 In this episode of Mind Pump, the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast, we answer fitness and health questions asked by listeners just like you. Now the way we open the episode is with our introductory conversation portion. This is where we talk about current events, our lives. We have a lot of fun. Sometimes we mention our sponsors. So what I'm gonna do is give you a breakdown of what happened in this episode. So the first 33 minutes is the intro portion. We open up by talking about me washing dishes with my brother this weekend and surprising my mom. So much, she actually filmed us pretty fine. They almost fainted. Then we talked about 24 hour fitness, going bankrupt and closing locations. That's kind of sad for us. We talked about how great glassman came under fire again, but not for the same thing. Something totally different. More shitty stuff, kind of crazy. I talked about drone technology. Got to fly one this weekend. Can't believe how crazy those things are. Justin and Adam talked about vigilantrics. This was on the show. The limitless drug. There you go. Then we talked about how my family is a huge fan of OrganiFi's Pure Supplement. So Pure is a natural, Neutropic type supplement. Supposed to improve gut health and cognitive function. My entire family keeps wanting free Pure for me. What's wrong with you guys? But anyway, OrganiFi is the maker of Pure. They're a company that makes organic supplements, including vegan protein powders, green powders, and many, many other things. And we have a discount code that works with them. So if you're a mind pump listener, that's what you need to do. Go to organifi.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump and you'll get 20% off all the products. Then we talked about quick and loans going public. This might be the biggest IPO of the year. We also talked about Hertz rental car. They had some problems with their shares in stock. Insert dad joke. Then we talked about why fitness is empowering. I talked about, as a kid, how I learned that I'm never gonna look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but that's okay. I focused on the things that I could control, which led us to talk about one of our favorite online coach certifications, NCI. It's a company we work with. They do excellent online coaching for people who wanna be able to coach fitness and health through the internet, through their phone, virtually. Now, right now, for mind pump listeners, they're offering a free webinar which teaches online coaches how to build a six-figure nutrition coaching business. It's a free webinar. Normally they charge a lot for this, but for mind pump listeners, again, it's free. Here's what you do if you wanna take this webinar. Go to ncicertifications.com forward slash mind pump. And then we talked about Justin building a bike ramp because he's having a midlife crisis. You guys called me out. Then we got into the questions. Here's the first one that we answered. This person says, hey, when I'm buying supplements like creatine or protein powder, what should I look for? Like what are the things I should look for to find good products? The next question, this person says, how do I transition for a bunch of high-intensity training, a bunch of calorie-burning type training into more traditional resistance training? How do I do that without gaining a bunch of body fat? The next question, this person's gonna switch their careers and become personal trainers. They wanna know where they should start. Get a degree, get a certification or just start coaching and gain experience. And the final question, this person wants to know what our advice is for somebody who wants to become a better communicator. Also, all month long, we put one of our best fat-burning, calorie-burning programs. Maps hit, by the way, hit stands for high-intensity interval training. We put this program at 50% off. So this is high-intensity interval training done with weights. So that means it preserves muscle while burning body fat. You don't get the calorie metabolism slowing down process that can happen sometimes from too much of this high-intensity training because we did it with weights. It's a short program. It is intense, but it is extremely effective. It's summertime, so if your goal is to burn a lot of body fat in a short period of time to look great for July and August, this is a program you might wanna invest in. Again, it's maps hit. Here's how you get 50% off. Go to mapshit.com. That's M-A-P-S-H-I-I-T.com and use the code HIT50. That's H-I-I-T-5-0. No space for the discount. And it's t-shirt time. Oh, shit, Doug. You know it's my favorite time of the week. Yes, indeed. We have three winners for Apple Podcasts and three winners for Facebook. For Apple Podcasts, it's Liz Mead16, Saxaw, and at ValendV3017. For Facebook, we have R.C. Lyley, Candace Hutchins, Victor, Manuel, Ramos. All of you are winners. Send the name I just read to iTunes at mindpumpmedia.com. Include your shirt size and your shipping address, and we'll get that shirt right out to ya. Victor. Dude, I gotta tell you guys a story about this weekend. You guys are in love. What'd you do? Solo cholo this weekend? Solo cholo. How was the solo mountain cholo? Yeah, no, because Jessica was out of town? Yeah. Yeah, I was just me and the kids. And so during the week, my dad, I told you guys was working in the backyard and doing some stuff and asked my son to help. So because my kids were there, my mom's like, of course, if they're there, my mom's like, eat over, eat over, eat over. And then over the weekend, she invited my brother and his girlfriend, lovely young lady, for dinner. So my mom's like, eat over again so we could all hang out. So I'm like, all right. This is your brother's new girlfriend. Dude, it makes it easier. He's been with her for a while. Yeah, it does. And of course, the food, I can't turn down. Like, amazing, the best food of all time. Are you still getting husky or what? Well, I mean, you guys have eyes. I just thought the shirts were getting smaller. No. Thick daddy. No, no, no. That's not what I'm calling you. Thick daddy. The shirts are the same. I'm getting thicker. With a bunch of C's. But anyway, so after dinner, we're eating or whatever. And there's certain things that you don't notice because they're just a part of your family or whatever. Certain things that always happen, right? After dinner, 99.9% of the time, it's my mom. And then she'll pull one of my sisters to clean up. And I just take that. I don't even think about it, right? I don't even think about it. It's just the way we do it. So we're sitting there and we had dinner one night with my brother and his girl. And his girl gets up and she's helping my mom. And I become aware. And I'm like, well, that's nice. She's getting up to help. And I'm like, when's the last time I did it with my brother? And when's the last time my brother did it? Yeah. Never, right? So the next time we ate over, my brother was there. My sister was there this time with her husband. And we're all hanging out. So as we're finishing or whatever, I look at my brother because his girl, my dad had comment, was talking to my brother's girlfriend. He's like, you look tired? She's like, yeah, you know, I've had it long day and I'm a little tired. And that made me think, like, I don't want her to get up and have to clean. She's tired now. So I looked at my brother and I'm like, hey, when we're done, let's get up and let's do all the stuff. And so my brother kind of looks at me like, OK, whatever. See, what are you talking about? He's like, this is some bullshit. Yeah, yeah, why are you trying to ruin here? Yeah, but you know, but he's like, whatever, right? He's had a good thing going for like, 20 years now. He's going to uproot everything, but he's done. He's a good guy. He lived on his own for a long time. So I get up and I start, you know, his girl tries to get up. My mom tries to clean. I'm like, put the stuff down. We're going to do it. You guys relax. Let us take care of it, whatever. So I start getting up and then I tell my brother, come help me. So my mom and my sister make the biggest deal of all time. Oh my gosh, get the camera. Oh, my mom's like, oh, I love you guys so much for clean. Then of course my sister gets upset. She's like, you never say that to me when I clean or do anything. Why are you so happy that you're and then she comes over and she has, you know, whatever. She's like, wow, I'm so happy to see my boys do this. I'm like, yeah, it only took me 40 years, mom, to figure this out. Took me 40 years and a divorce to figure out that this is totally something I should do. Total Kodak moment. Yeah, so we're sitting there clean. So then my brother feels, enjoy this will never happen again. He feels conflicted, you know? I'm like, why do you feel weird? He's like, because they're filming us. I'm like, so, I'm like, let's