Episode 305: Mastering Coaching Communication with Brett Bartholomew

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Dr Mike T Nelson: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Flex Diet podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. On this podcast, we talk about all things to increase performance, muscle, and improve your body composition all without destroying your health in the flexible framework. Today on the program, my buddy, Brett Bartholomew. He is from the art of coaching.

You may know him as the author of the renowned book, Conscious Coaching. And today we’re talking about all the interactions that coaches and trainers go through. In addition to, he asked me a whole bunch of other questions too. So this is a pretty wide ranging podcast today with Brett talking everything about the role playing how you can actually learn things by actually practicing the reps.

And we even get into things like what are fitness trends, cold plunges, red light, [00:01:00] social interaction, the importance of communication. How is AI going to affect communication and coaching in general, the pros and cons of hosting live events and just kind of moving beyond your own boundaries overall.

So I really enjoyed this conversation. And as always, the podcast today is brought to you by. My friends over at Tekton. So if you’re looking for a ketone drink that tastes pretty darn good, this is my go to. I’m actually doing a longer fast today. I’m just gonna go do some cardio in just a bit. So I, I had one of the ketone drinks right now, since I am about 17 hours, 18 hours into a fast.

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I’m excited to tell you all about it. And then the other part I was actually consuming today was for my friends over at LMNT it’s a way to make electrolytes, especially higher sodium electrolytes, quite darn tasty. I’ve been using them now for man over like three maybe coming up on four years. So check them out at the link below and enjoy the podcast today.

My good buddy, Brett Bartholomew.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?

Brett Bartholomew: Glad to be here. Appreciate you having me. I’m doing great.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. It was fun to finally meet you in person out at Jason Leiden’s event in Connecticut.

God, that was a year ago, September. Wasn’t it? Yeah, it was.

Brett Bartholomew: And I remember that was that

Dr. Mike T Nelson: long ago.

Brett Bartholomew: It doesn’t. I remember that only [00:03:00] because. I remember I went out there and I’d gotten COVID and then I I’m usually somebody that doesn’t get sick very often But I got in COVID and then I ran and ran an event in January after that and got pneumonia and I was like Like what’s next the black plague?

So that year was especially memorable for me, but not for the right I felt bad because when I saw you there I was on my deathbed and you were not

Dr. Mike T Nelson: feeling good. No offense

Brett Bartholomew: No But we’re good now and i’m glad to be here with you.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Awesome For people who may not have heard you, I’m sure most people have heard you, especially in the coaching industry, especially with your book, give us like the, just a high level view of kind of what you do, because as an outsider in the coaching industry, I always think of you as the guy who, Talks about coaching communication, but I know you do a lot more than that.

In addition to that.

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah, no, real simple. I mean, prior, so I spent 15 years of my life as a strength and conditioning coach, mainly working with professional athletes and special forces. And [00:04:00] then I had written a book called conscious coaching in 2017. That was all about how to deal with people that have, you know, different personalities.

And some of those personalities are a little bit more Difficult and irascible, right? There’s people that are inherently a little bit more skeptical or withdrawn. That certainly doesn’t make them bad people, right? There’s many things about that that can be very good. And then there’s other people that on the other end of the spectrum can be a bit too naive or trust giving.

And so the bottom line is I had worked with so many different athletes at a young age and you’re working with these multi multi millionaires. That you’ve got to convince to do things that many of them inherently don’t want to do. So I wrote a book about how to navigate those social dynamics and just by the grace of God or whatever you believe in that ended up crossing over into the corporate world.

And so around 2020 I stopped working in strength and conditioning and now my company, Art of Coaching, is mainly in what you’d call broadly just the leadership development space, but we focus on conflict resolution, Power dynamics. [00:05:00] I always just tell people, Hey, think of any person, you know, that can, you know, either won’t admit that they’re wrong or it’s a struggle to communicate with them or they think they know it all or their standoffish.

We help people deal with that. And in many respects, we also just people deal with themselves. You know, a lot of leaders and different organizations will come to us and say, Hey, I know I’m very defensive. I don’t always take feedback. Well, this is costing me jobs or it’s cost me a relationship or it’s cost me an opportunity.

You know, I’d like to kind of get to the bottom of this and work through it real time. So we invite people from all over the world in any profession. We have workshops. We do executive coaching. And this is tied to my doctoral work, but we use social scrimmaging, just a form of improv, putting people in scenarios, just like an athlete would be or a boxer would spar or a military, you know, going through war games to simulate a real life conflict.

And we work with them to improve on those things, whether that’s their tone, whether that’s a [00:06:00] persuasive approach or appeal, anything that allows them to navigate those interactions more successfully.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Do you find that the, like a better word, kind of role playing, having them in the strength and conditioning world, we’d say like just doing the reps, is that common in your space or is that something that is different?

Because as an outsider looking in when I worked in the med tech space, I went to, I would say a fair amount of those types of seminars and it was rare. We ever actually had to practice the things that we learn. So I think about like strength coaching and be like going in and being like, Hey bro, here’s exactly how you do a deadlift.

Well, you know, don’t worry about touching the bar. Like don’t do any reps in the thing. Like, ah, you practice on your own, which nobody ever did.

Brett Bartholomew: Right. Yeah. I mean, you’re, you’re definitely right. So that’s a key differentiator for us. Like good rule of business, right? Don’t enter the market if you don’t have a differentiating factor.

And so. That use of role play. We use a lot of video breakdowns. So experiential learning, and then going [00:07:00] back and examining those things is our core differentiator. So and we’ll do long form and short form. Sometimes somebody just needs to work on something and we’ll, we’ll parse it down to just one minute because there’s an emotional toll to that.

Just as there’s a physiological toll to training. And then other times we’ll go more long form and it’ll be eight to 10 minutes, but we’ll video we’ll, we’ll throw it on an Apple airplane. We’ll break it down. And I think what’s been really refreshing is seeing people, you know, I was nervous cause we all have insecurities at first when people take to this, because especially like in strength and conditioning, most people would want to go to conferences cause they, Oh, I get a workout, you know, or I get a, even if people do the cold plunge and the saunas now, like everybody.

They’re just going, a lot of people go to conferences to do things that they just want to do, you know, naturally, where very few people wake up and think, you know, I want to put myself in difficult situations and role play those things out. So our goal was to try to make that find the, the, what [00:08:00] the intersection between fun and challenging, but we find that the majority of the people that are attracted to our work do enjoy that.

Cause our, our core audience are the people that feel like. I really want to get better at what I do. And I don’t get a lot of feedback, and I would rather have challenging feedback, and I’d rather be made to feel uncomfortable in a good way, because we always make sure psychological safety is, you know, huge there, then be where I’m at now, where everybody just either agrees with me because they work under me, or I don’t get any feedback, and they just don’t feel challenged, right?

And so yeah, I couldn’t imagine doing it even at our speaker school. So we run a speaker school workshop. And I remember when we were doing this, cause I’ll speak a lot. And I know you present quite a bit too. I, I never saw anything other than toast masters and stuff like that, that would do it. And then I had heard of one gentleman that ran one, but it was more about like how to dress and how to comport oneself.

