The Uneducated PT Podcast - 🎙️ Ep. 130 – Coaching, Change, and the Stories That Shape Us — with Lewis Potts

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

Description:In this episode, I’m joined by the one and only Lewis Potts — a coach, mentor, and thinker who’s played a huge role in my own growth over the past three years, both professionally and personally. Lewis has lived multiple lives in one — from American football player to party animal, to going through a massive fat loss transformation, open-heart surgery, and building a thriving coaching business that now helps coaches and clients around the world transform their lives. We dive deep into the psychology of change, behaviour, and what it really takes to help people grow — not just on the surface, but at their core. Here’s what we explore:Why so many coaches struggle to get results for their clients — and what’s actually missing.How to help people care enough to change.The hidden stories we tell ourselves — and Lewis’s powerful question: “What is this story doing for you?”The difference between understanding change and actually doing it.How to spot when a coach is leading from ego instead of empathy.Why some people stay stuck for years while others reinvent themselves multiple times in a decade.The role of emotion, resistance, and discomfort in real transformation.The truth about motivation, ownership, and lasting change.Plus, Lewis’s thoughts on the growing role of AI in coaching — and how it might shape the future of personal development.If you’re a coach, leader, or anyone who helps others grow, this episode is packed with insights, uncomfortable truths, and practical wisdom you can apply right away. 🎧 Tune in, take notes, and get a dose of that Lewis Potts magic.

Hello and welcome to the uneducated PT podcast with me, your host, Carlo Rourke. The goal of this podcast is to bring on interest and knowledgeable people from all walks of life, learn a little something from each conversation and for you, the listener, just learn something from each episode. So don't forget to subscribe to the channel, press the box below, show some support, and I'll see you on the next episode. All right, hello and welcome back to the uneducated PT podcast with me, your host, Carlo Rourke. Today we have a very handsome guest on, but he's also very wise as well.

Lewis, you've helped hundreds of coaches become better. at what they do what's the first thing you look for in someone who wants to help change others for the better i always think you may you may have heard this before you may have spoke about this before i do think especially in this day and age as things are evolving uh with the the landscape of the industry as it is these days i think it starts with the person i think it's it needs to start with the coach so as cliche as it is as cheesy as it is i'm always talking to people about why did you get into this? Like, what is, what's the driving force for you as an individual?

Like, what is your backstory? I think, well, I say I think I know the people that I see that have the deepest roots to this, the biggest passion for why they want to do this, they're the ones that, again, particularly as things are pretty rocky at the minute, they're the ones that are, for sure, have seen success in the past, but for sure are almost like, able to to steady the ship right now. So yeah, for me, it's before we start talking about your approach to coaching, your approach to communication, what the outcomes are that your clients are looking for, before we even start talking about any of that, and it's why I do it inside the amplifier as well.

I start with the coach first. What are your values? What are your beliefs? What experiences have shaped you? Why do you do this? I think for me, it all, it doesn't have to come from there, but I do see a direct correlation between the people that have that, are the people that are able to really, really make something of this. I think anyway. From dealing with plenty of coaches and probably dealing with their limiting beliefs and their insecurities and stuff like that, do you think that you can still be a working project and coach other people? Or do you think that you have to be fully confident in what you're doing and who you are? Or is there a grey area in between? If you show me somebody that claims to be the finished project, I'm going to show you

a liar. Like, I do not think, I don't think there's, I know there's no such thing as a finished project. I think this is an interesting topic at the minute because I am a massive, massive believer of leadership, of being a leader, of doing everything you can to work on yourself as the person, the leader and the coach, the business owner as well, I guess the fourth heart. So I do think you have to lead by example, but that doesn't mean that you have to be perfect. And I do also think that puts a lot of coaches off. Maybe, again, the limiting beliefs think, who am I to tell people this?

Who am I to help people with that? I heard a, and I'm not going to be able to tell you where I heard this, and it's only recently, and I really wish I could. But I heard, oh, actually, it was Mike Samuels. So Mike Samuel's the copywriter, fucking genius. He was talking, I saw him deliver a talk where he was talking about the different types of things that you could write emails about, right?

That's his area. And he said this quote, and I wrote it down straight. away and I don't know if it's his quote or somebody else but he said work from scars not open wounds that is very good amazing in it so so I do talk to coaches I've got coaches inside the amphire that are going through things right now and I'm like maybe don't be talking about this just yet that doesn't mean don't talk about it to your friends to your family to any potentially help that you get in for sure talk about things but not to your audience not to the people that you are helping, not to followers, not in content, until you are in a place

where you're like, right, okay, I went through this. Here's how I dealt with it. I think that's fine. I'm going through this and I've got no fucking idea what I'm doing is not fine, in my opinion. And I do think that's one of the things that not, I'm not going to say a lot of the fitness industry, but I do see a lot of coaches that I'm like, you've not figured your shit out yet. Like yeah. Here's a question. There's two things I wanted to ask you off the

back of that. One was on leadership but I suppose I'll go on to the open wounds versus scars thing. I suppose the scars thing reflects experience. Like you went through this thing and now you have the ability to coach

other people through that thing. Do you think that people who are coaching clients, whatever that domain is that they have to have lived experience of the thing. And I'm trying to think of kind of examples maybe of like maybe a man coaching females about female physiology or or trying to think of another one. Maybe like someone who is coaching someone to become better at a sport, but they've never

played that sport. So do you think you have to have the actual lived experience of the thing to coach it? Or do you think you can get by by being really knowledgeable? and, you know, knowing what you're doing. I don't think you need it. I think it gives you an unfair advantage if you have it. Yeah. So when we talk about coaching, right,

and there's so many people that use the so-and-so's football, professional football, professional football, you say, bolt, sprint, coach that, like, whatever, cool, right, I get that. When we look at coaching at its core, which is the ability to empower people to think and act for themselves, there's no need to actually have lived experience in anything. At that point, we're talking about a... So coaching at its core actually comes from the corporate world.

It doesn't come from the sporting background. People think it comes from... People think automatically sports coach. No. Coaching is a method, a form of leadership and development. It came from corporate. It's a question-led, conversation-led way of developing people. So when I'm talking about coaching, whether it's online, whether I'm running, now on the YouTube that's just launched, that's the side of coaching that I'm talking about.

I'm not talking about bodybuilding coach adjusts carbs by 25 grams. I'm talking about the actual me to you, dialogue, conversation, back and forth, asking questions. So do I think that coaches need to have lived experience? No. But I think what it gives them is an added stream. to the bow, which is the empathy, the relate ability, the ability to say, the difference between coaching and mentoring, coaching is the ability to ask questions. Mentoring is the ability to go, here's what worked for me. Right. So if you have both of those things, not all, here's a bit of a

mad one for you, not all coaches have lived experience. So not all coaches can say to their clients, this is what worked for me. So if you can do both of those things, this is, uh, what, do you think you should do what solutions are you most likely to stick to okay can i offer some advice here's what work for me it then starts to play out and give people options to actually think about okay well i could do this i could do this i could do this versus just being told what to do and having to stick to that thing by the drill instructor slash coach um leadership you touched on leadership there and i just wanted to kind of ask you maybe about because obviously people will have different personalities, different traits, you know, that make them good at what they do

in terms of coaching. So what does leadership look like for someone who wants to run a coaching business and provide a proper service for people? So it very much depends. Again, leadership again, you start to unpack leadership. A lot of people these days, particularly in, I'm not going to say the fitness industry, but like the sports industry, you think of the captain of the team that maybe the loudest person in the room for me it's not that again if you even if you were to look at like autocratic laissez-faire somebody that takes a little bit more of a step back in their style of leadership there are so many different more than i could name off the top of my head approaches to leadership you can have a collaborative leader who gets everybody involved in the

process you can have somebody that is a bit of a i guess a dictator somebody that is a fast to make decisions. We're doing things this way. The benefit is you make progress a little bit quicker. The downside is maybe it's not well thought through. Maybe there are mistakes. So I think not as a way to not answer your question, it very much depends again on the individual. Like if you are not the loudest person in the room, if you are not somebody like, I guess me or you, if you are not somebody that is comfortable standing up and basically taking the ball by the horns, you don't have to be. So the worst thing you could do in my opinion at that point is try and force yourself to be that person.

