Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1492: Five Things to Look for in an Online Coach With Jason Phillips

Episode Date: February 18, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with Jason Phillips about the five things to look for when hiring and online coach and how to transition into online coaching. Is it common that people are getting bad programs online? (2:32) The appeal of being an online coach. (6:45) Five Things to Look for in an Online Coach. (8:13) #1 – Have a connection-based model. (10:18) #2 – Look at their process for creating the results you want. (21:54) #3 – Application over education. (26:44) #4 – Retention over acquisition. (32:59) #5 – Over Deliver on service. (43:40) How do I transition into online coaching? (48:14) #1 - Social proof above everything else will win. (49:30) #2 - Train people for free! (51:55) #3 - Lead generation is a function of value. (55:50) The difference between education online versus in-person. (59:33) NCI, the leader in nutritional education and application. (1:01:30) The origin story of NCI. (1:04:50) Featured Guest/People Mentioned Jason Phillips (@jasonphillipsisnutrition)  Instagram Joe DeFranco (@defrancosgym)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned February Promotion: Phase II Bundle Special Promotion: NCI Certifications x Mind Pump Dallas fitness influencer Brittany Dawn halts personal coaching amid controversy The Most Important Skill For Personal Trainers – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1180: Joe DeFranco On What Makes A Good Trainer, The Importance Of A Structured Warm-Up, The Role Of Genetics And MORE Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You are listening to the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Now, today's episode, we have one of our favorite guests, Jason Phillips. He's the owner of NCI Certifications. This is a great company.

It certifies online trainers and coaches we've been working with them for a long time. But in today's episode, we talk all about the things you should look for in an online coach. So if you're somebody who wants to hire someone to help you with your nutrition, your workouts, virtually online either through Zoom or Skype or through email or text. It can be kind of hard finding the right person.

The release in a standard. So in today's episode, he goes down the list of the things that you should look for in an online coach that you know, you have a good one. We also talk about how to transition into online coaching. So if you're a trainer and you're thinking about doing the online coaching route for your business, pay attention to the second half of this episode. No, this episode is brought to you by NCI certifications. Again, they're one of our sponsors. Here's something that we worked out with them, by

the way, unique only to MindPump listeners. You, if you go to this site, NCcimindpump.com, you can get 75% off the full institute. So we talked them into hooking guys up with a massive, massive discount. So these are certifications that talk about nutrition and workouts and pretty much everything including how to apply it to your clients. 75% off go to nImindpump.com. Also, all months long, we're running our phase two bundle. This is taking two of our most popular workout programs, Maps Performance, and Maps Esthetic, putting them together in this bundle and discounting the price tremendously. Now, both programs are about three to four months long themselves. Maps Performance is athletically

minded. Maps Esthetic is athletically minded. Maps aesthetic is bodybuilding minded. So combine the two, you get the best of both worlds. This bundle is only $79.99. The retail would be over $250. So it's a huge, huge savings. $79.99 you get access to maps performance and maps aesthetic.

Go check them out. Go to mapsfeb and maps aesthetic. Go check them out. Go to maps, February dot com. That's M-A-P-S-F-E-B-R-U-A-R-Y dot com. You know, ever since the pandemic, I feel like there has been this huge surge with online coaching. And I remember I think it was last year when we all got together and we hung out. You remember that girl, Brittany Donne. She was in, she was on the new, I think Good Morning America even had her,

and she got in like huge trouble for like, screwing people over, right? Yeah, and I don't know the girl. Miss managing all these people. Right. Soaching, because she had a huge following, and I know that she started to do this like online personal training,

which I don't even know, I don't think she has a training background at all. And I think she just, she thought that she would turn the monetization switch on and figure it out afterwards. And I think she got such a huge response that she had thousands of people that were signing up for her. And then she just was giving out cookie cutter shit to everybody.

Is that common Jason in the space with the online coaches where you get a lot of people get kind of screwed over by online coaches that way? So I thought I heard she didn't even send programs out at all. Oh really? But regardless, like, is it common that people are getting bad programs?

Yeah, I think we can all agree on that. I mean, there's a lot of people in the online space that probably shouldn't be in the online space. But I don't think the sad thing is But I don't think, the sad thing is, I don't think any coaches really come in and are intentionally screwing somebody over. But I do think that, dude, you nailed it. The pandemic started, and it was before the pandemic,

but people come in and they're like, okay, there's a quick way to make a buck. If I have a tension and I have abs, you know, that was the joke for a long time. If you have a six pack, just sell someone how to get a six pack. Right. The reality is you're probably born with a six pack, right? You're like one of those genetic people,

you probably eat pizza every night, but you're like here trying my starvation diet. I mean, there's a lot more garbage online today than when I think we all started in this space, especially when I went online, which was shoot man, a long time ago. I think it's like any market, right? The bigger it gets, the more you'll see people entering it,

that probably shouldn't. I remember, for me a great example of this was, years ago, when I was managing health clubs, there was a health club company that exploded called Curves. I don't know if you guys remember Curves. Oh yeah. And it became, it was like the fastest growing

fitness franchise in the world at one point. And it got so big, so fast, you had all these people opening up these curves franchises that had never worked in gyms, never worked in fitness, never worked out. They just sought as a way to make money. And predictably, that franchise then collapsed. Because fitness is one of those things you need to know what you're doing. Because otherwise, you're just not gonna succeed long-term.

It feels like you see a lot of that right now. A lot of people are still happening. I think like F-45 and I won't say other ones because we know the owners of the franchises but there are franchises out there saying this is a bizop. You can be, I heard an ad on serious exam as retro fitness.

You can be completely off site. You can just, I heard an ad on serious XM as retro fitness. You can be completely off site. You can just be an investor. You don't need to be an owner operator. And, you know, but the same thing online. The appeal is so sexy. Well, that was my experience when I worked with Orange Theory when it first started. And, I mean, it just, that company blew up.

And just, so I was in the very first one in the Bay Area, right? That opened up. And during the time I was in the very first one in the Bay Area, that opened up. And during the time, the two years that I was there, I think, seven or eight opened up in the area. And so I knew all the owners. All the owners at one point were just members of my class. And they were people that had money. They had money and they saw the riding on the wall

and they were smart and they got in, like, no fitness people. And they were running these gyms. They were building these fitness cultures to make money off of this franchise. And what I saw was a bunch of smart people that saw an opportunity to make money, but not fitness smart people,

not a people that really understood how to help and coach people. And that was kind of my knock on the whole formula. I was like, man, this is, it's, and it grows so fast, it gets out of control. This is whole formula. I was like, man, this is, it's, and it, and you, it grows so fast, it gets out of control. It's a similar to what I think happens to these coaches. I think they're always get so huge, like what happened

and probably like pretty dawn, didn't realize that, you know, maybe a thousand people would give her money to help her out them, do what she's doing. And then I think she started, and I think how she got cut up was she was scrambling to get something to everybody, and then it ended up being like the same thing. The online coaching space seems to be exploding, right?

It seems like it's growing faster and faster and more people are seeking online coaches than ever before. Is this your experience? I mean, you're at the front line of this. Yeah. First of all, the appeal to being an online coach is so high, right?

I mean, from the outside looking in, it's really simple. You know, you sit behind your computer, somebody approaches you for coaching, you send a plan and you don't have to talk to them. That's the appeal, right? It's obviously far deeper than that, but I think a lot of people get into it with that frame of mind. They're like, great, I'll take your intake form,

I'll build you some plan or I'll try to. And that's where I think like the messiness has gotten. But, you know, we were talking off air, how many gyms went out of business in 2020? I think conservatively, 30 to 40% of niche gyms, not even talking big box gyms, but 30 to 40% of niche gyms went out, which means 30 to 40% of the world's trainer force

is now out of a job. And so you've got two choices, right? Or maybe three, one, join a big box gym that's still open and maybe have access to 90% less clients, because it's like 10% occupancy. Two, go get a job in a completely different industry or three, go online.

