Episode 218: From Fitness Novice to Pro: How to Create Compelling Content and Nurture a Loyal Following with Jordan Syatt

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[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. On this podcast, we talk all about ways to increase muscle performance and improve body composition, all without destroying your health in the process. Today we’ve got one that’s related to the topic, but similar to the one from Andrew Coates this past week.

[00:00:25] We’ve got a bonus episode this week with my buddy Jordan Syatt. I’ve known Jordan for many years now. Like Andrew, I first met him, I believe, at the Fitness summit in Kansas City. I think it was the first time we met in person. Followed his stuff for years. Got to see him present again recently at the Raise the Bar seminar.

[00:00:49] So always awesome to see him. And we got to do a little virtual hangout session here. We talked all about a little bit more on the business side of fitness. Make sure to follow Jordan’s content. We’ll link to his website, his wonderful stuff he puts out on Instagram, which is actually really good.

[00:01:08] I don’t say that about a lot of people’s Instagram content. We talk about writing, why it is a useful kind of meta skill that you can apply to many other things. We do a little bit of back in the day about how we got into fitness and talking about even the early days of reading team Ag, a bunch of the authors there who’ve now become friends to both of us, which is crazy.

[00:01:34] Training. What are some different methods of training? Customer acquisition, how many followers do you really need? Can you make a business out of this? Imposter syndrome much more. And then we also talk a little bit about Brazilian jiujitsu kite boarding and Jordan’s experience getting a tattoo recently.

[00:01:57] So I think you’ll really enjoy this conversation with Jordan Syatt as of this release, which it is going to be out most likely on this Thursday. And I will still have applications open for the Flex Dive mentorship until midnight, July 21st, 2023. I will put a link in here below, so if you happen to listen to this right away as this comes out you can still apply to get in there on this round.

[00:02:32] If you do miss it, you can sign up to my newsletter. There’ll be a link for the newsletter there also. And if I decide to do it again next year or whenever I decide to do it, assuming I’m doing it again, which probably will, I have no idea the timing yet. Just go to mike t nelson.com and you’ll be able to sign up to the newsletter.

[00:02:50] You’ll be updated on everything that’s going on. And if you are listening to this in time and want to apply to the Flex Diet mentorship, Where we discuss how to transition your business online, it’s a little bit geared more towards beginner and intermediates.

[00:03:06] We discuss everything from exercise assessments to business and marketing, primarily via newsletter. Yeah, some social media stuff, mindset and personal development. Go to the application process below. As I mentioned, applications close at midnight, July 21st, 2023. So enjoy this wide ranging conversation with the one and only Jordan

[00:03:31] [00:03:32] Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome back to the Flex Diet podcast, and I’m here with Jordan Syatt. How’s it going man?

[00:03:39] Jordan Syatt: Man, like I said before we started recording, it’s a huge honor to Oh, thank you. I know I think one of the coolest parts about us, like connecting was, I think I was actually speaking on stage when I first saw you.

[00:03:50] You were like, is that, that Dr. Mike? I freaked out. I’ve followed you since I was a kid since I was a young kid, man. So it’s really a huge honor and a blessing that I get to connect with you and speak with you on a more regular basis. So thank you for having me.

[00:04:04] Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, no, thank you so much for, all the great work you’ve put out and the content and I think just providing consistently good information cause our, kind of our topic today is where do we think the fitness kind of industry is going?

[00:04:20] More from a coaching side and also even. A consumer side. So I appreciate all the good information cuz my first question is what kind of makes you, I don’t wanna stay, say stay with the basics, but with stuff that actually works and not get distracted by the latest dancing Teddy Bear Fitness video on TikTok or whatever.

[00:04:42] Cause I think for newer coaches, I think there’s this perception probably cause they haven’t been around as long that, oh, I gotta do what’s trending now. I gotta get likes and views and so I’m gonna try to follow the trendy thing and then it doesn’t go well or it does go well. And I think they entrap themselves either way.

[00:04:59] Jordan Syatt: Yeah, man it’s a really good question. I’m glad you asked and I think that I think that most coaches and people who want to build their business, they look at likes and views and followers. As the currency when in reality, likes and views and followers, it’s like having a lot of monopoly money.

[00:05:24] It means nothing and what’s really important. I think one of my greatest advantages is I came up in the time of blogs and website articles. Yeah. I think, and this time, like you were in the thick of it. Yeah. I think that is one of my greatest advantages that I was brought up in that era because you know how long it takes to write a great article, talk about it.

[00:05:48] It is a savage process. It’s awful. It takes an unbelievable amount of time to think of the article, to research the article, write the article, edit the article, post the article, distribute the art. Like it’s so much time. And the worst part is that once you post it, no one sees it. Yeah, very. Especially when you’re just starting out.

[00:06:12] I remember for the first couple years of my business, like my website would get 18 views a day, and then most of ’em were my mom.

[00:06:18] Dr Mike T Nelson: She just keeps coming back. Did you publish anything new yet?

[00:06:21] Jordan Syatt: And she hated my content. She was always this, but the funny thing is that is what I still treat my business and my content from that perspective thinking.

[00:06:36] Because what you realize when you build your business from a blog perspective, from an article long form article perspective, you realize you don’t need hundreds of thousands of people seeing it. If you have 25 to 100 people who will read a 2000 word article every single time you put it out, you’re gonna do very well.

[00:06:58] You’re gonna do totally. You don’t need a big audience. And Most coaches who are trying to build their social media think that more followers and more likes and more views will lead to more business. And I know for a fact that’s not how it works. I j I know for a fact. And so I treat my social media the same way that I would treat a website article or a long form piece of content where it’s like I’m just trying to speak to a very tiny percentage of people who will really care and listen and benefit.

[00:07:31] I’m not trying to go viral, I’m not trying to reach the most people. I know there are options on social media where you can monetize your Instagram reels and stuff. Yeah, it’s a terrible idea. As soon as you do that, now your entire thought process is, how do I get more people to see this as opposed to how do I help more people with this?

[00:07:50] And when the pro, when the whole foundation of your process of content creation is. How do I help people who see this now, actually, ironically, you’ll probably end up reaching more people and the people who see it will want to work with you. So it’s the whole concept of trying to reach more people, trying to go viral, trying to get more views, more likes.

[00:08:11] It is a losing battle. You will lose this 100 out of 100 times. It might work short term in terms of, maybe you’ll get more views. Maybe you’ll strike, you’ll go viral at one point. But I know when I say this, dude I’m not joking. I know multiple people with huge audiences who are struggling severely with their business.

[00:08:33] Oh yeah. Like severely. And I also know, I know many coaches with a very small audience who are dominating and who will continue to dominate because they give the clients that they have an amazing service and then their referrals come in. And then the small number of people who see their free posts online, become paying clients because they’re a good coach.

[00:08:54] It’s, this isn’t trying to get rich with monopoly money. This is trying to help real people with great content, which often doesn’t go viral.

[00:09:04] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I can’t go to my bank and be like my mortgage is a little late. I got a hundred likes on Instagram, though. Exactly. Screw off. What are you talking about?

[00:09:13] Jordan Syatt: It’s, yeah, it’s that. And that’s what a lot, you’ll actually appreciate this. I’ve split test different things on social media advertising to see what coaches are interested in because I have one aspect of my business, which is for fitness and another one that is to help coaches with their business.

[00:09:29] And I’ve run split tests to see if coaches would be more interested in either making more money or getting more followers where I’ll essentially put out an ad on using Facebook advertisements on Instagram and Facebook, basically advertising, do you wanna get more likes and followers or and another one, the exact same ad, but instead of more likes and followers, it’s Make more money, dude, every time.

[00:09:56] Coaches prefer to go for the more likes and followers really every time. Man, that out outperforms making more money every time. That’s crazy. It is wild to me. It’s crazy. And then the, there’ll be three. There’s how to make more money, how to get more likes and followers, and how to help more people.

[00:10:13] Which one do you think does the worst?

[00:10:16] Dr Mike T Nelson: Probably how to help more people, unfortunately, which every time makes you wanna go pound sand, but how to help more

[00:10:21] Jordan Syatt: people loses. And that’s why, that is why when people say, aren’t you worried about the competition? There’s more people than ever. I’m like, Nope, not at all.

[00:10:30] I could not be more confident in the future because people are getting into this industry, they’re becoming coaches, not because they wanna help people, because they think it’s gonna be an easy career to make more money in. And I’ll outlast all of them. I don’t give a shit. Yeah. So it’s, if your goal is to help people, you have to understand you’re probably not gonna go viral.

[00:10:49] You’re just not, and that’s okay. You don’t need to go viral. You need a very small group of people who trust you and then you provide a great service. That’s it. Yeah.

[00:11:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: I have a similar thought process. I teach in the flexi mentorship and the process I do is old. It sounds like old school.

[00:11:07] Cause I’m like this old curmudgeony guy now, but it’s hey maybe you should learn how to write an actual article and yes, it’s gonna suck. No, it’s not gonna be a lot of fun. It’s a long kind of climb, but it’s such a useful skill. And then after that, how about we start a newsletter where you control all the aspects.

[00:11:32] If you wanna repost some stuff to social media. Yeah, we go into that. Cool. Whatever, that’s fine. But then the next thing, once people start getting followers on the newsletter, it’s the same thing. They’re like, oh, I only have, I had one person come to me. Literally, they’re like, I only have 10,000 people on my newsletter list.

[00:11:48] Only, I’m like you, hold on. Like these are people who opted into your content. You didn’t buy a list from someone else or do some maintenance shit or whatever. They’re like, no. And I’m like, when’s the last time you sent a newsletter? They’re like, I don’t know. Like last year. I’m like, last year.

[00:12:05] What are you doing? They’re like I don’t think I have enough people on my newsletter list. And I’m like, how many people do you need? This is, a solo printer, one person to transition to online training type thing In. Shocker, we had this person send out some newsletters, send out content, send out a decent offer.

[00:12:26] It converted six people in a week, and it wasn’t slimy, it wasn’t used car salesman. It was just very simple, good content. Hey, if you wanna work with me, here’s the process. That was it. And I’m like it seems weird to me that I think social media especially has inflated all of the numbers that people think that they need to hit.

[00:12:47] And same thing as you I’ve known people who have a lot of followers on social media, and I know about what they make and where they live and what they do. And not that money is everything, but the perception would be that they’re, super far up and they must be making six, seven figures a year.

[00:13:05] And they’re not even close.

[00:13:09] Jordan Syatt: And they’re stressed and

[00:13:10] Dr Mike T Nelson: angry. They’re stressed out, they’re unhappy, they’re grouchy all the time.

[00:13:15] Jordan Syatt: You’re speaking the truth, man. And I don’t think this is spoken about enough. There aren’t many people who know people in, in these situations who are willing to talk about it.

[00:13:25] Honestly. It’s A lot of followers does not equal a big business, nor does it equal happiness at all. No matter what they put on their social media, I promise you it is. We all know this, the highlight reel, you know that saying, we don’t, I don’t think most people understand how much of a highlight reel it really is and how much it is actually fabricated just for the perception of what it looks like.