Like, just figure out what your style is. Are you somebody that takes everybody's opinion into account and then makes a decision from there? Do you get everybody involved in the decision? Like, it doesn't really matter. But I think coming back to this idea of leadership, one thing that I refuse to budge on, especially these days, is the whole idea of leading by example. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to.

be the example everybody using the fitness industry is do you need to be fucking shredded if you are coaching people for fat loss no I don't believe that do you need to have your shit together when it comes to your food and your training and your habits and your lifestyle yeah I think you do is your body your business card no to an extent but the market decides right the market decides so I'm not for one second saying you whether you are transformation coach relationship with food coach performance coach whatever i'm not saying that you need to be the elite in all of those things 24 7 365 but you do need to be further ahead than your clients in the area that you are helping them

with if your relationship with food coach you better believe or you would like to think that your relationship with food is pretty fucking solid it's not me and you both know from that's the area that we i guess we both kind of specialized in when i was coached in when i was coached anyway you don't it's never going to be 100% all of the time you will go through times where things life affects it certain situations personal factors have so much of an influence on your relationship with food it's not saying that you always need to be perfect because that raises the bar too high for people makes it unachievable for people to be that but for the most part you do again if you are coaching fat loss you should probably have some sort of

approach to food approach to training that at least enables you to sit at a healthy comfortable whatever that is weight rather than spending half of the year cutting for a shoot and then half of the year eating like a farm animal you're probably not going to be the best person to teach people about fat loss of maintenance i suppose online you see that art you see that you just see the extreme views of both sides when they do argue about that body is your business card versus you know, it's, it's not about how you look. And it's like, like you said, it's like the market dictates that. And I suppose when you come back to leadership, it's like, okay, well, what is going to inspire me?

You know, who's going to, who demands respect? And like, another thing even as you said that, I was thinking like, yeah, you're right. It doesn't have to be the loudest person in the room. Like sometimes I remember being in changing rooms after football games. And it's like someone might not be as loud and abrupt as someone else. but when he does say something, everyone stops and listens. And it's like that, you've, you've commanded the whole dressing room. You've demanded respect off the whole dress room without really having to say much.

Because when you do, when you do say something, like it hits home for people. You've just said the word there and I'd not even thought about it. I think a lot of it does come down to respect. Yeah. Whether that is talking about football or me, American football, right? Whether that is respect because you are capable, whether it comes from competence or whether it comes from that you are maybe it's not a skill related thing maybe you are the person to step up when shit it's the fan yeah like again way back when in a different life

a captain every american football team i ever played for like i've always been in these positions of leadership i was for sure the first person to go steaming in if hands were getting thrown like i was for sure not the person that was backing away from it i was quick to make decisions I was, again, yes, I was the loudest person in the room, but I think a lot of it did come down to respect. Like, particularly with sports teams are a great example, right? Because you get put into that position of leadership by a coach, a manager, something like that.

You then sink or swim. Yeah, yeah. And then the dynamic of the whole team also creates that as well, whether it's like you have a captain who nobody respects and then it doesn't really work out well for that team environment. versus, you know, yeah, I've, I'm thinking back to that. I've never been in a,

I've never been in a sporting situation where somebody's been putting, so in American football, you have four captains on a team, you don't just have one, obviously, you have different phases of the ball. So maybe it's more likely to happen in a sport like football

where you have a captain, but you get a good mix normally in American football, like with their being four captains, but I've never been in a situation where somebody has been put in a position of power, somebody's been giving captaincy that it wasn't obvious that they were going to get it, right? But I would imagine that is the case.

I can't imagine being on a football team, a rugby team where you have one captain and the person that has made the captain, everyone's like, what? Yeah, yeah. Like, where did that come from? Like, yeah, but I can imagine that as a very, well, a fucking very negative effect on team morale spirit. But you're absolutely right as well. It's usually obvious before it.

becomes the captain or gets you know gets the title of captain he probably already has them them traits and that that made him a captain even before he was a captain so it was only an inevitable step yeah yeah i would say so in american football the way that it's always been done in the teams that i've gone is captains get announced maybe two weeks before the season but you've already been training preseason for maybe three months at that point so they've had plenty of time to to see obviously um most captains are maybe veterans or have been around a little bit longer, so people might hold a captaincy for three or seasons, four seasons, five seasons.

But yeah, I'm trying to think, I'm trying to, I'm trying to think, are there any ways that we could pull this to leadership for online coaches, but not really. Yeah, well, pull them back from leadership and then onto actual online coaches and how they're going to perform in terms of the service that they're providing. What have you found coaches are most insecure about when working with them, and having talks with them. So there are a couple of things, right?

I think a big one is there's a clear divide in there's people that are like really on one end of the spectrum or really on the other end of the spectrum and I think both sides could do with learning from each other a little bit more. Some people are ridiculously have zero self-belief in their own coaching skills in their own actual ability to get people a result. But then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got people that think they are God's gift to coaching and maybe get one result out of every 10 clients

with the client that's an absolute robot and would have got a result anywhere. And I think it'd be a lot of what I speak about and, I mean, you've been to the events and stuff like that. I do think that everybody should spend a lot more time living in the messy middle. in the grey area, in the nuance. But again, it doesn't translate to social media, right?

But I think that actually, whether it's people that aren't as good as coaches as they think they are learning from people that are better coaches than they think they are, or whether it's transformation coaches learning from relationship with food coaches, I think everybody actually should just move closer to this middle area of whatever range, whatever spectrum they're on, and there's stuff to be learned everywhere. but I think the biggest insecurity I see in people is either lack of confidence in their own coaching skill or the biggest insecurity would be an insecurity

that they're not aware of, it's, well, I don't know, what's a good way to put it, ignorance. Yeah, yeah, I think that makes sense because it's like the loudest people on social media and are probably doing well in terms of business, maybe at the forefront anyway, is they're not worried about their flaws. where, as I know, loads of coaches who are really well educated, you know, really know their stuff, you know, backed in evidence, and yet they're terrible at marketing themselves because they're so insecure that they might be saying something wrong when they go to market themselves.

100%. And again, it's for both sides of them. You've got the coaches that are convinced that they know everything that they need to know and are now just investing in business and sales and marketing and stuff. It's like, cool, right. I have conversations with both sides of this camp, literally on a daily basis. And I have the coaches that tell you. me, oh, my retention is sound. Oh, my coaching sound. Oh, like, that's all good. I just need more leads. I need more clients. And I'll look at the social media and I'll go, where's your results? Like, you tell me that everything's sound, but what does the data say? And why can't I see it? And that's not me saying that everybody needs. When I talk about a result, I mean a result for your specific client with your specific approach to coaching. Whether that is a before and after, I guess is one end of the, one end of the spectrum, or whether it is a video testimonial from somebody saying about how you've really changed the outlook on food, emotional regulation,

etc. I'm not just talking about before and afters, but we have the coaches that claim that the best coach in the world have zero social proof on the page. But then you have the coaches that are better than they think they are. They also have limited social proof, but that's for a different reason. It's because they're not able to attract the clients in the first place because of the lack of confidence. They're not as willing to put themselves out there. And like I said, I would love to be able to almost like, do you ever have a stretch armstrong as a kid? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I never had. I asked for one every single year for Christmas and I never got one. It's like therapy. I would love to be able to stretch out to one side and

stretch out to the other side and drag everybody to the middle like and just go, right. You need to work on your coaching skills a little bit more, but you can learn from them. You need to a little bit more confident you can learn from them and and and but again it's the messy middle the nuance the the gray area it's it's nobody yeah you know what do what do coaches get wrong about behavior change so let's say talking about the coaches who are trying to help their client get that result whether that's a relationship with food client or you know physical transformation or whatever whatever whatever degree that looks like what what are people what are coaches getting wrong about behavior change it's quite again i'm trying

