 For all intents and purposes, the health, fitness, and wellness industry is failing. Look, its intended goal is to help people improve their health, get leaner, stronger, more fit, more healthy, and yet people are worse. Worse health, more obesity, more mobility issues. Look, I hate to admit this, but we're sucking right now. We are losing this battle, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about why we're losing this battle. And if you work in this space, listen carefully. We're going to talk about what we can do to work together to turn the tide of this war. Do you think we're getting worse or better? Health is worse, chronic health. That's a fact, right? There's no debate on whether we're getting healthier or unhealthy at a faster rate. That's no debate. But the debate to be had is, is the health and fitness space getting better or are we getting worse? You know, I don't know how you would judge that. Yeah. Well, part of the factor has to be whether the majority is getting healthy or not. That's the only way. So that's, well, I don't think that's, I think there's more to it, right? There's still some accountability. Like, what else would you look at? I mean, how we, how we deliver the message and the information that we're presenting and, you know, is the science evolving, like things like that. I think there's ways to measure that or at least discuss it. And I go back and forth on whether I think that we are better as an industry or we are worse. It's hard to say where we would be if the health, fitness and wellness industry didn't exist. Like, okay, so we're getting worse. We're getting fatter. We're sicker. Chronic health issues are getting worse. Would that be even worse if this industry, that's a, that's a hard thing to. You have to at least ask, give it that much credit that there's potential that it could have been. I mean, two times. Maybe, right? I mean, I, we know enough people where, where health and fitness change our life that it helped them. But if we just use this simple, and I know it's too black, it might be too black and white, but if we use a simple criteria, like across the board, are people healthier or, or less healthy today than they were 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago? And the answer is they're worse. And so if our goal is to turn the tide and get people from getting worse than we are losing, and unfortunately, maybe it's a battle that can't be one. I don't know. But I can definitely, there's definitely things we're doing wrong. Do you think there's a unifying message out there in terms of? Definitely not. Right? Definitely. That's a big problem. I guess that's where my, my concern is. Um, and I think it's very reflective of just how we consume information now, because there's so much good information, but there's, um, there's always a counterpoint. There's always a, uh, an undermining philosophy there somewhere that somebody is angling to, uh, get you to purchase something or, or be more, uh, inclined to, to go in that direction of training or nutrition or, uh, it seems very fractured, uh, in terms of our space, uh, in terms of our overall message of just for your average person, here's how you get healthy. Oh, no, a hundred percent. It's disjointed. It's scattered. Look, uh, this is not a, a secret. If you're fighting a, uh, an opponent, right? You're against, uh, another army. One of the most effective strategies that you could do to win is to cause or create or, um, drive infighting amongst your enemy, get the different tribes and groups to start arguing and fighting each other. Well, they can't win a war if they're fighting each other. All we do in our space is this. Like if I say the wellness, health, fitness and performance segments of our space, first off, all of those, most of the time are at odds with each other. Within those spaces, people are odds with each other and they're the ones that are putting out and competing for consumers. So they continue to put their information out and who typically wins is the one that can present the information in the most cool, catchy way. The loser is the average person because if they try to navigate art, look, this is the whole, this is literally the reason why we started the podcast was exactly what I'm talking about. We worked with clients for decades and all of them were so frustrated navigating the space. Like there's so much counter information. I mean, you have the health space, which is, I guess you would consider the medical health space, right? Doctors, nurses, traditional kind of would be considered your traditional health. Then you have wellness, then you have fitness, you're right. So that's the point that's been rough is that, that all of these spaces, there's, there's stuff in common that they could bring together. And push forward if they just learned how to work together. But that's not what's happening. And I think that's a big reason why we're failing. Money's involved. That's why there's, there's money in dividing and conquering. There's money in, uh, making, villainizing somebody else's method or ideology. And so, so long as we're motivated by money and rewarded for doing those things, it's, I don't know if it ever gets solved. You know, I mean, in a, in a free market society, the only thing you can help hope for is that the best idea, the best ideas and message eventually, you know, rises to the top and wins. I think that, but I think that we're in this interesting time right now with health and fitness. I mean, it was in our lifetime when it was not a popular thing. Early on, when we were younger kids and stuff like that, it wasn't, it wasn't an industry. It wasn't really a space. There wasn't even a lot of money in it. It's been relatively new that it's exploded and turned into like legitimately a place that you can build serious wealth and a great career in like that didn't exist just two, three decades ago. So, you know, we're going through this growth phase of part of that is, uh, you know, weeding out all the bad information and the charlatans and stuff like that. And of course, a lot of them are going to make a lot of money, uh, on the rise of the industry, but you got to hope that again, that the cream rises to the top and eventually outcompetes the bad. I, you