[00:13:48] A lot

[00:13:49] Dr Mike T Nelson: of it is like I’ve seen people take, we’ll say the interesting video in front of a house that’s not theirs, A car that’s not theirs. Yes. And I’m like, okay, one, whatever. Two, what are you trying to do? It almost seems like you want perception, like you said, likes over everything else. Yep. And that you think that if I just project this image that I don’t have.

[00:14:17] People are gonna come to me. And I’m like, what happens when they do and they find out that wasn’t even real? It’s then what? It’s like they haven’t really thought the process through. I think. I don’t know.

[00:14:27] Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s it’s a terrible cycle that people are falling into.

[00:14:30] And I think this is one of the reasons people burn out on social media because they’re doing things that aren’t congruent with what they feel like they should be doing, but they do them anyway. And so then they feel like an imposter. It’s yeah, no wonder you feel like a fucking imposter because you’re pretending to be someone you’re not.

[00:14:47] That’s you an

[00:14:47] Dr Mike T Nelson: imposter. You are an imposter. No wonder you feel like one, it’s

[00:14:51] Jordan Syatt: of course, it’s not a surprise. You’re doing things that you don’t even think you should be doing and you’re acting in a certain way that isn’t actually you. Like you are an imposter. That’s exactly right. That’s why you feel like it and then that’s why you burn out.

[00:15:03] And it’s really sad. And I think the more that we can have conversations like this and just let people know, it just blows my mind to hear. Someone would say 10,000 people isn’t enough. Yeah. When I had less than a thousand followers on Instagram, which is nowhere near 10,000 on an email list is insane.

[00:15:23] That’s

[00:15:23] Dr Mike T Nelson: actually really good. Like you can make them very good living if it’s a legit list. Yeah. With 10,000

[00:15:30] Jordan Syatt: easy. If you didn’t, if you didn’t buy fake people from yeah. Cash then, and it’s all real then a hundred percent. Like you can live a wonderful. Very comfortable life and provide for your family without question on a 10,000 person list.

[00:15:48] And if you can’t, then that probably says more about your service as opposed to anything else. Yeah. Because people just are the words getting out the peop you’re or, and you’re not offering good service, you’re not getting good retention, getting no referrals. That says more about maybe your coaching, in which case maybe you need to start learning more, studying more paying better attention to your clients, replying your emails more quickly, making, getting their programs on time, all that stuff.

[00:16:11] But most people are like, oh my God, I only have 4,000 followers. I’m like, could you imagine standing up in front of a room of 500 people and giving a talk? Yeah. It’s like 500, a hundred people. Yeah. 20 people. It’s and you’re saying that a thousand people isn’t enough. Get outta here. People are outta their fucking minds.

[00:16:29] Yeah. And

[00:16:30] Dr Mike T Nelson: I told this story in the podcast before, but it also matters who those people are. Like people tend to think in. Quantity not quality. Yeah, I remember the story of one of my favorite bands of all times is a band, hardcore band, hate Breed. These singers, Jamie Josta. And so when they put out their first independent record, they went to play this gig.

[00:16:50] They get there, he said, there’s the like, and it was like a 3000 cap room or something like that. He’s there was maybe 21 people at the entire show. And he’s and they’re all standing in the back with the, the arms, pretzel arms. And impressed me, bro type stance. But it turns out one of the guys, there was a record executive and he’s we decided we were gonna go out.

[00:17:12] We’re you gonna play the show the best we can? We didn’t have the best attendances. Whatever, we can’t do anything about it. It’s time to do the show. And it turns out the record executives saw the show. Long story short, signed him to a three or four year, record deal. But he is if we would’ve went out and said, oh my God, there’s only 20 people in this show.

[00:17:28] Fuck this show. I don’t want you, let’s not really give it our best. He’s I guarantee we would’ve not gotten that record deal. Yeah. So that’s always stuck with me. Even if you’ve got an email list of a hundred people or 20 people, like you may not even know who’s on there, what they need, what that may lead to.

[00:17:43] We’ve been around long enough to go to conferences and just run into someone like I got in Men’s Health in 2011, cause I ran into Lou Schuler in the hallway, we’re both lost, trying to go to a lecture. And it turned out that I actually stalked him because it was an nice s n presentation. Jose, Tony asked me, he is like, Hey, do you wanna do this talk?

[00:18:04] And I’m like, I would love to, but I am dead broke right now. I’m trying to go through grad school. I’ve got a house payment. Like I, I literally can’t afford it. And he’s no, I totally understand. And then I saw that Lou Schuller was presenting. I was like, oh, I want, my goal at that time was to have an article in Men’s Health and have, Lou Schuller be the editor.

[00:18:23] And so I called Joy back, I’m like, Hey man, can I still present? Like I’ll find a way to, to pay for it. Cuz in my brain I’m like, Flu Schuler’s presenting and I’m presenting, Hey, we’re at the same level. At least, I can show ’em the brochure. And long story short, ran delude just by pure accident.

[00:18:39] Got him come to my talk. We ended up talking afterwards and ended up getting an article on metabolic flexibility in men’s health. That doesn’t always work that way. I’ve had many other circumstances where you’re run into someone and you never see ’em again and nothing happens. But you don’t know without putting yourself in that position or getting more people on a list or putting out content, like you have no idea what can potentially happen at that point,

[00:19:01] Jordan Syatt: bro.

[00:19:02] Amen. A hundred percent agree. The more shots on that you take, the more chances you have to score. And this is where, this is one of the reasons aside for one of the reasons I replied to as many comments and dms as I possibly can, even to this day. One of them is because I know for a fact people get really excited when I reply to get stoked and if I can do that for someone on any given day. That’s amazing. If I could just make their day better just from replying, like amazing. The other thing is I’ve gotten so many opportunities from replying to comments and dms. I, the only reason I got the job coaching Gary Vanerchuck was because I replied to a comment on my website in 2012.

[00:19:42] The only comment on an article on that one article, that was the only comment, and I didn’t know the guy, I just replied. He asked a question. And then four years later, that guy was Gary Vaynerchuck’s coach, and he asked me to, if I wanted to be his next coach. Now he’s one of my best friends, Mike Viti. And we have a business together.

[00:19:58] Multiple opportunities just from being kind and replying to someone. And then maybe nothing happens. I would say more often than not, nothing happens. Yeah. But sometimes it does. And when it does, oh, it’s always worth it. And you’re so glad you did. You’ll never regret.

[00:20:18] Taking the time to be kind and reply to someone you will always regret not taking the time to be kind to someone and reply always.

[00:20:27] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And it, and I think you do a good job of replying and doing things because you honestly want to help them. And whatever happens after that happens, I, back to the, some people in the industry, there’s some things I know people will do very publicly because it looks better, but yet they’re not as helpful as they appear, and so I think that’s another trap. But, same thing I remember years ago I replied to a guy who was on my newsletter list. He had a few questions, just answered his questions, and then a couple months go by, don’t hear from him. And he’s I was like, Hey, I work for a bunch of dentists and we want someone to talk about fat loss at our annual conference.

[00:21:09] Oh, by the way, it’s in Cancun. We’ll fly you down, pay for all your expenses. You just have to give a half hour talk and you can hang out like the whole weekend. I’m like in and I’m like thinking a dentist conference. Like what? Like you would nev, I don’t market to dentist. My topic wasn’t even close to any of the other topics, but it so happened he liked me.

[00:21:30] I put out good content, I answered his questions. He was on the board who got to pick speakers, so he is I want this guy. I want him to present. It was relevant and I also found out Dennis actually liked to party. It was actually pretty fun.

[00:21:45] Jordan Syatt: That’s so good. Yeah. I love that, man. It’s exactly right.

[00:21:47] Like it, it happens literally just last night. Someone dmd me, she asked me a question, I replied, and she was like, number one, I can’t believe you replied. Thank you. Number two. Thank you. That was very helpful. Number three, apparently she lives here in Dallas and she’s an organizer for a big a big group a certain federation.

[00:22:03] And she was like, I would love it if you would be a keynote speaker for us. And I was like, yeah, sure. Oh, nice. And it’s awesome. You just have no idea. And like you were saying, do it without the expectation that something is gonna happen. Yeah. Do it cause you really wanna help them. But if we’re talking about, someone asked me I think it was yesterday, I do a lot of podcasts, either yesterday or the day before someone asked me, they said, if you could give your younger self some advice, what would it be?

[00:22:28] And this is, people ask this question all the time. I don’t regret anything. There’s nothing that I regret what I would. Tell my younger self is cuz I’m a pretty anxious person. Like I, I just get, there’s, I’m, I get anxious. I get worried about the future, especially like money. I was not only did I not really have much money growing up, it was always an issue in our house.

[00:22:48] Money was a big problem. So I saved to a fault. Like I save as much as I possibly can and probably I sh might, I should probably spend more to have a little bit more balance with it. But the idea of being broke and not being able to provide for my wife and daughter and my family and everything is always, has always scared me.

[00:23:07] And that was, it plagued me even more when I was younger and just starting out because, like when I’m, when you’re writing articles and no one’s seeing it, you’re not making any anything. Oh. And the advice that I would give my younger self would be this, as long as you keep trying to help people and keep.

[00:23:29] Building relationships on the foundation of just being a kind human. Everything is gonna be great. It’ll all work out. It will all work out. The constant has to be hard work. And that was never a question for me. It wasn’t like, oh, I’m just gonna stop making content because I loved it and I knew it would work.

[00:23:47] But it, you have to consistently work hard and consistently be kind and try to help people. That’s it. As if that’s literally it, that’s the recipe. And the advice I would give myself is go back. If I could go back, I would say just listen, as long as you keep doing what you’re doing, there’s no reason to worry.

[00:24:05] You’ll be fine. Yeah. Work hard and be kind, and then it’ll work out. And that’s truly it. Yeah. And it’s,

[00:24:12] Dr Mike T Nelson: I was just talking to my wife, God the other day, like how many times, because owning neural business, obviously my wife works for me. We’ve got one other employee, a couple virtual plays, et cetera.

[00:24:23] It’s. It’s it’s freaky when you’re both doing the same thing or you’re the sole person, providing, you don’t really have a backup type thing. And I’ve, we were just talking the other day about, I’ve lost track of how many times where you’re looking at your bank account, you’re looking at all your stuff, and you’re just like, oh shit.

[00:24:44] And then you’re like and within literally most of the time, a couple weeks, like you say, Hey, I’m gonna open up a few coaching spots, or you have a program. Or more often than not, I’ve had people just random referrals. I didn’t even ask for it. Come up and they’re like, Hey, I really wanna work with you, and you talk to ’em and it’s a good fit.

[00:25:00] And they wanna pay cash up front for a year in advance. You’re like, thank God. But those things happen more often than not, where I think if you told me that, when I would start, I’d be like, no, you’re crazy. Like you’re running around with scissors what are you doing? This is a stupid idea.

[00:25:18] But like you said, like you’ve, you put in the time, you put in the effort, you generally want to help people. You just keep doing that. And more often than not, things actually work out, which I know is corny advice and extremely hard to believe when you’re sitting there just starting it out going, oh, I don’t know what I’m doing.

