 Next question is from AMR1514. Was there ever a time you felt that you failed as a personal trainer or as a leader? What did you learn from it and how did your life change? Oh gosh, I failed as a trainer so many times, especially early on. And especially when I would figure out that I was doing something wrong and then looking back and feeling really bad for some of the stuff I did. I remember when I first became a trainer, I was going through and reading a lot about intensity and how important intensity was for training. And I remember I had this one guy that hired me and it was this engineer dude and he wanted to build muscle. And I would take all his sets to failure plus force reps because I thought this is what triggers muscle growth, right? This is what's going to get him to succeed. And I remember after a couple months he started to get injured and he didn't feel good but we kept pushing, he eventually stopped working with me and then it was only a year later that I realized that was not the right approach. The one time that really stands out for me, I've told this story on the podcast before in the past but till this day if I ever find this lady, I'll apologize to her, she hired me to lose weight and her husband and her hired me and I trained them separately. And at this time as a trainer I would have people track their food and I would give them macro goals and I would test their body fat every two weeks and weigh them and take their measurements every two weeks. I was one of those trainers, right? And I would do that with her and she was reporting to me and I would look at her meal plans and stuff. She was reporting to me that she was following my macro advice like to the T and she was doing everything that I was telling her and yet every other week I would test her body fat and look at her measurements and at first nothing changed, nothing changed, nothing changed and then she started gaining weight and so I cut her calories, changed her macros and she gained more weight and then I cut her calories and more and she gained more weight and I remember thinking to myself, this is impossible and then her husband who I also trained told me, maybe he shouldn't have but he told me, he goes, you know, I'm going to be honest with you, he said, she's not being honest on her meal plan and so I thought to myself, okay, cool, tomorrow when she comes in I'm going to have one of those hardcore talks with her. I'm going to call her out and tell her how it is and that's going to motivate her or she's never going to come back and that's too bad on her or whatever. So she walked in, I sat her down and I said, you're lying to me and she said, no, I'm not and I said a bunch of stuff and I said, look, if you're gaining weight on this many calories then we need to study you because you're the first human being ever on the face of the earth to create tissue out of nothing. Such a dick. I'm showing her the law of thermodynamics and basically showing her, you're not telling me truth and I said, look, you're either serious or you're not. If you lie to me, you lie to yourself, the whole thing, right? Blew her out, okay? She left and I thought I was so satisfied. Oh, you know, I told her now she knows that, you know, now she can't lie, she knows whatever. She never came back and I remember at first I was pleased with myself, you know? Like, yeah, you know, if they lie to me, they're lying to themselves and they're not serious. But about a month went by and I kind of felt bad and then I thought to myself and I said, you know, she was at least showing up twice a week. She never worked out before. Maybe she was lying because I was such a hard ass about everything and so she felt like she couldn't be honest with me, but she was still showing up. She was still showing up and now what I've done is I've completely ruined her experience of fitness. She finally took the step to work out, finally had the courage to come in and she experienced the shitty experience with the trainer that told her she was a liar and that she's not good enough and now she'll probably never work out and I remember feeling totally like a big piece of shit afterwards. Still to say, even talking about it, I feel terrible and that was probably, that's the one time that stands out the most as a time that I failed because later on, if I had that same client, I would make them feel comfortable with telling me that they were having a tough time with eating a particular way and we would work through it and I'd make them feel supported and I would be proud of the fact that they were coming in twice a week because that was more than what they were doing before, but instead I probably ruined somebody for at least a while in terms of working out. You definitely did. Yeah, I had a problem with intensity too. Yeah, that was like a big one in the beginning because you think that it's relatable. It's something that everybody really wants to get after it. I come from this sports background where that was definitely the talk of the day. It was always a mindset issue and so I was always trying to get my clients into the mindset of wanting more and wanting more intensity and being able to really get after their goals and I thought that was, if I'm not getting them in that mindset then I'm failing. I'm not getting them to really want it and get after it and I was training this lady and we were actually doing pretty well like she was showing up and we were getting good results and I figured that it's been at this level. Let's turn it up a little bit, turn the notch up a bit and she came in one day and if I was a good trainer I would have picked up on this right away. She's just having an off day. Something