fitness person to get to eight to 10 plus servings of those chemicals per day, every day forever. And when I started Legion, the research wasn't, I wouldn't say it's robust right now. There's more research to suggest that doing that might not be the best for your gut health and that can impact your overall health

in many different ways. And when I started Legion, there was less evidence to support that, but first and foremost, I was kind of scratching my own itch and I care about my health. And if I can possibly avoid, it wouldn't be a catastrophic problem, but if I can possibly avoid, it wouldn't be a catastrophic problem, but if I can possibly avoid, let's say, meaningful negative effects, health effects, by using all natural products, that's what I would do personally.

on the microbiome and gut health has progressed. I know there's still controversy even over what I just said, but I will say that there is more evidence now for that. And there are more experts who would agree with me. And so that's why I chose to do it and why I've stuck with it. And then there's the marketing side of it, where if you poke around on my website, I explain it more or less as I just explained to you. I don't make any extreme claims about, I mean, I explicitly say that these chemicals are not as dangerous as many people would have you believe. I'm not an alarmist, but there is evidence that having a lot of these things every day, more or less forever, might not be great for your health. And so that's why I stick with natural stuff and that's it.

Well, and it's also knowing your audience. I mean, you're selling to people who are definitely more health conscious. Health conscious, very active. I mean, the idea, like if, I mean, I maybe have a scoop of protein powder once every three days. Right. So of course it doesn't matter. You can use whatever you like. Yeah. But if you were a person who was taking several supplements several times a day every day.

Yeah. So, it's just that this world is very interesting to me. to me you know what it's it's interesting to me because it seems like there's some disconnect between what you should do when you see other people doing and not realizing that they're different people than you and and there's no one way uh you know for the right type of person what what you're doing is brilliant and there's a lot of people like that but is it actually that important for your average Joe or Jane? No, it's not. Supplements are supplementary by definition. I mean, I say right on the homepage, you don't need any of my stuff, actually, to build muscle, to lose fat, to get healthy. And that's true. You could say, oh, that's good marketing. You're just being clever because if you admit a fault, then people instinctively trust you. Sure. I know that. But it's also true. It is true that there aren't many supplement companies who will just explicitly tell you like you actually don't need to buy any of our stuff. It's all just optional. If you have the inclination

and you have the budget, there are some things you might want to consider. And that's why we exist. And that's also one of the reasons why I've focused so much on education, of course, in my own work, but also with Legion. I mean, over at Legion, we have now close to 5,000 articles and podcasts over on the website. We have a coaching service. We've worked with thousands of people. People, I mean, we get hundreds of chats a day of people just asking

us questions, diet questions, exercise questions, that little chat that you see on the website. That's mostly how it gets used. And the people who man it up are all certified personal trainers, for what it's worth. And they are on our team internal. We don't outsource that. They spend a lot of time just helping people, just answering their questions. Because I see supplements as kind of the, to use like the meat in the medicine analogy, it's kind of the meat to get people to accept the medicine, which is that supplements can only help a little bit in different ways. You really need to know how to eat, how to exercise. You need to be living a healthy lifestyle to achieve your fitness goals. But some people are ready to hear that. Many people are not ready to hear that. And they're

looking for pills and powders and potions. And so by bringing people in who are just looking for a fat burner so they can lose fat and then helping them understand that the fat burner isn't what helps you lose fat. It's the calorie deficit and it's eating enough protein so you retain your muscle and it's doing the right type of training. And if you do all of those things and you want to include a fat burner, you have to be careful because a lot of them are just useless. The best fat burner is going to help you burn a little bit more energy. It's going to make you maybe a little bit less hungry. And if that's worth it to you, then buy it. If it's not worth

it to you, then don't. But if you just do the other things, you're going to reach your goal. And so that's also part of Legion's DNA, so to speak, and part of why I do it. I'm not a very, it sounds people, I'm just not a very money motivated person. Like I like to make money as anybody else, but I don't get the thrill out of making money that some of my very rich friends do. And, you know, I can think of a couple of people who, if I had their money, I could just throw my money away. And they, they love building their business and making money. And they're not unethical, bad people that they have good businesses, good services. They just love it. They just love, you know, like, dude, you're

worth $500 million. Like, what does it matter if you make another? It's like when you see a fit person in the gym. It's like, what are you doing? Go home. You're done. Yeah. It's like, what do you need another? Why are you so excited over $10 million? Like, I can hear it. It's so exciting. It's more exciting. You know, it could be his birthday and be like, yeah, whatever. I don't care. But, uh, you know, he just made $10 million. So excited about it. And I don't say that as a criticism at all. I'm just saying, I just, I'm not, I don't, I'm not that personality. I get more excited over writing a book than I do. Uh, I mean, $10 million would be cool, but you know, and just, just so,

so because you love the fact that you're the know your bill of rights book is on the Legion page for sale. You know what? You're going to like more than that. You know, guess, guess. So that was my number one bestselling book last year. I remember you telling me that. Yeah. Okay, good. So it's that for, for people, I mean, I won't get into the origin story because people have heard it. But my original interest, I was not planning on being a fitness guy, so to speak. I was planning on I would write in fitness. And if that went somewhere, sure, I'll write some more fitness stuff.

