Episode 216: Building a successful online fitness coaching business: An Interview with Aaron Straker

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[00:00:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. Now on this podcast, we talk all about things you can do to increase hypertrophy, strength, performance, and improve your body composition, all without destroying your health in the process. Today on the podcast, I’ve got Aaron Straker and.

[00:00:26] We have a short note at the beginning of how we actually met at a friend’s wedding recently in Denver, Colorado. So it was great to meet up with him and we talked all about his journey into nutrition coaching especially transferring over from the software industry. Of course, we talk about the skills you need for nutrition coaching.

[00:00:50] When do you make that transition? I did something similar many years ago. I worked in the medical device industry cardiac division for almost 12 years. Last probably four years or so we’re part-time. Before I switched over, what am I looking at? 10. I’d say I switched over full-time eight years ago now, I believe.

[00:01:13] And it was a really good decision, what is that thought process? Do you just jump and go for it or what does that look like? So Aaron went through a similar process. So we talked with him about that and much more. So Aaron has a program with our buddy Jackson. You can check that out below.

[00:01:31] I will put a link to it. And then if you are also interested kind of a little bit more on the business side. I decided to open up some spots in my Flex diet mentorship again. So as of this recording, it’s July 10th. I’m thinking applications will probably be only open for one week, maybe two weeks.

[00:01:55] But I’ll put a link down below if you’re interested. Just fill out an application there, and I decided to do it again because there’s so much new stuff with AI and a lot more people getting into. Online training and nutrition that I’m super excited to teach a bunch of stuff cause I think there’s becoming more and more distractions and there’s definitely some stuff that has value added to it, but it’s being easier than ever to become completely distracted in that process and not focusing on the things that are actually moving stuff forward.

[00:02:27] If you’re interested in that, go down to the link below. It is a mix of business. I go through my entire online assessment. So I’ve got everything from a two day to a seven day assessment looking at everything from aerobic capacity to movement, breathing, nutrition, and you name it. And basically, if you’re in the flex diet mentorship, I give all that stuff to you so you can go out and use it and help people with that.

[00:02:55] We also cover mindset and then also personal development. So it’s primarily for people looking to enter the online space or looking to elevate their position in the online space. That definitely fits in with the conversation we had today with my good buddy, Aaron. So check it out and we will talk to you all soon.

[00:03:15] Enjoy this conversation with myself and Aaron Straker

[00:03:19] [00:03:19] Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m here today with Aaron. How’s it going, man?

[00:03:25] I’m good. How are you, Dr. Mike? I am good. We actually met each other in person at our friend Rick Andy’s wedding in Denver, Colorado. And it was funny, like at the actual reception I saw you and I’m like, God, that God looks so familiar. And I’m like, ah, like you have the vision of the person online and then, like where they’re living.

[00:03:49] And so like your brain doesn’t really make the connection that you guys flew all the way from Bali for the wedding. And it wasn’t until the next day I was talking to you and you’re like, I was like oh, cool.

[00:04:01] Aaron Straker: Yeah, I had the exact same thing happen. I’m like, looking at you. I’m like, I know that guy.

[00:04:08] I’m like, but why? And how do I know that guy? And it’s that’s one of those. Very new strange phenomenon of the world of social media and stuff is like some people that, yeah you watch their stuff on Instagram, whatever, you just never expect them to be in the room where

[00:04:22] Dr Mike T Nelson: you are.

[00:04:24] Yeah. Yeah. And remind me, do you know both Rick and D? Is that right? Yes.

[00:04:29] Aaron Straker: Rick I know through, we were in like a similar friend group in San Diego and we would hang out in that sort of thing. And then I was actually, Rick launched a, like a self-discovery like it was a program in 20 20 18.

[00:04:44] I was in the first cohort of that as was Danielle. So I met her through that and then as they’re, as they started dating and stuff, we would spend some time in Colorado and we would hang out with

[00:04:54] Dr Mike T Nelson: them and that sort of thing. Very cool. And for the listeners, I’ll link to their podcast we did with both of ’em here.

[00:04:59] And it was awesome that you and your girlfriend flew all the way from Bali to come to the wedding, which was great.

[00:05:04] Aaron Straker: Yeah. Yeah. Certain friends we will travel quite far for, to

[00:05:08] Dr Mike T Nelson: be there with. And I’ve looked at that flight before because our friend Jackson has a, was it a seven day retreat camp thing in Bali in July?

[00:05:18] Does that sound right? I think it’s in August. Maybe it’s August.

[00:05:22] Aaron Straker: But yeah, I think it’s five day, five nights, six days or so. Something like

[00:05:27] Dr Mike T Nelson: that. Yeah. But pretty much a week. Yeah. Yeah. And I was looking at it, I’m like, oh, that’d be fun to go to. And then I looked at how expensive plane flights are and then how long and how many flights to get there.

[00:05:38] And I’m like, Ooh, if we did that’s like a bigger time commitment than I thought. And then we’re definitely staying for longer than a week.

[00:05:48] Aaron Straker: Yeah. Yeah. You essentially lose a day and a half on, on both ends. And that’s once you factor in. Jet lag and just trying to adjust sort of thing.

[00:05:58] Not to mention like the 30 hours of travel it actually

[00:06:02] Dr Mike T Nelson: is. Yeah. And for someone, like for our listeners, you’ve done the kind of nomadic online business life for a while. Do you have any good tips for long plane flights? I’m always looking for good tips.

[00:06:17] Aaron Straker: Be small enough to, to the, where you can

[00:06:20] Dr Mike T Nelson: sleep, and Yeah.

[00:06:22] Person,

[00:06:23] Aaron Straker: you’re even bigger than I am. It’s you. It’s rough. I would say if you have a very. Like a great book. That is a very good story that you can lose yourself in. That would be really good. My favorite book of that sort being Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog,

[00:06:40] Dr Mike T Nelson: which is essentially the story of Mike.

[00:06:41] Yeah,

[00:06:42] Aaron Straker: that is a great flight book because that is like a book that’s really hard to put down. But no, it is try if you can sleep, try really hard to sleep. But the days are brutal on me and I have another one tomorrow,

[00:06:55] Dr Mike T Nelson: and it’s what? It’s, yeah. I think one of the two worst we’ve ever done was we went to international Nutrition Conference 2015 in Tokyo, Japan.

[00:07:05] And so for that one, we knew we could get a non-stop flight from Los Angeles. So we left a date early and stayed the night in Los Angeles so we could at least get up, do some exercise, do whatever, and then flew out from there because, Otherwise, it was literally almost two days because of the way the planes fell.

[00:07:23] And then same thing flying to Australia went over for my buddy Luke Lehman and Zoe’s wedding. And same thing, like there’s just, they’re flying to the other side of the world, right? So there’s just no, the shortest flight is 10 ish hours anyway, and there’s just nothing you can do about it.

[00:07:42] Aaron Straker: Yeah. It I would say like the very first time I did it, it was very hard o on me.