I don't avoid like sweeping statements, but I know our, I know our podcast work. A lot of coaches still believe, and again, this is not opinion plucked out my ass just based on conversations that I have with people. I think a lot of coaches still believe that their clients are, did you ever have in school, maybe it wasn't like it's an island, did you ever have that little like round robot and you would program it with like forward, left, forward, forward and it would like work its way around? No, but I know what you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know what it's called, Little Rumba. Like, it's what the model, Hoover's are modelled on these days, right? The thing that I see most people struggling with is the coaches that program their clients, whether that is nutrition, training, habits, checkings, steps,

everything that comes along with it, believe that they should just go and do that thing. So the thing, the behavior change for me, first and foremost, it takes a lot longer than you think it's going to take. Yeah. And actually, really get into the fucking weeds when the clients aren't making progress you really start to uncover

the things that you need to uncover to encourage long-term behaviour change and identity change when it's not working and I still see a lot of people and I have a lot of conversations with coaches and they're like oh yeah we'll get into the how many people I always ask about percentages there's a like out of 10 people how many would you say that get a result like because there's A little bit of research, it's not specific to health and fitness coaching, but I think I've probably shared it with you before. The ICF, who are the International Coaching Federation, like the big fucking, the big dogs in coaching, they are, they oversee most, pretty much all types of coaching from, yes, some health and fitness coaches, business coaches, life coaches, relationship,

like just coaching in general, the way that I talk about it, they found that the KPI for percentage of people that should get a result from coaching is 82% right so 82% of people that 18% allows for the people that maybe it's not the right time for because that like the people that sign up and kind of like the non-starters people that circumstances change maybe it's not the right fit whatever so no we can't say that applies specifically to health and fitness I probably would I would I would assume I would bet that it's maybe lower than that but even if we say 70% right if you were to say right okay if you've had a hundred clients your marker of success should be 70 of those clients should have got the result that they signed up for again

that that number is plucked out my ass but the 82% is what the ICF found when you start to talk data like this which I know shuts a lot of coaches off that's where they can start to see okay maybe I do need to spend more time on behavior change maybe I do need to spend less time telling my clients what to do and more time motivating my clients because again that's a topic that the fitness industry I can see you writing down there I'm like here we go we're diving into that one that's a topic that this whole you don't need motivation need discipline quite literally bollocks so so if people had the data of how many out of the clients that I've worked with as a percentage get that result if it's 70

percent great cool how can you increase it to 75 percent i would imagine it's lower than 70 percent for most coaches i would honestly say thinking back to my business and i you know me i will say in my chest i'm a really really good coach i've done i've done the fucking work i've like i know more than most about coaching not about nutrition and training just before anybody comes after me but more about behavior change connecting with people getting them to a solution which is which like you can have all the knowledge in the world terms of nutrition or trying to doesn't mean shift for the general pop client. But for sure, yeah, absolutely, for sure.

I think if you've got just enough, yeah, sound, crack on, now start learning about people and behaviors and, like, how people work. But going back to that, I don't think mine would have been 70%. No. And that's me being completely honest. Yeah, I wouldn't think mine would be 70% at all. Like now I've changed my, the results that I get clients

have completely changed from have they lost weight or have they improved the relationship for? or the quality of life it's more like are they surrounded with other people and enjoying themselves and feel like they're part of a community so i would say my percentage of that has drastically gone up but i would say as a as a as someone trying to help people to lose away you like it's it's it is difficult yeah yeah for sure yeah that's a really good point so i know what mine is with the amplifier so the stats that we're talking about as specific to the result that you promise people mine currently and this is measured on how many people have either done a testimonial filled in a

filled in a trust pilot. Mine's 94% right now with the amplifier. So I know what that data is, but I've found all this, all this stuff out since starting the amplifier, not when I had body and brain, not when I was coaching people on a one-to-one basis. But going back to the point, it's what are people getting wrong with behaviour change is a multitude of things. I think the first thing people need to do is actually sit and look at the stats, look at the data and see where they're at. Because, I mean, the YouTube video that I posted yesterday about retention if you three different coaches could come and ask me how to add one month to the retention well unless i see the current date or i don't know unless i'm like okay

are you is your average retention two months six months or 12 months because what i would tell you to do at that point would differ based on your current situation going back to coaches and behaviour change well what's the current layer of the land i can't tell you what you're getting wrong until I know what it is that you're already doing because again from the surface level of coaching of here's your meal plan here's your training plan let's do a checking next week there's a lot that we could talk about but if you're already tailoring things involving people in the decision making process holding people accountable to the things that they say they're going to do rather than the things that you tell them they should be doing then actually the thing that you are

missing if we're talking about behaviour changes a wider topic, it might be something really, I say really small, don't get offended when I say really small, but it might simply be introducing community. Or it might simply be how can we celebrate mastery more? If we're talking about so many different

theories behind behaviour changes, but if we look at self-determination theory, we know that acceptance or relatedness being part of something, we know that mastery and we know that autonomy are three things that people need, well, if you're already doing a good job, the thing that you're missing might be the community

or we just need to celebrate the mastery side of things more. Can you give me an example? For the coaches who are listening, who might be kind of new to the industry and want to understand this a little bit more, tell me, dig into a little bit more about that and about autonomy and stuff like that and why that matters. So autonomy, essentially, autonomy agency,

I don't think they're interchangeable. I use them interchangeably. They've probably got their own definitions, maybe some sort of differences is the idea that people want to be able to think and act for themselves is that we are all adult being, adult human beings and that we all want responsibility and we all like the ability to make the decisions for ourselves.

We know using things like fMRI, when we look at the neuroscience side of things and coaching and how that starts to intertwine, we know that the number one cause of stress in all living creatures, not just humans, all living creatures is the removal of choice. It's the removal of freedom, it's the removal of option. Isn't that funny because it's very contradiction to what people say they want when they come in.

Like I remember from my day... Tell me what to do. Just tell me what to do. I, you know, and you're like, yeah, oh, well... And I do think, depending on the person, short term, that is... I think when you're working with somebody, if you get somebody that comes to you and goes, I just want to be told what to do and I need to see fast progress. Yeah, for me to buy in, I'm like, sick, I will slave driver you until week two. Yeah. And then we'll start to, like, loosen the reins and bring in, but, but so, so I think

that's, comes down to knowing the person and, and, and listening to what they're saying to you and being able to react to that. But yeah, number one causes stress, removal of freedom, removal of choice, right? It's, and there's all sorts of studies done on it, literally where they'll put, uh, animals in cages and, and remove and make the cages smaller. and over time, the removal of choice is the number one cause of stress. So we combine those two things, right, of, okay, well, let's flip that on its head. Let's be really obvious.

