Active Life & The Evolutions from Fitness To Health Profession - Dr. Sean Pastuch

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Future of Fitness, where we talk with entrepreneurs, researchers, and practitioners in fitness, wellness, and the health sciences. I'd like to give a big thanks to our sponsors, Level Five Mentors, helping entrepreneurs achieve the highest levels of freedom in time, money, relationships, health, and purpose. Also, Certified Course Creation, helping entrepreneurs create accredited online certifications that are not only lucrative but highly scalable. Go to levelfive mentors.com or certifiedcoursecreation.com and learn more. I am your host, Eric Malzone. And once again, welcome to the future of fitness. Boom. We're live. Sean Pastouche, my friend. Welcome to the show.

What's up, Eric? I love talking to you.

Yeah, man, it's great. I uh I'm gonna cut through all of it. Um, all the I'll give a short introduction, man. I mean, you are a uh an entrepreneur, a coach, uh a medical professional, and you are leading a tribe. You are growing a solid business, and you've hit a lot of adversity through the process and you've just blown your way through it. And uh, I have a ton of respect for everything you do, Dr. Sean. I'm always excited to talk to you. I always learn something and I get excited about the energy you bring to what you do, man. So if people want to check him out, Active Life RX, Active Life Professional, is that correct? Am I getting that right?

Yeah, the the best place that they want to check me out is to check out Dr. Sean Pestuch on Instagram and they can find the businesses from there.

Yeah, you're a social media savage. I love it. So, man, things are uh today's date of recording, Sean, is the 27th of August in 2020. You and I have not actually touched base for a podcast, the future of fitness or black diamond podcast, about what's going on during this crazy pandemic thing for you specifically in the fitness industry overall. So we're both have been entrenched in the fitness industry for a very long time. Give us some updates, man. How is how are things in your viewpoint going for the fitness industry right now?

Yeah, well, the first thing I would love to do, if it's okay with you, Eric, is just make sure that people who are listening who are not familiar with me understand that that was a really nice intro, and I appreciate it. Of all the things that you mentioned, the only thing I'm doing right now, I'm focusing 100% of my effort on the businesses. I'm no longer seeing pay. I want people to know that because I remember being a young entrepreneur and seeing, like, oh, this guy's a doctor, he's a this, he's a that, he's doing seven different things, and thinking that the more things you're doing, the more successful. And the reality couldn't be more opposite of that. So I have been a medical professional, not anymore. I have been a gym owner, not anymore. I'm an entrepreneur, and that's what I focus all of my time, effort, and energy on. Awesome.

Well said.

But so as far as far as the pandemic goes, I gotta be honest with you, it's done nothing but increase my confidence around the team that we have at Active Life and the mission that we're facing at Active Life because we didn't feel it so much financially. You know, we took a hit, don't get me wrong, in the first month, which was April, you know, when people really started to kind of panic and hold on to their wallets. But we rebounded in May and we've gone up since. And it's it's definitely been stressful and it's been harder work to get the same thing we used to get. But it's it's it's been a huge jolt of confidence that we have the resiliency to make those pivots, innovate, and persevere as a company. That was very cool.

That is really cool. And right I made the executive decision when we were having our little chat before this interview to be like, hey, stop talking, Sean. I want to record this. And uh I asked you how's business going, how are things going? You said, Eric, do you know the rules of the threes and tens?

Yeah, I believe.

So let's give it to me, man. What would have what is that?

So there's a business rule of threes and tens, and essentially it goes something along the lines of every time that the first number and the the revenue of your business annually is a three or a ten, you have to change your entire business. And the idea of that is like if you're making a hundred thousand dollars a year, that's great. If you want to make three hundred thousand dollars a year, things will need to change in your business. Who you're going after as clients, what you're charging, how people come in, how you find your clients, what your service is, whatever. Some major things need to change. When you want to go from $300,000 to a million dollars, things need to change again. When you want to go from a million dollars to three million dollars, things need to change. And when you want to go from three million to ten million, things need to change. And it will keep happening on the threes and the tens. And I'm finding that to be extremely true for us as we're in the process right now of completely reorganizing our entire corporate structure.

