Ep. #781: Cody McBroom on How to Be an Awful Fitness Coaching Client

Mike: Hello, and welcome to Muscle for Life. I’m your host, Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for a fun interview I did with Cody Mick Broom, who is a repeat guest on my show and who is the CEO and founder of the Tailored Coaching Method, and who is also a legion athlete. And in this podcast we talk about how to be bad and not like Mad Max Lone Wolf, badass, bad, how to be a.

Coaching client how to be uncoachable bad. You see what some people don’t understand when they first hire a coach is it’s not a one way, one and done transaction that gets you at least halfway to your goal. If you want results, you have to do the work and people generally, But you also have to be coachable.

You have to be willing to learn. You have to be willing to question things that you’ve assumed are right or assumed you should be doing. You may have to change ingrained habits, and the coach is there to help you, of course, but even the best coach can’t get results with the worst type of client. And so I thought that would make for an interesting discussion.

What are the big mistakes that coaching clients make that get in the way of their results and that make it very hard for coaches to help them. And as Cody has. Successful coaching business for some time now. And he has coached many people himself. And now he mostly manages, I think, all of the coaches that he has.

But he has plenty of experience with this. And so in this episode we talk about some of the ways that people sabotage their results when they’re working with a coach, including having the wrong expectations. That’s a big one, thinking they already know everything or thinking they know the most important things already.

We talk about why it’s important to not make unfair comparisons and why you have to look at the bigger picture. We also talk about the tendency to overthink things and to fall into the paralysis by analysis trap, which often takes the form of always wanting to know why. With every little instruction, every little thing the coach asks the client to do, the client pushes back why?

Once in depth explanations before they will do anything. And oftentimes these exchanges can go on for days before any action is actually taken. And when you repeat that again and again, of course, that becomes a major hindrance to results. Also, if you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my v i p one-on-one coaching service because my team and I have helped people of all ages and all circumstances lose fat, build muscle, and get into the best shape of their life faster than they ever thought possible, and we can do the same for you.

We make getting fitter, leaner, and stronger paint by numbers simple by carefully managing every aspect of your training and your diet for you. Basically, we take out all of the guesswork, so all you have to do is follow the plan and watch your body change day after day, week after week and month after month.

What’s more, we’ve. That people are often missing just one or two crucial pieces of the puzzle, and I’d bet a shiny shackle, it’s the same with you. You’re probably doing a lot of things right, but dollars to donuts, there’s something you’re not doing correctly or at all that’s giving you the most grief.

Maybe it’s your calories or your macros. Maybe it’s your exercise selection. Maybe it’s your food choices. Maybe you’re not progressively overloading your muscles or maybe it’s something else. And whatever it is, here’s what’s important. Once you identify those one or two things you’re missing once you figure it out.

That’s when everything finally clicks, that’s when you start making serious progress. And that’s exactly what we do for our clients. To learn more, head over to www.by legion.com. That’s bui legion.com/vip and schedule your free consultation call, which by the way is not a high pressure sales call. It’s really just a discovery call where we get to know you better and see if you’re a good fit for the service.

And if you’re not for any reason, we will be able to share resources that’ll point you in the right direction. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, and if you also want to finally stop spinning your wheels and make more progress in the next few months than you did in the last few years, check out my VIP coaching [email protected] legion.com/vi.

Hey, Cody. It’s my first video interview maybe ever on my podcast. I think. I’ve done video interviews on other podcasts, but yeah, I’ve always just stuck to audio because I didn’t wanna mess with video and I was like, Yeah, whatever. I’ll just do audio. But we’re already posting the episodes to YouTube and we’re posting audio only, which is of course, that’s not how you do YouTube.

So I figured, I don’t care too much about YouTube right now, strategically, like I don’t put much thought into it really any at all, actually. But I figured, eh, if I’m already gonna do the work, and I might as well make it more YouTube friendly, 

Cody: right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think. The clips you can take out of it always helped too.

Cause if somebody can see your face, even if it’s 

Mike: true. Yeah. For even social media. 

Cody: That’s true. Exactly. Yeah. Good point. No, I’m the same way. I don’t put too much emphasis on YouTube. And just recently we started doing a little bit more because we did a SEO overhaul and just started tweaking and adjusting and fixing things.

And it was we have all this content, let’s repurpose it and use it. Because now Google owns SEO or YouTube. They have for a while now, but let’s do something with it. But I’m the same 

Mike: way. It’s a big opportunity. It’s actually something I may focus more on maybe the end of this year, going into next year.

It’s just to. The way I want to do it, I’m gonna need a few people and they’re gonna have to be good at their respective jobs. So I’m gonna need a good videographer, a good editor, and probably a good administrative person to deal with just the mechanical like logistics of running a YouTube channel properly.

Yeah, and there is a big opportunity there, like talking about seo. It is much easier to rank for big terms on YouTube than it is Google, for example. It’s just Google’s algorithms are a lot more sophisticated. Obviously I’m talking, when I say Google, google.com. Algorithms are much more sophisticated.

There’s probably a lot more competition, particularly in our space, even though of course there is a lot on YouTube. But I just know that from quite a few successful marketers who are living it both on Google and YouTube, and they’re still impressed at how much easier it is to make YouTube go than Google.

Cody: So yeah, no I, And that’s funny cuz that’s actually a good, since I know what we’re gonna be talking about today, . Yeah. Actually is a good survey, right? I reached out to somebody who knows way more about SEO and YouTube and blogging and everything, and I was like, Hey, let me pay you for as much time as I can.

So you can teach me how to be better at that because that’s not my specialty yet. But I want to learn more and grow. And the only way to do that is to steal somebody else’s knowledge. And I’m not stealing cause I’m gonna give them money for it, but point being is I’m graciously accept.

Exactly. Yeah. So I’m getting help from somebody 

Mike: else. And yeah, that is a good segue into what I wanted to talk to you about, which is the title that I think this is what came to mind initially. Although what often comes to mind right away is in anything remotely creative is never what you should go with cuz it’s usually just something cliche and you can do better.

But I do the title of How to Be Utterly Uncoachable. And this is something that I haven’t written about, I haven’t spoken about. I have interviewed some coaches, you being one of them and a few others in the past about had any. Actually, no. I think about it, I don’t know if I’ve ever even come at it from the positive angle of how to be a good client, but I thought this would be a.

Maybe a little bit more of a fun spin on how to be a bad client if we’re talking fitness specifically. And then another reason I liked this topic is what you’re gonna be talking about, the principles of how to fail as a fitness client, I think apply to really any activity or endeavor and just life in general.

I think one of the easiest ways to fail in life is to it’s to, to do some of the things that you’re gonna be sharing. And I think we’ll have some fun tangents connecting those do. 

Cody: Yeah, no, I first of all, I really like the title. Actually. That’s a great first shot at a title for this one. And to be honest with you, man, it’s if I think back of when I first got into fitness, it started because I met a person who became a mentor to me.

And I remember I was just, I was 18 so I was still very young. I was very ignorant to meeting him because he offered me help and I had a knee brace on. I just had another surgery on my knee. I was finally trying to lose some weight cuz it was like I got overweight. At this point, all my friends are all playing college ball.

I’m going to community college for business, and I’m in the school gym doing leg extensions with this knee brace on. He was like, Hey, I think I can show you some this is like the functional era. Like I can show you more functional ways to do that and help you out. And I just looked at him and was like some old dude and I was like, All right bro.

He was like, All right, if you feel like stopping by my class, it’s in building 12, blah, blah. And I ignored it for at least a few weeks. But then I ended up skipping my class cuz I just didn’t like what my teacher was saying. He basically was teaching business class and I asked him how many business he own.

He said None. And I said, Okay, this is ridiculous. I left, stopped in his class and it turns out he is like good friends with Michael Boyle, Greg Cook, Dan, John, Charlie Weinroth, like all these people that back then were really leading the strength and conditioning world. And he had coached Olympics swimmers, like he just had this crazy history.

Once I Googled him and that turned into my first mentor, who introduced me to my next mentor, who introduced me to the whole world of fitness. And I hired coaches and I sought out and invested in education and seminars and all these things. But point being is I was openly willing to be coachable in every single scenario cuz it.