[00:07:47] Like I, I was the final, like three or four hours, I was like, like beside myself, like counting down the minutes. Yeah. But now it’s like with anything you realize there’s nothing you really can do. You just gotta sit and wait and just

[00:08:01] Dr Mike T Nelson: chill. Really? Yeah. That’s kinda like the Lewis block joke.

[00:08:05] He is ah, you get on the plane and then you watch a movie and then you watch another movie and then you realize, There’s still seven more FN hours to go.

[00:08:16] Aaron Straker: Yeah. It’s, what I will say to walk back a little bit, choosing the right airline is really helpful. Like some airlines, they’re gonna have 300 movies to choose from, like ready to go.

[00:08:26] Yeah. On the flight. Other ones you might get like 19 sort of thing. So I remember one of the, one of the flights I’m not, no one crucified me here. I’m not a big like Marvel superhero kind of fan thing. I just burn out on all of ’em, to be completely honest. But one flight, they had all the Avengers movies.

[00:08:48] Oh, okay. So I was like, oh I got 12 hours to kill. Yeah. They had all three or four of ’em, so I was like, here we go. I’m diving in sort of thing. So you get lucky with certain things like that. That was a nice, like nine, 10 hour kill, just watching all those straight through. But yeah the choosing the right airline does

[00:09:04] Dr Mike T Nelson: Really help.

[00:09:05] Any favorite airlines for long flights? I know sometimes they’re limited by countries and stuff.

[00:09:10] Aaron Straker: Yeah. I, when I have the choice, I’m generally going with either Qatar

[00:09:14] Dr Mike T Nelson: or Emirates. Oh, okay. That’s good to know. Yeah. And usually fly through that part of the world. Is that correct? I know there’s different ways of getting to Bali.

[00:09:23] Yeah.

[00:09:23] Aaron Straker: This trip, I have a stop over in Doha, which is like the city in Qatar. Or if you’re flying Emirates, you’ll usually have a

[00:09:30] Dr Mike T Nelson: stop over in Dubai. Have you been to Dubai

[00:09:34] Aaron Straker: before? Only for a 12 hour, like long layover sort of thing. But not like a, a reel. We got the we, we left the airport and stuff, but it was the middle of the night.

[00:09:46] It was one of those sort of ones where it’s from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM sort of thing. So I didn’t get to really do too much. Plus I felt

[00:09:53] Dr Mike T Nelson: like a zombie oh yeah. Yeah. Fitness in Dubai just always has interested me over the past few years. I wrote a, basically a long story short, a buddy of mine came to me and said, Hey, I’ve got this other buddy who’s doing a fitness certification in, I think it was based outta Dubai, but it was basically for that area.

[00:10:13] And he’s we need an actual textbook written from scratch for this course. Somebody of mine was a PhD. He got together, six of us, and I, he said what kind of timeline are you looking at? He’s I need it in three months. We’re like, write a textbook from scratch, no copyright issues in three months.

[00:10:35] And he’s yeah. So luckily a buddy of mine said, okay, if we are able to pull this off, then we want this structure set up. So we’ll get our fee upfront and then when we deliver on time, then we’ll get a bonus for doing it. So I remember trying to, I did two chapters for I to biomechanics and a nutrition chapter and oh my God, it sucked so bad.

[00:10:57] But at least I knew it was short and I got one of the payments up front, which in hindsight was not nearly enough. But you poor cheap college students. You’re like, okay, whatever. Yeah. And I remember frantically trying to finish the last part of it. Before I got on a plane and I couldn’t email the final copy because all the internet just went to crap.

[00:11:17] And so I was like so pissed. I had spent all this time and then missed it by a couple hours. But yeah. But he, I think, I don’t know whatever happened to the guy who was doing it in that area, but last I heard he made a killing.

[00:11:36] And also related to, I guess one of the topics of the day here is kinda online nutrition and traveling. And we were talking about this in person that I think from the outside, and I know you and Jackson have a whole course on this, which we’ll talk about too, and we’ll make sure to link to that. It looks like, oh, you’re a trainer online, you’re just, you hang out in nice places like Bali and you sit martinis all day and you.

[00:12:03] Do nothing. You log onto your laptop for 20 minutes every, fourth day of the week, and life is good. Can you explain how that’s definitely not how it works?

[00:12:14] Aaron Straker: Here’s the thing. For some people that is what

[00:12:18] Dr Mike T Nelson: they do, right? Yeah. That’s definitely what some people do. That is a hundred percent true.

[00:12:22] I wouldn’t have them coach anyone, but, yeah,

[00:12:24] Aaron Straker: exactly. And I think it, it really is you reach a threshold where, like professionalism is always been a really big one for me. I’m not like, like completing check-ins in the airport or at the gym with people walking behind me where, the screen, you can’t really see me.

[00:12:43] And I’m, I might bite my words here, where I’m working here, I’m in like a. I’m in an angle where you can’t the light doesn’t come in well, so I have a light here, but then it’s very dark over here, so I’m eating my words there. But it’s important to me, like for my clients to see that, like I am in my office environment where I am dedicated to completing check-ins in that sort of thing.

[00:13:04] And I think it, again, it, I’m a little bit older, right? So in terms of people floating around Bali, living the online coaching life, I’m 35 years old. So it, some of those things that might have interested me, 10, 15 years ago, do not interest me at all anymore. But if you have five, 10 clients and you’re just, repeating plans and kicking out very generic workout programs, which I see a lot of there.

[00:13:32] Oh yeah. You can get by with that, but that’s not how you rise to the top, yeah. And I think with, like with any field, if you really want to differentiate yourself, it’s going to be time alone, in your office or whatever, dedicated workspace, really putting in the hours and learning and growing and learning how to effectively communicate, which is arguably one of the most important as factors there.

[00:13:56] And that’s, for Jackson and I, and we make this joke a lot. Like he’s in, he’s over at his apartment slogging hours in, and I do the same thing over at my place too and we’re not out hanging out and stuff

[00:14:08] Dr Mike T Nelson: realistically. Yeah, I think it’s a good point that there’ll never be a substitute for just being really good at your craft.

[00:14:17] And then it’s one of those things that just takes time and it takes some money and then it takes more time and dedication again. And it, I think it, it’s also harder because it’s not. This nice linear curve, after you’ve been doing it for, quite a few years and as a new case of yourself, like a long period of time.

[00:14:36] It’s those exponential things where you’re at the curve, but it’s still going up, but it’s not like the first time. I’m read, how was it PO’s what training principles? I read, I don’t know, 20 some plus years ago now. And I was just like, oh, everything is Theorum three by 10.

[00:14:51] And he had something like 10 by three and he had all these other like loading parameters and five by five, which the time I didn’t know was actually from Bill Starr from the seventies. And I was like, oh my God this is amazing. And it was like, when you’re into training, of course that’s gonna be revolutionary.

[00:15:06] So you’re not gonna have those huge kinda leaps forward. It’s gonna be much, much smaller steps. But I think if you’re doing it right, you’ll still, it’s still rewarding. But I. It’s also harder to still dedicate the time unless it’s something that you just truly love and are passionate about doing it for the sake of doing it.