And so we're seeing a massive migration online, which in my opinion means if you're an online coach now and you wanna be an online coach, you need to level yourself up. Like there's a completely different, it's a new game. It's not what it was 10 years ago when I got in the space and the coaches have to start looking at it.

Well, this is really what I wanted to get into with you, Jay, because you have so much experience in this field. And I think we can organize an episode for the listeners. Like, how do they look, what are the things you look for in an online coach? Like, how do I know? Because here's the thing, it's flooded, you have a lot of bad coaches out there, but there's good ones too.

Oh yeah. There's coaches that, I mean, I coached online. So that was the natural pivot for me from competing, right? Before mine pumps started, and I got attention on social media, and I had all these people that wanted to show them exactly like how I did what I did. And when I started looking at other online coaches, the first thing I did was like, okay, what I don't wanna do is do what I see

is happening in the space, which is this generic cookie cutter thing. I'd rather charge a premium, take less clients, service them better than try and go the volume route, which is what I think a lot of these coaches do. It's like, oh, I have this following. Let's try and get a thousand people for and be under the price of somebody else. I was like, no, I'd rather have less people because I found that personally, once I got over 20 people that I was managing, which was very similar to when I was managing in a gym. You know, you start getting up beyond 20, 30 clients clients and it's really hard to give that personal service

unless you've got a really good system in place which most of these guys are doing. You just become way less effective as a trainer. And training people online is actually harder than it is in person because you're not with them, right? It's actually much more challenging. So for the listener who is, because there's also, you see online coaches

flood the market, you're also seeing a lot of people looking for it. Yes, because gyms are closed, but they still, you know, they're still a demand for help. They're still demand for fitness. What are some of the things that they need, they should look for? Because there's no standardization. It's not like you can go online and say, oh, these people, you know, there's these qualifications I need to look for. A lot of people have no idea. All they see are followers, how the person looks, and then they're like, okay, is this gonna be a good coach? So let's start with some of the stuff

that you probably should look for in an online coach that'll tell you that this person that you're dealing with is probably gonna do a good job. What would be one of the first things? Man, the first thing that I'm a big fan of and what really allowed me to build my coaching business, and I think I was one of the first in the space to really get to multiple seven figures with a coaching business. I think I was one of the first in the space to really get to multiple seven figures

with a coaching business. Funny Adam, you talk about the low price arbitrage. Like that was me and I completely, it was like one of my earliest mistakes. But at my peak, Sal, I was doing what you were doing and what you were talking about, just doing it way too often. I think burnout affects the online space too.

The first thing you need to look at is your coach willing to connect with you? Are coach willing to connect with you? Are they willing to speak with you? You know, Sal, you were talking about the online training being harder. Your time commitment as an online coach is probably more. When a client pays you in person, it's very expected. There you're two, eight, Thursday morning clients, seven a.m. to eight a.m. You're not expecting text messages, you know, Tuesday night at 6 p.m. Wednesday morning at nine a.m. If you're an online coach, your clients need a lot of support. They don't have that physical

touch to you, they don't have that level of access. You need to provide that. I think online coaches need to be about connection. It's what I founded my whole nutritional coaching institute on is what we call the connection based model. Everything starts with that connection to your client. It's a weight loss, physique change, body recomp, it's a vulnerable proposition. Mrs. Jones comes to you, she's a hundred pounds overweight. She doesn't want to talk about the fact that she's overweight and she certainly doesn't want to talk about all the problems

that's causing in her life, right? Her husband doesn't look at her the same way. Her clothes don't fit. That's not very fun to talk to somebody, you know, five states away about, and here she is, and you're expecting to have that conversation. If you don't bring those walls down, if you don't open up the channels of communication

beyond a simple, five word email, how are you ever gonna get the connection you truly need to create the results that you want? And I think that, again, the state of the industry coaches are looking towards this automation. Oh, well, if I only have to send one email, oh, if I insert them into my trainerize app or whatever it is, that's not authenticity,

that's not coaching, that's technology, and that's a dime it doesn't. Right, right. So you're looking for, you wanna ask the trainer, how often are you gonna be contacting me? How often can I get a hold of you? You wanna be able to have kind of a direct line to the coach, is that fair to say?

I'm a huge fan of that. I mean, that's literally what set me apart. So when I teach coaches, I say, you gotta have a unique opportunity, right? And I came in, what are we, 2021 now? I came in around 2015 is when I really blew up my online business. And I was like, how can I differentiate?

Everyone's putting out macros, everyone's putting out calories and workouts. And I was like, you know what, no one's putting out macros, everyone's putting out calories and workouts, and I was like, you know what, no one's doing? No one is getting on phone calls. No one's getting on FaceTime's Zooms, allowing text message. Everyone was hiding behind one email a week. And that connection-based model,

honestly, has become commonplace today. I think that if you're a good coach of any sort, you do that. And so if you're a client out there looking for a coach, your coach should be doing that. If they're not willing to give that level of access, I don't think they're a very good coach. And how can you coach, right?

We're all very good coaches in this room. How can you coach without that? Well, you hit it earlier is, you know, one of the things I figured out as a trainer, training people in person, and it took quite a long time to get here, was that part that you talked about with being able to break down those walls and humanize yourself, right, and be vulnerable. That's hard to do in person.

Looking you in the eye and letting you see me, it's 10 times harder via email or text message. It takes that much more. And that's what I found when I started getting into the online coaching space was the things that I could communicate in person, I could say a lot less and get my message across or show you and you could see it, where I had to find a way to be able to get that across

via text message or email or Zoom call, and it did, it took more effort and more time to do that. Well, I think there's a misconception too. And I'd love your input on this, Jason. I think sometimes people, especially when they hire an online coach, they think, I just need someone to tell me what to do. But the reality is that's never effective.

It's never effective to have someone just tell you what to do. You actually need someone to guide you. So it's like, you're going to climb up a mountain. You've never been up before. It's very challenging. There's lots of twists and turns. It's very dangerous. You know, oftentimes people fail or fall or die. Do you want the guide that says, all right, I'm going to write you a map and then give it to you or do you want the person that's going to be like, I'm going to walk with you. I'm going to walk you up this mountain the entire time.

And every time you stumble, I'm going to be there to coach you through every stumble. That's how I was as a trainer. I can't imagine somebody being successful any other way. Dude, that's such a good analogy because let's be honest, all the information someone needs to lose weight, change their body, gain muscle, it's all available online. It's on Google. Like we literally, nothing I wrote, I've written seven, eight courses now in our company. All of that information is on Google. It's not the information that changes somebody's life. It's the ability to apply that information.

It's taking that and saying, okay, you're showing up with these problems. You know that you should be choosing, let's make it really simple, a salad over a big Mac. The real question is, why are you simple, a salad over a big Mac. The real question is why are you not choosing the salad over the big Mac? Why can't you put down your Coke every single night? Like it's not common knowledge, or it is common knowledge rather,

that if you stop drinking soda, you're reducing calories, right, first change, drink more water, have less Coca-Cola, you'll probably see the scale go down. Right. Why aren't people doing it? Right. And the coach that comes in is really successful.

It's that connection that brings down the barrier because there's some sort of emotional reason. The root cause. There is some reason that this person is choosing food. And I tell everybody, it's always a function of pain. I mean, physical change, human change only happens when the pain of perceived change is less than the current pain they're experiencing.

And you only get to that inside of connection, right? Because if your current pain is less than your perceived pain of change, you're not going to change. If that seems like, like, Sal, you know, if there's a million dollars on the top of the mountain, but you're a billionaire, you're like, I'm not climbing the top of that. But if you're dirt poor and there's a million dollars on the top of the mountain, you bet your ass, you're climbing that mountain to get to that million dollars Right, so that pain has to be decreased and that coach has to go in

Bring the barriers down connect super deeply to be able to find out. Why is this change not happening now? Do you do you talk to That your coaches and you know people that are considering you know signing up with you guys about what gimmicks to look out for. Are there common ones in our space that a lot of these online coaches use to get leads and do you warn people of watch for this or the 30-day challenges or the transformation thing?