[00:25:36] Jordan Syatt: A hundred percent. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions in terms of there are many misconceptions about many things, but when it comes to creating content online, I would imagine most people think the majority of my time is spent making content, and that is actually not true. The majority of my time is spent speaking with people one-on-one.

[00:25:57] Like I spent a significant amount of time making content, but the vast majority, I would say, 75 to 80% of my time is actually spent interacting with people who interact with my content. Not the actual making of the content. Whether it’s replying to emails, whether it’s answering comments or dms or even the, I do q and as all the time on my Instagram story.

[00:26:21] That’s another way to interact directly with your audience. I believe in this so strongly and there’s this, a phrase that Gary told me when I was coaching him and he’s used it many times over. He calls it scaling the unscalable. And everybody wants to automate things and have all the, have someone do this and have AI do that.

[00:26:41] And there’s a time and a place for delegation and ai, all of that. But the one thing that AI can never take away from us, and the one thing that, that you ha always have control over is. Your interact, your human interactions with other humans, and in this day and age, I think they’re more valuable than ever.

[00:27:01] I think a real rep reply. When I message people on Instagram, I usually send voice memos. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just easier to be very honest. Like it’s, if it was easier for me to type, then I would type, but I just get, I hate fucking typing for hours a day on my fucking phone. So I just, I’ll send voice memos and people freak out.

[00:27:19] I can give more nuance there. I can go more in depth and I know for a fact that leads to far more business than any just single piece of content ever has. It’s the interactions with people, the real time discussions with people that make the biggest difference.

[00:27:35] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I started doing that is it five years ago?

[00:27:39] Through email. I can’t remember who’s the business guy I got it from, but once I finally switched over to getting to Mac, I realized, oh, it’s so easy. You just have the QuickTime recorder. You pull it off. Yes. I actually have a separate signature that says, here’s the audio note, my signature, and everything’s below it.

[00:27:56] And boom, you’re done. Even obviously cell certifications. So flex diet cert, fizz, flexer so everyone who purchases, I send ’em an audio note of Hey, thank you so much for buying the course. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Here’s what to expect. And obviously they have the emails, they have their logins, they get all that stuff automatically generated.

[00:28:12] It’s crazy how I had one person last time, she’s oh, that was so nice that you sent me an audio note. And then a few days later, I got a card in the mail and she’s I’ve gotten courses from people for $20,000. And they’ve never said thank you. I’m like, what? This is these people are spending hundreds to sometimes thousands of dollars.

[00:28:31] Like, how hard is it for me to send them a thank you note and to just do a simple one, two minute audio reply. It’s nothing crazy. I’m going through my life history. It’s just be a good human. I don’t know.

[00:28:44] Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It, it seems like it should just be common sense. It’s crazy and people aren’t willing to do it.

[00:28:49] It’s e even something as simple as replying to, I know people who say, oh, the engagement on my posts suck. They say this all the time. And then I’ll go look at their posts and there’ll be, I don’t know, 57 likes and two comments, and one of the comments is a bot. And then the other comment is someone being like, wow, this is really helpful.

[00:29:10] Thank you. And the person who’s saying their engagement sucks, didn’t reply to that Nice comment. Yeah. They didn’t say, I’m so glad it was helpful. If you, if there’s anything else you need, let me know. They didn’t like, maybe they liked it, maybe they gave the fire emoji or a thumbs up. Are you out of your mind?

[00:29:29] How stupid do you have to be? It’s if a real person comments and says something nice and you don’t reply, you’re an asshole. And you can’t complain about your engagement if you’re just liking or giving an emoji response because people will see that you don’t reply. So then why would they wanna leave a comment if they know you’re not gonna reply anyway?

[00:29:48] And if that person just left a really nice comment and you didn’t reply, why would they do it again in the future? It’s if you make a, an amazing dinner and you invite people over your house to eat that dinner and they say, oh wow, this was delicious. Thank you so much. And you ignore them after they say that.

[00:30:03] That’s what you’re doing when you don’t reply to people. So if anyone is engaging with your content and you don’t reply back, you do. You have not earned the right to complain about your engagement because you’re not doing what you need to do.

[00:30:16] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I agree with that. And I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes I get busy and replies take a little while longer.

[00:30:21] But I try to get back to everyone as, as best that I can. But I’m also not sitting around going, oh, what was me? My engagement sucks. Either I know it’s my own problem. I know exactly like I’m the issue. And the other thing I did for years with the newsletter list was I took and got a Google phone.

[00:30:39] So I would port it to my own private phone. And I would say, Hey, this Thursday at 9:00 AM till 10:00 AM I’m gonna do open office hours. Just call me at this number. Like literally physically call me. I love it. It will answer the phone. If it’s busy, that means I’m on another call. And I do that once in a while now I should probably do it again more often.

[00:30:59] So I did that. I like once a week for a long time and it, and I literally would write it after a while I had to write, I. I’m not trying to upsell you in anything. I’m literally not trying to sell you anything. It’s just easier for me to have a one-on-one conversation with you. Please keep your questions short, be respectful, whatever.

[00:31:17] But the amount of people I would talk to then that are just like, oh my God, I can’t believe I’m talking to you. And I’m like, I don’t know. But it was easy to do. I’d go on an hour walk and the calls would just come through. Next call. It was all random stuff, but the amount of people who later on bought programs bought stuff from me, and that wasn’t the intention of doing it.

[00:31:37] It’s I just wanted to know what questions do you have? Like, how can I help you? And it was just an easy way of doing it, and people can still do that now too. You could, your social media, there’s a lot of ways of doing the same idea. It doesn’t necessarily have to be through one medium, per se.

[00:31:51] Jordan Syatt: It’s such a good idea, man. You should. You should do that, and then you should record the calls and either make them into a podcast and or a YouTube video where it’s yes, sit down and just have camera on you and have the call on speakerphone and obviously let them know they’re being recorded, but just ha answer their questions.

[00:32:09] That’s the majority of what my podcast is. I get my inner circle members, they send me an email, any inner circle member can come on my podcast. And what initially happened was I was doing a, I was doing one-on-one coaching online from 2011 until 2017, and I was getting on phone calls with all my clients and they all had the same questions.

[00:32:30] Yeah. All of them, it’s the same questions. And they all thought that they were unique and that their questions, they were ashamed about their questions and they felt bad about it. And I, I was having call after call after call, and I’m like, for fuck’s sake, Everybody has the exact same questions and fears and concerns and worries.

[00:32:47] So I was like, screw it. I’m gonna start recording these calls. And I would tell them, listen is it okay if I published this call? And yeah, sure. And the first few people, they didn’t want their names in it, so we changed their name. But that was it. And and those got the best response.

[00:33:00] And so that’s what my podcast became, where Inner Circle members would email me, we’d get on a call and I would just help them through whatever they were going with. Whatever they were struggling with. And that has been the greatest, I think, the greatest piece of content I’ve ever done consistently because it helps the individual in that moment and they get a plan, they can speak with me.

[00:33:20] It helps people who are listening, who are struggling with exactly what that person is going through, which is an unbelievable amount of people are all struggling with the same things. And then from a business perspective, they’re already in the inner circle. And so they’ll come on and they’ll be like, I love the Inner Circle, thank you so much.

[00:33:35] Which leads more people to wanna join the Inner Circle as well. So it helps everybody involved. It’s, and it’s really a great piece of content. I would love to see your calls on YouTube or something.

[00:33:45] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I did record one with a client recently. I’ll ask her for me, I can get permission, but I did that a little bit with, they did the Ask Me Anything series.

[00:33:53] So a lot of times people would email questions and so I, what I started doing now is I’ve, I gotta get someone to go through ’em, but I’ve got this archive of. Like the last year of just questions from people and what the reply was. So I’ll need to go through and just put those out and it’s usually just me recording back so I don’t have their name, their info or anything like that, so there’s no privacy concerns.

[00:34:14] But yeah, it just, doing that when you start is like, if I would’ve known that when I started, oh my God, that would’ve made my life so much easier. Because most of the time I was the biggest thing. Like I hired a business coach for two and a half years, was ungodly expensive at the time. It was almost like three grand a month.

[00:34:34] I pissed myself to sleep at night cause I didn’t know what I was doing. I was trying to finish my PhD and I’m paying this business coach and working and it worked out okay, but it was just a disaster at the time. But the thing that finally got through my thick skull was like, Hey, you are not your clients.

[00:34:51] Like the stuff you like and that you do, your clients may or many times don’t give a shit. Because to me it was like, cuz I, I remember having this conversation with him and he’s okay, how much more physiology do you really think you need to know? And I’m like all of it. There’s all these questions about, mitochondrial and coupling rate and all this other stuff.

[00:35:14] He’s none of your clients give a fuck. I’m like, what? Oh my God. At first you’re like taken back and then you’re like oh, they only care about the result. And that the way they phrase this, probably different than how I’m thinking. They’ll pay me for high-end knowledge, but I need to translate that into something that makes sense to them that they can actually do.

[00:35:36] And that’s like the huge light bulb that took me many months and thousands of dollars to figure out. It’s okay, I can still do that other stuff, but. How do I translate it to the person in front of me? And so then when I started doing the office hours, I realized the questions I was getting were actually more basic.

[00:35:54] And the kicker to all of it was, I remember him saying back when like press releases were a big deal for Yahoo and everything else. He’s we’re gonna do a press release and it’s gonna be, fitness for busy executives. I’m like, okay, great. Perfect. And so we write up this whole thing, he looks at it and he goes, we can’t use any of that.

[00:36:11] No one understands what the fuck you just said. And I’m like, oh. So it takes eight revisions. The last revision was literally, Hey, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you should go lift something Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, you should do cardio Sunday, just do some food prep or take the day off. And I’m like, this is gonna suck.

[00:36:32] Everybody knows this. This is gonna be horrible. This is my big, novel idea I’m trying to get across to the world. He’s no, trust me. It’ll be good. I’m like, Okay I’m paying this guy thousands of dollars. Sure. Whatever. So submit it and it ends up, ranking number one on Yahoo Business for three weeks.

[00:36:48] And people were falling up like months later with oh my God, that was so cool. That was so revolutionary. And I’m like, oh. Because to the average person, that probably is, because they’re doing muscle confusion and they’re doing metcons they’re like all across the board. To have some very basic structure was actually helpful.

[00:37:08] I was like, oh. Oh, I’m not my client. Oh, got it. Okay.

[00:37:14] Jordan Syatt: It’s such an important concept. I think one of the best books I’ve read specific to this topic is called Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. Oh, that’s a great book, dude. Yeah. That book changed my life in terms of content creation understanding the curse of knowledge where it’s yeah, you forget what it was like to be a beginner.

[00:37:32] Yeah. You forget the terminology that you, dude, I remember when I first got into weightlifting and fitness, I would just read Men’s Fitness and Muscle and Fitness and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book. And I just look at the workouts and the exercises and I would go do them like, that’s awesome.

[00:37:47] That’s, I just wanted the workouts and I would flip right to the workout in the magazine and that’s what I would do. And then the more into it you get, you wanna learn more about the why’s and the how’s and the what’s and the deeper science. And that’s what we’re interested in. Cuz we’re nerds.