So I said, why isn’t there anything where [00:09:00] people just get rep after rep after rep and hands down time. So our speaker school, people will come that either don’t have an idea of what they want to talk about. Maybe they even have social anxiety. Or we’ve had former Ted talk folks come and people that just want to refine it.

And in day one, they get eight reps, you know, eight, four to five minute micro talks, and then we expand that out. But yeah, it’s I can’t imagine doing any of that without experiential learning, cause it would just be miserable.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. It’s a weird thing for presenters. I know you present a ton and you always get people who are.

You know, new to the industry, it’s like, Oh, how do you get to present? I want to do what you’re doing. And it’s odd that the first opportunities I had were just kind of by. Dumb luck being in the right place at the right time and, you know, having something to present on. And they were horrible. They were a disaster.

Like I feel so bad for it. I’m sure they weren’t that bad.

Brett Bartholomew: Why do you feel like they were bad? I guarantee you they weren’t bad. [00:10:00]

Dr. Mike T Nelson: It was that I just felt like I didn’t have enough. And I wasn’t presenting, I took at face value what the organizer told me he wanted as the thing to present on. So I did a very highly technical talk on HRV because that’s what I was told.

But I didn’t have any reps to know that was going to be a shit show. And it was only like halfway through it that I realized no one in here has any idea what I’m saying. And, you know, that was just. Horrifying because now I’m like, ah, whatever, I know I can do this and this, that, but you know, you’ve done it hundreds of times where many, many times you know how to pivot and change, but being thrown into that and not having the reps to do it and not even having the structure to go by.

Like I did a Dale Carnegie course. It was like the only thing I ever did for public speaking. So I think to have the reps and to have a structure and to get practice and, you know, just [00:11:00] simple things like watching the audience, like if they’re all just like, Deer in the headlights of a Peterbilt, then, you know, that’s probably not the, the best.

And at least you can maybe try to pivot or change a little bit based on that live feedback.

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah, I mean, to your point, though, it is difficult sometimes because you, you have, you do have folks that they don’t really know what they’re asking for and they want you to come speak. And, you know, you, you have to find that balance because I can certainly relate going in and you know, people are paying their hard earned money.

So you want to, You want to give them a lot of value, but then you it’s easy to forget that maybe you only have 45 to 60 minutes and I was certainly guilty of trying to do too much too, especially because, you know, coming off of conscious coaching. There were certain people in strength and conditioning that felt like that was a subjective, you know, well, communication subjective and.

Here I come with all this data showing, well, no evaluating communication is perhaps the most objective thing in the world. Like that goes into consumer psychology that goes into [00:12:00] so many facets of, of, of behavior change. And so I would feel like it’s that quote, the son pays for the sins of the father.

So I

Dr. Mike T Nelson: started,

Brett Bartholomew: I started to realize that, Oh, I’m being perceived in the same audiences. Like These jump up and down, you know, trust folly, you know, I don’t think people understand that I’m coming at this from a socioanalytical standpoint of, Hey, what is it? You know, what are the core aspects of human nature that make us receive and react to certain messages the way we do?

And how can we, how can we manage that with certain persuasion techniques and through a better understanding of various communication styles and breaking the, so I overcorrected unknowingly. just out of sheer enthusiasm of wanting to share a lot of this information. And then you look back at it and you’re like, Oh my gosh, like you said, you overwhelmed.

But I think also, I don’t know if you can relate to this. I’d love to hear your perspective. There were times, I remember we ran a pilot [00:13:00] workshop once and for some reason, three years after we ran it and we had made so many positive tweaks to it, I had felt a lot of guilt about that first pilot. There was nothing to feel guilty about.

It was a, Great workshop, but for I was it was more like it’s so much better now. I felt like I needed to apologize to a couple people that went then And it was pure insecurity. It was pure just oh my gosh. I wish you could see it now I hope you didn’t have a bad time And they were like to this day. It was the best workshop I ever went to And so a lot of times what most people feel like is their worst effort.

We tend to be, as you know, our worst critics and it’s like, all right, it’s okay to understand you got a lot to work on and it maybe wasn’t perfect, but if you showed up with a lot of passion and enthusiasm and you were really there for the audience, you were probably, if you thought you were at a five, you were probably at an eight, you know?

And so I think sometimes people need to give themselves a little bit more grace.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I would agree with that. That’s one thing I kind of figured out on my own too, is that. [00:14:00] Especially if you’re presenting as something you’re considered a subject matter expert on whatever criteria people use for that, you’ve seen it like so often and you’ve, I remember like the third talk, I did a metabolic flexibility and by that point I had fricking read every document.

A metabolic flexibility was doing my PhD on it. I had given two previous talks. So I made the mistake of assuming a little too much from the audience because like, Oh, everyone must know this. Nobody knew what that was.

But

Dr. Mike T Nelson: I realized. I would ask people after the talk, I’m like, Oh, what, what did you, what were you coming to your takeaways from it?

And I had my list ahead of time of what I predicted their takeaways were going to be. And when I asked people, I wasn’t even in the ballpark.

Oh, I realized

Dr. Mike T Nelson: it was like, Oh, very simple things. And everyone mentioned an analogy or a story. No one ever mentioned a fact about anything. And that’s when it dawned on me.

I’m like, Oh, you mean people learn in stories? Oh, you [00:15:00] mean there’s something to this communication thing? Oh, I can’t just go up there and blast them with like 57 studies. You know? Yeah,

Brett Bartholomew: yeah, yeah. A hundred percent.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, it’s, it’s an iterative process, you know? And again, the first ones probably weren’t as bad as what we, we think.

There’s always a perception of you want to. And do such a good job. But the bigger the audience gets, the more it’s just not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. And at some point you, you kind of have to decide who are you going to talk to in the room and just kind of go for that. And the handful of other people who don’t like it, I’m sorry.

You know?

Brett Bartholomew: Well, I would, I would say it’s a bigger, you should be more worried if it. Is if you’re not getting people that push against it, that’s lukewarm, you know, and that means you played it too safe. So, and plus it’s just not possible. You know, everybody, I think the title and I can’t share the title of my next book on here, but just even the title of my next book, assuming the publisher doesn’t change it.

Is going to [00:16:00] have certain people clutching pearls and not buying the book based on their initial judgments. But that’s, that’s people. And that’s what you want. I’m I’m the type either way. I don’t know about you. I’d rather have a really strong cult following than be this mass market. You know, kind of person.

I just don’t want that. You know, I don’t, you see those people in all due respect to them. Like there’s people that have written like 20 books, but, and I’m not talking about like the John Grisham’s of the world. I’m talking about people on that. They’ve written like 20, 30 books, but the, you know, like it’s a book, the entire book’s about like one fable.

And then the next book’s about the Walnut who lost his way. And, you know, then the next book’s about like the five old men you meet in the forest that give you a point for, and you’re like, come on, like, These aren’t books. These are like a campfire story that you can tell. But I don’t want to be mass market.

I’d rather be, I’d rather be a cult following that people are like, Oh, you don’t like him, I think is just great. Or somebody else be like, no, I don’t. You need to have that debate. You need to, you need to make sure that you’re stirring [00:17:00] that up a little bit.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Cause I think that’s. What’s also more interesting.