What would you consider like the gimmicks that people use to attract leads for this? I think if there's, I tell coaches, there should always be an entry point and exit point. And if it's just, if you're just getting somebody to a result and it's like, see later, I don't think that's coaching, right? I think that, and so if you start to look around,

it's like six weeks to a six pack. Okay, great. Well, are you gonna maintain that six pack? Because let's be honest, we know that starvation. Nobody's getting shredded in six weeks unless you're severely starving yourself or unless you're already really lean. Right. And so I think that to say, look out for these gimmicks would almost be shortsighted because there's a new one popping up every single day. And a lot of times, if it sounds too good to be true, it likely is too good to be true. I think that we talk a lot about understanding that it's a much bigger model, it's a much

longer game, and trying to help clients understand that. But again, a lack of connection will lead people to the gimmicks. So I think these two are interchangeable because if you're not connecting with your clients and you're allowing your information to be what is your forward facing vision to the client, then they're going to go consume more information. And your stuff probably sounds less sexy than the person down the street that says, I can get you shredded in two days. So now you've just kind of commoditized yourself as the coach or as a client, you're like, well,

that information sounds better. So it's the connection that kind of brings down that wall and creates that level of trust to really buy into something that will be effective. So in your professional opinion, coaching multiple clients and then also guiding these other coaches, what would you say is the cap for the amount of clients and the scale ability for that because this is so involved. This is something that they have to put a lot of time and effort into, like, what does that look like for an online coach? Bro, I'm the worst person in the world to ask about this because I, when I started,

we were talking about this offline too, I was, I was just hanging out with Billie Jean on Tuesday and he said, uh, can you have a relationship on the come up? And I completely lost mine on the come up because I overworked myself. At my peak, I had 167 clients. Whoa. Okay, and dude, I was on phone calls. Every client got a 30 minute phone call with me. Every 12 days.

Wow. They could text me unlimited amounts of time. Bro, I was in, I was on calls from 4 a.m. and I was living in Arizona at this time. So 4 a.m. either mountain or Pacific, depending time of year, until midnight. And I'm talking like, I took living in Arizona at this time. So 4am, either mountain or Pacific, depending time of year until midnight. And I'm talking like I took calls in the gym. There's a video of me somewhere

back squatting 405 taking a call. And it was like I would do anything for my clients, but mind you, my whole premise at that time was I was coming from being really poor and only caring about helping people and health and fitness. And so I was gonna do whatever it took. Now, today, if you asked me that question, I would say realistically,

if your organization is systemized, if you understand what you're doing as a business owner, not just a coach, right? And that would be the differentiator, is if you're a business owner, you could probably handle like 30. If you're a coach, and this is all you do, and you don't have to outsource, you don't handle like 30. If you're a coach and this is all you do and you don't have to outsource,

you don't have to worry about like admin and all this crazy shit, you probably could get to 60 relatively safely. But I think anything beyond that is, that's just asking for burnout. And that's a lot of work, so. That's a ton of work, dude. Like that's 50 hour work week.

And people are like, well, it's just 30 clients, you know, half hour phone call every other week. That means I'm on, you know, seven and a half hours of calls a week. That's no big deal. No, no, no. It's gonna go away beyond that. And it's every day they're texting.

And emailing and you'll update. I have a craving, oh, I missed this thing. And I feel this way and what about this workout all day? Now is that a valid question for a potential client to ask the trainer, like how many? One people are resurfacing. 100%, I think it should be how many clients do you work with, how closely do you work with your clients?

I think if you're a client and you're asking potential trainer, like think of all the scenarios where you've been disappointed before. By the way, if you're a coach, think about on your come-up because you guys all hired coaches before your trainers, I would assume, I hired every coach in the game because I wanted to just learn it. I thought about all the ways I was disappointed. And I'm like, great, I need to solve that in my business. But yeah, definitely if you're a client, you should grill the coach before you

hire them. Because again, the industry is becoming so commoditized, becomes so oversaturated. Dude, that's a great question. I think way too many clients just make an assumption. They're going to get a lot of time and they don't ask. I like what you said about the exit plan, too, because the truth is, let's say your goal is to lose 30 pounds. It's way easier to lose 30 pounds than it is to keep it off. Yes. Way, way in, the statistics prove this. People lose weight all the time. Almost nobody keeps it off.

The personal connection piece, I think I 100% agree with you. That's got to be the most important thing. What's another thing that they should look for in online coach? I think that your coaches that are out there are the ones that you're looking at. You should really be looking into their process, not what they're spouting off to be knowledge. I think there's a lot of really intelligent coaches out there. There's a lot of knowledge being put into the world. I think a lot of online coaches are talking about very specialized subjects, but that's

cool that you're that smart, but can you do it for me, right? And I think we could all sit here and identify? There's probably there's probably a lot of really intelligent trainers that we don't know about and it's because they can't create results being able to just you know sit here on a podcast and spout your knowledge off that's great And I've always said like I I never made all my success because I was the smartest coach in the world I was probably the dumbest coach in the world But I was I was really good at connecting with people and I was good at creating results I was good at like bringing you in, analyzing where you're at, and then building out a plan, not just like, okay, well, you got gut health problems today.

All right, well, fast for a day, and let's see if that works. We would build out like a six month plan, all right, we're going to fix your gut health, and then we're going to look at, you know, HPA access, and then we're going to, you know, restore homeostasis, and then we're going to bring you into active fat loss. You know, that's one of the, that was one of the biggest hurdles for trainer, this is in person training, right? Back when I was a manager and I had a staff underneath me,

one of the biggest hurdles they always had was they couldn't understand like, Adam, how do I sell like 30 sessions or 50 sessions? I'm like, well, part of your problem is, you're selling the sessions and you're not selling your plan. Like, you have to have a plan mapped out for these people. You don't just say, hey, you should buy 30 sessions for me and then along the way, I'll train you

and we'll figure it out. Like nobody's gonna buy into that. And so you need to start thinking about this client who's sitting in front of you, what their goals are, what they're trying to do, and then you have to be able to put a plan together for them. You gotta prescribe it. Right, exactly.

You need to have a prescription so they know what to expect over the course have to be able to put a plan together for them. You have to prescribe it. Right. Exactly. You need to have a prescription so they know what to expect over the course of the next two to three months. If you think you're going to be able to sell somebody on this idea that they're going to be with you for six months versus this, hey, I'm a great trainer. Let me show you the best exercise or whatever gimmick to get your attention and then a hope that you buy all this training.

I think that's a really good point because I think if you're looking at the content that your perspective coach is putting out, I think that you should ask yourself, is this person continuously talking about the work they do with people? And if that's the case, there's a really good chance all they do is what you talked about, just those reactionary transactional sessions. Oh, we're on a call today. Oh, you didn't sleep good last night. Oh, okay, try this.

Talk to you next week. Like that's not solving anything. That's not a plan to take anybody anywhere. But if your coach is putting things out and they're talking about solutions, they're talking about results that they create. Like obviously you're investing in a coach to get somewhere.

There's a result that you want. If it was about workouts, why are you buying workouts? There's 10 million ways to buy workouts very cheap. If it's about you being on a diet, well, there's 10 million free diets in this world. You're not investing into the process. You're investing into a result. So, I look at your coach's content. Number one, have they created results? But number two, are they even looking at the result you desire? If all they ever talk about is weight loss and you want to fix Seabo, well, you should probably ask them if the process is going to be geared towards fixing your Seabo and not weight loss and not make the assumption That they're going to just inherently know that so would a fair question then be

You know when you're interviewing an online coach, and I do think it's important to interview them right? Yes, you say okay, what would this plan, what is this plan going to look like? Obviously, as we go along with it, you're going to have to modify it because everybody's a little different. But what does this plan look like based on what I've told you my goals are? Would that be a fair question to ask? One million percent. And again, just like what Justin was asking earlier, I think that you definitely should ask

those questions. I agree, you should definitely interview your perspective coach. And then, you know, if you've had an experience, if you've tried everything, well, why wouldn't this be the plant? Oh, I read this. Why wouldn't this work? See if your coach can actually answer those questions. They should be able to handle things.