[00:38:00] Yeah. But the people who. If people were as interested in it as us, then they probably wouldn’t be hiring us. They would exactly. They would be gonna school for it, and this would be their profession as well. But whether it’s moms or dads or lawyers or even doctors or teachers or construction workers, or Janet, whoever it is, that’s not what the fuck.

[00:38:22] They don’t care about it at all. Like at all, just get me the result and that’s it, and that’s our job. And how do you get the result? You give ’em simple, practical advice. And that article, Lyft, these days do cardio these days sounds like a very good article that could easily be made into Instagram or YouTube or TikTok content.

[00:38:41] Now it’s just, and that’s the other thing is I’ve sh someone sent me a DM last night. They sent me DM last night, and they said they, they sent me a screenshot, Of a u of an Instagram video I made on the kettlebell swing. I made this video in 2018, and then she sent me another screenshot from a YouTube video I made about the kettlebell swing in 2014.

[00:39:04] And she was like, I love these videos. Number one, because the technique cues, all that stuff was great. They were the same in both videos. The difference is your, the way you presented it, like in 2014, you were way more nervous and timid in 2018. You were much more yourself and who you are.

[00:39:22] And it, for me, there was there’s so much, so many lessons in that. One thing, not least of which what I was originally trying to say is that you’re gonna post the same thing over and over and over in the same way that you expect your clients to do the same exercises over and over.

[00:39:38] Like effective strength training like Ben Bruno says, is just doing the same 15 to 20 exercises over and over again until you die. That’s what effective strength training is, and effective content creation. Number one, you have to be knowledgeable in your field. Number two is you have to stay within the scope of your knowledge, and number three is you repeat that information and find out better ways to say it over and over again.

[00:40:02] But invariably you will repeat yourself over and over. Why do I sometimes wear wigs in my content? It’s not because I like wearing fucking wigs. It’s because I realize if I can create a character and be a little bit entertaining, then for me it’s more fun to say the same thing over and over again, just in a new, fun way.

[00:40:22] It’s yeah, that’s really it. I, how many times can I just seriously sit down and talk to the camera about the same thing over and over again? It’s very difficult. But when I can bring in different characters and have fun with it, now I’m able to enjoy my job more.

[00:40:36] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and I think that comes across, the.

[00:40:40] One thing that helped me the most was not for the newsletter, for my style, not having to be so formal, like having technical stuff there, like having references, like having solid concepts. But I was so used to technical writing, which I absolutely freaking hate. Surprisingly I can do it, but I don’t like it.

[00:41:00] But once you allow the creativity that, oh, it’s my newsletter, I can write whatever I want. And if a bunch of people unsubscribe, then oops, I screwed up. Maybe I’ll fix it. Maybe I won’t. Cuz sometimes I do wanna offend people just to get ’em off there right away if they don’t complain later.

[00:41:14] But sending to social media, like you can do whatever you want to do. And what I found almost by more, by doing that by accident, because I was getting bored. It sounds better. And people are like, oh, that’s more interesting. Because the reality is people are bored. They’re at a job they don’t like, they’re probably interested in fitness.

[00:41:35] They don’t know what to do with that. They train, they do things, a lot of them, more fitness enthusiasts, they’re just bored. And if they were into reading research studies, they would be reading research studies. That’s exactly reality is most people are not reading research studies, which is totally cool.

[00:41:49] I get it. So if you can try to, in my case, try to translate it and make it somewhat interesting, then it’s just more fun for me. And I think it ends up being a better product because it becomes just like your videos more entertaining so that people shocker will actually pay attention and then they get good content.

[00:42:07] Oh, cool. That’s

[00:42:09] dude,

[00:42:09] Jordan Syatt: a hundred percent it’s I remember having that revelation when I was reading the Science and Practice of Strength Training by Zzi Osky. Yes. And when I was reading super training, Bro, I can’t tell you. I vividly remember trying to read super training. Like you would read a normal book.

[00:42:28] Yeah. Like cover to cover. And it was devastating trying to read that book cover to cover science and practice was more enjoyable for me. I realized I was reading super training wrong. I realized I’m supposed to just find a certain section and then dive into that section. I shouldn’t just try and read it cover to cover.

[00:42:45] It’s just ab

[00:42:46] Dr Mike T Nelson: it’s brutal. Yeah. That took me five years to figure that out.

[00:42:51] Jordan Syatt: But it’s one of those things where as you’re reading it you’re like I’ll give you, I’ll give you an example that’s a little bit separate. I love to analyze other coaches content just because I like to see what does well and what doesn’t do well.

[00:43:04] And one, one, a mistake that I made when I was younger and upcoming up was I tried to model my content off of those who I admired. Whether it was Louis Simmons or whether it was Dan John or Z Cki, Mel sif, whoever, it’s the main one was Eric Cressey. Yeah. And Eric is an absolute genius and Oh yeah.

[00:43:29] And I remember I would read his articles and I would just wish I was as smart as he was. And so unconsciously from stemming from a desire to be seen as smart, I began to write my articles, trying to use his voice. Because, I admired him so much, and I was so overwhelmed with how smart he is, and I wanted people to think the same thing about me.

[00:43:59] I wanted people to think Jordan is so smart. And so then I would start, referencing Shirley Sarin. And I would start talking about all like upper cross syndrome, lower cross and anterior pelvic tilt and all this stuff, and trying to use very high like medical jargon that was completely unnecessary for the average person.

[00:44:17] And it wasn’t until later on that I realized that I was hurting myself and I wasn’t allowing the people who were following me to actually get the most benefit out of it. And what I was really doing was I was trying to appear smart to other coaches rather than trying to help the people who need it.

[00:44:32] And a very simple example that I see coaches do all the time when I read coaches’ captions, I can always tell if they’re trying to sound smart or if they’re just talking how they are based on simple word uses. For example, one that I see coaches use a lot, they always say the word consume and if you’re consuming this many calories, and if you are the one of the very few people who actually uses consume in everyday life, sure.

[00:45:00] But I guarantee you when you’re eating dinner, you’re not saying oh wow, this is, I’m glad to be consuming this with you. You’re like, no. Like you say eat is the word that you use. If you’re eating this many calories, if you’re eat not eating enough protein, you don’t say, are you consuming enough protein?

[00:45:14] Some, I have one friend, she’s, she actually legitimately says consuming it. It blew my mind. I’m like, that’s a phrase that you actually say this on a regular basis. But the vast majority of coaches are just, they’re trying to, they go to Google and they search for a synonym. To make it, to find a word that sounds more complex or sounds more advanced.

[00:45:32] And if you’re doing that, if you’re using words that you wouldn’t actually say out loud, stop it. It’s, and I would say the way that you write should be exactly the way that you speak. And because that’s how you get your personality across, that’s one of the things that’s gonna set you apart. And it’s one of the things where people ask like, why do you swear so much in your writing?

[00:45:51] It’s cuz I swear when I talk, it’s literally, it’s just thumbs out. I’m not adding it in for effect. That’s just how I was brought up. I was brought up in Boston. My whole family swears like sailors, I swear. And it’s not trying to be cool, it’s just that’s how I fucking talk. And so that’s how I write as well.

[00:46:08] And so if you don’t swear, then don’t swear. You don’t have to swear in your writing. But if you are one, I think the best revisionary tool I was ever taught in terms of editing, writing is. Before you publish, number one, you take a day away, especially if it’s a long for article. You don’t need to do this for an Instagram post, but take a full day away from writing and then you go and you read it out loud Yes.

[00:46:29] To yourself and not like you don’t you don’t speed through it. You slowly out loud, read the entire thing and if there’s one thing in there that doesn’t sound like you would say it directly to a friend or a colleague or a client, then you change how you say it. So it would be actually how it comes out of your mouth because it’s gonna hit home so much better.

[00:46:52] Yeah. I mean

[00:46:52] Dr Mike T Nelson: I, for long form stuff that I know has to be like super high quad, I don’t do this for newsletters all the time. I have this whole elaborate process where I’ll even print it out. I’ll go to a separate coffee shop. I have colored pens I use on it. And then if it’s like a manuscript or a book or something like that, or even to Tmag or whatever, I’ll then the final version, I’ll start at the last sentence out of context and I’ll read that and then I’ll go to the sentence before that.

[00:47:23] And I, unfortunately I didn’t figure this out, so I almost failed outta my PhD process. Cause my writer, my advisor yelled at me about writing. But when you’ve looked at something 41 times, you’re, no matter what, your brain is filling in those things. Yes. That when they read it for the first time, they’re like, what is wrong with you?

[00:47:41] But, so I had to do like these extreme things because I a lot of times didn’t have enough time to leave it sit and forget about it and that type of thing. But yeah, even it, just leaving it for a day and going back to it makes a huge difference compared to just writing and then, sending it out.

[00:47:58] Jordan Syatt: Man it’s so funny. People often ask me if I could give someone one piece of advice, like what platform should they start on, even now in 2023. Writing articles is my, yeah, like number one. It’s like before Instagram, before TikTok, before YouTube before podcast, you should write articles and you should write.

[00:48:16] I’d say it’s different now. Like I would like to see them on some other social media platforms, but if you could only do one long form article writing, because it’s it, you learn so much, nevermind the search engine optimization benefits and all of that, but just the way that you learn to present yourself and you learn that you learn from writing articles, you learn so much in that process.

[00:48:39] And now more than ever, and this is a separate discussion now, as soon as people post, they expect immediate like in comic and it’s like it, I think it fucks with our brain. I re I definitely, truly believe it fucks with our brain dopamine, all that nonsense and. I very much believe one of the reasons I’ve been able to be successful is because I was brought up in a time in which, from the moment I, I would work for about 16 to 24 hours in total.

[00:49:05] I would publish one article a week, every week for years, a at least one article a week, every week. And every article was about 16 to 24 hours of total work on that one article. And when you do that, and then you hit publish and you step away from the computer knowing that people aren’t gonna read it for a long time and you’re not gonna get inundated with comments immediately it, I think it’s much healthier for your brain and for your emotions to be like, you know what?

[00:49:29] I’m gonna publish it. I’m gonna walk away. And you don’t expect immediate feedback. You don’t expect, like immediately people are gonna be liking it. That’s, it’s, it definitely screws in my head in terms of social media when I know. I can know within 10 minutes how a post is really gonna do on Instagram and that can fuck with me mentally, where it’s that’s why as soon as I post it, I’m out.

[00:49:49] I’m gone. I’m going to my wife, going to my daughter, I’m leaving. I’m not gonna sit there and scroll and see, okay, this many likes this. Nope. Out. I played that game early in my career and it was a, is the key to anxiety. If you wanna be super anxious and hate yourself, do that. That’s what you should do.

[00:50:06] And develop a terrible relationship with your phone and social media. Just sit there and see how many likes you can get. It is a bad game to play host ghost. That’s what I try and do that all the time.

[00:50:17] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, no, I think those are super solid advice and. You’re part about writing, like technical stuff. Like I’m, I probably did the same thing.

[00:50:27] I remember reading Eric’s stuff when he first started publishing stuff. Ont Nation. Yeah. And I didn’t know, he was like, fucking, but he was 15 at the time or something, I thought this guy’s like in his forties. I’m like, wow, look at this dude. And and then you know, all the, I grew up reading all this stuff on, teen Nation from, Lannie, Lari, John Barardi, all the guys.