And I think obviously in fitness, some of that stuff goes a little bit too far. But I have people in the industry and you’ve probably done this too, of, I actually am actively trying to find something we disagree on and, you know, normally you, you will, and it’s always relatively minor things, but those sort of air quotes, disagreements, those discussions are usually the most interesting also when you can find them.

And then normally I find at the end of the discussion, it’s like, Oh, we weren’t really that far off. You know, from each other or you kind of agree to disagree, but. It’s the places where you don’t necessarily overlap. That’s always more interesting to you.

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah. A hundred percent. No. Wait, do you, what, what is something you feel like now?

I mean, cause you’ve seen so much, you’ve been around the block. What is something now that you think is people treat as contentious, but you’re like, really, like, this has kind of been, we’d been there, done [00:18:00] that. I thought we were over, like, for example, right. I remember just so I don’t hang you out to dry.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, people were doing cold baths and cold plunges more than 20, 30 years ago. And I’m not talking about people in Norway and different parts of the world have been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years. But like point being is, you know, this, this stuff isn’t new. And now all of a sudden you would think that like cold plunges cure every communicable disease under the sun.

You know, I had a friend one time that’s like, Oh, do you have a barrel sauna? I’m like, I lived in Atlanta. I don’t need a barrel. I don’t need a barrel sauna. Like, what are you talking about? Like I work out in my garage in Atlanta, that’s my barrel sauna. But it’s just, I just feel like people latch onto this stuff and the cycles just repeat themselves.

And it’s the same arguments over and over and over. Do you ever feel that way with everything that you’ve seen?

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I mean, the temperature thing is crazy because I, and I started thinking about stuff for the physiologic flexibility certification where a big pillar one is temperature. And so I started thinking about [00:19:00] this stuff, you know, like 12 years ago.

And obviously there’s a ton of research going back for many, many, many years. High level coaches have been using this stuff for, you know, decades, probably longer. You can find early strong men talking about it from the turn of the century. And if you would have asked me, like, so before. I was lucky enough.

I got a freezer, I sealed it and I thought, Oh, I’ll do some cold water immersion. Oh, it turns out I was, you know, stuck at home for a year and a half. Couldn’t teach, couldn’t present, couldn’t do anything. So I’m like, Oh, great. This’ll be my little experiment to do a bunch of cold water immersion every morning.

And it was like, you know, 2020 and or 2020. And then about maybe half a year, a year after that, like cold water plunging was like everywhere. And I’m sitting there like scratching my head going, really, this is a thing that everyone latched onto. Like, I would have never predicted that because it’s, it’s a weird thing that like, even after doing almost daily for a year and a half, like right before you get in, [00:20:00] it still sucks.

There wasn’t a single day. I went out there and went, Ooh boy, I’m excited to cold plunge now. Like right before you get in, like there’s always that, that weird hesitation and granted you felt better afterwards. And I do think there is some benefits to it, but all the stuff that was being touted, you quickly realize that almost nobody read the original research on it.

At all. It was either, ah, it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s going to, you know, impair all your hypertrophy gains or, oh, this is the best thing I’ve ever done for my life. Like this, Oh, you know, 10, 20 grand on a cold plunge. Like don’t eat vegetables and protein. Just get up cold bruns, bro.

It was like this because everything in fitness has to be the extremes. And it’s just weird. And even like, you know, the hypertrophy stuff is, you know, at the time there was like four main studies on it. And you had to do basically 50 degrees for at least 10 minutes up to 20 minutes. Sure. All these people are like, Oh, this is so [00:21:00] horrible.

I’m like, No one’s really sitting in a cold plunge that long immediately after they’re No. Framing anyway. So no one’s really following the parameters that couldn’t, you know, be detrimental. So it was, Really what I think is a lot of people

Brett Bartholomew: just get bored.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: I think a lot of people get bored. Oh yeah, it’s new and novel.

They want something different.

Brett Bartholomew: Right. They get, they get bored and then they want to, they want to argue about something and it’s like, it’s all, it’s all black and white thinking reductionist, prescriptive, I got to know the way, which fundamentally goes against the complexity of the human body, you know, like it really, we found the way you found, you found the way that works for a 13 year old soccer player, the same that it works for a 21 year old wrestler at the university of Iowa.

Come on. Right. You know, and I think that’s kind of just what I got tired of a little bit in that space is Yeah, you saw it come and go all functional trading. No, we gotta do this. This is hardcore now and It’s like, Jesus, you guys are like, you know, we’re whatever age, are you in about the same thing? And any true practitioner knows that you, yeah, [00:22:00] my father was a stockbroker for 40 years.

You don’t invest in one stock. Sure. I’m going to hold my Costco’s and my Microsoft, but you diversify your portfolio. And just about everything. When somebody says they’re not going to, Oh, I’ve never do this. And you know, I’m, I’m a West side guy. And I’m, it’s like, Oh yeah. Until you get somebody where you have to do that, then you’re an idiot.

If you don’t balance. Out your methods. But yeah, I think there’s been a lot of spilled ink and spilled tears over things that ultimately people just, their self identity is so, and their self concept gets so wrapped up and it’s not even just performance. That’s anybody that, I mean, look at that’s, are you an iPhone person or a Samsung person?

Are you a Nike or Adidas people’s self concept get wrapped into a product or a methodology or an identity. And so it becomes this projection of ourself to defend it.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and that’s why even now if I get crazy DMs, I look at their, their handle and if it’s like KetoKaren, if like the thing they do is like part of, part of their name and it’s like one isolated [00:23:00] thing, I’m like, Ooh, danger, danger, they’re gonna Look out

Brett Bartholomew: for KetoKaren.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, they’re gonna try to convince me that this thing is the thing for everything. And as you know, like, nobody wants to have a long discussion about context, which is why I think podcasts and stuff are great. Like, there’s a lot of things work, but they work for who, under what conditions, what are you doing?

I realize that’s why I don’t put up a lot of, like, programs I do for clients, because without, I might do them eventually as a case study or something like that, so I can explain the context. Without the context, like, that may be the best program ever written, or it might be the single worst program ever written, depending on who it’s for, what are they trying to do, you know, their goals, that type of thing.

Brett Bartholomew: Yep. Yep. No, a hundred percent. I, I, sometimes it’s just fun to put that stuff up and watch the internet be the internet though. You know, like I remember one time, like, you know, here’s this, people are like, why would you do that? His knee’s going to break. You’re like these people that know nothing about the individual and you know Nothing about why you’re doing it and then they’re well, you better [00:24:00] tell me every reason why you’re like, dude I’m, you know, i’ve got a kid.

I gotta go I’m, not i’m not gonna sit here and explain to you lead pipe 420 while i’m doing this What about my favorite thing to do then would i’d be like? Oh, yeah, like we’re gonna do a whole podcast on it Here’s the link below Like just be like I because I used to get wrapped up a long time ago You And I’d feel compelled, you know, cause it was kind of like battle rap.

You’re like, I got to answer this guy. And then, then what I do is I’m like, check out our podcast last week. We talked about it, you missed it. And he’s like, well, I want to know here. And I’m like, yeah, I’m not going to do that, but here’s the, here’s the podcast, you can listen to it. Cause people want to argue over context, poor mediums, you know?