How do we increase? How do we decrease stress, choice, option, freedom? We all, all us, me and you and everybody listening to this, were just big fucking kids. We're just big kids. Remember you used to be told to go to bed when you were a kid? You're like, no, I'm not going to bed. Five minutes later, you're tired and like, I'm going to bed now because it's my idea. yeah mate i've got i've got mates that will ask me for advice on things i'll give them the advice

they won't do it two weeks later i've had this really good idea it's the idea that people take people are more likely to adhere to things that they can take ownership for yeah so what does that look like for a coach talking to a client do you think so you could tell sally it is always sally i don't know why it's always sally you could tell sally sally you could tell sally you need to do 10,000 steps this week and be completely justified in what you're telling it to do it's not out there you're not telling to do 50,000 steps a day it's within the realms of normality it will help if you can have a conversation where sally comes up to her own conclusion that she needs to do 10,000 steps a day the research shows this as well the research

supports this Sally's three times more likely to stick to the thing that she came up with herself even if it's the same outcome so i know you're a man of great questions so how would a coach be able to deliver that to make sally think that she came up with that idea by herself without you saying sally you need to do 10,000 steps yeah so it's not even making a think that she came up with it it's asking the question so she has the opportunity to come up with it so so rather than this is why i'm this is why i'm not a massive it's not that i'm not a massive fan but if we're talking about traditional online coaching in the checking process,

it is way less important than people think, in my opinion. Because you would be better off giving somebody two minute feedback and having a 10 minute phone call than a 15 minute feedback, loom, voice note, whatever the fuck you want to do, written feedback, because it's a conversation, it's dialogue. So it would start with something like,

Sally, let's have a look at your steps this week. How many steps did you do this week? Oh, well, yeah, okay, 7,000. Okay, cool. And is that aligned with your goals? Is that not aligned with your goals? Is it taking you? you're closer to where you be, further away from where you want to be.

Yeah, actually a little bit further away from where you want to be. Okay, cool. So, in your opinion, then, knowing what your life looks like, what's a realistic increase? How many more could you do? Oh, well, maybe I could do like 8,000 steps this week. Sick, sound, go, do that. Hold her accountable to what she said she's going to do. Yeah, great idea, Sally.

She's better, yeah, literally. But she's better off doing 8,000 steps seven days a week, than you tell her to do 10,000, her doing it Monday, hating it Tuesday and then doing 5,000 Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Yeah, and then the coach comes back to you and is like, oh, my client isn't checking in and they're not doing what they're told, you know, they have, like, they're the worst client than the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's why, again, going back to this idea of options, too many options can be bad. Too many options can give people, paralysis, yeah, decision fatigue. But if I'm talking to somebody, I'm like, right, okay, the best case scenario for me is if you can get your client, you need to guide them, like obviously you still have a part to playing it. And that's why I think a lot of coaches don't like this necessarily because they think that if I'm, if I stop pulling the strings and I stop giving all the information, I remove my value.

And I'm like, no, your values just in the wrong, fucking, like, wrong area. that's not where your value is your value is the the communication the connection keeping people accountable to what they've said they're going to do that's that's where the coach's value comes in so if people if i'm looking for a i guess best case scenario with a client i'm like if you can guide that client to come up with three options for whatever it is let's say we're talking about the steps right let's say sally's agreed that she needs to do 8000 steps and then you can guide her to come up with three different ways she could actually achieve that. Option one might be getting a fucking walking pad and getting them done in the morning.

Again, just going with different ideas. Option two might be going for a walk on a lunch break and a walk straight after work. Option three might be something completely different. Then getting it to consider those three options. Right. What are the positives and negatives of each? Well, the positives of the walking pad are that I get them all done first thing in the morning. The negatives are I'm going to be fucking knackered because I've got to get up at five before work.

to do that. The positives of going for a walk on my lunch break and a walk at the end of work is it's spread out through the day. I get more sleep in the morning. The negatives are, well, I get less time to eat my lunch. And if it's raining, I don't want to go outside on my lunch break at work and blah, blah, blah. And then third option, same thing. Like, okay, cool. Then asking the simple question of which of those three options, considering everything that we've spoke about, the positives and negatives, which of those three options are you most likely to stick two on a daily basis. Actually, I think the walking pad sounds like the most realistic option.

Cool. Let's go with that. Yeah, good idea, Sally. You're going to be a little bit tired in the morning, but you're going to have time to eat your lunch. You're not going to get wet at lunch. You're not going to have to go for a walk after work where maybe you want to go out with your mates or do whatever.

Cool. We're going to achieve the thing. The thing that I knew that you needed to do, you've come up with the idea of how many you're going to do and how you're going to achieve it. course Sally's now more likely to do the thing rather than drill sergeant going you need to do 10,000 steps a day full stop. Yeah. There's about five or six steps in between that and even asking the question like what are the negatives to this because a coach will just be like, well,

get 10,000 steps like they won't even consider what are the negatives or the impact to that person's life to attempt to do that. So consider this. This has been fucking with my head for a while and I've been thinking about this for a while. It's like we make decisions. We make choices on a day. basis you can't truly commit to a decision until you've considered all of the all of the um so i like how words are formed i like like like etymology and stuff like that and the word consequence has negative connotations but quite literally the word means in sequence right so you do something the consequence is this if you stick to your diet the consequences you lose weight yeah right in that in that sense obviously it's not a it's not a negative word but until

you've considered all of the options and all of the consequences negative and positive of those options, you can't really take ownership for the choice. Yeah. Yeah. Because you've not actually thought about, well, what would that one look like? Yeah. Yeah. It's the same as someone going into, into business. It's like, what are the, what are the sacrifices? Like, oh yeah, it sounds great. Oh, I'm going to have my own business. This is, I'm going to, you know, work from home. This is going to happen but have you considered what are you sacrificing what are you giving up yeah yeah exactly that you also touched on motivation there so you know um a client comes to me they're not filling out their check-informed they're not sticking to their diet they're not training you know i'm texting

them i'm like uh listen you're not getting the work done uh you don't need to be motivated to do the work you just need more disciplined elaborate on that I think, again, not making sweeping statements, a lot of the fitness industry like that narrative because they believe discipline for sure is something to be admired. Is motivation real? Yeah, 100%. Yeah, absolutely.

And there's more than enough research to show that it is. We also know from research that there is no action without a prior motivation. Motivation literally means that which causes us to act. So if you are laid on the sofa, watching TV in the evening, and your arm goes dead because you're laid in a funny position,

that's the motivation that causes you to move. If there wasn't a motivation or you didn't need the bathroom or a drink or you didn't want to get a snack or you didn't want to go to bed, you wouldn't move. You'd stay there forever. So everything,

action decision ever is always preceded by a motivation. So for people to say that either it doesn't exist or you don't need it quite literally do not understand how the human brain operates. Why do people say that then? Why do people say oh you don't need motivation? You just need discipline. Because the things that they are motivated to do and we can unpack the four of the many different factors that increasing intrinsic motivation in a sec and a second and don't worry, I'll drill this point home. People, particularly in the fitness industry, are motivated to do things and they confuse it for discipline

and discipline is a, it's an honourable trait to have, it's something to be admired, look how disciplined I am, I get it done anyway, and it gives them a pedestal to stand on. that makes sense that their virtue comes from the thing that they do but they actually I do it when it's hard yeah yeah yeah but secretly they actually enjoy it yeah so I stood um I did a I don't know if you've had her on the podcast you should I did a talk at mayor's event earlier this year right um mayor had she did a a Galantines event on Valentine's day it was fucking sick I was like me in a room full of 50 I was I've never been more intimidated to stand in front of a room

honestly but she asked me to come in and speak about motivation and a lot of these people had coaches a lot of them didn't and there was a lot of coaches in the room as well and I stood at front of the room and I said how many people have either heard this from somebody directly or seen online you don't need to be motivated you just need to be disciplined and every single hand in the room went up and that's not an exaggeration every single hand in the room went up everybody's heard that and then I said and keep your hand up if hearing that or seeing that made you feel good about yourself

and everybody put the hand down. Not a single person put the hand down. So the first thing that if there are any coaches listening to this that do say that sort of stuff, I'd have you consider that actually it's having the opposite effect that you think it is. It's making people feel worse. It's disempowering them

because you're telling them that they're not disciplined. They don't have discipline. And again, going back to the point I made, research shows us you need motivation it is a very real thing so again looking at motivation to go down I guess the research side of things there are many different I guess schools of thought when we talk about motivation the one that I um the one that I like to fall back on because it inspired a lot of a big body of research into motivation is I mentioned it earlier it's self-determination theory so self-determination theory um looks at motivation on a scale from essentially truly intrinsic all

the way out to external extrinsic motivation. It takes into account the things that contribute to increased intrinsic motivation, which is ideally when we're looking at things like autonomy, we want people to experience those things. So first and foremost, the largest contributing factor to increased intrinsic motivation is enjoyment of the thing. So do you enjoy doing the thing. Like, I, um, I really enjoy painting Warhammer. I never need motivation to go and sit and paint Warhammer. Yeah. I really like five guys. Yeah. I never need motivation to go and eat at five guys. Like it is, or the motivation is that you enjoy it. Yeah, well, yeah, that's what I mean. I enjoy going. So, so, so, so the first contributing factor is do you enjoy the thing?

