 You are tuning in to the fastest growing fitness, health and entertainment podcast on YouTube. This is mine pump. Check this out. Turn on your notifications because when we post these episodes, if you comment within the first 30 minutes and we pick your comment, check this out. You can win one of these guys. Mine pump t-shirt. These things are going for the last one I saw go went for a half a million to a million dollars on eBay. That's how valuable these shirts are. It's not true, but we will send you one of these shirts. If we pick your comment in the first 30 minutes, also don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with your friends. All right. In today's episode, we talk about online coaching. So we tell you the five things you should look for in an online coach. And we do this with our friend Jason Phillips. This guy owns NCI certifications, a great certification course for online coaches. In fact, when after we were done, we talked him into offering our listeners 75% off the full Institute. So huge discount on how on getting educated through NCI certifications. Go to this site. Okay. NCI mind pump.com. If you're interested in checking them out or getting that 75% off. Also all month long, we're running the phase two bundle special. This is where we take maps performance. This is our athletic minded maps program and maps aesthetic or body building inspired workout program. We combine the two and you get a huge discount. The phase two bundle is $79.99. Normally would cost you over 250 bucks. So it's a great discount. Go check it out. Go to mapsfebruary.com. Again, that's mapsfebruary.com. You know, ever since the pandemic, I feel like there has been this huge surge with online coaching. And I remember I think it was last year when we all got together and we hung out. You remember that girl, Brittany Dawn. She got, she was in, she was on the new, I think good morning. America even had her and she got in like huge trouble for like screwing people over. Right. Yeah. You know, and I don't know the mismanaging. Yeah. All these people right coaching because she had a huge following. And you know, I know that she started to do this like online personal training, which I don't even know. I don't think she has a training background at all. And I think she just, she thought that she would turn the monetization switch on and, you know, figured out afterwards. And I think she got such a huge response that she had like thousands of people that were signing up for her. And then she just was giving out cookie cutter shit to everybody. Is that, is that common Jason in the, in the space with the online coaches where you get a lot of people get kind of screwed over by online coaches that way. So I thought I heard she didn't even send programs out at all. Um, but, but regardless, like, is it common that people are getting bad programs? Yeah. I think we can all agree on that. I mean, there's a lot of people in the online space that probably shouldn't be in the online space, but I don't think the sad thing is I don't think any coaches really come in and are intentionally screwing somebody over. But I do think that, dude, you nailed it. The pandemic started and it was before the pandemic, but people come in and they're like, okay, there's a quick way to make a buck. If I have attention and I have abs, you know, that was the joke for a long time. If you have a six pack, just sell someone how to get a six pack. Right. The reality is you're probably born with a six pack, right? You're like one of those genetic people. You probably eat pizza every night, but you're like here, try my starvation diet. Um, I mean, there's a lot more garbage online today than when I think we all started in this space, especially when I went online, which was shoot man, a long time. I think it's like any market, right? The bigger it gets, the more you'll see people entering it that probably shouldn't. I remember for me, a great example. This was years ago when I was managing health clubs. There was a health club company that exploded called curves. I don't know if you guys remember curves. Oh yeah. And it became, it was like the fastest growing fitness franchise in the world at one point and it got so big, so fast. You had all these people opening up these curves franchises that had never worked in gyms, never worked in fitness, never worked out. They just saw it as a way to make money and predictably that franchise then collapsed because, you know, fitness is one of those things. You need to know what you're doing because otherwise you're just not going to succeed long term. It feels like you see a lot of that right now. You get a lot of people going on there. I think that is still happening. I think like F45 and I won't say other ones because we know the owners of the franchises, but there are franchises out there saying this is a bizop. Like you can be, you know, I heard an ad on SiriusXM as retro fitness. You can be completely off-site. You can just be an investor. You don't need to be an owner operator. And you know, but the same thing online. The appeal is so sexy. Well, that was my experience when I worked with Orange Theory when it first started. And I mean, it just, that company blew up. And just, so I was in the very first one in the Bay Area, right? That opened up and during the time, the two years that I was there, I think seven or eight opened up in the area. And so I knew all the owners, all the owners at one point were just members of my class and they were people that had money. They had money and they saw the writing on the wall and they were smart and they got in like no fitness people. And they were running these gyms. They were building these fitness cultures to make money off of this franchise. And what I saw was a bunch of, I saw a bunch of smart people that saw an opportunity to make money, but not fitness smart people, not people that really understood how to help and coach people. And that was kind of my, my knock on the whole formula. I was like, man, this is, it's, and you, it grows so fast, it gets out of control. This is similar to what I think happens to these coaches. I think their followings get so huge, like what happened to probably like Brittany Dawn didn't realize that, you know, maybe a thousand people would give her money to help her, help them do what she's doing. And then I think she started, and I think how she got caught up with, she was scrambling to get something to everybody and then it ended up being like the same thing. Is the online coaching space seems to be exploding, right? It seems like it's growing faster and faster and more people are seeking online coaches than ever before. Is this your experience? Cause I mean, you're at the front line of this. Yeah. First of all, the appeal to being an online coach is so high, right? I mean, in, from the outside looking in, it's really simple. You know, you sit behind your computer, somebody approaches you for coaching, you send a plan and you don't have to talk to them. That's the appeal, right? It's obviously far deeper than that, but I think a lot of people get into it with that frame of mind. They're like, great, I'll take your intake form. I'll build you some plan or I'll try to and that's where I think like the messiness has gotten. But you know, we, we were talking off air how many gyms went out of business in 2020? I think, I think conservatively 30 to 40% of niche gyms, not even talking big box gyms, but 30 to 40% of niche gyms went out, which means 34, 30 to 40% of the world's trainer force is now out of a job. And so you've got two choices, right? Or maybe three, one, join a big box gym that's still open and maybe have access to 90% less clients cause it's like 10% occupancy. Two, go get a job in a completely different industry or three, go online. And so we're seeing a massive migration online, which in my opinion means if you're an online coach now and you want to be an online coach, you need to level yourself up. Like there's a completely different, it's a new game. It's not what it was 10 years ago when I got into space and the coaches have to start looking at it. Well, this is really what I wanted to get into with you, Jay, because you have so much experience in this field and I think we can organize an episode for the listeners. Like, how do they look? What are the things you look for in an online coach? Like, how do I know? Because here's the thing, it's flooded. You have a lot of bad coaches out there, but there's good ones too. Oh yeah. There's coaches that, I mean, I coached online. So that was the natural pivot for me from competing, right? Before Mind Pump started and I got attention on social media and I had all these people that wanted to show them exactly like how I did what I did. And when I started looking at other online coaches, the first thing I did was like, okay, what I don't wanna do is do what I see is happening in the space, which is this generic cookie cutter thing. I'd rather charge a premium, take less clients, service them better than try and go the volume route, which is what I think a lot of these coaches do. It's like, oh, I have this following. Let's try and get a thousand people for and be under the price of somebody else. I was like, no, I'd rather have less people because I found that personally, once I got over 20 people that I was managing, which was very similar to when I was managing in a gym. You start getting up beyond 20, 30 clients and it's really hard to give that personal service unless you've got a really good system in place, which most of these guys don't really have. You become way less effective as a trainer and training people online is actually harder than it is in person because you're not with them. Oh, I agree. It's actually much more challenging. So for the listener who's, because there's also, you see online coaches flood the market, you're also seeing a lot of people