So, I mean, what a great way to get dumber. Hey, let’s have a non context rich discussion on a pot, a context, poor medium, what, you know? So anyway,

Dr. Mike T Nelson: yeah, it makes no sense. I know one of the funniest ones I had is a random DM from a guy years ago who Oh, I saw you took some PRI courses and now you’re [00:25:00] promoting RPR because you teach for them.

You need to call me and have an hour discussion about why I should take an RPR course because I think PRI is better and i’m like no It’s 250 bucks. Take a course you like it. Great. You don’t like you don’t like it. I don’t care. I’m It’s not my job to convince you to do this thing like you want to do it or not like I don’t care

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah, people again people are lonely and bored people are bored So what is it that you is there anything right now that you think people are grossly?

Misunderstanding or you know not really latching on to the way they should it could be either or like What is something that you think is very much people are giving this too much weight. It really doesn’t deserve the prey. Like, what is it like red light therapy? Or they’re not giving this enough weight.

What is something right now that you feel like is falling into either of those categories?

Dr. Mike T Nelson: I was actually very skeptical of red light therapy. And I mean, I have one now I’ve used it pretty [00:26:00] much every day, unless I’m traveling for like four years, I ended up doing a. I agreed to do an informational seminar for, it’s not released yet so I can’t say who, but two very big names in the industry.

And I thought this would be great. I have two and a half hours to compile, you know, the research. It was very much a research based audience, but they wanted it to be practical. Holy crap, I had to ask for so many extensions on that damn thing, it took me like a year to pull all of it together. Wow, you’ve got so many parameters.

You’ve got different types of light. You’ve got different things. You’ve got different indications of research is all across. And I had read most of the research before I agreed to the damn thing.

Yeah.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: But I do think in the right hands, it is useful. What do you have? Like a

Brett Bartholomew: mask, a bed, a panel, a wand.

What do you got?

Dr. Mike T Nelson: So I would say you can use a smaller panel or a two panel. So the main things you’re going to look at is the power of the device. which more power is not better. The research clearly has shown that. So the industry is pushing more power is going to be better. That’s not [00:27:00] necessarily true.

It’s just like exercise, right? If you can add too much of a thing that is stressful, like if I do too many bicep curls, at some point I’m not getting the benefit and I just destroyed my bicep and I can’t do anything for seven days. I can’t scratch my head or do whatever. Same idea. You do get a stress response.

You get too much reactive oxygen species. And you have a negative. So it’s this bell curve, just like all things. So one or two panel, I think is good. If you have a smaller panel, you just need to do a little bit longer because your exposure to the skin is going to be less moderate type panel in terms of power near and red light are probably your best bet for just general health, mitochondrial health, muscle recovery, most lights will do those two things, and then you just modulate how close you are to the panel.

If you want it as kind of a red light source in the evening, you can just turn anonymy a couple of feet away. Like you’re not getting dick for any response, but you’ll get a nice, you know red light, you know in your eyes that type of thing You want a therapeutic effect? You

Brett Bartholomew: red light district to do that and get you know Yeah, my

Dr. Mike T Nelson: house looks like that at night the neighbors probably think like what’s going [00:28:00] on over there That looks pretty funky.

Brett Bartholomew: But where do you where did you buy your pan? Yeah, because I had heard of it You know, mainly as I think it was like a 2021 article, not that that matters, but I just remember like for dementia, I had heard about it through, you know, pain or, you know, into like arthritis or, but now it’s, again, it seems to be everything.

And I also, if I remember correctly, people were using it for acne, but then it was like, wait, what’s the average person using that for? And where are they buying their pants? You know, are they buying it for the woozy store on Amazon? You know, cause Like that’s the thing is now all these whenever any of these things pop up, right?

And i’m not saying anything about a red light therapy. I’ve never tried it I’m, just making a point of no matter what comes up whether it’s okay Now I gotta do saunas and cold plunges and now we’ve got to do You know, you’ve got to step on snails because the mucin is good for your skin and it gets through the transdermal, you know What now where are we gonna buy it?

Okay, it’s only gotta be this vendor and it’s gotta be this kind of katsu method Where where are people getting this stuff?

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, there’s legitimate red light people. I use one Gemma [00:29:00] Red and Red Light Therapy Co. is what I’ve used. Like, a decent single panel is probably 250 to 300 bucks. A double panel, probably at least 500 on up.

Probably closer to 700, 800. The cosmetic industry, it will be pushing red light therapy for freaking everything. I guarantee like this year, there’ll be a red light therapy device for almost everything. And most of them are going to be utterly worthless.

Brett Bartholomew: Oh, I’m looking at this now. I wish I could share my screen.

I went onto Amazon right now. There’s go on to Amazon type in red light therapy. Oh, it’s nice. And these are purge masks. Yeah, these are one of these things. It looks like something I’d wear on date night. And I, one of them looks like a jabberwocky kind of thing with, Oh my, I need to get one of these just, you know, I don’t need it.

This is wild. What a time to be alive. What a time to be alive. Anyway, we’ve,

Dr. Mike T Nelson: it’s crazy. Cause there [00:30:00] is some pretty good data on, you know, collagen repulsion of maybe small wrinkles, depending upon that. So there is some data showing under the right conditions for skin and for beauty, probably a beneficial thing.

However, does that mean any red light you stick on your face is going to be beneficial? No, it, it, it gets overdone like anything else. Companies come in, they want to use the data, even though their device isn’t the right frequency, isn’t the right power isn’t set up that way. But they’re like, Oh, see all this data that red light therapy is beneficial.

And the same thing when supplements, like you see the testosterone boosters that show up every now and then. The funniest one I saw in that was the, the deer, deer velvet antler, deer antler velvet. That shows up about every like four years, kind of cyclically. The last company that was advertising this they actually put scientific references at the bottom of their thing And so I look at the references and they had four references And all four of the references [00:31:00] showed it didn’t do shit, but they put them on their sales page thinking Oh, we have references.

We have scientific data. No one’s going to actually read said scientific data

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah, I mean I and again, I want to make it clear. I’m not a hater I’ve never tried I was just making a point of all these things but It’s interesting Yeah People do take things and run with it because as I as I heard all the things that it had been used for Now people are using it to try well, you know, I have depression or I have this or I have that i’m like Okay, now we just making shit up.

You know that like probably yeah, it’s just kids. Well, but here’s my point, right? So Or you could go to research that we know works where, you know, I always show this in one of our I always show that and people could probably, it probably just pops up if you type in all cause mortality and social relationships.

If not, I can send you the link, but you know, you look at the right. You know, just, Hey, look at all, cause mortality goes down when we have stronger social relationships and social ties. Oh yeah. So I always think it’s hilarious because, [00:32:00] you know, right now I’m wearing an Apple watch. We, all these things, it tells you all what you sleep and how much, how active you are and all this.

I’m like, where’s, where’s the part that talks about our interactions Now, if I didn’t wanna live past the age of 45 and I wanted to stress myself out, I would’ve taken my doctoral research. And five to 10 years ago, gone to a venture capitalist and said, Hey, and, and I talked about this. I didn’t end up doing it just because I don’t want that kind of life.