I know next to nothing compared to any of these people. And I’m my ego, I’ll put that aside. I don’t care. I’ll admit that. Teach me more. And I just kept going down that path, which led into email marketing. It led into team building and being a leader. And so much more than just training and nutrition.

I’ve read on marriage, I’ve read on world religions cuz it’s just To me, the one thing that’s infinite is knowledge. It’s education, and the only way to become better and smarter, more intelligent, live longer, live wealthier, everything is to take from other people. And even dude, like I’ve taken so much from you without you, I’ve told you before, so you know it, but from afar and then also like selfishly emailing you and interviewing you and getting interviewed and trying to listen to how you operate and watch after I talk to you and see what you guys do, and then pick from that.

You’re never gonna reinvent the wheel. Take from other people. I think there’s a quote by Picasso said, An artist steal from others, or something like that. Yeah, 

Mike: it’s I think the punchline is great. Artists steal, it’s good artists. While you’re talking, I’ll mute my mic and I’ll Google it, but yeah, the punchline is great.

Artists steal . Exactly. 

Cody: Yeah. So there’s 

Mike: a book by Austin Cleon, I think his name is Right. Steel. Like an artist or something 

Cody: is good. Exactly. I have it on my bookshelf. It’s a, it’s an interesting book. It’s cool. It’s laid out really cool. But yeah, to me it’s, I think that’s the idea of a lifelong learner.

I’ve heard somebody else call it a white belt mentality. Even if you’re a black belt, anything, you have a white belt, white’s good mentality and it’s 

Mike: Yeah, so good artist’s. Copy, great artist, steel. 

Cody: There you go. There you go. There you go. As you get better at that, I think you learn.

And I actually, this is something I learned from you a long time. I think I was talking to you via email about some website changes I was thinking of making or something when you were talking about like making a swipe file right? To start like browsing and don’t just look in your industry. And I was like, Oh shit.

Maybe I’ll go steal from other industries too. And I started looking at apparel and supplements and all these other type of industries and companies and taking their styles and ideas and designs and the way they have the experience for the user. And that helped me more because people in my industry don’t think like that to me.

Yeah, I think the general 

Mike: state of marketing is pretty poor actually in fitness. Of course, there are good marketers. I’m not saying that’s the case, but there aren’t as many sophisticated marketers in our space as, let’s say, I think health and beauty is an example where you have a lot of sophisticated marketing, a lot of money, and a lot of very skilled marketers.

There’s a lot of money to be made in that space. So not that there isn’t in fitness, but generally speaking, I of course maintain a swipe file too. And most of it is not, It’s not related to supplements, it’s not food. There are some not too much e-commerce that you’ll find a lot of good branding and packaging in food e-com is.

There are some I think a few food companies in my swipe file, but there are quite a few health and beauty and just software. You have a lot of really slick marketing in the software 

Cody: space. Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think speaking as a coach, I think being a great coach also means being a great client.

So that’s where they all tie in together. And we briefly touch on this, but I’ve met a lot of people who they get in their own way of being more successful, being happier, getting better results in anything, any endeavor they’re chasing because they’re stuck in their own ways.

They’re unwilling to let other people in to hear what they’re doing and tell them they’re wrong. They’re unwilling to hear that and change. And I think at the end of the day if you can’t be aware of what you’re not doing, enough or great at all, you’re not gonna have the awareness to change anything.

If you don’t change anything, you’re not gonna get results. Cuz everybody listen to this, wants to change something, they wanna get better, period. It’s a never any desire as 

Mike: a client who’s signing on, let’s say somebody’s hiring someone who works with you, someone on your team, maybe even working you directly.

And of course you’re gonna speak from personal experience. I’m assuming these days you spend more time running your businesses and you don’t coach as much personally as you did in the past, but you certainly have a lot of experience. So when somebody signs on for coaching, People listening, I could hear them thinking isn’t that already not an issue?

Like they’ve reached out and they’ve signed up for coaching. Aren’t they already in the mindset of wanting to be 

Cody: coached? That’s a great question. And what I’ve learned over time is that it’s one of those things where they think the transaction itself is going to give them a result almost, right?

If I pay for this, that’s like the one and only step I need to take. But the reality is what you’re paying for is somebody to help structure and keep you accountable of a way to build more discipline in willpower and create the type of personality and characteristics that are required in order to constantly seek change.

And that’s where I think people fall off, is that change requires sacrifice. And that’s the biggest downfall is like you can pay me. But I’m gonna tell you some things that you don’t necessarily want to hear, and I think that’s a big problem in the industry too, is that not enough coaches are willing to be transparent with that.

Hey, this shit is hard and you’re gonna have to plan ahead. You’re probably gonna have to say no to some things. But you know when you’re lean and maybe you can see some abs or you can see all your abs and some veins in your arms. If you’re a guy and you like grip something and that’s a good feeling, that feeling’s gonna feel much better than the one or two times.

You gotta say no. Cuz we do practice a flexible approach, but even a smart, flexible approach still has some restriction, right? The definition of a deficit is to restrict technically. So I think for most people that’s the biggest issue, is assuming that the transaction itself is going to give them willpower or self discipline.

When in reality you’re paying somebody to help you create it. You still have to create it yourself. You still have to do the work. Nobody can replace that. We can just show you from our experience, and I’ve been doing this a long time, I’ll tell you the roadblocks you’re gonna face. I’ll tell you the struggles you’re gonna have or the best solutions in order to continually move forward.

But I can’t do the work for you. I can’t just. Hand it to you on a silver platter, right? . 

Mike: Yeah. So what I’m hearing is maybe we could summarize that in just having the wrong expectations maybe in terms of what this is going to entail and what it’s going to 

Cody: take. And part of that is, speaking of bad marketing, it’s false promises inside of marketing, right?

I don’t know if it’s out yet, it probably will be by the time this goes out, but we did a podcast on this talking about coaches and trainers and people in the industry. They create marketing and promises that it’s going to be easy and it’s gonna be so simple. And sometimes people assume too much from that.

They’re, like you said, they create false expectations because of the marketing they’re seeing when in reality, and you see this over time, like you see companies that do, I’m not gonna name certain people, but companies that kind of blow up and it seems like they’re just killing it. And then they slowly disappear, right?

And it, And then there’s these companies like ours that just slowly but surely just. Going up up. And then they stay up there. And the reason is because it’s transparent. There’s a lot of people who choose the quick fixes first, and then they come back to companies that do it the right way with an evidence based approach that is gonna be honest and say, This is gonna take longer than you think.

Okay, you’re gonna have to do this consistently every day. Okay? This is gonna cost your time and money you have to invest. It’s not something you’re spending money, it’s on. It’s something you’re investing on. But again, at the end of the day it’s creating those expectations for the individual at the very beginning.

And that’s, I think, where you see. If they are truly coachable, right? If they’re uncoachable, they’re gonna deflect it. They’re gonna resist it. But if they’re open and willing to learn and hear you out and understand the actual process it takes, that’s a good sign of being coachable in the first place.

Yeah and that 

Mike: makes me think of, this is a copywriting thing, but a general marking just tactic that it works to bring the right people further into your copy and into your sales pitch. But it also works to help vet the people. And this is particularly relevant if we’re talking clients because there are a lot of people you actually wouldn’t want as a client.

Like you want a very specific type of person, especially when you only have so much time to give and you don’t want to waste that time with people who are, for example, Uncoachable. But there’s a point of explicitly explaining who. Your thing is not for, whether it’s a book or a service or anything.

Anybody who’s studied a bit about copywriting and done copywriting successfully knows to think about including this doesn’t fit for all pitches, but it’s something that is also useful, again, for just being honest about this is not for you if you are not only not looking to actually make changes or maybe looking for miracle solutions or magic bullet fixes, and there are large segments of any market, the more unsophisticated, not stupid per se, just unsophisticated, inexperienced people who, that is where many people start and they’re not ready then.

