Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 231: The Truth Behind Success in The Fitness Industry (My Story)

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome in everybody to a special episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. Today you will be hearing a guest interview I did with the Spitballers podcast. to discuss entrepreneurship, my journey through fitness as a coach and as a lifter, what got me into fitness, what inspires me to stay fit, how to get started on a fitness journey if you've never lifted before, common tropes holding people back, the ins and outs of content creation, and how to stand out in a really saturated space. This is one of, if not my favorite guest spots I've ever done on a podcast. And I think you guys will really enjoy this, especially if you enjoy the content I have here. You'll also get to enjoy a longer than normal episode.
Starting point is 00:00:55 So please sit back and enjoy this awesome guest spot I got to do with the Spitballers. Check them out. You can check them out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you find podcasts. And if you'd like, go ahead and actually check out the bio for this show and the show notes down here. I'm going to link the YouTube video for a special YouTube version of this podcast. So sit back and enjoy, guys. I hope you like what we recorded. Ladies and gentlemen, our guest today has been putting in serious work in the fitness
Starting point is 00:01:27 industry for over 10 years now. Through his content powerhouse and personal training, he makes getting in and staying in shape easier for people. He is the founder of the Core Coaching Method, host of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast, and here today to talk to us about everything fitness through his lens. Please welcome the great and powerful Danny Matrenga. Let's go. Thank you, guys.
Starting point is 00:01:49 I don't know how great or how powerful, but we'll get through it together. I appreciate the introduction for sure. Everybody's great and powerful, man. It's definitely within you too. So we're grateful you're here and happy to have you. I tend to think people have that potential. And that's one of the reasons why I was so drawn to fitness is because it really allows
Starting point is 00:02:05 you to cultivate and pull out of people things that, one, they didn't know were possible. And then two, we all need to connect with people at some level on something that we're passionate about. And most of us eventually kind of find our way to what we're passionate about. But I was lucky enough through athletics early on to be like, hey, the human body is this incredibly adaptable thing. And if I could change my body to become a better athlete, get a little leaner, build a little bit of muscle, maybe I can help other people do the same. And that's really what drew me to it to begin with. But the potential that people have
Starting point is 00:02:39 to change is what keeps me sticking with it, not just physically, but also emotionally, because you create relationships with every client you have, with all the trainers you work with, and seeing people change physically, mentally, and emotionally through fitness, because it challenges you so much more than physically to stick with it. All you guys are active, so you know there are days you don't want to fucking do it. And on those days, you really cultivate something deep down. It's something that I can't ever imagine not having in my life. And even if one day I decide hey, you know I don't really want to do one-on-one personal training anymore
Starting point is 00:03:09 I don't think there will ever be a day Where i'm not either working on my own fitness or helping people with theirs, right? And I feel like the probably the coolest thing for you is watching the transition of somebody's somebody's confidence where they're coming in They're a little insecure. They're not really like comfortable with their. They're not really all the way who they want to be. And then you can help them and you can watch their confidence change and it completely changes their whole demeanor as a person. It is. It's the best part. And I've worked with clients all over the spectrum from the highest level of physical capability to people who are completely and totally new to fitness and exercise, who've never touched a weight before, who are entirely intimidated by the idea of, oh my gosh, I'm going to challenge myself physically.
Starting point is 00:03:49 Am I going to get hurt? I'm going to look stupid. I don't know what I'm doing. And I always find those clients to be some of the most rewarding people to work with because before you see any changes physically, you see changes emotionally, you see changes with their confidence. And just to use an example, I've been training my girlfriend's dad for the last three months, who's never exercised in his life, but he's 60 years old. He came over here from Mexico and he was a teenager and he works insanely hard. So he has the work ethic thing down, but the exercise thing is like completely foreign to him. He's like, okay, I know
Starting point is 00:04:26 how to move my body. I know how to work hard, but I just don't vibe with exercise. And he's been coming over to the house because I'm fortunate enough to have a home gym in the garage. I have the studio out here, but it's easier for me for him to just come to the garage. And I've been working with him for about 45 minutes, three times a week for the last two months. And his confidence has just gone through the roof. It's really cool to see. And you're totally right, because that's the first thing that changes. I do think some of it is I'm more confident in how my body looks, moves, and feels. But I think a lot of it is, hey, I could not do this a little while ago. Now I can. And where does that take me then from here? Because if I could change this much
Starting point is 00:05:05 in two months physically, how can I change emotionally, spiritually, mentally? And the physical stuff is so palpable. We see it, we feel it. I really do think it motivates people to expand and evolve in other ways without getting too woo-woo. But it is something that I think people who are physically active and who challenge their bodies and initiate that level of change, they become more encouraged and more open to developing as a whole human being. That's something that I've really learned starting as such a young man doing this and not really having had any development of my personality, of my spirituality, of my emotional intelligence. Being able to change my body really made me realize just
Starting point is 00:05:45 how adaptive we are as organisms overall. Right. It translates really, really well to, uh, just the rest of life, right? Like there's a really cliche saying for people who are in fitness, I think pretty regularly of, uh, just doing, doing that first thing in the morning or doing that at any point in the day is the hardest point of the day. So then everything else in comparison is not as tough, right? That's definitely so true and such a gift that comes just from exercise. It's totally true. I mean, for years, I was part of the 4 a.m. crew. Even going back to high school, when I first started training, I would get up at 4 a.m., I would take a cold shower,
Starting point is 00:06:23 I would have two pieces of toast with almond butter and a protein shake, and I would drive to the gym, and I would wait until the guy opened it at 4.45. And I remember so many days, like this is before I knew about the value of sleep, and I tell people all the time, I literally flushed all that training down the toilet because I didn't recover from any of it. It was pure, like I didn't understand that you needed sleep because I was just like, I'm going to the weight room, then I'm going to class. Then after class, I have, I have whatever sport I'm doing. But that getting up and doing the hard thing first, when you don't want to do it, whatever the fuck else is going to happen to you that day is probably going to be easier than that first workout or that early morning workout, because it's you and the tiredness versus the task at hand. And if you can overcome that,
Starting point is 00:07:06 then whatever the hell gets thrown your way is substantially easier to handle. And you know, I've already done one hard thing. I can build off that. And I do think that people generally now struggle with that. Some people it's easy, but I do think a lot of people struggle with doing things that are challenging. And that's part of the reason why I champion exercise so much is not just everybody knows what it does for you physically. Everybody knows what it does for you mentally, cognitively, and how good it is for your brain. But it does something to build that level of resilience. It means something to be someone who does the hard thing physically. Right. And I think that also what you're talking about with getting up early in the morning and
Starting point is 00:07:42 kind of getting that first part over with and it's easier. It comes with even smaller things than getting up and going to the gym for an hour. If you can just get up and make your bed, that's like a win. It's like your first win of the day. And then getting in that cold shower, which by the way, I love. That's kind of way to wake up. I was like before people did cold showers. It was like I knew that there was a benefit to it.
Starting point is 00:08:00 But really why I was doing it was because it was waking my ass up. Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. Now, respect to that, I guess just for some context for everybody listening to, this is the first time we've ever sat down with you and had a conversation, right? So why don't you give us some context to kind of, how did you become you today? Like, what's that story? Yeah, sure. I mean, I think the best place to start would be with how I got into exercise. And, you know, I think I got into
Starting point is 00:08:25 it the way that many fitness professionals do, which is through athletics. Growing up, I played all the sports. I liked all the sports. I wanted to be good at all the sports, but as a- What sports were those? Baseball, basketball, football. And then you have, you know, the undersized white guy syndrome. It's like, okay, I clearly have a cap here. I'm going to be very limited by the fact that, you know, my dad's 5'9", my mom's 5'3". I was 5'7 and a half as a senior in high school, like 170 pounds. We can all relate to that.
Starting point is 00:08:52 I was like, well, I think there's a ceiling here. What can I do to really elevate that ceiling? And as all of you are aware, if you're not going to get any taller, the best thing you can do is probably get a little faster and get a little bit stronger. And so that's what really helped me gravitate towards the weight room. And I had a physique and a body type that developed relatively quickly. I was always on the leaner side. So I saw progress physically very quickly and I just became totally, totally hooked on it. But what made me want to share it with other people is my dad. My dad has Parkinson's disease, which is a really degenerative physical illness that affects the brain. The part of the
Starting point is 00:09:30 brain that coordinates movement and motor patterns started to degrade for him when I was 12. That's when he got his diagnosis. So from 12 to 17, I watched my dad go from somebody that I would play catch with in the backyard to somebody that was completely wheelchair bound who I had to drive around. And I became really, really committed to learning everything I could about how I could help him. And I realized very quickly that that disease is incurable. There's nothing you can do with nutrition and there's really nothing you can do with exercise. All you can do is slow the progression. And so that's when I said, okay, All you can do is slow the progression. And so that's when I said, okay, if I can't help him, I can help someone else.
Starting point is 00:10:13 And this exercise thing, this nutrition thing seems to be the key to preventing this kind of stuff, not just to happening to me, but happening to other people. You can't really control the hand you're dealt, but you can control how you play the hand. 100%. And so I became very, very like insatiably hungry in terms of learning everything I could about physical fitness and exercise. So as a jock who loved the way exercise made me look and somebody who didn't have any athletic ambitions beyond high school, cause it just wasn't realistic. Uh, and I was like, well, I gotta, I probably gotta go to college. Everybody goes to college. So what the hell can I go to college for? And I found that kinesiology was a major. I was like, oh, you can study exercise. And I'm
Starting point is 00:10:51 really passionate about helping people with exercise. So let's apply for all the kinesiology departments in the state school system. And I got into Sonoma State, which is like, what, five minutes from here? And so I came down here to study exercise and I needed to pay for it because my parents weren't in a position where they could pay for me to go to school. And so I was like, all right, I think I'm going to get a job at the vitamin shop because I really like supplements. And I remember specifically like applying at the vitamin shop, getting accepted for that job and showing up on the day I was supposed to show up for my first day. And the dude who interviewed me was working the front counter. And I got out of the car and I could see him through the double paint glass. And the look
Starting point is 00:11:31 on his face was like, oh, fuck. And I knew something was weird. So the minute I opened the door, he's like, hey, yeah, I meant to call you. I meant to tell you this. I actually had to give your job to an inter-organizational transfer. Somebody transferred up here. So I actually gave that position to them. And he wouldn't mind maybe waiting a couple months. We could probably get you another job. And I was like, dude, I need a job pretty soon here. Because I don't have an income.
Starting point is 00:11:56 And I have like $1,100. And so what I did was I said, I know that you can get a personal training certification. And I know that I can get a personal training certification, and I know that I can make money doing that. I spent $800 on the NASM certification, and I studied it every morning at 24-Hour Fitness in Rohnert Park at 5 o'clock in the morning. I would go there and work out before my 7 a.m. class. I'd work out from 5 to 6.15, take a shower, and from 6.15, 6.30 or so to about 6.45, I
Starting point is 00:12:22 would sit in the front of that gym and I would read that book and I would hope that the manager would see me. So I was like, this guy's got to know that I want this shit. I'm grinding for this. If he sees me reading the book, he might talk to me. And I was so shy because I just moved down here and I didn't know anybody. But eventually I passed that test. That dude agreed to hire me. And I was so bad for the first three to six months of personal training. I remember I sold the very first person I ever had a consultation with. And then I was goosing for the next three months. I couldn't sell anybody anything.