seeking it. Yes, because gyms are closed, but they still, you know, there's still a demand for help. There's still demand for fitness. What are some of the things that they need, they should look for because there's no standardization. It's not like you can go online and say, oh, these people, you know, here's these qualifications I need to look for. A lot of people have no idea. All they see are followers, how the person looks and then they're like, okay, is this going to be a good coach? So let's start with some of the stuff that you probably should look for in an online coach that'll tell you that this person that you're dealing with is probably going to do a good job. What would be one of the first things? Man, the first thing that I'm a big fan of and what really allowed me to build my coaching business. I think I was one of the first in the space to really get to multiple seven figures with a coaching business. Funny, Adam, you talk about the low price, like arbitrage, that was me. And I completely, I was like one of my earliest mistakes, but you know, at my peak, Sal, I was doing what you were doing, what you were talking about, just doing it way too often. I think burnout affects the online space too. You know, the first thing you need to look at is, is your coach willing to connect with you? Are they willing to speak with you? You know, Sal, you were talking about the online training being harder. Your time commitment as an online coach is probably more, right? When a client pays you in person, it's very expected. They're your Tuesday, Thursday morning clients, 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. You're not expecting text messages, you know, Tuesday night at 6 p.m., Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. Like if you're an online coach, your clients need a lot of support. They don't have that physical touch to you. They don't have that level of access. And you need to provide that. I think online coaches need to be about connection. It's what I funded my, or what I founded my whole Nutritional Coaching Institute on is what we call the connection-based model. Everything starts with that connection to your client, right? It's a weight loss, physique change, you know, body recomp. It's a vulnerable proposition. Mrs. Jones comes to you, she's 100 pounds overweight. She doesn't want to talk about the fact that she's overweight. And she certainly doesn't want to talk about all the problems it's causing in her life, right? Her husband doesn't look at her the same way. Like her clothes don't fit. Like that's not very fun to talk to somebody, you know, five states away about and here she is, and you're expecting to have that conversation. If you don't bring those walls down, if you don't open up the channels of communication beyond a simple five word email, how are you ever going to get the connection you truly need to create the results that you want? And I think that, again, the state of the industry coaches are, they're looking towards this automation. Oh, well, if I only have to send one email, oh, if I insert them into my Trainerize app or, you know, whatever it is, that's not authenticity. That's not coaching. That's technology and that's a dime a dozen. Right, right. So you're looking for, you want to ask the trainer, how many, how often are you going to be contacting me? How often can I get ahold of you? You want to be able to have kind of a direct line to the coach? Is that, is that fair to say? I'm a huge fan of that. I mean, that's, that's literally what set me apart. So when I teach coaches, I say you got to have a unique opportunity, right? And I came in, what are we 2021 now? I came in around 2015 is when I really blew up my online business and I was like, how, how can I differentiate? Everyone's putting out macros. Everyone's putting out calories and workouts. And I was like, you know what no one's doing? No one is getting on phone calls. No one's getting on FaceTime, Zooms, allowing text message. Everyone was hiding behind one email a week. And, and that connection based model honestly has become commonplace today. I think that if you're a, if you're a good coach of any sort, you do that. And so if you're a client out there looking for a coach, your coach should be doing that. If they're not willing to give that level of access, then I don't think they're a very good coach. And how, how can you coach, right? We're all very good coaches in this room. How can you coach without that? Well, you, you hit it earlier is, you know, one of the things I figured out as a trainer, training people in person, and it took quite a long time to get here was that part that you talked about with being able to break down those walls and humanize yourself, right? And be vulnerable. That's hard to do in person. Amen. Looking you in the eye and letting you see, see me. It's 10 times harder, you know, via email or text message, it takes that much more. And that's what I found when I started getting into the online coaching space was the things that I could communicate in person, I could say a lot less and get my message across or show you and you could see it where I had to find a way to be able to get that across via text message or email or zoom call. And it did. It took more effort and more time to do that. Well, I think there's a misconception too. And you know, I'd love your input on this, Jason, but I think sometimes people, especially when they hire an online coach, they think I'm just, I just need someone to tell me what to do. But the reality is that's never effective. It's never effective to have someone just tell you what to do. You actually need someone to guide you. Okay. So it's like, you're going to climb up a mountain. You've never been up before. It's very challenging. There's lots of twists and turns. It's very dangerous. You know, oftentimes people fail or fall or die. Do you want the guide that says, all right, I'm going to write you a map and then give it to you? Or do you want the person that's going to be like, I'm going to walk with you. I'm going to walk you up this mountain the entire time. And every time you stumble, I'm going to be there to coach you through every stumble. That's how I was as a trainer. I can't imagine somebody being successful any other way. Dude, that's such a good analogy because let's be honest. All the information someone needs to lose weight, change their body, gain muscle. It's all available online. It like, it's on Google. Like we literally nothing. I wrote, I've written seven, eight courses now in our company. All of that information is on Google. It's not the information that changes somebody's life. It's the ability to apply that information. It's taking that and saying, okay, you're showing up with these problems. You know that you should be choosing, you know, let's just make it really simple, a salad over a Big Mac. The real question is, why are you not choosing the salad over the Big Mac? Why can't you put down your Coke every single night? Like it's not common knowledge or it is common knowledge rather that if you stop drinking soda, you're reducing calories, right? First change, drink more water, have less Coca-Cola. You'll probably see the scale go down. Why aren't people doing it? And the coach that comes in and is really successful, it's that connection that brings down the barrier because there's some sort of emotional reason. A root cause. There is some reason that this person is choosing food. And I tell everybody it's always a function of pain. I mean, physical change, human change only happens when the pain of perceived change is less than the current pain they're experiencing. And you only get to that inside of connection, right? Cause if your current pain is less than your perceived pain of change, you're not going to change. If that seems like, like Sal, you know, if there's a million dollars on the top of the mountain, but you're a billionaire, you're like, I'm not climbing the top of that. But if you're dirt poor and there's a million dollars at the top of the mountain, you bet your ass you're climbing that mountain to get to that million dollars. So that pain has to be decreased and that coach has to go in, bring the barriers down, connect super deeply to be able to find out why is this change not happening? Now, do you talk to your coaches and people that are considering, you know, signing up with you guys about what gimmicks to look out for? Like are there, I mean, are there common ones in our space that a lot of like these online coaches used to get leads? And do you like warn people of like, watch for this or like, you know, the 30 day challenges or the transformation thing? Like what do you, what would you consider like the gimmicks that people use to attract leads for this? I think if there's, I tell coaches there should always be an entry point and exit point. And if it's just, if you're just getting somebody to a result and it's like, see later, I don't think that's coaching, right? I think that, and so if you start to look around, it's like six weeks to a six pack. Okay, great. Well, are you gonna maintain that six pack? Because let's be honest, I know that's starvation. Nobody's getting shredded in six weeks unless you're severely starving yourself or unless you're already really lean, right? And so I think that to say look out for these gimmicks would almost be short-sighted because there's a new one popping up every single day. And a lot of times if it sounds too good to be true, it likely is too good to be true. I think that we talk a lot about understanding that it's a much bigger model. It's a much longer game and trying to help clients understand that. But again, a lack of connection will lead people to the gimmicks. So I think these two are interchangeable because if you're not connecting with your clients and you're allowing your information to be what is your forward-facing vision