I like fitness and I like what it can do for people. But I have other interests and I want to do other things too. And, um, and, and then the fitness stuff just did so well that I decided to pursue the opportunity, but I still am very much that person who, um, would a part of me would love to just go back to my original plan, which was I'd be writing fiction and writing a nonfiction that interests me and just pursuing, I guess, intellectual curiosities. And maybe in my next life, if I can make enough money, then I can justify it, I guess, because I don't know how much you... I think you've probably made enough money to do it now. I mean, I'm working on a fiction

book. It's fun. That's exciting. It's something I do in my spare time. It's a parable on the fitness industry. It's ridiculous. It's funny. It's, I mean, it's just, it's fun. You know, like there's- I mean, it's fun. For people, and I'm guessing that you're just similar to I am in that if you're a creative type of person, that's the only way to scratch

that itch it's not fiction per se but doing creative work everything else if if you get away from creative work for for too long it uh it just it just kind of drains the the life out of you um at least that's that's been my experience like a lot of building a business and running a business is, you know, it just feels like kind of putting out fires, solving stupid problems. And I've been good enough at it to get as far as I've gotten. But that doesn't give me the thrill that it gives some people. Some people are really good operators and they just love the game of putting out the fires and solving the stupid problems and growing the business. I do not. I like some aspects of marketing and you probably do too because it's creative. Because you go into something knowing that there is a way to hit a grand slam home run with this product or

service, assuming that it's not completely terrible, right? Some products or services, there is no way. But in many cases, there is a way. I guess I could take that back and say, well, then you'd have to go back to crafting the product or service. But there is a way to come up with a product or service and then market it in such a way that it, it explodes. And, and, and, you know, there are the, the total addressable market is, is going to dictate how big that explosion is. But, and, and that to me is, is fun. It's fun to figure, try to figure that out and, and get into the psychology of it well this is what we're finding with our software i haven't even it's not even out yet nobody's seen it nobody's seen it it's hitting the need that's been unmet so deeply which i which i had hoped i

mean we've done all the other research i've advised or been an advisor to basically every software company you know online advisor to basically every software company, online training software company, fitness software company for the last decade. And it's just like, nobody's even seen it yet. And like, went to bed last night. It's not anywhere. We're not $0 in paid advertising. Went to bed last night, woke up this morning, there's 70 new people on the wait list it's just like people are talking about it because it's because it's needed because it just hit it right right um i think that's what's missing you know copy is not about marketing is not about like the best words

and copywriting it's about it's about figuring out what product needs to be there and why and dialing in on that yeah i would say that um on the product development side of things huge everything yeah i i would i would agree however i i would say though and this is this is this is not just me saying this is me just parroting smarter marketers that i've studied really really. And that is that, I mean, I do agree with the idea that fundamentally marketing is messaging and it fundamentally is perception. Value is perceived or not, or it's perceived as low or high. But to your point, I think you need to have a combination of those things, right? You need to have, it's not just the right idea, in my opinion. It's, I think, the right idea at the right time.

That timing point is huge. And that's where some of the, quote, the luck plays into it, right? Although you can engineer some of that. But you can have an idea that is fundamentally sound. And you can have a great team. And you can have an idea that is fundamentally sound and you can have a great team and you can have a lot of funding. But if it's just not the right time, it's not going to go. But if you have the right idea at the right time, poor team, underfunded, it's still going to go. You're going to see some fireworks and hopefully you can scramble to get the team and get the funding because it can have big, big potential, right? But then in terms of how do you communicate and how do you sell? Because a lot of products and

services probably are that people come up with. Maybe it's not a majority, but a lot of them are good enough. They are good enough to succeed, right? Take something like supplements. People could just copy and paste my formulations. Like everything is right there. It's fully transparent. There's no hidden proprietary information of any kind, right? Even all the research that is behind the formulations is cited on sales pages.