What you do, what I do, they have to maybe get burned a couple of times. Waste money taking fat burners that claim that they’ll lose 20 pounds in 30 days. Or I just saw an ad, a buddy of mine sent it to me. It’s a good ad, but it’s a perfect example of what you’re talking about here. It was an Instagram ad.

And it was promoting a fitness app. And it had some illustrations for, let’s see, it was twenties, I think. They segmented okay, for twenties, here’s your workout. It was an illustration of a younger fit looking guy abs, but it was just, it was like, oh, flutter kicks and planks and air squats and like two sets.

Two sets, two sets, right? And then it went all the way up to, I think, fifties or sixties. And it’s like this jacked, again, illustration, big beard. Like the cool badass 50 year old guy. And again, it’s two sets of pike pushups and two sets of Bulgarian split squats and things that sound, But anybody who knows anything about fitness, they’re like, This is gonna do anything.

This is like a 15 minute workout. But that’s of course the implication. They didn’t say only 15 minutes. But even if you don’t know much about fitness, you’re like, that doesn’t sound like that much. I could do these things anyway. So people often, when they get into any marketplace, They have to get it out of their system.

They have to get the shiny object syndrome out of their system before they’re ready to 

Cody: make real change. No, I a hundred percent agree and I think that’s hilarious because I’m unaware of age specific exercises like that. Oh, my flutter kicks need to change once I turn 30 . Correct? 

Mike: Yes. That’s science.

That’s my biology. Actually read a book. 

Cody: This is not for you. Marketing is actually really intelligent too, because there’s certain people who. May actually fall into that. This is not for me category, but they desire the change to be that person, right? And so it can also trigger the people who are like, I’m not there yet, but I would like to be, and maybe this is the person to help me get there because I wanna stop saying that I fall into these bad habits, or I don’t do these things, or whatever it may be.

But I agree. I think people have to do, for lack of a better term, stupid. With their diet and training a little bit. I did at the beginning. We all, I 

Mike: did for years. Yeah. The only redeeming quality is, I didn’t think it was good necessarily. I was I guess ambivalent about it. It was, I just got into the habit of working out.

 It was almost just exercise really, and I enjoyed it and I tried little random diet things that I had read in magazines or heard about and, oh, add some cardio in, I’ll do some sprints and try various things. Not becoming dogmatic about any of it, and still being cognizant of the fact that I wasn’t quote unquote taking it seriously.

Like I couldn’t really say that I knew much of anything about fitness. I could just say I’ve been doing it for a while, and by the sheer repetition of an activity, I’ve gotten something of results and gotten, maybe better than average at 

Cody: it. But that’s it. Yeah. If you’re a newbie, you’re gonna get some results and sometimes it’s fun.

You’re doing shit that seems again, I was just reading Flex Magazine and doing whatever I saw like Flex Wheeler doing, and it was like, it was exciting, it was fun. I was doing these crazy bro splits, doing weird diets, and it was just like a cool way to get into it. But if you keep studying and learning, you learn that it’s bullshit.

But I think there’s this concept of being and I’m sure you’ve heard of it, I know John Barard wrote a lot about it in his book. I think it. Change makers, I think is the book. It’s a really good book for newer coaches and really just anybody. But it talks about the generalist rather than the specialist.

And I think there’s like a balance that needs to be had there. Cuz you refer to marketing to a very specific person, which would imply a niche. But I think there’s a difference between specializing and nicheing, right? Nicheing would be nicheing towards people who are coachable. And I think that’s a really good approach to take because it implies that you’re giving transparent market.

Really good organic free content that teaches people things that kind of weeds out the people who won, maybe don’t need coaching yet. They just need to start, identify what protein is at the grocery store, and you eat that more often. You’ll be fine for a while. And the people who maybe can do a little bit on their own and be self-sufficient, and then when they come to you, they’re an even better and more coachable client because they won’t take it to the next level.

Rather than being a specialist who has an Instagram bio that says you work with 30 year old women who have thyroid dysfunction, two kids and work a job and whatever it is. Like just stupid specific stuff. That’s just too niche blonde. Only though. Yeah. . It’s just ridiculous. And it’s, and funny enough, it’s out there.

And for people listening who aren’t coaches, that’s might be a good way to, I shouldn’t say a red flag, because if you are a pro golfer with a specific injury and you find a golf trainer that works, that, that’s great. That’s a great specialty. But there are some like farfetched niches that people put in their Instagram bio.

Better. Just wild and probably a red flag. I think a generalist is a little bit better because usually a generalist has more experience with a lot of people. And that’s part of the reason why I’ve never niche down to a specific category because I’ve been coaching for over 10 years, and like you said, I don’t coach as much as I used to cuz I run a team of coaches, but I’m coaching coaches on how to coach and we work with hundreds and hundreds of just totally radically different people. And over the years I’ve met so many different people that have done so many different things and had so many different goals and it’s allowed me to be more of a generalist.

I think that’s okay. Especially if you’re gonna build a team. But again, that’s, I’ve had to be coachable in so many different areas cuz I had to learn about these different people and there are different issues and disfunctions and stuff like that. Just to bring it full circle to that idea of being uncoachable, I don’t know if there was.

Specific points that you wanted to highlight, but I think, We’ll, I 

Mike: think we should. I think just to summarize quickly we’ve specified, I’m, this is me just paraphrasing what we’ve been discussing, but understanding why you are getting a, why you hiring a coach in the first place, right?

If you think you have it all figured out, then maybe you don’t need coaching yet. , it’s not gonna go very well anyway. Having the right expectations, and hopefully your coach is giving realistic expectations and being wary of things that just sound too good to be true, really, because, especially in fitness, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is not true.

I 

Cody: think a lot of times. If you are willing to hire a coach, you’re most likely willing to eliminate your excuses. That’s part of the reason why you should hire a coach, is if you’re making too many excuses. And I would throw rationalizations in there as well. A lot of times people rationalize with themselves as to why they may not need something.

I put together a really cool, 

Mike: The sour grapes phenomenon. Where you disparage or you criticize what you can’t have kind of thing. Yeah, 

Cody: exactly. And comparing to others, comparing in that sense, that’s a whole nother, I think that would be a good one to bring up too. Yeah. But I created this, it was actually just complete by accident, but I don’t know if it would be analogy or an abbreviate or whatever, but it’s, they’re all A’s, But it was, you have to first find awareness, you have to be aware of what you are doing wrong and that it can be fixed or improved. Then you have to accept that you are wrong. You don’t know how to do it, you’re not doing it right. And awareness and acceptance are two different things, right? Because like we said, a lot of times people will become aware but then rationalize as to why that’s not the case or it’s well in these circumstances.

No, just accept that it is what it is and try to move forward. And that needs to be followed by action. Because if you don’t take action on hiring a coach or what the coach tells you or making moves or anything, you cannot accelerate, right? So it’s this awareness, acceptance, action, acceleration.

And I’ve used that with clients to try to get them to open up their mind a little bit. At the end of the day, and this is where I think it translates to all categories of success. If you look at any successful entrepreneur, ceo, physique athlete, pro athlete, coach of athletes, any actor, whatever, they all follow that, right?

They’re all aware of themselves, of their body, of their surroundings, of their lifestyle, of their routines. They all accept what life is and that they need to change something. They take action on that change, and that’s the reason why they accelerate. And if you link these commonalities and see these people doing these things, and for coaches listening, using stories and analogies and examples and case studies is the best way to get people.

Open up to it. Because if you’re just using scientific definitions and education, they’re 

Mike: not a coach. That is a very good point that it’s good to have that information if you need it, but you’re gonna get more of an emotional response out. Stories out of being able to explain how somebody else you worked with was in a very similar situation.

And here’s what we did about it. And I’m reading a book right now that I’m gonna do a book club episode on. If you’ve read much on relationships, you’ve probably read it. This is something I wish I would’ve read a long time ago because I agree with a lot of it and I’ve had to learn some of these lessons the hard way.

That is the five love languages. . Have you read that book? Yep. I’ve read it a couple times. There’s a lot of anecdote in it and there are some nods to research here and there, but that it’s not that style of book and that style of writing or communicating is more inviting. It’s more, it’s a bit warmer than just sharing data.