to the client, then they're gonna go consume more information and your stuff probably sounds less sexy than the person down the street that says, I can get you shredded in two days. So now you've just kind of commoditized yourself as the coach or as a client, you're like, well, that information sounds better. And so it's the connection that kind of brings down that wall and creates that level of trust to really buy into something that will be effective. So in your professional opinion, coaching multiple clients and then also guiding these other coaches, what would you say is the cap for the amount of clients and the scalability for that because this is so involved. This is something that they have to put a lot of time and effort into. What does that look like for an online coach? Bro, I'm the worst person in the world to ask about this because I, when I started, we were talking about this offline too, I was just hanging out with Billy Jean on Tuesday and he said, can you have a relationship on the come-up? And I completely lost mine on the come-up because I overworked myself. At my peak, I had 167 clients. Whoa! Okay, and dude, I was on phone calls. Every client got a 30-minute phone call with me every 12 days. Wow. They could text me unlimited amounts of time. Bro, I was on calls from 4 a.m. and I was living in Arizona at this time. So 4 a.m. either mountain or Pacific depending time of year until midnight. And I'm talking like, I took calls in the gym. There's a video of me somewhere back squatting 405 taking a call. And it was like, I would do anything for my clients but mind you, my whole premise at that time was I was coming from being really poor and only caring about helping people and health and fitness. And so I was gonna do whatever it took. Now, today, if you ask me that question, I would say realistically, if your organization is systemized, if you understand what you're doing as a business owner, not just a coach, right? And that would be the differentiator is if you're a business owner, you could probably handle like 30. If you're a coach and this is all you do and you don't have to outsource and you don't have to worry about like admin and all this crazy shit, you probably could get to 60 relatively safely. But I think anything beyond that is that's just asking for burnout. And that's a lot of work still. That's a ton of work dude. Like that's 50 hour work week and people like, well, it's just 30 clients, you know, half hour phone call every other week. That means I'm on, you know, eight, you know, seven and a half hours of calls a week. That's no big deal. No, no, no. It's gonna go way beyond that. And it's, it's every day they're texting you. And emailing and your updates. I have a craving and oh, I missed this thing and I feel this way and what about this workout all day. Now is that, you know, a valid question for a potential client to ask, you know, the trainer, like how many people are you servicing? 100%. I think it should be how many clients do you work with? How closely do you work with your clients? Right. I think if you're a, if you're a client and you're asking potential trainer, like think of all the scenarios where you've been disappointed before. By the way, if you're a coach, think about on your come up because you guys all hired coaches before you were trainers, I would assume. I hired every coach in the game because I wanted to just learn it. I thought about all the ways I was disappointed and I'm like, great, I need to solve that in my business. But yeah, definitely. If you're a client, you should grill the coach before you hire them. Because again, it's the industry is becoming so commoditized become somewhat oversaturated. Dude, that's a, that's a great question. I think way too many clients just make an assumption they're going to get a lot of time and they don't ask. I like what you said about the exit plan too because the truth is, let's say your goal is to lose 30 pounds. It's way easier to lose 30 pounds than it is to keep it off. Way, way in the statistics prove this. People lose weight all the time. Almost nobody keeps it off. So the personal connection piece, I think I 100% agree with you. That's got to be the most important thing. What's another thing that they should look for in an online coach? You know, I think that your coaches that are out there are the ones that you're looking at. You should really be looking into their process, not what they're spouting off to be knowledge. I think there's a lot of really intelligent coaches out there. There's a lot of knowledge being put into the world. I think a lot of online coaches are talking about very specialized subjects, but that's cool that you're, that you're that smart, but can you do it for me? Right. And I think we could all sit here and identify, there's probably, there's probably a lot of really intelligent trainers that we don't know about and it's because they can't create results. Being able to just, you know, sit here on a podcast and spout your knowledge off. That's great. And I've always said like, I never made all my success because I was the smartest coach in the world. I was probably the dumbest coach in the world, but I was really good at connecting with people and I was good at creating results. I was good at like bringing you in, analyzing where you're at, and then building out a plan, not just like, okay, well, you got gut health problems today? All right, well, fast for a day and let's, let's see if that works. Like we'd build out like a six month plan. All right, we're going to fix your gut health and then we're going to look at, you know, HPA axis and then we're going to, you know, restore homeostasis and then we're going to bring you into active fat loss. You know, that's one of the, that was one of the biggest hurdles for trainer. This is in-person training, right? Back when I was a manager and I had a staff underneath me, one of the biggest hurdles they always had was they couldn't understand like, Adam, how do I sell like 30 sessions or 50 sessions? I'm like, well, part of your problem is you're selling the sessions and you're not selling your plan. Like you have to have a plan mapped out for these people. You don't just say, Hey, you should buy 30 sessions for me and then along the way, I'll train you and we'll figure it out. Like nobody's going to buy into that. And so you need to start thinking about this client who's sitting in front of you, what their goals are, what they're trying to do and then you have to be able to put a plan together for them. You've got to prescribe it. Right. Exactly. You need to have a prescription so they know what to expect over the course of the next two to three months if you think you're going to be able to sell somebody on this idea that they're going to be with you for six months versus this, Hey, I'm a great trainer. Let me show you the best exercise or whatever gimmick to get your attention and then a hope that you buy all this training. I think that's a really good point because I think if you're looking at the content that your prospective coach is putting out, I think that you should ask yourself, is this person continuously talking about the work they do with people? And if that's the case, there's a really good chance all they do is what you talked about, just those reactionary, transactional like sessions. Right. Oh, we're on a call today. Oh, you didn't sleep good last night. Okay. Try this talk to you next week. Like that's not solving anything. That's not a plan to take anybody anywhere. But if your coach is putting things out and they're talking about solutions, they're talking about results that they create. Like, obviously you're investing in a coach to get somewhere. There's a result that you want. If it was about workouts, why are you buying workouts? There's 10 million ways to buy workouts, very cheap. If it's about you being on a diet, well, there's 10 million free diets in this world. You're not investing into the process. You're investing into a result. So look at your coach's content. Number one, have they created results? But number two, are they even looking at the result you desire? If all they ever talk about is weight loss and you want to fix SIBO, well, you should probably ask them if the process is going to be geared towards fixing your SIBO and not weight loss and not make the assumption that they're going to just inherently know that. So would a fair question then be, you know, when you're interviewing an online coach and I do think it's important to interview them, right? Yes, absolutely. Would you say, okay, what would this plan? What is this plan going to look like? Obviously, as we go along with it, you're going to have to modify it because everybody's a little different. But what does this plan look like based on what I've told you my goals are? Would that be a fair question to ask? One million percent. And again, just like what Justin was asking earlier, I think that you definitely should ask those questions. I agree. You should definitely interview your prospective coach. And then, you know, if you've had an experience, if you've tried everything, well, why wouldn't this be the plan? You know, oh, I read this. Why wouldn't this work? See if your coach can actually answer those questions. They should be able to handle things. And let's be honest, if you're a prospective client, you have some intuition as to what the journey should look like. And if it's completely counter what you're, you know, what the coach is going to prescribe, you need to know that on the front end. Because otherwise you're going to invest money. It's not going to be what you expect. We all know we're emotionally tied to our expectations. And so when all of a sudden they give you something that is not what you're expecting, you have to behave differently. That's really difficult as a human being to accept. So yeah, I mean, I think that