I mean, you're not seeing all the papers that were reviewed per se. Maybe 60 to 70 papers were reviewed in the creation of a product, and then you're going to get 30 citations or something because it's just not necessary to cite the other 30. So somebody could have products that are just as good as mine, and, they're gonna have to figure out the manufacturing and whatever. But from there, how do you win? Because just putting that stuff out there, I've seen quite a few companies rip off some of my formulations and it's totally fine. I don't even, I don't take it personally. I don't care really. Sure. Come, come compete with me. Maybe, maybe you'll end up just growing the pie a little bit bigger for all of us. And some of your customers will end up trying my stuff because they just like me and my brand more than yours, whatever. Right. But just having, having products that are objectively premium minimally, in some cases, I think I could really say best in class, is not enough, right? So that's where I think this element of marketing that revolves

around perception. And ultimately, I do think it's messaging. I do think at least a lot of the, some of the best marketers that I've known personally, or maybe they're not outstanding copywriters in the sense of being able to write a long form, you know, nine page sales letter per se, but they are good at messaging. They, they, they are good at creating, at communicating in a way that resonates with people and they are good at understanding people, looking at the world through their eyes, meeting them where they are, persuading them and so forth. A lot of that is fundamentally salesmanship, really. And so that's what I really like about marketing, again, because you can never, there is no, there is no perfect sales letter. There is no absolute, it can always be better.

There is no perfect PDP. There is always a better way. There is always something that if you can somehow stumble upon it, it's going to increase your conversions by 10%. And in some cases, it might just be design rejiggering things. But once you get past the easy wins, and I've done a lot of CRO work, so I've experienced this firsthand. When you get past the easy stuff, then a lot of it is understanding the psychology and

hitting on something that is a hot button and then figuring out how to communicate that in a way that makes people say yes or just just pay attention and that's a game to me i like that and um so i i would suspect that that you're similar and and uh that's why you like to write that's why you i like the content you share on social media i I like that it's unique. And that's why you're writing a fiction book. I'm making assumptions. I mean, you're right. There's a lot of things in this last year, particularly, that I've just opted out of.

And I came to the realization that I have enough. And I opted out of a lot of the games. And maybe I'll opt back in at some point hey there if you are hearing this you are still listening which is awesome thank you and if you are enjoying this podcast or if you just like my podcast in general and you are getting at least something out of it would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even who might want to learn something new? Word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. Is that partly because did you feel like you were, to use a school analogy, maybe getting by your own standards, regardless of what other people thought, you were getting maybe Bs in five classes and you'd rather be getting A pluses in two or three? Maybe. I was doing a lot. I mean, I have the entrepreneur syndrome where the minute that something becomes successful,

I become disinterested in it. And so you can see that with my career. I've written, like you, I've written 11 books. Why the hell would you write 11 books for personal trainers? I've written like six books for a niche of a niche of a niche. Why the hell would you do that? Write one, have a product it leads to, get the shit out of that one, and keep pumping that funnel for the longest time. And so I just can't not do it. I mean, the amount of things I've done in the last 10 years, I could list them off. You'd be like, holy crap, man. And some of it has been very

successful. I'm just not interested in it. The minute that it becomes successful, I just want to do something else. And so the most successful things that I've done, to be honest, the reason why they've done really well and continue to do well is because I built it and then I stepped the hell away. And so all of my focus, my personal focus is on my own personal brand because it allows me to write, to be creative, to get eyeballs. That's what I'm good at. And, um, and I can spend six to eight months and I can build a business and then hand it off and then go and build another one. Uh,

but that's not the way to build a unicorn business right that's the way to build is it necessary though to build a unicorn business depends what you want that depends what you want but that's what i mean i mean that's the game that i opted out of that's what i was talking to you about you know can can you build a a high six a low seven figure business once a year once every every two years, basically at infinity. I've had to resist the temptation myself because I've wasted time and money on a workout app that it's just free and put a fair amount of time and money into it. And a lot of people like it. Some people don't. It wasn't necessary was it was i i i should i should have thought i had an app so why wouldn't i have it right it was just for fun it was actually just for fun because i felt like doing

it but at the time my time maybe i put less of a premium on it i maybe should have put more of a premium on it now i'm i'm more careful about what I say yes to because like, like you, I have more things going on and, um, I've just learned what type of work I actually really like to do and what I don't like to do. And things are at a point now where I don't, I have a high pain tolerance, uh, probably like you, I can grind on shit more or less indefinitely. I'm just not a person who quits because it's hard or because I'm bored or I just don't want to do it anymore. It's just not me.

But, but I think there is something to be said for exactly what you just said is, okay, if you reach a certain level of success, there's nothing wrong with delegating all the stuff you just don't like to do. And maybe that includes stuff that you're not that good at either, or that you can find somebody who's better at it, maybe just minimally because they like it more than you. It's hard to be really good at something

that you really don't like. It's just hard, right? And then that allows you to focus on the stuff that you like to do. And you don't necessarily have that luxury in the beginning. You have to do a lot of stuff that you don't like to do to put that business there. But once you've earned that luxury for yourself, I don't think there's anything wrong in indulging it, right? I think it's seasons of life. At least for me, it's kind of seasons of life. I mean, when you're younger in your business journey, you got to do a whole bunch of different shit. I mean, you got to wear a lot of hats. And that separates a lot of the winners from the losers, right?