So by all means, somebody else get rich, but you could partner with me. Cause we have tons of data through our workshops. But I was like, what we should be doing is integrating things into wearables or even zoom right now. That gives us real time feedback. And I’m sure with the emergence of AI agents and all this, this is coming.

But that literally says, Hey, Brett, slow down. You know, you’re speaking at 188 words a minute. Take a pause, ask Mike a question. You sound serious. Maybe make a joke, right? This thing that’s kind of like a corner man or corner person in today’s parlance that [00:33:00] lets you know, and he helps you become more socially aware.

Because when they show that your social relationships and your social health are such a huge indicator to the same exact extent of things like sleep and everything else, but we don’t measure that. But by all means, let’s go get a barrel sauna. And once again, it’s not me hating on barrel saunas. That’s me poking at our, at our health.

Tendency to go away from the obvious and the non sexy, even when I mean, right here, I’m like 2, 738 citations P. N. A. S. Journal, right? Social isolation, loneliness and all cause mortality and older men and women. It doesn’t take a genius. You know, we saw this during Cove it and what we saw it. Here it is.

Social isolation is a risk factor for all cause mortality, social relationships and mortality risk and a meta analytic review. And so, I mean, duh, we all know we need to be around people. That’s not the point. The point is, is how you interact matters at the same or even a greater level [00:34:00] than what we eat and how we sleep.

And there’s your soundbite because it’s bound to get somebody up in arms. But I tell you this. I, you know, we all have a grandpa or a grandma or a great, great grandma that smoked 80, 000 cigarettes and ate bacon every day and lived to be 103, you know, and whatever, but, and that’s, that’s by no means me saying, use an N equals one to substantiate eating poorly, anything like that.

I hope everybody’s following me. I can definitively say that poor or shitty communication is literally guaranteed to make some aspect of your life worse. Thank you very much. I could not every, I could not tell every athlete, Hey man, if you don’t train, you’re never going to win a super bowl. Now, of course I wanted to still get them to train and we’d work on everything we could.

And, but the fact of the matter is some of these guys don’t want to train and they’re still going to go make millions of dollars. But I mean, I can tell people you want to, you want assurance, go be an asshole. Go be a poor [00:35:00] listener. Don’t be interested in anybody else. Don’t work at all at how you communicate, but, and, and see if that makes your life better.

Now, then of course we had some wisecracker, unfortunately, right now I’m, I’m currently going through a divorce. And so somebody said, well, you do this for a living and you couldn’t keep your relationship together. And they were trying to bait me, you know, and I was like, well, There’s a lot of things I could say to that.

For communication to work, it has to be reciprocal, right? So, and I remember telling my divorce attorney, you know, this just as a joke, and he goes, Oh, brother, I guess I should quit being an attorney because if half the people I had took my advice, they wouldn’t either get divorced or, you know, it’d be a less messy divorce.

But nobody’s saying that because you spend the time to communicate more effectively, that everything in life is going to be easier. But I look at it this way. There’s plenty of people that are out of shape. How is that an excuse for me to then be out of shape? Just like, all right, I’m going to interact with poor communicators or people that don’t value [00:36:00] communication.

So I should just not work on it then. Right. And so every, I mean, not to mention people like Tony Robbins and Chris, 40 percent of the world’s population, unfortunately gets divorced or, you know, relationship issues are ubiquitous, but it just, it boggles my mind. That was along the same lines of when I asked somebody and it was a rhetorical question at a workshop.

Give me an example of what working on becoming a better communicator would be harmful to you. And a guy literally raises his hand and goes, Hitler. And I go, excuse me. And you know, the age old thing of like, you know, you’re reaching when you use Hitler. And I go, and he walked me through this walking and he goes, I’m going to seek to understand.

He goes. Well, he was a really good communicator. Look, he was able to brainwash people. I’m like, I think you’re missing the complexity there. There were a lot of historical and socioeconomic factors that there were a lot of factors that made World War II What [00:37:00] it was, and that part of the world and those people influenced the way that they were by this person.

I don’t think you could just peg it down to, Oh, because he was an effective communicator and they’re like, well, didn’t hurt. And I’m just like, but this is the, you know, the human population, man. You’re just sitting here now at those things. I just kind of laugh because you realize like, okay, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I think there were some other factors there, but it’s just interesting.

We, we can all COVID should have taught us. How much more we need to invest in the social side of what we do, even if that’s just reaching out to one person a week and being like, Hey, Mike. I wanted to let you know, it’s been a while since we’ve talked, but I really appreciate you respect the hell out of you.

And I hope you’re doing great. Like those little things week after week, after we can add up to help you create such a rich and fulfilling life.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. A couple of things on that is when you’re talking about the technology, like I. [00:38:00] I’m pretty convinced someone’s going to do this, that they will have AI.

That’s going to look at like your speech patterns. Like you said, it’s going to do it live. You’ll have like probably a little bot in the corner of your screen. That’ll be like your. your zoom coach or whatever that’ll be like throwing things at you like exactly like what you were saying i know i won’t say the companies but i know certain places via webcam will be able to pull biometrics directly from potentially blood pressure heart rate hrv just through your web camera which in theory you could run as a biofeedback into your little bot that could see oh you’re becoming more stressed maybe you didn’t like that topic or In theory, you can get this feedback on other people as you’re presenting to them over zoom and see their biometrics and

yeah,

Dr. Mike T Nelson: it was all sorts of, I think, crazy stuff that’ll come in the future, potentially good or bad, but I think to your point.

If we learn anything from COVID is that, yeah, like communication matters, like social events matter. [00:39:00] I know it was very weird for me at first just to really go many places, not to teach, not to do seminars in one aspect, it was kind of nice to have a little bit of a reset and realize, oh yeah, the longest you’ve been home for three and a half years is three and a half weeks.

That might be a little much. But. It was so nice. Once things started to open again, I think we under appreciate it. So I remember going on a kiteboard trip and at the time people are like, Oh, what are you doing? You crazy person. I’m like, I’m outside in 20 mile per hour winds. Yeah. Like out of all the places I’m probably going to be safe.

I think I’m going to be pretty safe doing this, this thing. Yeah. And it was so nice. It was like, Oh, Let’s go do a fun activity. And I get to hang out with friends again. I get to see people. I was like, Oh, this is great.

Brett Bartholomew: You know, the thing you have a good point. The, the thing that I, I miss the most after COVID the thing that it you’re right, it did do some positive things that people don’t always [00:40:00] recognize.

It was great for. Introverted extroverts like me, cause it gives you a built in. It was amazing for that. Yeah. But one thing that I didn’t appreciate, and maybe your experience with this has been different is I don’t feel like the international education market really ever recovered, you know, like, yeah,

Dr. Mike T Nelson: I don’t think so.

Brett Bartholomew: No, like I, I, I looked forward to about five times a year. You know, being able to go to like a, you’d go to a Brazil and something in London and you know, maybe you’d go to China or Portugal and you know, ever since then, you know, we’ve done stuff in Australia and the uk, but just Brazil and a lot of other places.