[00:15:29] Aaron Straker: Yeah, that I what you said there is like the, they’re not gonna find as many revolutionary things anymore. That being said I, as much as I don’t like spending the money to be like, I already know all this, sometimes it’s like a nice pat on the back to be like, dude, yeah I know all this already.

[00:15:47] Yeah, that’s really sweet that I, I’m interested in this person, or th this cert or whatever that I think is gonna be really cool. Their marketing, pulled me in and then I know it all. I’m like, okay, like we’ve come a long way. We’ve learned a lot. So while it, sometimes you spend money to learn lessons, but regardless, you learn the lesson and I’ve learned that that’s

[00:16:06] Dr Mike T Nelson: okay sometimes.

[00:16:09] For someone starting out, how would you recommend they get into the online training space and the. First question with that is, do you think they need time training in person? It appears that the push now is everybody just be an online trainer, screw, working in the gym, doing an hour is like, bro just go online.

[00:16:28] Aaron Straker: I would say I’m a very interesting person to ask this question to. I have never done anything in person. Oh, interesting. Any person, any in-person training. And the real reason there, I used to have horrible social anxiety. So the thought of meeting a stranger, like in the gym, like that sort of thing.

[00:16:48] Skin crawl, even just talking about it I’ve come a long way, but even just just mentioning it to you there, like I could feel it, like the hairs on my neck going up sort of thing. So I went straight to online. But where I think that I was fortunate is by the time I decided to do that, I had.

[00:17:07] Literally 15 years in the gym already, yeah. I was one of those people that I had a previous career. I was a software engineer and, many times throughout my software career, people like would not think that I was a software engineer. Cause I didn’t look like your typical software engineer do those sorts of things.

[00:17:25] And to me it really was, it was a means to pay my bills, so that I could go to the gym and live the life I really wanted. And then eventually, I just reached a point where I was like, I’m gonna go do that thing that I originally set out to do anyway. I’ve scratched the itch of going through the tried and true method and I just don’t wanna be here anymore.

[00:17:44] I’m gonna go do, I’m gonna go bet on myself sort of thing. So I was fortunate that I already had a really long track record of. I obviously had the physique already. I was one of those people who like bought training, books and nutrition books for fun. So I had already yeah.

[00:18:01] Went through a few of them by the time that I decided to really start taking anyone on and even, joining getting some certifications and stuff. So I, it’s doable, right? I am, proof of that. I think I got lucky in that by the time that I went fully, full-time in early 2019 doing it, I was already like a year and a half ahead of the pandemic sort of thing.

[00:18:24] I already had my entire business structure set up and all of that, but, There are certain things like the one that I briefly mentioned earlier, like effective communication that is much, much harder to learn online. Especially if you’re doing like text-based communication in and getting across like tonality, empathy, these sorts of things that, doing those in person we would obviously get much better practice

[00:18:53] Dr Mike T Nelson: at How do you handle the movement aspect online?

[00:18:59] Do you work with more intermediate to advanced clients? And that’s how you get around that they have a basic movement fluency. Do you require videos? Do you do an assessment? I’m always curious how online trainers handle that portion.

[00:19:13] Aaron Straker: Yeah, so I generally have more I would say like intermediate to intermediate.

[00:19:16] Plus I get some advanced trainees, but one thing I never do is I. I don’t like, want and fully assume that someone’s movement patterns, are correct. When I see things that kind of don’t look right or I might see for example, I have a client who’s coming from like a CrossFit space, and then I’ll have, I’ll do some like programming, like accessories for him, and he’ll have he’s doing lateral raises with the 30 pound dumbbells, and I’m like, no, you’re not.

[00:19:44] Dr Mike T Nelson: No you’re not. No, you must be a pretty damn big dude. Send me video of that, please. Yeah.

[00:19:47] Aaron Straker: Yeah. So I think like some of those things they’re pretty obvious. If you’ve spent enough time in the game and coaching, like you can spot things for beginners. I give them very basic things like, we are going to drill, these movement patterns.

[00:20:01] Send me a form, demo form, demo form check. That’s what I was looking for. Form check and working from there. But I would say like at this point I don’t really get like super, super green people. It’s any kind of the more beginner generally comes as like a referral from an existing client or something like that.

[00:20:18] So there are already like somewhat comfortable

[00:20:20] Dr Mike T Nelson: with the space. Yeah, I go back and forth on that too. If someone asked me and if I had to make a rule across the board, I would probably require some in-person time or like yourself, at least a minimum of a lot of in-depth training yourself and assuming that the person’s not just a genetic responding freak because those people are out there and they exist.

[00:20:46] It’s like I. Not, not the Andy Bolton were, the first time I deadlift it’s, 600 pounds. I squat 500 and yeah, granted he went on to break, a thousand, pound for a deadlift and did very well. But, eh, if I’m just wanting to learn how to deadlift 1 35 maybe is not the best person, to ask, I would want some movement fluency and to know what it’s like to struggle and figure out solutions to it is just my bias,

[00:21:11] Aaron Straker: yeah. And one thing I should also point out I am very transparent that I am, like nutrition is my bread and butter. It is only recently that I have like in the last like year and a half or so really started taking on like more training as opposed in combination with it.

[00:21:28] And I would say the real reason there is, As much as, like Mike, like people like training is sexy. You have all these different variables to modify

[00:21:37] Dr Mike T Nelson: and you, the secret squirrel, Russian maximal periodization program. Yeah.

[00:21:44] Aaron Straker: But for 80 plus percent of clients, right? Nutrition is where they need the emphasis to to see, to achieve the results that they want.

[00:21:54] And by talking too much about the training, like people, they just bite onto that and they’re like, oh, what about this and this? And I’m like, Hey. Come on. We’re not even in the ballpark o of our nutrition these three days per week. It doesn’t matter yet. So that, that I make very clear there.

[00:22:11] And I’m really only doing any training within the realm of hypertrophy. If a client wants specific sport performance or especially like power lifting, I have my coaches in my network that I, refer the, I’m like, I’m not, if you wanna get super strong, I’m flattered, but I’m not the guy for you.

[00:22:28] You’re gonna reach out to my guy Ryan here, who will, add hundreds of pounds to your total sort of thing. And I’m, I think that’s a also a pretty good quality of an established and honest coaches I’m not going to take on any single person. I only take people that I’m very confident that I can help.

[00:22:45] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I think that’s a key. That’s probably the, for better or worse, I started off in person and similar to you. Man, if I had to do in-person the rest of my life, I would probably jump off a bridge somewhere. Like I, from the outside looking in, I can fake it enough or I don’t think anyone would notice.

[00:23:03] But man, just doing four clients a day, I was wrecked. I was just like, oh my God. And then like people would come in, I would just get so nervous about the process, not necessarily, cause I didn’t know what to do. It’s like I, I just didn’t give two shits about any of the personal stuff, but I knew enough to know that mattered a lot to them.