The second one, we've mentioned that, I mentioned it earlier again, is mastery. Can you see you are getting better at the thing, is there cold, hard evidence that you are developing a skill? Is it make it, because that leads into things like self-belief, self-efficacy, the way that you view yourself. If you can see evidence that you are getting better at something, the effort that you've put into it suddenly starts to become worth it and you're more likely to do it. So if you are, if you enjoy the thing more, you're more likely to do it. If you're more likely to do it, you're more likely to get better at it. The second two, number three and four, and we'll kind of like cap it there because that it could go on,

but number three and four are, first and foremost, does the thing align with your values? So whatever it is that you're looking for motivation for, does it align with your values? So you getting up and starting to decide, you decide that you want to start going to the gym or you decide that you want to start attending school of fitness, well, actually, you might not enjoy exercise at the minute. and actually the idea that you can see evidence that you are getting better at whatever it is that you're doing in the sessions, that might be a fair way away for people. But if that person, using you as the example, really values human connection and really

values community, straight away, it's like tick, right, okay, that's going to start to increase their intrinsic motivation. And then the fourth one is, does it align with personally valued goals? So if you have a true goal, I don't mean like a surface level goal. If you have a true goal of, I always use the example of getting in shape because I normally talk to online coaches, but this could be applied to anything. So if you have a real goal of getting in shape and not just like a surface level, I kind of feel like I should lose a few pounds because diet culture. Or as in I really want to get in shape, you will start to have increased intrinsic motivation for the actions that will guide you there. So going back to some of the fitness industry

and this whole idea of motivation versus discipline, what they either don't know or don't want to admit is when they get up in the morning to go and do their fasted cardio on the stepper, maybe they don't enjoy it right then and there, but it aligns with who they want to be as a person. They have a goal of doing a photo shoot or stepping on step.

age. So in that second, on that fucking steper, maybe they don't feel, maybe they feel like they're using discipline or using willpower. But by default, if it's contributing to a goal that they want to achieve, there is some intrinsic motivation to do it. Yeah, there's motivation there even if they can't feel it because, again, they've mastered the idea of like they're able to go into the gym, they know what they're doing, their values are, they value health because they've done it for so long and they obviously have this this other goal

exactly that if you if you wake up in the morning and I mean it's happening for me at the minute the fucking the weather's the dark the weather's shit the mornings are dark you wake up your alarm goes off at 5.30 in the morning and you open your eyes and you go it happened to me this morning I really can't be fucked with the gym this morning

I really don't want to do it I really don't want to do it the moment you decide to do it you've done so because you've found some intrinsic motivation maybe a brain hasn't gone Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You're motivated, you motivated. Maybe it's not the motivation that people think is this big fucking fire in your belly and I can't wait to get it done.

But the moment you've made the decision to get up and go to the gym, you have done so because of intrinsic motivation, not discipline. So you don't have to feel motivated for motivation to actually be there. No, absolutely not. And I guess the final point I always like to bring up is going back to when I said to people, has that ever made you feel good and no like does hearing that you don't need motivation

you just need discipline it's the wording right you just need this as if it's like something simple is maybe maybe the coach only needs discipline if we're going to follow this train of thought

right let's let's put ourselves in the I'm so disciplined camp maybe they only need discipline for one session out of ten but Sally needs discipline for nine out of ten yeah so you go in i'm so disciplined i'm getting my faster cardio done today

sally's like i feel like that every day so you telling them they just need more discipline realistically logically speaking thinking about this i think that's going to actually encourage people to see long-term behavior change i think it's going to convince people to grit the teeth and willpower for long enough to see enough of a change where maybe it sticks. Nah. Where does identity come into this?

Does identity help with intrinsic motivation? And can you, can you realistically create an identity around, let's say, going to the gym unless you've done it for a certain amount of time? So you kind of have to do the thing first and then feel like you are a part of that. That essentially, the second one. So it does, it absolutely has, it absolutely interplays with motivation. It's this idea of like self-belief in anything, right? You have to do the thing first and get the evidence and do it.

You can't just think you're way to a new identity. Yeah. But you do have to have or you don't have to have. It helps if you've got a pretty clear idea of the type of person you want to be, who you want to be. first and foremost for me identity is again there's a lot of research in this and quite a lot of it actually conflicting but there's a lot of research into identity which shows you the one that maybe it's confirmation bias right the stuff that I like is the stuff that says identity is essentially I am someone that yeah you can't be you can't be I am somebody that looks after my

health or I am somebody that is there for people. You can't say that and then not do it because you can't lie to yourself. Yeah, like 2019 Lewis couldn't say I am someone who helps someone with behaviour change. No, I am, 2019 Lewis couldn't say a lot of things made. He was too busy dribbling over himself at a party. But that's a very good point. It's like 20, 2019 Lewis was still 150 kilos.

Yeah, yeah. 2019 Lewis couldn't say, I am somebody that looks after my body because I care about my future because at that point genuinely it was like, where's the next high, where's the next party? Yeah, yeah. So it couldn't say that, but it could say I am somebody that goes to the gym consistently because I was still training four days a week.

I was just eating and part in like a fucking lunatic. So for me, it's what sort of person do you want to be? What's in the gap? Like, if you want to be somebody that stops consuming traditional media and reading all the shit that's going wrong with the world

right now and wants to a place that with some self-development, some, I'm not saying everybody should start fucking rinsing through audible. But if you're, if you find yourself traditionally listening to toxic shit that's going on and you see yourself in the future of somebody that is actually more invested in their own personal development, that's, you identify the gap. This is the reality. This is where I want to be. Now let's change that small behavior. And again, coming back to behaviour change is it's just the compounding effect of hundreds and thousands of decisions. Today instead of scrolling on TikTok, this is such a bad example and I don't know why it came

to my head because I've never even, I've never, I've never, I don't have TikTok and I've never used Duolingo. Today instead of scrolling on TikTok for 20 minutes, I'm going to do 20 minutes on dualingo. That doesn't feel like behavior change. You do that for six months and you start to, I think you have streaks on dueling go, I don't know. You start to build up a streak and you start to see that mastery, all of a sudden you look back six months ago and fuck me. That now, in hindsight,

I've changed the behaviour. But at the time, it didn't feel like it. So there really needs to be awareness there of who you want to become. And then, like you said, where's the gap? Yeah. So self-awareness,

I knew you, obviously, were talking about behaviour change um and again i know that you've been through the amplifier for me self awareness is state literally stage one yeah of um you need to be aware of your current strengths you need to be aware of your current weaknesses your current blind spots without that and without acceptance of those things you'll never really commit to changing anything yeah if you can't actually see um one of mine at the minute that i'm working on and again i'm probably talking to the right person. I have got, I've got a, I've got a personal WhatsApp and a business WhatsApp. A business WhatsApp is sat on zero and read messages. My personal WhatsApp is sat on like 80.

And they're like friends and family. And so, so me displaying self-awareness is I know that I am nowhere near as good as I want to be at maintaining relationships with people outside of work. If I'm not willing and ready to actually own that, well, then I'll never do anything about it because I don't truly believe it's a problem. Yeah, yeah. So it has to be, it has to be something that like, like, oh, you're, you're actually craving more deeper relationships with the people in your life. So therefore, now you can decide what's in the gap, what do I change?