And let's be honest, if you're a prospective client, you have some intuition as to what the journey should look like. And if it's completely counter what the coach is going to prescribe, you need to know that on the front end. Because otherwise you're going to invest money, it's not going to be what you expect. We all know we're emotionally tied to our expectations. And so when all of a sudden they give you something

that is not what you're expecting, you have to behave differently. That's really difficult as a human being to accept. So yeah, man, I think that'd be- I like what you said about reactionary too, because I could just imagine that, right? So they get on the phone with the client and it's like, how do you feel today?

All right, do this. And then next week, how do you feel today? All right, do this. Without any real plan of action, without any real steps or any scaffolding, you know, to follow. So I think that's a great question. You said something off-air that I thought was really good,

that we actually preach quite a bit on the show, which would be application over education. Explain that, explain what that means. Yeah, I think that, and this is like, I'm just gonna say, I think we were one of the first ones to really talk about it at NCI. You know, when I came in the space, what held me back the longest time as a coach was I knew my stuff,

but clients would come in and they did not fit what I had been taught. At Florida, I went to Florida State for my undergrad and whatever certifications I had had, it was different. And today, look at Western culture, we all just lived in lockdown for a year, like, we're still living in lockdown, you know, armatables, arms are destroyed, from all like the low calorie thing,

so nothing's lining up. If your coach is just spitting like knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, and it's like, okay, great, I'm coming in, and you're banking on the fact that, your cookie cutter program is going to work for me based on the fact that you're highly educated, and I'm not disputing your education, but if you're banking on the fact that your cookie cutter program is going to work for me. Based on the fact that you're highly educated and I'm not disputing your education, but if you're banking on the fact that you're highly educated program is going to work for my specific application, how can you guarantee that?

And we could call that individualization, we could call that really being able to assess properly what the situation is. We could talk, there's a couple different ways we could probably articulate that, but I think that the best coaches in the world can immediately analyze what the situation is, we could talk, there's a couple different ways we could probably articulate that, but I think that the best coaches in the world can immediately analyze what the situation is, they can deduce the proper treatment, the proper plan moving forward, and then they can implement accordingly. And let's be honest,

I mean, all of us are coaches, we can build amazing plans, right? Implementing that plan with your client, that doesn't follow it, 80% of the time, because we all know clients are very rarely gonna follow things right away. It's not easy. So how do you work in the confines and the constraints

that your clients are giving you? You know, ask, if you're a prospective client, I would certainly ask your coach, well, what happens if I fuck up? Right. Like, what happens if Sunday night, I'm out with the boys and I just completely go off the rails, are you gonna yell at me?

Or are you gonna edit my plan tomorrow? Like what am I supposed to do? Because you gotta know that, right? Like can I text you? Can I text you and I'm out with the boys? Like these are things that matter and by the way, there's no textbook in the world, promise you. That says well if you're out with the boys

and you have two extra beers on Sunday night, here's the exact way to change. Right, right. Your plan to make sure you get back, it's like the famous Mike Tyson quote, right? Everybody has a plan to get punched in the face. I'm not a brother. For me, it was, you know,

as long as we've been doing the show, there was always this hallmark way of knowing that I was talking to a trainer who's worked with people versus somebody who's just very educated. And it's very, very simple. Like we had Joe DeFranco on the show years ago, and he was somebody that we all followed before we started Mind Pump.

And we would ask him questions, and his answer was always, it depends. It depends. That's the key word in my opinion. Two favorite words in NCI, it depends. And this is because people are so damn different. They're not just different physiologically, right?

We all have different, you know, gut microbiomes. Biodeverse. We have different bodies, know, gut microbiomes. Biodeverse. Yeah, different bodies, all hormones can be different. We respond differently to things and foods and whatever. We also are different emotionally. We have different experiences. Daily activities look completely different. It's like so different from person to person

that it makes just being highly educated without knowing how to apply it is, you're literally just a little bit better than Google. Well, all of these things become interconnected because what you're talking about now, the difference is also a function of connection. If Adam, if you were coaching me and I show up, I'm in reasonably good shape now and you're like,

cool, getting you lean will be super easy. But you don't know that my journey started in anorexia. Right. You putting me into a calorie deficit and asking me to stay there, you're just triggering those behaviors right away. So that connection now becomes part of the application.

So I don't think you can be like, I'm a coach that has application over education without connection. Like we can't be talking about these things like they're on an island and like they're mutually exclusive. All of these things are what your coach has to have. They have to have the ability to connect. They have to have the ability to connect.

They have to have the ability to apply. They've got to be able to create a plan for you. Like, if this isn't what you're paying for, then you need to go find somebody that has it. And listen, online coaching has gotten a little more expensive. When I first got in the game, it was like $150. I mean, when I ex it, it was $500. But, you know, today today it's, you know,

minimum probably two, 50, 300 bucks to get a reasonable coach. And I mean, there's some coaches charging $500, $1,000. And it's, in my opinion, it's worth every penny. It almost feels like you should use the amount of questions that the coach asks you is like a metric, you know, in terms of like, you know, trying to field as much information from you as possible

versus like giving you a plan. I would, that would be a red flag from you right away as a prospective client, right? If your coach literally, if you inquire with a coach, and a coach is like, you know, you're like, how much is it? A coach is like $250, and you're like, okay, cool.

They take your money and they just build your plan. You need to fucking run. Like, even without your money, just fucking run. If they didn't ask you questions, if they didn't somewhat interview you, I mean, I take on very few clients these days and I recently took on a client that I just knew would be fun to work with. We sat on an hour on a Zoom and I was very open with him.

I'm like, listen, dude, in zero chance in the next six months, you're hiring me for fat loss, zero chance you lose fat in the next six months. You are so broken that if we don't restore like where you are, like, he's a doctor, he's abused himself with excessive exercise, he's under consumed calories, like, like he's going through a lot of stress

or he's got like, young kids, I'm like, you got six months ahead of you. And the truth is, you could get him there. The truth is, yeah, the truth is, a coach could, and that's the hard thing to communicate. It's not that it's impossible to get you to lose that weight. I mean, I could cut your calories in half, tell you to double up your exercise,

and we'll lose more weight, but I'm only setting you up for long-term failure that way. That's it. I'm gonna make you fatter, long-term, right? Like, Sal, you said it best. We don't have a weight loss problem in our country. We have the maintenance of weight loss problem in our country. People lose weight every day.

Literally, wake up, scale is down. Why aren't people keeping the weight off? Because the tactics being used, even the coaching methodology is being taught or are just completely bastardized from what proper protocol should be. What about, because obviously online coaches are trying to build their business as well,

what about coaches that seem to be far more interested in getting new clients versus serving the ones that they're with? I used to see this in gyms where we'd see there were managers who were just worried about getting new people in the door and just didn't care about the members or the gym itself. And that worked for a few months, maybe even six months, but eventually they started to tank because the atmosphere or the culture of the gym would just decline. What about that? What about people who are more interested in acquisition

over something like retention? Yeah, I mean, it's a tough dichotomy because brand new coach has to focus on acquisition, but a experienced coach probably less on acquisition. I think that if you're a good coach and you understand business, you understand that acquisition should be something you try to do once and that the majority of your effort should be on retention.

They say, old business lesson, you guys ran gyms. It's much easier to upsell a current client than it is to acquire a new client, far less expensive, far easier. But if you constantly see your coach or your perspective coach on Instagram and they're like $99 special, like come work with me or... I got five spots left. Yeah, like, I'm looking for three people to completely change their life with me in two days.