Being willing to do it. Yep. lot of hats and that separates a lot of the winners from the losers right being willing a lot yep a lot of the winners a lot of i think it just comes down to stamina and being willing to do a lot of the things that the quote-unquote losers the people who are and i just mean people who are not winning i don't even say that as a as a knock on their identity but the people who are not winning they generally are just not willing to do a lot of the things that the people who are winning do. And they don't do it because they love it. They just do it because they have a strong enough reason to do it. Yeah. And I wonder, I go back, I think a lot about the stories we tell ourselves or the stories that we hear that resonate and the companies we admire.

the companies we admire and you know it's easy to admire like amazon and those i've read all those books about about uh walmart and amazon and that kind of thing too but to be honest like some of the companies i admire most are the are like craigslist right yeah what are they what are they it's like is it is it 50 how many employees it's like a billion dollars in revenue or something like 10 like nothing like nothing but i mean that could be they have like they get like 500 million page views a month like something like that right but but you think i mean how many how many well how many silicon valley firms must have gone up to them and offered them ungodly sums of money. Actually begged, not only

offered money, but got down on their knees and groveled. And then you have Craig who's like, nah bro, I'm good. I'm making 20 million bucks a year and I'm just chilling, living my life and I'm providing a great

service. And this doesn't need to be any more than it is. We don't need to do anything more than what we're doing right now. Company that I admire most, I keep on my list every day, all day, Casio. They created the first ever digital watch, 1978. And they got it perfect on day one. 14 bucks, tells time, lights up, has a timer and a lung, it's waterproof, and the battery lasts forever. That's it. Watch doesn't need to do anything else. And as a result, they've been selling the same ugly ass watch for 50 years. Now they've screwed around and done stuff like the G-Shock and all that kind of thing. But the reality of it is it's so perfect in its simplicity. And that's what I

admire. It might not be for you. People give me all types of fitness gadgets all over the place, Apple Watches and that kind of thing. And I'm like, I don't use them. I give them away because I don't want that kind of stuff. So that's me. But those are the types of companies that I admire. I want to do all of the work that we need to do. That's what we did. But our software, Quick Coach, man, it's the Casio watch of online training software.

I'm building it in a way that I don't ever expect to have to touch it. It doesn't integrate with anything. It doesn't automate anything. It does exactly what it needs to do for trainers. Nothing more, nothing less. And if you're looking for higher level automations, that type of thing. The average personal trainer has 10.4 clients. Basically, no independent trainer has more than 30. Why do you need something that's powerful? You don't. You need something that's going to save you time, make you look professional. But it's the same type of thing. It's free. The software is 100% free. It's my gift to the industry, like straight up. We'll process, you know, if people want us to, we have payment processing and invoicing in there. If people want to process their payments through us, we'll take a fraction of a percentage.

But, but beyond that, like, I don't know what I'm going'm gonna do with it but i don't need to do anything with it yep like you can figure out how to monetize it uh it's not hard i mean a friend of mine he's in the digital marketing world seo world and he he i believe he started with buying an existing tool for seo, like keyword research. And then what he did is he just, he spent a lot of money too. I mean, he was spending six figures a month for a while, I remember. And he just copied basically all of the useful features in the competitive products, but made his free. And that was the beginning of- Is this Neil Patel?

Yeah. Yeah. So- Yeah, I know. He put out a free tool And that was the beginning of- Is this Neil Patel? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know. He put out a free tool like that, yeah. Right, and so that his free tool quickly became about as good as the tools that people were paying $100 a month for. Our software is better than any of the other platforms. And it blew up.

Neil's blew up, and then he monetized it, and now it makes a lot of money. So think about even this breakdown. I mean, A, our software is already better than anything else out there. Now, it doesn't do as much. But what it does do. It doesn't need to. And a lot of the reason why the other platforms are difficult to use is because they're cumbersome and bloated.

I mean, they just do stuff for people who don't need that stuff and so there's a lot of people who do that's great there's a lot of people who don't and they don't currently have an option that's but here's here's a basic breakdown numbers why don't you quickly tell people where if they if they want to see this software if they're let's just make sure they know where quick coach dot fit is the website cool and so um initial initial prototype that we'll get it out to uh it costs about 250 000 bucks to put together okay give or take um right now i haven't checked today but right now there's just over 11,000 on the wait list. Zero dollars in paid advertising. And so we've gained. So if you look at this as a pure marketing expense, it's cost us $38.