Well, that's one, that is one element of it, but it doesn't always have to be a want. It could just be as simple as. I don't want to be that guy. Like, I want to be the type of person that I know people can reach out to. People know they can reach out to. It's not necessarily, again, I'm not a phone second sitting and saying, I'm fine. I'm not craving. I've got a lot of really good relationships and connections, but I'm a type of person.

Well, I do it to you, right? We'll never talk and then I'll just ring you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, that's my preferred way of communicating people. It's not this constant, because I work on WhatsApp and my phone and stuff like that, not that I'm justifying it, but I'm not craving deeper connections, but is that not awareness as well to be. like oh well actually i don't need to change this thing because it's actually not uh well maybe

this is this is turning this is turning into therapy maybe that's why i'm struggling to change it because i would genuinely i would rather not speak to somebody for three weeks and then have a proper catch-up and like what's well do you think that's something that maybe coaches and clients fall into is like they're saying that they want to do something or the idea of doing something is um you know enticing but they're not doing it because realistically they don't want to do it and that's why the behaviour isn't changing i think that for sure is um that is something that i don't think it's a lot of it tends to come this is something that really i'm trying to figure out how to best start this sentence i'm just like tripping over my words here

you talk about weight loss right particularly from experience this is not me um tiring people with a brush but i would when i had my coaching business i'd have a lot of conversations particularly with women in the maybe 30 to 40 age bracket that we'd get into the conversation and it would be like, okay, cool, why have you reached out? What is it that's appealing to you? What do you want to work on fat loss?

It's almost like a straight, and this is going down the diet culture thing, right? Yeah. You start talking to people a little bit deeper and you're like, that's not what you want. Like that's not the thing, that maybe that's a symptom of or maybe that's the surface level thing,

but I've worked with many of people that have come in in, and I do say this, knowing that it might get some backlash in dire fucking need of losing fat. And I'm talking like 150, 160 kilos, threat to health type thing. And they've convinced themselves, society's convinced them for so many years that the thing that they want is fat loss

when actually they couldn't really give a fuck how much extra tissue they've got on the body. Like they're not actually that bothered, But the surface level answer is, yeah, I want fat loss. Well, no, it's not actually. I think of past clients of mine. I won't name any, but a client of mine 180 kilos told me he wanted fat loss. It didn't.

He wanted to make sure that his kid grew up with a dad. So I do think if you aren't hooked to the real thing, to quote unquote, the thing, whatever that is for you, I think it makes things way harder. Yeah, like that's why people will try. and fail a diet. That's why I tried and failed diets. I didn't get to 150 kilos overnight. Like, I got to 110 and then I went down to 100, then I went to 120, then I went like, it happened in stages. And every single time I yo-yoed and I lost weight, it was because I'd convinced myself I wanted fat loss. I didn't. The thing that lit the fire under the belly

was actually nothing to do with the heart situation. It was for the first time ever, I was at a festival, I had this way, I had a weird out-of-body experience fueled by God knows what. And for the first time ever, I had, was it ego death? Maybe, I don't know. I had this weird, I fucking hate everything that I've let myself become. Now I'm going to do something about it. It wasn't fat loss. If I woke up the morning after and been like,

I'm just going to try and lose some fat again. Yeah. Like, well, sound, remember the last 12 times that you failed? Yeah. So I don't, we're on a tangent here, aren't we? No, no, we're not because I think that, like, does that fall into, like, it sounds crude, but does that fall into let's say if someone's stating that they want to see change in their life

and whatever degree that looks like but it's not happening does that fall into well you without without this sounded terrible do you you you don't want the bad enough at this stage of your life right now because because you will fall into that kind of intrinsic motivation to change when you're ready to change you are right that does sound bad but yes yeah yeah it's So it does sound bad. It sounds very simplistic, but at the heart of it, like, when people are really ready to change, they, they tend to change. I do believe so, but I also don't believe that you need to have like, what is it, people call it these? You don't need to have your rock bottom moment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's a Robbins quote. I think it's a, or at least Tony Robbins is the first place that I heard it. It's this idea of when the pain of staying the same. outweighs the pain of change or whatever that the variation of that quote is yeah but there's there's two sides to that equation it's there's the carrot and the stick right yeah something's something to to drive me into action but i also need to know that there's something works working towards yeah and and we see that in research all the time right that the force again in

animals not not in human beings but the force that i think it was rat or mice would exert to get away from the threat of danger versus the force that they would exert to get towards reward to get away from danger it's incredibly higher and I'm not going to try and just I'm not going to try and fully unpack that study because I can't remember it off the top of my head but but there are multiple driving factors yeah absolutely but I think also is like I said you don't need to be in that situation to want to change you could be you could be somebody I guess like

inside the norm that you could still want to I know we keep using like fat loss and stuff as the example but I think it's the one that most people will be able to relate to is you could be somebody that is technically quote unquote

in a healthy body but still want to lose some weight. It doesn't mean that you need to have this big everything shit in my life what I think comes into play there is going back to that quote of when the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of change,

I think a lot of people these days, because of the media and what people are told, I think people are completely wrong on what they think the quote unquote pain of change is. Like, again, I will only ever speak from experience of the clients that I used to work with.

They were 130, 140 kilos plus they tried and failed dozens of times. So to them, the pain of change is really, ridiculously big. Yeah. It's, I'm going to have to change

everything about me. I've got to stop doing this. I hate that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to enjoy this. I'm not going to enjoy that. And it's because they've fallen prey to things like the fucking special K diet,

to Keito, to all of these things that have made them feel shit, to slimming world where they got demonized for gaining weight. Again, talking about my clients. So to those, their perceived version of what they're going to have to go through, is larger than it actually is.

Going back to this idea of behavior changes, thousands and thousands of tiny decisions stacked up compounded, actually one decision today, two decisions tomorrow, three decisions the day after will start to compound. And but in, but in a lot of people's heads, the pain that they're going to have to go to change, even though that in a lot of pain already is still larger.

Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes perfect. sense it's like yeah why would you want to go on a diet when you failed it multiple times and it's it seems like it's impossible and for you to fail it again like that's taking a hit to your ego every time that you fail that diet as well yeah 100% yeah so like why would why would why would would I want to try again if I'm going to fail and it's like it almost comes back to what you said in terms of motivation mastery like if you feel like you're getting better at something you're going to continue to do it but if I keep on failing that something so the last thing I'm going

to want to do is pursue it again exactly why would I want to keep putting myself out there when I just keep giving myself evidence that I'm shit. Yeah. Because that's how you feel. Like, oh, that's how I felt. Every time I failed, fucking hell, here we go again. Yeah.

Wait, it's piling back on again. There's a question that you used to say, and I absolutely love it, and I'm trying to powerphrase it, but it's kind of like, what is this story doing for you? And it's like when you're trying to create some sort of transformation,

but you're telling yourself that you can't change because of X, Y, and Z, or like you're kind of in this victim mentality of oh i can't achieve this i can't achieve the transformation or i can't you know run the business or i can't get this many people to work with me because of whatever it is um can you can you talk a little bit about that what is that what is the question that you yeah so i mean there's a few versions you're talking about um so this is when we're talking about limiting beliefs right yeah and there's a there's a series of questions like that i would get some or take somebody through ask somebody get them to fill

and fill out themselves it's actually one of one of my favorite talks i ever did was when i did that talk for you yeah like it's it's a lot of fun because it's quite i say it's quite deep i mean there's people crying left right and sunda it's such it's such an exposes you for who you are when you have to answer that question or like what you've been the narrative you've been telling yourself and it's like oh shit yeah so so essentially i don't know what there's quite a few I don't know maybe maybe 20 questions in this like this process and this is kind of like halfway through like starts off basically like what are your limiting beliefs how are they impacting you just really starting to color those things in

and then then we move on to things like okay and is that limiting belief true and that's a yes or no all of a sudden there's questions start becoming very offensive it's like is that limit and believe true yes or no it's not a maybe sometimes it depends yes or no and then it's the next question is okay and would it stand up in court like that whatever you're telling yourself about yourself if you had to present that to a jury with fact and evidence would it be found true or not true and it's all these different um questions that start to kind of poke holes in the belief itself but then the question that you're talking about is a two-parter and the first part is what are the negatives of believe in that story?