[00:23:22] So an example I’ve used is client loved baseball. So I’d look up, what were the twin scores the night before. And in between sets I talked to him about baseball and he is oh, this is amazing. I’m like, whatever it takes to have to, you have a better session. And the better mood he was in, the more sets he did, like the more output he, he did.

[00:23:38] But I kinda realized pretty soon that I’m like, oh man, if I have to do this like full-time the rest of my life, it’s, I. I, I didn’t like the kind of the person to person interaction. And then also I just felt like I wasn’t solving any problems. I was just like there making sure they go through the motions.

[00:23:55] Of course you’re watching ’em, but most of it was general population and after you do it for a while, it is, you tend to use this in queues and stuff like that too, where when I moved online now, because you’re not limited also by geography, similar to you, there’s so many fascinating problems to solve, right?

[00:24:12] Because you’ll find for better or worse, I find all the people who have the weirdest shit going on for some reason. But that what also makes me pull my hair out. It also makes it very interesting because to me that’s like the high level problem solving of like, how do you get the training and the nutrition and the mindset and the monitoring and all this stuff to play together with, humans who, can be a little bit screwy from time to time.

[00:24:39] Aaron Straker: Yeah, it’s. I don’t think either has the exclusivity of the benefits. Yes. Even, much. So myself, I’ve five years now, full-time online. I crave a little bit of that in-person stuff, and this is coming from like a huge introvert. Where I would love to do some I don’t necessarily wanna do like in-person, like one-on-one sessions, but I would love to do like hypertrophy seminars or something like that.

[00:25:04] Hypertrophy, nutrition seminars, full of context and that sort of thing. Because I feel like, yeah, there is nuance that you can’t really, or you can, but it is so much more difficult to. Grasp over over o online without, hands on stuff. Especially when you’re talking about perfecting movement patterns, like a hack squat or something like that.

[00:25:28] That yeah. Like you can hit your depth in those sorts of things, but there is nuance, and I know even myself, I’ve been lifting damn near 20 years before I figured some of that stuff out, and I think there is utility to it. But it’s, there’s a lot of other limiting factors to being like, full in-person, the down, the 20 minutes of downtime between each client, people canceling because they’re stuck in traffic.

[00:25:54] There, there’s a lot of limitations to it. But there’s also limitations to online, right? Garnering trust through, just social media or a podcast or something like that. There’s challenges in both ways that I would definitely say.

[00:26:08] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I would agree with that. I’ve turned down many online clients in the past just to, I’m like, you have so many movement issues, you just need to find a good in-person trainer.

[00:26:18] I’m not gonna be able to solve all these. You just don’t have, and it’s not that they’re doing anything wrong, it’s just they just don’t have the reps, they don’t have the movement history. Yeah, we can do some basic stuff and I’ll do a lot of videos, but the good part is, similar to you having done it enough, usually on a one hour assessment call, you can figure out, okay, yeah, you, you’re new and we’ll work through some of this stuff.

[00:26:40] And you’re like, yeah, you don’t have a whole lot of movement stuff. Cool. This’ll be great. Or you’ve got a laundry list of things that don’t work, two trick knees, a bum shoulder, and you’re just like, ah. And you’ve never really done much lifting before, so you don’t have a history to modify it from.

[00:26:54] I’m just like, you just need to find someone in person and just do some basic stuff with them, even if it’s one session a week, and then we can sort stuff out in the future. Yeah, agreed. Yeah. The other part I did to work around that too was, obviously I converted my garage into a gym hot going on 13 years ago now, I think.

[00:27:13] And what I realized about four years ago was, oh, when I wanna teach stuff, I’ll just have private seminars here and it’ll be expensive and I’ll just invite whoever I want. If I don’t want ’em to come, I just don’t take their money and I don’t let ’em come. And the, the four times we’ve done it, it’s been great.

[00:27:34] It’s been super fun. Like they come into my house, we have a lecture in the living room, we make food in the kitchen, we do meditation outside, we stick ’em in the cold plunge. I’ve got the whole, garage converted to a gym and for limited times and for people that I know. It’s been awesome. But I also do it on an extremely limited basis, only with people I want to work with.

[00:27:55] Because if it’s three dickheads wanna show up for four days, it’s ah. Unless you’re really gonna pay me an ungodly amount of money, I’m just gonna say no. Yep. Yeah,

[00:28:06] Aaron Straker: I definitely agree with that too. Have ha it’s a it’s like a beauty to have, be able to not be in that position to be like, because it’s from like with you just explained there, like it’s not purely monetary gain No.

[00:28:19] It’s scratching different itches of your, personal and professional interests.

[00:28:25] Dr Mike T Nelson: And how did you transition from software developing to online training? Did you slowly transition and you wanted a certain amount of income per month, or did you just be like, I’m out and you jump ship all at once?

[00:28:40] Or how did you do that?

[00:28:41] Aaron Straker: Did not, jump ship all at once. So I was very fortunate that I had a girlfriend, or have a girlfriend, I should say, that we just planned it, she worked, she used to work in corporate finance and we were like just having deeper conversations like, is this.

[00:28:56] This is it, like you’re in corporate finance. I work at, I work, I’m just pushing code. Don’t get me wrong, we’re living in Southern California and San Diego. Like it was a good life. I guess there was just that, that dream that you had at 12, 14 years old of this like grand adult life you were gonna have.

[00:29:12] And I was just like, this ain’t it, thing. So we just decided to I was like, I’m just, we’re just gonna chase that, the original passion. And if we get good enough at it, if we work hard enough at it, it’ll eventually, w work. So we put together a plan, right? We picked our, we picked our exit date, which was essentially January of 2019.

[00:29:32] And just worked backwards. But fortunately by the time we like, had that conversation, like the nutrition hobby was in full swing. Like I had already been through some textbooks and that sort of thing, but I, kicked it into overdrive. I was like, okay, I need to get my first like cert sort of thing, because I was always just someone who was like, I’m just gonna, wheel and deal my knowledge between different sources, but to get us start you need some, you need to spend money on some things.

[00:29:54] So I went and I got the precision nutrition was like the first cert that I got. And then I quickly realized that, how their progression of like your, your level two and level three clients, you may never work with them, but I was like, ah, I don’t know. It’s what I want my sweet spot to be, so I’m gonna go chase that a little bit more.

[00:30:11] And then there was like a, there’s an N A S N Association in California. So I got, I went I went to them next. And I really just started diversifying my sources, right? Taking different certs, different courses. And I just started consuming it, as much as I possibly could. And then those first clients are gonna be like friends, acquaintances, a little bit of family, those sorts of things.

[00:30:31] And just started cutting my teeth on things, building my very first iteration of my done for you client check-in system, which is now a, a part of my business in and of itself. And I was learning as much as I could and we just worked backwards into that date and then slowly started getting rid of things cuz we knew we’d be leaving San Diego.

[00:30:51] And then just jumped, real realistically I took, took a leap of faith and pulled my boss at the software place, like about four months out. Because I was, I. Not to like toot my own horn or whatever, but like I had an important role at that company that the person under me, not from a hierarchy, but like the next development.