And there’s nothing wrong with just sharing data, but it really depends who you’re talking to and what their circumstances are. And so in the case of relationships, this is a very emotionally a charged thing. So I think the communication style in this book, I’m not surprised that this book has done far better than another book that I read.

It was the, I think the Seven Principles of Successful Marriage, I think as what it’s called. Yeah. That book has done well, but that’s more of. An objective kind of evidence based analysis. A lot of studies in there. Yeah. And observational stuff. Okay. We’ve seen now all of these relationships and now we’ve teased out the associations between these behaviors and it’s good information, but it doesn’t resonate in the same way as this five love languages when you hear your circumstances.

Like whatever. And for me, I think that my wife and I have a good relationship, but I would like it to be better. Just like I would like everything to be better. That’s why I’m reading the book. So there’s a, I guess a little bit of almost like. Metacognition for me where I’m seeing, eh, okay, I understand that one.

Understand Oh, that one, that little story actually resonates with me because I’ve said those things to myself or I’ve said those things to Sarah, and of course now he has my attention more than with anecdotes that. Are just not representative of me in my situation. 

Cody: Yeah. I think there’s very few, like I’m into evidence and studies and stuff, and I know you are too.

So there’s one part in the book, Seven principles. He says like he can predict a divorce with 97% accuracy. And that clicked for me to be like, Holy shit, how on earth do you do that? Yeah. And then I start thinking, but rarely you’re gonna hook somebody with that. So the stories analog, and I used one the other day with somebody was they want to train too much, right?

And they don’t wanna take rest days or deloads all this stuff. And the way to get through them wasn’t telling them the science of training because their profession is not trained. They don’t give a shit, They just want lose weight and build muscle. And so the way I explained it was like, hey, if you were driving on E and I told you to stop for gas, and you said, No, I’m too busy driving, that’s exactly what we’re doing here.

, that’s oxymoron. It doesn’t make sense. You’re gonna burn out, your car is gonna start burning oil, then it’s just gonna tank and then you’re gonna have some injuries to the engine in this case to your body. But that clicked with them and they’re like, fuck. That sounds really stupid and it sounds like what I’m doing.

I’m like, Okay, so let’s take a rest day once a week. Not that big of a deal, if it’s gonna be okay or a D load every once in a while, whatever it may be. But the analogies are what click with people and explaining it in that way. Or when I have people, this is why we’ve written case studies and I think you’ve done this too, where it’s check out what this client did, right?

And we’ll lay out the whole process and we’ve done one on reversed dieting and there’s been so many times where I’ve sent that to clients or my coaches have sent to clients or even people have reached out and they’re like, Hey, I use this with my client to try to convince them why they needed to stop dieting in reverse.

Thank you for writing this article. And I’m like, that’s awesome cuz it lays out step by step what Maridi did. And when they can see Meredith and they see her name and they know her age and they’re like, okay. That’s a real human being and they really did this with this person. Now all the science of metabolic adaptation and puritization that I tried to explain just that went in one ear and out the other, it all clicks for them whether it actually clicks or they’re just like, Okay, he’s right.

I’m gonna listen cuz I see it. That’s all that matters. And 

Mike: anecdotal evidence is perfectly valid and perfectly useful. Yeah. It’s the beginning of what you would apply the scientific method to is you have observed something maybe several times and there appears to be a pattern there and you wanna understand more about it.

And then that’s where again, science with a capital s would get involved. And one of the downsides of science is that it moves very slowly. And this is something to be careful of when, especially in fitness where people. Especially if they are strange claims or very unusual or contrarian claims. And they’re saying that they’re ahead of the science basically, that they have enough hands on experience and they’ve seen enough and they’ve been smart enough to discern these patterns and they couldn’t tell you exactly why.

Maybe like they would need to go through the scientific method to pinpoint the exact mechanisms, Here’s how this works, and maybe to quantify the effect sizes, blah, blah, blah. But what they could say is this works consistently. And I’ve seen it firsthand. There’s no research on this yet. Maybe one day there will be, There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

That is actually how everything works. But again, when somebody makes those claims, you just have to be careful. And I would say you have to vet this information and you have to, if it were me, I would want. Know more about these observations, these case studies, the anecdotal evidence. If it was just one example of something I would go, okay, maybe I don’t know.

But if they could show, okay, here are 30 case studies. Here are 30 carefully observed. Examples, and here’s this consistent pattern. Look in this, we did this and got this in this. It was a bit different. We did this and got this. So I think that some people are too quick actually to dismiss anecdotal, and they just go directly to, All right, where’s your PubMed link?

That’s just ditto head 

Cody: thinking. Yeah. And it’s all how you present it, right? The way you presented that is perfect. There’s no research on this, but here’s what we’ve seen in how we’ve seen it. And that’s what reversed hiding was for a while. That’s even and I know, I’m sure it’s the same with you cuz you’ve done a couple podcasts with him, but I’ve gotten closer with Bill Campbell and he’s reached out to me of what do you think about this kind of study or this type of project for the science community?

And a lot of times that’s how research studies start. They’re like, what are these coaches or people seeing in this fitness space? Anecdotally, okay, let’s research it. Diet breaks, we see ’em working, why are they working? These people say this reason, these people say this reason. Let’s just do some studies and we’ll find out why.

So the anecdotal stuff is always on the forefront. But you have to be able to admit that too as a coach, right? That’s not necessarily being uncoachable, but being a good coach means that you’re willing to admit that Hey, this isn’t fully backed up by literature yet, and it probably won’t be for years because it takes so damn long.

But here’s what we’re seeing. Here’s the examples of it. Tell the story. Tell the analogy. Tell the case study for the client, because that allows them to be more coachable. And actually that’s another great point too is you know, it’s also up to the coach to get them to be coachable. Because if you’re not a great coach or learning how to be a better coach, which in hindsight means that you’re not coachable, it’s a cycle, right?

If you’re not coachable or learning how to be a better coach from other coaches, from people who are writing books, recording podcasts, seminars, whatever it may be, just getting better, you’re gonna be less likely to know how to coach that person. And this is exactly why. We do a book club for my team.

And very rarely is it ever like we’re gonna read the Muscle and strength pyramids, even though everybody is required to read that at the very beginning of their internship for Become a trainer or a coach. But the point is it’s let’s read about psychology, let’s read about conversation and communication.

Motivational interviewing is an amazing book for this kind of stuff for coaches because it teaches you how to connect the dots for people who maybe aren’t in your realm. If a plumber comes to my house I don’t know what the fuck he’s doing, right? Cause I’m not a plumber, I’m not a mechanic, so I don’t know what the guy’s doing on my car or anything like that.

And a client is the same way. You’re their mechanic, you’re their doctor, they’re coming to you for the service or prescription and they know nothing about, And so you have to teach them properly and open up. Eyes to seeing different opportunities so they become more coachable. And a lot of that is how you communicate effectively to those individuals.

So for us at 

Mike: the motivational interviewing, that’s the name of the book. I feel like you’ve mentioned this before, but I really good, I don’t know if I’ve added 

Cody: it to any of my, So motivational interviewing was originally a study they did at Stanford, I believe it was. And it was basically a way, how do we get people to adhere to objectives or stay consistent easier, right?

How do we translate this information to them to get them to buy in like this? That’s the whole buy-in conversation. And then they created a textbook on it, of course stuff, but then they wrote another book and it’s motivational interviewing for fitness nutrition. Really great book. I would say don’t take some of the actual nutrition information that they use as examples to coach people is incorrect.

I’m like, eh, that’s not really backed up by research. But the point is how they’re explaining it to people and how they’re translating that info. And speaking of looking at case studies, we’ve done this as an experiment in our own company of implementing it and then actually monitoring check-ins in communication and seeing how language has changed.

And it’s amazing how much more adherence and better consistency we see with clients just from our coaches understanding the psychological side of things. We coach the coaches on that side and they’re able to make their clients more coachable, if that makes sense. , because I think that, there’s two types of people that come on board.