know, what's sad about this whole thing? It took me, well, I figured this out kind of early on. I know you guys did too, because you guys had good careers and you managed other people. I realized, especially when I had my wellness studio, that if I worked with other people, if I wasn't always just trying to battle everybody and really try to communicate the message that we all had in common, I didn't lose customers. I don't, if anything, I got more, more, yeah. If anything, I got more business from, uh, from doing it that way. You know, fitness and health is a lifestyle. So really that's the only way to do it in both, that both hits the success that actually helps a person, but also hits the success in the sense that makes you financially successful. Otherwise what happens, and this is what we're stuck in, in our space, is who can catch the next fad? Who's going to come out with the next trendy something? And what they're doing is they're capturing this moment of motivation that people get into when they feel bad about themselves, which doesn't last. Eventually they go off. And what they're, what they're all doing is fighting over that. Who can capture people when they're in that moment of self-hate? And nobody is trying to figure out how we can solve this forever, how we can get people on this journey and make this a lifestyle. And the result of which is number one, it's a big industry, but it could be bigger. It could be bigger. The health, fitness and wellness industry, let me ask you guys a question. Of all the industries that exist, which one is positioned best with, what's within them, positioned best to solve our health issues? Right? Yeah. It's that. Yeah. It could be so much bigger than it is. If everybody just figured it out that if we work together, not only is, are we going to succeed at getting people healthy in real ways, we'll all make more money as a result of it. I mean, here's your evidence right now. Your average gym charges how much per month? Like 20 bucks a month to go to a gym and have access to all this equipment. They know you're not going to show up. How much does a cell phone cost? Or, you know, or how much do people spend on Starbucks? Why are, why is this happening? Because we suck. Yeah. We suck at providing value. Really, if people really understood the value, gyms would be, it would be a much different market and there'd be a much more special economy. I mean, like healthy people, you know, in terms of like our healthcare system in general, like it's going to help in that direction. There's just so many benefits to a healthy person that's out in society that's going to have a healthy outlook and is going to be a vibrant, energetic a person that's looking to benefit people around them versus kind of where we're at right now, which is, again, we're so disjointed and you brought up even, you know, just the medical industry too and like how fractured that's been over the past few years and just the type of service like we're providing people now and how that's all changed. And so, yeah, we have a very big uphill battle in terms of, but it all starts here. It all starts with that ownership of like your own efforts that go in towards your own health and how to make those healthy habits and how to stick with those healthy habits. I do think there is a unique characteristic to the fitness industry that perpetuates this problem that's different than most other spaces. Not that it's not in other spaces, but I think it's the amount of people in our space. It's unique how great the percentage is. And that's the scarcity mindset. I feel like in our space, it's greater than any other space. And I think that has a lot to do with the type of person that's attracted to the space to be a voice or to build a business in it. I think most of us were driven by deeply rooted insecurities and the things that made us quote unquote successful at fitness are those insecurities. And a lot of times the natural progression to that is to then build a business or start a company or work for a company related to that field because it's helped you so much. But in reality, you haven't moved beyond that insecurity and so that you operate from a place of scarcity. And I just think that's greater in our space than anywhere else. You know what's funny is that when I first started, I value or I rated my success as a trainer by the dollars of training that I could sell every month. How many people I could sign up and what was the amount of revenue that I could generate. And it wasn't that long before I started to realize that I could sign up people all day long. I'm very convincing. I could, whatever. But people were not maintaining what we had accomplished together on their own. They just couldn't. It was like my fail rate was as high as everybody else's fail. I could just sign up more people. And I remember looking at that, you talk about the same thing at them where you're looking at it and you're like, okay, I'm really not a good trainer if this is what's happening. And when I changed my approach to sustainability, longevity, really getting this person to really figure this out, I didn't lose sales. I made more sales. That's what I'm trying to communicate to people in our space that are watching right now is this is not a sacrifice of your business. Your business will grow if you do it this way. We have this weird skewed idea that, oh, if I do it in the right way, I'm not going to sell as much. I'm not going to make as much. Not true. You'll do better if you do it this way. All right. Today's giveaway, again, it's launch season for a brand new program, so we're going to give it away for free. Maps, old time strength. If you want to win, you got to do the following. Leave a comment below this video, the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel, turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. Now everybody else, because it's a brand new program, it's on sale. $80 off, plus you'll get two free ebooks. Forgotten muscle and strength building secrets and living a fully optimized life. The sale ends August 27th. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below. Otherwise, go to mapsoldtime.com and use the code old80. All right. Back to the show. So the first thing, I think the first big mistake that all of us make, especially the people that seem to get the most views and eyes, is that we communicate perfect too much. Like it's, we get so in the weeds with, wait 90 minutes before you drink your coffee, get 15 minutes of sun exposure. Make sure you eat your food and it comes from these sources and chew your food in this particular way. And make sure you stand up for at least five minutes after whatever. And grass fed, no, it's fish. No, it's vegan. You know, no, it's this nutrient. No, it's that nutrient. It's like, we communicate perfect so much that the average person, we lost them completely. Because they're so far from perfect that if I communicate to the average person, oh yeah, what you need to do is you need to lift weights four days a week. And then three days a week, you need to do specific cardio. Every day you need to do mobility. I mean, I lost you already. You're like, I don't even work out once a week. There's no way I could do all that. You know, I'm done. So I ended up just talking to a bunch of other fitness fanatics. We're not extending a hand or just standing on a pedestal looking down. Oh, that's what it looks like. What a great analogy. Well, we also care too much about how perfect we sound versus how this is why, too, you see situations where, you know, and you'll get a really intelligent or experienced, knowledgeable fitness expert who is putting down, you know, some insta-famous kid who's got a lot of people that they're helping and supporting. But the truth is that kid has found a way to help more people than this person who has got a higher education, more experienced. And their angle is to put that person down versus looking and going like, what is he doing that I'm not doing to communicate to the masses like that? And of course, they'll default right away to the, oh, he's just, you know, showing his fancy cars and he's doing all these things that are just, but it's like there's also something in there they're communicating around health and fitness that is it's breaking through to a group of people that that other person isn't isn't getting through to. Yeah. You know, we had a someone, I don't know if you guys saw this last week, somebody asked me a question on my on my live, my live Q&A and it was they asked me if I get really mad about the people that come on our, our, uh, Mindput Media IG and answer the questions. You ever noticed like on our claws? They're trying to scour for. Yeah. And they're trying, they're trying to, to poach clients off of that. And I said, I said, no, it doesn't bother me at all. And I said, uh, it reminds me when people used to ask me or used to think that I was crazy for allowing other trainers to train my clients. They'd always say to me, like, aren't you worried that the trainer is going to shark your people and they're not going to come back to you? Just like the same question that the people are going to shark these people and we're not going to get it. It's like, the way I look at it is like, that's a great reflection of myself. And like, if somebody else can get on our, our IG and communicate the information that we've been busting our ass for, better than us, better than us. Yeah. Shame on us to help that person. Yeah. Then it's a win. Right. Yeah. And, and, and it also serves as an educational tool for me. Like, oh wow, I could get better. Communicating that because this person came on my IG and said a few things and won that person over after all the stuff that we've put out, put out for free and tried to help people. Like, I don't look at that as like, oh, you're trying to poach me or, oh man, that's going to hurt my business. I look at it as like, oh, I could be better about how I communicate that. I just think that, I think that's rare in our space. I think the natural reaction for most fitness people is to have this knee-jerk reaction and go like, oh, fuck you and like turn it into this like competition with each other. You remind. But it's like, wait a second, if we both agree that the goal is to help as many people as possible and somebody else comes on my page or somebody else finds a way to communicate that information to get these people to change their behaviors for the good and they move the right direction, I don't look at that as like a competition thing. I look at that as an opportunity to me to forget even better at communicating this information. 100% and you don't lose that client by the way. You know when you lose clients, when you, when they sense that you're afraid of them getting better information and you try to, you try to suck them in. So I remember distinctly switching how I approached health and fitness in regards to this early in my career. I did this way too often in the beginning. Somebody would come to me, they'd tell me they only have a couple days a week they could work out or they don't want to change their diet just yet or whatever and I would sit there and try to convince them to make all the changes now. I would sit there and communicate perfect. Like I know you only said you could work out twice a week but really if you worked out four days a week is what you could do and I know you don't want to touch your diet but let me just show you what we could do if we change this, that, follow the meal plan otherwise it's a waste of time. I remember saying stuff like that and either I would convince them and then they fail okay shortly after or I would blow them out and they wouldn't sign up with me and then I would feel good about it like well they weren't serious type of deal and when I had that, that you know that kind of self-reflection like am I really helping people? This was one of the first things that I changed. I'll never forget as my favorite example I've used this before I had a client come in referred to me by one of my doctor clients they used to train doctors and at some point they started referring to me patients and this particular doctor had been working on this patient trying to get her in for a long time telling her hey look you need to work out it'll be good for you when this person's like so anti-gym I hate that atmosphere I hate the whole thing whatever finally convinced her she came in to see me and I remember that had other trainers sitting at desks