And that one, people are okay answering that one. Yeah. Because they go, oh, well, it's stopping me from doing this. This is, that's almost the script that they've got rehearsed. Yeah. I've got this limiting belief that I am not good enough and the negatives are, it's stopping me from putting myself out there. It's stopping me from going on dates.

It's stopping me from whatever. Everybody's fine answering that one. And then you ask them the flip side of, okay, and how is that story serving you yeah and then all of a sudden it's well it's protecting me again you get a lot of people this is where you start to get a lot of people that are like ah shit right okay but it's normally things like yeah um that story is protecting me it's keeping me safe um it's keeping me my comfort zone it means i don't have to face the risk of fear of failure et cetera et cetera et cetera etc and that's when they start to see actually if there were no down if there were no upsides to

utilising whether you want to call it a story a justification or the most aggressive version a fucking excuse if there were no upsides for you actually having that belief or using that excuse you wouldn't you wouldn't be using it yeah can i give you a great example of this because i remember i was talk i had someone on the podcast and she's a therapist and she said she put it it was like a negative consequence to a positive intent and like the positive intent is obviously you're protecting yourself so on so forth and then I came back to her with a study that I always use about obesity and it's a you know women who were sexually assaulted when they were younger are like three times more likely to suffer with obesity because they're using their fat as armor to ward off

predators because if I'm overweight nobody's going to want to go near me so it's like it's a positive intent I'm trying to put my brain is trying to protect me by saying you know if I'm overweight this person won't so it's a positive intent but the negative consequences that you're over overweight and you have all these health complications so even though you want to lose weight you know there's your way is actually serving a purpose and that purpose is it's it's it's keeping people away from you essentially yeah for sure and again going right back to motivation is when I'm whenever I'm delivering the talk on motivation I always use the example of myself of binge watching Netflix eating Ben and Jerry's by the tub

right is to look at that person objectively most people would go that person's not motivated they're not motivated but what they don't realize is that I was playing elite level sport I was DJing pretty much full time so I was motivated in those areas of my life but what they also wouldn't realize is that person then was motivated by comfort like that's the thing that was motivating me so the again the what what is it the negative consequence of the positive intent negative consequence of the positive intent and the positive intent for you is to to probably your comfort well it I mean it was multi-layered and looking back it's ridiculous now but the position that I played in the sport I needed to be big

aggressive heavy strong violent yeah so for me at that time that's a positive intent yeah genuinely I'm like I can eat it some of Ben and Jerry's a night it doesn't matter if I'm 130 kilos it means I'm actually I was better yeah and that's also protection and safety because you're you're you know you're bigger so you're less like yeah and my identities yeah my identities wrapped up in American football and being the big boisterous aggressive yeah interesting I like that yeah and before before I let you go because I know you're a busy man I wanted to talk to you about AI because I know you put up a post on that earlier and I think it's a very fascinating like I'm sure there's a lot of coaches who

we're out there now being like, oh my God, AI is gonna take my job. And I know there's a lot of people who are using AI as like their personal therapists at the moment. Like personally, I use AI all the time. I use it for. I love it. I think it's great, but I'm not concerned about it taking my work. I think I can use as a tool to help enhance what I do.

And is, is, can you just give me your thoughts on AI and coaching and AI replacing coaching or affairs that people have and just what's your, your overall thoughts? that's about it. So, I'll tell you a little story. I don't know how long, over a year ago, Maria's been working with Sarah for a while now. Sarah, who you knew.

Again, would be great on the podcast. Maria has been working with Sarah for a while now, and before she was working with Sarah, obviously Maria's got a background in coaching herself. She decided that she just needed basically a program to follow. And at the time, she signed up to an influence, I'm not going to name it.

I don't know, like, what the rules are and stuff like that. An influencer's app, basically. I think it was maybe 60 quid for the year. It was something ridiculous. 70 quid for the year. And she signed up and she set herself up and she answered the questions and da-da-da-da. Within seconds, it had spat out a fantastic training program.

It had spat out a tailored meal plan based on the foods that she said she liked. it had worked out calories it had done all of those things then also had the function the feature that you could request changes or as you lost weight it would tailor your calories and bring things down and basically it would do the entire job you just wouldn't get the feedback that was happening over a year let's say 18 months ago let's say I don't know two years ago okay immediately the adjustments were being made with more accurate accuracy than a human being could do.

And that was 18 months ago, two years ago. I know now, and again, I'm going to be very careful with my words here. I know people personally that have large accounts, they're not necessarily fitness coaches. They are now working with companies. There's two that I know of that are approaching people with large accounts and saying, we will build this platform for you you just need to be the face of it create content drive people to it

will take 30% that's happening it's been happening for a long time those platforms are powered by AI there's account managers and overseers and people obviously making sure that things are passing quality control but there are people out there with hundreds of thousands and millions of followers

selling 30 to 40 quid a month platforms that are coaching people, sorry, quote unquote coaching people. So writing plans, making adjustments, training, faster, with more accuracy, with as many changes as you want to the plan for 40 quid a month. It's already happening. Yeah, yeah. So you're not going to compete with that. So I say that because I do think if you are, this might be triggering and I'm really,

I was going to say, I'm really sorry, I'm not sorry. If you are somebody that only does that, if your service is, I'm going to set you up, I'm going to sort your food art, I'm going to give you feedback, I'm going to make adjustments, you're going to lose. Do those coaches need to be worried about AI taking the job? Yeah, they really do. Genuinely, they really do because these big companies have got more marketing budget,

more clout, the shout louder, they've got more money to throw up problems and they're a better service really and it's a better service it's a better service so those coaches for sure worry like if you are somebody

that is offering and this is why what you do is brilliant but if you are somebody that is offering so much more than that a truly tailored service actual coaching dialogue conversation all of the stuff that we've been talking about connection whether it is in real life or not

whether it is you can create connection online it's just more difficult whether you've got some sort of live element in person element whatever it is you guys still need to worry a little bit but the only thing that I think you need to worry about is making sure that you're using AI for the right things so AI is I absolutely love it and I am I've gone past the stage of just using chat GPT I'm like five different bits of software deep using different things for different tools, different capabilities. None of it is coaching my clients. None of it is giving people feedback.

I am utilising it to help me be creative quicker. I'm basically utilizing it as a way to improve my service, not replace my service. So things that would take me two weeks to create and now taking me two minutes to create. And obviously I'm refining it and I'm not just fucking sticking it in the client group. but even as far as creating custom GPDs

for specific bits of the service that the clients can now use means that they don't have to wait to a call to ask me, they've got my brain there, they've got the, and it's the exact same, you can do the exact same for a fitness client. If you've got processes,

ways that you do things, approaches to certain mindset issues, obstacles, you could absolutely do this too. It costs you $20 a month, or chat GPT to create customers, some GPTs that instead of your client having to come to you and say, what should I do about this, this, this and this. They ask the thing. It frees up your time. Not for you. I know there was a mentor that I called out recently. Not for you to take up a hobby, like the mentor was saying.