I like what you said about reactionary too, because I could just imagine that, right? So they get on the phone with their client and it's like, how do you feel today? All right, do this. And then next week, how do you feel today? All right, do this without any real plan of action, without any real steps or any scaffolding, you know, to follow. So I think that's a great question. You said something off air that I thought was really good that we actually preach quite a bit on the show, which would be application over education. Explain that, explain what that means. Yeah, I think that, and this is like, I'm just gonna say, I think we were one of the first ones to really talk about it at NCI, you know, when I came in the space, what held me back the longest time as a coach was, I knew my stuff, but like clients would come in and they did not fit what I had been taught. Like at Florida, you know, I went to Florida State for my undergrad and like, you know, whatever certifications I had had, like they were, it was different, you know? And then today, like look at Western culture, we all just lived in lockdown for a year, like we're still living in lockdown, you know, our metabolisms are destroyed from all like the low calorie things, so nothing's lining up. If your coach is just spitting like knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, and it's like, okay, great, I'm coming in and you're banking on the fact that your cookie cutter program is going to work for me based on the fact that you're highly educated and I'm not disputing your education, but if you're banking on the fact that you're highly educated program is going to work for my specific application, how can you guarantee that? And I, you know, we could call that individualization, we could call that really being able to assess properly what the situation is. We could talk, you know, there's a couple of different ways we could probably articulate that, but I think that the best coaches in the world can immediately analyze what the situation is. They can deduce the proper treatment, the proper plan moving forward and then they can implement accordingly. And let's be honest, I mean, all of us are coaches, we can build amazing plans, right? Implementing that plan with your client, that doesn't follow it 80% of the time because we all know clients are very rarely going to follow things right away. It's not easy. So how do you work in the confines and the constraints that your clients are giving you? You know, ask, if you're a prospective client, I would certainly ask your coach, well, what happens if I fuck up, right? Like, what happens if Sunday night I'm out with the boys and I just completely go off the rails? Are you going to yell at me? Are you going to edit my plan tomorrow? Like, what am I supposed to do? Because you got to know that, right? Like, can I text you? Can I text you when I'm out with the boys? Like, these are things that matter. And by the way, there's no textbook in the world, promise you. That says, well, if you're out with the boys and you have two extra beers on Sunday night, here's the exact way to change your plan to make sure you get back on track. It's like the famous Mike Tyson quote, right? Everybody has a plan till they get punched in the face. Amen, brother. For me, it was, you know, as long as we've been doing the show, there was always this hallmark way of knowing that I was talking to a trainer who's worked with people versus somebody who's just very educated. And it's very, very simple. Like we had Joe DeFranco on the show years ago and he was somebody that we all followed before we started Mind Pump. And we would ask him questions and his answer was always, it depends. That's the key word in my opinion. Two favorite words at NCI, it depends. And this is because people are so damn different. They're not just different physiologically, right? We all have different, you know, gut microbiomes. Biodiverse. We have, yeah, different bodies or hormones can be different. We respond differently to things and foods and whatever. We also are different emotionally. We have different experiences. Our daily activities look completely different. It's like so different from person to person that it makes just being highly educated without knowing how to apply it is you're literally just a little bit better than Google. Well, all of these things become interconnected because what you're talking about now, the difference is also a function of connection, right? Adam, if you were coaching me and I show up like I'm in reasonably good shape now and you're like, cool, getting you lean will be super easy. But you don't know that my journey started in anorexia. You putting me into a calorie deficit and asking me to stay there, you're just triggering those behaviors right away. So that connection now becomes part of the application. So I don't think you can be like, I'm a coach that has application over education without connection. We can't be talking about these things like they're on an island and like they're mutually exclusive. All of these things are what your coach has to have. They have to have the ability to connect. They have to have the ability to apply. They gotta be able to create a plan for you. Like if this isn't what you're paying for, then you need to go find somebody that has it. And listen, online coaching has gotten a little more expensive. When I first got in the game was like 100, 150 bucks. I mean, when I exit it was 500. But today it's minimum probably 250, 300 bucks to get a reasonable coach. And I mean, there's some coaches charging $500, $1,000. And it's in my opinion, it's worth every penny. It almost feels like you should use the amount of questions that the coach asks you is like a metric, you know, in terms of like, you know, trying to field as much information from you as possible versus like giving you a plan. I would, I would like, that would be a red flag for me right away as a prospective client, right? If your coach literally, if you, if you inquire with a coach and the coach is like, you know, like how much is it? A coach is like 250 bucks. And you're like, okay, cool. They take your money and they just build you a plan. You need to fucking run. Like even without your money, just fucking run. If they didn't ask you questions, if they didn't somewhat interview you, I mean, I take on very few clients these days. And I recently took on a client that I just knew it would be fun to work with. And we sat on an hour on a Zoom and I was very open with him. I'm like, listen dude, in zero chance in the next six months, you're hiring me for a fat loss, zero chance you lose fat the next six months. You are so broken that if we don't restore like where you are, like, I mean, he's a doctor. He's abused himself with excessive exercise. He's under consumed calories. Like, like he's going through a lot of stress or he's got like young kids. I'm like, dude, you got six months ahead of you. And the truth is you could get them there. The truth is, yeah, the truth is a coach could and that's the hard thing to communicate is that it's not that it's impossible to get you to lose that weight. I mean, I could cut your calories in half tell you to double up your exercise and we'll lose more weight. But I'm only, I'm only setting you up for long-term failure that way. That's it. I'm going to make you fatter long-term. Right? Like Sal, you said it best. We don't have a weight loss problem in our country. We have the maintenance of weight loss problem in our country. People lose weight every day. Literally wake up, scale is down. Why aren't people keeping the weight off? Because the tactics being used, even the coaching methodologies being taught are just completely bastardized from what proper protocols should be. What about because obviously online coaches are trying to build their business as well. What about coaches that seem to be far more interested in getting new clients versus serving the ones that they're with? I used to see this in gyms where we'd see there were managers who were just worried about getting new people in the door and just didn't care about the members or the gym itself. And that worked for a few months, maybe even six months, but eventually they started to tank because the atmosphere or the culture of the gym would just decline. What about that? What about people who are more interested in acquisition over something like retention? Yeah, I mean, it's a tough dichotomy because a brand new coach has to focus on acquisition, but a experienced coach probably less on acquisition. I think that if you're a good coach and you understand business, you understand that acquisition should be something you try to do once and that the majority of your efforts should be on retention. They say old business lesson, you guys ran gyms, it's much easier to upsell a current client than it is to acquire a new client. Far less expensive, far easier. But if you constantly see your coach or your prospective coach on Instagram and they're like $99 special, like come work with me or... I got five spots left. Yeah, I'm looking for three people to completely change their life with me in two days. Yeah, that's probably not something. And here's the thing, I don't want to discount them because I know several great coaches that are trying to build their business and they've learned from quote unquote, guru that said to fucking do that or whatever. Like, if they're cold messaging you in your DMs, like let's just be honest, that's a plague right now. Like, I don't know about you guys. I'm like, my cold DMs, literally I had a guy message me yesterday on Facebook and he was like, hey, I see we have a lot of the same friends and we're in a lot of the same groups. And I like, I just wrote back and I was like, bro, don't bother pitching me. And he wrote back and he was like, wow, that's not the typical response I get. And I was