Again, I don't do public math, so give or take the change. It's cost us $38 a lead for 11,000 leads. Irrelevant of everything else to market everything else that we do, because really this is kind of a marketing tool for education and stuff like that. Well, $38 for a lead for a B2B niche is actually really, really good. So alone already, I'm doing as good or better than I would probably be doing with cold advertisements. Then you consider that these people are actually going to get something

that they actually want versus like an ebook or a course or a free course or whatever it is that, I mean, they may or may not want, right? But the odds that they're going to spend a lot of time going through. So if you have a cold, if you have like an ebook or whatever that you convince somebody to download with an advertisement, get them on an email list, you're doing, like in that email list is 10,000 plus, like you're doing good if you're getting a 15% open rate and a 1% click rate. Well, a Quick Coach waitlist has a 78% open rate and a 37% click rate. Well, our Quick Coach waitlist has a 78% open rate and a 37% click rate. And these people are going to be logging into our software every single day because they're

going to use it to manage their clients. And by the way, inside the software, there's a grow your business tab where they can talk to us about how we can help them grow in their business. So from a pure marketing expense standpoint, let's say I spend half a million dollars on this tool. If I were to use that same amount of money on paid advertising, spend that on paid advertisement in a year easy, what's my return on investment? A relevance of everything else. It's actually a really interesting kind of flip, right?

Building a tool for your audience. I'm surprised more people don't do it. What about red flags? So red flags when you're trying to pick a trainer, things that should give people pause. There was a book by somebody named Upton Sinclair that was written a long time ago, like 1920s, 1930s. It was called It Can't Happen Here. And it featured a demagogue who rose to become, I think it was governor at the time. It was actually pretty present kind of book. But one of the lines in the book I highlighted and wrote down and I've never forgot it. And the line is, it is difficult to get a man to understand something

when his job depends on him not understanding that thing. I know that quote. It's a good one. And the reason that I bring that up is the number one red flag when choosing a trainer is that trainer has branded him and herself around some sort of dogmatic approach. Now, do you mean like a branded dogmatic call the paleo diet or maybe just local i'm keto killer 27 on instagram or whatever right and nothing against any of these things but the reality so that would mean intermittent fasting as well just people listening if they go that is the one that is the way, like the stupid Star Wars show. If their brand is based around these things, there's a chance that that might be the best thing for you.

But there's also a pretty good chance that there isn't. And the reality of it is a coach in branding themselves in a dogmatic way and building perhaps reputation around that or whatever, they literally can't say, no, this isn't the best one. We've seen lots of experience with this. I mean, we've seen, what was the famous example? There was a vegan fitness influencer who basically got told by her doctor that she was like, she was like super ill. And they're like, yo, you need to eat fish. Was that, was that the banana girl who she'd only- Something like that. I don't remember. I remember seeing some YouTubers, she'd eat like 30 bananas a day or claim to or something.

Something like that. And like, there's nothing, again, there's nothing wrong with veganism. But once you brand yourself around that, it becomes very difficult to say, okay, well, this is right for me. But for you, perhaps a different approach is right. Steaks every day. Right? I mean, we see this with all the insane Instagram nonsense stuff where it's basically just exhibitors. I mean, it's just, what's the new- Liver King.

Yeah, I wasn't going to mention the name. I've commented briefly in a, in a Q and a it's, it's clever marketing. I'll say it's a hundred percent clever marketing. And the interesting thing is that somebody exposed it, um, basically like him and this other guy who also like sells liver and that kind of thing are actually like have a company together. Yeah. Of course. Somebody figured that out. And the other guy is like a slim like 50 year old guy who is sort of more normal and they basically just wanted to like corner both parts of the market like he's just got a he's got a po team behind a media team behind him right and he just does stunts like that's all it is it's clever marketing it's

stunts it's obviously gone it's obviously contrarian it is for sure it's it's even some of the stuff is kind of grotesque and it's ridiculous it's stuck it's stuck his look is kind of grotesque and you know it it makes you uh stop scrolling and i guess half of social media now is just that all right so i mean to me that's a red flag like yeah like this is like, well, I feel like I need a little bit more vegetables in my diet. You're not going to go to that guy. So that, to me, is the number one red flag is if that trainer, if he or she or they has branded themselves based around some sort of dogmatic approach to training or nutrition, I would say it's a red flag and be very, very cautious. Again, it does not mean that you shouldn't hire them. It doesn't mean that they don't know what they're talking about. Absolutely not. It doesn't even

mean that what they're talking about is bad. It could be very, very good. But understand that in doing that, they've painted themselves into a corner and cannot possibly build a full mental model of the different ways that fitness and lifestyle and nutrition can be a part of your life. And I think it's pretty important when coaching people to understand that there's different ways for different people. Yeah. Yeah. Great point. And I was just going to add that the same tip would apply to exercise as well. If somebody is saying that one way of training, this is the one way, and it could be a certain type of programming, or it could be a high-intensity interval. Everything has to be a high-intensity interval or some derivative of that or so forth. Yeah. I mean, there's tons of examples of it.

