 Every week I send an email to my mastermind clients. They send me one or two questions. Usually it's a science-based, kind of like tutoring question. And we'll talk about anatomy or physiology or whatever. I got a guy who's going through a physiology course. I've got a guy who's reading an anatomy book. All sorts of stuff. This week I had a very unique question. More of a business, career, mindset, life, existentialism kind of question. And I want to read you his email. I'm currently still looking for a job and I've been reading a lot about the process. I'd like to pick your brain on it because you have a lot of teaching coaching experience. I know follow your passion might not be the best advice, but my passion is to become a great physical preparation coach. However, I coach for free currently to get coaching experience and I'm not sure if joining a big box gym would be a good gateway to becoming a better coach or possibly for that matter if they focus on my formal education only. Therefore, my idea is to try out a job and sustainability in the meantime to pay the bills and see if I might enjoy it while I can build some tangible skills, which I do not have my choice for a very broad study. So he is from a country that isn't an English-speaking country. Some of this is a little backwards. Anthropology sociology is his undergrad and he has a master's in industrial ecology. He left three prompts for me. Do you have any remarks about this plan? I read slash heard about the idea of finding a job that meets your natural talents. I'm not sure what to think of it. Do you think you can and should identify these? And if so, do you have a tip on how? And then third, have you seen people trying to become a better coach or something else while it might not be a good fit? What skill set does a good coach need in your opinion? So there's a lot going on here. I have a friend who has a master's degree in economics and he's a fantastic coach. He's not even this ridiculously outgoing, extroverted kind of guy. He is great at connecting with people. He's great at giving advice. He's very intelligent and he understands his science so he can give great advice. And he understands the ultimate limitation is behavior. How will somebody be able to enact the advice that he gives them? So he's identified rate limiting steps and he knows how to push even semi-accomplished people further on. So there's a lot that goes into that. Let's break down his questions. So any remarks about his plan? The idea of making money and living and eating is a strong one. So if you are well trained and you can find a job in the field that you are comfortable in or trained in or familiar with, then go ahead and do it. I know for a fact that this guy is kind of having some trouble doing that. So maybe keep the feelers open. If you find something that pays really well, then it's probably something that you might want to take as long as it's not eating up too much of your time because we have to keep in mind what is the ultimate goal. And if the ultimate goal is to become a physical preparation coach, then you've got to prioritize that. That has to be there. It's really hard to see people go through jobs working for the weekend basically. This phrase is poisonous. So you spend most of your life at your job and you hate it. I don't think that my mastermind client here will hate doing that stuff. And as he said, he may actually like it, but I don't want him to force himself into something that's ultimately just going to bring him down. Those are just some kind of thoughts about his general plan. Now his second prompt here. Read and heard about the idea of finding a job that meets your natural talents. Can you identify these? Should you identify these? How do you do it? My favorite book on this topic is called So Good They Can't Ignore You. It's after a Steve Martin quote and the book is from Cal Newport. I read this thing and I thought to myself, man, I should have read this book five years ago. It would have saved me so much time. The idea is that follow your passion is not the greatest advice. And I've received that advice and I've received that advice from millions of smart people. Millions is an exaggeration, but it's nice and it's frequently given by people because that advice has a very simple actionable step. If you know where you're going to go, then take steps to go there. The issue is that, I mean, for me, exactly, I have no idea where I'm going to go. So it's hard for me to make plans more than 24 hours in advance, more than six hours in advance. So let's be honest, I can't even make my day plans the night before I got to do it in the morning. The book talks about acquiring career capital. Basically, get more skilled at the things you do and then at some point those skills are going to fall into place. They're going to make sense. As you have more tools in your toolbox, you can better apply those to problem solve. Another really good book about problems is the subtle art of not giving a F word. And it's by Mark Manson. If you haven't heard of it, I'd be shocked because it's like the number one Amazon bestseller right now. It's great though. And he talks about problems and he talks about choosing a path. He talks about what stresses people out, especially in this day and age where information is everywhere. Millennials get a bad rap. They're not all just misguided souls. They're looking for a place to go. And they're trying to find their purpose and what they're supposed to do, but they have no idea how to do that. And the world, the social media, makes it seem like they should already know those things. And it's okay not to. You just need to go out and you acquire career capital like Cal Newport says. And eventually things will fall into place. Third prompt here. Have you seen people trying to become a coach or something else when it might not be a good fit? What skill set does a good coach need in your opinion? What skill set does a good coach need? So I've seen a ton of coaches who leave a lot to be desired from my perspective, but from their client's perspective. Clients love them. You'll hear some of my PT friends will tell you stories about someone coming to them for physical therapy. And the person will say, you could ask them, what did you do for your last physical therapy session? Who'd you see? Sarah. Oh, Sarah's great. She is just fantastic. I love her. Yeah, I wasn't any better after though. And they have no associates. So they identify this person as someone they like, someone they want to be associated with, someone they want to be around, someone they want to talk to, someone whose opinion they respect, even if it is proven that the opinion holds no value. So number, absolute number one thing for coaches is you've got to be good at talking to people, making connections, caring about people. You know, for me, I'm not a very extroverted naturally kind of person. I can turn that on when I feel I need to. But most of the time it's less stressful for me to stay introverted, to listen a little bit more, talk sometimes. But ultimately, that's all people are looking for. They need someone to listen to them. They need someone to guide them. So make sure you can you can do that. For science perspectives, I just think whatever general basic science you find yourself most motivated to study, because some people find it really hard to study basic sciences, whatever you've got, whatever kind of drive you can find, whether it be anatomy or physiology, you just latch onto that as much as you can, and you learn as much about it as possible. The more basic science you understand, the more creative you can be down the road. You can make up exercises, you can tweak programs slightly. You know, when you start coaching, you learn these programming rules. And then when you understand your physiology or your anatomy or whatever, you can start to break those rules. And you can start to form programs around your methodology. You start to develop your own system. You know, you might take a weekend course and take on their assessment process. And that's a great place to start. And it's a great way to test to see if this assessment process is going to fit into what I do. But ultimately, you have to keep asking yourself, is this going to fit into what I do? Does this fit into what I do? If I only work with 50 people at a time, doing a nice one-on-one assessment seems ideal, but it's really not ideal given the logistics that you've put yourself into, or your job puts you into. So be able to make connections, learn whatever basic science you need. And then the third main point is you've got to get out there. You've got to practice. You've got to practice talking to people. One common piece of advice for people who think they want to coach is to get a service industry job. If you are a server, waiter, waitress, or you work in some other restaurant or you sell clothes, all of those give you experience talking to people and managing people, especially people who are angry and expect a lot out of you. Because that is going to happen. People are going to yell. People are going to get upset because that's the nature of humans. You need to learn how to deal with that stuff. Okay, so we've got learn how to be a cool person, a genuinely nice person, someone who can connect with people. Learn some basic science and start doing it. Get practice. Those are my basic, overlying 10 or so minutes of thoughts. If you have any other thoughts to add, leave them in the comments below and don't forget to smash that like button. Do you start something and then just quit it almost immediately? Do you have trouble with accountability? Are you ready to start your personal career as a physical preparation coach? Have you heard a bunch of conflicting information and you're just not sure which one to pick? If you'd like to sign up to be one of my mastermind clients and exchange weekly emails, there's a link below. Click it. Huge dividends will pay off.