like, well, you're cold outreach, honestly offends me. And if you're a marketer, which I assume you are, you probably should learn to market. And he was like, literally at that point, dude, I had him turned around and I was ready to sell him. Like that was great. But like, if that's what you see from your coach, if they're just like, what are they putting out there? Is it real value? But also like in your time with them, are they hounding you for friends? Or are they constantly talking about, because I'm not opposed to asking for referrals, but if it's like this never ending stream of like incentivizing referrals, if they're running a new fucking challenge every single week, right? Like there's probably a problem with their model. And I don't think that, I don't think really successful coaches that are focused on connection, that are focused on laying out a long-term plan are gonna have retention issues. Well, it's the short gains versus the long-term gains, right? I had an opportunity, and actually when we came out and saw you, I met, I won't roll a guy on the bus, but a big online personality guy that had, I met his marketing dude. It was at the dinner that we had. So I don't know if you remember who this was or not, but we were sharing behind the scenes numbers, like lifetime value and exactly what we're talking about, acquisition. And I told him what Mind Pump's lifetime value number was and he like stopped mid-com, and he was like, are you kidding me? He's like, and then by the way, this person does a lot more business than we do. He's been doing it online for a lot longer. And when he shared the number that he had, and he was like so baffled, I don't understand, how do you guys get that? And I said, well, you know, since we started this business, and back when we had 100 people listening to us and we had 10 people in our forum, our business model's always been about taking care of those 10 people as much as we possibly can because we know if we can impact those 10 people and change their lives, they're more likely to go out and talk all about us all the time versus the temptation of being on the web and having all this like eyes on you, just trying to get more people in the funnel versus really taking care of the people that have already invested in you. And I think that's, it's in the defense of these coaches, it's tempting because it's quick, easy money. If I throw this click funnel up and I just get leads in here and as long as converting at this percent and I'm pumping this much into Facebook, it makes sense, it makes dollar sense. And so who cares if the people are falling out the back? There's billion people to go after. That'll last me the next 20 years of building a business. There's another elephant in the room too, which is if you elevate your quote unquote personal brand and this is something I've respected about you guys forever is you have the opportunity to elevate your personal brands really early and you just let it grow organically. You all have amazing personal brands. I know you guys behind the scenes super, like you are who you are. If you elevate your personal brand artificially, there's sponsorships out there too, right? You become an influencer and it's like, oh, well, now so-and-so supplement company is gonna promote me. They're gonna get me another 100,000 followers, which means now I could sell my bullshit abs product to another 100,000 followers and that's where you end up with like the Britney Don scenarios. And so it is tempting and a lot of it's the fault, man. Like if you open up your phone right now and you scroll Facebook, there's every marketer out there like do this and you'll instantly have a hundred clients, bullshit. Like let's just be honest, let's call bullshit. It's not gonna happen. And I think for me, I almost got discouraged, man, like a little over a year ago where I was working with all these coaches and they were all telling me, oh, I hired so-and-so to grow my business. And I was like, okay. And like six months later, they're coming to me, so-and-so fucked me over. And I'm like, oh, you kind of bought into a fucking scam. Like they didn't fuck you over. They just, they're doing what they do and anybody that promises you you're gonna be filthy rich in six months, like, I mean, dude, I went broke twice trying to get to where we got to. Like, I mean, we all have stories of hitting rock bottom before we ever made it. And it's, there's a lot of components that go into it. And, but it is, it's, again, going all the way back to the beginning, it's so attractive today to be an online coach. Well, it's like trying to fill a bucket with water and there's a massive hole at the bottom. When I first became a trainer, I had to hustle to get new clients way more than I did later on as it became a much better trainer. Later on, I almost never had to get new clients. I had clients and they were with me and my slots were full and I provided them with tremendous value. And eventually clients would work with me maybe less frequently. So, you know, I trained Miss Johnson three days a week when we first started then it became two days a week and then one day a week and then once every the week and then I had lots of clients like this and they'd been with me for nine or 10 years and I was providing them with tremendous value. That's the model in my opinion for success. But besides that, that's the model for success for the client when you're working with a coach or a trainer who does it that way because what are you really after if you're a client looking for an online coach? You want to get good results and you want to keep those results, right? So, that's the person you should look for not the person who's constantly trying to get new people. Why are they always trying to get new people? Because maybe that providing the value that they say that they're providing to the clients that they're working with. Dude, to this day, I mean, again, I don't take on that many new clients. To this day, I still have I have a client who's been with me over eight years. I have a husband wife who's been with me over nine years. I've got a woman that was like shit and she's closing on seven years. I mean, when we talk about lifetime value of clients, I remember when somebody asked me in a certification, well, how long is the average client with you? And I couldn't figure this out, to be honest, because I had a team when we had I and three, we had 15 coaches. And my coaches would keep somebody like maybe six months. Like my retention was upwards of two years. And I was like, what the fuck are you guys doing? And honestly, like that learning experience is what has driven a lot of my perspective on this because that drove me deeper into the connection-based model. That's when I was like, guys, you're treating this like nutrition coaching. You're not treating this like human connection. And then like that is everything to me. If you're not looking at it as connection, person to person, solving this person's problems, being there for them, Sal, you said it best, walking the journey with them, what are you really doing? You're just collecting cash for something that you're not really delivering. Right, and let's be honest, the fitness and health journey is a long journey. So this is why someone listening may think to themselves, why would I need to work with someone that long? Well, I'm being, if you're 35 years old and you need to lose 30 pounds, and you've never really been consistent with exercise or with good nutrition, you've been on diets, but you've never really figured out, that's a lot of stuff you have to work through. And you have to completely transform the way you live. And it takes a long time and this is why investing in somebody who knows what they're doing, who's gonna have that connection, they can work with you for a very, very long time because the process changes every month, every year and you continue to progress. And then eventually you get to the point where you really start to figure it out for yourself, but it does take a while. Well, let's, I'll use a really good client example in the absence of connection, what can happen? I had two ladies in Oregon hire me, same time. One woman, I mean, so metabolically adapted, it was absurd. She was training five times a day. She was older woman, she was like Tybo five times a day, but she was training five times. She was eating like 800 calories. And her friend, like salon owner, overweight, just really needed to like reign it in, but not that bad of a scenario. Both of them wanted to get leaner, obviously. The one that was so metabolically adapted, I had to come to Jesus moment with her immediately and was like, listen, it's gonna be a long process. And she really was like on the fence. The other woman was super on the fence, but the woman that was metabolically adapted, she ended up getting diagnosed with breast cancer. And she was like, I just have full faith in whatever your plan is at this moment. She's like, you'll get me through this, you'll get me to where I need to be. And she's been with me eight years. The other woman was like, you didn't get me ripped in 90 days and she left. Since then, she's hired six other coaches, all of whom she hired for 90 days, and she's still right where she is. The other woman like had cancer overcame everything. She now consumes regularly 1800 to 2000 calories at her age. She trains no more than four times per week. She goes on a date night with her husband every single week. And she absolutely loves the way she looks, feels, and everything about her life. And it's like, that's the epitome of coaching to me. It's not even the result, like that's cool. The whole journey to me was the epitome of coaching. And that's always what's drawn me to it. And if that's not something you can see yourself as a client engaging in with your perspective coach, probably not the right coach for you, right? You