Stop coaching your clients. Save 10 hours a week and take up a hobby. No, it frees up 10 hours a week for you to actually have more conversation, to actually form deeper connections, to actually take on more clients if that's what you want to do so I don't know if that answered your question or not I think it does because I think when when I was online I think the best aspects and it became the only aspect actually of my program was the Zoom group calls that we did that we had you on and it was it was just people then having conversations and chats and I taught that I don't at this stage I don't know how far AI will go but like at this stage that you can't replace that yes no you know i um yeah i don't know i'm not going to i'm not going to sit

and make any predictions about how far it will go but i do think now more than ever coaches need to be focusing on coaching and when i say coaching it's the stuff that was explaining earlier the questions yeah um the the the connection the motivation the identity change everything we spoke about really the holding people accountable to the tiny decisions creating relationships that for me i was at um i was at an event last week where they were talking about it a little bit and then i've been toying with this idea and i don't know if you still talk to a lot of coaches and stuff like that but for sure it is harder now than it has been in a long time i would imagine yeah i would imagine for sure not just not necessarily in

the coaching element of it, but in trust is at an all-time low. Skepticism into online coaches is at an all-time high. I think there are a number of reasons. I think AI for one is a contributing factor. I think GLP's are a contributing factor. I think the fact that we're now seeing the fallout of the era of the businessman and people just selling shit and I think people have been burned. I think there's more people out there that have been stung by shit service and now

assume online coaching is all shit. I think there are a multitude of factors but I was at this business event and every now and then I like to go to business events that had nothing to do with the fitness industry. There's nothing to do with fitness industry. I like to see, get a finger on the pulse of like

what's happening just in business in general and obviously the mentorship that I'm in, it's not specific to fitness coaches. Actually in my the top level, top tier of the mentorship that I'm in, there's only 20 of us. There's only actually three of us in the fitness space. people in general are again biased sophistication is at an all time all of these different things

but actually talking to other people in positions like mine that do deal with online coaches it is harder and everybody's feeling it it is more difficult and i've been telling me this concept that a combination all of that i think prediction for 2026 is at the start of this year i said people need to be worried about glps and AI and it's kind of come to fruition i think next year and I do, I hate to say this because I love coaches. I love coaching. It's literally everything that I do. I think this time next year,

there's going to be way fewer coaches still in the game. I think there's going to be, I've called it to the clients the other day on the call, like the great divide. And I think people are, everything that we've spoke about, I think it's harder than ever. Dan Smith, who is Sophia's mentor,

posted something really interesting. about it on threads, I think, about how what he's seeing the most success in is either real, I hate the phrase in the language, but I don't know what's about words, but it is real quote unquote low ticket. So people selling subscription services. So to name a few who you know, Josh is a perfect example. Rachel Henley, perfect example. Or the super Uber, like high, touch point high conversation like Sophia I think 390 quid a month for something ridiculous and I think people in the middle

are the ones going to be flushed out are the ones that I don't want to necessarily say flushed out because there's a lot to say for ingenuity there's a lot to say for resilience there's a lot to say for people I think people are stronger than that but for sure the ones that are going to struggle of like okay well where where do I currently operate because if I'm if I'm trying to sit on the fence at

150 pounds a month and not really offer a not be able to offer a premium service because at 150 pounds a month I have to have 50 clients which means I'm more spread thin I'm not in the position where I can take on 200 clients at 50 quid a month and I'm not in a position where I've got the skills yet to take on 20 clients at 400 quid a month it's the people in the middle that i think are going to feel the squeeze the most in the next year so what's your advice for them people um who are who are in the in the online coaching game or want to enter it although they probably missed the heyday of 2019 to 2020 but say they want to enter that what what's what's what's what's your advice for them so they can survive and and even thrive for for anybody just to

address to people that maybe if there are people that want to enter it you've not you've not you you have missed the heyday of 2019 and 2020 when it was like shooting fish in a barrel. But that doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't do it. If you're getting in this for the right reasons, you're passionate about it, you actually really want to help people and learn, go for it.

Literally, boss of the war, go for it. The advice to those people would be, but you have to be prepared to take the long game, to play the long game. It's not, please don't enter the industry, get your qualification and then let somebody convince you that you're going to make 10 grand next. month. Like this is, if you want to build the foundations and have longevity in your

business, let's, like, I think the industry needs more good coaches, not less. So if that's you, don't let this put you off. For the people in the middle, I think they, I don't, I hate using language like need, but they need to essentially decide what route they want to go down is, are you somebody, and there's no right or wrong answer with this either, by the way, It's just whichever, I guess, floats your boat more and which you think is more realistic achievable. Are you somebody that wants to work with real high numbers and build an incredible community subscription type thing

where it's less about one-to-one touch points and more about really building something big, really building something special? Is that you? Or are you somebody that actually is in this for, were you at the did you come to the event in London you didn't you when Imty spoke London yeah

yeah yeah so I always think about back to what Inti said when he was talking about impact is the two main ways of measuring impact are width or depth so width of impact I'm going to work with 500 people and we're going to cover

I don't want to say surface level thing I don't want to sound like I'm belittling those services but that's the way that I'm going to have impact or I'm going to work with 30 people and we're going to get into the fucking weeds and we're going to work on every element of the life just like I did with you just like I did with the guys and it's not just about fat loss anymore it's now about behavior change mindset identity we're going to talk about relationships we're going to talk about all of that side of thing because the thing

about coaching and coaching skill when you are a good coach you can coach anybody on anything and I believe that wholeheartedly like you could put anybody in front of me with any subject and I could coach them to a solution because I'm not telling them what to do. Yeah. I don't need to have experience. I'm asking them the right questions to empower them to think and act for themselves. So I think if that's you in the middle, which of those sounds more appealing and realistic? Like if you, if working with 500 people sounds more appealing, but you've only got 250 followers. Yeah. And you're not great American. It might be appealing, but it's not realistic. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

So they're for sure the things, but I think now more than ever, human connection, actual knowledge in the areas of people, not nutrition, in behaviour, identity, not training. Those things are for sure important. But I think moving forward, we're going to see that becomes such a, I'm not going to say such a small part,

but a smaller part of the businesses that I think you'll see that are thriving this time next year we'll all have an element of that. Yeah, yeah. I think if you're, for the majority of coaches, I think depth is probably the way to go, isn't it? And to do that,

you want to, you want to be able to create client retention and you want to be able to have good conversations and you want to be able to ask questions. For anyone who's listening to this who wants to learn how to do them things, can you tell us a little bit about where they can find you and where they can find out more information

about the amplifier. Absolutely. So on Instagram it's Lewis Potts official and I always feel like I need to preface this. I don't think I'm some sort of big dick and added official to my name. It's just there's already a Lewis Potts out there. There's already a Lewis Potts out there

and I think he's a videographer and his stuff is really cool. So it's not even like it's a dead account that I can get. Yeah. Yeah, so it's Lewis Potts official on Instagram. I regularly rant about coaching behavior change everything pretty much everything that we spoke about today as of yesterday i don't know when this will go out but at the time we're recording as of yesterday there is now also

a youtube channel which i don't actually know what it is i think it's louis potts official i'll i don't i'll find out i'll put it in the show notes i'll send you the thing yeah so um that that's essentially it like i'm a completely open book i will answer all of your questions if if you don't think i'm an absolute cunt after there's the first a C-bomb, if you don't think I'm an absolute You did well. After the podcast and it's something and working on impact.

I used to save attention but it's not really attention. If working on having an impact and helping people is your, I guess what you got into this for and you want to have a conversation sick, if not also sick. Yeah. Well I'd highly recommend that as someone

who went through it. Lewis Potts, thank you very much for today. That's been the uneducated PT podcast with me. Carl O'Rourke. If you've enjoyed this conversation, make sure you subscribe, make sure you share it. All of Lewis's information will be in the show notes. And folks, thank you for today. Lewis, thank you. As always, my man. I've enjoyed it. Thanks for watching. If you like that episode and you want to see more content like this, make sure you're subscribed and I'll see you on the next one.