There’s a person who is very coachable. Like we said, the beginning. They hire a coach because they’re coachable and they want to see better results. We all have those clients, they’ll basically do whatever you tell ’em to do. So if you lead ’em down the right path, they’re gonna get amazing results.

And this is also why. Not that you can’t trust. I don’t wanna say that cuz that’s incorrect. But you have to take transformations from body building, prep coaches lightly if you’re an average person because those people step into that transformation, literally willing to do whatever the coach says.

They’re an athlete for bodybuilding. So all this adherence talk and it goes out the window. So there’s 

Mike: a big selection bias just 

Cody: inherently. Yeah. So you can’t use that as your fuel if you’re just an everyday person cuz it’s a completely different scenario, which will go into the comparing side of things in a bit.

But I think that your ability to create a coachable client, cuz some of the people come on board are coachable, some of ’em they’re not, but they’re willing to become coachable. They want you to show them how to be more coachable so they can get better results. And that’s, that’s your job as a coach, and then the other side of it is, like we said, comparison and I interviewed Jared Hamilton we actually. Pretty cool friends after this cause he’s just, he’s a good dude and his perspective’s different. He’s a fat loss coach, but he’s very much more focused on mindset it seems like. And he said something that really resonated with me and he said, I don’t tell people not to compare cuz they’re humans they’re gonna going to.

But if you’re going to compare the complete picture. So speaking of the body building person, if you are a 35 year old mom of two who stays at home, is really busy, can train four days a week and you’re trying to figure out this whole macro thing, right? Counting macros and losing weight and you’re following and comparing yourself to bikini competitors and one that’s also five three and around your weight like.

Because that person doesn’t have kids, works in fitness for a living, has less responsibilities, has a different schedule. Compare the whole picture. And when you do that, you can actually see that there’s a huge gap. It’s not the same scenario, it never is. But I even tell people, don’t compare to me because I literally I’m in my office right now, there’s a 2000 square foot gym right here.

If I don’t get a workout in, how the fuck does that happen? It’s two feet away from me. I live in here . So it’s yeah, and then I drive five minutes away to my home, which literally my house is five minutes on the street. So I’ve created a pretty damn good situation. You can’t compare to that.

It took a while to figure that out. But point being is I’m in a situation that does give me a level up, people with great genetics, it’s a thing. It gives them a level up. So I think comparison is the Thief of Joy is a really famous quote. I don’t know if it’s, Is it Theodore Roosevelt or is it What’s Author?

Dunno. Oh, I’m surprised you haven’t heard that quote. That’s a really famous quote. I 

Mike: probably have. It sounds familiar, but I 

Cody: didn’t, The guy that wrote Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain, Is it, I think it, it might be him or Theodore Roosevelt. But it’s an amazing quote. 

Mike: It says, Let’s see, Teddy Roosevelt, according to Psychology Today, dot com, quote investigator, I’ll pull this up while you’re talking.

We’ll see 

Cody: great quote, But it’s true. As humans we compare. So if you’re gonna compare the whole situation and. Try to eliminate things you compare to outta your environment. If you can, if you’re following a hundred physique athletes that constantly make you feel like shit, just stop following ’em.

Like plain and simple. Follow people that are going to motivate you to be better and are going to give you information that helps you be a better person, be a better parent, be a better business owner, be a better general physique athlete, like a garage gym athlete, or whatever you wanna call it. Yeah. 

Mike: At that point, maybe it’s more a matter of inspiration rather than comparison.

Cody: Yes, a hundred percent. And I think that’s, again, part of being coachable, but it’s also the coach’s job to have that conversation. And the problem there too is there’s a lot of coaches in the space that are afraid to have a conversation a little bit deeper than training and nutrition, right?

 Either. They don’t do enough personal development themselves to speak on it, or they’re just hesitant to open up the door to a new conversation, which could lead down an emotional path for a person, but that’s part of personal coaching. You gotta expect that. They always say a trainer is like their second therapist, right?

And a lot of therapy is listening and saying why, or asking questions or getting them to think more. So you don’t necessarily need to know it all in order to allow them to express or find the answers themselves. But part of eliminating that comparison, I think is it is part of the coach’s job to help them become coachable and teach them the ways to do it.

Mike: If you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my v i p one-on-one coaching service because my team and I have helped people of all ages and circumstances lose fat, build muscle, and get into the best shape of their life faster than they ever thought possible. And we can do the same for you.

Another one just I think that is worth mentioning is too much thinking, too much questioning and constantly seeking other opinions on things in place of just doing the work. Yeah. I’m sure you’ve run 

Cody: into that. Oh yeah. I think there’s a difference between, and I’d love your opinion on this too questioning and challenging, right?

There’s the people who ask me why, cuz they’re like, I’m just curious because, and I tell these people too Hey, like I’m gonna coach you. I’m gonna get you the best little possible, whether it’s in three months, six months, 12 months, at some point in time. You’re gonna leave. I’m not gonna coach you forever, so feel free to ask why.

I want you to understand what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, how we’re, Which I totally agree with of 

Mike: course. Yeah. That’s been a big thing of, with my coaches, I want people to be able to fire us after a few months if they don’t want to. If they like what they’re doing and they like the accountability and they like, they don’t have to think about anything and they can just let their coach know, Hey, can you make me a, can we come up a couple dinners?

I’m sick of this. I’d like to change that. Or and just have it, they can delegate to, And we had a lot of those people, but I wanted people to come out the other end of what I felt was a reasonable beginning a couple of months and feel like they could continue on their own. 

Cody: Yeah. And I think that’s coaching with integrity.

And you can tell companies that do that based on their content, right? You’ve probably been asked this too. I’ve been asked many times, Why are you giving this away for free? And I’m like, that’s how I know it’s good content . Because if it’s so good that I probably could charge. It’s what I wanna give because we’re a content company, but we’re a coaching company.

That’s how we generate revenue. Yeah. Content is just something I do to build your trust, to teach you, to show you, and that just gets deeper with the client relationship. But being able to teach them those things throughout the process, I think in general is just a principle of coaching that is better.

And That’s great. People ask why they want to understand the process and why you’re doing what, a hundred percent when they challenge you, Which happens more often to us, at least when we have a coach who is uncoachable, right? Cause we get coaches that hire us. We get nutritionists. We have dieticians that hire us as well to do their nutrition and reach their goals.

And a lot of times it’s the same question with a little bit of attitude or SAS in it. And that’s when, they’re challenging you and there’s a difference between, Hey, what’s the thought process on this versus why not do it this way? Or what do you think about doing it this way?

And that’s where you go, Okay. Like, why did you hire me? You hired us because you want us to give you the answers and lead down path, not because you want to be able to challenge us every time we give you a solution. And the, I think is also 

Mike: the point of implementation. I’ve worked with many people over the years who have a lot of questions and that’s fine.

Any follow up questions? And that’s fine. And sometimes even. Coming to me with other sources of information. What about this guy? He has a bunch of acronyms after his name, and he says that energy balance is bullshit. He says It’s all hormones. What do you have to say about that? That’s fine.

But when it becomes a problem, and when I realize I’m just wasting my time is when we can go back and forth for two weeks and they still haven’t done anything yet. Yeah. It’s like, all right, if you don’t want to quote unquote believe in energy balance, fine. Then try the other guy’s thing then. But don’t do nothing.

Don’t just bounce around from one expert, quote unquote to another and fall into the paralysis by analysis trap and just do nothing and waste all of our time asking us never ending 

Cody: questions. Yeah, and it’s the, the program ho. Aspect of coaching, right? People do that with training programs all the time.

They start 5 31 and then they get two weeks in and then they change to five by five. And then they’re like, You know what? I’m gonna change to a high volume the fat program by Lane Norton, the next to the next thing. And it’s Dude, all of ’em are gonna work if you actually just do it for long enough.

Progressive overload doesn’t happen unless you do the same thing repeatedly to get better at it, period. So it’s the same thing with coaches. If you’re hopping around or if you’re, like you said, you’re overthinking or a paralysis by analysis, that’s an issue. And I think a lot of times, this is my mindset, but I put a lot of weight on the coach because we work with so many average people that want to learn and want to be better.