Yeah. And there's pressure to do it. It's interesting because… Marketing. A lot of it is marketing. A lot of it is marketing. A lot of it is marketing. And you see lots of examples of it. And then oftentimes when you go deeper into that person, you realize that that's a lot

more depth. One example, I think, I don't know the guy, but I've seen a few of his things, the knees over toes guy. Yeah, a buddy of mine. Oh, is he? Okay, cool. Yeah. And I mean, the name and everything

you're just like oh what is this shit like more of this like what but then but then i mean you go deeper and you realize there's more depth to it and it's you know there's a lot of intelligent training and but on instagram is studs that's how you get attention and then you can decide whether to go deep or not so again it's just a good example of like it doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't something there that could be really beneficial for you it's just well that's the nature of a red flag right yeah it just means that like slow down look deeper yeah um and and we're talking about likelihoods here. And I would absolutely agree that the likelihood of that person not being a good fit goes up when you see a very rigid approach to, I think, anything related to eating, exercising, living.

Totally. Last question for you. I know you got to run. And that is just when should people consider quitting and moving on, finding somebody else? With their coach? Yeah. Ooh, I don't think I've been asked that question before. I don't really know. Give me a minute to think I've been asked that question before. I don't really know.

Give me, give me a minute to think about it. I want to hear your answer. Yeah. I mean, I wanted to pose it to you because people have asked me that. I know also people, they find it uncomfortable, right? So when they start working with somebody, they, they, they then, they, I've seen many people, I think, work too long, stick with somebody for too long. Like it was clear at some point that it just was not the right fit and they just kept going. with the obvious. If somebody, if they don't know even the fundamentals, then the chances are they're going to have a hard time helping you get to where you want to be. So a lot of people

who are looking for a coach, especially these days, it's so easy to educate yourself online. So if a trainer or a coach didn't know what energy balance is, and they're giving diet advice, they're saying, hey, I'll make you a nutrition plan, and they couldn't explain to you what energy balance is, or they couldn't explain to you the difference between protein, carbs, and fat, and how your body uses those different macronutrients, it's, it's, uh, I would say that that is probably, well, certainly I would say you probably shouldn't get a nutrition plan from that person. If you are trying to significantly improve your body composition, um, because that's, that's, that's pretty fundamental, right. To being able to at least you have to, you don't, you don't have to count calories. Of course, as people know that

you don't have to track everything you eat, but you do need to understand what a calorie deficit is and how to produce one. So that could be an example. There are many examples of just bad advice that, that, I mean, I don't, I don't know how to, I mean, I understand the principle of a calorie deficit, but I couldn't tell you how to do macros or anything. I've just never been interested in mine. I've never coached nutrition. See, but you just't tell you how to do macros or anything. I've just never been an interest of mine. I've never coached nutrition. See, but you just said that you don't coach nutrition though. So you would be the type of trainer who would tell your client, hey, what I specialize in is this exercise programming.

Oh, I can program, man. I can build programs. But you would be okay saying that I'm not your guy for a nutrition plan. I could teach you a few things, but if you really want to dial in your calories and macros and get things adjusted i know you're a guy for that exactly i'm not that guy those that's what you would say um so so uh if though if a trainer were to not say that if they say oh yeah i got you no problem uh here's your nutrition plan and then you find out that they they they they don't know again even like you know nutrition 101 then

that issue yeah that's that's definitely a red flag right because now you have to wonder what else do they not know and if you're if you're that that client uh there's a lot of unknown unknowns. That's the problem, right? You don't know what you don't know, and you're hoping the expert knows. And now you have to wonder. And again, it comes down to likelihoods. What we're trying to do here, if we're a potential, if we're a client, is we're just trying to increase our chances of getting somebody who can help us get to our goal effectively and efficiently as much as we can. Right. And so that, that would be one obviously results. I think if what are your thoughts on if somebody is not seeing results in a certain timeframe, for example,

but you did make a good point earlier in this interview that if you're new, you can do pretty much anything and see results. So it's really hard to not get results. However, I'll add an asterisk and then give the mic back to you is fat loss. I don't wanna hijack the conversation. I get hate, I get comments every interview. I mean, I get, I get, I get hate. I get comments