Starting point is 00:12:50 I had a coconut haircut, pimples, this terrible retainer, two fake teeth on it. I was congenitally born with one missing tooth. And I got one knocked out. So I had this doofy little retainer on. And nobody's taking you serious. Because you're talking to adults. And you're like, listen, exercise is very important. You should build muscle and elevate your metabolic capacity. And you probably shouldn't be this fat. And people are like, how old are you again?
Starting point is 00:13:12 And I'd be like, listen, don't worry about that. I would try to do everything I could to position myself as the expert. And it was a really big challenge for me at 18 years old. And knowing that I needed to be successful to pay for school really forced me out of my comfort zone. And after about six to 12 months, I finally got some traction, started to get some clients, started to get some referrals, started to get some confidence. And after about two or three years, I was really, really well established in that gym, training 150 sessions a week or a month, 150 sessions a month, going to school full-time, getting my degree, graduated in four years, paid for everything myself, zero student
Starting point is 00:13:51 loan debt, you know, the kind of stuff that I was really proud of. My parents were really proud of. And that was kind of the catalyst for, and the foundation for ultimately getting onto social media, trying to spread what it is that I'd learned along the way to other people through other avenues. And that was tricky at first too. That was really uncomfortable too, but I'd already been there. I'd already done that. I'd already faced the rejection and the fear. And what so many people struggle with when they try to build a digital brand or an online presence is what are people going to think? What are people going to say? And at that point, having had the experience of just trying to get some clients at a 24-hour fitness, I was so much more resilient to that that I was
Starting point is 00:14:30 able to push through and ultimately get to a place where I had an online business and that allowed me to open my own business in person, my own gym. And it is like the quintessential story. You start from the bottom, you build your way up. But that's really the story of how I got to where I'm at. Where does all the ambition come from though? Because many people, I think, there's a lot of personal trainers who probably found it through sports, but then there's a lot of average personal trainers, right? Yeah. More probably average to below average than good. And that's the case for most things. Was it the Parkinson's with your dad? Well, I think what it was, was I didn't have that safety net.
Starting point is 00:15:05 You know, my dad lost everything and it was really hard to watch. And my mom was really never stable or in the picture very much. So it was always a question of, okay, if you don't do this, ain't nobody coming to save you. So you can't fuck this up. And there's something really powerful about that. Cause like, yes, some of it is ambition. I'll say there's a lot of ambition. I definitely am a go-getter. I'm an overachiever. I have that alpha male high T. If I'm going to do this, I want to be better than you. And I want to be better than you. And at 24, it was like, okay, you sold $25,000 worth of training this month. I'm going to sell 27. Oh, you did 150 sessions. I'm gonna do 155. Some of that competitiveness that I got from sports was a piece of the ambitiousness that
Starting point is 00:15:48 one might look and see and go, oh, that guy's really driven. He's really ambitious. He wants it. A lot of it was I didn't have a choice. I had to go get it. Right. And there's something really helpful about that. And I hate the fact that my parents had the struggles that they had.
Starting point is 00:16:01 And a lot of people learn to resent that and they pack it away. But I love that I got something positive out of that, which was I had to go out and do it myself. And I know so many people who have really stable parents, who have really loving parents, who support them. And I think that's great. But if you don't have that, it can actually be beneficial for you. It forces you out of your comfort zone. And when you know you don't have that safety net and you know you don't have that fallback, it challenges you in a way that I think can push you a little higher. And I do think that you see that consistently with people who are quote unquote successful or who accomplish things is that they either don't have that
Starting point is 00:16:38 fallback or they hit that bottom point where they had no other choice. And I think I had both of those things happen relatively early. And I had the fortune of finding something that I was passionate and ambitious and wanted to succeed with. And so once those two things came together, it was, it's a formula for success for me, for sure. 100%. How did you said during like the first three months, it wasn't going so good. How did it get to going good? What were the things you did? Yeah. So it was not going good at all. I like at all. I remember I was living off of Marlowe road in Santa Rosa, which is serendipitous because I just bought my first home over there about three blocks away from the apartment that I moved to when I moved down here because I couldn't
Starting point is 00:17:19 afford student housing. So I moved into this two bedroom apartment with my best friend from high school who was going to Santa Rosa junior college and trying out for the basketball team. And he moved down into that apartment. And the other guy, I don't even remember his name. He was in the other room. He had like a cat and me and him split this 10 by 10 room. And it was horrible. Our beds literally overlap. Like I had a Tempur-Pedic mattress. He had like a normal mattress on a box spring. And I just bent like the top of my Tempur-Pedic up enough that I could push it up against his bed. And then the rest of it fit into the closet. You guys were sleeping together. Essentially. And so the closet had to be open to fit my queen bed into it and then bend to the top
Starting point is 00:17:59 of the bed up against his bed frame. And so I was there for like the first three months and the other dude in the other room hated living with us because it was like protein shakes and protein farts and bro talk all the time. And, uh, when he moved out, we were like, shit, dude, this apartment's like 1300 bucks. And I, at that point was literally making, like, I think I was doing like five sessions a week and making minimum wage on top of that. So I was probably netting like 300 bucks a paycheck. So the minute that other dude was like, I'm out, we were like, well, we actually can't afford the whole apartment. We can only afford this one room. And so I had like 25 days to basically get this rent, enough money to get this rent paid, get through my finals week and all that shit. And
Starting point is 00:18:42 it was just awful. And so that was the moment in that first month period where I was like, dude, you better figure this shit out. Because like, there's really no choice here. Like you're either getting bounced from this or you're going to figure out a way to make some money. So I was just up there at the front desk, everybody that came in just being like, what are you working out today? I don't know. You need some help with that? No. Okay. Have a nice day. You know, like talking to as many people as I could. And eventually I got enough traction that I was able to pull myself out of that. But again, it is a situation where it's like, you don't really have a choice. So that's going to be uncomfortable, but you got to do it. You either figure it out or you don't. And those are the two choices. You better figure it out
Starting point is 00:19:20 unless you don't want it to work. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that does tend to work well for me. It doesn't work well for for everybody some people lock up and shut down and that kind of separates and i cannot tell you how many times i wanted to run home and just be like i you know i wanted to run home and i was like but you can't know where to run like there were so many days where i was so angry i was like i had all this pent-up teenage angst like this is such bullshit all my friends have such stable home situations and their parents help them out and their parents give them money.
Starting point is 00:19:49 And now I appreciate it so much, so much. But I was so angry, so resentful, so frustrated. But pushing through that and having that opportunity to challenge myself is something that I'm so grateful for now because I'm mature enough to really understand how much it benefited me. Right.
Starting point is 00:20:04 And how much it helps me connect with people who are struggling with their weight or with their fitness or with their habits. Because when you're 18 and in shape, how the fuck are you going to relate to somebody who's 45, has two kids and hates exercise? Mutual suffering. Hey, your life is hard in some ways. Check it out. So is mine. Here's how we're going to connect. So it was a gift that I didn't expect. And I'm thankful for it every day. Yeah. There's a lot of things that happen at some point in your life. And in those moments, you absolutely don't understand it. You don't know why. And you're really hating things. You start to try and blame people or things for them. And looking back, to me, at least the worst things that have ever happened to me that I thought were
Starting point is 00:20:40 the worst things that ever happened to me in those moments turned out to be the best things that have ever happened to me. Absolutely. Every breakup I ever went through taught me something about relationships. You know, every client who didn't sign up taught me something about sales. Every issue I had, you know, growing up with family taught me something about being independent. You have to go through it enough and not die and go through it enough and not, and survive to be like, okay, when bad things happen, it's not the end of the world. And you have to have a positive outlook towards the things. If you just see bad things happen and think, oh, it didn't work because she or he or somebody else, something like that messed it up, then you're never really going to learn.
Starting point is 00:21:14 You have to look at it like, okay, what can I do to be better at this situation? Why is it that I lost it and how can I change it so that next time it doesn't happen? Yeah, and you have to be able to frame things as like, okay, did this happen to me or did this happen for me? Right. Because if this happened to me and I perpetually frame myself as a victim, you will end up in perpetuity going around in circles as the person who everything happens to. Right. But if you can frame it as, okay, where's the lesson in this? What can I learn from this? Then those little chunks of adversity that happened along the way can be invaluable lessons in moving you forward in life. And I did learn how to do that. I just, again, I had to realize that acting as though all of the shit was unfair, it wasn't working.
Starting point is 00:21:56 And I wasn't born with the inclination to be like, this is happening for me. I'm going to frame this as positive and constructive. I had to basically fuck it up enough and be like this is happening for me i'm going to frame this as positive and constructive i had to basically fuck it up enough and be like hey you know telling myself that this isn't fair that ain't that ain't working it has not helped yet so let's try something else just digs you deeper in that absolutely and it gives you any just if you're already negative that's just going to make you more negative and it's just going to kind of pull you downhill whereas if you just stop and figure out what you can do and do the best you can and let go of the results, you know. And it's, I'm not like that all the time. There's definitely days where I have that tendency. I think we all do. And some people are really good at it. Some people are never like that. They're always positive. They're always pragmatic. And
Starting point is 00:22:37 I look up to people like that. There are days where I'm not positive and I'm not pragmatic, but I remember to check in and go, you know damn well where this is going to take you. A whole lot of nowhere. So figure it out from here. You have to pick your struggle. You either deal with the negativity and that sucks or getting up, getting out of bed early, doing positive shit could be hard at times, but pick your battle. And the whole choose your heart thing, right?
Starting point is 00:23:00 It's hard to be overweight. It's hard to exercise. Choose your heart. You know, it's hard to eat healthy. It's hard to deal with disease. Choose your heart. There's so many things that like you are going to face challenges. I think we've gotten so deconditioned to the fact that life is allowed to be challenging because of the convenience culture. You know, everything's instant, everything's fast, you know, everything's convenient and all of the good shit that people really want that they drown
Starting point is 00:23:25 themselves with convenience because they don't have it, it does take work. You can get the dopamine hit from your phone. You can watch porn instead of investing in meaningful relationships. You can sit on your ass instead of exercising, but it's so shallow, it doesn't get you anywhere. So once you become comfortable with what is essentially uncomfortable, that's when life starts to get better. You get comfortable being uncomfortable. And once you can do that, man, everything seems easy and it seems simple and it makes your life a lot easier. And the other thing I was going to say back on that was that if you get some, like, imagine in the beginning, it was like really
Starting point is 00:23:57 hard for you to be in that room dealing with that situation. Your biggest problem was, okay, make my rent for this month. Now, if you would have fast forwarded to where you're at now, looking at things, you're like, oh my God, that's perfect. That's exactly what I wanted, whatever. But bringing yourself to where you're at now and looking at your situation, I'm sure there's things that are probably harder to deal with in your situation now than other than just a rent. Totally. I mean, there's so many unique challenges that I face on a day-to-day basis as somebody who owns a business, who's in a relationship, who has a dog, all these things that we deal with as adults. And I think back to the simpler problems sometimes when life is simple. Even though my life sucked, you know, like
Starting point is 00:24:37 indisputably, it was pretty shitty to have like no money and basically be living off of cereal and protein shakes. Like I still relish the simplicity of those problems. Totally. Because they were problems that ultimately gave me the tools to deal with the problems that, you know, come with more responsibility. They come with having more ambition and more success. And I, I, I smile and look so fondly back on that apartment. There's not a single piece of me that looks back at that apartment. And I'm telling you guys, the fucking power used to go out like 15 times a night. It would go on and it would go off. It would go on and go off.