I put a lot of weight on our coaches to be like, You gotta make them coachable. 

Mike: Yeah. Which makes sense. I, we do the same thing where if there’s a report of a client being very stubborn or quote unquote uncoachable, our first assumption is, All right. The coach probably did something wrong here, and that’s not always the case, but I think that’s a more productive place to start.

Cody: Hundred percent. Cause that’s how you get better. I did a podcast called You’re either a loser or a Learner, and that’s a learner’s mentality, right? If there’s a fuck up here, blame your coach and teach them how to be better. Learn from the situation, even if it was the client just being stubborn or wrong, which you end up finding out anyway.

Cuz even if you fix it and get better, they still leave, then you know, okay, it’s probably not you, it’s them. But it goes back to that awareness to change, right? The person has to be aware to change and you gotta try to develop that into them. But I do put a lot of weight on the coach to get them to start acting the way that we’re talking about right now and stop acting the way that we’re trying to avoid people.

Stop being uncoachable and start being more coachable and the whole paralysis by now thing. Sticking with something, committing to a longer period of time. Those are all issues a lot of people have. To an extent it’s on them. Like you, you can lead a horse to water kind of thing, but it is, it’s a lot on the coach to try to get them to start acting the right way and do the right 

Mike: things.

One final point I think we should comment on is skin in the game. What are your thoughts on price where people that they’ll go, for example, the cheapest options out there? You can sign up for quote unquote coaching programs that are, Oh yeah, I guess I haven’t looked in a while, but 10, $20 a month, maybe even less.

But, and then of course you’re just getting cookie cutter and then by not having much skin in the game, of course that just it just makes the person less likely to follow through and actually comply. And maybe this is more a point of actually it’s more maybe relevant to coaches who struggle with pricing their service, but it does come back also to this psychological component in or just of how clients are going to behave based on how much they’re 

Cody: paying.

Yeah, I think there’s a few things there. I think a lot of times, you could just be logical. If I’m paying $20 a month, can this person make a living off of doing this? The answer’s no. So that means they’re either doing other shit to make them money, which means they don’t like this is just a side thing, which means it’s not their main thing, which is a red flag.

Or the other side of it is there’s going to be a large quantity of people in here, which means that person can’t really pay attention to me or dictate anything to me, or 

Mike: they’re gonna have assistance that’s very common, who pretend to be them. And that’s something that I did not want to do. That’s why I don’t pretend like I’m working with anybody.

They know that they’re working with people who work with me and who are part of my whole system, but I’m not gonna sign people up for working with me and then just give it over to someone to pretend 

Cody: to be me. And that’s a good example of those people. Blew up cuz it was a great idea from a clickbait, like a selling perspective.

And then 

Mike: it kinda, Yeah, it’s easy money. Easy money. Cause people are, there are some people who are, again, not necessarily stupid, but unsophisticated enough to believe that really I can work with this celebrity, What a fitness celebrity for $50 a month. Okay. And this is too 

Cody: where I would say training and nutrition differ.

Now there’s gonna be special scenarios of training, but even like you have multiple books with training programs in it. The masses can get that book, use the program and see great results. The masses can use a book and calculate their macros and maybe get results. But if you have problems with adherence, if you have problems with support, if you have problems with figuring out your nutrition, if you’re looking for, or some people that just don’t wanna 

Mike: read a book they would actually rather just pay for a coach to give them the exact information here, the five things you need to know to be able to follow this meal plan.

Good. Here’s your custom training plan. Five things you need to know for that. No, no more than 10, and here are some supplements if you want to take them. Here’s what I’d recommend. You don’t have to, and I’m gonna do all the thinking for you, and you just need to show up and do what I tell you. 

Cody: Exactly. And the reality is there’s more adjustments to be made along the way for nutrition than training typically.

Training is, the ju the main adjustments are progressive overload. Unless you run into an injury or scheduling issue or something like that, nutrition. If you have a really specific goal, we’re gonna be tweaking things along the way. And you do need somebody to help you with that.

Yeah. But at the end of the day, I think. You do have to like, you pay for what you get. And if you’re paying for something that, you know, and this is why LA Fitness and these big gyms make so much money, it’s tons and tons of people who have memberships who never go, if everybody went, the gyms would be crowded as hell and they wouldn’t like, it wouldn’t work.

They bank on all these people paying 20, $30 a month. We just don’t even use a service. But they’re like, I’m not gonna get rid of this. Which 

Mike: is great for those of us who do go to the gym though, because that’s just the market forces supply and demand. If the demand for the space went up, the price would go up all of a sudden that they would, that’s what they would have to do.

They would’ve to double their price to, to get fewer people to actually use it. 

Cody: But if it’s, you’re paying a couple hundred dollars or more a month, now all of a sudden you’re like, Okay, I see this money coming out and this person’s actually talking to me and this person’s giving me advice and so on and so forth.

And I think that’s where we do like an initial consult with every person that comes on board and like the amount of people that have said Oh, I’ve done tons of online coaching, but I’ve never actually talked to a coach. And I’m like, that’s kinda weird. You should like, Ask for a call, and if they should say yes, you’re just starting.

I’m not saying that every coaching company should do calls every single week with her. We don’t. But when you start, we’re gonna talk to you. We want you to know who we are. We wanna know you. And I think that’s important in, in having, just having a coach. There’s actually a person who says, Hey Steve, , I’m talking to you right now.

It’s different than you’re gonna get entered into this Facebook group. 2000 other people and we’re gonna, there’s like a post that has your macro calculations on it, so just go ahead and do that. And it’s Okay, come on. It’s totally different. So I think skin in the game’s huge, not only from the coach perspective, you should find somebody who has skin in the game.

Like you wrote a book, I mean like a legit book, multiple legit books. I think, a thing or two, that’s a pretty good signal that you can trust. Mike Matthews, he has some skin in the game. I’ve been doing this a very long time. I don’t have any published books yet, but I’ve been doing this long enough and it’s very evident if you look at everything I do from content to the people I work with.

And that goes from teachers and everyday people to WWE athletes and low time actors and stuff like that. So I’ve had a lot of experience. That’s my skin in the game now. I think the person’s skin in the game comes down to, you mentioned they gotta do some stupid shit, basically. You said it differently, but they gotta do some stupid diets.

I was, I think that’s part of their skin of the games. Like you’ve given it a shot, you’ve tried and that, that builds the awareness. Okay, you really can’t defy. Thermodynamics. You can’t defy calorie balance. And anybody who says that you can’t, they’re wrong. And trying to do all these things like 

Mike: I saw the other day, you’re gonna learn the lesson one way or another.

It just, you can decide how much pain you’re willing to endure to finally accept it. That’s all it is. And that’s 

Cody: A green flag. Or a green light from a coach. You should look at some coach’s content and if they. This works really because calories and calories out and this is the situations and it kinda depends on this.

That’s a really good answer. Versus like intermittent fasting is the best strategy to enhance auto topology and improve your insulin sensitivity. And that’s the reason people are obese is they don’t have that. And it’s black and white claims in, shit, you can follow a couple key people to hear them call out the charlatans if you really wanna like really be on point.

Ben Carpenter tweeted at some guy that was like talking about how humans didn’t evolve eating processed things and then he replied and somebody screenshot and post on Instagram is hilarious. And it, he said, why do you sell hundreds of supplements in meal replacements on your website like that are paleo, quote unquote.

Because those are process, And it’s that’s a good example of somebody who is black and white trying to preach a guru is so that you buy their product. And Ben Carpenter is just calling people out and I don’t even know actually what I think he coaches. I don’t know a ton about him.

He’s not selling snake oil or whatever, it’s legit information. So I think you should be looking for that. And people who have like good integrity, good skin in the game, they do things the right reason. That’s what you’re looking for, and you gotta get your own skin in the game by just being, not only being coachable, but being willing to do the work.

Cuz nobody can take that away. Like in, in today’s world, everybody just wants to get shit handed to them and they don’t wanna do the work. But at the end of the day, that’s the fundamental key of success. It’s action you have to do. By yourself, for yourself, regardless. Completely 

Mike: agree. And one other final thing that I think it’s maybe just me venting a little bit, but it’s relevant and this is something I was saying before we started recording, is something that has, this is something I have learned and I have accepted as I’ve gotten older and seen the different trajectories that people’s lives have taken, people that I knew when I was younger.