next to me when this all happened so she comes in I introduced myself first words out of her mouth I'm only working out one day a week I'm not doing anything of my own and I'm not touching my diet and I don't want to get sore and I remember hearing Snickers from the trainers behind me thinking I was going to blow her out and I said no problem we'll start that way now I had learned at this point that if I'm going to convince this person to do anything more than what they're committed to my best my best chance would be to get him in within the whatever they told me they can do and then show them something show them something give them a good experience and that's what happened I said yeah no problem and I remember the look on the person's face when I said that she was shocked she thought I was until her don't bother and I give her a nice reason to not come in say yeah no problem once a week's fine she's like it is so yeah we could are you doing anything now she said no I said well once a week's more than what you're doing now you'll definitely get stronger we don't have to touch your diet to improve your strength of course if you worked on diet probably would get better but that's okay I'll start where you're at you'll come in you probably you might get a little sore the first time as we start to figure out the right intensity but then soreness is not something I aim for and we had this wonderful conversation she signed up and literally this is how it worked out for a year I trained her once a week then she asked if I could train another day week then she asked if she could have exercise to do on her own then she said how do I cut sugar out of my diet then she said I should cut heavily processed foods out of my diet so over the course of three years completely transformed this woman's life and she became somebody where this was a part of life had I not approached that had I communicated perfect to her she would have never started we would have lost her forever well it's an interesting sort of philosophical conundrum I think like a lot of trainers when they first start like they want to show their worth so much and they want to be so involved with all these decisions and really it's very condescending because the person coming in you don't think that they didn't think maybe some more time carved out in their day would probably help or like maybe I should get more sleep or you know maybe I should you know move this meeting and so I can have more workout you know they've thought of all those things already and you know like so you can you can do a lot in terms of the beginning of like that might be their their thought is like well I got to go hire a coach I got to have them tell me what to do I got to have them provide me with just a meal plan or something that's like here's these things and I'm just going to follow this and it's not their idea they didn't come to conclude that they didn't find themselves there so this is none of this is their journey this is just something that you've you've conjured up and written for them and what you find out later as you mature as a trainer is that you have to you have to work with them on their journey to find where that path is taking them totally and so you foster that all the way through from the very beginning wherever they are so you're able to shape and cultivate that for them instead of just stamping it here's here's all the answers to the test boom just follow it well what's more effective a client showing up because you're basically forcing them to show up to an extra day fear or the client coming in an extra day because that's their idea that's a leadership question right oh managing out of fear versus on motivation to support yeah no i was going to ask what you guys think is the root cause of that like what caused us we all experienced that we all probably came from a place like that is it go back to the insecurity is it i'm so insecure about my knowledge because i'm so green and new and so i feel i need to be authoritative and i'm going to tell you like i this is what you need to do like oh one day a week that's not going to get you i think that's part of it but i also think if you have good intentions you look at the person and you know how big of an impact like good health would have with this person and so you just want to give them all the answers you just want to tell them oh my god you really want to do this you're excited to help you here's your diet here's your workout it'll change your entire life because you know what it could do for them but that's not how people learn that's not how people develop lifelong have it doesn't work that way it just it just doesn't what but i get i used to get so excited because i was like oh i could totally fix you just do everything i tell you exactly yeah i think part of it too i think that's the early years where you lean heavy on the science and the yeah the studies and what the research says right and the research says that this many days per week at this rate will you know give you this with anything less than that is less likely to whatever so i think this is an area where you know you learn some of this new information through studies or certifications and you go oh so then you go back and you're you you forget about the behavioral aspect or you don't know about the behavioral aspect yet you haven't accounted for oh that's great this is what the research says that they should be doing but what i realized over my decades of training was oh god 90% of those people can't follow that protocol so what do i have to do in order to potentially get from that oh okay well not have to make different decisions or i don't think that's discussed to be honest with you a lot of the education and the certifications and they don't go to heavy on behaviors and like you learn through experience that's one of the biggest things like you don't you don't really see how this all plays out because you haven't worked with enough human beings human beings are complex and there's a lot of variables you don't anticipate and to actually work with people along that bottom line you when you're talking with someone if we're trying to read by the way we're trying to reach the people who are getting fatter who are getting sicker who have