should be ready to have that kind of journey. Yeah, you know, as we're talking, I'm thinking about scenarios that pop up with people, with clients, and let's say, for example, they're trying to eat right in it's, you know, Friday night, they're about to go out with their friends and they're feeling, you know, for lack of a better term, they're feeling maybe weak, right? They want to go drink, they want to eat, you know, maybe something that might not be on their meal plan or on their strategy. How important is it that they can get a hold of their coach and get a reply right away? That was something I was huge on. I remember I had one client, she was a very well-known cross fitter, and she's like, I never know what to order. And I was like, cool, take a picture of the menu, text it to me, I'll walk you through it. And she's like, wait, you'll do that? And I was like, why wouldn't I do it, right? Assuming that like you give me some heads up and you can't just like Sunday night, like 9.30 Pacific time, I'm living on East Coast time, like expect me to be awake, right? Like give me a little heads up. But I think it's super important, like Adam in the prep game, I can't tell you how many coaches I've watched, and you know what it's like on show day. You wake up on show day, there should not be a plan. You should, the plan should be go look in the mirror and figure it out, right? You might have an idea. It's hour by hour. It is hour by hour. You should have an idea of where the body's trending, but you do not know what the plan is at that moment. I hear coaches that are, I hear people wake up, they're like, yeah, like my coach sent me my plan a week ago. What the fuck are you talking about? How do you know what your body's gonna look like? So I remember I'd be on the West Coast, I'd have clients in Europe. I'd be, you know, I'd be waking up at all hours. And obviously I told you I lost a relationship. My girlfriend at the time was like sleeping in the other room. And I did and totally understood why, right? But I'd wake up 2.30, 3.30, whatever time, like send me pictures. I'll make the adjustments, I'll send it to you. Send me pictures again in two hours. So I would have broken sleep that night. That's the sacrifice I made as a coach. But again, as coaches, we chose that profession. We said, I'm gonna walk this journey with you. I'm gonna cross the finish line with you. I'm not gonna expect you to cross it. And I'm just gonna go sleep and hope that you do well. Right. Well, that way of coaching though opens the opportunity though for you to scale your prices. So this is very similar to when I got into the online coaching space, I started relatively cheap. Like you mentioned 150 to 500 was the range. I started at $200, because that's what I thought was on the lower end. And my theory or thought process was, okay, I'm gonna be competitive with my price with most people that are out there. And then my job or my goal for myself is to over deliver so much that my amount of slots fill up right away. And then I'll just keep increasing my price by 50 bucks. And I'll just keep getting better at the service. Versus, oh wow, I filled my 20 spots up. I could go to 30 because there's now more people. And I'll just keep charging. No, I was like, every time I added a new person, I went up $50 more until I eventually got to where I was charging $500 a client. And everybody felt like they got great service. And everybody that was coming was a referral from somebody I was already servicing. We talked about earlier people like acquisition versus retention, the best form of acquisition is serving your clients. If you're serving your clients at a high level, you're going to get people. And that becomes a hard conversation because your client that's referring you out, they're only paying like $200. And they're like, can I only pay Adam 200? And your friend's like, he charged me 500. Well, Adam, you should have hired him like two years ago. And I mean, you gotta have those difficult conversations. Oh, I would have that. So let's talk about- Oh, I had that all the time. Right, so I would communicate that to clients. I'd say, hey, listen, once I get to this certain amount, like you guys have a premium rate. So if you go tell your friends, please don't tell them that they can have it for that because once I'm capped out, I'll go up. And it's connection. Right. And what was great was cause I had that connection, I could have that and they would go out and they would do the selling for me. Bro, it all comes back to connection, right? This is why from day one, I said NCI will be built on a connection based model. If you lack connection, everything you need to do tactically, business-wise, anything, scale, whatever it is, if you don't have connection, it will not happen. This is why, cause, you know, we started the podcast years ago and very quickly we became quite popular in the podcast space as a fitness podcast. We had a lot of people approach us with certifications who wanted to work with us a lot. And we turned all of them down because, you know, they just didn't meet our standards. Again, we're not, I mean, we were trainers way before we ever started a podcast. So we did for a year, I did it for over two decades. This is why we wanted to work with you because you get it and the way you talk about it to us, I mean, that's how we train clients. And that's the only people we want to work with in the fitness space are that way like you are. And that's why NCI is the only certification that we work with. So let's transition this a little bit because we talked earlier about how there's a flood of new trainers wanting to become online coaches. But I think a lot of them don't know what it's like, what it takes, what does that transition look like? It'll say where to start. Yeah, let's say there's a train listening right now and they're like, man, I worked, you know, I was a trainer at 24 Fitness or at Goal Gym or whatever, they're still closed. It's hard for me to build my business. I want to do online coach. I have no idea where to start. What does that look like? I think every coach that's considering going online right now or even if we've experienced a lot of people that are in other industries considering becoming an online coach, you know, fighting against the pandemic, whatever it might be, they feel like there's two options they have, which is do I go learn all of the knowledge? Do I learn all of the application? Which is great. We all know a lot of really good coaches out there. Or do I learn the business side of it? Do I learn client acquisition? Do I learn systems, scale, et cetera? And the truth is like, they're both very expensive to invest in traditionally. And I think that the answer is you actually need both. Honestly, that's why we as a company made the pivot that we did is we were like, we're not just going to sell them independent. We're actually going to bring them together. And I think you have to be ready to do both. But you know, one of the things I think we've done exceptionally well inside of our certification. And if you're seeking certification, if you're trying to go online and become a coach, make sure that you're learning the application side of it and that you're able to coach clients because social proof above everything else will win, right? And so like when we have a client come in and they get certified with us, they don't answer a bunch of multiple choice questions. They actually have to operate with guinea pigs. And, you know, Frankie, who's in the room with us right now, right? Like he's a sales person for us. And he tells people online, he's like, dude, NCI only makes you get two guinea pigs, get 10 guinea pigs. And like, let them be your walking billboards. Let them go rave about your services. So when you're ready to build a business around this, you've already serviced 10 people. You've got 10 before and afters that you can showcase. Now you have a justification for charging 200 a month, 300 a month, 500 a month. And by the way, you're learning on the job. You're not saying like, oh, well, I know what, you know, protein metabolism looks like. So I should be able to help you lose fat. Like that doesn't work out so well. Okay. So start by getting some clients, charging them a little, but make, be doing a damn good job so they can become your. I think that's first. If you don't understand that, everything else, I mean, we could sit here and talk for the next five hours about business. If you can't do that, if you can't create results, start over. Like, why are you taking somebody's money for a service you can't provide? And I think that's the biggest dickhead move that a lot of coaches are doing is I've talked to a lot of coaches and I asked openly on a webinar recently, I said, if any client walks through the door, are you 100% confident that you can service them? And I'm talking any issue, 95% people said no. And I'm like, then why are you not becoming a slightly better coach? Like that's a problem, right? And I get it. There's a lot of people focusing on business. And by the way, this was on a business building webinar where I was selling business building services. And I'm like, this is a problem. If you can't do that, go back and show the world that you can, right? There's a business that I coach and he's actually, he's not the best marketer in the world. He's really fucking good at getting results. And he shows testimonial after testimonial after testimonial and that's his big marketing approach. The kid gets like 15 new clients a week. People are like, how does he do it? I'm like, cause he's really good at what he does, right? So I think when we're talking about business, biz dev, we're not talking about cold DMs. We're not talking about traditional lead gen strategies. We're talking about number one, above everything else, create fucking results. I'll take it even a step further. And I