just do it. Let's just be grateful. Dude, did you hear the news about, so 24 closes down 100 locations. I know. And they filed for bankruptcy. Yeah. Oh, did they? They filed for bankruptcy. Absolutely did. Boom, strategy though. Well, bro, 100 locations is one fourth of their clubs almost, right? They had over 400 clubs, just over 400 clubs. One fourth permanently shut down. And I'm the ones in the Bay Area, one in particular, Capitol McKee, that's the location on Capitol McKee here in San Jose. That is one of the old flagship locations. So, okay. So I was going through the list, right? Fremont. Oh yeah, I was going through the list. Now what, and I was trying to speculate on why those locations, because the thing that's weird is like Capitol McKee was one of the most profitable gyms that they had. It had one of the largest EFT bases, the overhead on it, the lease agreement was sold. It's like a 200 something thousand dues base. I'm guessing Hillsdale and San Teresa or not. Yeah, they're fine. So what do you think is the reason why? I have my theories, but what do you, why those clubs? In my opinion, I think that what they're trying to do, and this is a guess, but I think they're trying to strategize and see, because yes, it does have a big dues base, but a lot of those people either are allowed to transfer or they already have an all club membership. So they're probably thinking, if we close this one down, what's the damage versus if we close the other ones? So it looked to me like it was mostly all the old ones. Oh, that's not a bad point. Right, and just because probably the maintenance on it to keep them up, they get the most complaints, probably remember how many complaints that like, yeah, you kind of need a clean club to start with. Right, and so if you've already deemed, like I'm sure they sat down in a board room and said, listen, this is how much we're losing. This is the only way we're gonna survive. We're gonna have to cut a quarter of our clubs. We're just gonna have to close them down and let's start putting together a list of which ones. And I'm sure the list of the ones that popped up on there had a lot to do with how old they were. That's my theory, because if you just did it straight numbers, I know that Capital McKee is one of the more profitable gyms of all their gyms, right? So most all of them are profitable. Some of the greatest general managers, fitness managers, trainers in the Bay Area started at that club. Five out of five. That's yours. Yeah, for you. That was your home club. The funny is that I was brought up in that culture. So were you, Adam and Justin too, as we started our careers, right? We were brought up there and I learned some of the greatest lessons I've ever learned in fitness and business in the early years of my career. At 24, I had some great mentors. It was started by one of the greatest fitness leaders, if not the greatest fitness leader in the gym industry ever, Mark Mastroff. And they did a lot of changes. I left the company a long time ago. And I thought I had completely cut and severed the feelings towards that company, like I don't really care, whatever. But I'm not gonna lie, dude. A piece of me was sad to see some of those clubs shut down. Oh yeah, no, no, of course. It's interesting to me to watch the different CEOs right now, how they maneuver this way through this and who will come out at the other end. I mean, UFC obviously taking a whole different approach, right? We're not gonna shut down any places. We're gonna just increase the rates and then try and provide more service. So it's gonna be really interesting to see in the next six months to a year, like how this all washes out and what was a better strategy. I feel like what they've been doing is slowly destroying the brand. You know, the name, you know? Well, they got a lot of, they've been getting piled up, speaking of getting piled, Justin, tell me you listened to the podcast that Sal sent over and shared in our forum about Glassman. Yes, I did. Yeah, I, oh yeah, that was, holy shit. That was at a left field. I did not, I almost didn't listen to it. I'm like, whatever. I'm like over the drama news and stuff like that. Yeah, all new information in terms of like the culture and behind the scenes in CrossFit. So first he gets hammered because of his insensitive comments regarding the, you know, George Floyd and all that stuff, steps down. So he's already beaten, right? He's already beaten down. Then this dude comes out with a podcast. I can't remember the guy's name. We should probably get his name so we could say whatever. I'll look it up while you're talking about it. But he worked closely for Glassman, does a podcast and basically it's like a tell all. And in it, nothing to do with racism, nothing to do with George Floyd. Nothing with that. It was nothing, it was basically all about how Glassman talks about women in disparaging, terrible ways. His attitudes towards his female staff and basically made him sound like it. Just a general. Alludes to a lot more information he knows that he's gonna reveal a bit later. Yeah, in the podcast, he's really vague. Like he's intentionally, right? Cause he's not trying to drag it with it. But towards the end of it, he straight up says, if you think that I'm being vague because I don't have specifics, you're fucking dead wrong. Well, that's the thing. I mean, he's really like putting himself out there cause like he mentions how litigious like that's like their thing. Like they go after people like constantly. Full auto Friday. That's the name of his podcast. Full auto Friday. It was shared in our forums. If you're in our forum, you've seen it already. But when I watched it, it had only had like 40,000 views. Yeah, what's it at now? 191,000. Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's flying. It's flying right now. So you can go to YouTube and go to full auto Friday dash round five. And he's cleared hot podcast. Sorry, that's the name of the podcast. The podcast is called cleared hot podcast. He does a thing called full auto Friday. I mean, ripped, terrible. And it's like you're kicking someone when they're dead. Now, of course, it's his word at this point. I don't know if there's anybody. He was his private pilot for like six, seven years, you know? So the stuff that he says was like, he said was directly said in front of him or to him. So this is gonna get really, really interesting. Have you heard of anybody? He's not backing down anytime soon the way that he was talking towards it. He's like, I'm gonna come out with this. Now, have you guys heard anything, anybody else coming out to basically confirm some of those stories? Or so far, have you just heard, because I haven't heard anything about it. No, I haven't. I never even heard about any of this. No, well, to me, the case he makes is that just they, everyone out of fear, right? I mean, that's what he's saying is he just out of fear that they, because of how litigious they are that they would come after them immediately if they tried to say so. Isn't it interesting when you have someone like that start to fall that people then start to come out? And I think it's because they're not afraid anymore. Yeah. They start to come out. I think they look as an opportunity to kind of make, you know, like amends for some things, like where they wanted to jump in and say something, but they didn't because, yeah, they were afraid. I thought it was a curveball because you listen to the first half of it and he's pretty much defending him that he doesn't believe he's a racist. You know, mind you, he says what he said was insensitive and probably not the smartest thing for him to say. He's like, however. Yeah, yeah, however, there's this other stuff. Yeah, that's what? Yeah, I was like. Dude. And now he's not super record skip. And I've seen top CrossFit representatives, like these are people who, you know, are well-known million followers plus, posts about Glassman after he stepped down and basically say he stepped down, but he still owns the company. So we're not satisfied. Oh yeah. Holy cow. He also just said, I want to kill the guy. Whoever, I forget the name of the guy that's now stepped in the role of CEO and the concern that this guy is saying is that he was complicit to all this stuff. So he knows fully aware of these conversations, the culture. And so even though a new CEO is coming in, unless some serious house cleaning is done or some reckoning that he doesn't foresee things really changing and in order for them to survive and keep going, they will need a whole new regime. Yeah. Is this going to, I mean, they've already, the brand CrossFit has already been getting hit. And then him, you know, stepping down, that was bad. Now this, and it's hard to separate him from the brand, right? Cause he's, it's like- Yeah, he owns, isn't he like all owning? Yeah, he still owns CrossFit-ing. Well, not just that, it's just, it's hard to separate. Even if he sold it, like it's like Steve Jobs and Apple or Elon Musk and you know, you could sell it, but you're still people connect you, right? Yeah. Like could this be the, just the last straw that destroys the brand completely? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it would be interesting to see like how a lot of these other CrossFit boxes will sort of rebrand and create something maybe, you know, completely new. I don't know, like, I don't know if they have the force. I don't know what's going to happen with all that. It'll be interesting to watch. Dude, crazy. Anyway, so my brother, speaking to my brother earlier, he got a drone, just regular drone off the internet. I've never used any of these. I've never seen them or whatever. Cost them about a thousand bucks, not a lot of money. Dude, the technology in these things is scary. Have you guys used these? Yeah. Is that the one, like, does he have the one where it actually follows you? Bro. With a track. Oh, bro. It's got a little controller. The thing is easy. My kids were flying it around with no worries about crash or anything. Hook your phone up to it. Yeah. Hook your phone up to it. Wow, they've come a long way. He can fly six miles away. Six miles. Bro, we were at my parents' house and we were going six miles in other directions. You're flying, you control it. It'll not hit things because it's got its own sensors. You can lock on to targets with the camera. It's 4K. Thing goes up almost 1,000 feet into the sky. Dude. 1,000 bucks. This is insane. I'm investing in drone attacking falcons. Oh, yeah. Have you seen those? I haven't seen those. So like, dude, we're going to have these flying all around our backyard and like monitoring and, dude, no. They actually have falcons that they train to. I've heard that, but I haven't seen it yet. You can watch videos. Oh, really? Yeah. They're rad. Oh, really? They're so rad. Yeah, so I mean, we were, you know. Nature wins. My daughter and I were on like one of those electric scooters and so he locked on to me and it just followed us. And it made like the sickest, like I felt like I was on a music video when I watched it. Yeah, I was like, wow, that was cool. That's the thing. Hey, you saw my rad video? It was him riding a scooter. Please tell me you're not picturing that right now. A rad video? Yeah. We were rolling into one of those electric scooters. Hey, man. Listen. That'd be badass. I tried my, I already tried the hip hop. You said I felt hell of tough, huh? I looked back on cool. Like zoom in, I looked back, you know? No, those things are crazy. Thousand bucks? You know how much that thing would have cost 10 years ago? Oh, I know. I mean, all the ones that we've tried, like before that, we literally just crashed all of them in just some smithereens. So to have it like fly like that is another level. It's turning into quite the career opportunity too for people to pursue that as like a job. Really? Oh, yeah. When Katrina was working for JJ Albany's, I think they had like, and I forget what they call them, they call them pilot pilots. Yeah, they're pilots. And they have to get like all certified and everything to do this. But I remember they paid them good money to do that. So they had like eight employees on staff for that company that did that. And they go and they fly all these job sites. Wow. Yeah, so there's definitely. I couldn't believe the clarity of the video. And then there's, you could follow, like let's say you're flying six miles away, you can't figure out your way to get back. You just click on home and it comes back and lands itself. I'm like, this is silly. Why would you need a pilot? That's the thing I'm wondering. Because my kids were operating these things perfectly. Yeah, but you still have you still have things that like so the pilot people have to be able to. It's just like pilots today. I mean, flying and landing, landing a plane and taking off is like the only parts that pilots really do. Yeah, but people are on the plane. Well, yeah, it's still I mean, it's still a couple thousand dollars for a nice piece of equipment like that. You're still flying around where there are people I imagine if you're doing like construction sites too, you've got to maneuver down and through the building and things like that. Well, I think in the Air Force, they have a whole drone department of like, I think they still call them pilots. Like they're flying these drones and everything. So have you guys seen the videos of people with drones that they hook up a little flamethrower to get rid of like wasps, nests and stuff on their property? Have you guys seen this? No, I have. I thought that was just a one off kind of thing. No, so like, you know, to get rid of like a wasp, like that's pretty hardcore. You got to go get rid of a wasp nest. Like what do you do, right? So these guys will put a little flamethrower on the drone, fly up to it and just, and then the wasp will attack the drone, but the colors were too. Oh my God, that'd be like my favorite job in the world. I fucking hate wasps. What? What? Oh yeah, it's like, dude, come on. Like I got stung so much. Justin leaves mind pump for wasp burning something. I would get so much pleasure out of that. The wasp hunter. Oh, I was just, ah, die, bastard. You got stung by a bunch of them? Yeah, oh, I used to step in like, because they have nests on the ground. Like I used to go through all these different like forests and stuff and build forts. And like I was very much like out outdoors doing stuff. And I would, every now and then I'd step in one of their nests. And I had one time where I had like hundreds of these fucking things just biting me and I just ripped my pants off and running down the neighborhood without pants on, just screaming. So what's the strategy with the pants off? Because they're all up in my pant legs. Oh, okay. Yeah, just kidding me. You got to get them off you. It sounded at first like a terrible strategy. Yeah, just peeing on them. Quick to die. Tear off protective clothing. Let's, maybe I can run faster if I can. I showed you, did I show you guys my, it was like my fourth grade picture for school. I got stung, once I walked past this puddle and like two of them came up and stung me right in the eye, like right underneath my eye. And so the next day it was super swollen. I couldn't even open it, it was just like a picture. Yeah, yeah, so I was like sideways. I had to do a profile pic for my school pic. Yeah, it was the saddest, but almost hilarious looking thing. They said social workers to your house. Are you sure that was a sting, Justin? It did, it looked like that when I got my ass kicked. That's hilarious. Dude, my whole family is their fanatics of Pure, the Organifi Pure. All of them, they fight over it. So when I get there, of course, and you know, this is just, I don't know what this is. I don't know if this is my parents Sicilian culture or whatever, but it's all about getting connections in hookups, right? So always, it's always about connections. So they're like- You're a deal in Pure on the side? No, no, no. So they're like, hey, do you have any more of that up here? You know, I'm like, yeah, yeah, use our discount code. Yeah, but you know, don't you get some, you know? I'm like, just buy it. Support my, you know, support the company. No, but they all like it. They all love that. That reminds me of the Billions episode last night. Did you watch them? Oh, you saw it, yeah. What do they call that? Visual Antrix or something? Like one of those limit list pills? Oh yeah, it was crazy. It was so great. Cause remember when we were talking about like Adderall, how you thought you were like really productive and doing awesome stuff as you're doing it, but you realize later, it's just like your ego. You're not really doing cool. You just feel like you're better. Yeah, you feel like you're better. They totally, it was the same thing. Like he's like making all these like connections and thought he had like, you know, everything figured out where he's gonna make all this money off of gold and all these like minerals and everything. Realizes like, oh shit. You know, I'm just gonna totally tank this market. Pull back. Bro, it's like one of the, when you ever get, when you're a kid, you know, you get high with your friends, smoke a bunch of weed and then you come up with this brilliant idea and you write it out. And then the next day you look at it when you're sober. Yeah. And you're like, you know, like what the hell was I thinking? Yeah, yeah. It's actually pure, it doesn't do that. Cereal sandwiches, this is a stupid idea. Why did I think this was so, this is dumb. Hey, speaking of stocks though, a couple of things in stock news right now. Quicken Loans is looking to go public. We'll open up as the biggest IPO of the year. Wow. And then the other