poor health issues okay these are not fitness fanatics there's a hierarchy of steps that this person can take stop communicating perfect because that's not how you get there you don't get there by jumping from where you're at now to perfect in fact that's a guaranteed way to fail you do steps which might mean and i've done this before hey first step drink an extra glass of water a day oh how much weight am i going to lose nothing with that but that's the first step let's build a habit there or the first step walk for five minutes am i going to get totally fit from that no but you might notice something from it and you might if the only thing you might notice is that you can do it and then that might encourage you to take the next step there's a hierarchy of steps and if we communicate perfect as the only way or fight with each other over who's more perfect or we're communicating to the average person is you're wasting your time unless you do everything perfect unless you eat meat from you know cows that were blessed by a monk and their grass fed they only you know the grass that's organic and that grows on the west side of the hill because it gets most sunlight or weird shit like that like you are going to lose everybody because nobody is can't even think that that's possible for them so forget that the second thing is how condescending our space can be to the average person this is when they say things like you're just lazy you know just get off your ass pain is you know weakness leaving the body type of deal when you're taught when you're communicating that to somebody who's never developed behaviors and structure around health and fitness who also has life stresses and kids maybe they're dealing with mental health issues they have a job like are you going to win anybody over like that are you going to win anybody over by looking at them and saying oh you know what your problem is you're just lazy that's your problem okay cool I'm going to go try harder yeah well you're an asshole and I'm going to go do this so I'm not going to do this anymore you know type of deal I think the reason why that there's so much of that because I think there's actually a percentage of people who actually think they want that and need that there's people that have that you know masochistic type of personality where they think like I need to be beat up shame me well that's when you hate yourself so much that feels good that's what I mean so I part of why I think it's perpetuated in our space is because the trainers are getting this feedback of like oh my client likes it oh they need it they need me to talk shit to them they need me to be condescending because that's what make that's what motivates them they want that kind of militant personality and so and then you add in the the hype and motivation bullshit in our space and so the combination of that with people thinking that's what they want and need I think this is what why you get so many of this these condescending trainers presenting I remember once I had a moment where I realized how condescending I was I had a family member by we were I don't remember where we were we're buying food and they got fried chicken okay and they're like oh you know I'm trying to lose weight so I'm going low carb and like an asshole I scoff like you think fried chicken is healthy now I saw the look on their face which was like I just shared with you because you're a trainer what I think I'm supposed to be doing and you just made me feel like a complete idiot and and and guess what I will never reach out to you again or now I'm embarrassed or now I'm gonna give up and I remember the look on their face and then realizing wow what a that door just shut yeah what a shitty why did I scoff right like I wasn't supportive and and uh you know there could have been a much better way that I could have communicated or maybe nothing maybe it was just they made a comment and I said oh cool we're trying to go look carb.com yeah you know but it was that condescending like you know I would do this too with people when they'd say I'd say oh what do you do for exercise I walk you scoff yeah I remember being like condescending about that well I mean everybody walks that's not really an extra guilt yeah you remember doing that yeah yeah how many people we've turned off because of that type of attitude where it's like and this is when people feel like they can't connect but they or they break the math down on how many hours are in a day that's a classic that's a classic condescending like like you like the average person doesn't know how many hours in a day and how many days are in a week fucking asshole like I really need you to break that these rituals you need to do I really need you to break that math down for me so I knew how much I was failing at getting in shape or like you know like you know I can't afford to buy super healthy food oh really because you go to Starbucks every day and I know you buy chips let's add up the math and then you show them looks like you could totally afford it gotcha has that ever convinced anybody I mean that's the difference between I've said this before like the good closer and the great closer right a good closer has learned all these rebuttals and guilt people and make people feel stupid ways of overcoming their objections but a great closer can pull somebody into it can pull somebody into wanting to make the change to wanting to make the sell like that's and it's through listening and asking a lot of right questions and leading not punking them into thinking what they're doing just making them feel embarrassed you know like they're embarrassed to ask you a question you know you remember you remember feeling like that in class where you had a question but you don't want to ask it because you were embarrassed that's how our space can make people feel we can make them feel like that by the way by being condescending to each other so the bodybuilder who's communicating something for hypertrophy then you get the functional mobility whatever guy and he's going to talk condescendingly about oh well he probably can't even you know he probably can't even go across monkey bars or something like that right it's like but did he communicate something with some value like why are