know this is crazy to the generation now to say shit like this, but I would encourage these trainers to train these people for free. Amen. Like, you know, and that's just sounds like, oh my God, how am I supposed to do it? Cause I know that you have them listening right now and they're like, well, okay, you're saying go practice on 10 clients. Well, how do I get to clients? I've never been a personal trainer before. How am I going to sell these people? Like we used to do this all the time. Yeah, I'm like, don't sell them. Go, I mean, I told, I was helping a trainer, I was mentoring a trainer the other day. It was just like two weeks ago and I said this and he was just like, for free? And I'm like, well, yeah, dude, you have no fucking experience. Go get your experience. You believe you have, you've listened to every Mind Pump episode. You've got multiple certifications. You've got, you have a degree. You have experience enough to have, you're going to be smarter than most of these clients. Now get out there and practice your knowledge. See if you can apply it and see if you can get these people's results and you shouldn't be charging money if you can't prove to yourself first that you can do that. And don't be afraid to go work for free. Well, I'll take that a step further is, you said, this person asked you, how do I get people for free, right? How do I get 10 people adjusted? And you said, you know, friends and family. Letting somebody, letting you work with them is a function of what? Trust, right? Absolutely. It's a function of trust. If there are not 10 people in this world that you've added enough value to, that trust you enough to help them. It's something like losing weight, which we all know people want to fucking do. What have you been doing with your life? And the truth is, and I mean this wholeheartedly, like we can all laugh about it, but if you haven't done that, where you start is go start adding value to people. Such a good point. Ask them what they need from you and give them a function of value. Like help them in their life. Like if they want business advice, help them. But most people want health advice. And dude, try this and let me know how it works and call me in three days, right? And they're like, wait, this person actually cares. Okay, do that. If you can't, like, and I think that's a great place to start is, you should be able to get eight to 10 people that you can help for free. You should create badass testimonials. And that should be the function. But from there, like, that's where we can really get into biz dev shit. And that's where I've hacked this. And honestly, I've spent like the last year inside of that. Dude, like, I'll confidently say, I think the system we've built is changing online, like forever. Like we've got coaches that in their first month of us have done upwards of 50K, have done, like, I mean, we've made three millionaires in like the last year. Like it's been awesome. And that's been a lot of fun. Wow, that's exciting. The free thing is funny to me because when I was a trainer, it's what you did. You gave recessions in order to- Ah, bro, now run a Facebook ad and get four for $199, like, come on. But it's because, I mean, what are you giving away for free? What you're doing is you're asking them, you're saying I'm gonna help you for free in exchange for the experience I'm gonna learn from you. Well, it always, sales always comes down to two things, value and price. Amen. And if you cannot convince somebody to work with you for free, you're sure you're gonna have a hard time trying to convince people to give you $200, you know what I'm saying? So at least hit that out the park first. First get to a place where you can add enough value that people are like, oh my God, you're gonna give this to me for free? Hell yes, if you can't convince 10 people to do that, you need to start there. We also see that at scale. I see so many of the quote unquote gurus that are like, well, just run Facebook apps. And I'm like, wait a minute, your offer isn't converting to the people that know you, that know you like you and trust you, right? Your offer isn't converting. So here's an idea, let's send it to 10 billion people that don't know you like you and trust you and expect a different conversion. Like are you fucking serious? Zero chance that is going to work, right? But also to your point of helping people for free, how many of those people, Sal, like when you did it, Adam, when you guys did it in the gym, how many of those people turned into paying clients out more at the end? Not only do they turn into paying clients, they become one of the most powerful advertising tools that you have because if you do a good job, right? You end up changing those people's lives. They're far more likely to go out and tell five, six, seven other people. They're evangelists. By the way, this all speaks to like one simple thing that I believe to be true. That lead generation is a function of value. It is not a function of anything else. And so like in our space, you know, we hear in the digital space, we'll just put out your freebie. There's a rule in my system. If you use the word freebie, I will kick you in the dick and kick you out. Like not allowed in our system because if you're putting out quote unquote freebies, you don't believe there's value. So why the fuck should your prospective client think that there's value? And so we call it value exchange content. We are going to give you value, like very valuable content in exchange for like your information, right? Your email, your name, your phone number, like all those things. But again, it's lead generation at its core. I mean, we all understand like what a lead is. Somebody seeing you and knowing who you are, that's not a lead, right? That's just awareness. But real lead generation where you capture somebody's information comes down to a function of value. There should be a, you know, if you thought about it, like all the coaches listening, if you think that your, somebody's email address is worth $5,000, what are you gonna put out there that they're willing to invest $5,000 into you with? Is it your free fucking, you know, two day cleanse that's worth five grand? Like no, that's a terrible piece of content. So there's no value. So you now have no leads. That's why you suck. That's why your business is failing. And so instead, start thinking about it in terms of value exchange content to generate those leads. I think that's, that has to be understood. You know, what's funny about this too is that there may be some people listening who are thinking about online coaches and they're like, oh man, that's gonna take a while. You know, it's gonna be a lot of work. Well, yeah. Building, you know, when we started Mind Pump, we did the podcast for a year for free. We did nothing. We sold nothing. We pitched nothing. It was all about, can we produce enough value for people to the point where they're gonna ask us, hey, can we buy something from you because you guys are giving us the most value? And then at that point we know this is a business. Otherwise, it was just a labor of love and we were all totally fine doing it. We used to meet, you know, once or twice a week, after work, seven o'clock, eight o'clock a night, we'd podcast for two or three hours and we did it because we loved what we did. But it took a year before we started to realize that, okay, this may, it looks like we can actually turn this into a business that's kind of cool. So if you wanna be a coach and you're listening, you're like, oh, that's a lot of hard work. Maybe you don't really wanna be a coach. Right. It's the same theory. If we can't convince people to listen to our information for free, how the shit are we gonna sell them something? You know what I'm saying? That's even less connected to us. So I haven't, go ahead. Oh, well, even there, like, I'll shout out like one of my clients, like shout out my boy Tyler Newton, right? And he, this guy had hired another coach and gotten in a really bad situation. First of all, don't ever be that coach that's like trying to take money when someone else is like working there. I like, I showed up as like support and I was just like, listen, like if you wanna run the advice by me, I'm happy. And like, he ended up just asking me for like a lot of advice. And ultimately over time, he's like, dude, I have to pay you. Like, I have to like join one of your programs. Again, function of, I gave value and value and value. And like, he finally came, you know, through one of our funnels and was like, dude, okay, it's finally time I'm gonna pay you. But I was already doing millions of dollars at that point. I didn't have to do that for free. I did it because again, every day, this is the core foundational strategy that we use as a company. Is, you know, we run Facebook ads. We have all of these things, of course. But like at the end of the day, our core strategy is we're gonna out give value more than any other entity in this world. And like we look at our competitors, we're like, well, you're not putting out very valuable stuff. We're going, you know, we're connecting to people live every day. We're letting you in trainings for free. Dude, our next live event, if you pay for a ticket to it, I'm personally paying for your hotel room and your meals. Like we are always trying to hack value creation. And I think that's why we've seen a rapid acceleration and the coaches that work with us have also seen the same. Well, your coaches are becoming successful because of it. And that's what's making it grow. So I'm gonna ask you a more specific question, okay? Again, you're listening. Maybe you're a trainer in the gyms. You want to make the transition to online coaching. You have a NASM certification. You've been working with clients. How different is the education you need to get for online versus when you were training people in person? Is there