Starting point is 00:25:13 And my PS3, that's how long time ago this was. Beep. My PS3, yeah. It would double beep on, double beep off. Double beep on, double beep off. And you'd hear gunshots. And nobody in the apartment complex spoke any English. Every time I did laundry, I would come back with two thirds of my shit because half of it would go,
Starting point is 00:25:29 you know, get swiped out of the dryer. And I look back on that with a hundred percent fondness and gratitude. And I love it. And some days, like, I wish I could just go back and talk to that guy and be like, listen, this is where you're going to be in five years. And that kid would never, ever have believed it. And the cool thing is like, I check myself with that shit when I'm feeling like an ungrateful prick, which happens a lot because we all have things that we want. We all feel entitled to a certain degree. But I think all the time, if who I am now, interestingly enough, owning a home, like three blocks from that apartment, if I can just walk down the road, get in a time machine and walk down to the road,
Starting point is 00:26:05 knock on that apartment, me now could talk to me then and be like, look, it's going to be a long road, but you'll get to this point. I wouldn't have believed it. And it's not like I have like anything special. I have things that I'm happy to have, but I look fondly upon those days
Starting point is 00:26:20 and those memories and those struggles. And what I have now, I would have never believed was possible, but because of those moments, that's what exactly why I think it is. Right. And if, and if some, if that guy that lives down the street walked over to your apartment and knocked on your door and handed you his company right now to that kid, he would not be able to run it.
Starting point is 00:26:38 Destroy it. Screw it up. Yeah. He was destroyed. Exactly. So it's like, you can't, you can't be handling. I think that's a reason a lot of like big companies with a lot of money that are passed down to children and stuff like that, they go to shit. Because in order to be the person that can run that company, you have to have built that company.
Starting point is 00:26:53 You have to know the ins and the outs of it. You have to know every single person under you. You have to know how to do their job also to make sure that they're doing it correctly. Because if you don't, you're just sitting at the top all pretty. It doesn't work. It's not going to work out. So you have to go through those struggles and learn those things from the building of the company in order to be good enough to be able to run the company absolutely experience is the best teacher and
Starting point is 00:27:12 resilient is built through that for sure i heard on uh i think it was the full send podcast too kamara uzman said something like uh his mom used to tell him like if all the people in the world took their problems and put them in one pile you you'd pick your shit up real fast, shit up real quick. Yeah. And you'd always, you'd always just want that. So I think I actually saw that the other day and maybe you shared it. I don't know, but I did see it. And I remember thinking like, yeah, that, that is pretty true. And that's something that I learned from working with people. Um, you know, when you are a personal trainer, when you're a strength and conditioning coach, people come to you because they want to change their body. Maybe they want to move better. Maybe they want to look better. Maybe they want to feel better. But the reason they're struggling
Starting point is 00:27:51 very rarely is specific to just their body. It's usually something going on emotionally, something going on mentally. Sounds like a lifestyle. It's always a lifestyle thing. And so you're working with somebody and you're like, hey, I'm going to give you the perfect diet. I'm going to give you the perfect training program. And for some reason, you're not going to stick with it. And I'm going to have to unpack why that is. And you get to know people and you get to know what they struggle with. And very, very quickly, I started to realize everybody's going through it. Everybody's struggling. And I got, I have had the opportunity to probably train over a thousand people. And some of the
Starting point is 00:28:24 shit that I have heard that people have dealt with, the trauma that they've gone through, the suffering that they've gone through, like it's, it's remarkable. And it, and perspective is huge in this life too. Like,
Starting point is 00:28:33 like it's so easy to think you're, you know, you are the main character, you know, I'm the main character. Only my shit matters. I'm the only one who's got a hard life. I'm the only one who struggled.
Starting point is 00:28:43 And when you work with people in an avenue like fitness, where they might have a physical problem that they need a solution to, you also need to be able to acknowledge the emotional problem, the spiritual problem, the discipline problem. It's always multifaceted. And that taught me really, really quickly, like, okay, one, yeah, you've had some shit, but so has everybody else. And two, whatever it is that you're looking to accomplish like the physical thing comes easy for me but there's all these other things you got to work on too and if it ain't all right you're gonna have some problems and i feel like you probably are somewhat of a psychologist from working with that many people just because
Starting point is 00:29:18 you're learning how to take what they're saying and then try and figure out what that actually means and also you're working with people sometimes the most, like that's the most stress, the most, the hardest thing you've ever done is a hundred pushups. You know what I mean? Like whatever it is. So you're, you're meeting them at a time of their life where they are struggling the most. And so I'm sure a lot comes out plus throw a little endorphins in there. You know, like there's a lot of chemicals that are mixing while you're working out for the first time and going through that, that I'm sure they're venting to you a lot about it. And you're having to kind of pick through that and learn how to transition that back into helping them at what they're doing.
Starting point is 00:29:50 I tell people all the time, you would be shocked what starts coming out of people once they start moving. Yeah. It sounds horrible, but people have opened up to me in the middle of their set about like uh somebody that they know that was murdered or having been sexually assaulted and imagine being 18 19 years old and being like i have no fucking clue what to say back to you plus you're already like a shy guy i'm like um wow five more um okay uh geez yeah so how does that, uh, let's unpack that. You know, like, you know, it's just so many times people hit me with their deepest, darkest shit because you're connecting with them. They're, they're vulnerable in that environment. Right. And so
Starting point is 00:30:36 they're uncomfortable in that environment and you're making them feel comfortable. You're like, Hey, you're doing great. Nice job. Perfect form. You know what that looked like on set one compared to what it looked like on set three is night and day. I'm really proud of how this exercise has improved just in the last week. Let's move on to the next one. And, and they're like, Oh, I can trust this person. I'm vulnerable in front of this person. And, you know, they've helped me out along the way. And then they divulge some of their deepest, darkest secrets to you. And I'm just like, I have no idea how it is to connect with this and meet with this. Now that stuff comes really easy.
Starting point is 00:31:11 Like one of the unique gifts I've gotten from working with people so closely is I can resolve conflicts much more easily. I can communicate about highly volatile and emotional topics without losing my cool. Because if you have a transactional relationship with somebody where they're paying you for a service, you can't exactly say, nah, I'm not going to fucking talk about that. Sorry. You know, sometimes I go, sometimes I do tell my clients like, that's way beyond my pay grade, man. Sorry, I can't help you. They're still going to talk to you about it because you're kind of captive. And so it's really given me some incredible communication skills that I think most young people don't develop or haven't had the opportunity to develop.
Starting point is 00:31:53 And I tell people all the time, this career has given me tools, skills that are worth so much more than all the money I've made and all the material possessions I've been able to acquire. If you told me right now after 10 years, you can either have a lump sum, every penny you've ever made, you can have that upfront lump sum, or all the lessons you have ever made. You can have that upfront lump sum, but you got to rewind and go back to when you first started. You can have the money. You can have the skills and the lessons. Take the skills and the lessons all day. All day.
Starting point is 00:32:23 Because you can make the money with the skills and the lessons like nothing. Like nothing. Yeah. The money is the easy part. It's the skills and lessons that got you the money. That's the hard part. And you only learn those by being in a situation where you're kind of, you know, you've kind of gone a little bit past what you're capable of conversational.
Starting point is 00:32:41 You're like, I really don't know what to say here, but I'm going to try to meet this person where they're at because we've got 41 minutes to go it's almost like biting off more than you can chew and figuring out how to chew it it's kind of like it's exactly the analogy that i kind of go with with and i think it's a good way to be for any person whether they're an athlete an entrepreneur a business guy whatever it is like i feel like biting off more than you can chew and figuring out how to chew is always better than turning down things somebody Somebody said something one time that I do think it's a little bit reckless. I don't remember where I heard it, but it resonated with me a lot. And they said, when you've got too much on your plates, push to the side and put one
Starting point is 00:33:12 more thing on there. I was like, what the hell? I don't know why like that resonated with me, but I was going through some shit at the time. And I really do relish like when things are hard, that's okay. Because life is allowed to be hard. It's just the modern environment that we live in that is attempting to convince us otherwise. It's trying to make everybody soft. And what's, you know, you know that saying, right?
Starting point is 00:33:34 It's like hard men create soft times, create weak men, weak men create hard times. And then the cycle perpetually repeats. That's when I go back and forth on with because I think that so oftentimes culturally, we have a misrepresentation of what it means to be a strong man. Right, hard. And I think that you could project strength and you can project masculinity in a lot of different ways. And I'm certainly somebody who, I'm physically inclined.
Starting point is 00:34:02 I like to work hard. I think that those are inherently masculine. But I also feel like so much of the projection of machismo that we see culturally, I'm going to be mean to people. I'm going to be tough. I'm going to push it all down. And never showing your emotions, never showing your insecurities, things like that, that I feel like there's a lot of guys out there that are big and tough and strong. And they're the original like masculine man that was like shows manliness but he pushes down all of his feelings he doesn't talk about him so
Starting point is 00:34:29 he's trying to like hold it all in tight and pin it all up when really i think there's a lot of people that are not physically as strong and don't look as manly but if they can be one with themselves and everybody and transparent be open about their insecurities be open with their emotions and be able to talk about i mean not overly yeah oversharing is is too much too yeah that shows the insecurity to me and it smits but uh being able to be open with your insecurities open with your your emotions is kind of like if you have to like preface things by saying like i'm gonna be really authentic i'm about to be really vulnerable. It's probably bullshit. But if like you're confident enough and comfortable enough to be like, yeah, you know, I had no idea what I was doing. I fucking sucked at that. You know, like to, to own your shit in, in whatever capacity that is. I think that that's a projection
Starting point is 00:35:17 or not just a projection, but it's an, it's an exemplification of strength. And I do think that so oftentimes we get caught up in the phenotype, the display, what masculinity looks like, what it sounds like. But I think there's a lot of it that's silent, that you don't see. It comes from the inside. The ability to push forward without complaining. The ability to have a story that nobody knows about because it was tough, but you didn't complain about it.