[00:50:43] Yeah. And I remember printing them out when I was at my med tech job on, cuz he only came out on Friday. I would print them out and ghost it in the cafeteria and eat my food and read the articles and, you, you tend to want to get to that level. And then I realized that for that medium or certain mediums, it’s okay.

[00:51:04] But then I remember reading one of Tony General Corps’s articles and my first thought was, who the fuck is this buffoon? That was literally, and I’m good with Tony, so he won’t be mad at me if I tell us. But then I started reading this stuff and I was like, Oh shit, this guy really knows what’s going on.

[00:51:21] Yeah. Like he, he knows his stuff, but his writing side was so much different than Eric’s stuff, and they were both, good friends and stuff. And the other part that really caught me too was I was at the fitness summit years ago and I met Mark Fisher Fitness for the first time.

[00:51:36] And he’s asking me all these, I said, what do you do? He is oh, we have a playground for our ninjas. And he is telling me about his gym, which is, caters to a lot of, actors and is very different, but yet, very good, serious results. So I’m talking to him forever and I’m thinking, I’m like, this guy’s kind of weird.

[00:51:55] I don’t know, how did he end up in fitness? I don’t know about this guy. And then he starts asking me about, obscure, like Russian puritization like techniques. And I was like, what the fuck? And I was like, oh, this guy is like super smart. But he understands like how to talk to his customers, and Mark’s a client of mine, I don’t think he would mind me sharing the story.

[00:52:18] And that, it dawned on me that oh, you can be very technically good, but you don’t have to come across to the person who, cuz his audience, they’re technical, but they’re not at that level, of technique. They’re going there to get a training effect, which they do a very good job of.

[00:52:33] And so it further embedded that, oh yeah, you can still be really good, but you don’t have to, I don’t have to talk to people like they’re an academic all the time, because that’s probably not their background.

[00:52:42] Jordan Syatt: Exactly. Yeah. I love it. I love Mark. I love Mark. He’s, oh, Mark’s so awesome.

[00:52:47] He’s amazing at what he does. Tony has been a huge inspir. Tony’s awesome. Yeah. He’s just a, did he put he, I he put out like a blog a day, five days a week or more. For years. Yeah, years. Just like an absolute savage. And they were, his writing is so good and funny. Like I, I loved re. I’ve said this before, I think reading Tony’s articles for years made me a better writer.

[00:53:12] Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, it did for me. A hundred percent. Him and tc. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

[00:53:16] Jordan Syatt: Yeah. One thing I see a lot of coaches do is, and this infuriates me, is I see a lot of coaches complain about how they’re such a better coach than someone else who has a big audience. And I’m like and then I go and look at that coach’s content, and oftentimes they’re over complicating it just like we’re talking about now, or they’re not posting it all.

[00:53:37] But it’s one of those things where

[00:53:41] I, I think about looking at a strong man competitor or a power lifter, Olympic lifter. And I just imagine seeing someone on the sidelines just being like, Ugh. I have so much better technique than that person, but that person’s lifting way heavier than you. No one gives a shit, no, like no one stopped.

[00:53:58] You’ve got beat, bro. Yeah your technique with a broomstick is great, but like you’re gonna do it with 200 kilos. Because the, it doesn’t matter how good your technique is cuz you’re not on the platform and you’re just in the background. And this is infuriates me with when coaches do this, I’m like, so do something about it.

[00:54:15] Yeah. Clearly there’s some, they’re doing something better than you are and you can sit here and complain and be a grouch and curmudgeon and mad that, because the reality is there are some unbelievably knowledgeable coaches who just don’t really understand the, like how to put themselves out there and how to help people.

[00:54:35] But the answer isn’t to just crawl into your hole and then complain about everyone else. The answer is be better. Work. And I love how you brought up your previous business coach, how he was like, how much more about physiology do you need to know? Yeah. It’s it’s, and I, from a personal growth and knowledge and understanding I love that.

[00:54:54] But I also understand the other side where it’s like, how many more, how much more money and how much more time you’re gonna spend learning this when the reality is all of the knowledge you’ve gained thus far, you could work on now reaching more people and helping people with that knowledge. Yeah. And it doesn’t mean your education has to stop, but in terms of balance, maybe now instead of spending 100% of your time researching more physiology, maybe we drop it to 50 50, 50% researching and 50% creating.

[00:55:21] And then who knows, maybe he drops to 30, 70, whatever it is over time or, but the truth is, if you could be, have the most knowledge in the world, you could be an amazing coach. But if you’re not actually coaching people, then you’re not fucking helping anybody. Stop. Talking badly about the people who are doing really well and maybe aren’t as good of a coach as you, maybe you should pay them for a consult call to learn how they’re doing it.

[00:55:44] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And that to me is shocking because you can pay people for their time and you know what, 99% of the people will help you. Yes. Isn’t I feel like sometimes this just gets lost. Like I, a couple years ago I did a formulation for a supplement company, did everything, did the contract, whatever.

[00:56:04] I was like, yeah, okay. I feel pretty good about this, but I hadn’t done it for a couple years. And so I called the buddy. I said, Hey man, I want an hour of your time. I will pay you your rape. I don’t want to favor a hundred percent will pay you for your time. I just want you to look this over and then tell me are there things that I didn’t think about or things I should be aware of.

[00:56:24] You don’t know what you don’t know. Cuz he’s been doing this for, 20 years works in the industry. Shocker. I paid him, I think $300 or something for an hour of his time. He looked over everything. He had two comments, which were great, and yeah, $300 out of, very nice figure for doing that was a fraction of what I got paid.

[00:56:44] And granted, I was able to get it because of the knowledge I had done before, but you can pay people to get their knowledge, or maybe you have 70%, 80% to do the project, but you’re missing the last percent. You could do a contract with them, you could split it, or you could just be like, Hey man, I, here’s what I wanna do.

[00:57:01] Is it fair if I pay you for three hours of your time, here’s where it’s gonna go. You’re not trying to be a weasel, you’re just telling ’em what you’re doing. And most people will be like, oh yeah man, that’s cool.

[00:57:09] Jordan Syatt: Ex a hundred percent like it. It’s so funny. Coaches who always say they, their job is to be hired as a coach for some reason, don’t realize that they should be coached in other things that they’re not good at.

[00:57:22] Yeah. Dude, I’ve hired so many coaches throughout my career. I hire a new fitness coach every year. I’ve been working with Alex Vita for about a year and a half now, but Oh, cool. Every year I try and hire a new coach every, because I’m always gonna learn something new from a fitness perspective.

[00:57:38] Business coaches, I’ve hired so many, and most of them, frankly, were shit. They were awful. The best business coach I’ve ever had is Pat Flynn. A amazing Oh, he’s great. He’s incredible. And the reason there are many reasons. He’s among the best, but not least of, which is he was the one in 2015, I hired him, and he really I’ll tell you this story, so I think you’ll appreciate this story.

[00:58:03] Yeah. Yeah. In 2015, Facebook was the big area for the science-based fitness industry. And it was, for lack of a better phrase, a big circle jerk, whereas, oh yeah. Like everyone who was at the top knew each other and they like, they basically controlled everything. And I hated it because I felt like I had to compromise who I was in order to fit into this group of people.

[00:58:29] And I, I called Pat Flynn and I said, I want to be out of this fitness circle jerk. I want to not rely on anybody but myself for my business. And at that point I was very nervous to be truly me for any number of reasons. And Pat assured me, he was like, you don’t need anybody. You don’t need anybody else.

[00:58:53] You don’t need to pretend to be someone. You don’t need to try and fit into this group of people. We can just do you and you can do what’s important to you to try and help people and. All of the money I spent on awful business coaches prior to him were, it was all worth it because I landed on him and I don’t view all of that money as wasted.

[00:59:14] I view it as part of part of the process to finding the one coach that freed me from the gates of hell in that end of the industry at that point in time. And and that’s where I just could not be a bigger advocate of hiring people who are better than you, whether it’s for one-off consult call or monthly mentoring, whatever it is, because the money that you spend with them will, like you said, be a fraction of what you earn afterward.

[00:59:40] Whereas, if someone has lived it and they’ve experienced it and they’ve acquired this knowledge, why wouldn’t you pay them for that knowledge? Yeah. It just doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t you?

[00:59:51] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. A couple times with a business coach I had who was great, But I remember a few times he always made me super nervous, which I almost didn’t hire him because of that, because I was like, I don’t know.

[01:00:04] And but then I’m like, wait a minute. That’s what I’m paying him for. I don’t want him to agree with all my hair brainin ideas, cuz the date that hasn’t gone so well. It’s oh. Because he would be like, that’s a fucking stupid idea. Why do you wanna do that? I’m like, oh, don’t be mean 70% of the time.

[01:00:22] He was right. And cause I remember a few times just thinking, I dunno, if you wanna do this, okay, why am I paying him several thousand dollars a month if I’m not gonna at least test what he is doing? It wasn’t unethical, it wasn’t anything like that. It was just, I didn’t wanna do it because I felt uncomfortable.

[01:00:39] I’m like that’s not really a good reason. That’s a lame reason, yep. Yep. But that’s why people hire coaches. And some people need pushing in different directions. Some people need more technical stuff. There’s all different things that you need. And even previous to that, I remember doing more general kind of fat loss stuff for a while because I had somehow in a weird universe convinced myself that’s more what the world needed.

[01:01:02] And I was so goddamn bored. I wanted to jump off a bridge somewhere, like I couldn’t take it. And then one day I remember doing a call with Ryan Lee and he’s telling me about this guy who’s got a sock of the month club. I’m like, a sock of the month. What are you talking about? He’s oh yeah, he is got all these subscribers.

[01:01:21] He sends out a new custom sock to these people, and he was making like a hundred thousand a month. This is back, wow. Probably 12 years ago. And I asked Ryan, I’m like, So you’re telling me that the internet is big enough that some crazy guy could sell a sock of the month club and be grossing a hundred thousand dollars a month.

[01:01:40] I could probably don’t have to do general fat loss stuff. He’s oh God no. He is just do whatever you enjoy doing. The internet is big enough that you will find people that resonate with that. I was like, oh, thank

[01:01:51] Jordan Syatt: God.

[01:01:55] That’s exactly right, man. It is. And Gary has a very famous clip of him being like, it doesn’t matter, like you, like Smurfs, smurf it up. You can make a business smelling, selling Smurfs, like whatever you’re interested in. There’s a market for it that is for sure. And that’s why I think another reason why people burn out because they feel like they can only make content about one thing.

[01:02:15] It’s like you can make content about whatever you want, just make sure that. You’re knowledgeable in it and you’re not just holding shit outta your ass. Like as long as you’re knowledgeable in it, you care about it, post about it, and people will find you. The right people will find you. And the wrong people will unfollow and it’s good they’re gonna unfollow then they weren’t gonna buy from you anyway.

[01:02:32] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And that’s, it’s not a bad thing. I think we get so and the human brain is lost averse. It’s just wired that way. And I remember initially, so one of the things, my business coach at the time, I would put up these YouTube videos, which I didn’t necessarily put ’em out for public consumption.