we doing this to each other that's so that's a really really good point that can't be highlighted enough because there's a lot of people that don't ask these questions or say anything in fear of being rejected and then another fitness professional says something that that person probably thought or believed and then the other fitness professional trashes that person it's the same as you picking on them yeah they feel like oh my god I thought that too and so that infighting amongst us it just that really really and you don't know it's it's silently hurting them and your business and you don't even realize it by being that way you know everybody's yeah viewing all the comments back and forth and yeah making their concluding their own ideas and yeah it just makes them feel even smaller through that whole interact totally which brings us an x1 which is this no empathy we have no we're so bad at empathy for the challenges that people have to beginning or starting this journey and the reason why we have no empathy is because we found this journey oftentimes their own insecurities combined with obsessive discipline and dedication because we found something that we loved we made it our career so for us it's easy oh you know working out every day I wake up at 5am oh eating healthy you just got to make healthy choices you know what I tell the fitness professionals and influencers and health people who have no empathy for people who might say it's hard to eat vegetables or it's hard just to walk more is I like to point out the shit that they're challenged with so oh that's great John that you're like that how's your relationship doing you know oh it's a tough for you you act like an asshole and you can't control yourself or what about your drug problem or what about your gambling issues or what about the fact that you can barely support yourself because you're shitty at job at your job so it's like we all have challenges so every time I hear someone say something to me that's easy for me I try to remind myself of the stuff that I just can't seem to figure out this is what we're dealing with with a lot of these people they just can't figure it out and it's not our job to not have empathy it's our job to help them figure it out and they're not you they're not us otherwise they'd be in the space otherwise they'd be working as fitness professionals half the space is like 15 year old teenager you know or like in dog years right the experience of being a trainer they're at 15 years old you know regardless if they're 35 40 or whatever they're a teenager in the fitness space still thinking they know it all and they haven't figured out that they what they what they don't know yet and I think we all experience that I think that's a part of the growth and again all this I feel like I can connect all this back to the the insecurity is to that's where and that's why it's unique to this space why I think this is more of a conversation in our industry than it really is and any other competitive industry that's there's lots of competitive industries but I think it's it's the most monetized attribute though if anybody coming in is like if you got insecurities we got the answer for you you know and so we're always like looking for that and like sharking on it right away which kind of puts us where we are instead of leading with that helpful hand yeah it's like oh you feel shitty about yourself yeah come on over here I got the answer for you I'm gonna beat the shit out of you because you deserve it and you're gonna take these pills and it's gonna happen really quick and here's John look at his before and after totally works right give us a thousand dollars you know type of deal and the person ends up you know failing that brings us to the next one which is is it's oftentimes an echo chamber how often do people in the health wellness fitness space communicate to each other and not try to reach the people who seem to be unreachable I remember data in gyms I remember managing gyms and I remember when this data was presented and it was presented because a competitor had come into the market and had blown open a hole that existed that nobody was paying attention to and really got the attention of a lot of people so I remember this must have been 1999 when curves started to make a splash in the fitness space so back then the gym industry really started taking off in the I'd say the mid late 80s and then by the late 90s you had some big players like 24 fitness really start to show the world like oh you could this could be a big business and then all of a sudden this company shows up and they open up these small studios they use pneumatic equipment so this is with air like air pumps so it's not even weights not even weight stacks there's like seven pieces of equipment that are in a circle you show up it's women only you show up you do a couple circuits and then you leave and they went from zero locations to surpassing the biggest gyms and chains in the world literally becoming the number one franchise in the world at a particular time now they had their own issues and I could see why and they failed as a result but what it did is it highlighted what we were all screwing up over what were they doing they were not taking members from 24 fitness gold's gym crunch fitness they weren't taking members from us they were reaching the unreachable it was people who were embarrassed to go to gyms who were really overweight they were women and they finally felt like that a place and we just didn't reach them and I remember looking at the data and I and they showed us I remember I'll never forget we're in a meeting they're like you know what we're doing right now we just trade members between each other but there's this huge segment of the population we're not touching curves figured out how to how to reach them and now now they're destroying it this is how I communicate the success of the business all the time when I'm asked you get asked all the time if I thought that the show and the business would be this big eight years ago and I quickly always say absolutely and that was because when we looked at the space at all the other podcasts all the other fitness influencers on social media they're all talking to the the same percentage of fitness fanatics