Like, yeah, that's probably not something good. And here's the thing, I don't want to discount them because I know several great coaches are trying to build their business and learn from quote unquote guru that said to fucking do that or whatever. Like, if they're cold messaging you in your DMs, like, let's be, let's just be honest, that's a plague right now. Like, I don't know about you guys. I'm like, my cold DMs literally,

I had a guy message me yesterday on Facebook and he was like, hey, I see we have a lot of the same friends and we're in a lot of the same groups. And I, like, buffled, like I just wrote back and I was like, bro, don't bother pitching me. And I was, and he wrote back and he was like, he's like, wow, that's not the typical response I get. And I was like, well, you're cold outreach,

honestly, offends me. And if you're a marketer, which I assume you are, you probably should learn to market. And he was like, literally at that point, dude, I had him turn around and I was ready to sell him. Like, that was great. But like, if that's what you see from your coach, if they're just like, what are they putting out there, you know, is it real value? But also like in your time with them, like are they putting out there? You know, is it real value? But also like in your time with them, like are they hounding you for friends? Like are they constantly talking about?

Because I'm not opposed to asking for referrals, but if it's like this never ending stream of like incentivizing referrals, if they're running a new fucking challenge every single week, right? Like there's probably a problem with their model. And I don't think that, I don't think really successful coaches

that are focused on connection, that are focused on laying out a long-term plan or going to have retention issues. Well, it's the short gains versus the long-term gains, right? I had an opportunity actually when we came out and saw you, I met, I won't roll a guy on the bus, but a big online personality guy that I met as marketing dude. It was at the dinner that we had. So I don't know if you remember who this was or not, but we were sharing behind the scenes numbers, like lifetime value, and we're exactly what we're talking about acquisition.

And I told him what MindPumps lifetime value number was, and he like stopped mid-car, and I was like, are you kidding me? He's like, and then by the way, this person does a lot more business than we do. They're doing it online for a lot longer. And when he shared the number that he had, and he was like so baffled, I don't understand,

how do you guys get that? And I said, well, since we started this business, and when back when we had 100 people that seemed to us, and we had 10 people in our forum, our business model's always been about taking care of those 10 people as much as we possibly can because we know if we can impact those 10 people and change their lives, they're more likely to go out

and talk all about us all the time. Versus the temptation of being on the web and having all this like eyes on you, just trying to get more people in the funnel versus really taking care of the people that have already invested in you. And I think that's, it's in the defense of these coaches, it's tempting. the funnel versus really taking care of the people that have already invested in you. And I think that's, it's in the defense of these coaches, it's tempting because it's

quick, easy money. If I throw this click funnel up and I just get leads in here and as long as converting it this percent and I'm pumping this much into Facebook, it makes sense. It makes dollar sense. And so who cares if the people are falling out the back, there's billion people to go after. That'll last me the next 20 years of building a business. And so who cares if the people are falling out the back, there's billion people to go after, that'll last me the next 20 years of building a business. Well, there's another elephant in the room too,

which is if you elevate your quote unquote personal brand, and then this is something I've respected about you guys forever, is you have the opportunity to elevate your personal brand to really early, and you just let it grow organically. You all have amazing personal brands, like I know you guys behind the scenes super, like you are who you are. If you elevate your personal brand artificially, their sponsorships out there too, right? You become an influencer and it's like, oh, well, you know, now so and so, supplement company

is going to promote me. They're going to get me another 100,000 followers, which means now I can sell my bullshit abs product to another 100,000 followers. And that's where you end up with like the Britney Dawns scenarios. You know, and so it is tempting. And it's a lot of it's the fault, man. Like if you open up your phone right now and you scroll Facebook, there's every market

or out there looking. Do this and you'll instantly have 100 clients, bullshit. Like let's just be honest, let's call bullshit. It's not gonna happen. And you know, I think for me, I almost got discouraged, man, like a little over a year ago where I was working with all these coaches and they were all for me, I almost got discouraged, man, like a little over a year ago, where I was working with all these coaches,

and they were all telling me, oh, I hired so-and-so to grow my business. And I was like, okay. And like six months later, they're coming to me, so-and-so fuck me over. And I'm like, you kind of bought it into a fucking scam. Like, they didn't fuck you over. They just, they're doing what they do.

And anybody that promises you, you're gonna be filthy rich in six months like I mean dude. I went broke twice trying to get to where we got to like I mean we all have stories of hitting rock bottom before we ever made it and It's there's a lot of components that go into it and but it is it's again going all the way back to the beginning It's so attractive today to be an online coach Well, it's it's like trying to fill a bucket with water and there's a massive hole at the bottom. When I first became a trainer,

I had to hustle to get new clients way more than I did later on as it became a much better trainer. Later on, I almost never had to get new clients. I had clients that they were with me and my slots were full and I provided them with tremendous value and eventually clients would work with me maybe less frequently. So, you know, I trained Miss Johnson three days a week when we first started, then it became two days a week and then one day a week and then once every two weeks.

And then I had lots of clients like this and they'd be with me for nine or ten years and I was providing them with tremendous value. That's the model in my opinion for success but besides that, that's the model for success for the client. When you're working with a coach or a trainer who does it that way, because what do you really after if you're a client looking for an online coach, you wanna get good results,

and you wanna keep those results, right? So that's the person you should look for, not the person who's constantly trying to get new people. Why are they always trying to get new people? Because maybe that providing the value that they say that they're providing to the clients that they're working with. Dude, to this day, I mean, again, I don't take on that get new people, because maybe that providing the value that they say that they're providing to the clients that they're working with. Dude, to this day, I mean, again, I don't take on that many new clients. To this day, I still have a client that's been with me over eight years.

I have a husband, wife, only over nine years. I've got a woman that was like, shit, and she's closing on seven years. I mean, when we talk about lifetime value of clients, you know, I remember when somebody asked me in a certification, well, you know, how long do you, the average client with you? And I couldn't figure this out to be honest because I had a team at, you know, when we had I-3, we had 15 coaches and my coaches would keep somebody,

eh, like maybe six months. And like my retention was upwards of two years. And I was like, what the fuck are you guys doing? And honestly, like, that learning experience is you guys doing? And honestly, that learning experience is what has driven a lot of my perspective on this because that drove me deeper into the connection-based model. That's when I was like, guys, you're treating this like nutrition coaching.

You're not treating this like human connection. And that is everything to me. If you're not looking at it as connection, person to person solving this person's problems, being there for them, saluted best, walking the journey with them, what are you really doing? You're just collecting cash for something that you're not really delivering.

Right, and let's be honest, the fitness and health journey is a long journey. So this is why someone listening, maybe they may think to themselves, why would I need to work with someone that long? Well, I mean, if you're 35 years old and you need to lose 30 pounds, you've never really been consistent with exercise

or with good nutrition, you've been on diets but you've never really figured out, that's a lot of stuff you have to work through. And you have to completely transform the way you live. And it takes a long time. And this is why investing in somebody who knows what they're doing, who's gonna have that connection. They can work with you for and it takes a long time, and this is why investing in somebody who knows what they're doing, who's gonna have that connection,

they can work with you for a very, very, very long time because the process changes every month, every year, and you continue to progress. And then eventually you get to the point where you really start to figure it out for yourself, but it does take a while. Well, let's, I'll use a really good client example in the absence of connection, what can happen.