[00:31:11] Yeah. Yeah. He would’ve been fucked if I just pieced out. And I didn’t wanna do that, so I said, Hey come January, like I’m not gonna be here anymore. And he let me pick my last day. Nice. And they were super, super cool about it. And that took a lot of stress, off me. And then just worked into it and saved a lot of money, put away as much money as I could.

[00:31:29] I sold TV, couch, like all of our belongings, put that away because I knew there would be like a hit. And that very first year was a little rough. Yeah. I knew a whole lot about nutrition. I felt very adequate in my education skills. My marketing and sales and everything else got awful.

[00:31:48] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. That’s exactly the same place I ended up almost like I. Started doing it part-time. I worked for a medical device company for 12 years and I was able to negotiate working kind of part-time for them the last five years I was there. They got transition jobs and went back to a job I started there with and told ’em I wasn’t gonna move over until they could guarantee that I was gonna work part-time or at least start up, 24 hours a week eventually.

[00:32:15] And so they were like, no, we can’t do that. That’s impossible. And so I went to HR and I’m like, that says you can job share here. So they’re like you gotta find someone to job share. And so someone in the department wanted to work the other halftime. And so I ended up going back there, worked halftime, similar things, started getting clients doing that all and that was good.

[00:32:32] Did some in-person stuff for quite a while and then I hit a wall where I was just like, oh, like how do you get clients? Like what, I started doing a blog and writing, but I knew nothing about marketing and I ended up hiring a business coach at that point. And God, I spent almost three grand a month on it.

[00:32:52] And my thought was I’d finished my PhD, do the business coach thing, and great, peace out at my other job, PhD took four years longer than I wanted. I didn’t have any money, so I had to stay at the corporate job a little bit longer. I’m paying this business coach like three grand a month.

[00:33:06] I’m almost like trying to piss myself as I go to sleep at night trying to figure out, I just want to break even. And, but in hindsight, it was worth it. And the biggest thing I got from it was just really simple messaging of hey, when you write, like what you’re trying to solve somebody else’s issue, and then what is your process for, do you do an interview?

[00:33:26] How do you present your offer? That type of thing. So really basic stuff. But it was surprising at the time, maybe you ran the same thing out of the marketing was these complicated funnels and these systems and all this stuff. Nobody was teaching you the basic stuff of Hey, here’s how to write an article.

[00:33:41] Hey, here’s how to present an offer and. Here’s how to do a call with someone. Did not sound like a sleazy used car salesman in the process.

[00:33:52] Aaron Straker: Yeah, that one, very similar. I went through the business coach process and I can’t say that it’s all wrong, but there’s certain like an ethos that, that each of us have, and it’s going to be different with each person.

[00:34:06] But I just felt like I didn’t, it’s not how I wanted to operate my business, and there was a lot of which, different business coaches will teach you like, kind of trap people into these, like longer and that sort of thing. And the ultimate kicker for me was I had this experience at a a lifetime fitness where with my lifestyle, we’re in and out of a different.

[00:34:29] Cities and stuff for, or at least the past handful of years. It’s slowed down now, but I had to cancel 30 days notice. I’m like, okay, got it. Or 31 days notice or whatever it was. So I went in to cancel. It was like 29 days and not the 30 or 31. And they’re like, you gotta pay an extra month. And I remember being like, oh, okay.

[00:34:47] Like it’s a technicality. I missed the day, but when I left I was like, I will never step foot in this establishment again. Yeah. Like I, I’ve drew, like you drew the line in the sand sort of thing I’m done here. And that really hit me. I was like, I never want to be on the other end of that. I never wanna leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth and something like that.

[00:35:05] So it really it just changed my a, a business approach of I’m not gonna trap anyone in here. I’m very transparent about things on the front. If you don’t wanna be here, that’s fine. I’ll find someone else who does, but I’m never gonna leave, a bad taste in someone’s mouth sort of thing.

[00:35:21] And that really changed how I approached, my sales, and especially like sales calls and stuff. I don’t have a script. I hop on, I talk to people, I make sure I cover the questions that I need, but at the end of the day I know how to solve that person’s problems because there’s, you’re only gonna run into so many kind of client avatar, like silos.

[00:35:39] They’re gonna fit in like one of six. And you’re like, yeah, I know exactly. I know exactly what we’re gonna run into that sort of thing because I just, I’m experienced now, and I’ve been through it and I’m convicted in what I will say and as a potential buyer on the other side of that people can pick up on your conviction and it’s, oh yeah.

[00:35:59] It’s, they, he very help. It very much so helps them

[00:36:02] Dr Mike T Nelson: buy into that. Yeah. That was the biggest thing I realized was I ended up having developed, I guess my own script, but it’s not even a script. It’s just here’s a structure of some things that I honestly want to know about if we can work together or not.

[00:36:18] Because regardless if it’s a payment exchange or whatever, the first question is if you’re a trainer is I have to know, can I solve your problem? If I can’t solve your problem, then it doesn’t matter what you want to pay me because it’s not gonna work. Yeah. And I wish that, again, the things I learned along the way that, cost me $200,000 in coaching to figure out did get beat through my thick skull.

[00:36:42] Oh yeah. And then it’s okay to not work with everyone. If you’re not meshing like personality wise, then. It’s cool to be like, Hey, I don’t think this is a fit. Or, I haven’t opened anything in my one-on-one coaching to the public for God, probably two and a half years now. So I haven’t had any calls for quite a while.

[00:36:58] And then just referrals once in a while or even trying to talk the other person out of it. I’ve had calls literally where I’m like, okay, here’s the deal. You wanna get to this goal? Here’s what’s gonna be required of you. And I’m like, honestly, I said, I just don’t think you’re gonna do it. Oh no, I’m gonna do it.

[00:37:14] And I’m like, okay, so let’s do a trial period for 30 days. You prove to me that you can do these things. I’m not gonna give you unreasonable things to do. And if you execute on all those, cool, we’ll work together. If you don’t cool, peace out. No worries. It’s all good. Like you’re, just have a good life.

[00:37:31] It’s just not gonna work. And that’s okay. Yeah. And the two times I’ve done that, both of ’em turned out to be great. The person was awesome. Did everything that was asked at 90% compliance and everything was good the early on when I. Didn’t do that or I didn’t have any requirements. I was just like, oh my God, I need money.

[00:37:48] Like sure, I’ll take you. It was like every time was just, it was a trade and wreck. It was a disaster. Yeah.

[00:37:54] Aaron Straker: And that’s the really difficult phase where it’s you are in need of clients to, to make this work and try to make the best, call use case. Obviously the money is going to be much firmer of a decision making point, but those are those places where you like learn your lessons a lot and the real advice there is like you, you have to go through that period there, there’s no way around it,

[00:38:19] Dr Mike T Nelson: unfortunately.

[00:38:21] Yeah, and I’m biased cause I teach some of the stuff and I have a flexi mentorship program. I know you’ve got programs too. And exactly what you said, like you can give people the system I’ve used and it’s worked well and have ’em practice it, but. You just gotta keep you, it’s like lifting. You just gotta get your reps in.