Starting point is 00:35:43 You didn't ask for help. You push forward and you help other people. The ability to communicate with the people that care about you. We think about masculinity in my job as a protector. If I'm a man in theory, if I'm masculine in theory, I should be able to protect the things and the people that I care about. And yes, we obviously think about the physical manifestation of that. Like if I go out with my friends and my girl and somebody's, you know, you know, hitting on my girl, I want to be able to say, Hey, knock it off. Or, you know, if somebody pulls up on me in a dark alley, I don't want to be fucked. Right. But there's also something to being able to, like, if you've got a friend who's going through a breakup
Starting point is 00:36:22 and they can turn to you because you can hear them and listen to them and give them good advice. Empathize with them. Empathize with them. Provide a port in the storm, you know, a little bit of shelter. We don't necessarily think of that as being conventionally masculine, but I think it is. I think being able to be strong and supportive, both physically and emotionally is masculine. Even though, you know, like we might think, oh, well that's a weak man. A weak man is talking about his feelings or comfortable talking about his feelings. And you don't want to overshare because I think, like you said, it's definitely a sign of insecurity to be the person on the first date. Who's like, here's
Starting point is 00:37:01 all the things that are wrong with me, but you do need to be well-rounded. And this job has taught me, and that, you know, as somebody who led with physicality and masculinity and power and muscle, and that was all, that was all that it was all about. I realized very quickly, that is not enough. You got to develop the rest. Yeah. And then the metaphor you're saying, a protector, like the metaphor that I use for that is like, so there's sheep and there's wolves, right? And so like the wolves are like, kind of like the, you know, what the killers, the ones that are like super alpha manly men, but they're also, they'll take advantage of the sheep. They'll do these things. Right. And I like to think of a protector in the same sense of like a sheep dog, right? So he can go and take care of
Starting point is 00:37:42 the sheep and be on them, but then he'll also, he can go fight the wolves, you know? So he's like happy in the middle. He's very masculine and he can take care of the wolves and make sure they're not preying on the sheep, but he's also very sensitive and can take care of his pack, you know? I like that. It's sort of like what you were saying with, you know, successful, sustainable exercise. You have to, it's not only the physical thing, but it's the spiritual, it's the mental, it's, it's sort of like the spokes of a bicycle wheel, right? If one thing falls off, then the whole wheel will fall apart. I think being a good man might be successful, right? Because if you have just that alpha, I'm the protector, I'm the toughest dude in the room, like that, that shines through his personality, right? It's almost just,
Starting point is 00:38:21 it's like a mask he's wearing to find comfort in society, right? Men wear many different kinds, but you know, if, if you weigh too far on that scale and you don't, you don't go all out on any of the other ones, then that's going to show in your personality, right? So it's like when he said it was like well-rounded, it's just like balance, right? Balance with everything. The beast who can keep it calm at the same time too. Yeah. You know, I've more recently really started to think about, you know, what am I, who am I becoming as a whole human being? What can I work to develop? Because obviously early in life, the physical thing came natural.
Starting point is 00:38:56 And for a lot of people, that's the hard part. And then the nutritional thing came pretty natural. So there's these pillars, if you will, of health, wellness, of wholeness as a human being. And again, this shit gets woo-woo. I do apologize because not everybody wants to hear a sub-30 personal trainer giving life advice. And I'm entirely aware- People will gain a lot of value from it. That this could come across as being perhaps not narcissistic, but perhaps I haven't lived a very long life. But you're just sharing your personal opinion and what things you've learned along your journey.
Starting point is 00:39:33 And it's not like saying that you know everything. It's just simply saying, hey, this is what I've learned on my journey. And if there's anything anybody else can learn from my story and the things that I've learned and I can help convey those things, then here it is. That makes me feel better. Because I think when you think of it, we all have things that have come natural to us and we want to lean into those things because it's easy. I like sports and physical activity. I'm an athlete. So the exercise thing is easy.
Starting point is 00:40:00 I like eating healthy and nourishing my body. So taking care of myself is easy. But the emotional shit, God, did that take a while to develop the resilience and, and, and getting over having a semi-traumatizing childhood with multiple divorces, tons of fighting, tons of abuse. God, did that take a lot of work? And you know, I didn't want to face that. Just wanted to run as far away from that as I possibly could. Plus you were young. So you didn't really have the tools yet to be able to like navigate that kind of situation. Naturally instilled in people.
Starting point is 00:40:29 And when I started working with people and being like, why the hell don't you understand how important this exercise thing is? Why is this so hard for you? I realized like they're better at the other shit and they suck at the stuff that I'm good at. So it's like a skill tree in a video game. You know, you have dexterity and magic and defense and speed and attack. And it's like, if you're all attack and all speed, which is like
Starting point is 00:40:52 the athlete equivalent, and you have all these vulnerabilities, you're going to be in trouble. You need to develop the whole skill tree. And so the confidence I got through the fitness and nutrition thing gave me the ability to confidently at 20 pay out of pocket to go to a therapist, which I'm like, this is so lame. Like, why am I doing this? I don't need this shit. And then I was like, oh yeah, I got a lot of baggage. Yeah. After one session, I was like, damn, good thing I talked to that guy. Cause I did not know what I was dealing with and all this stuff. And it was so uncomfortable and so revolting. And I was like, oh, that's probably like going to the gym for the first time. But to me, that is what manly today looks like is saying, okay, I am not well-rounded
Starting point is 00:41:33 and I want to be the most well-rounded best person I can be. So I'm going to go to a therapist, which a lot of people would say was weak. A lot of manly men would be like, oh, I'm not going to a therapist. You know, it's like, if you want to be the best, which in my mind is the most manly, then being the best at everything, right? Like not just being one-sided. You got to go to therapy. You got to figure out where your weak spots are because not necessarily, you can't just look at yourself and know where your weak spots are. You have to go look at a, talk to a professional that that's his job or her job to find those weak spots and then start working on those. Yeah. I think also too, communication, you can't argue that's just how humans work through their problems and get better at things, right?
Starting point is 00:42:08 Yep. So any man who's saying, I don't want to communicate and evolve and better myself, then just have fun staying the same because that's what you're doing essentially by disregarding how good that is, man or woman, just for humans to communicate.
Starting point is 00:42:24 And like you think about it, like all of, all of us are athletic. All of us like the demand of something physical. And I can tell by your guys' ears before you put the headphones on, you guys like fighting. Yep. And you might rather fight another human being and fight what's going on inside because it's more comfortable. Yeah, a hundred percent. And I don't know how, how true that is for everybody,
Starting point is 00:42:46 but I know that that was probably true for me too. And I felt that I was able to cultivate a lot more strength and a lot more resiliency by saying, I definitely don't have it all figured out. And I'm willing to work until I do. And I probably won't. I probably won't ever reach a point where I've got it all figured out. But I'll be damned if I'm not going to try my best
Starting point is 00:43:04 to be the best boyfriend, husband I can be, to be the best business owner I can be, to be the best content creator I can be, to eat well, to train hard. Because building up and working at improving in those areas, even if you're at the very bottom of the ladder, is what I think this whole thing is about. That's what I think this whole thing is about. It's the best part of life. You know, it's like, it's the shit that you're not good at that you start to get better at. That's what it's all about.
Starting point is 00:43:30 And that's the fun part, or at least for me, like doing stuff that I'm already good at is like, that's cool. But I don't feel like I'm gaining ground and making yourself a better person by getting even more lopsided. Like I'd much rather take something
Starting point is 00:43:42 that I'm really bad at and be like, okay, I want to build this up to make it all a little bit better. You learn a lot about yourself by doing that. We're right out here on the golf course, which I picked up at the beginning of the pandemic. And I was terrible because I have ADHD. I'm impatient as fuck. And I'm like a fast twitch power kind of athlete. And so golf's all about finesse. So, you know, I walked up there, my first golf swing ever, and I swung as hard as I could. And I think the ball went like two feet behind me off the tee. And my buddies are all laughing. Like that's the record for the world's
Starting point is 00:44:13 shortest drive, negative five yards. And I remember thinking to myself, okay, this is going to be a real pain in the ass. And I had to check myself in ways physically and mentally playing golf that I did not think were even possible. I was like, how could this game be so hard? What's going on guys? Coach Danny here, taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method, and more specifically, our one-on-one fully tailored online coaching program. My online coaching program has kind of been the flagship for Core Coaching Method for a while. Of course, we do have PDF programming,
Starting point is 00:44:50 and we have app-based programming. But if you want a truly tailored one-on-one experience with a coach like myself or a member of my coaching team, someone who is certified, somebody who has multiple years of experience working with clients in person online, somebody who is licensed to provide a macro nutrition plan, somebody who is actually good at communicating with clients because they've done it for years, whether that be via phone call, email, text, right? This one-on-one coaching
Starting point is 00:45:15 program is really designed to give you all the support you need with custom training designed for you, whether you're training from home, the gym, around your limitations and your goals. Nothing cookie cutter here. As well as easy to follow macronutrition programs that are non-restrictive. You'll get customized support directly from your coach's email, or they'll text you, or they'll WhatsApp you. We'll find the communication medium that best supports your goals, as well as provides you with the accountability and the expertise you need to succeed, as well as biofeedback monitoring, baked-in accountability support, and all of the stuff that you need from your coach when you check in. We keep our rosters relatively small so that we can make sure you get the best support possible. But you can apply today by going over
Starting point is 00:46:02 to corecoachingmethod.com, selecting the online coaching option. And if we have spots available, we'll definitely reach out to you to see if you're a good candidate. And if we don't put you on a waiting list, but we'll be sure to give you the best shot at the best coaching in the industry. So head over to corecoachingmethod.com and apply for one-on-one coaching with me and my team today. Taking a little break from the action here to tell you about our amazing partner, Seed. Seed makes the best probiotic supplement on the market, bar none. I'm very confident with that because I think that the probiotic space and the gut health space in general is filled with people who have no idea what they're talking about or who are
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Starting point is 00:47:09 probiotic. Seed makes the best probiotic on the market with 53.6 billion active fluorescent units. These are organisms that are going to be alive and helping transfer a variety of different benefits to the human host. All these things are actually proven to work in humans. These strains work in humans, not rodents. Seed is not cheaping out here by providing you with any random strain. They're providing you with strains that help with digestive health, gut immunity, gut barrier integrity, dermatological health, cardiovascular health, micronutrient synthesis, as well as many other things. They're vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, nut-free, shellfish-free. So very friendly for those of you who may have a variety of different
Starting point is 00:47:51 allergies and who are looking for a supplement you can take that can enhance a variety of different things. I have a very, very good track record over many, many years of having to deal with things like eczema and having to deal with things like psoriasis on occasion, especially when the weather changes. And I swear to you, since I started taking seed, I have noticed substantially less of that. And there's four strains included in seed shown to help with things like atopic dermatitis. So there you go. Not to mention the plethora of strains for the health of your gut. If you're looking to take your gut health to the next level, you can go to seed.com.