[01:02:51] I was just documenting my training. And so he calls me up one day and he goes, and for God’s sake, quit posting the dead list and death metal or whatever the fuck that shit is in your garage.

[01:03:04] And at the time I was like, oh, I’m so offend. But I’m like, okay, maybe that’s not the best avenue per se for what I was doing. But later I realized, I’m like, oh, but that’s who I am, right? Yes. And so I realized that once you have an audience that is interested in what you’re doing, you don’t need that many, right?

[01:03:25] So now I have a Sunday weekly review and I put Hey Jim, tune of the week. Hey, here’s his death medal assuming, or whatever. Or I’ll reference a concert I went to, tool concert, skinny puppy, whatever. Knowing that even on my current email list, like 90% of the people probably have no idea what it is and are, highly offended and a few will drop off every time, which is fine.

[01:03:44] I don’t care. Yeah. Because it’s, and what I’ve realized is people are more willing to put up with it because they see that you’re more than this one dimensional person. Even if they only like country and they hate death metal, it’s like I would be much more interested in someone who’s.

[01:04:00] Super into, I don’t know, country music than the fact that they don’t like music at all. If you don’t like music at all, to me that’s just weird. We can disagree about types of music, but if you don’t like it, that’s just weird. So I think people are more interested in things that are passionate about it and not necessarily the thing that you’re into.

[01:04:19] They wanna see that you’re into things, not necessarily the thing that you think they are.

[01:04:23] Jordan Syatt: Dude a hundred percent agree. It’s like I think about dating and, if I, if you’re dating or like you’re at beginning the dating process or you’re listening to someone that you’re on the first date with them, they could be talking about something completely that I’m not only not knowledgeable, but something I don’t really care about.

[01:04:44] Yeah. But they’re so passionate about it that I’m very invested in what they’re saying. Someone could be talking about. How a grass grows. Something that I don’t know, anything quite frankly don’t give a shit about. But if they’re super passionate about it oh my God, you wouldn’t believe how photosynthesis works?

[01:05:01] Yeah, like you’re just going nuts. I’d be like all right. Tell me more. I’m really interested in it. And this is, I think this has really come more and more, especially with social media, Instagram, and I think it’s Instagram stories above all else have really pushed this Instagram stories and also YouTube blogs.

[01:05:18] People care about other people. Yeah. They care about what are you interested in? And also worth noting I unsubscribe from people’s email list all the time and it’s literally never, because I don’t like that person. Yeah. It’s always because ah, it’s clogging up my inboxing and I just haven’t been reading it.

[01:05:36] Anyway, that’s like the vast majority of it. And it’s so funny because if I see someone subscribes from my unsubscribes from my email, I’ll be like, oh shit. Are they mad at me? Do they not like me? Yeah. Yeah. No, they probably just weren’t reading the emails and they just aren’t really into it right now.

[01:05:51] So they unsubscribe, and that’s really it. Same thing with unfollows and all of that. Occasionally I’ll get someone being like, you suck. I hate you. I’m unfollowing you. And like occasionally, but like that, usually that person is not in a good place themselves mentally. And it’s like, all right, cuz I don’t know anyone who’s a happy individual who would leave that type of a comment on someone else’s social media.

[01:06:10] So like the vast majority of time people are, they’re just not following it. They’re not interested in it right now. And that’s okay. And it has nothing to do with you. And that’s fine. Yeah. And that’s why

[01:06:20] Dr Mike T Nelson: it’s so hard to get wrapped up in the stats of it because like you said, for unfollows. Yeah.

[01:06:26] I’ve screwed up and sent some emails that, oops. Probably shouldn’t have done that. A bunch of people unsubscribe. Oops. It happens. But if it’s a few here and there, it’s like you don’t know the reason. Like you have no idea. Yeah. And it goes back to what we were saying before with, likes and follows and everything else.

[01:06:42] At the end of the day, which I got from Ben Settle, is if you’re in a business, the best thing you need to do is test to the sale, not your open rate, not your click throughs. He’s are those kind of important? Maybe you can argue about it all day, but I’ve had multiple times where I sent an email where my click through rate was abysmal, that I made two sales.

[01:07:02] Yeah. Now, I don’t know if it was from that email. I don’t know if it was a setup from the emails before. I have no idea. But all I can look at now is just simplified it of, okay, here’s a rough idea of how these performed. Here’s this block of time, here was the sale, here’s a deadline, and this group did better than that group.

[01:07:20] And I can try to guess as to why I think that is and maybe iterate. But at the end of the day, like I think technology’s kind of sold us as. Bill of goods that we can even split testing, like I think it’s good. I think it’s useful. I think you can get trends and stuff from it, but how many people run split tests that have any statistical significance?

[01:07:40] Like almost none. I’m a hundred percent guilty of this too. Oh, a hundred clicks, shit, I like this one better. I don’t know. It’s just something to do the next test with.

[01:07:48] Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That’s exactly right. It’s we could argue about optimal volumes and intensities and stuff.

[01:07:52] Yeah, same idea. It’s like how much stronger did they get at the end of the program? What’s the actual amount of strength that they gained, or how much muscle did they actually build? Objectively, that’s it. Let’s stop arguing about the open rates or the clickthroughs and all of that.

[01:08:08] How many sales did you make and how many people did you help as a result of it? Yeah. That’s really the only number that matters.

[01:08:16] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. So second to last question, what do you think the role of AI will be in fitness? Because I hear, I am not an expert on this at all. I’ve played around with Chad, G p t. I think that’s useful for some things.

[01:08:28] It’s utterly horrible for other things. Yeah. But it just seems like everyone is oh, the sky is falling. We’re gonna be overrun with content and the world’s gonna end. And I just, for people that are doing good coaching I just don’t see that happening.

[01:08:42] Jordan Syatt: No it’s not at all. I, and I love chat.

[01:08:45] G P d I use it, it’s fascinating. It’s dude I use it for, I have a lot of interesting discussions with it. Dude, it’s crazy. I like, I have legit

[01:08:54] Dr Mike T Nelson: conversations. No, I’m laughing because I’ve tested it with just weird shed too. And you’re like, oh, I didn’t,

[01:08:59] Jordan Syatt: my wife will be like, who are you talking to?

[01:09:03] But It’s, there’s still a lot of room for it to improve, and I think it will improve, err, radically and very quickly, but I’m not worried about it at all because it can make certain tasks easier, but there it’s hard for me to fully put into words how not worried I am about this taking over and ruining all of our jobs.

[01:09:30] I actually think it’s going to make great coaches stand out even more. Yeah I think this is actually going to help the, those of us who like really care and really work hard to be great coaches. I think the coaches who are going to be more phased out by it are the ones who are. Pretty half-assing with their effort.

[01:09:52] They’re not really working that hard. They’re not trying to stay up to date with education. They’re not really, they’re not doing great content. I think those are the ones who are gonna suffer the most. But the people who like really care and really wanna work hard, it’s only gonna help. I truly believe that.

[01:10:05] It’s in terms of the idea of oh, but it can make a whole workout program for someone. There are free workout programs all over the internet that people do. Oh yeah. All the time. It’s not an issue of accessibility at this point that is gone from a knowledge perspective, from the accessibility of getting a workout program.

[01:10:27] It’s been available for many years. So that’s not the issue. The issue, the main thing that people really struggle with among others, but the main one is accountability. They want someone to hold them accountable and. Chat, G P T or AI will never ever be able to hold another hu a, a human accountable in the same way another human can hold them accountable.

[01:10:48] Because inherently, you’re speaking to a robot, you know it’s not a real person and for therefore, like you can just screw off and not do it. And there’s no one holding you accountable. But when you, when someone hires you, they’re not only hiring you for your knowledge, they’re hiring you because they like the death metal videos that you post of you lifting in your garage.

[01:11:13] They like that stuff. They like seeing you do the things that, that you’re putting into their programming. They want to tell you about it because they know you care about it because they know you care about them. I don’t care how good AI gets, you’re gonna know you’re talking to a robot and it will not be the same as another human.

[01:11:31] And I, it’s funny cuz so many people are worried about it and I’m just like, I love it. I think this is great and I think it’s gonna help us even more.

[01:11:40] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And Mike Tuscher had a good post a while back. He was like if you are selling coaching, you are selling a service, not a product. Yep. And since you are selling a service, it’s gonna be very hard for anyone to replace you.

[01:11:56] And at the end of the day, most people hire coaches that they like. It’s if yes, I don’t have a tattoo yet. I’m planning to get one. But there’s some tattoo artists who I think do incredible work, who I will not give them a dime because they’re dickheads. Yeah. And I don’t want that experience of sitting with someone I don’t like for a lot of hours inflicting pain on me.

[01:12:19] Even if the art is great, other people wanna do it. Cool. I don’t care. You do you man. Like that. That’s all cool. That’s just for me personally, but I think there is a fair amount of people where. That’s like the biggest thing I do on coaching calls when I have my program open.

[01:12:33] It’s been closed for a year and a half, but when I’m actually taking on new clients, it’s can I solve your problem and do I wanna work with you? Exactly. There’s some people work. Yeah, I could definitely solve your problem. Do I wanna work with you? Hell no. We’re just, and you’re not a bad person, it’s just, you just don’t mesh.

[01:12:48] And that’s cool. There’s nothing wrong with it. Or early on I felt I had to work with everyone and I had to make it work. Yes. And that just never went well. So I don’t think you can ever, like you said, replace that kind of personal contact and context with a bond.

[01:13:04] Jordan Syatt: And I think the tattoo example is perfect.

[01:13:06] Like you’re looking for a tattoo artist that you want to support. Yes. Because when you support that tattoo artist because of who they are, you’re not just supporting them, you’re supporting their family, you’re supporting the local economy. There’s. There’s so much that your support goes into and you want to put it into the place that you value the most.

[01:13:30] And dude, I literally just got a sleeve the other day and I was Oh, nice. Can we see it? Yeah. Yeah. Man is the kid who did it, 26 year old kid from Mexico. Just a sweetheart and an unbelievably talented man. It’s not done. I still have much more work to do on it, but I’m just obsessed with Oh, nice.

[01:13:51] How good he is, how good the artwork is. That’s

[01:13:54] Dr Mike T Nelson: cool, man. Thank you. How long did that take?

[01:13:57] Jordan Syatt: It was like six, six and a half hours.

[01:13:59] Dr Mike T Nelson: It was, oh, that’s not as bad as I thought it was. It was brutal. It

[01:14:02] Jordan Syatt: was Oh, you did it all at once? Yeah, all at once. And I have all my ribs done. I got when I was a kid I used to fake ID to get a tattoo on my rib.

[01:14:11] Dr Mike T Nelson: On your rib. Just great first tattoo,

[01:14:15] Jordan Syatt: dude. So painful. But yeah man, it’s it’s, we want to support the people that have, that share the same values that we admire, that we respect. And I love that. What are you gonna get for your tattoo?