every, every interview. I mean, some interviews, I swear I'm so good. Like I don't, I don't say much of anything. I just ask my questions and I just, I just acknowledge and ask the next question and I'll still get comments. Oh, you interrupt guests too much and you hijack conversation. But anyways, with fat loss in particular, right? That's something where you can get results quickly and just doing effective workouts is not enough. The question to me is what the client is after too. The majority of my clients for the eight years that I trained in person did not have major physicals. They were happy to look a little bit better, but they were largely health-related, functional-related. I mean, they wanted to feel sexier for sure, but it wasn't like I need to lose 30 pounds. And I actually think the majority of personal training clients

are not weight loss or muscle gain clients. They're not going to hold a trainer. They're not actually there for that. They may enter in and hire a trainer and say, I want to put on five pounds or 10 pounds muscle because their understanding going into the gym or wherever they're talking to the trainer is like, this is what I should be asking for. Like, if you don't know, if you go into a conversation with somebody who's an expert in that thing, everybody, myself included, kind of starts with what they know and says what they feel like they should say that's correct in that situation. And so it's the trainer's job to ask why. Why do you want to do that? Okay. What would that mean to you? Oh, do you remember a time when you felt that way? Oh,

was there anybody else there? Well, all of a sudden now, Susie, who told me she wanted to lose 10 pounds when she came into the gym, is now talking to me about her real goal, which is to feel the way that she felt when she wore a black dress on a cruise with her husband when he couldn't keep her hands off of her. she wants to fit into it. Well, who gives a shit what Susie weighs? Because you and I both know that she's going to fit into that dress, probably weighing the same amount, but with a bit different body composition, which is exactly what happened. Susie's a real person with her name changed. And so, I mean, that's not like when to fire a trainer or whatever it is, but I think it's important as a client to say, okay, well, like, what am I, what am I really after? And how can I make sure that the training worthy knows that?

What's a reasonable expectation of what it's going to take to achieve that, right? And then, because many people, they think they are, quote unquote, not making progress when they're actually doing quite well. They just have the wrong expectations, often because of social media, because of stuff they see on social media. It's, it's crazy to me. I mean, even my own, my own physique, I'll train so hard and I'll be like, oh, I'm not making any gains. And then I'll have like a little period where I'm like not training it a bit. And I wake up in the morning, I'm like, whoa, how'd that come from? That was pretty cool. Two, to me, times though, when you should immediately... I've got a few non-negotiables with anybody I work with and honesty and punctuality are the two. And so the minute that anybody... I believe that you should be 100% honest in all of your dealings every single day,

no matter what the situation is, no white lies, no nothing. And I try to do that. I catch myself doing white lies to, in my mind, protect other people. And I hate when I do that and I'll try to self-reflect on it. But the minute that anybody is dishonest in any way, cut ties immediately. There's just no question. I give all of my staff so much leniency, so much. But the minute that they are in any way, shape or form dishonest, it's an immediate fire. And it's only happened a few times. But honesty, number one. Punctuality, perhaps I'm a little bit far over the line on this one, but I think punctuality is one of the top three, one of the top important traits for people to have. For sure, successful people. Every successful person I know is punctual.

And maybe that's just my upbringing as a personal trainer. I mean, you just have to be punctual, like you have to be on time. But if you want other people to respect you and your time, you've got to be punctual. You've got to respect their time. It doesn't mean that stuff doesn't come up and you might be late, but you try to get ahead of it. You try to send a message ahead of time and say, hey, there's a chance I might be running late to this. I have something before I can't get out of. Hopefully, I'll be there in time. But I wanted to let you know in advance, if you'd like to reschedule for a time when I can be 100% or I'll be punctual. Like, get ahead of it that way if you can. And so, to me, if a trainer is not punctual and if a trainer is dishonest, cut ties immediately.

They are immediately red flags for the type of person that that person is. Great tips. Yeah. I mean, the dishonest, the, the honesty point, um, for me as a, as a, if I were thinking as a client, absolutely the punctuality, uh, I maybe, I mean, yeah, it would, it would really annoy me. It personally, it really would annoy me because I probably like you. Um, I, I, I try to spend my time carefully and I try not to waste time. Do what you say you're going to do. I'll tell you an example and then I got to go.

I was in Arizona for a month and a half in January and February because my parents are in Arizona for the winters and I wanted to be close to them. So we lived in Arizona for a bit. And I got together a group of local fitness pros in Phoenix and Scottsdale and stuff like that to go for a hike. Instead of bringing people together, we'd go for a bit. And I got together a group of local fitness pros in Phoenix and Scottsdale and stuff like that to go for a hike. Instead of bringing people together, we'd go for a meal. I was like, hey,

let's just go for a hike. So yeah, it was like 15, 20 of us. It was super fun. And there was one guy I didn't know, but I noticed on Twitter, he was from Scottsdale. So I shot him a message on Twitter. I was like, hey man, we're getting together. And I knew that he followed the PTDC and stuff like that. Like he followed my website. And so I sent him a message. Okay, man, we're getting together, you know, for a hike on this day. If you're free, would love for you to join us. You know, it's just a bunch of local fitness people getting together. He's like, yeah, man, that sounds awesome. I was like, cool. What's your number? I'll send you a, you know, I'll put you on, I had a text message last night. I'll send you a text. And I, and he sent me his phone number and I sent him a text message last night. I'll send you a text. And he sent me his phone number.