Just people don’t host a lot of international education events like they used to have. You had a different experience with that? It just seems like even Canada slowed down a good bit, but people just don’t host those clinics like they used to.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: No, I think one of the shifts probably similar to what you said too, is that I think there was a rush to, at least in the fitness world, put information [00:41:00] online.

So every time Dick and Harry put whatever they wanted online for free,

I

Dr. Mike T Nelson: think the expectation sort of became I don’t need to go to a live seminar because I’m going to get all this information for free. Heck, I don’t even want to pay for courses or systems or anything to get better. I do think there is a small percentage of places where people will want that kind of one on one connection and do go to live events.

But my fear is when I go to those events, it’s, I don’t see many new people in the industry. I see the same people I’ve seen for a long time, which is amazing. I love seeing them, but I get worried that. The newer people coming up, they just don’t know. Back to the reps, right? Yeah. They don’t know what it’s like to go to a seminar, to have hallway conversations, to Go out to the bar and drink bourbon with Dan, John or, you know, to do these things that you just can’t do and you can’t get from online environments.

And hell, I saw online certification, so I’m not saying it’s bad by any means.

No. But

Dr. Mike T Nelson: there [00:42:00] is an intangible that you do miss by not being there. Live at an event.

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah. Yeah. And and with that, I think you get a little bit of, you get some people that miss out on. Education regarding the decorum, like, you know, again, right.

And so like, you know, if I, let’s say you and I are at an event, it’s, you know, and you speak before me, I try to make it. I try to make it a point to write down one or two things you say so that I can call back to it in my lecture to prop you up even more just as like a nod to the right. There’s a professionalism.

It’s no Dan. And granted, I can’t nor could anybody. I don’t make it to every speaker’s thing when I go because so much of it you get you land and you need to rest a little bit and just, you know, you adjust your slides or whatever. But I always try to get to the one before so that I can pay homage. And now I think that everything has become so maybe this compliments what you’re saying.

Correct me if I’m not, it’s become so hyper promotional or solely focus. It masks itself [00:43:00] as an educational event, but really it’s a time Can I use language on this? Can I use bad? Yeah, go crazy. Because there’s some things that just don’t translate. It becomes more of a medium for fuckboys to come advertise.

And you’re like, who are you? You know, I saw somebody I’ll make up the name here because I don’t want to But it was basically, they were, they were acting like they ran this preeminent coaching event in all of the world. And these, these aficionados are coming in. I’m like, I, not that I’m on top of everything.

Right. You should know one or two of these names. If you have longevity and I’m like, I’ve never heard of any of these people. And so I go to their website and I’m like, these people are all selling kind of click funnel ask just bullshit. And you’re like, Oh, this is a hype event. This is a hype event where somebody paid.

10 to $30,000 to get a Marriott Ballroom brought a bunch of social media people in here. They get a trailer and they try to, they bring in one big name and then they try to make it look like the preeminent coaching [00:44:00] conference of, and you’re like, that’s when I’m just like, no, no, no. What that’s led me to do, Mike, as we’re speaking, I have saved up for a very, very long time to make a scary ass investment.

I just signed a contract to put a half a million dollar metal building in our backyard. We’re on an acre of land, and that is money that. You know, I don’t write checks for half a million dollars, right? This is, this was like my poor kid account, my brother, you’re funneling a little bit of book royalty money every year for a very long time.

And we’re going to have an event space so that if anybody like yourself, if you wanted to come run something cool, you don’t have to pay an asinine fee to to a hotel conference room, or you don’t have to just do it in a gym anymore. You don’t have to rent out an Airbnb. If you want to film a course you can do that.

So it’s got a small event space. A little gym some upstairs retreat suites because I just wanted that kind of stuff That craziness made me just want to make my circle smaller [00:45:00] And be like, okay, anybody that’s actually super professional and wants to help each other. You come here, you come here, you can rent the space.

You can rent the whole property. If you want, I’ll go to Flagstaff for a weekend and come do your thing. But you know, you just have to be really careful about who’s in your circle. Cause a lot of these people are not professional at all. No, that’s

Dr. Mike T Nelson: what’s shocking.

Brett Bartholomew: And I, it’s not a complaining thing. It’s a tip for the audience.

It’s just a reminder for you guys. You know, and it was a reminder for myself, anything I say to anybody else, I’m always trying to do myself audit your network, constantly audit your network. I mean, for every person that’s like, Hey, Janessa, love your stuff. Just so you know, you probably haven’t heard from that person like six years.

And it’s good timing, depending on when this podcast goes out, because what happens this time of year, always on Thanksgiving or Christmas, you get bombarded with the bullshit. Merry Christmas, happy Thanksgiving. Killing it text from people that you hear once a year. Once, but those are the [00:46:00] same people asking you to promote their book or their new thing, you know, and they’ve never once asked you how you’re doing and what you can do, what they can do to help you.

So relationships in your social circle, it’s so critical. You’ve got to find new ways. Anybody listening. To reinvest in them. I mean, man, I even reach out, we’ve cut down on podcast sponsors because, you know, we want an opportunity to be able to promote more of our stuff, especially since social media reach has been so like siphoned off compared to what it used to be

crazy, right?

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah. And so unless you want to

Dr. Mike T Nelson: pay.

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah. Which, I mean, there’s a time and place, but like, you know, yeah. So anyway, we have one sponsor that’s been with us through thick and thin. And that was one thing I did to kind of take my own advice. I’m like, I’m going to reach out to them and let them know how much I appreciate them.

And then I’m like, well, I’m going to create a list of 10 people right now and just send them a brief message. Here’s what I appreciate about you. Here’s something I’m thankful for. Hope we can find a way to collaborate in the new year. And here’s a tip. Don’t send it to [00:47:00] anybody that you don’t actually mean that.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Don’t send it to anybody that you actually don’t mean it to. You’d be better off, I don’t even care if you copy and paste it, just make sure it’s heartfelt from the get go. Yeah. And these people are actually people that you like. You know, that’s an easy way to just make your life better and build some social capital in a meaningful, genuine way.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And that’s I mean, even now, like for, I haven’t applied to do many presentations. It’s not that I’m against it. It’s just, I’ve decided to cut back a fair amount on that. And even when Jason reached out to me for the event we were at, my first question was, and I’ve known Jason for years, he’s awesome.

I love Jason was, Hey, who else is going to be there? And it wasn’t a knock against him. I knew him. I knew the caliber of people he hung out with. I thought there’s going to be a fair amount of people there. And I just looked at the list and went. Hey, that looks cool. Those are people I want to hang out with.

You know, I haven’t seen Kelly’s thread for a while. Never met you in person. Yeah. You know, the list was awesome. And I’m like, yeah, sure. I’m in like, I don’t even know [00:48:00] what I get paid. If I get paid, whatever, I don’t care. Like those are cool people I want to hang out with, but if it, you know, and this wouldn’t happen with Jason, but has happened with other presentations.

If I look at the list and I’m like, I don’t want to see any of those people. I’m like, I’m out unless you’re going to pay me an obscene amount of money. If I’m honest.

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, you just gotta. There’s, I mean, you always have to take some steps back. I didn’t speak as much this year because I’m trying to get this book done and it, you know, we’ve changed editors a couple of times because one just took a different job and then we moved and then the publisher wanted to do a rewrite because some things with the election influenced how they thought a book like this would be perceived because it’s a lot on power dynamics and navigating egos and.