thing, the stock market is so weird right now. I cannot figure it out at all. Nope, yeah. It doesn't reflect. Listen to this. Hertz announces, okay, bankruptcy. Stock tanks all. I bet that hurts. Yeah. Duh, duh, duh. Sorry. Right, love it. Stock drops all the way down to like five cents or 50 cents a share, like just plummets, but then rallies back for five, five something, five 50 a share or something? After saying bankrupt, dude, how does that make even sense? Probably because a bunch of people got out, which lowered the price. People like, it's gonna come back. Yeah, it's gonna come back. And then you're gonna see it go back down as people try to realize their gains or whatever. Weird right now. Yeah, the market's very interesting. Like it doesn't seem to be connected to reality. Yeah. I don't know how it keeps going up. It's all monopoly money right now. When shits going kind of crazy. Yeah. Dude, this weekend I was writing an article for our website or whatever. And I remembered an old story, like an old memory or story that I don't think I've ever told in the podcast. Pretty interesting. So the article was about Arnold and our team wanted me to write about, if Arnold was a skinny guy, if he had those kind of genetics. And obviously we know that Arnold had amazing muscle building genetics, obviously. And it reminded me of the first time I realized how big of a role like your genetics play in how much muscle you could build. So when I was, I started working out at 14 and when I first started working out, I was very idealistic. And I think a lot of people, especially if you start working out when you're as a kid, this is how you start out. So I look at pictures of bodybuilders or I bought Arnold's Encyclopedia and I 100% thought to myself, if I just work hard enough and I'm consistent enough, take enough supplements, I'm gonna look like this one day. Like there's nothing's gonna stop me. That's the formula. Yeah. And I'm sure, like when kids play basketball, right? Oh, for sure I'm gonna be an NBA player. Same thing, right? So I for sure was sold on it. And I was sold on that for like a year and a half or two years. So a year and a half, two years of consistent working out, still thinking, oh yeah, four or five more years, I'm gonna be a pro bodybuilder. It's not gonna be an issue. And I had this friend, this neighborhood friend who I would talk, I was obsessed because I have that kind of personality. So I talk about working out all the time. And he wanted to come work out with me. He's like, dude, can you take me through some workouts? And this kid was one of those naturally kind of built dudes. You know, I was not like this. I was obviously naturally an ectomorph. So I'm like, sure, I'll take you. Now, of course, you know, 15, 16 years old, you know, you can only, I'm actually, I don't even have to give you an age. If you're a guy and you work out with another guy, it's gonna turn into a competition. But especially when you're that age, right? Testosterone's flowing or whatever. And I just couldn't wait to show him how much stronger than him I was, right? So we're working out and this fucker, I remember it was so, I was so shocked. I was barely strong with him. I could out lift him by like one or two reps and he never worked out. And then he kept coming to train with me and he like blew past me, just packing muscle on his body, strength. And I remember thinking like, he's on steroids. There's no way. What's going on here? And then I met his parents. His parents stopped by. I remember we were outside. We just finished our workout. Parents pull up, dad walks out. And he was like one of the most muscular dudes I've ever seen in my life. His mom comes out and she was also a freak of nature. And I remember thinking like, what the hell? I'm like, dude, your parents live whites? He's like, no. He's like, my dad played college ball, but now he just works on a computer all day. And my mom, she, I think she ran track in high school. But now she's a teacher. And then that was the first realization I had that, that plays a big role. It's a good dream. Yeah, like I'm never gonna look like Arnold, am I? Of course it didn't stop me and I kept going. And I think that's when I started to become empowered through fitness and started to realize that, you know, there are definitely things you can't control. I'm only gonna focus on what I can't control. So I might not have his genetics, but whatever I have, I'm gonna work with and I'm gonna apply training and consistency. And it just drove me to be a better person. But I totally forgot about that. Yeah, it's interesting. I think back, like some of the, like I was attracted a lot to like female athletes. I think a part of that was trying to like create, you know, my own little super athletes. I had this idea in my head, I was just like so into it. I was like, you know, and I would like find a girl that was like cute or whatever, but like was really good at their sport. And it was like so attractive to me. On your first date, you're like so, how much can you squat? Yeah. Show me. Can I see your muscle bellies? Can we see how long your muscle bellies are? Yeah, it's a little weird. Well, I mean, it really does remind me of how, why fitness is such a powerful tool for empowerment. If you stay with it long enough and you start and you do it for the right reasons, I think what it encourages or strengthens in you is exactly that, that you, there are certain things you can control. There are a lot of things that you can't, but consistently going to the gym or consistently working out, consistently trying to improve yourself, you feel empowered because you've, you know, maybe you're big boned or you're not as tall as your friend or you're not gonna ever look like a super model or whatever. But if you stick with it long and if you start to say to yourself, whatever, I don't care, I'm gonna focus on what I can. And I think this is why you see the correlation between successful people in lots of aspects of their life and usually a higher percentage of them is also consistent with fitness, almost every single time. Well, speaking of fitness and success, did you see what our buddy Jason and NCI put together? No. Yeah, they put together a cool free webinar for our audience for like building a six figure business. Nice. Speaking of empowerment, that's one, the reason why I like them so much is they focus a lot on that aspect of coaching. Like how to get people to change behaviors and really feel a certain way, which as we know as trainers is the most successful, you know, that's the most successful approach. Yeah, that's a no brainer ticket. If you're thinking about getting in the fitness space or already currently in the fitness space, definitely take advantage of that. I mean, it's free, so you'd be silly not to. Dude, what you guys up to this weekend? I didn't see you guys. Dude, I took it upon myself and I was, I knew I was gonna have like a just me and the boys kind of weekend Courtney took off for the weekend and went up with her girlfriends to hang out and stuff. And so I was like, I wanna do something fun with the kids. And I've been in this weird like nostalgic kind of train of thought as of late. I kind of showed you guys, I was looking at getting like an old 80s kind of BMX bike and like was gonna do it all rad style. And so I've been looking at that and cause my kids are getting really into bike, you know, whatever, like just using their bikes and jumping and doing all this stuff. Free style. They have like pump tracks and everything in my area. So I got sick of just like watching them doing all this stuff, you know? I'm like, why am I not doing this shit with them? So I just decided I was- Cause you're a 40 year old man. Why? Why would I should not stop me? Justin leaves mind pump to burn wasp and ride his BMX bike. Like everything I wanted to do as a kid, like I wanted to like make this happen. A midlife crisis hitting you a little early on. Shit. Oh no. What's going on over here? Usually they buy an intervention. Usually they buy a nice car or something like that. No, that's for stuff. Going backwards. You start playing video games too? Yeah. Like I'm gonna get a Corvette and all that. That's bullshit. That's BMX. For bald fucking small dick guys, you know? But anyway, yeah. So I basically, I was like, dude, I wanna build a ramp. And so I just like, you know, so they could do this like in my driveway and like have fun and I could, you know, I could hit it with them once I get my bike. So I was doing that. And I was like, why am I so sore? And like, I was like so sore doing all this work. And I'm realizing that man, the way I work, I don't like, I'm not like on my knees and like going on stuff to screw things in. I'm like always in a really low squat for the entire time. And I'm fixing and doing things and cutting. And it's just like, I was out there for maybe