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Starting point is 00:48:41 Back to the show. What's going on, guys? Taking a break from the show to tell you about our amazing partners over at Elemental Labs. Elemental Labs makes a flagship electrolyte product known as LMNT Recharge. Recharge is amazing. It's got bioavailable forms of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, which can really help you train, contract your tissues and get hydrated. I love having it in the morning before my fasted training because oftentimes I wake up without an appetite, but I want something in my stomach so I'm not flat. I can get a pump and I can get hydrated in the gym and still perform my best. I also love to sip on my recharge when I'm on the
Starting point is 00:49:21 golf course or especially when I'm in the sauna. The more you sweat, the more likely it is that you will need to replace valuable electrolytes like sodium, magnesium, and potassium. And while if you have high blood pressure, you might not necessarily be a candidate for electrolyte supplementation, many athletes and active adults need more salt and more electrolytes in their diet than they currently get, especially if they sweat, live in warm climates or humid climates. I found a bunch of different ways to use my recharge, but like I said, I love using it before and during my training, whenever I do something active outside or my sweat rate increases, or when I'm in the sauna. And you can actually try
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Starting point is 00:50:37 There's all these fat old guys that are just dominating me physically in this game and it's driving me nuts. But I would go to the range, I would figure it out and I would work on it. And I still am not very good at golf, but the amount of shit I learned about myself, about patience, about finesse, about discipline, about consistency through trying this thing that I sucked at, it taught me something. And golf is another physical avenue. It's just different. And so you pick up a lot of that same stuff when you challenge yourself emotionally or mentally, when you have the hard conversation, when you go above and beyond what you've done before.
Starting point is 00:51:13 Maybe it's starting the podcast or opening the business or whatever it is. The minute you put yourself outside of your comfort zone, good things start to happen. It's just you've got to get comfortable being uncomfortable. 100%. Yep. comfort zone, good things start to happen. It's just, you've got to get comfortable being uncomfortable. A hundred percent. I want to circle back. A while ago, you mentioned that from personal training, you gained all these, you know, like communication skills, even sales skills, right. And marketing skills. And those are all things that could be translated really to any business. Right. But marketing in particular, like you've done a really, really good job from outside perspective, looking at breaking through the noise in a super competitive industry, right? But marketing in particular, like you've done a really, really good job from outside perspective, looking in of breaking through the noise in a super competitive industry,
Starting point is 00:51:49 fitness, and then online fitness in that regard, right? What do you like a credit breaking that noise to or like successfully branding yourself and building buy-in? Like what's your philosophy behind all that? A big part of it was I used to consume the noise. I used to believe the noise. I used to be a victim of the noise. You know. All of the things that I'm able to cut through now were products I wasted my money on and bullshit I used to believe. And so it really helps to have actually been on the customer side of the thing.
Starting point is 00:52:15 We talk a lot about in business, the customer journey. And I went through the entire journey. I remember buying the supplements that now I know don't work. I remember trying the workout plans that now I know don't work. I remember trying the workout plans that now I don't know. The original Jacked? Yeah. Oh man. And I was slamming back three scoops of Jacked 3D. I tell this story a lot when I was like a junior in high school going to the gym and I would take the bus to the closest stop to the gym. And I remember sitting on that bus tweaking on three scoops of
Starting point is 00:52:41 Jacked 3D. And that shit was was so powerful it used to have this chemical called 1-3-dimethylamalamine which was a um amphetamine memetic it was basically like a clone of meth yeah and that shit fucked me up so hard i remember like my dick wouldn't work none of it none of it would work and i remember being like oh my god i have to take more and more of this shit and nothing is working and again like that experience taught me that like, okay, relying on heavy stimulants and amphetamines to power you through a workout is probably stupid. And so that made me a more vocal proponent against like, hey, don't, you know, get in a habit, get in a routine. Don't be the guy that needs to slam back literal amphetamine and then have to
Starting point is 00:53:23 work out not to feel like you're crawling out of your skin. It's got to destroy your muscles too, right? Physiologically, I would say that there's probably nothing in those products that's going to lead to any direct muscle loss. But again, it's going to inhibit your sleep quality, which will limit your ability to repair from your training session. And so much of your muscular growth is driven by sleep that if you're reliant on stimulants to a point where it affects your ability to get deep, meaningful sleep, then it will limit your gains. And if you go too far, too long without getting
Starting point is 00:53:55 enough sleep, it will fuck your body composition entirely. Like you can put two people on the same calorie deficit, eating the same exact diet. One gets six hours of sleep. One gets nine. The one that gets six is going to lose mostly muscle. The one that gets nine is going to lose almost all fat. It's remarkable. That's how you, you got to sleep more to grow, bro. And so if you want to grow, you got to sleep and it does help. But circling back to, you know, cutting through the noise, uh, being, having been a victim of the misinformation was really helpful because that didn't serve me. And I realized I wasn't the only person who was being victimized by the bullshit. And so I said, okay, what's actually working for me and what's working for my clients, this stuff. And I started
Starting point is 00:54:32 making content about what was working for me and what was working for my clients. And I started making content speaking to my actual clients. At first, I started making a lot of content speaking to the people I wanted to impress, trying to speak in a way that would garner me attention Trying to speak in a way that would position me as a really smart trainer Because I was so attached to being received as good enough. I wanted to Project as much intelligence as possible and I ended up completely going over the heads of the people who needed the most help And so there's a lot of people in the fitness space who make content to impress other fitness professionals. And then there's people who know how to make content to help the people that need
Starting point is 00:55:11 the help. So you're pretty much talking to the, if in the beginning it was three of your clients that came and got person trained, when you made an Instagram or a reel or whatever it was, you were, in your mind, you were talking to those three, nobody else. And then those three just kind of grew into our, I would describe it as when I first started making content, I wanted to make content that impressed people and that made people think I was smart and knew what I was talking about because I had insecurities and inadequacies about where I was positioned. So I said, I've always been able to rely on my intellect. I've always been a little bit smarter than the average trainer. And I have a really good handle on the physiology and the nutrition and the anatomy and the
Starting point is 00:55:46 biomechanics. And I'm going to lead with that. And I'm going to try to be the smartest trainer on social media. And that didn't get me anywhere because it's a dick measuring contest. It's all of these people who want to be the smartest and position themselves as the smartest, and they want to get credit for that. And I realized that content was self-serving. It was only helping me and it wasn't helping me at all. And so then I started making content, literally, like you said, that was entirely curated from conversations
Starting point is 00:56:13 that I was having every day with my actual clients. Wow. And using a little bit simpler language. Simpler language. Things that most people, the common person- Any business could gain from that. Dialing back the verbiage. And it was amazing how quickly that
Starting point is 00:56:26 started to take off and i started to get comments like god it's like you're speaking right to me or man i wish you were in my area or man i wish i could train with you i live so somewhere else and i was like oh i think what i was doing was i was making content for trainers and not making content for people that would actually give me money. Well, that was fucking stupid. And so then I started thinking like, okay, I have something that most people who are in the social media fitness space don't have. Thousands of sessions worth of experience with real people. Most people just get jacked, do one cycle, do a show, look good, start online coaching.
Starting point is 00:57:02 Or they train for one year, go on social media, start online coaching. Or they train for one year, go on social media, start online coaching. And I had been training for four years, 150 sessions a week before I ever made one post. And then I spent a year making content that was all about positioning myself as the smartest person in the room. And that didn't really work that well for me. But the minute I started making content that was one aimed at the people that I was already helping, but trying to reach the people that obviously weren't in my area. And I would say two, that was more accessible to people who needed the help, not trying to direct it to the people I wanted to impress.
Starting point is 00:57:41 That's when it really started to grow and expand. And I had to check my insecurity there and be like, what do you want to get out of this? Do you want to position yourself and project intelligence? Or do you want to fucking help people? Because you're not helping anybody by talking about the panacea angle of the clavicular head. You're trying to stroke your own ego at that point. I was stroking the shit out of my own ego and I was not getting rewarded for it. Right. And the minute I started doing like a more normal style of communication that was more relatable and probably more digestible for the people that needed the most help. I want to work with you. I want to work with you online.
Starting point is 00:58:15 Do you do online? Do you do online? And I was like, no, I don't. I didn't even have an offering. I didn't create my first offering until after I already had demand, which is kind of rare. A lot of people, you know, they start with product and they have no demand. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I had demand and then I curated my product. And that's when I started doing online coaching. And I learned a lot from doing online coaching. And then from online coaching, I got
Starting point is 00:58:38 app-based coaching. And then from app-based coaching, I circled back to opening up my own studio and offering all these different things. And so, but it all started with ultimately having to make sure that what I was creating and putting out into the space was created intentionally with the goal of helping the people that needed the most help, not positioning myself to receive clout. Because when I was clout chasing, I was getting no fucking money at all. And I know a lot of trainers who got a lot more clout or who have a lot more of a following, but they don't make shit for money. I know so many people who have two, three, four, five, 10 times the amount of followers. They got no money because if you have not built trust, if you have not established yourself as somebody who somebody
Starting point is 00:59:19 might want to work with, maybe they just want to look like you. Maybe you just make, maybe you have a million followers because you're jacked. That does not correlate at all to your business success. Like it can, there's certainly people who are very jacked who have a great amount of money, but. You see hot girls on Instagram with thousands, hundreds of thousands of followers that don't monetize at all. Same scenario. Yeah. It's very hard to monetize a following if you have not built any actual value. And it's like, okay, that's why OnlyFans exists. You had to monetize. It's like, okay, you have an incredible body as a woman. This is no means meant to be derogatory. Men or women, yeah.
Starting point is 00:59:55 Because men have OnlyFans. So let's say you're a man or a woman who's built your platform on the way that your body looks, but you have not added any concrete value and you have not established yourself as somebody who's trustworthy. And you know what they say, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. You haven't established any type of caring demeanor with your community. All of your content is thirst trap. The only way you can monetize that is with more thirst trap. And so you're like,ize that is with more thirst trap and so you know you're like oh well nobody's buying my booty program and it's like well yeah because 95% of the people that follow you are men yeah so you're going to have to you're going to have to
Starting point is 01:00:35 find a different pathway for this right product exactly and so you know for me I wanted to stay away from that at all costs which is why I like, and my physique, as far as trainers go is like fucking average. It's good. It's probably better than you might expect. Like if I have a good pump, I look pretty solid, but that's what like nine years of natural training, you know, like I tell people all the time, like if I had to just use my physique, I'd be in deep trouble. But I really did not want to do that because that doesn't separate me at all. There's a million people out there with a great physique, but there's not a million people out there with 10 years of actual training experience. And providing value. And this kind of rolls, since we're on the content question.
Starting point is 01:01:15 So what's your biggest, like, if you can think back to one post that got the most attention and did the most, did the best for you, Is it something that you expected to do that well, or did it, was it the most random thing ever that just kind of hit hard? I remember one post that I made in particular that got like over a million shares on Instagram. And it was a tweet that I AB tested. And I do this a lot where I tweet thoughts as an A and a B. So I will take a sentiment, something that I've been sitting with, I will tweet it once and then I'll look at it, I'll tweak it and I'll tweet it again. And I'll have essentially two iterations of the same thought and whichever one performs better, I'll screenshot and I'll throw on Instagram
Starting point is 01:01:57 or I'll use as an audio clip on a TikTok or something like that. And so I remember I made a post and I actually have about 70% of the people that follow me are women, which is what I want as a content creator and a fitness professional, because in the fitness industry, men do not buy nearly as many products or offerings as women because men masculinity again, here we go. I don't need any help. I don't want help. I've got this. I can figure it out. You know, And to a certain degree, that's true. But I had noticed early on in my fitness career, women were substantially more likely to become clients.