And I sent him a text, never heard from him. And then the day of the hike, and the text, not everybody got back. I didn't ask people to get back. In fact, I said, don't respond to this mass text. If you need anything, respond to me personally. Just show up, I'll see you there. And the day of, he posts his schedule. He's like, oh, it's going to be a busy day.

And right in the time when we were supposed to go hiking is his ice bath. And I was just like, you have just shown me that I want nothing to do with you for the rest of your life. And I even sent him a message. I responded to it and I was like, so I guess you're not coming from the hike. I don't give a message. I responded to it and I was like, so I guess you're not coming from the hike. I don't give a shit. Tell me no. Or don't respond.

But if you say you're going to do something, people make plans with you in mind. I mean, I didn't make plans. I was looking forward to meeting him. was looking forward to meeting him. But if I ever come across this person again, I'll be cordial, but I will never go out of my way to serve this person in the future. Because to me, it's such a great disrespect to say that you're going to do something to somebody and then just ignore it. I think it just highlights the importance of manners. It really does.

And obviously, he would say, oh, it's not a big deal. You know, he wouldn't consider things like that a big deal. Maybe even if people do that to him, he doesn't care. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what it is. The point that I'm making, though, is that different people perceive things differently, and manners are extremely important. And this point of punctuality, I think, is that's manners 101. That's manners 101.

And if in this point of doing what you say you're going to do, that is manners 101. And that's also being a dependable person. Or say no. I have so much respect for people who say no to me. Yeah, yeah. I mean, hey, if he would have just said no, then he is doing what he says, right? He said that he's not going to go and he doesn't go. Totally fine. And yeah, so I totally agree that.

And then this other point also just speaks to just reliability, dependability, and in work, that to me, just as honesty, I totally agree with you. That's a non-negotiable. in work that to me, just as honesty, I totally agree with you. That's a non-negotiable. This point of doing what you say you are going to do is also a non-negotiable for me. I would, would never work closely with somebody who is not. I mean, you've said no to me a few times, sent you a message, say, Hey, we're doing this thing. Do you want to join up? And you said, no, man, that's not something that is important to me right now, but I wish you the best. Cool, dude. Let's talk again soon. It's fine. I said no to you about, I think you asked me to promote Legion 2. And I was just like,

I'm just not doing that kind of thing right now. It's fine. I'm not going to say yes and then never send out the link because i know that if i say i'm gonna promote it your team will probably put together some materials for me and i'm i'm not gonna use them so disrespectful yep yeah it's i know you gotta go but last last little little uh little peeve that is is similar to this i'm sure you've experienced this where people will introduce you to somebody oh you should talk to this. I'm sure you've experienced this where people will introduce you to somebody, oh, you should talk to this person, you should do an interview with this person. And then in the email thread, they're like, oh, yeah, sounds great. Hey, Mike, just reach out to

me. I'd love to do it. Reach out to them, never hear back. On principle, follow up like three times just to be annoying and get no response every time. I love it. It's happened quite a few times in certain people's networks. The problem there was with the person making the introduction, though. No, I know. I know. It's the wrong way to do it.

It's the wrong way to do it. Like what I'll do. I was introduced to somebody. I've also gotten it, though, doing it the right way, where they actually asked the person. And so the reason why the person said yes to their proposition to be introduced to me is they wanted to maintain maximally good relations with our mutual friends, so to speak. I think that's bullshit, though. I totally agree. It's total bullshit. I've said to friends of mine, like, I'm not interested in being introduced to anybody like that.

But I make it a point now to go back to the mutual friend i go back to the mutual friend when that happens and just tell them hey by the way that person totally flaked out and like really because he sounded so excited when he talked to me and i'm like yeah he's just he's just trying to keep you buttered up because he probably wants something from you at some point but just know that that person is full of shit just know that fuck that that's tell me tell me how you really think about that yeah that's it's just that's just pathetic but anyway i know you got to go um why don't we just wrap up quickly where people can find you and your work um and and you already mentioned the software so they you know quick coach.fit. Yeah.

Other than that, Instagram is the best place right now. It's at it's coach Goodman on Instagram. Um, and then quick coach.fit is, is the software. If you're interested in that. Cool. Thank you, brother. You got it buddy. Well, I hope you liked this episode.

I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for

new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.