four, five hours straight, just like working like in a squatted position. And it was just like, I was so fried, dude. Dude, the video you sent of the ramp, the ramp is quality. You got some skills. Oh, it's just, it's not like that. If I have time, you know. Like if I made a ramp, it would be a piece of plywood on like some two by fours. I mean, you know, like you kid, his is like, it's got curved to it and it's all smooth. And did you see the video? No, I didn't see it. Bro! Yeah, I went, I went out. It's a legit ramp. It's like a professional, nice looking ramp. I took, well, I mean, I watched some videos and just kind of took ideas and kind of like- I could watch videos all day. God bless YouTube these days. I know, it helps man. Now did you jump it? Yeah, but it was like on one of their bikes, I was broke their bike, dude. So I was like, I gotta stop. Cause like all I have right now is a beach cruiser and it's just totally fucked. Not for that, yeah. Not for that. I was like, this is a big old cake, someone like this. Yeah. No, I need, yeah. I need to get a freestyle and like do it all like rad style. Wow. So are you going to, are you still thinking about getting like a legit 90, like old 90s? Yeah, like a Mongoose or like, yeah, like a GT. Yeah. Yeah. So you had a Mongoose. I forget which one I had found that was mine. It was a GT something that got splined or it was something like that. And then my cousin had a Harrow. Yeah, Harrow. That was one. And you had a- I remember I told you guys I was the pro. Yeah. I started with the Huffys, so I can't say that too much. I think out of all of us, I was probably the most in love with freestyle and BMX racing and stuff. So, but I was the kid who couldn't definitely not afford that. You put the pegs in the front and the back. No, my bike didn't even have the add option, dude. I had like, I was the kid who just had the bike. Kids, oh, do you remember riding with your friends and your friends sits on the handlebars? Yeah. You ride like that? Doesn't that seem like the most dangerous thing in the world? The baseball card in my spokes, you know, so it makes a sound. Yeah. You remember that? Yes, I did. Bro, that's the equivalent of the big, loud exhaust on the four-cylinder Honda. Yeah. The coffee can. Listen to the sound that my car makes and whatever. Wow. Dude, so are you, so you're gonna get a bike like that and then you're gonna try and pull tricks for real? Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, start small, get in the feel of it, do some jumps and then start kind of progressing. Can you wait until we finally sign and fill out the insurance that we're gonna do here? Bro, we got good health insurance. I'm fine. No, no, I mean the other kind where something happens to you and you can't podcast, you know, we get covered because of, you know, jumping at 40 years old. Whatever, as long as I can still talk, I'm fine. You got, we're over it. So I went over to Aptos and Santa Cruz area this week and that's where Katrina and I did with Max and I must have seen at least three of those parks. They got them everywhere over there. Oh, really? They had one that had like a, he had a complete like concrete skate park and then right next to it was a dirt park that was all for the dirt pump track. Yeah. It was rad. Wow. Dude, your son is, is he just getting super tall right now? Well, we just started the growth hormone the other day. Stop. I heard, wow. He's got a mustache. Yeah, I'm on a mission to make him into an athlete. He looks like he's getting super tall. Yeah, he's growing fast right now. I told you, he's been in 18 month old clothes and he is, you know, 11 months right now. We had, he was, you know, he started crawling, what, maybe a month ago or so, maybe two months ago. Is he everywhere now? Are you fucked in the house? You know, he doesn't, he crawls to you to let him stand him up so he can walk. Oh, he wants to walk. Oh, it's all he wants to do. He doesn't even want to crawl. He gets pissed. He doesn't like to crawl at all. He's going to just jump right past. He crawls right to you just so you, he can climb up your legs and then grab your hands and then he wants you to walk him everywhere. So it's like, and you know, I'm six three so leaning over, oh God, yeah, and I'm trying to train him to do like a, like I saw this people using like these hula hoops, right? So I could hold the hula hoop at the top and then he holds at the bottom to walk but he ain't having it. He wants to hold it. Now is his hair getting lighter too? The picture looked like his hair was a little lighter. He's got, you know, Katrina had really light hair when she was, so my hair was a lot darker. Hers was a lot lighter and then got darker as she got older. So we'll see if it thickens up and gets darker. But yeah, his features are really light. He, his hairs lie and he's, and his eyes are like a light brown hazel right now. So we'll see. But yeah, I know he's growing like a weed right now. That's good, dude. That's, well, if I have a daughter, you know, we got a little hookup there. Make sure they get married or some matchmaker over here. We'll be in-laws, Adam. How annoying would that be? Oh yeah, more of you? Oh my God. Keep it in the family. How annoying would that be? Oh yeah, yeah. All right, first question is from Rebel Hammond. When buying supplements such as creatine or protein powder, what ingredients or value should I look for to know if I'm getting the best bang for my buck? Oh yeah, that's a good question. So let's start with creatine. Creatine is by far the most, one of the most studied and supported by studies, ergogenic supplements ever. Ergogenic meaning performance enhancing. The vast, vast majority of these studies that show that creatine is safe and effective for muscle growth and recovery and strength. And now they're showing it's got heart health benefits and brain cognitive boosting benefits. It's got benefits for older populations, all that stuff. All those studies, almost all of them use creatine monohydrate, pure creatine monohydrate. All these other versions of creatine that you see. It's like spinoffs. It's all, they're all trying to capitalize on the fact that creatine is effective and trying to find a way to sell it for more money. That's what it feels like to me is just like a brand, like a marketing way to sell like other versions, thinking that there's some other benefits you get. It's like what casein is to like whey protein. Yeah, it's the same thing. It's like the little bit of, it's like you're splitting hairs and the difference of it. It's like if I would get whatever is cheaper, purer and cleaner. I think third-party testing is something that you want to look at. This made me think about like, cause you know how it's all coming out with it's being more of a wellness type of a product. Like how they're going to like repackage it and market it. Like what are their terms they might use with creatine? Yeah, with the wellness market, what you'll probably see is creatine combined with like four or five other ingredients that are supposed to be good for wellness. And I think that's more of a marketing strategy because the wellness space, most people know creatine as like build muscle, bodybuilder, right? So if you're trying to sell it to wellness people. No, it'll be focus, energy, you know, it'll be like that. Yeah, mitochondrial health, you know, might say something like that. I don't know if it'll say that, but. I mean, do people read that and be like, whoa, I don't know what that is, but I think it's good for me. It's like, you're a marketing guy over there. You guys always, you guys always doubt me. You always doubt me. The biohacking space is all about mitochondrial health. That's all they talk about. Trust me. They're also aware, I think of creatine. I think, I think, I'm thinking of the average person. Yes, the average person. I think it's going to be more like clear focus energy. It'll be something like that. That's what I would think. But I would look for, like you said, Adam, third-party testing, purity. If you want the benefits of creatine, just take it by itself in powdered form. That's where you're going to get the best value. If you want it to be augmented, I know Legion sells it with L-Carnitine Tartrate, which helps with recovery. So that's not a bad product. But really, you could just buy it on its own, get a good, pure source. And I think you're totally fine. You don't need to get it all crazy with it. Well, that's similar to protein. Now, protein, there was a major moment for me where this light bulb went off. And I don't remember at what point in my career, but I started flipping around the label and breaking down, because there was this huge discrepancy. I mean, back then, you could get a bottle of designer whey protein for 20-something bucks, and then you could pay as high as 70 bucks. So there was this