Starting point is 01:02:31 Women were substantially more likely to stay clients. And so I made a post. I don't remember exactly what it said, but I said, it's something like, imagine a world where women were introduced to exercise as a means to be healthy rather than to be skinny skinny and nutrition as a way to take care of your body rather than a way to change how it looks. And really the sentiment that I was getting out there was, you know, if you take care
Starting point is 01:02:56 of your body and you're healthy, you're probably going to like how you look. And if all you care about is how you look, you might not even end up that healthy. And so you might as well just take care of yourself first. And that's a message that women get hammered with the opposite. Just do whatever you can to be thin and look good. And I had heard that from hundreds of women that I trained who came to me with these horribly idiotic ideas of what they should diet like, or these horribly idiotic ideas of how they should train. And I was like, yo, that's going to break you. And so I made this post, which was essentially just five to six years of training experience into 140 characters. And that thing blew up. And I think I got 6,000 or so followers off that one
Starting point is 01:03:34 post and over a million shares. And it's been stolen hundreds of times. Like my shit gets stolen all the time. It's a compliment. It is. And so like, that's really what, what kicked it off. I was like, after that, people started sharing my stuff and people started stealing my stuff. And I'm like, now we're in the right place. Now you know we made it.
Starting point is 01:03:54 Yeah. What do you think? Another person that's blown up recently, liver King. Yeah. What do you think about all that? So personally, I think a lot of like the carnivore caveman approach, ancestral approach to eating
Starting point is 01:04:12 and training is misinformed. And I understand why it's appealing because we have gotten so far away from how we used to live as a species and we're paying the price for it. We pay the price for our sedentary lifestyle. We pay the price for eating a lot of processed foods. We pay the price for being addicted to our devices. And people know intuitively that we've deviated a lot. And somebody like Liver King has attempted to project, hey, look, I am literally ancestral. Everything I do is ancestral. I eat nothing but meat. I do simulated hunts. And he is a literal, like, there's a few ways to position yourself as a owner of your company.
Starting point is 01:04:55 And he owns a company that sells animal organ supplements, which is really brilliant when you think about it. Because the dude's eating like beef testicles and beef liver and beef heart. And that's insanely hard to get most places. So what are you going to do? You get the next closest thing, which of course he sells. But what he is, is he's very, very much mission driven. He believes everything he says. I don't, but that doesn't matter. He believes it. It shows up in his content. He puts it out there consistently. It's incredibly viral. It's incredibly unique and he's made a shit ton of money. But if you were to ask me if I think people need to eat that way to be healthy, I would say, no, it's absolutely ridiculous. And nobody,
Starting point is 01:05:32 none of our fucking ancestors ate that way. If you've actually studied the evolution of Homo sapien, you know damn well that they didn't only eat organs. They ate berries, they ate twigs, they ate bark, they ate grains, they ate what they could find. They foraged. And yes, they absolutely ate nose to tail ate bark, they ate grains, they ate what they could find. Right. They foraged. And yes, they absolutely ate nose to tail. But when I look at somebody like that, I look at somebody who's very much 100% committed to the cause. They're consistent with the cause. And it resonates with a large majority of people. And I think he's an example or an exemplification of a more extreme approach.
Starting point is 01:06:04 And people know intuitively that there's something wrong with how we're living today. But I don't, I personally, I don't believe that the cure to the, you know, issues we're dealing with today is to eat beef testicle and turn off your wifi at night. I think that there are a substantially more reasonable and balanced ways to approach your fitness that might include occasionally consuming liver that might include occasionally, you know, uh, opting for less technological exposure. I think all that's good, but you know, his shtick to me seems performative. It's like, we don't need to, we don't need to go back to the beginning and start over. We can just take a few steps backwards and be just fine.
Starting point is 01:06:39 Yeah. And remember these people died when they were fucking 40. Right. The people that ate like this died when they were 40. Okay. So do you, you know, do you want to be ancestral when you find out you have a cancer diagnosis? No, you probably want the chemo. It's like, yeah. You're like, okay.
Starting point is 01:06:54 Hey, oh, you got cancer. All right. Well, I'm going to do a juice cleanse. I'm going to, I'm just, just going to eat, drink nothing but juice. That's what killed Steve Jobs. Uh, you know, you know, if I if i'm here let's let's try what's natural and let's also try what's what's new scientifically proven and effective give me the best of both a b tested give me the best of both i do not want to be all ancestral but i sure as
Starting point is 01:07:14 shit don't want to be you know slamming back beyond chicken jerky which i just saw the other day and i'm like what the fuck is this you You know, it's like, it's garbage. And it's, you know, we, they're almost always, if you apply a little bit of nuance and work your way towards the middle, you'll find where you need to be. And, you know, we're that way with religion. We're that way with fucking politics now.
Starting point is 01:07:36 You got the loudest people on the fringes driving everybody fucking crazy. And then you got most of the people in the middle who think those people are insane. A little bit of common sense is all we need. Literally. I look at it all the time. I was saying the other day, I really believe that veganism and the carnivore thing are
Starting point is 01:07:53 just political. It's literally, you'll never find a fucking Republican vegan and you will never find a fucking Democratic carnivore. You fucking won't. You just won't. Because they're both playing to the same. The same fucking people. Oh, in my comments. bro broccoli's subprimal i'm like okay click on your profile and it's america first big flag guns in every picture and i'm like okay yeah that's great and then it's
Starting point is 01:08:16 like how dare you consume animal protein and i click on it and it's like oh you're they them purple hair it's like these are literally you're they, them, purple hair. It's like, these are literally, you're playing a character. You're playing a character. Because anybody who's actually tried to change their health and fitness has probably been like, hey, things are actually better when I eat a little bit of meat and a little bit of vegetables. That shit works so much better. It's just like politics.
Starting point is 01:08:38 It's like, you don't want to go too far out to the fringe. You got to be somewhere in the middle or else you're just the loudest guy that nobody wants to deal with. That's a great analogy for that, too be somewhere in the middle or else you're just the loudest guy that nobody wants to deal with that's a great analogy for that too far out in the fridge um these liver king he just put a picture of him up right there saying he's got fake abs and everything i don't know if that's true but i don't think they're he like him he said he spent 100k on abs that's crazy i i'll say this like uh genetically like the, the, the rectus abdominis, like if you want to pull up rectus abdominis, uh, lean, like you'll see that genetically people have
Starting point is 01:09:12 a different structure to their abs. Some are staggered. Like my, my abs are actually a little staggered. Some people have, have different looks. Like, and if you look at the, the anatomical representation, they're always perfect like this. They're never staggered. You see how they're stacked one on top of another, on top of another. Look up bodybuilding abdominal pose, bodybuilding abdominal pose. And if you see multiple bodybuilders standing side by side, you'll see a discrepancy in their abdominal structure. And so click on that one, go over to the left one. And you've got,
Starting point is 01:09:46 right here, you've got Frank Zane over on the left. Was that Arnold? But you see the different abdominal structure here. Some are staggered, some are stacked, some are perfect. And like, you know, obviously this is the best of the best of the best, but the one thing that sticks out to me about his abs is they are perfectly symmetrical, which is out of all, you know, out of all the abdominal structures that I've seen, I'd say that the slightly staggered and offset is probably most common and that the perfectly even and symmetrical is, is a little bit less common. And, uh, the amount of protrusion and the amount of distension that you get from from those abdominals like they really stick out and they're they're quite perfect uh it would lead me to believe that it's at least possible that they're fake and you know him saying
Starting point is 01:10:37 that they're fake is like okay what what more do you need and then also like the guys obviously on performance enhancing drugs it's like that's what i was gonna say you have to be uh again you have to want to believe that he's not to believe that he's not and if if you want if you want this to be the solution you're gonna believe that he's natty and if you want to hate on him all day you're gonna be like he's such a fucking piece of shit just like politics right what does that sound like? What does that sound like? You know, there are people out there and I don't want to get too political, but there are people out there that really believe that Donald Trump cares deeply about them. That's probably not true.
Starting point is 01:11:15 That's probably not true. He's probably a little bit self-interested. Yeah. I think we have all the reasoning and rationale in the world to believe that that's probably the case. But if you want to believe it, you definitely can. And so with something like this, I think that most of the people in the middle would probably go, yeah, I think that guy's probably not Natty and I'd believe it if they said he had fake abs, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. There's a vegan
Starting point is 01:11:37 out there that's standing outside of his house with a sign right now, you know, like death to liver King. And then there's also some dude standing in line waiting for his autograph i don't want to be either of those people yep right well that's what we were talking about like just being well balanced i mean at the end of the day just having balance and everything and not what i see with the biggest problem with both of these sides whether it's politics whether it's the way anybody that's like so one-sided. They don't want to learn anything about the other side. To me, that's a huge weakness. And if you can't sit down, like for me, you could turn me from a complete vegan to a complete meat eater if you can, or vice versa, or politics-wise, same thing.
Starting point is 01:12:18 If you can sit down and we can talk logically and you can bring up some logical points that I'm like, oh, you're right. I understand that. I'm not attached to any color of politician or type of food. I'm literally willing to be the, I'm trying to be the best version of myself. So I want to know as much information as you have from every side of it so I can make the best decision myself. Whatever decision I come to, that's my problem. But I want to have all the data possible from both sides, unbiased, and be able to make my own decision on it. And social media makes that almost impossible because you're going to either get, you're going to get two things on your feed. You're going to get something that you absolutely despise and you rage out on, or something that you
Starting point is 01:12:59 believe with entirely. And that's because of the attention you give to it. All confirmation bias. It's like, I knew it. I fucking knew it. I knew that was bullshit. And everything that guy says is gospel. It takes a special person to go, okay, we disagree on this. Let's engage in a healthy discourse. My goal with this discourse is to better understand your position and you to better understand mine in a peaceful and calm demeanor. And that is why this country is literally cleaving apart,
Starting point is 01:13:25 cleaving itself apart at the middle. Most divide and conquer. And we are fighting over stuff that is quite stupid in essence. You know, we fight over some pretty silly things because we're so dogmatic and vehement about not understanding each other. I don't care if you're wrong.
Starting point is 01:13:40 I don't care if you're wrong about one thing, you're wrong about everything. I have to be right. I refuse to give any ground and any credence that you could be right about anything. Yeah. It's cool we're having this conversation with that dialogue, honestly, bro, because it's not very common, but things like this will make it more common, right? Yeah, definitely. I want to circle back real quick, just because you brought up steroids and everything with Liver King and HEM, like Dana White, Joe Rogan,an Brennan Chubb a lot of these dudes are on TRT right now I feel like that could have an influence
Starting point is 01:14:09 on on younger dudes trying to turn into these alpha successful dudes what is the scoop on that like is it actually good for people if they have low T or like I don't really know anything about it so yeah I mean like nobody can tell you more about steroids than the guy that's too big of a pussy to take steroids and that would be me I cannot tell you how many times when I was 18, 19, 20, I was on the forums like, okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. 250 mg a week, a test, 10 mg of Anivar. This is going to be my PC. I'm going to do it. I'm going to finally do it. And I'd be like, I don't want to lose my hair and get acne. I can't do it. And so you learn a lot about how these compounds work. And I think that the TRT movement is something that you need to be very careful with because I think that there's TRT and then I think there's, I think my testosterone's low, I need some TRT.