[00:38:38] And I’ll tell ’em like, don’t even expect to convert your first three calls. It’s just practice. Like I think, with some good instruction you can get there faster than the hellish process I went through. But it’s not a guarantee. Like it’s just, it is just reps, and the sooner and the more reps you can get in and know what you did wrong and have someone be like, okay, next time try this or go this direction, or put your hands here, do this, you can get there faster, but that, that just doesn’t eliminate the amount of work you have to put into it. No

[00:39:07] Aaron Straker: And the real, and this is something like, I would say I was probably like three and a half years in before I really started to even be able to pay attention to this, but the effective communication part.

[00:39:19] Is huge. And oftentimes, and I’m sure obviously you know this Mike, but like client is gonna have expectations of the results up here, but their expectations of what they need to do is like down here. Yeah. Just dispatch. And the sooner that you can close that gap the better. And it, it seems like you’re being a little bit, not necessarily like a hard ass, firmer than you might otherwise want to.

[00:39:44] But at the end of the day, like this is, it’s a business, right? Someone is paying you to come to you to help them achieve results. And I could go on about this, on, on a different podcast or whatever, but achievement rates, across the industry with coaching I would say, like they’re abysmal

[00:40:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: on average, they’re pretty low, unfortunately.

[00:40:02] Aaron Straker: Yeah. And they, that’s like a personal vendetta of mine. For myself, and my clients. But at the end of the day, I lo I try and be as friendly as I can, that sort of thing. But I need to be very transparent when you are missing the mark and telling me, Hey, I have this, I want to be 15% body fat for my 40th birthday, and we’re 15 pounds out or 15 weeks out or whatever, and you’re pounding beers all weekend.

[00:40:28] You’re it’s not gonna work. We can pretend like it’s not gonna work for nine weeks and then get six weeks out and be like, yeah, it’s not didn’t happen. Maybe ne maybe next time you’re 40 or whatever. Or I can be like, listen, it’s not gonna work.

[00:40:43] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. How I handle that, which again, I wish someone would’ve told me this, is I will obviously point it out to them and then the decision is up to them knowing that they’re clearly off track.

[00:40:55] And the thing that kind of flips my switch is the second they complain. Then it’s okay, now it’s time for the come to Jesus talk of okay, here’s your behaviors, here’s your goal. Behaviors not matching your goal at all, and you’re very upset about it. I remember talking to John Bardi years ago and he’s it’s either the plan we gave you is amazing or not, or your compliance is at least 90% compliant if your compliance is 60%.

[00:41:25] I have no idea if I gave you the best plan or the worst plan it does. I have no idea. And there’s no way we’re ever gonna figure it out until you execute said plan, and then we can make adjustments from it. And it’s crazy how many times I’ve had to. Sit clients down and be like, okay, here’s the deal, here’s the plan.

[00:41:44] Here’s your compliance. I don’t know if this is good or bad because you did it at 15% of the time. And they’re like, oh.

[00:41:53] Aaron Straker: And I can’t in, in all honesty, make or agree that I think it’s like a purely a client. Like an individual client thing, because there’s so many things like social media that are like, all you need is five, five outta seven days in, in oh, you’re gonna make progress.

[00:42:09] And yes if you were like obese or have like very, in, in danger of health sort of things. Yes, five out of seven days is miraculous progress for you. But too many people extrapolate that to, Hey, I’m 17% body fat. Let’s use like a male. I wanna be 12% body fat.

[00:42:27] You’re not playing that game anymore. Yeah. Not even close to playing that game. Like in, in those extreme cases, I shouldn’t even say extreme. And those you’re already at 17% body fat. Like you’re healthy you’re doing good compared to the standard American, like you’re doing damn good.

[00:42:45] What it takes to continue to move the needle is leaps and bounds more than five out of seven days

[00:42:50] Dr Mike T Nelson: per se. Yeah. And I think even in the case I gave too, a lot of it is probably, and now early on, like some of the plans I gave clients was just completely unrealistic too. So I was just as much fault as they were for having this weird expectation because I didn’t do a good enough assessment and intake form of what their actual lifestyle is.

[00:43:11] I just took what they said they would do at face value and ran with it. Yeah. I didn’t ask ’em like, okay, how many kids do you have? Like most of my clients, are female. Okay, you probably have kids, okay, you work or you’re, working as a trainer. Oh, okay. What are the responsibilities?

[00:43:25] Do you have? Oh, you have to commute to the gym to work as a trainer. Okay. And then you’re telling me you’re gonna, crush it two hours a day, eight days outta seven days a week. And I go, okay, I should have asked you more. And known that something’s off here. Yeah,

[00:43:40] Aaron Straker: I completely agree.

[00:43:41] I did that as well. So much like now, one of the first things that I do when I get someone on the phone or really on like our consultation, ask them about tell me about your job and family dynamic. What does that look like? Yeah. And that’s exactly what I wanna find out. Do we have zero kids? Do we have six kids?

[00:43:57] Yeah. Do we not travel for work or do we travel internationally, weekly? I had a guy reach out who was lean already, like 15, like 13, 15% body fat wanted to be shredded. And then he is I travel every single week internationally for work. And I was like, oof. I can’t help you. I can’t, I’m sorry. I can’t help you.

[00:44:15] Yeah. I cannot help you achieve that goal with that circumstance. There’s too much variation. And it’s, yeah, getting that information like it, it’s critical for putting together a practical plan.

[00:44:27] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And tell us about the program you have with with our friend Jackson.

[00:44:31] Aaron Straker: Yeah. With kind of my interesting background in, in software, when I set out to build my business, I realized I needed systems, right?

[00:44:40] I had, I needed a way to keep clients, weigh-ins, photos, averages, food, all that in place. So I just built these things in Google Sheets because it would, orchestrate some of the things for me. And then that cascaded into three or four other tools that I built that I used to run my business.

[00:44:59] And then I met Jackson in Bali on a random night at a, all

[00:45:03] Dr Mike T Nelson: YouTube. How did you guys actually meet? This is a funny story.

[00:45:06] Aaron Straker: Yeah. We were at the same gym, but this is when he was in his his like back injury thing. So he hadn’t been in the gym, so I hadn’t seen him. And then this guy bullied me into a friendship at the gym.

[00:45:17] He was this big dude and he was like, he walked up to me at the gym. He was like, Hey, you look like you’re athletic. Let’s play like paddle this weekend in paddle. It’s like a, kinda like a tennis squash sort of thing. Okay. Paddle ball. And there was no option to say no. I was like, okay. So I met him, we played, and then he was like, Hey, we’re gonna go get this barbecue place later.

[00:45:38] I’ll message you the time. So I went to that and Jackson was there. So it was like four of us and we were just like, talking coaching and different things like that. And then a couple weeks later, Jackson and I met up for sushi and we’re just like, bullshitting, talking about coaching and stuff.