huge range of these protein powders. And aside from the third-party testing, because I think that's a must is looking at, so you know, and you're better off going with bigger names, name brands that are more credible for those reasons. But besides that, the number one thing with protein is actually just mathematically figuring out how much protein is in the entire jug based off the dollar amount. Because there's a lot of tricks that they use on labels where it's like, you know, it's a great deal, but then it takes two scoops of protein powder just to get it up. Yeah, look at the serving size. Right, it takes two scoops just to get it to 24 grams or 30 grams of protein, and then there's only 20 servings inside there. And then you can buy another one that has 70 servings in it, but then it's a lot. So you gotta really, you're really paying for the protein, right? Protein's expensive. So, you know, what labels tend to do is they manipulate the serving size to try and make you think it's a better deal that you're getting. So the best thing that you could do with protein, once you've figured out, okay, this is a credible source, it's third-party tested or it's a big name, is to flip it around, mathematically figure out how many total grams of protein is in the entire jug divide that by how much the total jug cost, and then start going down. And you'd be surprised how actually close they are in pricing. They're not that as wide of a gap. The margins are small. They are. Protein, it's such a competitive market that like Adam said, if they're literally similar, the price is probably gonna be very similar. Now for way, there's a few different types that you can get. There's concentrate, which is the probably the least expensive version. Concentrate has got a little bit of carbs in it and some other stuff. And by weight, it's the lowest percentage of protein, but it's not bad at all. Then you have isolate. Isolate is where they take everything out except for the protein. So you're just getting protein. And the difference you're looking at between concentrate and isolate is like five, seven grams of carbs. Not a big deal for the average person. If you're like measuring and weighing everything, maybe it can make a big deal. And then there's hydrolysate, which is where they predigest it. So it's quote unquote easier to digest for the body. We are literally splitting hairs with all of those things. It's not that big of a deal to go from one. Yeah, I would look at the price. To me, if they're all things equal. Purity and price. Yeah, and that is what is the deciding. And then a taste. If they're all equal as far as the quality, the next thing I want is one that actually tastes or mix really well. Yeah, but now if you're going with plant proteins, then there's something, some other stuff you wanna look for. Plant proteins on their own typically do not have the same usability, bioavailability or what they'll call, they'll score protein by their amino acids, how available the protein is to the body for lack of a better explanation. It's essentially how much of that protein is gonna be used for muscle and all that kind of stuff. So which one is more effective for the body? Animal sources on their own versus plant sources on their own. The animal sources just, they crush them. So with plant sources of protein. One that's a variety. Yeah, you want combinations that complement each other. So Organifize Protein does this, right? Organifize Protein's got several different plant, it's not just pee or hemp or whatever, it's a combination of different things so that it gets closer to the bioavailability, thank you, easy for you to say, of whey or animal. Yeah, back to creatine now, is there, so I was actually curious about this because of vegans and how we know, like it definitely has a lot of benefit for them cognitively, is there actually synthetic versions or is this like, I mean, does this come from animal products in the powders? No, you can get creatine that's vegan source. Yeah, you can. Vegans don't eat it, right? Because creatine's only found in animal sources. Right, so it's gonna be important. Yeah, and the body makes its own creatine by using amino acids to synthesize it. So you're not gonna necessarily be at a deficiency, however, consistently vegans who supplement with creatine get a cognitive boost, more than anybody else, which tells me that if you're a vegan, you probably should supplement with creatine. Next question is from Dumbbell. Is there an ideal way to transition from a lot of high-intensity workouts to more traditional resistance training? How can I avoid gaining a ton of fat while transitioning off of cardio or HIIT? This is such a common fear that people have. It's what keeps people from training this way. They just stay in the same regime because of this. And it's actually, it doesn't work this way, like even though you're burning less calories, if you're used to high-intensity HIIT training and you're super setting a lot and you're doing all this volume and you're burning a lot of calories and then all of a sudden you switch to like a strength-based program, you, even if your calories stayed the same, you are sending such a different signal to the body by switching that, that most all those additional calories will get partitioned to building muscle. You'll be just fine. That's right. And most of what we fear is that, is that you're not sweating as much, I don't feel like I'm burning as many calories. Maybe you start to put on muscle so you fill out your pants or you fill out your shirts a little more so you think you're getting fat. But more than likely, it's one of the best things that you can do. And I love to take somebody that's been training this way and transitioning them to straight sets and strength training and not manipulating the calories at all. Yeah, this is such a big fear. It prevents a lot of people from training properly for their body. Women are more susceptible to this fear, I think, because they're conditioned to be a more afraid of gaining any weight or size. I remember years ago, I had a client, Jennifer, who she was a fanatic. She did, she ran, I think she ran close to 20 miles a week. She, on top of that, did Pilates and cardio-based group classes. Then she lifted weights with circuit training. So she had always had a problem with weight, discovered fitness, and went the opposite direction, became obsessed. So when she came to hire me, she was working out like a maniac all the time and her calories were like 1700 calories or 16 calories a day. And she's like, well, how do I get leaner? I can't work out anymore. I don't want to cut my calories anymore. And this is what I convinced her to do. I said, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna move you towards building strength and building a metabolism. And it took me a while to convince her to do this. But the funny thing is when she finally did it, exactly what you explained happened, Adam. She gained some muscle. Her metabolism went through the roof. She got to the point where she lifted weights with me three days a week, maybe four days a week max. She went down to doing cardio two or three days a week and it was like a walk. It wasn't this crazy running and crazy whatever. And her caloric intake went up to like 2200 calories a day and she was leaner. And remember, it blew her mind so much, she became a personal trainer. Yeah, when you replace your body mass with more lean muscle, you get rid of the body fat. I mean, it's a hard concept to digest. But I think that this old sort of idea that if you sweat, you're burning fat. Like there's this weird like root of it. Like I've talked to a lot of my clients that have this sort of mentality that if they're not sweating, like, you know, I'm not gonna be shedding body fat. So there's no way that this can work. And you have to like take your time to really explain like this whole process. It's definitely something that people like still have. Now there's a lot of science zealots that will say things like, you know, two or three or four pounds of muscle won't burn. And I just talked about somebody who went from like 16-hour calories to 2,200 calories, right? She didn't gain 15 pounds of muscle. She gained like five pounds, which is a lot, but it ain't gonna make you bigger. Just made her feel more sculpted and tighter, all that. And they'll say something like, well, five pounds of muscle is not gonna turn into that many more calories, you're wrong. And that's true. However, there's other stuff that's going on. Simply changing the signal. Telling your body that you're consuming more and that your building reduces calorie efficiency. Your body learns to actually burn more calories through generating heat. It doesn't clamp down and become as efficient as possible. You can lose no muscle and slow your metabolism down. You can also not gain any muscle and speed