happened outside. I don't know if it was with her work or family, something. It was just off. My basic go-to was, okay, well let's push through it. We're working out and she's doing all these exercises and of course back then asshole, me would combo everything so she was doing a lunge but not just a lunge, a lunge with a row or a squat with a press. This is all before CrossFit and all that and I was doing it with dumbbells in place but it was super intense. It was just one thing after the next after the next and then she just mid-workout just stops and just busts out crying and just starts crying and crying and crying. I'd love to see how you would have handled that. And I was just like, and I just sat down and I didn't know what to do and I'm like, do you need some water? What do you want from me? She got her some water and she cried and she was like, I can't do it today and I'm like, oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Let's sign out. She just left and then she didn't come back. It just was too much. Mentally, physically, all those things. She never came back and then I saw her again years later like in Golds when I was off on my own. Working with a trainer. No, she was just like she said, she was like, that was just too much for me and I'm like, I get it. I'm sorry. I apologize to her for that but it was like one of those things where I just was totally oblivious. Why aren't you in the mindset like I am? Oh, man. I failed so much as a trainer. I can't think of a single story to give you. I'll give you a leadership one since these guys did both trainer stories and because I just shared this. I did an interview the other day with a question that was related to this. I thought it was good. I had this moment about 25-ish where I decided to, I had read the book One Minute Manager, which I've read that and then I read another book that I can't remember the name of the other book. The other book did all this all this data on surveys they'd done for the Fortune 500 company, CEOs and how they managed and led and that I was taught when I got into leadership and management was you evaluate your staff if people are not following the rules or underperforming, you coach them up you make them better and so that's how I looked at my team up until this point. I looked at my team and this trainer is not doing as well. I need to sit him or her down and coach them up and make them better what they do and thought I was doing the right thing which I think everybody if you're in a leadership role I think you should read this book. It's a day read and it really completely flipped the way I led from that point on on its head. It totally changed the way I spoke to my trainers and how I led my staff and this was in every aspect going forward too and the premise of the book is basically instead of looking at your staff and looking at the things that they're not doing well make it a point to find the things that they are doing well and always point that out and I thought well that's interesting but how do I measure this how do I change this way of leading and really measure if it's effective or not and so and I have shared this on the podcast a long time ago where I would take my palm trio dating myself a little bit here your stone tablet take my palm trio out that is he doesn't even know does he this is before I this is like the first digital calendars right before iPhones and stuff and I put all my trainers names in there and then an alarm would go off and so Justin's name would pop up at two o'clock and so what I would do is always the best I would head over to Justin I'd stop whatever it was I was doing like a point to thank him or point out something that he had done recently it must have been tough for Justin I don't like that stuff thanks Adam let me get back to work so I did this and I did it very consistently for a couple months before I recognized how powerful it was and I talk about the moment that I knew like holy shit like this was like a game changer for me that's saying that we use all the time kid named Anthony comes walking into my office it's like two months after I've been doing this he walks in my office and he just starts telling me all the things that he hasn't done right Adam and he's one of my good trainers right I need to get caught up on my files and I'm so sorry this I've had finals at school and he starts telling me giving me all the excuses why he hasn't done certain things and why he'll be better and and it you know open up the opportunity for me to say okay well you know let's work on this let me help you here and coach up and like he walks out and I was really strange and I'm like why did he do that and I realized that I had missed his you know walking over to him and saying what a good job he was doing for that past week so the first that he was the first guy first staff member that I had let seven days go by without walking over and telling him what a good job they're doing and it blew my mind that he had come to me with everything that he was doing wrong and it was at that moment that I realized how powerful that was because I know that when you tell somebody to correct something or you coach them up when you when you come at them and you tell them you point out something they're doing wrong you're it's like a one in ten chance that it actually sinks in and they adjust and they change things maybe you got somebody who is very self-aware and they do that most people get defensive whether they act defensively or internally they put a wall up and they don't receive any information versus when someone comes to you and says hey Adam I've got a problem or hey I'm not doing a good job they're actually admitting that they