[00:45:51] And that’s where the idea hatched of putting together something the, like different in the space. Cuz there’s so much of, I want to get into this space. I need to know macros calorie deficit calorie surplus, like the Xs and Os of nutrition. Yeah. And then there is. Business coaching, right?

[00:46:10] Which is okay, you’re a coach, you need $10,000 months, like join our, whatever sort of thing. But there’s nothing in the middle of, you have some coaching chops. You understand the basics of nutrition and training. You don’t have a business yet. Like how do you organize your check-ins?

[00:46:26] How do you organize and orchestrate your consultation calls? Your review process, staying organized? How do you decide when you are making adjustments or not to someone’s protocol? So like I have models that I had previously built, like fat loss and muscle gain models that help guide you through like rates of gain based off published research on it sort of thing.

[00:46:47] So we packaged all that up, put it together. We put together like eight curated modules of this is what we think that you need to like, get your coaching business off the ground and keep it off the ground with your integrity intact. So that is called the online coaching upgrade. We built it over like the last six months of 2022.

[00:47:07] We released our first class in January, 2021, which sold out, which was really cool. We just released our second class May 1st, which sold out again really cool to get the response that we’ve had from that. And then the third class will release sometime this this summer.

[00:47:25] Dr Mike T Nelson: Nice. And the classes are all the same material, but you have it gated cuz you take only so many people at one time.

[00:47:30] Is that correct?

[00:47:31] Aaron Straker: Yeah. Yeah. Same material. And then what we do have is at the end or what I should really say is like towards the end, about three quarters of the way through the course, we have a big live round table call where we set it up, in advance and have a big open like round table on parts of the course, things outside the course.

[00:47:49] Like any, anything and anything. Anything and everything that we can help with coaching.

[00:47:54] Dr Mike T Nelson: And it’s obviously online so people from all over can do it. Correct.

[00:47:58] Aaron Straker: Oh yeah. And it’s been one of the really interesting Things to navigate, cuz obviously, I’m a American based off my accent.

[00:48:06] Jackson is from Australia. But even like when we’re writing things, there’s these like little, there’s difference like the word enrollment, right? Oh yeah. It’s got two Ls here and no s at the end. And over in Australia it’s got one L and has an S at the end. So it’s always like a little bit of a back and forth of which versions do we use and then coordinating that call and trying to try and do our best to like, get everyone we can in a

[00:48:29] Dr Mike T Nelson: reasonable time.

[00:48:31] Yeah. That’s awesome. I think, cuz the one thing I don’t think get’s talked about enough that there is more solutions now for people starting is the fact that there’s multiple different people’s system that you can buy. And to me, I was just talking about with this, with Dr. Jade a couple weeks ago.

[00:48:48] He has his own system. You guys have your own system. And to me that’s awesome. If I were to go backwards in time again, I would’ve spent more money on systems or certifications. Not every recertification as a system and less on other forms of education. It wasn’t that the other education was bad, but I didn’t early on have any framework from anyone to stick anything into, so you’re like, fumbling around in the dark, trying to take parts of this and parts of that and parts of this, and then you’re, putting ’em all together and you end up with like kind of shit stew because all the components were good, but your combination was like horrible and you didn’t execute it very well.

[00:49:27] And obviously I’m biased cuz I have, the flex diet sir and the fist flexx certification. But yeah, I think now that you can literally go and pay someone, it’s not gonna be cheap, but. For their system that have taken them decades in countless trial and error to put together. Again, like we said, it doesn’t mean you’re gonna eliminate all of the mistakes, you’re still gonna make them.

[00:49:48] But to me that’s just like the, if there is any shortcut or hack, as much as they hate that word, like that’s probably the best we have so far. Yeah.

[00:49:57] Aaron Straker: I definitely hate the word like hack, but what I, it’s a shortcut on your like decision making options Yes. Sort of thing. And Yeah, for me I’m a little bit, I guess impartial cuz I, I built all the systems, but over four years.

[00:50:12] Yeah. Like the check-in system is literally it. Four years of iterations of hundreds of clients, and you get that in. Everything else that I’ve ever built for my business, plus everything else for, 1500 bucks. And that was something too, like we wanted it to be obtainable, i, I’ve, not to dive into, but I’ve know very well of people who’ve been burned, in the industry on 10 30 k coaching packages. Oh, yeah. Things that could not deliver. And again, integrity was something that we were putting our stamp on. And we feel very confident with that.

[00:50:46] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s, and it’s super cool that you actually did that, because as just assembling all that stuff from the outside looking in, you’re like, oh, you just assembled a bunch of stuff and it’s a product. It’s It’s not that simple, right? So you have another person you’re trying to coordinate with.

[00:51:02] You’ve got, it may work for this client, but what are the, so my background, I did master’s in engineering is, okay, what are the constraints on the system? Have the constraints first. I’m sure software development’s probably very similar. And then we can build out and do these different things.

[00:51:16] But when you try to scale that to a whole bunch of people, you run into all these problems that you’ve never envisioned before. For me, I know like the hardest thing was for the Flex diet cert was what is the framework and the architecture that I just put everything in. Like I have more information than I’ll ever put in a certification, but how do I put it in the right constraints?

[00:51:36] Put it in a framework that’s useful, and then only tell them enough that they can be useful and not more. Yeah. So like for the technical components, I limit myself to one hour. So I have one hour to tell you all about dietary protein, which. That’s really hard. That was by far the hardest thing for me to do.

[00:51:55] Cuz to give a, this is probably similar to you, to do an eight hour lecture on it, that’s easier. Like you can go all over the place, whatever, you’re good. But like, when you have that short period of time, because at the end it has to be useful to that person. So to have all the check-ins, to have the templates, to have the system, and then have it be scalable to different clients, that’s what’s gonna be the most useful thing out of it, in my opinion.

[00:52:16] Aaron Straker: Yeah, the, it’s like the dissemination of actionable information versus like the available information. And that was something that I, to be completely transparent, like Jackson really put his foot down on we need a time cap on the modules. Yes. And at the time I didn’t really, I didn’t appreciate it a as much be, but it was challenging to be like, fuck, I gotta pair this in super hard.

[00:52:41] But you lose interest in, in. When things are too long and I’ll be transparent, like I’m on a, I’m, in a continuing ed program right now. Every single Submodule is like a 50 minute video. And I’m just like, come on, they’re so long. And yeah, they’re unnecessarily long. And that was another thing that I was like really proud that we, refine the slides and really dialed into this is what is gonna move the needle so that it can be really actionable

[00:53:10] Dr Mike T Nelson: as well.

[00:53:11] Yeah. And that process just takes a lot of time and a lot of reps. And that was the thing on my end, I was the most worried about was that did I set the constraints too narrow? And in hindsight I got, I think I just got pretty lucky that it ended up working out okay. But the first time you go through and do that, and luckily I had done other products before.

[00:53:33] You’re honestly just guessing, right? So a time cap, like everybody knows, okay, we need a time cap. But then the discussion is how long? And you always can think of these other things that would be useful to add. But what I found was it’s the addition by subtraction. It’s okay, how can I refine this?