And all that stuff and they say that books really tend to not sell well leadership books on an election year Which is interesting. I’d almost think they’d sell better thought

Dr. Mike T Nelson: it would have been the opposite, but I don’t know that industry Well,

Brett Bartholomew: yeah, there’s just certain things that I don’t argue with anymore I’m like, yeah, you know you guys want to [00:49:00] make the monies like I I want the book to do well So it is what it is But point being of like you now I lost my train of thought because I was thinking about the book industry What were you were just talking about

Dr. Mike T Nelson: people we like people we don’t like going to certain events You

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah.

Oh yeah. And so like sometimes you just got to take a step back to cut to take a step forward with certain things as well. I know one event that we’re going to be hosting next year or when the book launches is, and this goes into a second thing, make sure it’s stuff you actually want to be around and put in your brain.

So, you know, our core content and art of coaching is helping people navigate the messy realities of leadership and life. So you don’t have to have a staff that you’re managing. You don’t have to have a colleague. You know, you can have a romantic partner, you can have a brother or sister that you haven’t connected with in a while, you can have your own insecurities.

And so I know we’re going to run an event once this compound is done and finish, and I’m only inviting people. And I’d love to have you, if you want to that want to speak about something [00:50:00] within that domain, people that are professionals and have a business or have, you know, like they work for an organization, but I want them to speak about.

Hey, here’s how I balance or fail at balancing being a great father and being an entrepreneur. And I don’t want to hear about your morning routine bullshit. I want to hear about the nasty stuff that you got overcome on a daily basis. I want to hear about the awful psychological spell you went down in 2020 and how you came out of that.

I want to hear about how. And I’m making these things up out of the blue. I want to hear about how somebody had their best business year ever, but realize they weren’t showing up as a father, the way they like to a new principal, you know what I mean? And that’s the kind of shit I want to hear about now.

And so if somebody is like, Hey, we want you to come to a clinic where people argue about whether you should catch the clean or drop it. I’m going to say, well, and I’ll say this unabashedly, here’s my price. It’s going to be really high. Okay. Because there’s an opportunity cost and I, I would like shoot myself.

Now if [00:51:00] it’s a friend and it’s a favor, that’s a different thing, but that’s

Dr. Mike T Nelson: totally,

Brett Bartholomew: that’s just not stuff I want to put in my head right now. And that’s going to come at a premium versus if somebody is like, Hey, here, we’re going to talk about behavior change and how that applies to blank and blank and blank.

I’m more likely to go and do that. Now. There are other circumstances like I’m going to speak For a university and some college students for well below my rate And for those listening that is never meant to sound ostentatious. It’s just you run a business, right? It’s simple math. One time. I got paid five grand to speak and somebody was like must be nice.

I go buddy That’s my payroll tax, you know but i’ll do i’ll do five or six events You Under my standard fee a year because it’s you know for a non for profit or kids or a good friend or But beyond a point like I can’t go to my bank and be like sorry, I can’t pay my bills I’m doing it for the right reasons, you know, like you have to balance those things out

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and last question on that is how do you find the balance point on that?

Do [00:52:00] you have like so for example one thing I try to do is i’ll have So many events or even like peer reviews I get peer reviews all the time. I’ll say okay i’m gonna do You I think I’m doing three per quarter. And after that, I just have to say no, because yes, I like doing them, but no, I don’t really get paid for them.

I feel like as an academic, it’s kind of an obligation. So I have like my minimum I’m going to do. And then after that, it’s just kind of no more. Do you kind of have like a minimum for each thing or does it just depend on what opportunities you get?

Brett Bartholomew: Are you asking kind of how I price it out or what have you?

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. So do you have like, you know, the max I can do is, you know, six events per year for college people or. Or do you just kind of go with the flow and decide on each one individually?

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah, so i’m actually going to pull this up because I was sharing this the other day And I always I always like sharing it and hopefully it helps some people.

Let me see here real quick And and i’ll take to contextualize it as I answer the question You know one time I remember I had I had sent my speaking rates to somebody And they essentially got really upset and they [00:53:00] were like, well, you know, I know for a fact You You know, you did this for a colleague at this price.

So, yeah. And what I did is I said, I started creating and steal this idea. We talk about it at our speaker school. Anybody’s welcome to steal this idea. So I, what I did is I created a rate breakdown and FAQ and it’s a nice thing. I like professional header, all that. And it just lays it out. It’s like, Hey, how do you determine your rates?

All this stuff. So here I’m going to read this verbatim.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Perfect.

Brett Bartholomew: So I put, whenever I speak at a conference or performing in service, a large number of hours are spent away from traditional work responsibilities. So I can prepare, tailor it. So on and so forth. I’m going to paraphrase a little bit. I go for a simple one to two day event with conservative travel estimates that could be about 26 hours away from home.

So, you know, I break, I break those things down in terms of correspondence, preparation for a talk, especially because this person’s like, well, I’ve seen you give this talk. I don’t understand why I should have to. And I’m like, dude, you know, I probably bought the 1 billionth Mac book [00:54:00] that Apple made. That doesn’t change the price.

So what I did is I put, you know, as each engagement price of the same. And I said in short, no, they are not as in the case with many service based professions, rates vary based on a multitude of factors, including time of year. Travel time and distance. Will the talk be recorded the nature of the material requested the length of the sessions, any pre or post conference requests, preexisting partnerships were, were books purchased.

Like, so for example, one person reached out total professional. I love people like this. The guy was like, Hey, I know this is below your rate. We’d love to have you respect you. Is there an opportunity where we could purchase a hundred copies of your book at a reduced price to show our support for you?

Well, that still didn’t get them to my rate, but that’s immensely valuable to me. Oh yeah. Immense as you know. So a thousand and we, we sent people that we sent people a zone of possible agreements. So what we do is we lay that out now to the listener [00:55:00] thinking, I don’t get it. Here’s why this was created.

There were many events. I remember one time in particular, I went and spoke in Nebraska. And then another time I went to another country. I don’t want to get into where it was. And the agreement was what it was. There were like two talk. One was like one talk and another one was two days. The one talk turned into seven.

Oh my God, you did that. Great. You know, I have a friend that works at the hospital. Could you give them 30 minutes of your time? Oh, well, I volunteered. No joke. And, and I was so early in at that time that I was happy to do it. By the end of that time, one talk turned into seven different talks at seven.

Yeah. And I did, I developed a throat ulcer, which I had never even heard of, but I had this laceration on the back of my throat. And then I had to go record one of our online courses. The other one in this other country. I landed. It was, we’d love to take you to breakfast. Cool. Go to breakfast. Oh buddy. A friend of mine’s in charge of a [00:56:00] rugby club.

He’s at the hotel you’re at mind giving him an hour of your time. No problem. Boom. That ended up being two hours cause I didn’t know how to set boundaries then. And he wasn’t interested in that. You know, he, I don’t think it wasn’t malicious. He was just, you know, and then mate, we’re going to lunch.