It’s interesting to see where they’re at and what kind of person they’ve become and how that has manifested in terms of habits and. And then things, experiences, the life they’ve built for themselves basically. And it’s a bit baffling to me how rare it is to meet somebody who goes searching for advice.

Now this would apply to fitness and it would apply to, shit, just about anything in life. And you can go for advice to books. That’s one way of doing it. And that’s something. Of course, I’m always talking about the value of that, and that’s one of my highest priority activities is to continue reading, just continue learning.

But that’s one way of doing it. Of course, you can find information in interviews, you can find information in just talks, right? If people don’t like to read, maybe they like audio books. But there’s also the one to one personal relationships that you have. So if you have somebody, if you know somebody and you have access to somebody who has done something that you want to do, and if they’ve done it multiple times successfully, that’s even more credible.

And then if you have somebody who can also. Explain cause and effect relationships. Okay. You asked them, So how did you do this successfully? A few times when they can really get into the details and show cause and effect here’s how this works. And then that led to this and then I did this and that did this, and I found out that produced this effect.

I didn’t want that. You know what I mean? When they can think like that, that’s so hard to find. It’s so valuable, and yet I just, again, I’d be very hard pressed to, I could probably list them on one hand, people I know who are consistently looking for advice to either achieve their goals faster, right?

To accelerate. Or to deal with problems better, to make better decisions and come out of difficult situations in a good place. And I’ve asked just for fun, a few very successful. And by that not just financially successful. Yes, they are. These people are rich by anyone’s standards, right?

Never have to work again, 10 or even hundreds of millions of dollars. But also, Made a good life for themselves. They have developed a good character, they have developed a good functional family and relationship and they’re not cheating. Let’s start there. . And they’ve made their living in a, at least semi honorable way.

They’re not scumbags, they don’t rip people off. type of people who maybe wouldn’t want to be them specifically, but for me I’d be like, Oh, that’s a pretty good model for a successful life. Usually involved also socially and blah, blah, blah. And so I’ve asked them, I just out of curiosity, the people in your orbit, just in your network, do you get asked for advice very often about anything?

Do you have people who come to you and say, Hey, could I get your advice on something? Would you mind quickly, lemme just tell you what I’m dealing with and it could be something, personal, business, whatever. And the answer is no. Sometimes in business, some of ’em are like there are a few people who come to me for business advice here and there.

Personal, take relationships for example. Never. Never. That’s so bizarre to me. That’s something that I consistently do. I have to be respectful, of course, of people’s time. Like I’m not going to go to people with shit. I could just Google and get the answer to, or I could just read a book. But if I’ve put in that work and I still have not been able to sort out for me like in a business sense, right?

So somebody I go to, a friend of mine, his name’s Neil, So Neil Patel, if anybody knows Marketing World, he’s Will. He’s very well known in that world, right? Very smart dude. Very good guy. I’ll talk to him a few times a week. Not always about business, but usually there are one or two things a week where I’m just like, I’ve tried to inform myself without going to him and I’ve come to something of a conclusion, but he has more experience.

He’s better at this stuff than I am. So I’d be curious if he were in my shoes, if this were his business, what would he do? And that’s been very helpful. He has saved me. Time and money, for example, convincing me. And I’m not hard to convince when I’m like asking, I’m not hoping he even says that I’m right.

Like I really just wanna know what he thinks. And I’m completely willing to scrap. I don’t care how much time I spent coming to an idea. If somebody has a better idea and they can explain it to me in a way I can understand, I’m taking their idea. I don’t give a shit about my whole idea that I’m throwing that away immediately.

So with that mentality, though, he has saved me time and money in that I would’ve pursued certain things, marketing projects in particular that were not bad ideas, but it was more a matter of priority. And simply by asking him and him just three minutes being like, Eh, I wouldn’t do. Because, a good example is I’ve looked at different ways to diversify legion’s income, right?

And what would be worth pursuing, what would not be worth pursuing. And I do expect some time in the next year to maybe two, maybe three years, that if I want to take Legion really to the next level, I’ll want a good strategic partner. I’ll want, it might be a PE group, or it could be a kind of like a holding company that has other similar companies where there’s synergy and where they can inject capital into the business and bring connections.

And like for example, we’re not in retail yet, we’re just getting that started. But it could be useful if I had a strategic partner who was very established in retail with different brands and who could go right to the people they need to go to and say. We’re working with this company, let’s figure out, let’s make this happen and provide the capital for it.

Okay. That’s an obvious win-win. So I was asking Neil about this diversification. You kinda had a couple ideas and one of them in particular that I thought was a great idea that I wanted to pursue. He was like, No, I wouldn’t do that. Because if we’re talking now about business valuation and how PE people and how a potential strategic partner would look at it, they don’t want a business that’s doing, let’s say $30 million a year in $1 million in 30 different.

You know what I mean? That’s an exaggeration, obviously. And there, I don’t know if there is a business out there like that, but what he was saying is what they want is they want a business that does one thing really well. If you have a couple of other things that provide a minority of your income, and especially if they have strategic value, if they’re worth more than there’s an asymmetrical value there, it’s worth more than just the money.

Coaching is actually a good example of that because of the type of people it brings in. And these are often people with their own spheres of influence. Like we’ve worked with a lot of CEOs and executives and businesses. These are people who interact with a lot of people and they get asked Whoa, what are you doing?

So there’s a bit of a force multiplier effect. But to Neil’s point was again, Instead of doing that other thing, just focus on selling more supplements. It’s like that’s what is going to help you get the best strategic partner. And that made sense to me. And I scrapped my other idea and I was like, ready to go on this thing.

I thought it was a no-brainer. Great idea. So just an example. And I’ve had quite a few of those conversations, not just with Neil. There are a few other people who all go to just to get their perspective. And I wish I had more of those people in my life that I probably have a pretty good informal board, so to speak, for business stuff.

It could always be better, there could always be more people. But I’m pretty happy with the handful of people I have and there’s. Individual expertises, and what I can tap them for. But I wish I had that for like relationships that would’ve been useful over the years. It would’ve, again, saved me time and frustration would’ve saved my wife frustration.

And, I had to just read books, and, maybe I could put it on myself. I didn’t try to find that mentor, quote unquote. I just stuck to books. But it’s just striking to me again, how many people have access to people who have very credible information, who are very reliable sources of things, yet they don’t want advice.

And if you try to give them advice, if you try to interject, you try to say, Hey, just want to let you know. If I were you right, and you know this problem you’re dealing with, I would do it differently. And here’s what I’ve done. Here’s why you should care why I’m telling you this, I’ve achieved exactly what you want to achieve and do whatever you want.

But hey, here’s some free advice. Almost never. Yeah. Will it be taken What? It’s 

Cody: so weird. Yeah. If they’re not willing, and I agree with advice from Neil, cuz I’ve been big on that too, of I heard somebody say that no multi-millionaire or billionaire became that way from doing many things.

They did that from one thing and then they diversified once they were a billionaire. And it’s that makes sense. Not that it’s just about money, but the idea of success is like you become the best at one thing. Once you create success and mastery, now you go, Okay, I can delegate and create the next thing.

But I agree, man. I think it’s, baffling is the right word. It blows my mind because even the areas where I’m pretty am good at in my life, I still am looking for the edge to be better. Because that’s what life’s about. It’s about expansion, it’s about getting better. And I think that if you are in a situation, and this is the baffling part to me, if you’re in a situation.

It’s not that great and you really wanna make it better and you still don’t go seek out people. That’s crazy. And you mentioned like number one, exhaust your environment. The people you already know in your life, they all do different things. So I think it’s important to exhaust your environment and audit everybody around you and go, Okay, how can I get these people to help me?

But at a certain point, you have to be willing to step outta your circle and go seek out people. There’s been plenty of people in my career where they had no idea who I was. I’ve flown to different states to go to events that I’m like, Hey, I don’t need the certification. I literally am just here to meet you because I think you can help me and I think I can help you and I wanna sit down for dinner.