[00:53:49] How can I make it better? How can we edit down so that yeah, you’re, it is gonna be longer in length. There’s no way around it. It’s gonna be many hours. But again, how do you make it useful and then also accurate. Cause as with anything physiology related, there is some stuff that is simple, but it gets very complicated, very fast and

[00:54:11] Aaron Straker: so not to, shamelessly plug myself, but myself and Yeah, go ahead.

[00:54:14] First, who was recently on the podcast, we have a podcast called E Train Prosper. And that’s all we do is context and nuance, yeah. For people like us who want to get into the nitty gritty, but. It’s oftentimes, you get like analysis paralysis by too many options of that sort of thing.

[00:54:31] And really in a course or something like that, you want what is going to be, again, the needle mover for 90% sort of

[00:54:38] Dr Mike T Nelson: thing. Yeah, and I had a good discussion with Brian and we were talking about, muscle hypertrophy and long lengths and all this stuff. And at the same point, I find it on one hand, utterly fascinating, the different types of muscle contraction may elicit more hypertrophy.

[00:54:55] And then on the other side I also know that lately when I’ve been going to the gym, I only go to commercial gym once a week when I’m home, which is nice. It seems like there’s these six foot eel shaped rake people who look like they need a sandwich, who just camp out at the cable machine all the time, who are about 18 to 20 years old.

[00:55:14] And all I keep thinking is bro, you just deadlift, pick something off the floor, like squat down with something like. Maybe their goals are different, I don’t know, but it almost feels like you can go so far down that one area that everyone is back to majoring in the minors again, when they don’t need to be doing that, they should probably start somewhere else, per se.

[00:55:37] Not that there’s not a time and a place for it. Again, you’re back to the whole discussion about, context. Yep. No,

[00:55:43] Aaron Straker: things don’t matter until they do. Yeah. Yeah. And it, I, that is a challenging one for myself. Like now I enjoy that because I love the example I like to use is it’s like a shotgun versus a sniper rifle, right?

[00:55:59] Before, six years ago I had to take, the only tool I had was a shotgun. So on Quad day it was like 15, 16 sets because that’s the only way I knew how, now I can do it in four with the additional knowledge, but, I’ve been lifting weights for 20 years. I’m in the mid thirties now when I was 18.

[00:56:19] I You like if someone was trying to explain to me like long muscle lengths or short muscle lengths I, yeah. I don’t think I could’ve began to grasp it sort

[00:56:27] Dr Mike T Nelson: of thing. Yeah. And I always think of the handful of gyms I’ve trained at that are the place you walk in that looks like a humid dungeon where you’re afraid you’re gonna get hepatitis B just by walking into the place like almost every single time.

[00:56:41] Those have by far, the biggest and strongest people I’ve ever seen in my life. And these are people who probably couldn’t name a long muscle length if they’re life dependent upon it. Yeah. So it, and again, you could argue maybe the people who gravitate towards that are all just, genetic freaks and drugs and everything else.

[00:56:56] But I, I think there is something to, you just can’t skip the brutally basic stuff. And it will, it’ll always work, but, Is where is the person in their journey? Like I was watching a video a couple months ago. J Color was being interviewed and he’s oh yeah, I don’t do flat bench press anymore. I don’t think it’s a good chest development exercise.

[00:57:18] He listed off some other stuff he does in between and the comments were hilarious to see all these people that are like, yeah, I knew bench press was bad. Even heavy dumbbells doesn’t work. And but if you listen to the whole video earlier in the video, he’s yeah, in high school I was mentioned 4 0 5 for reps and I just got to the point where it didn’t do anymore for my chest development.

[00:57:38] Everybody just skipped over the part where he is like a genetic freak cuz obviously worked, very hard over many years, but he was doing 4 0 5 for reps as a foundation and then maxed that out and then went on and did this other stuff. But everybody skipped that part.

[00:57:52] Aaron Straker: Yeah. And that’s the context that is important, right?

[00:57:55] Yeah. Or people focused pulled the wrong, sound bite out of it per se.

[00:57:59] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Cool man. Thank you so much for all your knowledge and sharing everything. I really appreciate it. Where can they find more about the course? And I know you’ve got the website and Instagram and everything else.

[00:58:10] Yeah,

[00:58:11] Aaron Straker: so the course is at the on or not the online coaching upgrade.com. You can find me on Instagram at Aaron underscore straker. It’s S T R A K E R or my coaching website@strakernutritionco.com.

[00:58:28] Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the time and all the best on the long plane flight back home to Bali and you never know, maybe we’ll actually we’ll see you over in Bali at some point.

[00:58:39] I hear that it’s beautiful and they have kiteboarding, so that bumped it much higher up on my list. Both of

[00:58:44] Aaron Straker: those things are true. Yes. Thank you for having me. This was a

[00:58:47] Dr Mike T Nelson: great conversation. Cool. Thanks buddy.

[00:58:51] [00:58:51] Dr Mike T Nelson: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Huge thanks to Aaron for taking the time to be on the podcast. I really appreciate it. So stoked that I got to meet him in person at a friend’s wedding of all places. As of this recording, Aaron is. Safely back in Bali.

[00:59:08] Enjoying his time over there is definitely on one of the places I’d like to get to at some point too. So make sure to check out his program there with their good buddy, Jack and Pa Jackson Pesos, and I think you’ll really enjoy it. And I know those guys have a lot of really great solid work.

[00:59:27] I haven’t been able to look at their program yet. But having known both of ’em for quite some time, I’m sure it’s gonna be completely stellar. I don’t have any affiliates for it, so no relationship if you purchase it or not. I don’t make any money off it, but excited to have him on the podcast.

[00:59:41] Huge thanks to him for sharing all of his knowledge there. And I am offering the flex diet and mentorship. Again, it is a six month mentorship. It’s completely online. But there is an application process and then there’s a phone call just to make sure we are a good fit. And I’m super excited to teach a bunch of new material again we cover everything from mindset to traffic to how to actually write.

[01:00:08] Like in this program, because there’s only a handful of people, I will literally go through and edit your assignments of writing like old school. Cause I think if you can write, you can transfer that to videos, you can transfer that to newsletters. You can transfer that to social media posts. But there are some specific things that you definitely wanna look for, so we help you out with that and a whole lot more.

[01:00:30] So if you’re interested, there’ll be a link down here below. I’ll go ahead and apply as it is recording in July 10th. I’m thinking the application will only be open for a week, maybe two weeks on the outside. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but we are definitely. Starting up very soon. If it’s outside that timeframe just drop me an email and we can add you to the wait list for the next time that we do it.

[01:00:54] Last time I did this was about a year and a half ago, so might be a little bit of a wait. Anyway thank you so much as always for listening to the podcast. Really appreciate it. Huge thanks to Aaron for being on the podcast here. If you enjoyed this podcast, so please leave us whatever stars you think is appropriate.

[01:01:12] Even a short two sentence review goes a long way to help us with the algorithms and getting the show a wider exposure to more people such as yourself. Thank you so much. We greatly appreciate it. We’ll talk to you next week.

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