they're all communicating and fighting over the latest study or modality and it's like that first of all the our clientele is everybody everybody needs health and fitness so literally we have the whole world at our disposal but we the space that is competing over this 12 percent yeah and it was like that's not the conversation we want to have we want to have the conversation that we had with our clients because our clients weren't that 12 percent our clients were engineers stay at home moms teachers doctors lawyers like just they weren't like following 50 influencers and subscribing to the magazines and on the the bodybuilding forums and arguing over the latest study that came out like that wasn't our clients our clients were the other 90 percent of the people and like just heard from Oprah that they needed to like move more like yeah you probably should yeah so there was this huge opportunity to you know and and that doesn't mean that we can't communicate to that 12 percent I think that we do a pretty good job of still communicating to them but that's not the focus the focus is attracting the other 80 to 90 percent that everybody else is losing because they're too busy feeding their own ego fighting over the the other fitness over who's more more right who's more smart yeah who's more smart come on yeah it's yeah we're not reaching most people we're not reaching most people because we don't focus on what's going to reach most people and we end up talking to each other and here's the deal most people will should and they have the potential for this most people could use fitness wellness and health to improve their lives the people in that 10 percent 12 percent that you're talking about Adam the fitness fanatics live for fitness wellness and health most people don't live for the gym most people don't live for their workouts most people don't live for it they use it as a way to improve their lives supplements yeah mrs johnson or you know mr smith they just want to be better parents they want to have less pain they want to have a better sex life they want to look a little better in their clothes they want more energy they want to be better employees they want to take less medications that's it the 10 percent that we're talking about wants to add another you know 30 pounds to their bench press wants to hit some new pr wants to compete in some new event wants to figure out how they could squeeze out you know longer telomeres on their on their dna but with the latest greatest whatever like i don't care about those people now i don't mean literally i don't care about you because that's us right i i love hanging out with you guys and stuff but i'm not trying to like make fit people fitter i'm trying to get just healthy you're not moving the needle by focusing there you're not i mean for every one person you get a little bit fitter you miss out on 100 people who missed the message because you're i mean how many times did we learn this in last eight years even ourselves right we went out with this in mind focused on that yet still like learned our lesson multiple times everyone episodes i know we would do an episode and we'd be like that is so dumb it's so basic like that people don't want to hear and it would viral yeah it would explode compared to these listens and we'd have these conversations off air with each other going like man we just got to continue to remember to not over complicate this message because every time we think something is too basic or too simple or it's people aren't going to like it it strikes a chord with with the masses yes and and that's not to say that we don't talk to the 10 percent i think if anybody's converted more people to becoming trainers it's us even though we talk about the realities of how challenging it is but what we're trying to do is turn them into real evangelists the 10 percent of the people out there who have really understood and adopted health and fitness they can act they're the ones that actually can make the big difference by learning how to evangelize properly and and not making the mistakes that we're talking about the last one this one is obvious it's number five but it probably should be number one which is that in our space we perpetuate righteousness or beauty way too much now i get it beauty in particular aesthetics how ripped you are how buffed you are how attractive you are if you want to get a lot of views a lot of likes a lot of attention if you want an easy very imperfect but however easy way to display your potential authority then just be sexy and fit and ripped right you post pictures of yourself the average person assumes whether consciously or subconsciously you know what you're talking about so it's a very easy way to kind of get attention the problem is is that what we're doing is we're selling the side effect not the main effect and we're also teaching people to compare themselves to people that i mean they're not going to look like or they don't want to live that way in reality and feel shitty about themselves and that's not a great way to to really promote health and fitness for everybody but that's the main I mean that's the main way our space sells and then the righteousness one is like you know your way is great but you also missed this one piece your coffee is not as organic or it could potentially have Mike you know not wake up early enough like i am yeah or oh i know you like squats but it's not as functional as this or yeah i know you told them to eat protein but unless it comes from these sources then this potential whatever and then again you lose everybody the highlighting the the beauty or your body and physiques is is a is a tough dance to be had right because there's there's a part of like obviously it does really well by you know presenting yourself very fit and ripped and if people are going to buy and invest in you teaching them how to eat ride and train looking the part helps right but then there's that fine line of i've built my entire brand off of how i look that i think one of the the worst parts about that is the amount of pressure that is for you oh it's a hell i know to to not let the natural ebb and flow of life happen where maybe you're not on a hardcore kick for a month or whatever like that or it's heaven