have an issue or they're not doing a good job they're looking to be coached up or they're looking for help that way of leading completely changed for me and that was a mistake that I did for years leading up at that point and when I made that switch I never had to work nearly as hard as I worked for the first five years as a leader and I was two to five times more successful going forward. You know that's really smart because it's actually human psychology so Dr. John Gottman by the way if you want really really good relationship advice for you and your spouse or your partner look up the books and research by Dr. John Gottman and without going to too much depth his research has been duplicated many times over proving the stuff that he originally came out with so it's legit and one thing that they say is that there's this ratio of good to negative there's this good to negative ratio that couples that last for long periods of time or the winners or whatever he would call them that they would have and it's five to one right so they thought going into the research that one to one would be good you know at least half the time the comments should be positive to balance out at least the other half of the negative but no they found that couples that succeed were five to one so if you're criticizing or have complaints to your spouse or your partner about like you didn't do this you didn't do that you did that wrong what they found is that there needs to be five it's five times as many positive things to balance out every one of those negative things and it's just human behavior so that actually is I can't remember the book I wish I remember the book but that's I can't remember to the survey that I read right so the survey that I read in the the previous book before women a manager showed that the 500 most successful CEOs of Fortune 500 companies they were they were asked a question like as far as positive affirmation with your staff on a scale of one to five five being perfect one being terrible what would you rate yourself as as far as that type of a leader in a CEO and of course all these great CEOs raid themselves at five right so they came out to an average of like 4.2 or 4.5 like a really high number they all rated themselves they asked all the employees of those CEOs the exact same question if their leader and the score came out to be like 2.2 so the take away that I got from that was that because at that point in my career I thought I was one of these guys already I'm a very positive person I do a good job I felt like I do a good job of congratulating my staff or pointing out the things they do well I was not a negative person whatsoever so I but when I read that it made me go wow even as much as I think I do it I am not doing it nowhere near enough to make that ratio positive for the person who's receiving it so in the book one-minute manager it doesn't teach to do what I did I just the information that I learned from that first bit of research which is similar to what you're talking about and then the one-minute manager strategy that what I came up with was my own thing right that was my own way of kind of measuring that because I realized wow I think I already do that but if these guys are running these massive companies this is what their staff is what does my staff think about me got to be the same thing it's all about the perception and human behavior it's like a negative comment weighs heavily and positive comments don't weight nearly as heavily so you have to have kind of this offset ratio we're Jessica and now we're talking about some friends of ours who are they just had a baby so they're having you know some some challenges in the relationship by the way every couple I've never known we just had a baby has challenges so that's you know number one that's totally normal but the I guess the wife was telling the husband something he wasn't doing or whatever and he responded he said can you tell me something I'm doing right and I'm like well that's he he's probably he's probably feeling and it might not be true but the negative to positive ratio feels way off huge yeah so he feels like all I'm doing is everything wrong it happens tell me something I'm doing right to have a deal you know it's an easy thing to happen I mean that's if you're just focused on that and you're looking for it you're gonna find it you know and so it's really just about both sort of reframing their ideas around it and trying to focus on the positive well that's the other thing that I found really powerful about leading this way was if I did that Anthony was the first example of when I went aha like whoa I'm on to something and and then what I realize going forward is because there's time there's definitely times where you catch something that you've got it you've got to say something immediately I can't wait for them to come to me and but what I found because I did so much work into making sure that everybody on that team was getting heard from positive things from me every single week multiple times that when finally they did fuck up you know five six seven weeks later they'd already heard me talk about how great they are 15 times that when I dropped the hammer that one time it wasn't like oh man Adam's always ragging on me bullshit I've already told you all these great things that you're doing you're not doing this that's not great this is not a great thing right here so it became way more powerful when I did come over and correct or when I did come over and say that point out something that they didn't do well and it just had so much more weight when I had made an effort to go out of my way to keep continuing saying good positive things of these people awesome