[01:14:28] Dr Mike T Nelson: So the short version of the story is the guy I want to do, there’s two guys I wanna do it, but the first guy, we were on his waiting list and it’s basically, I was uncomfortable with him drawing it out at first because he’s one of these guys where, okay, you can have something super planned out or you can just give me an idea and I’ll just start freehanding stuff.

[01:14:50] And that as a control freak, that kind of, I wasn’t quite there at that time, so I said, okay, I’ll have you draw it out. And so it’s basically a combination of some of the Da Vinci, the flying machines with like clocks and engineering like the ma the mixing of. Time engineering and physiology.

[01:15:07] Yeah. Like on my left side from like my elbow up through through my shoulder. Yes. The downside is we had the appointment and everything scheduled. We went there. The first idea I had just didn’t work because of the shape of the muscle. Okay. It’s have you’ve seen those tattoos where it’s somebody’s face, but it’s put on like your deltoid or something where it gets contorted?

[01:15:29] Yes. He’s the first design I had wasn’t gonna work so well. So he’s came up with his letter design. He is great. And then Covid happened and then everything got shut down. And so now he’s, I think his wait list is like three years or something, and it’s just wow.

[01:15:43] Bananas because he couldn’t work for a period of time. He got like super, super popular. So I have another guy in mind who might be able to do it. So I’m gonna have him, sketch it out and that type of thing.

[01:15:52] Jordan Syatt: That’s awesome, man. I love it. Yeah. That’s amazing. Yeah. It’s one of

[01:15:55] Dr Mike T Nelson: those, it’s one of those things where it’s I’ve.

[01:15:58] Had it in my brain for so long, it feels like it’s already been done. Yeah. If you ever had a, I have a midline scar from open heart surgeon. I was four and a half and I’ve had it so long, I literally don’t see it. Yeah. Because I’ve had it so long. So in my head, I have this image that it’s not there yet, but I know what it would look like.

[01:16:18] And so I keep, for three years, I just did that to see if I actually wanted to get it done, because I didn’t wanna be one of those people where you go through and do it and you’re like, oh no, that’s a horrible idea. And I’m like, no, it’s still cool. We’re good.

[01:16:31] Jordan Syatt: I, that’s literally the advice I give to people.

[01:16:33] I’m like, just sit on it for a few years and if you still want Yeah. Then go for it. And that’s it. It’s it, dude, I love it. I, it’s they’re also very addicting. It’s like once, and that’s

[01:16:42] Dr Mike T Nelson: why I’ve waited. Yeah.

[01:16:45] Jordan Syatt: You’re gonna want more. Like my rule of thumb is I try and wait at least two years between tattoos.

[01:16:50] That’s a good rule. That’s, I just try. All right. Just let’s just sit with this. I do. I wanna fill this one up more like immediately, but I’m like, all right, let’s just, let’s fucking wait for a second. Just patience here. But yeah, it’s, I’m very excited to see what your artwork looks like.

[01:17:05] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And then last question, why should everyone learn a new skill like jujitsu? Oh,

[01:17:12] Jordan Syatt: man. Now you’re gonna get me started on jujitsu. There, there are many ways I could take this discussion and I’m in my mind right now battling with which way I want to take it because I, there’s this side, the aspect of just learning a new skill, which I think is very important.

[01:17:27] Yeah. And then there’s the other aspect in my mind, which is specifically a self-defense type skill, which, yep, that’s, I have so much passion for self-defense and martial arts and

[01:17:39] right before we got on the podcast, my wife is opening up male. And and I just hear her say, what is a survival torch? And I had ordered these I just, I always wanna be prepared, I just wanna be prepared and I ordered these things that, like the flint that you can help make fires with, if forbid something happens.

[01:18:02] I got three, three of these things that have flint on it, that like on a rope attached so it can make a controlled fire if god forbid you’re ever in a situation where you’re eating. Yeah. Like I just rather have it. And so I’m obsessed with keeping me, myself and my family safe and all of that.

[01:18:15] And and every aspect that comes to that, one of which being martial arts and I feel very blessed that I got into wrestling when I was so young at eight years old. My mom put my brother and I into it because I’m short five four Jewish kid. And my mom was like, you guys probably gonna get picked on and I want you to be able to handle yourself.

[01:18:34] And and I’ll never forget when I was in elementary school, it’s. Kid picked on me, tried to start a fight. I picked him up, slammed him on his butt. And for the rest of school, elementary school, middle school, high school, not one person ever picked on me, ever again. And I didn’t do the kid damage. I just picked him up, put him on his butt, and that was it.

[01:18:52] And I think being able to protect yourself and your family is unbelievably important. It’s I just I’m super passionate about it. It’s one of the things that I care so much about, and I eventually would one day like to start something that helps people who might not be able to afford something like that.

[01:19:11] And so I don’t care if you’re a man or a woman, I don’t care if you’re a child or an adult, I don’t care. I think learning how to protect yourself is just, it’s essential. You need to do it. And it’s funny because I started with wrestling, I started with martial arts, and then I got into lifting.

[01:19:28] I got obsessed with lifting and. Lifters are so funny because they think that since they’re strong that they’re gonna be able to win a fight. And there, there’s a joke in the mixed martial arts community that they’ll like, like different industries have different inside jokes in the comment section and the joke is that, really strong people will just say, oh yeah, bro.

[01:19:48] Like when I get mad, I see red and I just go off. It’s like fighting is a skill and I it’s difficult to see that when you’re watching maybe a U F C event or Bellator and other mixed martial arts fight. You just see all this blood everywhere and you see these two dudes brawling. It is a science.

[01:20:07] Fighting is truly a science. And if you don’t prepare and teach and learn how to do this, Then how the fuck do you think you’re gonna be able to do it in a situation which you really need it? Yeah.

[01:20:20] Dr Mike T Nelson: Especially rep one. Like how do you think rep one’s gonna go for you?

[01:20:23] Jordan Syatt: Exactly. Probably not. One of my favorite quotes ever is I would rather be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.

[01:20:30] Ooh. I like that. It’s one of my favorite quotes of all time. And I actually want a, some a picture symbolizing that as part of my next tattoo. But I don’t learn to fight so that I can fight. I learn to fight, hoping that I never have to ever, yeah. Like I do it so that I hopefully will never need to because it, when it comes to self-defense, oftentimes it’s not about hurting the other person or causing them harm.

[01:20:58] It’s about keeping yourself safe. And sometimes that means just running away. Creating enough distance. But if you don’t know how to create distance, if someone grabs a hold of you and you don’t know how to break that grip, you don’t know how to get away, then you can’t be safe. A lot of it is just creating distance.

[01:21:18] It’s not about necessarily closing it or knocking them out. And that’s one of the things I love about jujitsu. You get to decide how much damage you inflict on your opponent. If you’re doing boxing or kickboxing, moai or any type of striking, you can’t punch someone in the face softly. Yeah. Can’t kick them in the head softly.

[01:21:41] And this is where often lawsuits come into play where you’ll see someone, they’ll punch them super hard, they’ll kick them, and the per they’ll kick the attacker, they’ll punch the attacker, and the attacker will either suffer real injuries or even die and then they’ll get sued for it. The person who is being attacked, depending on the state you’re in, you really gotta know the laws of your state.

[01:21:58] But With Jiujitsu, there’s no hitting, there’s no punching or elbowing or kneeing or kicking. It’s all, it’s grappling. It’s controlling your opponent and you can ch, you can choose to throw them and toss ’em on their head, or you can choose to bring them out down very lightly. You can choose to hold them and control ’em there, or you can choose to submit them, choke them out, break their arm, whatever.

[01:22:19] But you decide, and if there have been multiple situations, whether I’m in New York City or in Dallas, wherever I am, where maybe there’s a homeless person who’s being super aggressive and I have to think in my head, okay, how am I gonna handle this if this person gets outta line and puts me or my wife or my daughter in danger?

[01:22:35] And it’s never, I’m gonna knock this dude out cuz he’s probably got mental health problems, all this. It’s I’m gonna bring him very softly to the ground and I’ll hold him there until the authorities can come and help him get the help that he needs. For me, man, jujitsu is I love it. I love the mental aspect of it.

[01:22:50] It’s like playing a human chess match with the other person. But I love the self-defense side and the confidence that comes with it. It’s there, it’s the full package. And for, dude, there are people in there. There’s a 15 year old girl named Vanessa who trains at my academy. She’s been training for a while.

[01:23:05] She’s a savage killer. God bless anyone who tries to fuck with this girl cause she kill you. This girl, she’s never lifted a weight in her life. And I, this is true story. She probably, I think she weighs like 105 pounds. She’s never lifted a weight in her life. I am infinitely stronger than this girl is.

[01:23:24] But if her and I legitimately got into a fight, Mike, she would. She would truly murder me without breaking a sweat and without breathing heavy. Yeah. It’s wild what learning this martial art can do for you. And I don’t care if it’s jujitsu or moi, Thai box. I don’t care. There’s always, there’s huge debates in m a.

[01:23:46] Yeah. Just like power lifting versus Olympic lifting, whatever, or body building, whatever. The same thing is, like they, they have the arguments between juujitsu and mo, whatever. I don’t care. Do whatever one you enjoy the most, but learn to protect yourself and learn to protect your family. It’s, I just, I could not stand by that more.

[01:24:02] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And the flip side of that too is that if you’re in a situation and you’re the aggressor you can’t go by just looking at someone like you. You have no idea, one of their training. Two, you’re probably not skilled enough to watch their movement patterns to even begin to have any idea of what training they’ve done or not.

[01:24:22] And even then, you’re probably not gonna be correct. Three. You don’t know if they have a weapon, they have a knife, they have a gun. Like what? You have no idea. Especially now. So it, it’s just, yeah.

[01:24:32] Jordan Syatt: Dude, it’s so funny. The first time I walked into a jujitsu academy, I was 25 and I was living in Boston.

[01:24:37] I walked into Kenny Florence’s Jujitsu Academy, and I, it was a small class. And I, my, I had a huge ego. I had already deadlifted four times my body weight. I had 10 years of wrestling experience under my belt. I was like, I’m gonna be good. I walk in. It’s a small class. And I actually, I opted out of the beginner class.

[01:24:54] Cause I was like, no, I have 10 years of wrestling. I’m fine. I don’t need to do the beginner class. That was a fucking mistake. I should have done the beginner class. I look and I don’t see anyone who’s clearly the professor. I just see a couple of people and one of them I see like this really pretty like overweight guy who doesn’t look like he works out ever.

[01:25:09] And I was like, oh my God. Like this is gonna be easy. That turned out to be the professor. Yeah. And we rolled together. And when I tell you that, 10 years wrestling experience, deadlifted four times in my body, deadlifted 530 pounds at 1 32, like strong. I’m pretty strong dude and very capable against someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.

[01:25:30] When I tell you I couldn’t do anything, like there was not nothing I could do against this guy who I looked at and I would’ve thought, this guy’s outta shape. This guy can’t do anything. This guy doesn’t always, if I just saw that guy on the street and be like, oh yeah, okay, not gonna be an issue. You have, that’s one of the most amazing things about walking into one of these martial arts academies and some of the most savage killers look like the sweetest, nicest, and they act like the sweet and most of ’em are

[01:25:58] Dr Mike T Nelson: like the nicest people to ever meet this.