your metabolism up by changing the signal. So it's not just pounds of muscle gained. It's also the signal that you're sending. It's not just that either. It's also that most people that gravitate towards these types of modalities, you know, high-intensity, circuit-based, hit-type of training, have been doing it for a long time. Very few of them are like, oh, I just started this and I hear it on and so switch over. It's like, I've been training this way for years. And if you've been training that way for so long, switching over to something so different, like strength training, is gonna be such a loud signal, different from somebody who cycles through their types of modalities every couple of months. But like the story you shared, Sal, that's what's most common for me is that these people that would hire me and I'd ask them how they train and then how long they've been training that way. Most have been training that way for well beyond six months. Years are all their life. They always gravitate to that way of training. So just simply changing that to such a different signal by strength training, that's enough to get the body to really move and change just by itself. Totally. Next question is from Eric Luhnhom. When trying to switch into a career or of personal training from something else, what's more important? Getting a degree in a related field, working on certifications or just getting started coaching for free to gain experience. Okay, I'll add one right there. The most valuable thing you could do is, well, besides that is getting a mentor. I can't think of anything that will give you more bang for your buck in terms of becoming a good trainer. If you're becoming a new trainer and you can find an experienced coach or trainer who will let you follow them around and maybe in trade for doing their paperwork or putting away their weights or confirming their appointments or whatever, just follow them around, watch what they do, hear how they talk, let somebody experience mentor you. That's more valuable than all those things that we listed. But of those things that you listed, I would say certified and then start to get experience because a degree, it's expensive and it's long. Not saying it's not valuable, but geez, for the time and the money that you spend, I can't see it being more valuable than certifications plus experience. Well, to kind of piggyback on that, I think that there's a way to do that too. If you don't know somebody that's a really good mentor or personal trainer, but there's a gym where you know a really awesome personal trainer that you respect and hire them. Hire them, spend your money, having them take you through programming and explain it and go through that process to see how the inner workings of the whole thing and see if they're comfortable with doing that. I'm sure they would be. They'd be happy to get your business for that. That'd be like a good start for at least kind of getting a feel for what it requires by doing it that way. Well, you need a minimum of A certification or degree to like become one, right? So you have to have at least one to get going, right? One national certification or a degree in the field to at least get started. But then after that, I would actually say the experience trumps everything. I mean, this is my experience at least. I didn't have a lot coming into it. I had an A certification. I got one certification to get started. And then just got in, got into it. The trade started doing it. And then as I would run into the thing, and here's the mistake I think some trainers make is they're so afraid because they don't have a lot of experience and knowledge yet. So they're timid to go take on a client, but that's okay, you gotta be okay with saying, hey, I don't know, but I'll find out for you. And so most of my career, I spent the first five to six years at least saying that a lot and then go back and do my research. So I run into a situation, if never, and here's the thing too, you can have all the certifications and all the degrees in the world and it still will not prepare you for every situation you're gonna run into in real life. There's just, there's so many variables and we're so unique and we're all so different that you're gonna have to handle it case by case. So as you, I think nothing is gonna trump that getting into the trade like other trades too. I mean, that's very similar to almost anything else. Yeah, you get degrees and certifications, but until you get in there and start working with those people, you have no idea what you're going to run into. And when you do, you go home and that's why I'd go home after that. And then the next thing you know, I'd be reading books and trying to learn more about whatever I was dealing with and then I'd apply it. And then before you know it, after you've been doing that for years, you're gonna have gone through a lot of the similar type of situations. And if you've done your due diligence every time you cross that path or cross that scenario and you go and you learn and you read about it, to me that's one of the, and then why that's so important is because the part that isn't listed on here that I shouted out, which is communication, is it's just gonna get you that practice on how to communicate that information. Another thing that I had a lot is I would remember when I first started hiring trainers and I would look for the degrees and all the certifications. Oh, this trainer's got, you know, a master's, a master's, they've got, you know, foreign national certifications, they're gonna be so awesome. And then I get them and they're like, terrible because they have no experience on taking all that information and then communicating that to an average person and then getting the results that they need. So, you know, that part is so important to becoming a good trainer that I'd wanna get started in it as soon as I can and then I'll learn along the way. Yeah, the most I ever learned, I'm gonna be totally honest, that I ever learned as a personal trainer aside from my own experience was from other trainers, other health practitioners, by far. I had acupuncturists that I worked next to and I would observe and listen to the way they talked and communicated about their expertise, massage therapists and I would do the same thing, physical therapists, other trainers and then other practitioners that my clients would go to. So if I had a client that raved about their chiropractor or about their doctor or about their therapist, let's say I worked with someone with, you know, body image issues and they also worked with therapists, I would make sure to contact their practitioner both to be able to service my client better but also to ask them questions and listen because, you know, you're in your own bubble, you're a fitness person, you know. You don't think you can learn from an acupuncturist about, you know, Chinese medicine and meridians. Of course, you're not gonna communicate it the way they are but you're gonna hear and listen and learn and that's where I learned most of the most valuable stuff that I ever learned as a trainer. Yeah, I think too that there's a lot of different personalities that wanna get into this industry and I know myself even included in terms of like me being a little bit different than you guys. My weakness was something I worked on constantly so I do agree with Adam, it's about getting in there and working on things that might make you uncomfortable if that's, you know, communication thing, if that's, you know, small talk and like approaching people, if you're scared of that, like you definitely need to find yourself an environment where you can, you know, work on that but at the same time it does help to have the education and like so, you know, I'm not discounting the fact that like going the certification route and like getting, you know, a degree isn't gonna help, it's gonna help at least have, you know, that basis of knowledge to then convey so when that comes up you can relay the information you've learned to these clients and look like a genius but at the same time like you really need to get out there, it's really important that you put yourself in the environment that makes you uncomfortable, makes you work on all these things because it really is a one-to-one communication, you have to have really good communication. Just because I know people are gonna message us afterwards about what are good certifications, NESM, good general one, CPPS, excellent, very, very good one. My favorite. The Czech Health Practitioner level one, that's a good wellness certification. So those are ones that I would recommend that are great places to look. Next question is from Lean Queen. What's your best advice for someone who wants to become a better communicator? What would you say is a top trait of a great communicator? Yeah, a great follow-up question. I, one of my first mentors