I had two ladies in Oregon hire me, same time. One woman, I mean, so metabolically adapted, it was absurd. She was training five times a day. Like, she was older woman, she didn't like tie both five times a day, but she was training five times. She was eating like 800 calories. And her friend, like salon owner, overweight,

you know, just really needed to like, rain it in, but not that bad of a scenario. Both of them wanted to get leaner, obviously, the one that was so metabolically adapted, I had to come to Jesus' moment with her immediately and was like, listen, it's gonna be a long process. And, you know, she really was like on the fence, the other one was super on the fence,

but the woman that was metabolically adapted, she ended up getting diagnosed with breast cancer. And she was like, I just have full faith in whatever your plan is at this moment. She's like, you'll get me through this, you'll get me to where I need to be. And she's been with me eight years. The other woman was like, you didn't get me ripped in 90 days and she left. Since then, she's hired six other coaches, all of whom she hired for 90 days and she's still right where she is.

The other woman, like the head cancer, overcame everything. She now consumes regularly 1,800 to 2,000 calories. At her age, she trains no more than four times per week. She goes on a date night with her husband every single week and she absolutely loves the way she looks, feels, and everything about her life. And it's like, that's the epitome of coaching to me. It's not even the result, like that's cool. The whole journey to me was the epitome of coaching to me. It's not even the result, like that's cool.

The whole journey to me was the epitome of coaching. And that's always what's drawn me to it. And if that's not something you can see yourself as a client engaging in with your perspective coach, probably not the right coach for you, right? You should be ready to have that kind of journey. Yeah, you know, as we're talking, I'm thinking about scenarios that pop up with people,

with clients, and let's say for example, they're thinking about scenarios that pop up with people, with clients, and let's say, for example, they're trying to eat right in its Friday night. They're about to go out with their friends, and they're feeling, you know, for lack of a better term, they're feeling maybe weak, right? They want to go drink, they want to eat, you know, maybe something that might not be on their meal planner and their strategy. How important is it that they can get a hold of their coach and get a reply right away? That was something I was huge on.

I remember I had one client, she was a very well-known cross-fitter and she's like, I never know what to order. I was like, cool, take a picture of the menu, text it to me, I'll walk you through it. And she's like, wait, you'll do that. And I was like, my wouldn't I do it. Right? Assuming that you give me some heads up and you can't just like, Sunday night,

like 9.30 Pacific time. I'm living on East Coast time, like expect me to be awake, right? Like give me a little heads up, but I think it's super important, like Adam in the prep game. I can't tell you how many coaches I've watched and you know what it's like on Show Day.

You wake up on Show Day, there should not be a plan. You should, the plan should be go look in the mirror and figure it out, right? You might have an idea. It's out of our. It is, our by hour. You should have an idea of where the body's trending, but you do not know what the plan is at that moment.

I hear coaches that are, I hear people wake up and they're like, yeah, like my coach sent me my plan a week ago. What the fuck are you talking about? How do you know what your body's gonna look like? So I remember I'd be on the West Coast, I'd have clients in Europe. I'd be, you know, I'd be waking up at all hours. And obviously, I told you I lost relationship, my girlfriend at the time was like sleeping in the other room. And I did and totally understood why, right?

But I'd wake up to 30, 30, whatever time, like send me pictures, I'll make the adjustments, I'll send it to you, send me pictures again in two hours. So I would have broken sleep that night. That's the sacrifice I made as a coach. But again, as coaches, we chose that profession. We said, I'm gonna walk this journey with you. I'm gonna cross the finish line with you. I'm not gonna expect you to cross it. And I'm just gonna go sleep and, you know, hope that you do well.

Right. Well, that way a coaching though opens the opportunity though for you to scale your prices. So this is very similar to when I got into the online coaching space, I started relatively cheap. Like you mentioned, 150 to 500 was the range. I started at $200, because that's what I thought was on the lower end.

And my theory or thought process was, okay, I'm gonna be competitive with my price, with most people that are out there. And then my goal for myself is to over-deliver so much that my amount of slots fill up right away. And then I'll just keep increasing my price by 50 bucks. And I'll just keep getting better at the service. Versus, oh wow, I filled my 20 spots up.

I could go to 30, because there's now more people and I'll just keep charging. No, I was like, every time I added a new person, I went up 50 more dollars until I eventually got to where I was charging $500 a client. And everybody felt like they got great service. And everybody that was coming was a referral from somebody I was already servicing. Dude, that's, you know, we talked about earlier people

like acquisition versus retention. The best form of acquisition is serving your clients. Right. If you're serving your clients at a high level, you're going to get people and that becomes a hard conversation because your client that's referring you out, they're only paying like $200 and they're like, can I only pay Adam 200 in your friends? Like, he charged me 500. Well, Adam, you should have hired him like two years ago. Right. And I mean, you gotta have those difficult comments. Oh, I would have that.

So let's talk about that. I had that all the time. Right, so I would communicate that to clients. I'd say, hey, listen, once I get to this certain amount, like, you guys have a premium rate, so if you go tell your friends, please don't tell them that they can have it for that, because once I'm capped out, I'll go up and

Connection right and what was great was because I had that connection I could have that that and they would go out and they would do the selling for me, bro It's it all comes back to connection, right? This is why from day one I said NCI will be built on a connection based model if you lack connection Everything you need to do tactically Business wise anything scale whatever it is. If you don't have connection, it will not happen. This is why, because we started the podcast

years ago, and very quickly we became quite popular in the podcast space as a fitness podcast. We had a lot of people approach us with certifications who wanted to work with us a lot. And we turned, all of them down because, they just didn't meet our standards. Again, we're not, I mean, we were trainers way before we ever started a podcast.

So we did for, yeah, I did it for over two decades. This is why we wanted to work with you because you get it and the way you talk about it, to us, I mean, that's how we train clients. That's the only people we wanna work with in the fitness space are that way, like you are. And that's why NCI is the only certification that we work with.

So let's transition this a little bit because we talked earlier about how there's a flood of new trainers wanting to become online coaches. But I think a lot of them don't know what it would it's like what it takes What does that transition look like? Yeah, where to start? Yeah, let's say you're trained listening right now And they're like man, I worked you know, I was a trainer at 24 fitness or a gold general whatever they're still closed It's hard for me to build my business. I want to do online coach. I have no idea where to start What does that look like? I think every every coach that's considering going online right now,

or even if we've experienced a lot of people that are in other industries, considering becoming an online coach, fighting against the pandemic, whatever it might be, they feel like there's two options they have, which is do I go learn all of the knowledge, do I learn all of the application, which is great. We all know a lot of really good coaches out there, or do I learn the business side of it?

Do I learn client acquisition? Do I learn systems, scale, etc.? And the truth is, they're both very expensive to invest in traditionally. And I think that the answer is you actually need both. Honestly, that's why we as a company made the pivot that we did is we were like, we're not just going to sell them independent, we're actually going to bring them together. And I think you have to be ready to do both. But you know, one of the things I think we've done exceptionally well inside of our certification,

and if you're seeking certification, if you're trying to go online to become a coach, make sure that you're learning the application side of it and that you're able to coach clients because social proof above everything else will win. And so like when we have a client come in and they get certified with us, they don't answer a bunch of multiple choice questions. They actually have to operate with GuineaPigs. And, you know, Frankie who's in the room with us right now, right? Like, he's a salesperson for us. And he tells people online, he's like, dude, NCI only makes you get two GuineaPigs, get 10 GuineaPigs. And like, let them be

your walking billboards, let them go rave about your services. So when you're ready to build a business around this, you've already serviced 10 people. You've got 10 before and afters that you can showcase. Now you have a justification for charging 200 a month, 300 a month, 500 a month. And by the way, you're learning on the job. You're not saying, oh, well, I know what protein metabolism looks like, so I should be able to help you lose fat. That doesn't work out so well.

Okay. So start by getting some clients, charging them a little, but making them doing a damn good job, so they can become your... I think that's first. If you don't understand that, everything else I mean,

we could say here and talk for the next five hours about business. If you can't do that, if you can't create results, start over. Like, why are you taking somebody's money for a service you can't provide? And I think that's the biggest dickhead move that a lot of coaches are doing is,

I've talked to a lot of coaches, and I asked openly on a webinar recently, I said, if any client walks through the door, are you 100% confident that you can service them? And I'm talking any issue, 95% people said no. And I'm like, then why are you not becoming a slightly better coach? Like that's a problem, right?