Wow, that's no small undertaking. How big is your team, Sean?

When I send out the all hands email every Monday morning, there are 41 people on it.

Wow. And where where was that team one year ago? How many people did you have?

One year ago, I believe one year ago, we probably had 18.

Wow. Okay. So things are moving fast.

So yeah, and look, I also want to be transparent. Some of the people on that team are not full-time. Yeah. So we we don't have 41 full-time workers. I don't want people out there thinking that I'm misrepresenting anything. It's we have 41 people who contribute to the success of our business. And some of them give us their all, some of them give us all that they can or all that they want to. And everybody is expected to uphold the same standard.

Yeah. So this is actually a great way to kind of describe your business. So describe your what the the qualities of the business were, let's say two months ago, and describe what you what you're working towards two months from now. What is that transitioning looking like?

Yeah, so I would say two months ago, we were we were the equivalent of a really good street fighter. Like imagine somebody who just is the tough guy around town, is willing to get punched in the face and scrap. We were really good at that. We didn't know if we were gonna have to grab a brick that was loose and use it. We didn't know if we were gonna be able to win the fight easily. We didn't know if it was gonna break out in a bar on the street or on the sidewalk or in a schoolyard. But we were willing to take it on. Whatever the challenge was, we could figure out how to persevere through it. We're transitioning to being more of a martial artist, if you will, where everything happens on purpose. And we're grooving patterns so that there is a reasonable next step. There is an appropriate reporting structure, there is a sense of accountability and responsibility and ownership over the success or lack thereof in the business by every single person involved. And we had to build a corporate structure, which is something that I always looked at as we're never gonna be corporate. We're not corporate. And then the more you look at it, it's like, well, how many of the Fortune 500 companies aren't corporate? And if they're it's not about how they're structured, it's about the work that they're doing that's important in terms of the reasons that I had for not growing a corporate structure, right? It was I don't want people to get stuck working jobs that they hate forever. Well, then don't allow people to get stuck at jobs that they hate in your business. Don't hire people to work jobs that they hate. Every reason that I had to not build the corporate structure was a false story that I told myself. And I'm through it and we're doing it.

Awesome. Awesome. And I know you've been doing a lot of work with Ken here at the level five team. How's he?

Yeah, Ken was the impetus for it.

Yeah. So how how is it how what kind of role is he playing with your transition in this?

As integral as somebody could possibly be. You know, it's it's I tell people all the time that you'll never find a professional athlete, an Olympic athlete, who who succeeds without coach. And I I will always have at least one coach on my side at all times. And I don't see any reason to stop working with Ken anytime soon because he's been the first coach I've had who's been able to help me identify how my my personal mindset is getting the way of my business mindset, and how I need to change my personal mindset so that my business mindset can grow. And then I need to execute on that change so that it creates more opportunities, and then I'll need to change my mindset again to be able to accommodate those opportunities. No one has done that for me as well as Ken has.

Awesome. Well, kudos to Ken, man. I know he spends a lot of time with you guys. Uh I think he was on some all hands, all deck, all day meetings with you guys over the past month. And uh he's enjoying the work, man. He really is enjoying the work. And for those of you who don't know or furniture, it's uh my business partner, level five mentored Ken and Druco.

He's great. I mean, we just just for anybody out there listening who is considering hiring a coach, I would strongly recommend reaching out to Eric and Ken. Ken is now coaching myself, our and two other people on our leadership team, and you are coaching a fourth person on our leadership team. So of the four people on our leadership team currently, they are all coached by somebody at your company.

Wow.

Thank you for that, man. I appreciate it. Wasn't digging for it, but I'll take it. You mentioned personal attributes, a personal mindset. What's one of the things that you've noticed now over the last year or so that is a limiting personal component of your mindset that is now shifting towards a more beneficial business mindset? Give us some granular on that.

It's letting go and trusting people to do their job well. Uh and misunderstanding somebody's inability to do their job well as a reflection of them when it could and often is a reflection of me doing a poor job of describing what their job done well looks like. So I hesitated to loosen the reins on a lot of places within our business because I believed that I was the only person who was capable, willing, and interested in doing it the way that it needed to be done. And I did not want to spend money to delegate tasks out to people to do jobs that they didn't know how to or want to do. And the reality was the reason that every time I tried to do that, people struggled was because I actually didn't provide them with any of the necessary structure to succeed. And so the logjam wasn't them, it was me. And I needed to let go of the purse strings, of the responsibility, of the vision entirely, meaning I don't need to be responsible for every Instagram post and every comment under every Instagram post and every caption that we write and every email sequence that goes out and every program that we release. I didn't need to be responsible for all of it, or really any of it.

Man, I appreciate your authenticity and being open mouth talking about this because I think a lot of people listening, if you're growing a business, if you're the founder, the core entrepreneur of a business, you you've experienced this. We all struggle to relinquish control of things because that's the way we built it. But that isn't what gets us to the next level.

Right.

Would you mind if I share some advice as to what I would tell myself two years ago before I worked with Ken?

Please. Please.

So a lot of people listening to this might be like, that's really cool, Sean, but I don't have 40 staff members. I have two. And one of them is part-time. So I don't have four departments and leadership teams and director level and staff level people. Here's what I would recommend you do. And it's what I wish I had done two years ago if I knew that this was what could be done. I would have built out the exact same organizational corporate flow chart that I built out with Ken over the course of 16 hours and three days, and still is being a work in progress for when my company was where it was going to be. And in the meantime, each of those positions would still have the appropriate KPIs, key performance indicators for where the company is today. And what would happen is I would have put myself as the person responsible for each department that I was running, despite the fact that we didn't have departments. Who was running marketing? I was. Okay, well then you're the marketing director, Sean. What is the role of the marketing director? And I would have held myself accountable to KPIs that would have moved the company forward. And who is the director of staff? I was. Okay, well, what is the director of staff job supposed to be? Are you doing it? What is the operations job? Well, it's mine. Okay, well, what is the job? What is success in that job? Are you doing it? What is um RD's job? Well, it's mine. Okay, well, what are you doing? Are you hitting the KPI? Set out what all of the different roles and responsibilities would be if you were at full staff. And then understand that you're doing many of these roles, and that's okay right now. You need to, but you still are accountable to performance. You're accountable to yourself and to the staff that you want to hire in two years. The only way you get there is by being accountable to the to the metrics of success that you lay out for the position.

That's great, man. It's uh KPIs are constantly over really okay. They're over they just people just don't see them as an important part of the function. And oftentimes they're laid out, but they're not followed or held accountable to. And that's kind of the core things I've seen with it. And if you were gonna look at you as the founder and CEO now, or you may not even be the CEO, I'm not sure, but you're the founder, right? You're the you're the head of this this thing.

I'm so a CEO too.

Okay. What are your KPIs now? What are your personal things that you are accountable to?

So great question. And that's the job description that Ken and I need to build out the most.

Okay.

Because right now, my KPIs, the way I see them, are to ensure that every leadership member of our team has the necessary resources to do their job without being bogged down by lack of resources. Resources include autonomy, they include budget, they include inspiration, they include security and safety. You know, they include the the physical data that they need, they include technology. So the way I see it, I need to be checking in to ensure that each person on the team has what is necessary for them to be successful, and then to grow the vision and to ensure that we're moving into that growth.

And how does that feel for you to be understanding your roles, your accountability, and what it is? Do that does that excite you? Does that feel good? Do you feel like you're missing something? That's true.

There's still a bit of trepidation for me because I love our team. And I need I need to have call it six months to a year of seeing consistent success that is dependable, predictable, and reliable. And then I can say, okay, I don't need to focus on this anymore. We're still not there yet. We're still not six months removed from outsourcing some of these roles within the company. And so there's still a little bit of me that's like the immature side that wants to jump back in and try to move things along faster when all that that does is actually slow things down. The mature side of me, the angel on the shoulder, that is not the devil, tells me everything is going exactly as it is supposed to. And if I continue along this path, I will be operating within my unique ability 90% of the time, which will be extremely exciting.

That's um what you described just now, I think is one of the biggest struggles and tightrope walks that entrepreneurs face. And it's the balance between urgency and patience, right? Because at certain points you have to have a sense of urgency. It's just how shit gets done, right? But at other times you just have to let them marinate. You have to be cool with the process that you're laying out and be confident in it and just give it time. And I don't I don't have a good answer because it always comes intuitively at certain times. You know, like for example, this is August. Ken and I decided to kind of pump the brakes on on outreach and and some of our um normal activities and client and gaining new clients, but okay, let's build the systems down behind us to support us. And that's hard for me, man. It's hard for me. It sounds like it's hard for you too. Like, we'll pump the brakes. What do you mean? Like, I can't.

Well, I can I can I can give you guys a very specific example. We we have never had a plan, ever had a plan for how to bring new members into the business. That might sound ridiculous, but our plan has always been if we make a post that is an Instagram post that is interesting and engaging to you, let's talk about it in the DM. And if it seems like you're a fit to work with us, we'll ask you to. That's been the strategy. So we've needed to say, okay, well, that Nike doesn't do that, right? Um CrossFit doesn't do that. Nobody who is operating on the levels that we want to operate does that. Why do we do it? We do it because we haven't figured out a better way to do it. So let's figure out a better way to do it.

Yeah.

So we've built things like we stopped trying to drive all of our traffic to the DM and then drive people from the DM to the most expensive thing that they could possibly want and need. And when I say that, I mean it's the most expensive thing, is just the shortcut to the thing that you really need in a lot of cases. And that's what I'm describing. It's not milking the most money. It's if somebody comes to us and says, I need to improve my gym business, we're not going to try to sell you into a seminar and then ascend you into a foundations course and then sell you into our Pro Path if we think that that's going to take you longer to get where you want to go. Does that make sense, Eric? It makes sense. But what I've learned is that the reason that those systems exist and those flows exist is because many people who we could help, we won't help because they're not ready to spend tens of thousands of dollars annually with us. And we need to earn their trust more. And we need to obviate need more, and we need to provide solutions and value to them along the way that pay for what they've already bought from us. So we pumped the brakes on selling to the high-ticket stuff, and we moved into selling to much more accessible stuff, and then affording people the opportunity to continue to grow with us in their career. And that showed that saw revenues drop. And when revenues drop, of course, you know, you get a little bit concerned as the business owner. Why are revenues dropping? Well, because we're building a long-term sustainable growth strategy that is less of a street fight. And we finally pulled the trigger yesterday, two days ago, Tuesday, today's Thursday, we pulled the trigger Tuesday, two days ago, to launch the first thing that we had been working on developing, which is our seminar. And the idea is everybody comes through the seminar, just learn what we're all about and gain some skills to do a better job serving your clients. And the thought is people who take the seminar will decide if they want to keep working with us. Well, the seminar costs 200 bucks. Other products cost 3,000 to 25,000, right? So why would you sell something that costs 200 bucks instead of something that sells 3,000 or 25,000? Well, because we're going to be having conversations with people who already know who we are, who already have seen what we're all about, have seen the quality that we deliver. And two days ago, we launched our first seminar ever in this fashion. And we sold out in under 24 hours with one email and one Instagram post and zero dollar spent. And now all the people who are coming to the seminar are engaged with a staff member of ours who were notifying them that if they want to do more with us, we'll help them understand how. If they don't, if they want to stop here, we'll teach them the best way to leverage the skills that they're gaining in the seminar. And we're already halfway to filling the next one in terms of people jumping on the pre-sale list. That's great, man.

You know, I realize too that probably a lot of people who are listening now may not have heard some of our previous interviews on the future of fitness and fitness split radio. So I'm going to have you kind of describe what it is at the core of what you do by asking this one question. What does the future of the fitness coach look like?

I don't work with them. So I don't know. We work with the person who wants to ascend from being a fitness coach to being a healthcare provider. And what we want to be able to do is create a gap. Well, create a bridge between the gap that currently is what I would consider sick care, which is your chiropractors, physical therapists, orthopedists, medical doctors, and all of the others who fit in that category. And fitness care, which is people who help. Relatively healthy people get healthier. And the gap right now is you can get a two-day licensure, two-day certification that allows you to start coaching people and affecting their physiology. If you want to go the next step currently, which is becoming a healthcare provider or a sick care provider, you're going to school for at least three years after college. That gap is huge. And so most fitness coaches, fitness professionals find themselves inadequately prepared and educated to take the client who just finished physical therapy or chiropractic, just got out of surgery. The client who really is morbidly obese. Because there aren't processes in place for you to do a great job for a gym full of people who are obese, hypertensive, diabetic, post-surgical. They require too much specificity and attention for the group model to work. So we need to find a way to bridge that gap, and that's what we're doing.

Sean, there's a term that's been popping up quite a bit of medical fitness, med fit. Have you heard this term?

No, and I hate it. Why? Because it's not medical fitness. Like you're not a patient. Somebody who is 45 years old, who played high school sports, and has some old injuries, they're banged up, they've been working out really hard, and they want to continue living an active lifestyle. They don't want to do med fitness. They don't want to have a they don't want to think of themselves as going into a clinic and being a patient. It carries the negative connotation. Medical is sick care. Right? It has to be differentiated from fitness. And there needs to be a whole new category that grows out of it. And I just maybe they're talking about the same thing, and I just hate the title.

I think that's part of it. I do, but I agree. When I hear medical fitness, I think, you know, being 43, maybe a couple bangs and bruises on this old body, but you know, it's it's it's the mileage, not the ear, right? The I don't, I don't, I don't qualify myself as medical. If I have a you know uh a knee that's janky, I'm not I'm not a patient. I'm still active, man. You know, that's what I want. And and so many times over the past few years, I've I've I've been asked, you know, what does the future of fitness look like? And I almost always reply, it's gotta be something in between medical and what we currently have. It's gotta be health. But yet, you know, then people start turning around the term holistic, which I probably can't stand as much as you can't stand medfit, because it should always be holistic. That's like an assumption, right? You can't just talk about person within the confines of the hour or two hours a week that you work with them. It's gotta be everything in their life. But that evolution, right? That that rise up from you know, the the trainer that we know now and we associate fitness with to something higher up that's a higher value position in the whole hierarchy of wellness. So I think it's awesome, man. I think it's really cool what you're doing. And I'm I I want to hear more about that vision. So, okay.

Can I jump in there? Like, write your question down for one second.

Yeah.

So the reason why we haven't yet made that transition, like it's not for a lack of education out there. You know, it's the thought that something like the term corrective exercise has any place in the world. What is exercise if not corrective? Are we not exercising to improve the way that our body functions? Is that not corrective of an ailment that our body faces, even if we're healthy? Isn't is it not an inefficiency that we're trying to correct? Every exercise is corrective exercise. Now, the issue that we run into is people want to believe that they are capable of serving a larger group of people than they really are. And that includes the doctor and it includes the coach. And in doing so, we run into a lack of specialization, and the generalist believes that they can solve all problems. That is a massive issue. The person who needs really intense coaching, they're not gonna get the same results from the general group class. And the coach who does a phenomenal job coaching the general group class is probably lacking some of the awareness as to how to help the individual one-on-one because they're spending their time. If they're a true group class professional, they're spending their time and energy in becoming a better group class professional, which we need. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, it's a huge benefit. But the processes to help people in different subsets of need are different. And the lack of process is what keeps the fitness field from evolving.

I think there's a couple things here, because I was talking to somebody uh yesterday who's been a researcher for 25 years and specializes in this type of research, like you know, um getting the data behind things and then you know showing that it works, especially within fitness and health. It was interesting because I in my mind, the reason that uh the fitness profession hasn't elevated yet, and you're you're doing it right to more of a health professional is because two things are lacking between the medical community and the fitness community, and that is communication, the ability to communicate on a level that everybody understands and relates to and agrees on. And the other thing is trust. Agree or disagree.

They shouldn't. I I agree, and they shouldn't. Because what education does them does the average coach have?

A weekend certification.

Right. And and look, this is this is they should make the coaches out there who have spent more time, effort, money, and intention on improving their knowledge base. It should make them angry because the reality is this they might be capable of taking the client who just finished up with the doctor. That is perfectly possible, but they are associated with the worst of their profession. They don't have to like it. It's the same way that coaches would say doctors just medicate, operate, and med, and you know, that's it. Well, is that true? Or is that what some doctors do? So, what coaches need to understand is that they're doing the exact same thing in the opposite direction. And and and they're not recognizing why it's happening to them.

Yeah. That's you know, that's actually really interesting upon reflection, too, because I I know I've been in so many conversations in rooms with people who are fitness professionals, and uh they'll just shit on the medical profession, like, ah, they don't do anything, they just write prescriptions. And I always question them like, well, I actually have a great doctor, you know, I have to pay him cash and take insurance, but he's awesome. We talk for hours um about everything, you know, once a year, and then he gets all the tests and in. And, you know, he's trying to get me off medications if I'm on them. And it's you know, it's it differs from from case to case. Yet as a fitness professional, we don't want to be lumped into you know the stereotypical trainer who drinks his coffee and counts your dumbbell curls, right? So it goes you're right, it goes both ways. That's a really interesting observation. I like that.

I've lived both sides of it, so it's easy for me to see it.

Exactly. So what do you think? Um, and this is kind of highlighting what you do too. So, how are you helping fitness professionals bridge that gap? Like, I know the education is critical, but on like a tactical basis, right? Like how how is how does somebody go through your your pro coach program, right? And it gets educated and invests and understands how to become a higher level health coach. How are they beginning to start those relationships with the medical profession? Are you helping them facilitate that?

Loosely, it's something that we're working on doing much more uh structured. The the thing is this it's the way that we help them right now is by giving them a vocabulary that is backed by substance. So if you go to a doctor, and I'll give you an example. I had a client one time who got thrown from the back of a pickup truck and broke his fall with the back of his head. He was in a coma for about a month and a half, college football player, lost about 80 pounds while he was in the coma, lost the ability to swallow, walk, talk, all of that. When he came out, he had all of the rehab, he got back talking with a significant stutter, back to walking and running, but the running was like very forced gump looking, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

And you know, he was very skinny, where this guy had previously played defensive line on a college football team. So he came to me because he knew that I'd be able to help him without hurting him. And he wanted to get back to the muscle mass that he previously had and to feel confident that he was no longer somebody who was dealing with the ramifications of this injury. I told him straight up, I want to talk to every doctor who works with you to ensure that we're collaborating and not contraindicating. So when I reached out to his first doctor, it was a who was it? It was his neurosurgeon. And this surgeon told me he should not exercise. And I asked him for how long? And he's like, we will we'll guide him when it's appropriate. And I said, I understand. What I would love to understand better is what it is specifically that you're hoping to help him avoid. What are the risks that we need to be careful of? Because my concern is that if I don't take him as a client, he's gonna go train anyway, without guidance. And if he trains without guidance or finds a trainer who's willing to work with him without reaching out to you, it could be very risky. And I would love to understand what physiological changes we're trying to avoid both short-term, immediate term, and long term, so that I can help keep him safe and report back to you on a regular basis. And they were like, okay, that you make a good point. We're really trying to prevent a rapid increase in his blood pressure. I said, okay. So what constitutes a rapid increase? And where are we looking for that rapid increase to be problematic? Is it intracranial or is it you know systemic? And the doctor immediately was like, you know the difference between the two of those? I said, yes. And he said, okay, well, that's very helpful. In that case, what we're really trying to do is avoid having his um his his brain experience a rush of blood around him. So all the cavities within his skull need to avoid filling those fast. And like, great. So if we avoid things like going upside down, Valsava maneuver, anything above a six out of ten RPE as it pertains to weight in the last rep of any set, we should be in good shape. It's like, yeah, that that makes me very comfortable. So great, thank you. I will follow up in two weeks. Awesome. And I worked with the client for a year.

That's a great story, man. That's and I think that's where most fitness professionals want to be. They want to be able to speak that language, understand that's the level that's not necessarily medical level, you know, of education, of you know, three, four, five years of additional education on top of college, but just enough to form those relationships and then be useful enough to the medical professional to be highly beneficial to the client. And that's that's the goal, right? It's all about the client. Sometimes we forget about that.

Right. It's it's I'm not treating this kid.

Yeah.

He's not my patient. He's my he wants to be my client. And it's understanding, like being able to talk to the doctor about the if he doesn't train with me, my concern is he's going to train anyway, because he's in his 20s. And he's a guy and he's got all the testosterone. So he's gonna do things he shouldn't do. Let's help him do them wisely.

That's great, man. So I want to use the time we have to ask you a couple big picture questions, right? On Fridays, uh, Ken and I meet with a small mastermind group that we've been working with for a while. And one of my favorite Friday questions is we talk about, hey, what what are the some what are some of the more what are some of the industries out there or verticals that are more apt for disruption than others? And I I think the fitness industry is squarely in the top five, especially what what COVID has shown us. One year from now, man, how do you think the fitness industry is going to be fundamentally different?

So I have hopes and I have beliefs, and they're different.

Okay.

I hope that a year from now, most people who are hobbyists in the fitness space are out of it. Right? They're they're in gyms, they're shadowing coaches, they're learning things so that they can help their significant others, their friends, their family, and themselves, but they're not overflowing the market with less than professional training because the professional trainers have recognized that they need to up their game if they're going to survive in a down market generally. And the general public is able to see the difference between the professional and the non-professional, and they're always going to select the professional. That's my hope. I believe that what's going to happen is some of that will come true, and what always happens will happen. The people who have the most skill around marketing and sales will win. Yeah. And it will not have anything to do with their ability to coach. And we'll still be in a world where people will cry and complain and point the finger instead of the thumb about why that's not fair. And it is fair. We're all playing the same game. They can go lend they can go learn those same skills. But I believe that there will be many professionals who are left out because they they refuse to do.

I like that. I like the difference between a belief and a hope. I hope as well. Um, I've always been hoping for the evolution of the fitness professional to something greater, something that is highly professional. And I think this is a huge step forward. So, second part of that question, looking outside of the fitness and health industry, what other institutions, industry, verticals do you think are really ripe for disruption right now during COVID?

Education is number one.

Yeah.

Um, I think that my wife is a teacher, and we talk all the time about how neutered she is to do her job well. Despite the fact that she's in a very well-paying district and a very well-paying state, and they're very well funded. It's it's just there's we've gone from we forgot that the reason that we built the education system the way that we did was because we wanted to teach kids how to work on an assembly line. And we forgot that most people in the United States especially won't end up working on an assembly line because those jobs are gonna be done by robots, and we need people to think. And the education system as it currently exists, I do not teach it, I do not believe teaches people to think. And we're learning that it's it's as much daycare as it is education because schools are opening up without knowing if they can open up safely, whether you believe COVID is a real thing or not. And they're opening because they're getting pressure that parents need to go back to work and they can't their kids can't stay home. So I think the education space is is extremely ripe for disruption. I think that very smart companies are going to take a lot of the a lot of the business that used to go into local schools and public schools or businesses, make no mistake about them, for the local government. I think they're going to take a lot of that business. I think that what's going to happen thereafter is there's going to be a group of people who recognize the need to handle the child care portion and the administration of the education that's coming from these at-home services, and we're going to see an entirely new industry sprout up.

I agree. And I would even add an extra layer on that because I think part of the education is the university system, which we're finding is extremely fragile. I mean, you know, you're looking at anywhere nowadays in the United States of what five at the very lowest, most likely ten to sixty, seventy thousand dollars a year for a university model that's if you go to a state, oh, a year, yeah.

Yeah, if you go to a year.

Yeah, I mean, you're looking at really, really expensive. And now that they're asking for this maybe a small discount or the same rate to work from to to take Zoom classes for a semester, and how essentially that whole model has been subsidized by financing, right?

Well, Eric, well, what we're realizing about the education system at the collegiate level is that it's it's built on a false promise. Yeah. It was built on the if you go to college, you are more likely to make money when you graduate than if you don't. You're gonna have a better life if you go to college. And then it became you have to go to graduate school. Then it became you have to get a doctorate. And it's like, but what are we talking about? And if you look back at the history of college, it actually came up because we were running into a space where we had too many people graduating high school and not enough jobs available. So there was a large marketing campaign to send kids to college so that the country could buy four more years.

Yeah.

And it's uh I look at trade, uh what's wrong with a good old-fashioned trade school, right? Where people or a mentorship program.

It's the reason that we don't have it, in my opinion, is strictly because it it perceptively hamstrings somebody who might have thought bigger and puts them into something smaller. But I think that's such backwards thinking because I think that the way that you think big is by acting small. And if if the person who you know took auto repair in school graduates school and becomes a great auto mechanic, well, they're gonna create great solutions to problems that exist, and those solutions are going to create new problems that they will be the best one to solve. And ultimately they keep doing that until they're thinking too big. Like, you know, when I say too big, I mean too big to do the small job anymore.

Yeah. Well, problems are found by doing the work. So, an example had uh a beer yesterday with a client, and he was telling me about how he built out his first SaaS, you know, his first software program because of an issue he noticed through a friend who's a nurse. They have a huge scheduling problem. They still do scheduling in this, you know, archaic way of it's done intuitive by whoever the chief nurse is rid of that day. It's like, well, I guess I need this many nurses due to what's going on here. And there's no system to it. And they built out uh a SaaS platform and they sold it to Stanford. And very entrepreneurial, but never would have been done if that person hadn't gone through school and gone into, you know, nursing is, you know, obviously a higher education point. But going into that trade and understanding what the problems are that people are facing, you could say there's probably something similar in plumbing or HVAC or contracting, GCs, right? There's problems at every level that need innovation. And I think people can, once they get into it, they have to get into it to understand the problems if they're going to solve them. So the innovators, the entrepreneurs, all those people are there. They're in the waiting. They just don't have to necessarily go through a $200,000 education that leaves them in debt afterwards. And that's that's a problem.

Big problem.

Yeah.

Well, because think of it this way, right? It's uh I don't want to take a hundred thousand dollar loan to start a business. What if it fails? What business did did college provide you? Nothing. Right? And you're left with and and it's I'm not saying college is a bad thing. What I'm saying is it's a guaranteed fail in the perspective of putting dollars out to make dollars.

Yeah.

Like there is no ROI on college.

It's a lot of fun. You did it my way. I had a great time.

Great time.

Oh man. Well, uh, Dr. Sean Pastooch, I thoroughly enjoy our conversations. I love your outlook on things. I love how you're thinking big, and I admire the work that you put in to grow your business, and I know it's doing really well. So um, you know, congratulations on your success. And I think it's only going to get exponentially bigger. Your impact and your influence is going to make a permanent mark on the fitness and health industry. So I'm excited to uh, you know, to ride along with you on that. Do you want to anything you want to add where people can find you? Any particular things that you guys are promoting right now, let me know.

Um people can find me on my own personal Instagram account at Dr. Sean Pestooch. And then from there, they can find both of the companies right in my bio. Cool. And the company's being ActiveY4X and ActiveLife Professional, which are the Instagram accounts as well. But you can start at just Dr. Sean Pestoge, it's an easy place to start. And the one thing I would add to this thing at the end is just that you you need to have single focus. If you don't have single focus, you're you're not focusing on anything. And that's why nothing is growing. And I I say that all the time now to people because I spent so long failing at so many things without looking at them as tests instead of success or failure. Because I was focused on too many things at the same time. Once you get focused on one thing, there's no such thing as failure. There is testing things. And when things go well, we do them again and we do them better. When things go poorly, it's not a failure. It's it's the result of a test. And we now know not to do that that way anymore.

That's great, man. And that's an excellent way to explain a um positive relationship with failure as well. Um, I think it's really powerful because that's a number one struggle that I think a lot of entrepreneurs have. And uh it's it's their it's how they relate to failure and their their relationship with it. It's really critical. So I thanks for that, Jim, at the end, man. Um, Dr. Sean Pastouch, thank you again. Your time's always well received. And uh, I know we'll have you on soon anyway. So we'll chat soon, man. Thank you, Eric. I appreciate it. Hey, it's your host, Eric Malzone. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Future of Fitness. If you enjoyed it, please do me a huge favor by going to the website and signing up for our newsletter. The website is futurofitness.co. Again, that's futureoffitness.co. We've got some big, big announcements coming down the pipe, and we want you to make sure that you are on top of it. Thank you again. Signing off.