Can I buy you dinner? And I just pushed and push and that turned into a part of a mentor and shit. I have two mentors in my life right now that I talk to on a weekly basis, and neither of them are in fitness. One of ’em is very similar to what you were talking about. He’s a big part of many different social circles.

He’s very successful in many different businesses. He’s. He’s the epitome of somebody who is successful in multiple realms of life. He has a very amazing family and relationship. And that’s like the main thing he helps me with is I recognize that, my wife stays at home and it’s hard to be married to an entrepreneur who’s borderline obsessed with his business and really in that shit, and you can relate to that, right?

I had to accept at first I didn’t get it, but then after a while I was like, you know what? I can see how that is probably annoying. 

Mike: If a woman’s, let’s say the primary love language, right? These, that if it’s quality time, they’re gonna struggle with Yeah. In my, 

Cody: it’s just gonna, it’s gonna be a struggle.

Acts of service and quality time, both of which I need to be present to do. And so I had to recognize that. And what did I do? I sought out somebody who was very successful entrepreneur, but also had an amazing relationship with his wife and kids. And I was like, Show me how to do that shit you’re doing because that’s what I want.

And I have another person who is in the world of doesn’t. And when you do that 

Mike: right you’re like, also, it’s funny, I mean as to use Neil as an example, we’ve gotten to know each other fairly well and he knows now, like he doesn’t have to couch advice in a way to make it more palatable. I don’t give a shit, dude.

Just tell me if you say, Hey, what you’re doing there is actually dumb. Are you dumb? Is that actually the problem? I would just laugh and he’d be like, Just do this instead. I do not consider myself an important person. I don’t take myself seriously. And I think that’s also a key point though, right?

Is and is somebody who has even tried to give advice when asked. And maybe it’s just like a button of mine, something. It’s just like a pet peeve. But it is a bit annoying to me when people can’t just accept. Of course you don’t have to open it up with that’s dumb. You should just do something else.

But if I can’t just be. What maybe bluff would be the word. Like straightforward, but in a good mannered way. Yeah. And if I have to do a verbal dance to get somebody to maybe think about what I’m gonna tell them, I’m just less inclined to even want to do it. And so I think that’s also an important point of being able to receive advice.

And so to give this person a pleasant experience of sharing with you what they would do, where you not have a defensive mentality, certainly not a bunker mentality. You are really there to hear them out and you have an open mind. And I go into these kinds of conversations with the assumption that I’m probably wrong.

I’m probably not gonna be told, Oh yeah, that’s exactly perfect. Just do it exactly like that. You know what I 

Cody: mean? . Yeah. Yeah. And you going into it that way allows that person that’s helping you to be more enthusiastic about helping you. And be more honest. 

Mike: Yeah. And not 

Cody: hold anything back.

Exactly. If you wanna get the most out of that coachable scenario, you have to be coachable. You have to be open, you have to be willing to scrap your idea and be wrong. And then that person is gonna help you that much more. And I think that’s important. And like I said, like I have mentors in different arenas.

Ones in like financial advising and shit like that. But he advi like he’s a mentor in a, in business and money and savings and things like that. And then I have so many friends and people in the industry that I go to for advice that I would say I’m like eye to eye with, but I still ask them.

Cause I wanna hear a different perspective on this scenario because that’s how you learn, that’s how you get better, 

Mike: yep. And that’s if we’re talking about it also applies to businesses, right? There is a big push for diversity. And the superficial type of diversity that some people push for is just in skin color.

That’s stupid. Diversity of ideas and opinions. That’s what matters the most. If you actually look into the research that supports quote unquote, Diversity. It’s not just having people again with different skin colors or different ethnicities. It’s having a bunch of people who look at things differently, who have different perspectives on the world, often have different values, different like core principles and precepts that then inform how they view a work project.

And that’s very useful. And I think it’s also useful if we’re talking about having a network of people to give you advice if they’re all the same type of person. That’s not gonna be, and especially if they’re all just like you in the, maybe the most important ways that is probably not gonna be as useful actually as people who are different in their mindset and different in their actions.

And at least that’s been true 

Cody: for. Yeah, absolutely a diverse team. That is, that you’re, as a leader being willing to open the floor for like their uniqueness to shine and their ideas to come out. And cuz worst case, if you have that open floor and it’s all respect, then worst case you say, Hey, that’s not actually not really a good idea.

And you can say it respectfully and the person on team’s Ah, shit, I shot my shot. Okay. And you’re like, But keep shooting because 

Mike: We all come up with bad ideas. That is the key to come in with good ideas. 100% is just come up with a lot of bad ideas and that applies. Again, like I mentioned earlier in the podcast, whenever I’m doing anything creative, I always assume that the first several things that I’m gonna come up with are bad.

That those are gonna be the kind of hack need things just top of mind. That’s whenever everyone else is doing. That’s certainly true in writing. If you want to write in a more interesting and fresher way, you have to be willing to scrutinize, at the most autistic level, using that word in a good sense, right?

I mean it’s scrutinizing. Almost every noun and every verb Really in modifier. Yeah. Okay. The conjunctions and prepositions, like those ones take care of themselves, but the words that really do the communicating, and certainly if you’re gonna use any figures of speech or any phrases and avoiding cliche and taking the time to say things in a way that is, you can’t say it’s entirely new, but it’s at least different than how everyone else is saying things.

It sparks interest. So I think that that again applies to any sort of ideation of any kind. Yeah. That’s why I 

Cody: like a subject line or a book title or anything. It’s Okay, you got it. Cool. Write it 20 more times. Totally. Yeah. And so I think that’s the last thing I would say on that is just like what I said earlier, the whole learner versus loser thing, It’s like I heard, I think.

Dean Grazi Oso, I think is how you say his name. But he was saying like somebody asked him, Do you hate losing or love winning? And he was like, I used to hate losing cause I was young. And I was like, chip on my shoulder, you ego scopal. And it was ironic cause when I heard this, I was like, I think I hate losing.

That’s what drives me. And then as he explained it, I resonated more with his answer and it made me wanna push more towards that. But he said, But now I win more because I accept losing. So I actually just love winning so much. So I’ll lose over and over again because I just keep learning how to win more.

So real winners, they lose more often. And it’s the same thing as taking as many shots as you need to take until you get it right. Nobody remembers how many misses it took. They just remembered that they made it. That’s all it matters. 

Mike: Totally. Yeah. And then when you finally make it, then people think it’s an overnight success.

Yeah. Wow. Where did you come from? Exactly. 

Cody: Wow. I wish I were as 

Mike: lucky as you. 

Cody: Yeah. Oh, that’s the worst. Yeah. Let’s happen to someone who works really fucking hard over and over again. . 

Mike: That’s how you make luck at least. Exactly. Yep. This was fun, Cody. Thanks for taking the time and thanks for being the inaugural video interview.

Yeah. And so this is gonna be more interesting for people who like to listen on YouTube. And so let’s wrap up with where people can find you and your work and if you have anything particularly interesting that you want them to know about 

Cody: or new. . Yeah, absolutely man. And thank you for having me on.

It’s always a blast talking to you. And especially topics like this isn’t a common topic to be interviewed on, so it’s been really cool. And where everybody can find me, a company is called Tailored Coaching Methods. So tailored coaching method.com is where all of our coaching is obviously, but all of our free content is there.

The podcast is the Tailored Life podcast, and then I’m most active on Instagram, and that’s just Cody McBroom. So we’re not a big promote this, launch, this do anything. Like we just coach and we coach a lot of people. So that’s the one thing we do. The main thing I would say is go check out our free content.

We do a lot of good stuff and we interview a lot of cool people. Mike’s been on probably more than anybody. I think you have been the most recorded guests have a lot of good guests. Check the podcast out and and again man, thank you for having me on. 

Mike: Yeah, I I really enjoyed it. Look forward to the next one.

All right. That’s it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don’t mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or. Wherever you’re listening to me from, in whichever app you’re listening to me in, because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases search visibility.

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