We’d love for you to meet with this boom, boom, boom, boom. I just said, mate. So now you either know it’s the UK or Australia. Next thing, you know, so I get so I’m so grateful, but I’m also very overwhelmed by the end of that. Cause I’ve just been on after this massive flight. That I just go to the bathroom finally and lock myself in the saw and I needed like four minutes to just like Recalibrate and anybody that doesn’t understand that man All you need to do is be on for a two day of imagine being on It’s like an athlete competing all the time And so I realized I just was not I was not protecting my time charging and then one time I went to China I don’t mind saying this the agreement was [00:57:00] the agreement And ended up getting prolonged another day, another day, another day.

And I finally was like, you know, the money was good. So you’re I’m going to do it, but yeah. So I always just told people, listen, at that time I was still training athletes. It’s not what I do anymore now, but I can tell anybody listening and you should do this too. There are certain times of year that are my busy season.

And just like if you book at a hotel during their busy season, It’s more than in the off season. It is more expensive to get me during my busy season. You know, that just is what it is. Also consider, you know, I’m now divorced. I have split custody of my son. There’s 4, 200 days till he’s an adult that becomes 2, 100 days based on joint custody.

You know, my time and your time and everybody else’s time is at a premium. So where somebody could say, well, you charge too much. I’m like, you’re not charging enough. And for anybody that thinks that they are charging too much, I’m going to say, That you’re actually just nervous. You’re not living up to that obligation.

If you pay me to come speak and I [00:58:00] know if you pay Mike to go to speak, and I’m sure it’s the same for any of you listening, you are going to go balls out. You are going to stay and you are going to sign books and sign babies. You’re going to answer, be a professional. Yes, of course. If you want me to go to dinner with your staff and present two days, that’s going to be a different price than if you want this and this and this.

And that’s just being a professional. If I want a plumber to fix my toilet, but then he’s also got to drive an. hour and a half and he has to go get more stuff because it’s not just the toilet it’s the water You’re going to pay them more. So that’s how I do it. And then I just bake in, you know, I look at my budget for that year, you know, like one year we had like five staff and we operated at a loss.

Cause for the first time ever, cause we made a lot of investments into the company and that year I couldn’t do as many things at, you know but when my book goes, when my next book goes live, I will eat shit a lot to promote the next book. You know what I mean? And that’s just the stuff I don’t think people are willing to do anymore.[00:59:00]

People aren’t willing, at least a lot of them, and thank God, because I consider myself an underdog. I don’t have, I don’t have the type of agent like an Adam Grant or a Malcolm Gladwell has that are booking, booking those things. Like, I’ve got to do it myself or, you know, I have an agent through this publisher, but there’s nothing for him to sell until the book goes live, you know?

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I think even like I’ve gotten better at just simple stuff, like asking them, like, Hey, where’s your location? Like if you know me enough and you can convince me that it’s in a cool location and I could probably kiteboard for a few days there, dude, your odds of me showing up at your event went way up.

Brett Bartholomew: That’s a huge point. That’s it. And I hope everybody listened to that. Like, Make it, you know, make it special. Like if you know, one, I consider you a friend, I’d still pay you to come speak. Now, if you don’t want to, that’s fine or whatever, but it helped. I would think it helps that I live in Phoenix, Arizona.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: No, Phoenix is great.

Brett Bartholomew: You know, like that was a big re and so I live 90 minutes from Sedona, not even two hours from Flagstaff, you know, there’s a greatest pie [01:00:00] place in the world. Nearby there’s hiking trails. You know, or what I do is I’d find five speakers and be like, I’d love to just cook a dinner for you guys, a special dinner at the property.

I’m going to get some tomahawks, some special, that’d be

Dr. Mike T Nelson: awesome. Just fly for that.

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah, just like that, that we run. So we run a facility. I think that you’d appreciate this. Given your personality, we run a course. Where other people can speak on behalf of our company. Cause I don’t want it to be the Brett Bartholomew show.

And one of the codifying values that we teach them so that they know on the road, how they’re always supposed to behave. If they’re representing the company is Midwest warmth.

And

Brett Bartholomew: I’m like, you cook for people. You look them in the eye, you shake their hand. It’s a handwritten note with a wax seal. Do the small shit that matters.

And by the way, what does it take for me to go buy some nice steaks, a couple bottles of wine, ask you what your favorite side is, you know, have, have a nice little thing for you. You know, you can work out on the property and relax. You know, what [01:01:00] does it cost for me to do that? Nothing. And that’s the kind of life I want to build because having my four year old sit around a fire and listen to you and four other highly intelligent people just talk about life and whatever.

That’s a, that’s what I want. Yeah.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: And it’s those memories that you have. I mean, I think of all the interactions I’ve had over time, that it’s those memories that you’ll remember that are, are useful and just creating those experiences. And like you said, it doesn’t have to be anything like completely crazy.

It can be very simple and extremely useful.

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah. Yeah, no. And so I’m, I’m anxious to get that thing built so we can get it planned. 20. I never want time to move forward quickly for obvious reasons, but. 2026 and all that stuff. Can’t get here soon enough. Assuming all those things go, go right.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Awesome.

But where can people find out more about you? I know you’ve got the website, you’ve got a book coming up. I assume they can sign up to hear more about the book when it’s out.

Brett Bartholomew: Yeah, if you’re interested in those. So my first book conscious coaching is on Amazon and you can find that [01:02:00] translated in five or six languages.

I also do signed copies of the book and personalize, and they’re all on discount now because of the holiday. So first place is art of coaching. com, not the art of coaching, just flat out. Art of coaching. com. We have live events, workshops, their CEU approved. Now, whether you want our speaker school, our business development workshop, conflict resolution, you can get our online courses there.

We do one to one mentoring. So for those of you that don’t travel or can’t travel we do one to one coaching men that if you want to take a look at my first book, you can just go do Amazon and it’s called conscious coaching, everything is accessible. Through my website, though, art of coaching. com.

And I appreciate you allowing me to share that.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Yeah, I would highly encourage people to check out your stuff. It’s wonderful. I really appreciate it. And you know, all the stuff in the book for the price you charge is, it’s just, it’s a, it’s a no brainer. So definitely check that out and all the stuff you got coming out.

Yeah. Thank you so much. [01:03:00] Really appreciate all the time today and hope to see you in person in the future. I appreciate it, Mike. Take care. Thank you.

Dr Mike T Nelson: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. As always, really, really appreciate it. Huge thanks to Brett. Make sure you check out all of his stuff. We’ll put links to his website there, his Instagram. And super excited to hear a lot more about the book once it is out, all the wonderful things he’s doing.

I was great to see him in person last year. So make sure you check out all of his wonderful stuff. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, download, whatever, all the wonderful things you need to do to make the old algorithms nice and happy. So we can get better distribution of this and two more.

Ear holes and yeah, just help people get solid information. So thank you so much. Really, really appreciate it. Stay tuned. We’ve got a ton more guests coming up on the [01:04:00] podcast. Got one from Dr. Sharon talking about stress. That’ll be out in a couple of months. James Laval will be on here and many other ones too.

So stay tuned for that. Thank you so much. We’ll talk to all of you very soon.

Dr. Mike T Nelson: What do you suppose they call that? A novelty act? I don’t know, but it wasn’t too bad. Well, that’s a novelty.

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