[01:25:59] I never fuck with them. But, ever, and

[01:26:02] Jordan Syatt: this is, people talk about this in the fight world because. When you realize that you never know how skilled someone is just by looking at them, then you start being real nice to everyone real quick because you have no, there’s always someone better than you and always someone who can kill you.

[01:26:17] So I’d rather be very nice to everyone and very respectful cuz I have no idea how good or how good they are. And I’d rather just be very nice. And yeah. So you got me going on that tangent, but have you ever tried jujitsu or anything like that?

[01:26:30] Dr Mike T Nelson: I have not. And the reason I haven’t is because I know I can’t make progress at the rate I want going once or twice a week.

[01:26:40] Yeah. And so I would have to go more frequently and I just don’t have the room in my schedule right now. At some point I would definitely like to. It’s definitely on the list. The other part I realized too, which has actually gotten a lot better that. I just, it sounds so weird, but the way my brain thinks is like in biomechanics, like that’s literally how my brain thinks.

[01:27:00] My master’s in mechanical engineering, so I just need someone to tell me, okay, you put the joint in the thing like this. Like I don’t need the history of it. I don’t need any of the, which is why I wouldn’t be really good at karate in a lot of the TaeKwonDo and the stuff that is more, these are the forms that kind of evolved over time.

[01:27:17] This is the forms we do or jiujitsu from my understanding, correct me if I’m wrong, is they just test shit and so whatever works better they’re gonna do. And it’s mostly like putting the pens mechanically where you shouldn’t be putting them. Dude

[01:27:33] Jordan Syatt: that’s exactly right. It’s, jiujitsu is, in my opinion, the most practical martial art for self-defense.

[01:27:41] Mainly because a number of reasons. Number one is if you can goo like Google search and YouTube street fights the vast, like over 90% end on the ground. Yeah, they’re on the ground. And so it’s like you could be the best box in the world, but if you’re on the ground, good luck. And then in terms of the, in terms of the practical application of the study of jujitsu, specifically Brazilian jujitsu.

[01:28:03] People, they just want, they wanna be the best. And it’s not about how pretty it looks. It’s about is this an effective movement? Yeah. Did it work or not? That’s it. And you would love it because it’s not about, the effectiveness of a workout program isn’t based on any one exercise or even how you perform the exercise.

[01:28:21] It’s the cumulative stress over time. It’s the programming, it’s the design it’s the progressions, it’s all of that. It’s systems based. Jujitsu is a, it’s systems based. There are, yeah, so many systems and it’s all based on, okay, your opponent gives you this, so then here are your options.

[01:28:36] But then you give your opponent this, and now they have these options and it never ends. It never ends. It’s. It’s truly wild and it’s meticulous and it’s scientific. It’s I think you would love it. And some of I’m sure Lex Friedman. Oh yeah.

[01:28:52] Dr Mike T Nelson: I know who he is. I haven’t met him yet, but yeah.

[01:28:54] Yeah, I definitely know. He is

[01:28:55] Jordan Syatt: great podcast. Amazing podcast. He’s a black belt and jujitsu.

[01:28:59] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, they legit black belt.

[01:29:00] Jordan Syatt: A legit, yeah. And there’s a saying in jujitsu, there are black belts and then there are black belts. Yeah. And it’s in the same way it’s we look at the nba, you’ve got LeBron James and then you’ve got other NBA players, and then it’s like you only know LeBron’s name because he’s the best.

[01:29:15] They’re all in the nba. Yeah. But LeBron is far and above the rest. So there are some black belts who are way better than other black belts. And Lex is a no joke. Black belt. He’s a dangerous man. And I think some of the smartest, most intelligent humans on earth, men and women, Love juujitsu because it challenges you to think in these systems and in these the, in the biomechanics aspect of it.

[01:29:41] What’s you’ll get in these discussions. All right, what’s a better breaking mechanic? If I really wanted to, if I really wanted to just blow out the A C L M C L C L P C L, if I wanted to just ruin all of that, what would be the better breaking mechanic? Should I use a gable grip?

[01:29:53] Should I use a thumb grip? Like it’s, and it’s wild. It’s crazy, man. It’s truly extraordinary. I think you would love it.

[01:30:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah it’s definitely on my list and I just think there’s something to, especially as you’re getting older, to just go back and be a white belt again at something. Just go learn to suck at something that you haven’t done.

[01:30:13] I do a lot of kite boarding, which is a never ending progression of, the next thing. Very humbling at times. And I recently tried wing boarding. So same idea, but you’re on a foil board, but you’re holding onto a wing. And Nicole, you think, okay, yeah, it’s new, but I’ve kit boarded.

[01:30:27] I I learned how to windsurf pretty decently. Oh my God. I just went and got my ass kicked in a lesson for two days. I barely got on my knees and moved around on the thing. And then you were like oh yeah, starting over. Like even though you have some skills in that hope fail will progress maybe a little bit faster.

[01:30:43] But I think there is something as a good reminder to have some other scale outside of lifting that there’s an infinite amount of progression. There’s always the next level and just, I think it’s good just to be humbled once in a while. Like I’ve gone out kiteboarding where you’re like, oh yeah, today’s gonna be great and it’s gonna be amazing.

[01:31:00] You, you do a jump and you’re, 12, 15 feet up and something happens, you just get dropped out of the sky. You’re just like, oh, I remember two trips before a buddy of mine’s riding behind me and I’m just gonna do a jump transition. I’m like, oh, I’ve done this, hundreds of times. And I’m like, ah, this and my brain went somewhere else right as I did it.

[01:31:20] And so I made the transition and then I just caught my edge and just wham just face planted. And you’re just like, oh, yeah, you probably shouldn’t check out during this process either. Like you, you have to pay attention or bad shit’s gonna happen to, you gotta stay

[01:31:36] Jordan Syatt: present. Which and that brings like somewhat of a separate topic, but similar.

[01:31:40] It’s like in this day and age when we’re all just, stuck on our phone just like this. Yeah. It’s important to put it down and be pre, fully present in something else. It’s another, and you could do it, whether it’s jujitsu, kiteboarding, whatever, do something where it’s physically impossible to have your phone on you and just to Yep.

[01:31:57] Be fully present in something else. Yeah. I love that man. I’ll tell you what, if you ever come to Dallas and you wanna hang out, you want us train? Yeah. You’re always welcome to my academy. And then I’ll, if you come here and do that, I’ll go to you and you can teach me at a kiteboard.

[01:32:09] Yeah, there we go. That’d

[01:32:10] Dr Mike T Nelson: be fun. I

[01:32:10] Jordan Syatt: love that. It’s, and it’s funny. In terms of content creation. This is, you’re gonna see where I’m going with this. I see a lot of people saying things like, oh, you should take creatine for the neuroprotective benefits. It’s another reason for people to make content around creatine, it’s like, all right, you’re just trying to make more content.

[01:32:27] If you really want neuroprotective benefits, become a white belt in something. Learn a new skill. Yeah. There’s nothing better, aside from cutting, huge limiting alcohol intake would be learn something new. Put yourself in a situation which you’re forced to learn a new skill. Like you really want neuroprotective benefits.

[01:32:45] Yeah, if you wanna take creatine, fine, but don’t fucking act like that is gonna prevent you getting Alzheimer’s, God forbid. It’s learn something. Spend time learning a new skill. If you’re bored with what you’re doing and you’ve mastered it, go find something else and be a white belt.

[01:32:57] Figuratively. Or literally. It’s like one of the best things you can do for your mental health. Yeah. My

[01:33:02] Dr Mike T Nelson: short little thing on that as we wrap up is, I think we’re all becoming sea slugs. Have you heard the story of the sea slug, right? No. It’s this little critter that floats through the ocean and then it finds a rock and it attaches itself to a rock and it never leaves the rock ever again.

[01:33:16] That’s just cuz the food just flows by and it just hangs out there and then it eats its own brain because it doesn’t need to move and it doesn’t need to do anything at all. And you just think of like how much real estate of the brain is dedicated to movement coordination. Like I’ve often joked, like, how hard is it to have two robots play catch like two robots play tennis, right?

[01:33:38] Even if you’re a horrible tennis player, you would destroy the robots easily, right? Like these are skills we just take for granted. Yes. And I just feel like they’re being wasted and we’re just regressing back to a, as that looks like the shape of a couch cushion and a sea select.

[01:33:55] Jordan Syatt: I love that, dude. I completely agree with that. I love that it’s a, I, it’s a good analogy or a way to look at it. But man, listen, I thank you. I’ve kept you a long time and I appreciate you having me on. Again it’s a tremendous honor just to have a conversation with you like this. I’ve looked up to you for many years, so thank you for being you and for giving me the opportunity to speak with you.

[01:34:14] It means a lot. Oh,

[01:34:15] Dr Mike T Nelson: no, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And work in the viewers. Find out more about you and give out your Instagram all your

[01:34:21] Jordan Syatt: information. I always say if you wanna follow me on whatever platform, podcast, Instagram, whatever, just Google my name, Jordan Syatt s y a t, and I’ll be on whatever platform you want.

[01:34:31] Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Thank you so much, man. Really appreciate it. And hopefully we’ll see you again soon. Yes sir. Cool.

[01:34:38] [01:34:39] Dr Mike T Nelson: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast here. As always, huge thanks to Jordan for coming on the podcast here. Always a blast to talk to him, to see him in person again. I got to meet his wonderful wife and his very cute kid. When we were together down in Dallas briefly and just a wonderful human being doing some great stuff in the fitness world.

[01:35:04] And it’s always nice to talk to people who have been successful and doing it on their own terms going forward. So I really appreciate him taking the time to have this conversation about all aspects of fitness here. Depending on when you’re listening to this, you can still apply for the Flex Diet mentorship.

[01:35:23] The mentorship applications closed July 21st, 2023 at midnight. There’ll be a link down here below, so if you’re looking to transition or move your business more online, that is the main goal of the Flex Diet Mentorship. It is a six month mentorship. We cover everything from online assessments, online exercise, programming and nutrition to business and marketing, primarily via newsletter.

[01:35:49] Writing content. I actually edit all the pieces of content that you write during the mentorship, which is a big pain in the butt. But I like doing it and I think it’s extremely helpful. I had a mentor who did that for me, and it was extremely helpful to get very specific feedback for my targeted audience.

[01:36:08] We also cover mindset and personal development, so if you’re interested in that, make sure to apply below. If you missed it, you can still get on the newsletter and we have a whole bunch of other stuff coming out. And if I decide to offer the mentorship, again, a newsletter will be the very first people to be notified.

[01:36:25] Make sure to check out Jordan’s content. Make sure to go to his website, his wonderful Instagram. We’ll link to all of those below. Huge thanks to him for coming on the podcast. Again, always wonderful to chat with him. If you enjoyed this podcast please send it around to someone you think may enjoy it.

[01:36:43] If you’ve got just a couple minutes. Please leave us whatever stars you feel is appropriate and in a short one to two sentence review would be epic cuz that is what really helps distribution of the podcast to get it into more people’s ear holes, thank you so much, greatly appreciate it, and we will talk to all of you next week once again.