Starting point is 01:15:06 that 300 to 1200 nanograms per deciliter range instead of trying to end up at like seven, eight, which is really good. I get my labs done once a year. I'm right around seven, 750, which is chilling. I'm cooling on that. Um, it's like, Hey, I'm on TRT now. So I'm going to, I'm going to use my, my medicine. And you know, you, you look at these labs, it's 1500. It's like, that's not TRT. That's taking steroids. It's taking steroids. What is TRT? Testosterone replacement therapy. And so TRT and testosterone replacement therapy are essentially medical interventions for men who are what we would describe as hypogonadal, meaning they don't have adequate testosterone production from the gonads or from the testes. And that can be driven by lifestyle, being over fat, being under muscled, not being active, not getting adequate amounts of sleep. These are all things that can create
Starting point is 01:15:51 secondary hypogonadism. Primary hypogonadism would be, I had a car accident and I had a damage to my testicles, or I had something disrupted with my hypothalamus. And so one way or another, it's my testosterone's not where I'd like it to be. So I'm going to hop on testosterone replacement therapy to fix it. Now, secondary hypogonadism happens all the time from aging. I'm getting older. I'm seeing a decrease in my testosterone. That's the biology of humanity
Starting point is 01:16:25 working to prevent you from reproducing so that more youthful, vivacious mates can find each other and better procreate. Now, men are able to procreate deep into life. They never really lose the ability to have children, but they do lose that testosterone and that virility and that drive with age. And so when you hit 35, 40, 45, 50, and you're operating on 200, 300, 400 nanograms per deciliter, and you want to bump up to 600, 700, maybe where you were in your 30s, I don't see any problem with that. I think that could be beneficial and healthful. And most importantly, it could help you live a good life. I think what I see a lot now, and I see this with ADHD medication too, a lot of people want to be diagnosed as ADHD so they can get Adderall. So they can be, you know, I'm, I'm a boss girl. I'm a boss girl and I have ADHD and
Starting point is 01:17:09 it's my ADHD journey and my trauma. And I, I take my medicine. It's like, no, you want an amphetamine so you could grind. Dude, that shit like ruined me when I was a kid. Same, same. You, that shit ain't, you don't want to mess with that. That is no joke. So long story short, like there's a lot of people who are on TRT for genuinely good reasons. They want to bring their testosterone up to a range that allows them to perform their best. And then there are a lot of people who know that TRT is a vehicle for looking better and being alpha. And I just, I don't necessarily know where somebody should draw that line because ultimately the decision to use drugs is up to the user.
Starting point is 01:17:45 And I think that if I feel a certain way about marijuana and I feel a certain way about other psychedelics or cocaine, I should be relatively consistent with my belief system about drugs. Where I have a problem with TRT is when people who don't need it or who take a shit ton of other drugs just pass it off as I'm on TRT. I'm on TRT. And in the fitness industry, that's dubious because you can say, oh, I'm on TRT. And what else are you on, bro? Because when you imply that you're on TRT, what you're implying is I'm taking enough testosterone to replace what I don't have.
Starting point is 01:18:19 What you are actually doing is taking a super physiological amount of an anabolic hormone, and that's going to change how you look like a motherfucker. And I'll say this, I love Joe Rogan. Listen to so many episodes of his podcast. I like Dana White. Those dudes are alpha with or without it, you know, with or without it. And I know a lot of people who take it because they want to project being alpha and like, you know, I think think or they want to look bigger and badder and better and it's like you know you you can do that naturally and it's harder after 40 and if you're like 40 and doing it that's cool but there's like an epidemic of dudes in their 20s who are on trt and it's like that's a life sentence right and they're coming off that shit
Starting point is 01:19:00 that's life now and like i feel like that has to do with just everybody wanting to be more alpha than they are like obviously anybody no matter who you are nobody took steroids because they were happy with who they were on the inside exactly i know that sounds very condescending and rude but it's not like if you if you like and i'll say that the best bodybuilders who are enhanced would be the best bodybuilders if they were natural the guys who are on the mr olympia stage or the best physiques they got the best genetics already it's the best genetics plus the best drugs that get you up there right and that's not necessarily who i'm talking about they reached a level where they were like i need this to get to the highest level i'm talking about the dudes at the gym that you see
Starting point is 01:19:36 that are running a cycle to get girls who are running or they got their girlfriend stolen by the big dude i know that just happened to yeah i thought you said i know dude that just happened to me and i was like bro that guy is like dude i'm never getting my chick stolen i'm going to gym every fucking day i'm gonna get yacked dude literally every time i've been the closest to pushing that button was after a breakup yeah i swear to god for sure 100 we've all been there i literally remember like the biggest heartbreak i ever went through i texted the biggest trainer at my gym who i knew was saucin and i was like bro i think it's time i need the plug and he was like i don't know what you're talking about i'm like don't fuck around with me bro i know you know where to get this shit it's time and he's like i think you should
Starting point is 01:20:16 really think about it and i was like thank god he said that because if he didn't i'd i'd be pinning to this day because once you're on you get a natural suppression of your own testosterone and it's very hard to get that system booted back up. So it's kind of a life sentence. And personally, I'd rather wait. But when I hit 40, if I,
Starting point is 01:20:33 you know, popping where I want to be popping, you know, I'm not opposed to it. If you're not waking up energized and fucking ready to go. If I'm not able to perform as I like. If you catch yourself slipping, you're jumping on it.
Starting point is 01:20:43 Yeah, exactly. Is testosterone, TRT, the same as steroids? It's just how much you take it? A steroid is a classification for the hormone type. So estrogen is actually a steroid. And you got anabolic steroids. You got corticosteroids.
Starting point is 01:21:02 Corticosteroids are like prednisone. But anabolic steroids.abolic steroids like winstraw winstraw is actually a little bit different winstraw is something that kind of helps generally with leanness as i understand it is good at sparing protein so it actually prevents muscle loss but when you look at like steroids and somebody who's on steroids usually what they're taking is a base of testosterone, a steroid hormone. And you take that because when you start taking DECA or Trenbolone or all these other, those are the anabolics, you lose the androgenic. They will shut down your natural test. So you got to take the
Starting point is 01:21:36 test as the base. That's an anabolic steroid. And then usually with that, you're adding one to three to four compounds, depending on how serious you are about this shit. And those are the androgenic steroids or the anabolics. So the DECAs, the trends. And so being on steroids usually is when I'm thinking about somebody who says they're on steroids, they're probably taking multiple steroid hormones, but you can, uh, like theoretically, every girl in birth control is on steroids because the female sex hormones are steroidal hormones as well it's just when you think about he's on roids what that's usually denoting is he's taking multiple androgenic and anabolic compounds simultaneously but a steroid hormone is just a classification gotcha is that the same process for when people are
Starting point is 01:22:22 doing the testosterone replacement theoretically if you're TRT, you should only be taking testosterone to get your levels to a range that is within that expected 400, 300, 400 to about 1200 range. That's a big range. It's a big ass range. And bro, it sounds crazy to say this, but like, okay, let's watch the NFL. You guys like football? Yeah. Okay. Who's your team?
Starting point is 01:22:49 Niners. Okay. Chargers? Yeah. All right. The Bosa brothers. Where do you think they fall? Let's assume they're, let's pretend that all pro athletes are Natty.
Starting point is 01:22:58 You think those guys are closer to fucking 12 or four? 12. Probably. They're probably breaking through 12. And their pops was a pro too. Yeah. So he was probably closer to fucking 12 or 4? 12. Probably. And their pops was a pro too. So he was probably closer to 12. And if you look at their physiques it's like, well shit. Look at what those
Starting point is 01:23:12 dudes look like. Okay? Jimmy Garoppolo and Justin Herbert. 8's, 7's, 7's, 7's, 8's. Right? Okay. Robbie Gold and Hopkins. The kicker. Yeah. 600. 4 four yeah you know it's like okay like that's that is the that's you know the physical manifestation of what that spectrum might look
Starting point is 01:23:35 like robbie gold's probably listening it's like bro i'm fucking 900 dogs but like you you it does look a lot different and and that's like let let's assume they're all natural, which most pro athletes, I don't believe that a lot of them are all the time. But if you looked at most dudes, you got them all in a lineup and you could probably tell who's 12 and you could probably tell who's four. Right, right. And does that testosterone also have to do with how easily you can get fat? It definitely has a positive effect on body composition.
Starting point is 01:24:03 The more you have, the more easily you're going to repair your tissue, the more easily it is to metabolize fat. Like if you, if you took me, let's say I'm at 700, cause I know I'm close to 700. I did my labs in December of last year. So I'm coming up on being due to do my labs again. If you took me and you took me from 700 to 12, you would notice a difference. I'd probably look fuller. I'd probably look more vascular. I'd probably leaner. Yeah. I definitely would have better, uh, I'd have a way better fucking beard. I can tell you that right now, you know, so, so you can see a change. You could definitely see a change from just what's happening inside that range. But when people are on roids, as we typically think or
Starting point is 01:24:45 they're on a cycle or they're competing they're way north of that sometimes 15 18 2000 double what's you know naturally possible and that's what gets you popped on a test it's like oh your test was at 1600 well that's pretty rare you know like is there ever that where somebody's above like the i'm sure there is i'm sure there is like you know there's freaks like there's freaks there's freaks amongst us and like you know i would say if they're if they if there's guys who are up there those are probably the guys who want to fight those are probably the guys who who want to physically you know destroy another human being the francis naganos Yeah. That dude got more testosterone than
Starting point is 01:25:25 me. I don't know what the fuck you want me to tell you. And if he doesn't, he's using what he's got better. Cause you also have androgen receptors. Some people have more receptors, so they actually have more availability. The testosterone they have is more available to them. And the androgen receptors are located usually most densely in the neck and trap area. So when you start using steroids, what blows up on people, their neck and their traps, like instantly, instantly. Yeah. So it's like, okay, you just have a huge neck and huge delts and traps out of nowhere. It's like, yeah, bro, I'm daddy. It's like, really? Because those grew really fast and that's where those hormones tend to bind. So when somebody starts hops on you see the neck
Starting point is 01:26:05 and the delts blow up gotcha like like wildly fast i think conor regger might be on steroids after what i've just been educated have you heard anything about that like yeah i would imagine that if he's in a period of his training where he's not uh he doesn't have a fight booked that it'd probably be smart to be on steroids because his last fight got to recover fast nobody's testing me because i don't have a fight coming up and nobody's testing me because they don't want me to pop a negative i'm too valuable right you know definitely a chance that connor's been on some stuff before i look at connor's physique and the fullness that he has and how much things fluctuate a lot too it's just you know i i'd say he's he's probably used it before that shouldn't surprise
Starting point is 01:26:44 anybody you know if you're getting the shit kicked out of you and you need to recover and you don't I'd say he's probably used it before. That shouldn't surprise anybody. If you're getting the shit kicked out of you and you need to recover and you don't have a fight coming up and you know you can get clean before the fight, I'd probably do it too. Yep. Yep. What do you tell people who don't work out at all, have no regimen or routine for it, but want to get started and just kind of it seems overwhelming? What's like your… I thought you were going to say, what do I tell people who don't work out and have a regimen? I say, that's the ultimate fuck around and find out because you are going to pay for
Starting point is 01:27:11 that. But I tell people the same thing every time. And that is that something is exponentially better than nothing. So if you can just give me one day a week, I'll be happy with that because one can become two, two can become four. And do you think like the weights are like super important like doing a workout regimen because like i like i literally do not work out like pretty much ever but i do a lot of like you exercise he doesn't lift weights
Starting point is 01:27:35 i don't lift weights yeah so i like do jujitsu wakeboarding snowboarding motocross like yeah you're active i'm very active but i don't like lift weights you should because you'd be better at jujitsu and wakeboarding and motor you really would and it's like you would probably stand the most gain from two days a week with the weights because you've already developed those skills and the skill-based sports right and what would make you better would an hour of extra jujitsu a week make you better or would being way stronger make you better yeah and so like that would be you'd be a prime example of somebody who would benefit tremendously from a little bit of weight training but i would agree or i would at least echo that i believe if you're going to allocate a certain amount of time to exercise that it should be resistance based if
Starting point is 01:28:14 you don't have a ton of time i think aerobic exercise is incredibly valuable i think a lot of people shit on cardio it's stupid you need to do cardio you need to have a strong heart what's the number one killer of men in America? Cardiovascular disease. But you get some really unique benefits from resistance training. Better bone density, better testosterone production. Obviously, more muscularity, more sensitivity to insulin, which is blood sugar. You have better blood sugar regulation. You will age more gracefully.