forbid you get injured or get some major life-threatening disease or another huge priority in your life takes you know takes the front seat instead of you your physical time and so that's probably the the worst part of the most dangerous part about presenting that so much it's like so but i also understand how powerful it is i understand how it's a of all the industries and spaces we would be up there with the the top three most superficial yeah you know like it's a lot of people that decide to sign up for a gym membership or make a decision to go on a diet is it's around vanity first it's sometimes it's around health sometimes it's the doctor says hey you need to go and do this for x y z reasons but i would say a majority of the time it's it's vanity driven it's i want to look better and so as a professional there's this this this desire or draw to want to present your physique to show people that i can do what you want to do but then it's a it's a it's a double edged sword it is i'll i'll say the remedy is this because i get it i get the social proof of looking the part i know it's powerful i don't think it's all bad here's what i think the remedy is if this is what you're going to do as part of the way that you communicate your authority make sure you balance it with really good really really good quality information and make sure you communicate your struggles and imperfections as well that's more to protect you by the way the second part is more to protect you not so much for the consumer although some people do this is a way to like come across as authentic and it could be fake sounding but really it's to protect you for what you said adam if you get famous on social media as a fitness person because you're at five percent body fat you're screwed you're gonna have to be five percent body fat all the time or if you're that girl that looks really hot and you show your butt and you do all this whatever and you're 25 you've got a short shelf life with your business what are you gonna do 10 years later oh you're gonna try and retire real quick because if you want to continue to build this business it's gonna be hard to continue to kind of keep that up or what if you're in public people recognize you or they see you drink a soda or live like a normal life sometimes or you know it doesn't work really well so that's to protect you but the first part is for your business you want to be known for your information and your ideas more than your looks because your looks are fleeting and it's also not that valuable it really isn't there's a very small percentage of people that make a lot of money based off their looks 99.9% of the people watching this right now that's not gonna be you just the fact you just not you can get a fit and ripped as you want you're not gonna compete with these genetic perfect anomalies who are also obsessed with whatever so it's also not a good business strategy a good business strategy is to be known for your ideas those last those stand the test of time and if your beauty fades as you get older or whatever it doesn't matter people want to know what you think not necessarily how you look well part of that too I think is all of us as fitness professionals getting better about communicating what true health looks like too it's I mean for the longest time we've celebrated the cover of the magazine look as the ultimate sign of health and that actually couldn't be further from the truth and in fact a very healthy physique and body there's a wide range of what it could look like it could you know it could it could look on the softer side and then it could look on a much harder side and everything in between and you could be falling all into the spectrum of health you could be super ripped and be unbelievably unhealthy inside relationship unhealthy financially unhealthy all these other things unhealthy but look super ripped and then you could be super soft but then have all these other things incredibly in balance and so I think as a fitness professional part of your job is teaching people that is learning how to communicate that so that people understand that just this image of the six pack abs is not everything here's how crazy it is this is how flipped upside down it is of all of the values that improving your health and your fitness and your wellness will provide of all of the values improvements in your beauty is at the bottom it's actually the least valuable thing in your life I promise you and it's not just my opinion the data is clear on this I remember Arthur Brooks communicating this for happiness he said you could be a five on a scale of one to ten spend hundreds of thousands of dollars train your body dedicate yourself to being perfect move yourself up to a nine and your happiness will barely tick up a little bit with all that time and investment it'll barely tick up a little bit so it's also the least valuable thing it's what we celebrate the most though is how you look the truth is how you feel your cognitive performance your mental health learning how to develop that discipline your relationships your mobility how to affect your relationships your energy your beta like all those things are so much higher than just your beauty by the way if you're lucky to live a long life and I say lucky because some people are unfortunate don't live very long if you're blessed and lucky enough to live a long life you're gonna lose your beauty anyway what do you think you're gonna be a hot 65, 70 year old walking around that's that's down at the bottom there's a very short window for when you know that really matters anyway so the truth is that people it's in our space promotes and maybe they don't say this but the way they promote it says this that beauty is the most important thing that fitness will provide you when in fact it's actually the least important thing and I think that's the biggest part of this message agreed look if you like the show head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out all of our free fitness guides download them all they're totally free mindpumpfree.com you can also find all of us on social media Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin I'm on Instagram at Mind Pump DeStefano and Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam