Episode 197: The Ultimate Guide to Online Fitness Business Do’s and Don’ts – An Interview with Chris and Eric Martinez

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[00:00:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: Hey, welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson, and today on the podcast we’ve got my good buddies, Chris and Eric, and they allowed me to ask them all the crazy questions I get about online coaching and training.. So I get a fair amount of questions about this. I’ve been doing it on a pretty full-time basis for coming up on over a decade now, which is crazy.

And these guys have helped a ton of people with the business side of online coaching and it goes beyond that with even, trying to set up boundaries and how to take care of yourself as a coach and deliver a solid product and experience to everybody that you’re helping. So they’ve got some great info in the full podcast today.

Please check out their offer that they have. It is in a link below. You’ll find all the information there. I’ve referred other people over to ’em who have worked with them. It’s been a great experience, so make sure you check that out. They’ve got really good. . And then also if you’re looking in the online coaching space for more advanced work, the Physiologic Flexibility Cert, which is the level two to the Flex Diet certification.

That is now open as of this recording, which is March 20th, 2023. It will be open until March 27th at midnight 2023, and the Phys Flex Cert, I always get them mixed up a little bit. The Flex diet certification is nutrition and some recovery. That’s a little bit of exercise and walking and sleep. So that covers all the basics that you and your clients should be pretty good at.

But once you’re crushing those at around 80 to 90%, especially with the basic items, which is by far and away where you wanna spend most of your. . But once you have that, there are other things that can be of benefit. Everything from high intensity cardio zone two, cardio heat exposure, cold exposure, breathing techniques.

And then we also do a huge deep dive into a blood glucose and even ketones. So the physiologic flexibility certification is targeting the four main homeostatic regulators in your. These are things that your body absolutely 100% must maintain. Or else you’re gonna be in a world of hurt. What’s cool is that you can expand your adaptation to each one of these areas, the four pillars being temperature, pH fuels, and air, oxygen, and co2.

If you get better at regulating in each one of those areas, what we’ve seen is your ability to recover goes up dramatically. You’re generally much harder to kill, more robust, anti-fragile. Whatever words you want to use associated there, and it’s been super beneficial for everyone. So check it out. It is open now.

Go to physiologicflexibility.com for all the information and all the details. It’ll be open until March 27th, 2023 if you’re listening to this. After that time, you can still go to the same link and it’ll put you onto the wait list for the next time that it opens up, most likely. Probably not until this fall.

So again, there’s just some options for you if you’re doing online training and check out my full conversation here with Chris and Eric, but all the most common questions for online trainers.

[00:03:48] Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. Thank you for listening. We’re here today with Coach Eric and Coach Chris. Thank you guys for being on here. Really appreciate it.

[00:03:58] Coach Eric: Thanks so much for having us. Really appreciate it. I know we’ve connected several times.

We’ve known each other for several years, so yeah, this is this should be fun to, talk and jam out and just hopefully we deliver some great value to your audience.

[00:04:11] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And by the time this goes out, we’ll hopefully have seen you guys at the raise the Bar event in Dallas. I think you’ll be at, correct?

I know you’re in the Dallas area,

[00:04:19] Coach Eric: obviously. Yeah, unfortunately, I was telling Jodie though, I’m gonna actually be in California, so I Oh, bugger. Yeah. You won’t

[00:04:25] Dr Mike T Nelson: see me vacation time.

[00:04:28] Coach Eric: Just going, see mom go see my mom and my older brother. Visit them for a little

[00:04:31] Dr Mike T Nelson: bit. Oh, nice. Yeah. That’s cool. Very cool.

Awesome. Today we’re talking about what is the difference between in-person and online training? So I think there’s a trend by, I don’t know, Instagram and influencers or I don’t know, whatever word we use for people that hey, just do online training. You can sit around in your underwear, scratch your nuts all day and like just incline stuff to do and they do it and you just rake in tons of money.

And as we all know, that’s just a complete fantasy and it doesn’t work that way.

[00:05:05] Coach Eric: Yeah, exactly.

[00:05:07] Dr Mike T Nelson: Hundred percent. What were some of, what were some of the differences, for you guys when you started doing online training that you were prepared for, but things you didn’t quite. .

[00:05:20] Coach Chris: Yeah. I’d say the biggest thing is just really knowing like who you’re working with, right?

Like your demographic. We tell, like even our students right now, where, obviously if you’re a local pt, which a lot of people love doing, the hybrid model of in-person and online training is, you don’t have this selective pool to really choose from locally because you’re usually at a gym.

It’s a three to five mile radius, right? So you’re gonna work with an assortment of different people, whether they’re moms, they’re dads, they’re sedentary, they have physical limitations, right? They have different biomechanic issues, right? But online, that’s your opportunity where you could sit there and work with a different niche you want, because that’s where your messaging gets targeted to people through your content creation.

But I would say Mike, like for us too, and our students, the biggest thing is just that kind of carryover, right? Is if they’re working with a beginner online it’s gonna be hard because some of those beginners need to learn the fundamental movement patterns of a squat, a hip hing, an overhead press all those type of things.

And if they don’t have those fundamental movement patterns, it’s hard to have a really good online program for them to progress with progressive overload. So I’d say that’s the biggest thing is like you just have to know who you’re working with, online especially, cuz it’s a little bit tough with beginners, so that’s where the hybrid model is really nice, where it’s like if you have a setup of a beginner comes in for an eight to 12 week kind of phase, learns the fundamental movement patterns, then you move them into an online program because they’ve mastered those kind of fundamentals and then they can actually go into your online program.

[00:06:38] Dr Mike T Nelson: You agree?

[00:06:38] Coach Eric: no, I agree with Chris. And I wasn’t even say too. Yeah, I was just, I was waiting for Chris to just shut up. I’m just kidding. basically, right? No, I’m just kidding. I’m kidding. But no, I do agree with what Chris said. And for us too, it was a little bit different because, if we take this back to 2008, 2009, everything was so different.

Facebook was barely scratching on the surface. True. There was no social media. So for us, we had to dominate our three to five mile radius, and we worked at a mom and pop’s gym, saw a lot of clientele there. So we did really well with that. But then, like once we started working with Lane Norton, we saw oh man, like this is awesome.

This is where we, this is where the puck is gonna go in the future, because it opened up so much doors for online. So like when we started, we a hundred percent had to just dominate that three to five mile radius and then sit there and slowly transition online.

[00:07:26] Dr Mike T Nelson: And what were some of the the key points when you transitioned online?

Both kinda were older people here back in the day versus how is it different now?

[00:07:36] Coach Eric: Yeah, I would say the biggest thing now is we just literally worked with everybody, which, that could work to your advantage. And luckily, we had some good breaks with that.

But I think that nowadays you have to be a little bit more clear as to who you’re working with because it, there’s such a huge, massive, like lake and pool of people out there. There’s a lot of coaches out there. And it’s not to discourage like, aspiring online coaches now because there’s a lot to go around, people by coaches, they don’t buy coaching.

So for, I would say the biggest difference now is really identifying that avatar niche like underst. Who your perfect future client is. What is their pain points? What is their wants? What is their desires? What’s their needs? What is some of their false belief patterns? How, what is your specialty and methods?

How do you solve the problem differently than other people? So I think that is like the biggest difference that I would see now, because in person you can’t really target people like that. And online, it’s like you do have to, have your content dialed in with your message.

[00:08:30] Coach Chris: Yeah, and I would say too, Mike, like I was waiting for him to shut up now, , so I gotta get him

[00:08:33] Dr Mike T Nelson: The low blow, like ping pong

[00:08:36] Coach Chris: But he, yeah he hit the nail right in the head on the marketing side of it too, but on the delivery side of it of actually like giving the client an experience online, right? What’s different now from back then is now they have softwares, which make it a lot easier and more convenient, so to me it’s a double-edged sword though too, in a way, because again, it’s another software, it’s another app somebody has to keep track of, has to open up on their phone while they’re at the gym.

They could get distracted. There’s a lot of kind of cons to that as well too. But a trainer going into it now again, they have those advantages because of the software to be able to sit there and input all those certain things we had to use. PDFs, Excel sheets, Google Docs, and there’s nothing wrong with that too.

We still tell our students whatever makes it easier for you to run your business and deliver the program efficiently for them to follow and adhere to and get results. That that’s what all that matters, right? You could always invest in a fancy software and move all your training programs and stuff like that.

But I would say that’s like the biggest difference, would say in the past decade is just the involvement of like technology to make things a little bit easier on the delivery side of things.

[00:09:30] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. I probably waited maybe too long to switch from spreadsheets. I probably switched over five years ago and, oh God, switching was painful.

But the issue I was having is that the spreadsheets were becoming so painful. I had to do something different because I was trying to hyperlink to all the YouTube videos and then you’d miss a character here or there, or they’re trying to pull it up on some newfangled phone and the Excel wooden pulse and you have to put it a Google doc and then, oh, I don’t have wifi at the gym and it doesn’t load.

And so eventually I just caved in. But it was hard because it felt like starting over, like I had a lot of the programs and for me it was a good opportunity to go back and actually look and go. Man, why am I spending like three hours writing an Excel program? And what I realized was I took two days outta my schedule and just said, okay, I’m gonna suck it up.

I’m gonna figure this out and I’m gonna go back and look at all the programs I did over the past two years. And when I did that, even with a wide variety of clients, I was like, oh, like the first four to eight weeks are like 70% similar. I was like, oh crap. And after that it would definitely, diverge more depending upon what their goals are and what they were doing and what volume they could handle and everything else.

But I was shocked because in my head I had. I had, I was literally recreating each one from scratch, which is a waste of time. But the benefit of it was I realized that, oh, when I went back and looked at ’em, there was a fair amount of commonalities. So I could do a few templated things and have an idea.

And then fast forward over five or six years, you’re like, oh yeah, this person did, Novi strong man competition or whatever. There’s stuff that’s, gonna be key so you can reuse different things here and there as you, you customize

[00:11:10] Coach Eric: it. Yeah, absolutely.

And we could relate with that too, but it’s it’s just like anything else, it’s just as things evolve, it’s like you have to evolve with your business too and just change things up. You have to always constantly like fine tune your systems and processes and is in delivery.

[00:11:24] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And sometimes I realize I’m too much of an old school person because I still write everything down in my old training notebook. Hey man, I do that too. That’s what I do. That’s what we do. And I still tell clients it’s yes, I’m sending your program digitally because if I just mailed you stuff in the mail, you would hate me.

But I would still encourage you to write it down in your program. Take it to the gym. Don’t worry about leave your phone in your locker for crying out loud. Anyway, that’s a side note. I feel like some rambling old men now, cuz I see people sitting on the peck deck at the, I only go to commercial gym once a week, so my life isn’t hard.

But , they’re always sitting on the pack deck, like typing stuff into their phone, resting for five minutes for, I don’t know why they’re there. But

[00:12:04] Coach Eric: anyway. Yeah, I think it’d be amazing if like people could just leave their phones while they’re just doing their workouts.

[00:12:10] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I even like in online, like I, I think when you write something out by hand there’s something different about even understanding the program.

Like I’ve hired coaches in the past where they sent me all my stuff online and I would still write it out by hand. And I think just the process of doing that, I understood the program a little bit better. And I do think there is something to almost like subconsciously preparing for what you want to do, if you’ve written out your thing for the week.

I also realized I’m much more compliant because I don’t want to draw a line and have this thing. I go back and look at my notebook that I missed that day, or online. It just seems eh, no one will ever see it again. Or I think if I wrote it out, I feel like I have to, my compliance is much higher.

[00:12:54] Coach Eric: Yeah. And that, and we did that too. We would just go transfer it over like at the end of the week and spreadsheets and whatnot.

[00:12:58] Coach Chris: Yeah. But I was gonna say too, this is like a good kind of piggyback on this subject too, because I think too, like the caveat too with some of these like training softwares is too many people like use it as a crutch to where yeah, they just take the programs that are already built in there and it’s like they’re just basically cookie cutter type of programs that’s has nothing to do with these individual needs and preferences and, their lifestyle and stuff like that fits the individual.

But I think that other, like even trainers that are listening to this should go back and even just exercise that skill of exercise programming on Excel sheets or even like word docs, because there’s something about that too that just. You’re writing those things out, on the Excel sheet or the PDFs, and it makes you think a lot and just see it on paper, what you’re drawing out for the actual individual.

And that’s why we hired Eric Helms back in like 2015, because everything we were doing was off like word docs, PDFs, but then we’re like, man, we gotta level up on this. Like the books aren’t working enough. We actually need to hire somebody that’s designing higher level programs and teach us exercise programming.

And that’s when we got into spreadsheets and just really upped our game with exercise program for online clients.

[00:13:54] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I even find that I’ve got another notebook here in front of me that if I’m doing like a new phase or there’s stuff I’m not. I can’t, it doesn’t feel quite right. I’ll literally write out their whole program in a piece of paper and they’ll literally email the client and be like, Hey, I’ll have your program to you tomorrow.

You don’t start till Monday. You’ve got plenty of time. And I’ll literally put it, so I look at it first thing in the morning and I do this weird thing where I go to bed and I think about it and I wake up in the morning and I look at it and you’ll either have this thought after you’ve been doing it long enough of, yep, that’s good.

That’s good. Nope. Change this, change that. Yeah. And it, you, you either know right away if it was good or not. Yeah. But I found, or I didn’t do that. Sometimes if I’m not really sure. It would never fail that oh, this exercise was horrible and this didn’t work. And so I think there’s something to that whole subconscious process of, whatever process people do.

Even if you’re online, you don’t necessarily have to do everything online. You can write it on paper. Yes. And as long as it’s delivered in an online fashion, at the end of the day you’re good to go. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Cool. I’m preaching to the choir here, .

[00:15:04] Coach Eric: It’s good though. Good conversation with that.

[00:15:07] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. When you do programming, especially online, where do you start? Like I find I start with obviously their needs, their goals, all that kind of stuff, which is pretty, the same. But the thing I wish someone would’ve told me years ago was then to start with whatever their constraints are.

Is it time, is it a certain amount of equipment, travel, whatever. So again, I’ll write those in a whole separate area and then I’ll build it around that. Because I made this mistake years ago of doing programs that were way too long, or the biggest way, which I’ve screwed up in the past to look like an idiot is, oh, do this kettlebell exercise.

And they’re like, I don’t have kettlebells. You idiot. Oh, oops, sorry.

[00:15:46] Coach Eric: Yeah, exactly. I think a great place to start. That’s a great question. I think a great place to start is obviously, when you’re onboarding a new client online, let’s put this in the context online.

You should have an intake form where it’s asking very detailed questions to gather all that data from there. It’s okay like what is this person’s resistance training history? What’s their injury history like? How much time do they have? Can you make sure they send you a squat bench and deadlift video so you could see, like how their mobility is and what they need, work on.

Then you can go from there. But again, are they training at a gym? Are they training at a home? What do they have access to? So you have to gather all that data first in order to, make a really good, properly periodized like program, in my opinion. Again, too. You just a lot of people like, they, I think they overthink it too much because again, nowadays, like I, you want something that’s realistic and enjoyable and flexible.

That’s what Eric Elms would teach us, right? Is make something that’s realistic and enjoyable and flexible that this person could adhere to for days, weeks, and years on end, right? They’re not gonna sit there and program hop that they’re bought into, your philosophy and exercise training.

So I think with those different variables, just focusing on that, man, that’s a really good place to.

[00:16:50] Coach Chris: Yeah, I would agree. And I would just say Mike, like just a tip, like the wheeler, the hard way was we would sit there, if we had a new client, we would sit there and program like 12 weeks, right?

Of a full on entire program. For them, that was a mistake because if they were doing a payment plan come month two, they’d make some excuse up that they can’t sit there and continue in the program. They just got a whole entire 12 week program and they can go follow at the gym. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So that’s what we teach our students now is just programming four week kind of blocks. If, especially if they’re like on a monthly payment plan, because that could happen and there’s just nothing you can do about it once you deliver that 12 week program and then for some reason that month comes and they can’t make

[00:17:23] Coach Eric: the payment.

Yeah. One last thing I wanna throw in there, it’s a good tip is every online coach should have their own exercise library. I truly believe that we’re, yeah, that’s good. Just go to a gym, block out two hours, film 30 to 50 exercises, one minute videos, like executing how to do that video, because again, then you could use that to embed them into different softwares.

And again, the client wants to see you. Executing those. They don’t want some random like person off, like a trainer eyes app whatnot. So it’s just take the extra time to do

[00:17:51] Dr Mike T Nelson: that. Yeah. And that’s one thing I found that is beneficial. I will confess sometimes with a basic exercise, I’ll just grab some other video.

But for most stuff, it’s nice having a gym in my garage. Yeah. And I just go in there and tell ’em like, Hey, this is, I just leave ’em as unlisted on YouTube. I’m not doing anything else with them. And then it’s nice too, because I’ve done it a few times where you can even custom do an exercise for them.

So you could use their name and say, Hey Bob, I wanted to, do go in the gym and do this specific exercise, for you caveat, make sure you don’t, send that to Cindy or somebody else. Even just those short things that don’t take a lot of time, especially with we’re all walking around with cameras in our pocket and stuff now.

It goes a long way to show them that you actually are listening to them and you are trying to provide them more of a customized

[00:18:43] Coach Eric: solution also. Yeah, a hundred percent. And the biggest thing too like for coaches that are listening right now a great acronym for you guys to just write down and just really buy into.

It’s Huv, h u v. Your guys’ clients want to be heard, they want to be understood, and they want to be valued. That’s really what they want.

[00:19:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And that’s something I wish someone would’ve told me earlier cause my assumption was, oh, if I just deliver them the best program and the best nutrition and all this stuff, then everything will be great then. Yeah. That’s a basic requirement. And it was interesting, especially doing some exit interviews after I started it was all the stuff that I didn’t think they even listened to nor cared about, right? It was like, oh, I remember their dog’s name. I told ’em, Hey, get up in the morning and go walk fluffy or whatever, it was like all these. Smaller things or the fact that I would call people out on, mindset stuff. I’m like, oh, do you realize you just said this, or that? Oh wow, I didn’t realize that. So it, all those things, I think cuz you at the, you said at the end of the day you’re delivering them.

It’s online, but it’s still, to me it’s an experience. Exactly. But if they want just program, if they want just run in the mill nutrition, I mean you can get that wherever now. Yeah. But I think making it custom to them and then also demonstrating that, this is a living, breathing document, so if you go on vacation, we’ll change it.

If something happens or you can’t bench rest, cuz your right peck hurts, then you know, we’ll change it and modify it. And I think that’s why. Online training is useful compared to just following a program.

[00:20:17] Coach Eric: Yeah, those are such great points, Mike, and I think to what you nailed it with it’s an experience that’s what, they’re paying for too.

And again, you have to deliver that experience. The customer experience is pivotal. And that’s the thing that, that’s how you separate yourself from other coaches out there. When people say, oh, it’s so saturated. It’s no, just go above and beyond and just take a general interest in each client.

Like you said, get to know their names, get to know their family, their dogs, their interests. You’re building a relationship. This is a relationship business. And I think too many coaches just miss that. And again, too, it’s not really taught in certifications. That’s the problem too.

It’s like everything’s very just like text. Outdated towards okay, you’re competent in like nutrition and exercise science and all this stuff, but it’s then what do you go do after this? Like, how do you go build a business out of this? How do you go and really become a great coach? How do you challenge people’s thinking patterns?

[00:21:08] Dr Mike T Nelson: How do you do that? Like how that was something I’ve been still working on. Always feels like a work in progress. I think there’s a fine line between you want to be encouraging, but yet you don’t want to agree with everything they say, if their deadlift looks like a pooping dog, you don’t want to be like, great deadlift Bob.

It’s no, your deadlift sucked. Like how do you go about providing, constructive criticism?

[00:21:32] Coach Chris: Yeah. I think it’s just really dose dependent on like the client, that’s why it’s important to you just understand like the personality of the client or they, the type of person where it’s like they’re gonna get easily offended.

or they have a relationship where it’s like, you can joke around with them. You can give ’em the hard truth, you can come down on them. So I think it’s important, number one, knowing like the personality, and then number two, just the relationship you have with each of these, like clients, like how is it building upon like the weeks, the months, to where it’s like you can actually give them honest, like constructive, like criticism or feedback, within like a, an exercise pattern or call ’em out on their shit if they’re not following like their macros or something like that,

[00:22:04] Coach Eric: Yeah, I think too, it’s why would you want clients like that too, though, that are gonna get offended if it’s like you are the coach, like they’re paying you. Lead them, give them constructive criticism, make them better. So you gotta question that too, but I get what Chris is saying where it’s yeah, you do have to identify is this person, what’s their personality like?

Are they having a bad day, a bad week? People get easily offended, nowaday.

[00:22:24] Coach Chris: Yeah. And I would say too, Mike, one thing too is like in your like accountability check-in process, we used to do it just by like monthly calls, right? So at least two calls like per month in there because it didn’t matter if they sent in like their subjective and their objective like feedback, through like email.

And then we would get back to ’em on a video because sometimes they would misreport, sometimes they would lie, and really it was like an underlying like personal issue that they were dealing with personally. That made them not want to go into the gym or not wanna be adherent to like their nutrition program.

And the only way we got that out of ’em was jumping on like a 10 minute call with them and literally like just shooting the shit with them. Hey, what’s up? Like you haven’t been consistent, you haven’t been adherent, you’ve been m I like what is going on? That type of conversation with people.

[00:23:05] Coach Eric: Yeah, good point.

[00:23:06] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I think that’s super useful and I haven’t thought about assessments on that. And somebody of mine recently who’s very much admitted to be on the autistic spectrum, so he is very literal with stuff. He just started training people again a little bit online, and he’s you know what?

I just figured out. He’s some people just want to pay to be my friend . He’s I never thought that was a thing. And I thought everyone only wanted my advice for everything. He’s and what I’ve realized is there’s a percentage of people who just want to pay to talk to me. And he is it’s true, and I’m okay with that.

But I just realized this now, which I thought was like, I believe it so funny because you do run into those people every now and then, and you realize that it’s like bringing the horse to the water. You can do everything you can, but you gotta go to the gym. You gotta do some of the stuff.

And I was doing an in-person seminar here a couple years ago. And one of our good friends was here and she’s oh, if I fill this out on online, like in True Coach, like how do you provide feedback to people? Like we were talking about assessments and stuff, and I looked at her and I said, for you, you would leave a comment there that would not be urgent and I would not answer it for four days.

she’s she look like horrified. She’s what? I’m like, because you want to impress me all the time and I want you to do better just for the sake of you doing better. So if I delay my comments because they’re not urgent either way, then you remove that. Oh, I just want the high five. I want my coach to agree with everything.

And at first she was like horrified and then she’s oh yeah, I get it. That kind of makes sense. Yeah. , . But it’s hard to figure out what each person needs too. Cuz some other people, there’s no way I could do that. They’d be like, oh my God, this is horrible. Yeah. Yeah, I just think it’s a lot of, like you guys said, experience and figuring out what type of feedback that particular person needs in that point in time too.

[00:25:02] Coach Chris: Yeah. It could also be too, like on the onboarding process where you get a new client usually, like you have a PDF or something like that has the communication, the boundaries, like what the accountability calls look like, all these different things. I think you just set the tone there, to where it’s just like these are the zero, like tolerance things that you’ll put up with.

And these like the restrictions, the boundaries. And I think if you do that, you’re just setting the tone there. In the very beginning that this is like a tight ship that we’re running that, like I’m not here to be like your best friend, I’m your coach.

You’re paying me good money to get you a result and to solve a problem.

[00:25:30] Coach Eric: Yeah, I agree with that. I think, too at the end of the day, it’s like you have to understand that just you can’t help everyone. You’re not gonna be able to help everyone and not ,everyone is going to meet you halfway and put in the work.

They just, they’re just not So if, as long as you can live with that, as long as as a coach that you did everything with integrity, you did everything with an ethical manner, you showed up that’s really all you can do. Because Yeah, we’re gonna have those clients where every excuse in the book, every excuse in the book, you’re just like, I can’t help this person.

I just can’t help this person.

[00:25:58] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I’ll come back to that too. But related to boundaries, you mentioned again, something I wish someone would’ve pulled me to the curb and been like, Hey man, like you should probably have some clear boundaries and don’t give out your cell phone to every single client right away.

You should probably interview people at first. That was a big mistake. I didn’t do I’ll train with you. Great, here’s your buddy. Sign up. I’m like, oh my God, this is such a disaster. What am I doing? ? What kind of boundaries do you see are useful and what are ones that are not useful?

And I know it’s like highly dependent, per person and their style and what they’re doing.

[00:26:34] Coach Chris: Yeah, I would say definitely I like the whole idea of giving out your cell phone number. Like the way we teach it is having like a very high premium package. And if you sell that high premium package, I think that the client should get your phone, your cell phone number, but with the boundaries of Hey, you can’t just blow up my phone all day with questions, I answer questions only from 10 to maybe, 12 or something like that. After five or six o’clock I have family time and I just, I’m not gonna get back to it. I don’t do, I don’t get back to text messages on Sunday because that’s time that I spend with my family or something like that.

Those type of boundaries I’ve seen that like really works. And you can do the same thing like with email as well too,

[00:27:05] Coach Eric: Yeah, I would agree with that. I’m trying to think of anything else that really stands out in the context of like boundaries and communication. I think it’s just, again just putting it into a system and just being really clear and thorough as to what your check-in process is like how you can ask questions.

And again, just don’t use me like Google, ask like good, I don’t like saying that because there’s no such thing as like a stupid, there’s stupid questions, but it’s like they’re stupid questions. Yeah, there is. Yeah, there is. Yes. I caught myself here. I caught myself on that.

But yeah, I think that’s really it. That stands

[00:27:33] Dr Mike T Nelson: out to me. Yeah. Again, one of my biggest mistakes I made early on was I’m like, yeah, any questions you have, just text my phone. Because my thought was if I over-deliver like everyone else, I’m gonna provide this amazing value. And I remember having, oh my God, like this is years and years ago.

My client texted me pictures of fish oil from Target, and she texted me like four different ones. She’s oh, this one or that one, or this one. And then, and of course the pictures don’t turn out right. It’s, she’s not even sending me like the frigging, fax panel. It’s just the brand name. And so I’m like how much EPA and DHA is in the what cpa?

I don’t know. Okay, send me the nutrition panel. I can’t find the nutrition panel. Turn the bottle around. I’m like, oh my God, what am I doing? I hate my life. This is horrible. . And then the ironic part of that whole thing was, Even after all of that, she was still so confused. She leaves Target and doesn’t buy a single one.

So I’m like, okay. So I just lost an hour of my life and she didn’t even buy anything,

[00:28:32] Coach Chris: And sound like that too. I was gonna say, it is just like she was lucky that you were just like super responsive like that, like just the timing and I think about it, she’s at Target, and if I didn’t it back to her, she would’ve gotten probably pissed off or something like that at you, and it’s that’s entitlement, because you shouldn’t sit there and just be like waiting on your phone like this, waiting for her to send you pictures of fish oils, so if that would’ve been like a boundary, she would’ve understood it, and the same thing too, we tell our students don’t let your stu or your clients message you like on Facebook or Instagram.

That should be solely for your lead generation. Again, have a system where it’s email, whether it’s like a, an audio thing, like WhatsApp or what’s the other one called? Boxer. Boxer. Or if they have your phone number, keep it very clean and neat and organized.

[00:29:08] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, that’s one thing I’ve gotten better at too is, for me it’s just email me. I actually literally have a dedicated email that’s an email address that’s literally only for clients. Nobody else gets it. Because I realize if I was traveling, I could go in that email, I could get back to people who I had a agreed a time response too, and it was just less likely to get lost.

And unfortunately it’s email, so stuff still gets lost once in a while. And the other part too is like you talked about boundaries with times. So for me, for email, I tell people it’s 24 to 48 hours, yeah. Because again, same mistake I had with the texting thing early on, I thought, oh man, if I get back to their email right away, And what I realized was all I got was a laundry list of stupid questions.

And I like clients like drag me into God knows what, like you’d start talking about fish oil and it would be 15 emails later and they’re asking about the right ankle and they don’t know what’s going on with it, and it’s did you have any, no, I don’t have any pain in, I can squat fine.

It’s like, why are we having this conversation? And you realize that some people just, it’s almost like they wanted your attention cause they thought you’re just like the Google encyclopedia. And then when I followed up with them about their program, I noticed that the more weird oddball questions they asked, almost all those people were very not compliant.

And I’m going, what am I doing? So I’m actually allowing them to let them go off the path. They think they’re getting some value from it, but I know in a couple months and they don’t reach their goals, they’re gonna be pissed and I’m gonna be like, Hey, like you did 10% of your training. I don’t know what to tell you.

Yeah. So yeah, I realize now if someone, even, I probably shouldn’t say this on a podcast, whatever. Hey, a client sends me an email and I write back to it. If they write another question that’s not urgent, it doesn’t affect their training the next day. It doesn’t affect anything. I actually won’t answer it usually till the next day.

Yeah because I don’t want to get sucked down that whole path of, seven different email questions later and you’re talking about something completely different. And what I realized was there’s no value added to it either. Yeah, they weren’t getting better results. This is a good buddy of mine says it’s this is fitness.

There are no emergencies in fitness. You’re not an ER doc, you’re not, something that it absolutely has to have an answer. Like right now, like most things can wait a period of time and everyone’s gonna be just.

[00:31:25] Coach Eric: That’s a good point. Exactly. And it’s you’re busy. It’s you, you can’t be constrained to clients’ questions and all that.

And I think another way to solve that issue too for coaches too, depending on what their delivery model is or how they hold their accountability and accessibility. If you don’t wanna do give out your phone number and this and that, you could create, that’s why you have, you can create a Facebook group, you can create a WhatsApp group, a Slack group or you can do, you can host group coaching calls for q and a once per week to get all your clients on and just ask questions.

So then it just, it’s, you’re asking, answering common questions. Yeah, exactly. I was gonna tell just one quick

[00:31:57] Coach Chris: story, Mike, about the whole thing with boundaries. It’s funny, like when we started working with Lane, I think it was 2009 I was just like so hungry for knowledge and I was just asking him questions left and right through email, and I think he was on his honeymoon and he

[00:32:09] Coach Eric: just literally got fed up and

[00:32:10] Coach Chris: he wrote back dude, he is like

He’s stop asking so many questions. I’m on my honeymoon. And it’s I had to let that marinate because I was like, man, I was being very selfish and entitled because I hired him as a coach and he didn’t set the boundaries. But it’s when you put yourself in that sh in most people’s shoes, you just, it’s not okay.

You know what I mean? So we gotta get those boundaries in place in the communication

[00:32:28] Dr Mike T Nelson: straightforward. Yeah. I have a whole document now from a client I had in the past through, we’ll say, didn’t work out. And I call it my nuclear approach to boundaries, , and, cause I got fed up one day and I literally wrote like a five page document out and I, I sent it to her.

Obviously we didn’t work together after that. I said, here’s the deal. You follow this, we’re cool. You don’t follow it, you’re out. I’ll give you all your money back. I’m not dealing with you anymore , but it was literally everything from I’m not your psychologist, I’m not your physical therapist. I’ll help you with movement.

Here’s the times I’m around. Here’s my expectation for email. Yes, you have my private cell phone number. Here’s what I’ll actually answer it. Here’s a question that’s appropriate to send to the cell phone number. Hey dumb ass, my trainee’s not in there tomorrow. Totally appropriate to send to my cell phone, right?

Because I screwed up. To ask about fish oil. Again, not a good idea, right? , but most people you find like especially going back to the interview process. So now when I have a longer interview, you can, I think you can usually tell which people are gonna be better and which people are not. So like literally at the end of a call I have with people, like I just tell ’em this is as much as me evaluating you as you are evaluating me, cuz they’re gonna work pretty close together.

And literally at the end of the call the only thought I think of is, can I help this person into, do I really wanna talk to ’em again? Yeah. Yeah. And if I can help ’em and they’re gonna pay me money and I don’t want anything to do with them I’m like, Nope. We’re good. This is not gonna work out.

[00:33:58] Coach Eric: Yeah. And really quick. That’s a great it’s a little, this is a great teaching point for again coaches, right? Is what you said. This person probably might be a headache just after talking to ’em. So this is why we encourage like our coaches in our program to do what’s called 15 minute disc discovery calls.

, where all you’re doing is, going off a questionnaire that you have ’em fill out, you’re qualifying them and you’re building trust. That’s all you’re doing. And from there you make the decision whether you want to advance them onto another strategy call or a call to, pitch your services.

But I don’t think enough people do that because again, you can get a good feel for someone in 15 minutes if they’re crazy, they’re not gonna adhere in this, they’re gonna be a bad apple to maybe your community.

[00:34:36] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and I think even then realizing that there’s some people, you’re just, you might be able to help but you don’t want to help and it’s okay that you don’t want to help them.

Yeah. Because I think early on I felt oh, I have the skillset. They really need help. And like all those people I was on the fence about like generally didn’t work out too well, and it’s kinda almost an 80 20 principle in reverse, right? You’ll spend 80% of your time working with one or two clients, and I’m okay with spending more time with people who need help.

Totally. Cool. I have no issue with that as long as I feel like they’re getting a benefit from it and things are moving forward. But when you’re having all these weird off-topic discussions that’s are just derailing everything again, you’re spending a whole bunch of time and they’re getting a worse result from it.

Yeah. So you should’ve listened to your gut. Yeah, I made the same mistake with offering discounts too. Oh yeah. I remember emailing Lane years ago and I said, Hey man, I said, do you offer any discounts or anything? I said, I’m just asking from a business standpoint, cuz I realized the last two times I did this is probably like a decade ago, like both those people were a pain and I ass and one of ’em refunded.

He’s oh, you’re paying the stupid tax. I’m like, yeah, that’s a good way of thinking about it, .

[00:35:49] Coach Eric: Yeah. Yeah. We learned the

[00:35:50] Coach Chris: hard way with that too, because you’re gonna have those people that are gonna wait every year, just for you to offer that discount, whether it’s once a year or twice a year.

And we don’t, we just, I’m just very big on that mentality where it’s if you don’t pay, if people that pay attention, people that pay more attention, if they’re looking for the discounts, then they’re probably not gonna end up being like a good client.

[00:36:08] Coach Eric: Yeah. And that’s why we always say don’t put your prices on your websites.

If you have a website, don’t, because people are just window shopping and they have absolutely zero clue as to what the value is and how you’re actually gonna help them.

[00:36:18] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. What about this? I did the reverse actually. Which me is a good idea, bad idea since, technically I have a wait list that’s been like a year and a half. I do have some clients that come in and go out, but it’s usually just a referral or it’s one or one person here or there. I actually put on the website that I have a wait list and I actually listed the prices. My thought being I have the luxury right now, I don’t have to take a lot of people per se cause I have other projects and clients are still with me.

And what I realized was, for the reason you actually mentioned, it gets rid of almost all the tire kickers. Sure. Before when I put, hey, I’ve only got, three openings felt this application, it was a fair amount of work to qualify a lot of the applications and ask questions back. And it was just more kind of monkey motion where now I know if someone actually filled out the application, they have some good information Jodi will generally schedule a call.

And I know that they already know what the price is. It’s still a price range, so they don’t know exactly what it is. And I found that tends to work actually much better. Probably for the same psychology that you’re mentioning.

[00:37:18] Coach Eric: Yeah. And I would say absolutely for you, Mike, because you have built up, established, you’ve established an awesome brand, a trustworthy brand and you’re an authority figure.

You have 10 plus years of experience, probably more. You have social proof. So you’re, you rightfully so should be doing that to avoid, and protecting your time from people that are in serious. So yeah some, if someone’s in your position, yes. But if someone’s new or something, then totally agree.

I would not do that.

[00:37:42] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Cuz I think you want to get information about ’em. And what I even told people too is just get practice interviewing people. Yeah. you’re just starting, man, I lost so many freaking one hour calls because I was a dumb ass. Like my whole thing was, I’m like, oh, it’s a one hour call.

See if we were, and I. Literally, I remember this one client eons ago. I walked her through everything she needed to do. The call ended up being an hour and a half, and we got to the end and then she’s no, I’m good. I was thinking, what? I just demonstrated all this value to, I solved all your issues. And she’s no, I know what to do now.

I went, oh shit. I know she’s not gonna do any of it. Like in her mind, she solved all the issues that she had. So I was like, oh, whoops. , that wasn’t a good thing. . Yeah. And that’s

[00:38:28] Coach Chris: funny that’s something we teach actually to our students, right? There’s three different phases when you’re doing actually like that sales call with somebody, right?

And a lot of coaches make this mistake where it’s like, they could be the person where it’s like more of the friend right? On that call. So they’re just, they’re shooting the shit with them. They’re joking too much. They’re just like, they’re not showing that they’re like an authority to them, so people don’t take them that serious.

The other side of that point is somebody that’s coaching them too much. So they’re giving them all the answers. Yeah. So from there, what do you think somebody’s gonna do after the call? Oh, I got enough stuff here so I’m gonna go try it on my own. Because they only know what they know. Then you have the other one where it’s like the closer, the hardcore closer, they’re just being super, like aggressive, just very pr like a lot of pressure on the sales call.

But you wanna be the person that’s the auditioner, you have a blend of a little bit of it all, and like you’re there to coach them up and you set the boundaries again that you’re there to help them out and solve the problems.

[00:39:12] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. And I think there is something to just the psychology of you’re okay losing a sale if it’s not a good fit, which a hundred percent, biased opinion is a real thing because I don’t wanna work with the people that are pain in the ass.

Yeah. Even when I started, if I were to start over from absolutely nothing now, man, I would wait as long as possible not to work with people that are pain in the ass, yeah. Because it, so I do think there is almost a beneficial psychology to that of, Hey, I may turn you down, and I don’t think you’re a correct fit.

They’re like, what? You’re turning down my money. I’m like, I don’t wanna work with you. . Yeah. That’s usually kind oh, I remember a call I did six years ago, and so what I, what, again, this might not be the best idea, but what I do as someone who I don’t think is gonna follow anything that I say, I just literally spend the whole call telling them, I don’t think you’re gonna do anything that I tell you.

Here’s an example. And I’ll be like, Hey, if I tell you to do this, we’re going to, and okay. Explain to me how you would do that. And so I did this with one lady for 40 minutes, and I was just utterly convinced she’s not gonna do anything. And to her credit, she’s no, I would do this and I would do that.

And I said, okay, here’s the deal. I will take you on as a client, but it’s a trial basis. At any point, I can fire you at any point, you can fire me. And if you don’t hit 90% compliance after the first four weeks and you’re automatically done, she’s okay. And she ended up being a great client, , but I think if I wouldn’t have done that, it would’ve been like, oh, we’ll help you, whatever. It would’ve been a, just a complete disaster. . Yeah.

[00:40:40] Coach Eric: That’s funny though. That’s funny that you just did that experiment and she took, it’s obviously she took it well. So that’s cool.

And yeah, I just think too like I, you it’s, you coaches should look at themselves and have that type of attitude where it’s it’s a privilege to work with me. I think that just like you said, too many people just take on whoever, and I get it. We’re all like, like coming from like a servant mentality and we want to genuine, genuinely help people.

But again, sometimes is it worth it? . Yeah. I

[00:41:05] Coach Chris: think also too, just like on the sales side of it too, just a lot of like health and fitness coaches I think it’s one of the reasons why they don’t like sales or their resistance to it is because they think that every, call that they have, like they have to absolutely make that close, and take these and get these people on to serve them.

And if they were to go into the actual call, which is a mentality of I’m here to inspire them to take action and to make a decision, an informed decision. And the only way they can make an informed decision is to be able to be in your program to see what it’s like to be able to get results. So if you reframe your mindset that way, instead of thinking like, man, I have to go into this sales call and close them, I don’t care what, if they’re a good fit or bad fit, I just want the money.

I just want them in the program. I think like your success for the sales calls me a lot better.

[00:41:44] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I think there’s something about almost. Subconsciously appearing needy. It’s no one really wanna, wants to work with that person, even if it is a true thing and you’re just starting out, it’s, I think it’s a, and I get it, it’s a hard balance because you’re like, I don’t even have a single client. Why would I turn anyone down? It’s yeah, exactly. I know I’ve been there. I get it. . Yeah, exactly. Same

[00:42:05] Coach Eric: here. Same here.

[00:42:07] Dr Mike T Nelson: What do you guys do for, we talked about assessments, like what do you do for assessments online?

Because you had mentioned, and I found this out too, that some clients just generally tell you what you want to hear until all this shit hits the fan and then it’s oh this and that. And it’s like this outpouring of like how horrible everything has been going. I tend to use, I found using heart rate variability, so I have a marker of their physiologic stress and they’ve got little indicators they have to fill out each day.

And what I’ve noticed with that is, yeah, I can monitor their physiologic stress, but for me, that enables me to have more specific conversations. So I can look and be like, Hey, last Tuesday and Thursday looks like you were super stressed, but you reported sleep energy and everything else was fine.

Like what happened that day? So it’s almost like I’ve called them out that I know something happened, like something happened what was it? And then they’re like, oh yeah, I got in an argument with my spouse on that day and my training, I didn’t make it to the gym because of it.

And I’ve just noticed that because I can pinpoint what’s going on that kind of allows me to have more in-depth conversations as compared to, Hey, is there anything going on? Nope, I’m good. All good. You sure? You’re good? Yep. Oh, I’m good. I was like, okay.

[00:43:21] Coach Chris: Yeah. I was gonna say what worked well for us is we had a subjective and then an objective data form.

Yeah. So we had a spreadsheet created to where it’s like they literally would take whether they’re using like my MyFi power or my macros, plus they would transfer that information over onto the spreadsheet. So they’d have their daily wanes there, and then they would have like their daily total macronutrients, protein, carbs, and fats.

It populated all on a seven day average with their weigh-ins and the macronutrients. So that would help us with the objective side of things to be like, okay, are they actually staying within a plus or minus five to 10 gram range of their macros? What are the trends on their weights?

Is it fluctuating up or down based on the calories? And then they would have a subjective data where they could type it in or give us an audio of just like how stress levels, how’s like your mindset how’s sleep, how’s water intake? All these different types of things. And we would just really formulate like a really good decision on what we should do based off of all that information.

Yeah.

[00:44:13] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yep. I like that. Yeah. And with their check, do you have people do specific check-ins? Do you have ’em do once a week? Like how do you generally format that? Cause I know, I dunno, it just seems like there’s a opinions across the board.

[00:44:27] Coach Eric: Yeah, honestly, like what we used to do was like once a week check-ins, but then you would find too that a lot of ’em would, what wouldn’t need that.

So they would just go into just doing two check-ins per month. And again, it really just all depends on like how much, like you guys, how much a coach wants to just like, have that person just check in with them in the accountability aspect. But I think, once per week is fine. I think that, two times a month is fine and as long as they’re following and they’re adhering to the plan then that, I think that’s just whatever you wanna do with that.

Yeah, I always thought like pictures

[00:44:56] Coach Chris: and like anthropometric measurements were overkill, like weekly, so those would actually we’d actually be able to see better results if we like kept track of those like monthly. .

[00:45:04] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I end up just, I generally do check-ins weekly and I leave it up to the client.

I’m like, Hey, I’ll pull all your metrics on Monday. Cuz some people are doing H R V and Aura and Garmin and got COR meter and all that stuff. And then you send me your update by Sunday night, I’ll get back to you most of the time by Tuesday. Sometimes schedule gets a little bit crazy and it gets weird.

And I just leave it to them like, you tell me what’s going on as much as you want. And I’ve got some clients that write three sentences and I’ve got some that write seven paragraphs, but the ones who write more, it’s generally useful information. , right? Because I feel like you are the one who knows best about what it is to communicate.

And then the more information I have generally is gonna be more, more useful too. But it was fascinating to me when I did that, how variable it was. And it wasn’t like people who wrote more got better results or people wrote less, got better results. Either it wasn’t either way. I think it’s just A personal thing about how much they feel like they need to communicate per se.

Yeah,

[00:46:00] Coach Eric: definitely. And that’s why I think too, like it’s great to offer like a once per month call, whether it’s a phone call, zoom call, what, whatever you want to do. But again, I think people, really respect that and they pretty much lower down their trust barriers with you when you do that.

Because again, then you can talk a little bit about like personal stuff get to know them a little bit more. And again, just, it just builds a better relationship with that client towards then they can be like, okay, yeah, coach Mike, I feel better telling you, hey, like I just blew it. I bombed it on the weekend.

Like this happened. I went through a breakup. Maybe, something financially went wrong, something with family issues, they’re more likely to just really just open up about those things. And then you’re like, okay, now it’s like, why now I know why they’re not ad hearing. Yeah, or maybe

[00:46:38] Coach Chris: That first month they’re just like, you programmed them like five days a week or something like that and they’re just like straight up Mike, I just, I can’t do that with my schedule.

I’d seen, I need something that’s three days a week and these specific kind of like days and stuff like that. So it just gives you better feedback and relationship, to build that next like program for them to keep getting them results.

[00:46:54] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. How do you do that when they start?

Because sometimes I feel like it’s the catch 22 because I end up doing their, their lifestyle, their H R V, maybe if they have some blood work that needs looked at, blah, blah, blah, like a bunch of stuff. And I wanna give them all the information that they need that they feel like they paid for.

But yet I also know it’s impossible for most people to be a hundred percent compliant on everything out of the gate. So I try to tell ’em like, okay, here’s what we have. Yes, we’re just gonna do this component of nutrition. Here’s your training. How do you kinda ride that line between. Giving them all the information.

Cause in the past what I used to do is not give them nearly enough information. some people were oh, I paid for all this stuff. I don’t have it. But if I overload 800 things on ’em, there’s no way they’re getting all of them done either. So any thoughts on how do you find that right balance of, okay, here’s the stuff that we definitely need you to do, but here’s the progression of how I want you to follow.

[00:47:52] Coach Chris: I would say what works good too is like a 20, 20 minute kickoff call when you have like a new client, because most of the students that we have or coaches, they’re doing one-to-one coaching. And I think that it’s a really good kind of trade off to be able to do like a 20 minute kickoff call to build that like trust, to have the buyer’s remorse go away, right?

And again, you’re just getting more data on them and building that relationship with them to be like, Hey, you made the right decision. Hey, you could trust me. I’m like your coach. I have my best intentions for you and your results. So I think that’s a great time where it’s like you’ve already formulated their plan, you can go over it with them, right?

Make sure that they have any questions that are just unanswered, any concerns, right? About how the process works, how your coaching style is. And I think that just puts ’em at ease to be honest. And I think it puts you at ease too as a coach, because you could actually have all those little data points and write it down in your spreadsheet to anticipate, any type of like roadblocks.

Like when you have updates with them, be like, okay, I have a hunch at this person. they might be a little m i a or you know what, they might be like, a little bit unad adherent on certain things, but you at least have that data to anticipate going forward.

[00:48:51] Coach Eric: Yeah, and I think just to add to that too, it’s as a coach you should be just set in small milestones.

People love milestones because then again, it builds up. , confidence. Yeah. It builds confidence. And then momentum. Once you have the, once they have the confidence and momentum, it’s game over, then it’s like they believe in themselves. There’s certainty there to where they can continue to just build off of that.

So milestones are great, and it could just be on your weekly check-ins. You could be like, Hey Jack, I need you to, at least weigh in five outta seven days for me fasted. First thing, I need you to, at least hit your macros within a plus 10 minus gram range. I need you to at least get, two cardio sessions.

I need you to at least get 10,000 steps. So the little milestones towards they start compounding and they’re stacking these winds and building that momentum. So that’s also a great way.

[00:49:32] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I think of that. I am, right now I’m just doing audio notes back to people just purely due to time reasons.

Yeah. And I also try to convey what I call like the commander’s intent of the program. It’s okay, higher priority stuff is earlier in the week. Like higher priority exercises are a’s over B’S overseas. If you run out of time for God’s sake, don’t compress your rest period, the 10 seconds, like rest, make sure your high quality, stays that kind of stuff too.

And I think that’s been, but it’s hard because I know there’s some people who are very perfectionistic who see everything written out and they like just have to do it. Or they feel like they’re not getting the value from the program. And so sometimes it’s hard for me to, in, to tell ’em the value is that we can change this to your lifestyle.

The value is not just, you can complete everything. Yes. That’s nice. That’s part of it. But yeah, I still I’m still working on that balance. Yeah, I agree with you on that. Yeah. in relation to some mechanic stuff. Do you guys offer like a minimum, like they have to, do you have ’em sign a contract?

Do you allow them to get out of a contract? If they’re like, Hey man my basement flooded. I’m out. What do you do? Because I know that’s a big, and this still happens to me, to be honest. Like from yeah. A financial standpoint. Because I realized as I started doing this, I’m like, oh man.

I feel much better stress-wise if I have a lower income, but it’s consistent. Yeah. If my income is even higher, like my gross could be quite a bit higher, but if it’s volatile, that stresses me out.

[00:51:03] Coach Eric: Yep, exactly. Same here with us. But yeah, I think just, that’s why we stress having the, an agreement form set in place with all the expectations, all the communication.

This is like the exact date you’re gonna get billed, reoccurring. And yeah I just think that’s about having honor, right? Whether that’s you first selling like a 12 12 week program, or it could be a six month program, but. It’s about honor and just committing to that program and, I get it.

It’s hard. That’s why too, we tell a lot of our coaches try to get the payment in full because you just never know what kind, what’s gonna happen in life to these clients, like adversity wise. And they might not be able to honestly pay, make the payments. So just puts you in a sticky situation.

So that’s the downfall obviously of a service-based business and coaching businesses. But just do the best you can to have it all written up in, in writing. Have them sign it before sending any type of like program over just so you have it all written up. And again, you could go the extra distance too of just having another a business where it’s maybe like a collections type of like agency where just to cover your butt and just to show them like, hey, like I, business, like I’m a serious business owner.

Please don’t sit there and take me for granted and come up with saying these BS excuses that I can’t make this.

[00:52:07] Coach Chris: Yeah. And one more tactic could be is in the agreement form ’em if like they do break it, like midway or something like that they pay just a fee, to get out of it or something like that.

It’s just the honor of it and having it in writing like Eric said,

[00:52:17] Dr Mike T Nelson: Would do you, if someone paid in cash upfront, which I a hundred percent agree with would you allow them a refund or what do you do in that case? Because I know fitness is such a weird area because it’s still, unfortunately at the point where people don’t treat it like a real profession.

This is yeah. Fitness professionals don’t treat it real profession, I’m not talking about even general public. Would you allow them a refund or how would you work that? I’m always curious and I don’t think there’s a right or wrong to any answer here either. . Yeah. Yeah.

[00:52:47] Coach Chris: I, what I would do if they bought like a 12 week program, for two grand or something like that and, four weeks in that they just couldn’t continue it because of a death in the family or something like that, I would let them come back and honor like that, next eight weeks for them, so long as it’s not like a year later or something like that, I would definitely figure out, is it like a two month thing, a three month thing?

And I would honor that though if they definitely paid in full and if they were like adherent those first four

[00:53:07] Coach Eric: weeks. Yeah. But I think the biggest thing too, a lot of coaches they don’t put in place what’s called, a risk removal or guarantee in their program. So if you do that let’s say for example, like you’re offering a 12 week program and you’re guaranteeing them, an outcome of, okay, I’m gonna help you lose 20 pounds in 12 weeks, great outcome.

And realistically, people only know what they know. They’re not gonna be like, oh, hey, coach Mike, like I did not lose 20 pounds, so gimme my money back because they’re gonna have so many different changes that are g they’re gonna thank you for. And it’s a transformation. So you could say in your risk removal and guarantee, Hey, if I don’t get you these specific results in 12 weeks, I will continue to work with you for free.

And it just, it covers your butt. It saves any type of weird relationship where they’re gonna ask for money back and have a bad vibe. So I think that just, that’s a great way to avoid that. Yeah. Yeah. And so it

[00:53:56] Coach Chris: mitigates the risk and just a hundred percent reward on their end because of the investment.

They can’t really lose out of that,

[00:54:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah. Yeah. I’ve had. Very few people like cancel on contracts, but it does happen here and there. Yeah. Yeah. And I think everyone at some point just has to decide, okay, as a business, what am I gonna do? It’s like you either try to get people to honor things or you just be like, it sucks.

And I’ll take it in the shorts and figure it out with the next person. Yeah. And I’ve been doing this for quite a while, and with the paid in full, I’ve never had anyone ask for a refund until literally yesterday. No idea why. Don’t know why. And so I’m just like, oh man. Because it’s one, trying to generate that much cash to, to refund back sometimes can be an issue.

There can be a delay. It’s if you don’t have it in account, you get a transfer to another account, assuming you have it, and then it’s just comes back down. I’m either gonna go after this person and enforce some type of contract, which probably is not gonna end well for either person. Yep. Or do I just go, it sucks.

It’s only happened once in 12 years. I’ll just give them the refund, make sure they’re happy, and not worry about it, and just go forward, but it’s, yeah. It still sucks even after you’ve been doing it for a long time to have it happen. Yeah. And you’re just like, oh man,

Yeah.

[00:55:14] Coach Eric: Yeah. It just, it comes to the territory, unfortunately.

[00:55:17] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Thank you guys for all your time here. And the last question, two part question. Do you think someone should have to train people in person before they do online training? That’s

[00:55:32] Coach Chris: a good one. Whew. I’ll let you

[00:55:33] Coach Eric: tackle that first big brother.

Ah, you want me to do it, huh? . First off, Mike, thank you so much for having us, man. This has been really

[00:55:39] Dr Mike T Nelson: appreciate you. I appreciate all your time and let me just grill you with all my questions. . I love it.