Starting point is 01:28:41 You'll have more balance. You'll have more stability. Tons of carryover. And you do get a mild aerobic benefit from resistance training. Your heart rate will be elevated. You can't get that from running on the treadmill. Cool. So if you're not doing shit, it's counterintuitive, but I think people should start with the weights. Cool. So if you were going to, if, if you were going to like pitch somebody that maybe wanted to work out, what what's the situation what you got going for me
Starting point is 01:29:05 so like you know like if you imagine i came to you the first thing i would say is how much time do you have what can we realistically commit to like i need you to tell me how many days a week you could reasonably train to you tell me two beautiful we're going to do two total body days a week we're going to focus on mostly compound movements those are going to be movements that train a lot of muscles and a lot of joints that That way we don't, you know, we're not inefficient. We're optimizing for your time. So we're thinking things like squats, lunges, deadlifts, presses, chin-ups, things that are going to train multiple muscles. And if you're training twice a week, let's just spread those days apart two, three days. So you have time to recover. Tuesday, Thursday. Tuesday, let's do
Starting point is 01:29:42 Tuesday, Friday. Okay. That way you get a full three days. Because again, you want there to be adequate gap because each one of those is a stimulation. And if I stimulate you on, that sounds really weird. If I stimulate you on Tuesday. No, you got me sold. If there's stimulation on Tuesday and Thursday, that means like the further you get away from Thursday. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you're probably due again, but we got to wait Monday until Tuesday. So about like Monday, Thursday. Better. I like better because Monday is my start day anyways. Like I want everybody to start day on my Monday. So if you train on Monday, you're recovering on Tuesday, you're recovering on Wednesday, you stimulate again on Thursday,
Starting point is 01:30:16 then you have the weekend before you hit it hard again on Monday. And you do have an elevation and muscle protein synthesis post exercise for up to for up to 48 hours. So we want them to be about 48 to 72 hours apart if we're only going to do two of them. And you guys are smart. If you had to do three, where would you put them? Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Bingo, right? There you go. And so if you did that shit, your physique would change like motherfucker because you're not doing anything and you have a good build. So you'd change fast and you'd be better at all the stuff you're already doing. And you don't need to do that much because you're so new to it. It's like a suntan. You know, it's like, Hey, I've never been outside before. Okay, cool. Let's not put you out in Cancun in the middle of summer.
Starting point is 01:30:56 You're going to burn like a motherfucker. You know, you put them out, pull them back in, put them out a little longer, pull them back in, pull them out a little longer, pull them back in. And eventually you build up that base tan. But if I burn you, you ain't going out in the sun for a while. So then do you, do you still do like in-person coaching or do you all online coaching? All the time. It's so important to me. It's open enough, but like, I really try to work with the people that I enjoy working with at this point in my career. I work with the clients who I have a connection with, who need me, and they are all across the spectrum, whether they need me because of a disability that they have,
Starting point is 01:31:29 or because they need that level of one-on-one care. But I do it because it really helps keep my finger on the pulse. It helps me continue to make good content. A lot of people struggle with making content because they're not in the trenches. And I like to be in the trenches, and I make a good living doing that. I can generate six figures a year easy just training 35 sessions a week. In person. 35 sessions. 35 hours a week. I'm never going to work less than 80 hours a week.
Starting point is 01:31:53 What do you normally charge for like each session? Depends on the client. At 24 Hour Fitness, it would be like you did packages. And so you'd sell like I'd sell you 20 at a time. Like 20 sessions, 1400 bucks, 70 bucks a session now. And I would never recommend this to anybody who's in an appointment based business. My clients pay me one session at a time. I technically have no job security. Like technically all my clients could pack up on the same day and walk away, but I want them to be there because they're there.
Starting point is 01:32:19 And so they're charging, I'm charging them anywhere between 85 to a hundred dollars a session, which for me is probably less valuable than if I were to allocate that time to my online business, which does actually generate more revenue. But I get a tremendous amount of enjoyment and connection from that, and I don't want to lose touch with that. And that's what makes you make the great content.
Starting point is 01:32:40 I think so. And that also helps you tweak your packages for your online stuff. It's like it keeps you with your feet on the ground. Yep. Keeps me in the trenches, keeps a finger on the pulse. And again, it's a part of my identity at this point in my life. And I'm not willing to let go of it just yet.
Starting point is 01:32:56 And that's at your own gym core coaching method, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, it's literally like I show up at my own gym where I work with all my boys. It's like this, but a gym. It's literally like, y'all come here. Y i work with all my boys it's like this but but a gym it's literally like y'all come here y'all hang out together you guys are all boys and it's the best i go to the gym and it's like okay my three best friends are all in the gym with me one of them's a physical therapist the other two are trainers it's the best thing in the fucking world i would be crazy to let go of that yeah i would pay my clients 100 bucks a
Starting point is 01:33:24 session to hang all my boys all day yeah and so it's like, I've curated this amazing environment that just draws me in. And I don't want to let go of that because I worked to build this life and I want to enjoy it. And I, and that is a huge piece of enjoying it is, is the relationships that I have with the clients who I help with their health and the relationship I have with my friends who have a similar mission and purpose. And, and, uh, as I think when we talk about masculinity, there's something inherently, uh, masculine about like just getting around and aping out with your bros and like, you know, all right, goodbye, Karen, have a wonderful day. I'll see you on Monday. Okay. I'm fucking you up in fantasy football this week, bitch. I swear to God, you know, the minute she's out the door,
Starting point is 01:34:06 it's like, we bro-ing out. And that's just wonderful. It gives my life so much meaning. That's why I do it. That's what it's about, man. It's about that. It's about having fun, building something with your boys. Yeah, dude.
Starting point is 01:34:20 It's like literally every fucking civilization was built on having fun and building something with your boys. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, building something with their boys. Straight up. Straight up. boys george washington thomas jefferson build build something with their boys absolutely i seen i think it was on your guys's instagram bio somewhere too that you're you're staying more quality over quantity like with you know your trainings and everything and just the size of the gym what what's the reasoning behind that you just can't be there if you don't have a if you're not with a trainer. It's not a gym. It's like a private training studio. And the reason I did not open that gym for it to be a money-making enterprise. I opened that gym to provide more value to my clients and to film content. And so if I wanted to lose a lot of money really fast, I'd get into the gym business. Because what do you see all gyms doing?
Starting point is 01:35:06 Now they're all charging $10 a month. $24 used to be $50 a month. Now it's $200 a year. That's $10. That's like $12 a month. They're all in a race to the bottom, bro. Now your Planet Fitness is your crunch. You're 24.
Starting point is 01:35:17 It's all in a race to the bottom. There's no differentiation. It's all cost the same. It's all dirty. None of it's clean. Piss on the floor. I don't want to be in the business of charging people the least amount of money possible so they forget they have the membership and bet on the fact that they're not going to use it because they're fat. That's me.
Starting point is 01:35:32 Yeah, exactly. That's the gym model. I want to be on the other end of it. I've probably got all of those memberships and I don't think I've touched the inside of a gym in that two years. awesome though you're able to analyze the industry and that kind of highlights areas to improve in right and that gives you sort of your strategy and roadmap to how to do so besides what's unique about you already and you know how to approach social not in the framework of how do i make myself look like the smartest trainer but how do i actually provide value to people at the end of the day that's fucking special yeah i mean it's one thing to know the media it's a whole nother thing to know the social yeah and nothing will teach you the social like working with people 100 damn that's super well said you're all over social killing it um plug yourself in tell people where they can find you
Starting point is 01:36:13 your podcast all that good stuff yeah just danny matranga if you put that in the google or instagram or tiktok or apple podcast how do you smell that how do you smell that? You smell it probably pretty easily right now. D-A-N-N-Y and then the last name is M-A-T-R-A-N-G-A. Perfect. Awesome, man. This was fucking really fun, man. Do you guys have any more questions or anything for him? I'm just curious, where do you plan to take all this going into the future? Ooh, great question.
Starting point is 01:36:36 You know, I'm at a point in my life now where I see the ability to scale my online business and to probably in the next couple of years, step away from doing as much in person. Like I said, it'll probably always be a part of me, but I just got my house. I'm enjoying designing the house and creating a space. And I would honestly say, I think moving towards a family and a deeper commitment with my partner And obviously building my business is going to be a huge part of that. Scaling the app is going to be a huge part of that. But for as interested as I am in building the business and continuing to grow the business,
Starting point is 01:37:13 which it's kind of doing on its own, truthfully, I think I'm going back to the very first thing we started about being well-rounded. I'm just as interested in growing in those areas now. So the business has to afford me the ability to do that. And if ever it takes too much time that I can't grow into that, then I need to dial it back. But right now it's growing into allowing me to maybe take that step. So that's what's got me excited. Okay, bro. I think you'll do really great there too, bro.
Starting point is 01:37:39 They deserve that love and attention and respect just as much as well. This has been fucking awesome, man. Thank you very much for your time and coming on here and respect just as much as well. This has been fucking awesome, man. Thank you very much for your time and coming on here and just sharing so much game with everybody. Dude, I had a blast. Thanks. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Everybody watching, make sure to like, share, comment, subscribe. Spitballers.
Starting point is 01:37:54 Whoop, whoop.

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