a difference or is it the same? I'm not gonna speak to other certifications out there. I'm gonna make a blanket statement that whatever certification you've got needs to have a connection model. If you know how to connect and you can connect digitally, I think the process is relatively similar. Okay. I think that the, I think we've touched on it. The frequency of touch, the frequency of connection is drastically going to increase. I think you have to have the communication skills via text rate. We all know like Adam, I could send you a text that says, fuck you, right? You literally could be like, ah, Jay is fucking with me. Or you could be like, oh, what's he pissed off about? Right? We don't understand tonality. We don't understand voice through two words on a phone, on a screen. And so as a coach, you have to be able to pull that out of somebody. You have to be able to emote through text. Are you willing to do voice? Are you willing to set parameters in your business? Being an in-person trainer, your parameters are set for you. When you leave the gym at 6 p.m. Effectively, you have clocked out, right? I, again, I lost a relationship because I didn't have parameters. And so if you text to me at 1.30 in the morning, I probably heard my phone picked it up and texted you back. Like, are you going to do that as an online coach? And by the way, if you do that on day one, because you think that that is value, which it's not, but if you think that that is your value, how do you now recant that at day 180 where you're more busy and you no longer want to wake up at 1.30 in the morning? So I think that... That's a great point. I think it's a much bigger structures. Yeah, and, dude, you can't put out things on day one that you're not willing to do on day 100. You have to set a standard, right? You have to. Initially. Well, so you guys specialize in online coaching. So everything that you guys coach to teach, train coaches is about the online coaching model. Yes, yeah. So we did a little pivot last year. I mean, obviously NCI, in my opinion, obviously I'm biased, it's the leader in nutritional education and application. Like I think that any coach that's come through our stuff, we have every course, every specialty. We are making you a complete coach. We really don't sell the courses like one off as much anymore. We try to get you invested in the whole package because it's like going to college, right? Like English 201 can't be taken before 101, right? The functional, when I went to anatomy and physiology, I had lecture and I had lab, right? You kind of need all of it. And so that's how we position the Institute. Last year we said people were creating a lot of coaches, but we need coaches that can actually acquire clients, coaches that actually can build a business because let's be honest, if they don't have a business, then people aren't getting served, right? Like us helping coaches build their business is a way of service. And I don't know if I said it on here last time, but we're on a billion person mission. NCI wants to change one billion lives. And we're going to do that one of two ways. I mean, they're going to certify one million coaches and they're all going to touch 1,000 lives. A lot of our coaches have already done that. Or we're going to get 100,000 people and they're all going to touch 10,000 people. But however the math adds up, I want one billion lives changed before I leave this earth. And I'm on a fucking mission to get there. And me equipping you just with the knowledge to do so, I realized last year was not enough. And so we brought in a whole new program this year that we call coaching mastery. And it's literally the startup to scale, zero to multiple six figures. Exactly how I did it, how all of my clients have done it. And dude, it's changing lives. Man, like in the mind pump form, like we've got coaches that have come in and like, I fucking love those people. By the way, all the people that come to us from you guys are always my favorite. But like they, it's just amazing to see people light up with possibility. And I think the coolest part is people are more excited at the fact that they're changing lives than they are about making money. I love that you say that the leaders in education and application because, you know, before we met, there's other certifications out there in both nutrition and training that I see a lot of value. They're really good. Yeah, they're really good. The information they provide is solid spot on. But what I thought you did a really good job is filling that gap on the application process. And that was something that took us all years of experience to realize, oh shit, wait a second, that's more important. That's the most important. Yeah, that part is more important. You can have all the degrees and all the education, but if you can't apply, which I didn't know that until I experienced it again as a manager managing other trainers, and I'd have PhDs working underneath me, and then I'd have the kid that's 20 years old and has like one certification. And many times that kid would outperform the PhD and it was like, oh my God, I didn't see this coming because I know for sure this guy's got way more knowledge, but boy, this kid just has this ability to connect to his people and communicate the little bit of information that he has and his business does so much better. Well, I told you the story of how NCI came to be, right? I don't remember. I literally, I was leaving a mastermind in California. I was living in Arizona at the time and this guy who's a well-known internet marketer, he's like, dude, your next level is you have to teach people to create the results you're known for. And I was like, probably there's 10 million certifications out there. I'm like, it's not that hard. I literally, in my head, I actually, it was like, I'm not anything special. I'm just really good at what I do. And he was like, no, like you have a special skill. You need to package that up and like that's what you got to sell. And I was like, whatever, completely blew it off. Six hour drive LA to Scottsdale, halfway through it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, I do one thing better than everybody, which is I apply. Like walked in my door in my house in Arizona, opened up my journal, wrote out the whole curriculum in like 10 minutes, like all the chapter headlines, it never changed. Like I had that moment of clarity and I knew like this is what's gonna change the fucking world. We did the first cert three and a half years ago in Chicago and it like all of those coaches leveled up immediately. And I was like, okay, this is like, this is it. And I was super confident at that moment because application is the game. Like, you know, we could sit here and all of us are intelligent enough to talk about the next great business ideas of the world for, you know, Gary V said it at Stanford, right? When he gave a Stanford talk, he said we could all sit in this room, all of us super smart and mastermind and the next great business idea is for the next 100 years. Hundreds of billions of dollars. Which motherfucker is gonna get up and go do it? Who's gonna go out there, take their lumps? Like who's gonna go out there and understand the information that's being given to them? You know, sort it accordingly, plan accordingly and ultimately create success. That's what a coach has to do. Like a client is not showing up quote unquote whole. And it all goes back to the reason that a client hires you. How I don't know how many of you guys ever showed up with a client that was like, hey, I'm perfect. I feel amazing. I just really wanna give you money to spend time with you. Like it never happens. Justin gets that. I mean, well, Justin for sure. Today it does, but, you know, they come to you and they're like, I've tried this and it doesn't work. Okay, what was the effect of that? I've tried this, it didn't work. Great, what was the effect of that, right? I ran myself in the ground. I have this thought about myself. I have this problem. So where the textbook says, okay, assuming all things normal, this is how physiology works. Here's how you manipulate the body to create fat loss or whatever you're trying to do. The problem is in real life, that whole assuming all things normal never happens. And that's where you have to be able to be a good coach, deduce the information given to you and create the appropriate application. And that's what I love about it. Very, very well said. Well, always a pleasure working with you, talking to you. You're one of our favorite people. I think you're doing it, you guys are doing it the right way. I mean, just from our experience, training clients as long as we did, you understand what really is important in terms of getting people to get to those goals and then stay there. The real transformation, the lifelong transformations. And it's good because trainers, they're always special to us, coaches and trainers. They're on the front lines. They're the ones that are actually doing the work. And we get to talk to a lot of people on this podcast and through our media and we have a lot of fun. But let's be honest, the people really changing lives are the ones working with people in person. So thanks for coming on, man. Dude, I appreciate it. I mean, front lines, 2021, post craziness in this world, trainers and nutrition coaches are on the front lines, saving the world against future things like this. So I think all of us could, 100% needed now more and ever. Yeah, like we couldn't be out of more passionate time. Love it. Thanks, man. Modify your workout to compliment your particular posture issues to stick to the example of forward shoulder. If the shoulders are rolling forward, you're going to want to practice exercises that pull the shoulders back, right? So like a cable row, a band row, barbell row, dumbbell row, but really focus on the part that you need to focus.