And I get it, there's a lot of people focusing on business. And by the way, this was on a business building webinar where I was selling business building services. And I'm like, this is a problem. If you can't do that, go back and show the world that you can. There's a business that I coach, and he's actually, he's not the best marketer in the world. He's really fucking good at getting results.

And he shows testimony after testimony after testimony and that's his big marketing approach. The kid gets like 15 new clients a week. People are like, how's he doing? I'm like, because he's really good at what he does. So I think when we're talking about business, biz dev, if we're not talking about cold DMs, we're not talking about, you know, traditional lead gen strategies,

we're talking about number one, above everything else, create fucking results. I'll take it even a step further, and I know this is crazy to the generation now to say shit like this, but I would encourage these trainers to train these people for free. Amen. Like, you know, and that's just sounds like, oh my God, I how am I supposed to do?

Because I know that you have them listening right now and they're like, well, okay, you're saying, go practice on 10 clients, well, how do I get to clients? I've never been a personal trainer before. How am I going to sell these people? Like, we used to do this all the time. Yeah, I'm like, don't sell them. Go, I mean, I told, I told, I was helping a trainer.

I was a mentoring a trainer the other day. It was just like two weeks ago and I said this and he was just like, for free? And I'm like, well, yeah, dude, you have no fucking experience. Go get your experience. You believe you have, you've listened to every Mind Pump episode, you've got multiple certifications,

you've got, you have a degree, you have experience enough to have, you're gonna be smarter than most of these clients, now get out there and practice your knowledge. See if you can apply it and see if you can get these people's results and you shouldn't be charging money if you can't prove to yourself first that you can do that. And don't be afraid to go work for free. Well, I'll take that a step further.

Is you said this person asked you, how do I get people for free? How do I get 10 people in Justin? You said friends and family. Somebody letting you work with them is a function of what trust. Right? It's a function of trust.

If there are not 10 people in this world that you've added enough value to, that trust you enough to help them, it's something like losing weight, which we all know people want to fucking do. Right. What have you been doing with your life? Right. And the truth is, and I mean this whole heartily,

like we can all laugh about it, but if you haven't done that, where you start is go start adding value to people. Start your good point. Ask them what they need from you and give them a function of value. Like, help them in their life. Like, if they want business advice, help them. But most people want health advice and do it. Try this and let me know how it works in call me in three days. Right? And they're like, wait, this person actually cares. Okay, do that. If you can't, like, and I think that's a great place to start, is you should be able to get eight to 10 people

that you can help for free. You should create badass testimonials, and that should be the function. But from there, that's where we can really get into Biz Devs shit, and that's where I've hacked this. And honestly, I've spent the last year inside of that, dude, all confidently say, I think the system we've built is changing online forever.

We've got coaches that in their first month of the thus have done upwards of 50k have done. I mean, we've made three millionaires in the last year. It's been awesome. And that's been a lot of fun. Wow. That's exciting. The free thing is funny to me because when I was a trainer, it's what you did.

You gave recessions in your job, bro. Now run a Facebook ad and get 4 for 199. Like come on. Yeah, but it's because, I mean, what are you giving away for free? What you're doing is you're asking them, you're saying, I'm going to help you for free in exchange for the experience I'm going to learn for me. Well, in sales always comes down to two things.

Value and price. Amen. And if you cannot convince somebody to work with you for free, you're sure're sure shit gonna have a hard time trying to convince people to give you $200 So at least hit that out the park first first into a place where you can add enough value that people are like Oh my god, you're gonna give this to me for free hell yes if you can't convince 10 people to do that You need to start there. We also see that at scale I see so many of the quote unquote gurus that are like, well, just run Facebook ads. And I'm like, wait a minute, your offer isn't converting to the people that know you, that know you like you

and trust you, right? Your offer isn't converting. So here's an idea. Let's send it to 10 billion people that don't know you like you and trust you and expect a different conversion. Are you fucking serious? Zero chance that is going to work, right?

But also to your point of helping people for free how many of those people sound like when you did it Adam when you guys did it in the gym how many of those people turned into paying clients out what the not only do they turn it every client all of them they become one of the most powerful advertising tools because you if you do a good job right you those you end up changing those people's lives there are far more likely to go out and tell five, six, seven other people. They're you're evangelists, yes, by the way, this all speaks to like one

simple thing that I believe to be true. That lead generation is a function of value. It is not a function of anything else. And so like in our space, you know, we hear in the digital space, we'll just put out your freebie. There's a rule in my system. If you use the word freebie, I will kick you in the dick and kick you out, like not allowed in our system. Because if you're putting out quote unquote freebies, you don't believe there's value. So why the fuck should your perspective client think that there's value? And so we call it, we call it value exchange content. We are going to give you value, like very valuable content in exchange for like your information, right? Your email, your, your name, your phone number, all those things.

But again, it's lead generation at its core. I mean, we all understand what a lead is. Somebody seeing you and knowing who you are, that's not a lead, that's just awareness. But real lead generation where you capture somebody's information comes down to a function of value. There should be a, if you thought about it, all the coaches listening, if you think that

your somebody's email address is worth $5,000, what are you gonna put out there that they're willing to invest $5,000 into you with? Is it your free fucking two day cleanse? That's worth five grand? Like no, that's a terrible piece of content. So there's no value, so you now have no leads, that's why you suck, that's why your business is failing. And so instead start thinking about it

in terms of value exchange content to generate those leads. I think that has to be understood. You know what's funny about this too, is that there may be some people listening who are thinking about online coaches and they're like, oh man, that's gonna take a while. You know, that's gonna be a lot of work.

Well, yeah. Building it, you know, when we started Mind Pump, we did the podcast for a year. For free, we did nothing, we sold nothing, we pitched nothing. It was all about can we produce enough value for people to the point where they're gonna ask us, hey, can we buy something from you

because you guys are giving us so much value? And then at that point, we know this is a business. Otherwise, it was just a labor of love and we were all totally fine doing it. We used to meet once or twice a week after work, seven o'clock at a clock a night, we podcasted for two or three hours. And we did it because we loved what we did.

But it took a year before we started to realize that okay, this may, it looks like we can actually turn this into a business that's kind of cool. So if you wanna be a coach and you're listening, you're like, oh, that's a lot of hard work. Maybe you don't really wanna be a coach. Right, maybe it's not for you.

It's the same theory. If we can't convince people to listen to our information for free, how the shit are we going to sell them something? You know what I'm saying? That's even less connected to us. So go ahead. Oh, well, even there, like I'll shout out like one of my clients, like shout out my boy Tyler Newton, right? And he, this guy had hired another coach and gotten in a really bad situation. First of all, don't ever be that coach that's like trying to take money when someone else is like working there. I like I showed up as like support and I was just like, listen, like if you wanna run the advice by me, I'm happy and like, he ended up just asking me

for like a lot of advice. And ultimately over time, he's like, dude, I have to pay you. Like, I have to like join one of your programs. Again, function of, I gave value and value and value. And like, he finally came, you know, through one of our funnels and was like, dude, okay, it's finally time I'm gonna pay you. But I was already doing millions of dollars at that point.

I didn't have to do that for free. I did it because, again, every day, this is the core foundational strategy that we use as a company is, you know, we're, we run Facebook ads. We have all of these things, of course. But like at the end of the day, our core strategy is we're going to out give value more than any other entity in this world. And like we look at our competitors, we're like, well, you're not putting out very valuable stuff. We're going, you know, we're connecting to people live

every day. We're letting you in trainings for free. Dude, our next live event, if you pay for a ticket to it, I'm personally paying for your hotel room and your meals. Like, we are always trying to hack value creation. And I think that's why we've seen a rapid acceleration and the coaches that work with us have also seen the same.