in fitness, my friend Don, he was excellent at selling and communicating fitness and the benefits of health. And I remember when he would talk to potential members or clients, you know, he was just very effective. Now I was a young kid, right? When I started working with him as 18 years old, full of piss and vinegar, I loved to talk back then, just like I love to talk now. And I remember talking to somebody about fitness and he sat in and I did, you know, what I did well is I presented and I talked and I motivated, inspired and used my charisma and all this other stuff. And I remember that at that point, I was trying to show off in front of him, right? Cause he's watching me. So I'm like, I want to do a really good job. And the person, you know, they kind of liked what I had to say, but they were struggling with it. And I remember they laughed and they ended up not, you know, getting started in fitness or whatever. And I was really disappointed. And, you know, the guy, the person left and then Don sat me down and he goes, I was just like you when I first got into fitness. He goes, I'm gonna teach you one of the most important lessons in communication. He said, use your ears and your mouth in proportion. I'm like, huh? He goes, listen twice as much as you talk. He said, I think, a lot of people think communication is talking. More of it has to do with listening. So I would say the top trait of a great communicator is listening. Number one, it gives the person, they know that you're hearing them. So that already opens them up to anything you're gonna have to say. And number two, you don't know what to communicate unless you listen, you know? You really don't. You have no idea. You know, I've seen trainers make this mistake where I remember I had this lady that one time, you know, was thinking about working out. She was in her fifties and the trainer kept talking to her about how she's gonna get her body in bikini shape and she's gonna look fit and she's gonna look so hot. And she completely failed to hear the woman say that her problem was that she had osteopenia. She didn't give a shit about that. So her communication was terrible. Well, sales is just communication. We've talked about this before, right? So people get so turned off by talking about sales or closing, but really that's all that is is effective communication. So I'll give you a couple of books or three books that come to mind that I think are not traditional in the sales world that I haven't been recommended before, but I really enjoyed reading. Verbal Judo, Sway, and Biology. All three really good books and effective communication and sales. And the other thing I used to always tell my trainers is, you know, I used to ask them, I said, what is the difference between a good closer and a great closer? And a good closer learns to overcome objections and can push people and they know their product really well and they can push people into a sale. A great closer can pull somebody into a sale by asking the right questions. And so that kind of goes in line with what you're saying, Sal, is just learning to listen more than you talk. So learning to really hear the client or the person across from you and then learn to ask the questions to leave them in the direction that you want to go. That strategy is far more powerful than trying to push or convince somebody to do something. I think too, one thing that I struggled with and I know some of the trainers probably out there when they're going through the process of trying to get to the close, right? Like, you're anticipating the close, you're presenting what that looks like for the client, but now there's this uncomfortable silence where they're trying to think it over and it's like you get this tendency of like, okay, it's silent, so that's bad. So now I have to jump in and say, well, you could also do this and you just literally like cut your feet out from under you. You need to give them ample time to think about it and just wait, just wait, don't say anything. Let them present their ideas to you and so that's just something that I had to work on personally. I know that I got better at as I got more confident in my skills in terms of like trying to convey the best plan for them but it's just like, it's a process of reps, just like anything else. If you're in the gym, you need the reps, you need the people in front of you, you need to be able to see what went wrong, how it can improve and like for me and specifically like that was everything. I had to just keep placing appointments and keep booking them and keep talking to people randomly in the gym because I hated it and it's just like, you just have to do it. Yeah, one of the big, I'd say most common mistakes that we'll stick with trainers that trainers make when it comes to communication is that they talk, without realizing it, they talk people out of getting started in fitness. And you probably hear what I'm saying and you're thinking, how is that possible? Why would a trainer talk someone out of fitness? Well, they don't mean to but that's exactly what they end up doing. I'll give you a very simple example. If somebody is talking to you and you wanna talk to them about fitness and you're trying to get them started and they say, I don't have a lot of time, I just don't have a lot of time to work out, I've got kids, I've got a job and the reason why I haven't done this is I don't have a lot of time to get started. Well, the trainer that's not really paying attention is gonna start the whole motivation talk. Well, you know, everybody's got 24 hours in a day and we have to prioritize our time. And by the way, if you prioritize fitness, you're gonna be healthier, which is gonna give you more energy, then you're gonna feel, you're gonna be more productive, you're gonna have more time for your kids, you're gonna be a better parent, all true. None of that is false, it's all totally true. But what you failed to do was listen to the person, empathize and work with them. And believe it or not, less words would have been a million times more effective because what you just did by that is you literally talked them out of it. You literally just proved to them that you don't understand them, you don't know what they're talking about and that you're gonna have to make a lot of crazy changes right off the gates to do this fitness thing. When all you had to say, this is all you had to say was, oh, you know what, it makes a lot of sense, how much time do you think you can devote to fitness realistically? Whatever answer they give you's the right answer. It doesn't matter, one day a week, no problem. It's better than no days a week. I'm gonna construct the best routine I possibly can with that one day a week. We can totally start there and it's much better than doing nothing at all, and which is also all completely true. So this is one, and by the way, communication skills are the most important skills you can learn in life ever. I don't care what job you do, look at the relationships that you're in. You always have to ask yourself what your goal is. Like what is the goal with this communication that I'm doing with this person? Is it to prove them wrong and prove myself right? Or is it to get them to understand what I'm saying and maybe sway them a little bit? Maybe persuade them to do what I know to be the right thing? When you think of it that way, you tend to communicate more effectively. You tend to not be so zealot, such as zealot about what you're saying. It's a little softer because here's the deal, okay? Here's the reality. If I tell the person who just told me they have no time and I say to them, well, how much time do you realistically have? And they say one day a week, here's what I know about fitness. I know this for a fact. They come in because now I've listened to them and they honestly believe they only have one day a week, no problem, nine out of 10 times, the person shows up one day a week, they do it a long enough time, they feel, see the benefits, guess what they do? They make more time. All on their own, just like magic. I used to love watching this. It would take two months, three months, sometimes a year. Inevitably the client would come up to him and be like, you know what, Sal? I'd like to work out one more day a week. What do you think I should do? Just like magic. And they would end up sticking with fitness. So communication has a lot to do with learning and a lot to do with understanding what your desired result is. It's very little to do with winning an argument or a conversation. And with that, look, we record these podcasts on video as well as audio. So if you'd like to watch and listen to the podcast, go check us out on YouTube. It's Mind Pump Podcast. Also, you can find us all on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal, Adam at Mind Pump Adam, and Doug. He has an Instagram page too. It's Mind Pump Doug.