[00:55:43] Coach Eric: Yeah. This is, oh this is an interesting question. I’m gonna say no that you don’t have to train in person.

Just because again, like I’m a big fan of imperfect action. I really am. I think that if you’re competent and you can just do self-education and you take the proper precautions and you have a good heart, you have a integrity and you’re willing to learn, get better, I think that, just go for it.

Because there’s no such thing as perfection. I think most people focus on putting out their A plus work when you should be putting out your B plus work. And again action cures, fear, action cures fear to where, just do it and just see what happens and, just get better at it.

Because again I get it. You could say you should be an in-person coach and learn all the fundamentals and this and that, and I get it. Like I, I’m not against it, but I’m gonna go the other route and just say, you don’t have to do that. Yeah, I would agree with that.

[00:56:30] Dr Mike T Nelson: that easy. Are there no other comments,

[00:56:31] Coach Eric: I would say I would agree with it, but I would also say

[00:56:33] Coach Chris: that it’s not gonna hurt though, too. Because it’s just if you do in-person training too, it’s gonna, I feel like it’s gonna make you definitely a better online coach. Agree. Like all well-rounded, just because you’re working with people in person, you’re seeing them actually do the movement, and you’re gonna be better at programming and just a better overall coach with it, yep.

[00:56:48] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I don’t know, depending on the day of the week I go back and forth on this, but I guess I’m just old and crotchety and feel like you, he needs some. Experience in person cuz I just don’t think you can figure out how bad people can screw up exercise until you’ve actually had to coach them out of it.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s like maybe if you’re doing nutrition only and I’m biased if I tell a nutrition certification, maybe. I think some of those things you can definitely do online. I don’t think it’s as critical, but I think there is something very critical about seeing people move and being able to fix it in the moment.

And I think of nothing else. Having at least some vocabulary of movement you can pull from. Yeah. Because I mean I started doing online training in 2006 and I had not even worked in person at that point. It was a Trashman fire was horrible. I apologized to any clients I took on at that point.

It was a shit show and after a year I just quit cuz I’m just like, I don’t know what the F I’m doing. , I’m, this is not good. And so I ended up, getting some more in-person experience and I wrote down a list. I said, okay, I’m not doing online training unless I have an assessment of their stress level.

I can see their movement. I had this whole laundry list of assessments I wanted to do. Luckily heart rate variability became available via phones and a bunch of other stuff, so it worked out. Yeah. But I’m a little old school in that matter. . Yeah, it’s a tough one. It’s a tough one. Yeah. Yeah.

And I see both points of view, right? Yeah. Cause there’s, people who are new in the industry who are not gonna spend a lot of time, doing in person and may not be an advantage and so yeah. I get it. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Last super quick question as we wrap up for nutrition stuff.

My bias is everyone should do some type of nutrition online. Even if you’re an in-person gym atmosphere, I think you can easily transition your nutrition. Most of your clients are there for body comp reasons. If nothing else, you should be doing that online. What are your thoughts? I think they

[00:58:43] Coach Eric: like

[00:58:43] Coach Chris: nutrition, probably like out powers like, online training, to be honest, because with the nutrition, like what you said, that’s mostly a lot of people’s pain points, within that.

Yeah. Is losing weight, and that comes a lot with like their diet, that’s not to say that exercise is not important, but for the majority of the time it is. And with that kind of skill and that competence of nutrition coaching, you could go partner up with local gyms and local businesses and do seminars and most of the times you can’t do that, which is like a knowledge of exercise programming. So it just makes you really multifaceted with that skillset to be able to sit there and solve bigger problems and then be able to

[00:59:13] Coach Eric: monetize those skills. Yeah, a hundred percent agree with Chris on that.

And I think too, if you’re going, if you’re gonna go down that route to help people with nutrition, like you should like have at the base level of certificate in nutrition Yeah. And probably a higher level of ED education.

[00:59:28] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I think there’s a big market if someone wants to do that, you could literally go to local gyms and go to their trainers and be like, Hey man.

If you allow me to do nutrition with some of your clients, assuming they, they know and trust you and you can show your legit and you could pay them, a certain percentage or whatever. Yeah. You could get clients like so fast because I noticed a lot of trainers in person, if they said, Hey, you can work at our gym, you can train people all day and you never have to talk about nutrition.

Like most trainers would be like, yes, my life is amazing. Yeah. So definitely. A subset, but there’s the people who want to do that, which I think can, do it online and it can work quite well.

[01:00:04] Coach Eric: Yeah. That’s a great point though on that. Yeah, just go into personal trainers and just teaming up with them.

That’s good. Yeah. I’ll tell you just a quick story too.

[01:00:10] Coach Chris: We have a student in Vegas she got her MS in nutrition, and basically she went to Lifetime Fitness. I don’t know if you have those around there in

[01:00:17] Dr Mike T Nelson: Minnesota, but Yep. I go to one down the road. Yeah. So

[01:00:19] Coach Chris: very big ones, right?

Like they’re fluid type of gyms and she got that position because she had the MS and nutrition and all the other trainers there don’t have any type of nutrition certification. So she gets to sit there and get all of like the consultation. She gets to do seminars, she gets to do challenges, and it’s because she has that skillset,

[01:00:35] Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah. And that’s definitely becoming a more valued skillset thing, too. Hundred percent. Oh yeah. Oh. Cool. Thank you guys so much for all your time today. I really appreciate it. Where can they find more information about

[01:00:46] Coach Eric: you guys? Yeah, thanks again, Mike. Really appreciate that. And yeah, best place to just come and connect with us is probably Instagram just at Chris and Eric Martinez, or go check out our website, dynamic fitpros.com.

Again, we have a great training on there for health and fitness coaches that will, you’ll find a lot of value there. And then, yeah, check out our podcast. Mike’s been on it. It’s called the Dynamic Lifestyle Podcast.

[01:01:06] Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Yeah, and I’ve seen your programs and all your stuff and it’s really good.

I like it. It’s, thank you both practical and useful without being sleazy, which is a high compliment, ,

[01:01:15] Coach Eric: appreciate that. Li

[01:01:16] Dr Mike T Nelson: likewise. Awesome. Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. And we’ll talk to you guys very soon. All

[01:01:21] Coach Eric: right. See you guys. Thanks. Thanks so

[01:01:23] Coach Chris: much. Bye.

[01:01:25] Dr Mike T Nelson: Huge thanks to Chris and Eric for coming on the podcast and being so willing to share all of their information that they have accumulated over many years of doing this and helping several hundreds of other to thousands of fitness professionals get going in an online capacity. Which is even more critical now than ever before.

So huge thanks to them. Make sure to check out all their information that they have. We’ll put links down below in the podcast here so you can check them out. They do awesome work and I really appreciate them coming on here. And just giving of all their information so freely, which is great. If you want more advanced recovery tips and techniques, the Physiologic Flexibility certification is now open until March 27th at midnight 2023.

Go to physiologicflexibility.com. There’ll be a link below here Also, if you want to increase your ability to recover faster. Be more robust, resilient, even antifragile and crush lots of prs in the process. This is the certification information for you. In it we cover everything from cold exposure to heat exposure zone two, cardio to high intensity cardio when used to do a ketogenic.

There is actually a time I think that it can be extremely beneficial, even for healthy people who are training hard. The other end of the spectrum, how to carbohydrate load and some dispel some myths about lactate. Lactate will not destroy your performance in and of itself. And then we cover a lot of breathing techniques and breakdown how your body.

Oxygen and CO2 so that you can increase your performance. So check out physiologicflexibility.com for all the information is open now through March 27th at midnight 2023. Thanks again to Kristen and Eric. Thank you for listening to this podcast as always really appreciate it. And if there’s anything I can do to help you.

Go on to the newsletter, mike nelson.com. Just hit reply there and that is gonna be the best way you can reach me. Thank you so much, and we will talk to you very soon.