Well, your coaches are becoming successful because of it. And that's what's making it, what's making it grow. So I'm going to ask you a more specific question. Okay. You're, again, you're listening, maybe you're a trainer in the gyms, you want to make the transition to online coaching. You have a, an ASM certification, you've been working with clients, how different is the education you need to get for online versus when you were training people in person? Is there a difference or is it the same? I'm not going to speak to other certifications out there. I'm going to make a blanket statement that whatever certification

you got needs to have a connection model. If you know how to connect and you can connect digitally, I think the process is relatively similar. I think that the, I think we've touched on it, the frequency of touch, the frequency of connection is drastically going to increase. I think you have to have communication skills via text rate. We all know like Adam, I could send you a text that says, fuck you, right? You literally can be like, ah, Jay, it's fucking with me or you keep you like, oh, what's he pissed off about? Right?

We don't understand tonality. We don't understand voice through two words on a phone on a screen. And so as a coach, you have to be able to pull that out of somebody. You have to be able to emote through text. Are you willing to do voice? Are you willing to set parameters in your business? Being an in-person trainer, your parameters are set for you.

When you leave the gym at 6 p.m., effectively, you have clocked out, right? I, again, I lost a relationship because I didn't have parameters. And so, if you text to me at 1.30 in the morning, I probably heard my phone picked it up and texted you back. Like, are you going to do that as an online coach? And by the way, if you do that on day one

because you think that that is value, which it's not, but if you think that that is your value, how do you now recant that at day 180 where you're more busy and you no longer want to wake up at 130 in the morning? So I think that, I think it's a great point. I think it's a great point.

Much bigger structures. And did you can't put out things on day one that you're not only to do on day one? You have to. You have to. Initially. Well, so you guys specialize in online coaching. Yes.

Exactly. So everything that you guys coach to teach, train coaches is about the online coaching model. Yes. So we did a little pivot last year. I mean, obviously NCI, in my opinion, obviously in bias, but it's the leader in nutritional education and application Like I think that any coach that's come to our stuff, you know We have every course every specialty. We are making you a complete coach You know, we really don't sell the courses like one off as much anymore

We try to get you invested in the whole package because it's like going to college, right? Like English 201 can't be taken before 101, right? You know, the functional, you know, when I went to anatomy and physiology, I had lecture and I had lab, right? You kind of need all of it. So that's how we position the institute. But last year we said, you know, people were creating a lot of coaches, but we need coaches that can actually acquire clients, coaches that actually can build a business, because let's be honest, if they don't have a business, then people

aren't getting served, right? Like us helping coaches build their business is a way of service. I don't know if I said it on here last time, but we're on a billion person mission. NCI wants to change one billion lives, and we're going to do that one of two ways. I mean, they're going to certify one of two ways. I'm either going to certify One million coaches and they're all going to touch one thousand lives a lot of our coaches have already done that or we're going to get 100,000 people and they're all going to touch 10,000 people But however the math adds up I want one billion lives change before I leave this earth and I'm on a fucking mission to get there

And me equipping you just with the knowledge to do so, I realized last year was not enough. And so we brought in a whole new program this year that we call coaching mastery. And it's literally the start up to scale zero to multiple six figures, exactly how I did it, how all of my clients have done it. And dude, it's changing lives, man. Like in the mind pump form, the got coaches that have come in, like I fucking love those people. By the way, all the people that come to us from you guys are always my favorite.

But like they, it's just amazing to see people light up with possibility. And I think the coolest part is people are more excited at the fact that they're changing lives than they are about making money. I love that you say that the leaders in education and application. And because, application, because before we met, there's other certifications out there

in both nutrition and training that I see a lot of value. They're really good. Yeah, they're really good. The information they provide, it's solid, it's spot on. But what I thought you did a really good job is filling that gap on the application process. And that was something that took us all years of experience to realize, oh shit, wait a second,

that's more important. That's the most important part of it. That part is more important. You can have all the degrees and all the education, but if you can't apply it, and I didn't know that until I experienced it again, as a manager managing other trainers. And I'd have PhDs working underneath me.

And then I'd have the kid that's 20 years old and has like one certification. And many times that kid would outperform the PhD. And it was like, oh my God, I didn't see this coming because this, I know for sure, this guy's got way more knowledge. But boy, this kid just has this ability to connect to his people and communicate a little bit of information that he has and his business does so much better. I tell you the story of how NCI came to be, right? I don't remember. I literally I was leaving a mastermind in California. I was living in Arizona at the time and this guy, his well-known internet marketer, he's like, dude, like

your next level is you have to teach people to create the results you're known for. And I was like, probably there's 10 million certifications out there. I'm like, it's not that hard. Like, I literally in my head, I actually was like, I'm not anything special. I've just really good at what I do. And he was like, no, like, you have a special skill. You need to package that up. And like, that's what you got to sell.

And I was like, whatever, completely blew it off. Six-hour drive LA, to Scottsdale. Halfway through it hit me like a ton of bricks. I'll see, I do one thing better than everybody, which is I apply. Like, walked in my door, in my house in Arizona, opened up my journal, wrote out the whole curriculum, in like 10 minutes, like all the chapter headlines, it never changed. Like, I had that moment of clarity and I knew like, this is what's gonna change the fucking world. We did the first cert three and a half years ago in Chicago, and all of those coaches leveled up immediately,

and I was like, okay, this is it, and I was super confident at that moment, because application is the game. We could sit here and all of us are intelligent enough to talk about the next great business ideas of the world for Gary Vee said it at Stanford, right, when he gave it Stanford talk. He said, we could all sit in this room, all of a super smart

and mastermind the next great business ideas for the next 100 years, hundreds of billions of dollars, which motherfucker is going to get up and go do it. Who's going to go out there, take their lumps, like who's going to go out there and understand the information that's being given to them, you know, sort it accordingly, plan accordingly, and ultimately create success. That's what a coach has to do. A client is not showing up, quote unquote, whole. And it all goes back to the reason

that a client hires you. I don't know how many of you guys ever showed up with a client that was like, hey, I'm perfect. I feel amazing. I just really want to give you money to spend time with you. Like it never happens. Just them gets that.

I mean, just for sure. Just for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Today it does. But, you know, they come to you and they're like, I've tried this and it doesn't work. Okay, what was the effect of that? I've tried this, it didn't work.

Great, what was the effect of that, right? I ran myself in the ground. I have this thought about myself. I have this problem. So where the textbook says, okay, assuming all things normal, this is how physiology works. Here's how you manipulate the body to create fat loss or whatever you're trying to do. The problem is in real life that whole assuming all things normal never happens. And that's where you have to be able to be a good coach,

deduce the information given to you and create the appropriate application. And that's where you have to be able to be a good coach, deduce the information given to you and create the appropriate application. And that's what I love about it. Very, very well said. Well, always a pleasure working with you talking to you. You're one of our favorite people. I think you're doing it. You guys are doing it the right way.

I mean, just from our experience, training clients, as long as we did, you understand what really is important in terms of getting people to get to those goals and then stay there the real transformation the lifelong transformations and it's good because You know trainers. They're always special to us coaches and trainers. They're on the front lines They're the ones that are actually doing the work I mean we get it we get to talk to a lot of people on this podcast and through our media and we have a lot of fun But let's be honest the the people really changing lives,

the ones working with people in person. So thanks for coming on, man. Yeah, appreciate it. I mean, front lines 2021, post craziness in this world, trainers and nutrition coaches are on the front line, saving the world against future things like this. I think all of us can, yeah,

we couldn't be out of more passion at time. I love it. Thanks, man. Thank you for listening to MindPomuk. If your goal is to build and shape your body, All the most common ever. Yeah, like we couldn't be out of more passion at time. Love it. Thanks, man. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com.

The RGB Superbundle includes MAPS and a BOLIC, MAPS Performance, and MAPS ASTEDIC. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers trainers but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee and you can get it now plus

other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindP Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump!