Functional Mental Toughness - Brad Cooper

They always say, you know, first world problems. You can float too live. You don't have to work beyond it. You don't have to go beyond it. You don't have to do the extras. You can just get by on, you know, just because our world is pretty blessed. But if you want to do more, if you want to have a bigger impact, if you want to dial it up another notch, that's where functional mental toughness kicks in.

Hey fitness fans, welcome back to the Future of Fitness podcast and interview series. This is your host, Eric Melzone, and this is episode number one, two, eight. I talked to Brad Cooper. So who is Brad Cooper? Brad Cooper is the CEO of U.S. Corporate Wellness. He is also a co-founder of Catalyst Coaching Institute. And the topic that he brings to the table today, which I thoroughly enjoy, is mental toughness. And not just, you know, how to get mental toughness, what mental toughness is, but how to functionally apply it during your everyday life. And why is he qualified? Well, the guy's completed five konas, right? Uh triathlons. And he also talks about this crazy race he did across the country on Spike. And yeah, so the guy knows mental toughness, right? I'm going to give him that. And I enjoyed it. I got a lot out of it. And I think you will too, because it's not only how you can apply it to your own life, but you know, as a fitness, health, wellness professional, for those of you listening who fit that category, you got to be able to help your clients get there too, right? We all know that any kind of transformation on the outside starts on the inside and starts upstairs. So great information, great actionable items that you can take into your practice. And I think you'll really enjoy it because I know I did. And this episode is actually brought to you by Elite Gym Insiders. So a new community based on Slack. It's free. So if you are a gym owner or somebody who works with gym owners and you want to get into the group, just go to EliteGymInsiders.com and you'll find a whole uh host of information and you'll be able to gain access through an application process. Like I said, it's free. It's a Slack community. We talk about all things regarding business, training, operations, marketing, all of that. And it's free. And so far, there is well over 300 people in it, and it's growing extremely fast. And this is my personal invitation to you. You can come in there and chat with me too. I'm in there all the time and would love to meet you. So yeah, EliteGymInsiders.com. Go check it out. Without further ado, this is episode number 128. I talk to Brad Cooper. Enjoy the ride. All right, and we're live. Brad Cooper, man. Welcome.

How are you doing, Eric?

Good. Yeah, really good. We're recording this on a Friday morning, which is uh my favorite time to record because uh in about an hour uh I'm gonna be hitting the slope. So I'm just in a great mood today.

Ah, you poor guy.

Yeah. Just hey, man, just trying to get by. Suffering for the cause, right? Yeah, yeah. Doing it for my fellow fitness pro. That's right. Yeah, man. So this is exciting. I uh, you know, a little background for people listening. Brad was um nice enough to come on the Fitness Blitz podcast, which is our sister show. Uh go check it out. And uh it was a great conversation. You know, I knew immediately that there was more to uh extrapolate from from Brad uh as far as offering value to our audience. So um thanks for coming on, man. If you don't mind, maybe just start off with a little bit of your story and your bio.

Brief background, uh I like kind of having a lot of plates spinning. I was a physical therapist for 20 years, and then we started a company called U.S. Corporate Wellness. We've been doing that for the last 13 years. We serve basically serve employers around the country and provide anything they need, soup to nuts for employee wellness programs. And then in 2011, so about seven, eight years ago, we started the Catalyst Coaching Institute, and that certifies individuals who say, Hey, I want to go into wellness coaching. How do I do it? How do I get the training? How do I get credibility, differentiate myself, that kind of thing? And that has that has grown quite a bit. We're you're probably familiar with this, Eric. There's something called the ICHWC, it's the International Consortium for Health and Wellness Coaching, and they now have put together a national board exam for wellness coaches. So in the old days, meaning 18 months ago, uh you could just say, Hey, I'm gonna be a wellness coach. Boom, I'm a wellness coach. Now there's a national board exam, so there's a scope of practice, there are credentials you've got to hit, there's a certain training you have to go through, all those kinds of things. And so Catalyst has dipped its toe in the water there, and then I get no credit for this, but Susanna has done a fantastic job in making sure that we're hitting all of their targets so that we're one of those approved programs. So professionally, that's my focus. Uh, I started a PhD, I'm 53, I'll be 53 next month. Uh started a PhD program a couple years ago, and the topic may be of interest to your folks. It's functional mental toughness and its application, not just in the world where we usually think of mental toughness, but how do we then apply that to stuff like relationships or weight loss or consistent workouts or you know, taking it up? I had a chance to do an event called The Race Across America a few years ago, and that kind of started the PhD program, actually. And in that race, I just saw this up and down where, you know, this five-minute period I'd be doing great, and then five minutes later I'd just be a wreck and a disaster. And it had nothing to do with sleep, it had nothing to do with food, had nothing to do with caffeine. It was something else. And so we went back and studied that, and that was actually my first study as part of the research uh for the BHD was trying to figure out what was going on during that event, and then the follow-up, which was qualifying for Hawaii Iron Man World Championship, and then uh running a sub-three hour marathon two weeks later. Wow. So wide range of stuff. Personal level, I just enjoy endurance sports. I'm married, uh, my wife and I are celebrating 27 years this year. Uh three, three awesome kids, just so lucky as a dad. We've got a fourth grade teacher. Uh we've got uh our middle kid is a woman as well. She's about to go to occupational therapy school, and our son is currently out in Spain doing a study abroad. He is uh great student, straight a college student, trying to go to med school, studying neural neuroscience. So proud of all three of them. They're all making a difference out there, living good lives, and it's it's it's fun to be a dad when you get to watch the kids doing their thing so well. Yeah, man.

Yeah, man. It's like a poster child or a poster uh family, right?

I mean you guys are got a pretty good life. Yeah, and again, I think my wife gets most of the credit for that one.

Okay, smart man. Uh so uh a bunch. So and you literally you live out in uh Littledin, Colorado.

Correct. Yeah, southwest Denver. We're back in the foothills. I tried to give you a little view, but it it doesn't show up. But we're uh we're tucked back in the foothills here.

Tell tell me about the lifestyle out there.

Colorado's a pretty nice place. Uh I you know, I've got three options for running trails within a mile of my house. Um biking. I can pop on what's called Deer Creek Canyon and ride up to high grade. And there's cars. I mean, you can't avoid the cars completely, but just beautiful, beautiful spot, one of the prettiest areas in town. It's literally two-thirds of a mile from my driveway to get to that road. Um swimming, I need one of those endless pools, brother. It's not uh it's not that convenient to swim. You gotta drive 20 minutes to the rec center or whatever, but you know, so that tells you how terrible my life is. That's my big complaint, is that the pool is 20 minutes away. You poor guy, how do you even do it?

How do you live? Hey man, just just keep on keeping on one foot, one foot in front of the other every day.

Uh no, it's pretty nice. We're pretty lucky.

Yeah, that's cool. I I'm you know, like I told you, we're uh we kind of went north, my wife and I, you know, all the way through Canada, and now we're kind of back in Montana and we're thinking about starting to work our way down uh through uh through Utah and Colorado and just check it out. So um what tell us what for people who don't know, tell us what the race across America is. What is that exactly?

Yeah, so it's uh the there's multiple types of teams. The complete psychos, I'm only partially psycho, the complete psychos do a solo race. Uh I was part of a two-person team. So myself and Jerry Shemmel, who's actually the Colorado Rockies announcer, uh, he had asked me if I wanted to do it. At first I was like, no. Oh, why would I want to do something like that? That sounds ridiculous. But the guy's pretty convincing. And so we set off uh everybody starts simultaneously from Oceanside, California, and it ends in Annapolis, Maryland. It's 3,000 miles. Our year it changes a little bit based on construction and road changes, that kind of thing. But our year I think was 3,042. It took us just over seven days, so we averaged whatever that comes to, about 400 miles in a day. Um and we ended up winning the race, and it was just a I don't know how you say life-changing experience, but it was just one of those eye-opening experiences about who are you, what sets you off. Uh the funny thing is, I don't think I told you this, uh, a film crew followed us because they knew we had a chance to win and that'd make a good story. And so they actually made a movie, and it was out at the theaters last summer in about 600 theaters, and it's now on iTunes. If anybody wants to check it out, it's just called Godspeed, The Race Across America. And uh a buddy just uh emailed me this morning and said, Hey, how do I find your film? So it's fresh in my mind, but uh I I think you'd enjoy it. It it's it captures the scenery, they had drones out there, it captures the competition. We we we got a really nice lead on the two-person team, so we tried tried to start catching the four-person teams, and there was a German team that we just constantly went back and forth and back, and that's a big part of the story in the film is where are the Germans? Get the Germans, we gotta get the Germans! So it was it was a lot of fun.

Yeah, really cool, man. Well, that that's pretty main. So did you guys win the two-person?

We did.

Congratulations.

Thanks. It was it was a neat, neat opportunity and safe. Like, you know, that when you're in the heat of that, you're you're totally at least for me, you're totally focused on come on, we gotta do whatever we can do. But the fact of the matter is, I have three kids, I've got a wife I love, I've got a business. It's like the race is frankly a pretty small thing, but when you're in the midst of it, you're taking chances. There was this huge lightning storm, we just kept riding, you know, we did stupid stuff. So we're fortunate, frankly, to come out of it. I actually got in a bike wreck six weeks before the race, so I didn't get to the race unscathed, but uh got through the race in in pretty good shape, so pretty fortunate.

Wow. Wow. Man, so is that where you start to get like some of the concepts for the like functional mental toughness? Is that I mean, I would imagine it takes a lot of mental toughness to do that, right?

Exactly. Yeah. So so I got in the bike race six weeks before we started the race. I broke eight, I had eight fractures in the pelvis, four ribs, and the clavicle and a concussion. And so I went into the race. I was pretty fit, but but and maybe I was tapered, I don't know. But I wasn't able to train like I'd hoped to because of that accident and the surgery that followed. Um, so there's a lot more mental stuff than maybe I would have normally had. I mean, you'd always have it in stuff like that. But it was during that time that I started thinking, huh, what what is it? Like there's all these books out there about Navy SEALs and you know, business toughness and all that stuff. But what can you actually do to change that? And that's when I decided to start the PhD and and basically figure that out. How can we create, grab, nudge that mental toughness when we need it most?

Yeah. So give me um, maybe in context of your experience with race across America, like you know, the principles that you're starting, I presume in this you you're presenting principles, right? Um, ways to apply, you know, firsthand into you know normal day-to-day situations. But give me an example of like what was what are some of the principles that maybe you used when you were going through that race?

Yeah, so a couple things. The the basic concepts for for your listeners that'll be most helpful comes down to three components thrive, prepare, and activate. Thrive is the foundation of well-being. So if you're sleeping better, if you're sleeping more, if your quality is better, you're gonna have more mental toughness. You're gonna be able to draw on that mental toughness when you need it. So that's a simple example of thrive. But it also includes it's basically move, fuel, rest, connect. So those are the four main components of Thrive. None of your audience will argue with that. That's we all agree on that one. Prepare is the mental piece. So that's how do you not not prepare like get your bike ready, but how do you prepare mentally for when the spotlight goes on so you're ready. An example of that would be well, when I got hurt, I did the last six weeks of my training indoors. Doc said you can keep training, but if you fall, you're like maybe never ride again. So you need to be on your trainer. So I took this little target and I just stuck it in front of my face, and I turned off TV, podcasts, no movies, no music, no phone, and I just stared at that target while I was riding in my arrow bars for an hour, two hours, three hours. And anytime I got distracted, I'd work my way back in. So I'd go outer ring, middle ring, inner ring, and just keep working that back. So that was a mental preparation I used so that when I was out there and I was exhausted and I was, you know, middle of the night, I just needed to focus, I could come back to that visual or that practice of preparing for the mental piece. So that would be an example of prepare. The activate piece, so that that's when those when the spotlight hits you, what do you do then? And self-talk is a huge one. Music is a huge one. There are a couple of components to this. You can do uh associative, which is where you focus in, or you can do dissociative, where you focus out. It's almost like a distraction. That's where that word comes from. So you know, music in a race that's 3,000 miles long, seven plus days of riding almost nonstop, music was a nice dissociator. I don't want to be thinking about my form 24 hours a day. It doesn't work. So that would be an example of that. Um we also identified some other things, things like anger uh can can create a short term uh connection with others. Uh we had an interesting and and in the first research study we published, we talked about this a little bit, um, how uh connection with my daughter during one phase of the race impacted the ability to pull out more for the next three or four hours. So yeah, there's a wide range, but it comes down to thrive, prepare, and activate. And that makes it easy for people to remember. And I think one of the most exciting things about the model is you don't have to get overwhelmed. You know, you look at that and you go, wait, Brad, seriously, like that's a thousand things. There's you know, four major topics under Thrive, of which there's a hundred things in each of those. There's all these prepare things I could do. There's all I I can't do all that stuff. And the answer is exactly, neither can I. It's one at a time. So what is the one thing that you can do? Maybe you start with a thrive. Maybe just start with sleep. Ignore the prepare, ignore the activate, ignore all the other thrive. Just start with that one thing. Or maybe it's self-talk. Maybe you've read about self-talk for years. You never practice it. You're not gonna use it if you didn't practice it. You're not gonna say, I'm doing a little 10K tomorrow. I'm not gonna suddenly show up at mile four of that 10K when I'm battling it out and go, hmm, I think I'll use self-talk. It doesn't happen. If you don't practice it during the during your training, that's the prepare phase. It's not gonna happen during activates. So those are the main areas there.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I mean, there's um, you know, I I've read a lot of like self-help type category books, right? I know people who read a lot of them, but don't actually do anything with it. And it just ends up being like mental mental masturbation, right? It's like, you know, you're not really actually doing anything. And I think, you know, what you pointed out is, you know, in any situation where you want change to occur, you can't look at the big picture, you just have to take that one step that moves you forward, right? Um and measure it. Yeah, and measure it. And and that's a big thing is, you know, people look at significant change in their lives, whether it's, you know, creating a different lifestyle, um, a different occupation, um, something that improves you know your overall quality of life, and they look at the changes and they see it seem too big, so they never do anything. And meanwhile, all they have to do is maybe just write their idea down one day, right? And then uh and then go from there, something extremely small. And uh, you know, it's funny, I I it brings me back when I was hearing you talk. I I dabbled in a little bit in endurance in my life. I'm not an enduro by any means, but I trained for there's this race in Santa Barbara, California called uh the Pier to Peak race, which is uh, you know, they claim it's the ha toughest half marathon in in the world. Um maybe it was at one point, but I doubt it anymore. So it starts at sea level, ends up at Gaviota Peak, um, where it's you know 4,000 feet of elevation over 13 miles, right? So it's tough. And uh the coach I had, I asked him because there's one section at mile nine where it's like it just gets grueling, right? And mile nine's tough in any race, right? Any half marathon, if you're not, you know, true marathoner. And uh and I'm like, well, what do I do? Like, how do I tune out? And you know, how do I not? He's like, nah, you just you actually zone in on the pain, you know it's coming, and you just embrace it when it comes. And I was like, God, what an odd. So that's more like focusing in, right?

Um yeah, so that would be associating.

Associating, right?

Now and uh do you recognize the name Chris McCormick? He won the Iron Man World Championship a couple times. Yeah. He had a little phrase along the lines of what your coach is talking about, where he he would embrace the suck is what he called it. And whenever it would come on, instead of going, uh oh, I'm hurting, his natural response, and I've tried to uh adopt this myself, but it's a fascinating response. He he would say, Oh, there you are. Yes, I've been waiting for you. Of course, I mean I'm in the Iron Man World Championship. Of course I'm hurting. There you, where you're where have you been? Of course, there's the pain I was waiting for. Thank you for coming, finally. And I just love that because it flips it on its head, and instead of being, oh man, my legs are hurting, it's sweet. My legs are hurting. You know, almost non's void, shut up legs, kind of stuff. Yeah. Of, okay, that's where we're supposed to be. We're there, now what?

Yeah, yeah, and and that's brilliant. And one of the things that he said to me, I was James Fitzgerald. Um, I probably talk about him on this podcast all the time, but he was like, uh, yeah, it's part of the human experience. You know, that's that's what it is. You embrace it, it's part, it's why you're doing the race, right? Um, and that was uh yeah, very powerful. I'm curious too, because you talk about disassociation of using music and things like that. I feel like that's taboo in the endurance world. No?

No, it's it's it's phased. So for example, um, in an Iron Man, uh a 10-hour Iron Man is a pretty good race, depending on what the course is. So you're out there, you know, you're swimming for an hour, you're biking for five, five fifteen, you've got your 15 minutes between the two big transitions, depending on how they lay it out, then you've got your 315, 330 marathon. And so that's a really long time. So if you spend that whole time associating, if you spend that, and associating, there's a lot of different self-talk, but the basic ones are informational. So that's how's my form? Are my shoulders relaxed? Am I holding my head straight? How's my cadence? Am I lifting my leg? That that's one piece. Motivational, come on, we got this. You can do this. You can come on, come on, Coop, you got this, buddy. Those are the two asociative types of self-talk. The dissociative is, for example, faith is really important to me. So maybe it's praying for somebody different. I on my water bottle, I'll have like different my wife written on there and my kids' names, and I'll I'll just be praying for them or thanking God for them during certain times of the race. Um, during the run, you you it's 26 miles, dude. You're not gonna focus on your cadence for 26 miles. You can't. Like you lose it. It's not really associating, it's just faking it. So you might go, you know what, during miles 13 to 15, I'm just gonna take in the salty smell and the breeze coming off the ocean. Instead of complaining about the wind, I'm gonna just really enjoy this process. That would be dissociating, but it allows you to focus. One of the things I've been playing with, you can't use headphones in a triathlon, obviously, but you can in running races unless you're in the Olympic trials. And so um, I'm doing a half marathon in a couple weeks, and what I'll do is I'll go with I'll have the music on on my ears, but I won't turn it on until about mile seven, eight. So the first seven miles or so, I'll do asocive where I'll focus in how's your cadence, smile, relax, what are the shoulders doing, push off the toes, that kind of stuff. And then the last six miles, music comes on, let ACDC get its job done, and let's let's do this thing. So that that's the way that I've mixed it. And I and other times I've gone every other mile, and I actually might do that in two weeks, it's a little bit longer, where I'll go nothing for three miles, then I'll click on the music and I'll go a mile with music, a mile without, a mile with music, a mile without. And what that does is it it keeps you from creating that I don't know what the word is, but it it's where you get so used to it, it's not helping anymore. You you just like and that's what happens with music. People that use music during a marathon, it ain't helping you after a couple miles because it's just it's just background noise at that point. Whereas if you go on and then you go off, and then you go on and then you go off, it's that. That's fresh. It's firing you up and it gives you that boom. But you're what you're doing is you're bouncing back and forth. Associative, dissociative, associative, dissociative.

Yeah. Oh, that's really great. Yeah, it's a great game plan. So all right, Brad. I mean, most people aren't going to run American an Iron Man, right? Most people are probably, I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So we, you know, I don't think we swim in the same circles. Uh, but uh, you know, where where does this where does the rubber meet the road on these type of techniques for like an everyday life?

You know, let's talk an organization, for example. You've got a well, you know, let's let's take one that probably hits us all. And except for you, because you got this perfect work situation set up, but you got somebody at work that you just it's not working. Like you hate this person. You can't stand them. Every time you're in a meeting with them, you just want to blow your brains out or blow theirs out. And it's just driving you insane. So here's an opportunity to give you some functional mental toughness. So, first of all, let's do the Thrive. Let's let's make sure when those meetings are coming that the two nights before we dial that sleep in. That we're not binging on Netflix, we're not sitting on our phone, we're getting a good sleep two days before that meeting. Second thing, we prepare. So we think about that. We we we one of the things you can do is callus. So in athletics, that would be going out and doing a track session so that you're used to running 530 pace for short distances so that a 550 pace isn't as painful. You're callusing that that pace. Uh, we do that in athletics constantly. That's the whole idea of training. But in this, maybe you get some opportunities with that person in two and three minute increments. You just stop by their desk and just say, hey, I, you know, I really like that picture on your whatever, it doesn't matter. But you're not trying to survive an hour meeting with them. You're just callusing. You're just getting a little bit here, a little bit there. And so that would be a prepare piece you might use. And then an activate, there's your self-talk. You just constantly remind yourself during that meeting. This is a good person, it's one of my teammates. We don't see eye to eye, but but I want to support them. It's it, you know, I'm I want to be the the high road here. And you just use that constant self-talk as you go through it. So that would be a super simple example of of a way you could use Thrive, Prepare, Activate for something that probably is a dr is a deal for all of us.

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny, like people don't realize how day-to-day stressors are so prevalent, right? Stuff like that stuff, right? Or for a lot of people, um, I'd say anyone who's who's married, you know, has stress within their relationship, right? People forget like how stressful that is. Right. Um, because you don't associate things at home with, you know, the obvious stuff is work stress, right? Everyone thinks about work stress, but you know, how much that that has at home, that's probably applicable in every I mean it is applicable in just about every category, um, as long as you do you coach people through this?

Like I'm too busy. But so we we do coach clients through it, but I'm not doing that. So our coaches, US Corporate Wellness, we coach employees across the country, so thousands of people. And so, like, we have a coaches meeting today, actually, and thank you for scheduling it as you did, because that allowed that to happen without overlapping. But the so we'll be talking about some of these things with our coaches, and then they'll utilize these techniques. I did a webinar and several of our coaches were on it last week that talked this stuff through, so then they can take it to their clients. Uh, eventually, what we'd like to produce, once the PhD is over next summer, hopefully, um, I want to put together an assessment so that people can, because a lot of people are like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. Uh, where do I start? And so the assessment isn't going to be anything validated or you know, go through the reliability studies. It's simply gonna be a starting point where you can say, Oh, I didn't realize my Thrive was that far off. Or, hmm, didn't think about the prepare pieces there. So it'll just give them some things, like, you know, 10-minute quick thing go through and go, oh, wow, yeah, I've got a lot of opportunity in the activate and give them some examples for that. So we will have that available eventually. It's just not there yet. Yeah.

Awesome.

Awesome, man. You know, one of the big things to remember with this, Eric, that you mentioned you you kind of led me onto earlier, the big thing with functional mental toughness is you have to care and you have to want to go beyond your natural trend line. So, with our example of the employee you don't get along with, we do that all the time. We we just have people and we just avoid them, and and that's fine. And that doesn't take functional mental toughness. That's just be that's just you being you. You're just gonna avoid them, you're just gonna be an idiot, and it's not gonna be a good thing long term. You're not gonna use functional mental toughness. Or a run. Like I went out for a little four-mile shakeout run this morning, so I'm doing that race tomorrow. That that didn't require functional mental toughness. That's just Brad. I just enjoy running. It was a nice, easy pace. But tomorrow, I'll need it. So you only use functional mental toughness. Some people never use functional mental toughness, to be honest with you. Yeah. I mean, some people just go through life the way their physical and background and mental and emotional pieces allow them to do. But if you want to move above your trend line, even for a few minutes, that's where this stuff helps.

Yeah. Yeah, the desire, right? You have to have the you have to start with the desire.

You have to want a little bit more. Did you read the book Um How Bad Do You Want It by Matt Fitzgerald? No. Awesome book, one of my all-time favorites. Um, and he goes through a whole bunch of different athletes from multiple different backgrounds to try to figure out you know, how did they take it up a notch? So this is case study stuff. When Samuel Marcora, a great researcher, did the foreword for him. And there's a quote at the beginning of it that basically says, in every, and this is completely off the top of my head, so I won't get it exactly right, but it's something like in every race, you have to answer the question, how bad do you want it? And then you've got to basically answer it with your actions. I mean, it's this powerful reminder that, and that's the same with life. I I we can float through life. You know, we live they always say, you know, first world problems. You can float through life. You don't have to, you don't have to work beyond, you don't have to go beyond, you don't have to do the extra. You can just get by uh on, you know, just because our world is pretty blessed. But if you want to do more, if you want to have a bigger impact, if you want to dial it up another notch, that's where functional mental toughness kicks in.

Yeah. Yeah, and I imagine it's extremely applicable for you know what I call the sport of business or entrepreneurship, right? Yeah, absolutely. Not not easy. Um, you know, sometimes uh I wonder, you know, I think anybody, any entrepreneur knows that every once in a while you get that craving and that voice in your head to be like, Eric, go get the salary job. Yes, we've all had that. Yeah, you know, and that's uh that's a big that's a big thing for it too. And it's so easy in our in our modern society. Oh, nothing's uh easy is probably not the right word, but it's very it wouldn't be very challenging to slip into the $40,000 a year job, right? Go through the motions every day, come home, go through the motions every when you get home, you know, do your Netflix, right? Wake up. And people can do that. People some people are cool with that.

A lot of people are, and they can't, they're not using functional mental toughness. No, no, no, that's fine.

Yeah. It's really interesting, man. It's it's cool. I'm excited to see how it how it all comes out. Um, you know, one of the burning questions I want to ask you today is, you know, uh, you know, it's kind of shift the conversation a little bit towards you know, health and wellness professionals. Um to me, um, and maybe you can help shine light on this because I'm I'm guessing I'm not alone, but the term wellness professional seems a little ambiguous to me, right? Uh I think it could be so many things, but do you have like you know a definition of what a wellness professional is? And then um I I like to hear your thoughts like where it is right now and and where it's where it's all going.

That's funny. My wife is at a meeting the other day, and we're in Colorado, so that gives everybody context. But um, she's like, yeah, we run a wellness company. Like, oh, really? So all the marijuana laws, has that been a good thing for you guys? Because to your example, marijuana is seen as a wellness thing. Oh, yeah. Right? So, by the way, I found that quote. I was fiddling over to try, I knew I had a picture of it. So, this is that quote from Matt Fitzgerald, the book, How Bad Do You Want It? And this says it so much better than I did. In every race, something within each athlete poses a simple question. How bad do you want it? To realize your potential as an athlete, you must respond with some version of this answer more.

I love that.

Yeah, it's cool. That is really cool. Yeah. Functional metastaphis. Do you want more or are you fine where you are? And if you're fine where you are, you don't need me. But if you want more, then I can help you get that more. So anyway, back to your question. Just I just love that. I didn't want to leave it.

Yeah, no, thanks for grabbing that. That's great.

Um so what health and wellness. So um the the national board exam technically is called the International Consortium for Health and Wellness Coaches. So they mix the two together. Historically, health coaches tend to be more clinical. So they're gonna walk you through your biometric screenings, they're gonna talk through what your blood pressure means, that kind of stuff. Wellness coaches tend to be on the health side of life coaching, if you will. So let's let's think this through what's going on in your life, how do you want to build off of that? Um so for us, we see it as a very holistic thing. We're for example, if um if you're an employee with one of our companies or you come to us for coaching and you're wanting to let's just say lose weight, a common one. We don't start with let's make a list of all your food. I mean, we might, but there's so many food weight loss is not weight loss, not weight loss. For some people, it's sleep. For some people, it's you know, they're not hydrated. For some people, it's poor self-efficacy. For other people, it's their relationships or their financial fitness is so bad they're stressed out, and so they're doing so we approach it as a very holistic thing. We're not looking at it and saying, So, Eric, you need to lose weight. Here's the three steps. Wellness coaching isn't three steps. Wellness coaching is what's going on in your life? Let's talk this through. How does that fit? How does that all work together? And that's where it's oftentimes a nice. We have a lot of personal trainers who go through the program because the personal trainers are used to being the expert. They come to you because you're the expert and you're gonna help them build a program, dial in the workout, and do that correctly. The wellness coaching expands that from saying, Well, you're still the expert of the personal trainer, but you broaden it out and you say, Well, they're the expert in their life, but I'm the expert in fitness. So let's start out here and find out what's important to them, what their lifestyle's like, how this fits into their life, and then we zoom it in. Simple example, New Year's resolutions. You know, everybody, the old thing is you go three weeks and you're done. I think a lot of times that's because we create these very broad generic goals that have no well, A, no accountability, but no specificity to your real life. So let's say a wellness coach, we're talking to somebody on December 30th, and they say, Oh, I'm gonna work out three times a week this year. Now, a lot of us in my former life, I'm a physical therapist with my background, would have said, Oh, cool, awesome. We met this goal. You you're dialed in, you're you're clearly motivated, you raise your voice, you're energetic about this, you've got your membership, we're gonna do this thing. The wellness coach says, Oh, interesting. Okay, so which three days? Um, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Okay, what time? Um, right before work. I gotta be at work at 8. I'll there's a place near my office, I'll go at 6.30. Okay, cool. What are you currently doing at 6 30 on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday? I'm uh, oh, wait a minute. I've got to drop my kid off on Wednesday at school. I can't do Wednesdays. Okay, but Monday works, 6 30. Yeah, Monday works. Friday works.

Yeah.

Okay, so then what's our third day gonna be? Well, you know, I like watching the Bronco games. I've got a treadmill I've never used. Uh so you see the difference? One is I'm gonna work out three times a week, and then we get into January and we go, oh my gosh, I can't work three times a week. Yeah. And all of a sudden we drop it, and now it's next year, and we say the same goal. The wellness coach says, Hold on, partner. When? What? When does that start? Where's it gonna be? What time is that? What are you currently doing now? Why will that change? You're not that motivated, those kinds of things. So that's a that would be an example of the difference.

Yeah. You know, there's terms in in the fitness uh industry that that really bug me. One is, well, same, same thing is um compliance and adherence, right? Right? Because there's like um, and I know it's it's probably for lack of a better term, but you know, people have like, well, what's what's the person's, especially in remote coaching, like what's the compliance rate of your, you know, how many workouts are they actually doing? Um and for I I don't like that term because it it means that you're an authority and that they are you know responsible to to you, right? Um and I think you know, true, truly great coaching, um, you know, like like you said, is is really holistic and understanding deep down what would drive someone. And you know, when I work with um, you know, new trainers, especially uh when I was training them at my gym, is you know, if you're doing a consultation with somebody, you gotta ask the question, why is that important to you three times? You know, you know, well, what do you want to do? I want to lose 20 pounds. Why is that important to you? You know, okay, great. Why is that important to you? Okay, great, why is that important to you? And then like there's a 50-50 chance someone ends up crying in your office, right? And then you got like you got something, now you got something to work on. Uh and I I I it's interesting to me too, because I feel like in the traditional fitness community, right, which is young, I give it 50, 60 years old, really. Um, you know, you start to hear this life, because I've actually posted, um, I guess I could even say I used it as clickbait on social media of like, hey, what do you think of the term life coach? Or what do you think of the term wellness coach? And a lot of the old school people just like, ah, it's bullshit, right? Like, you know, you know, lift the bar. And um, but it's true. And I'm wondering, you know, I think it's it's newly adopted, but it the regulation of those things, right? There's a lot of people out there who are now quote unquote life coaches, right? Um, how do you think it's gonna move from and maybe maybe you have a completely different perspective? That's what I see. It's kind of woo-woo now, but it's a real thing, right? It's but how do we how do we change that to make it more um digestible to the mainstream? Does that make sense?

It does. And and I don't know enough about the life coaching industry to answer that, but I can answer it for the health and wellness coaching side. That's what's happened. In the last 18 months, that's exactly what's happened. You and I could have been having coffee 18 months ago, and you say, Hey, Coop, you want to want to be a wellness coach? And I'm like, Yeah, what do you think, Eric? You two? You're like, yeah, totally. And we walk out of the coffee shop, wellness coaches. Well, as of September of 2017, yes, 2017, so about 18 months ago, uh, there's now a national board certification for wellness coaches. So you and I can call each other wellness coaches, you can call yourself wellness coach. You're not a wellness coach. You've got to be certified by an accredited program, there's a scope of practice, and I think this is the coolest part the exam, the national exam, is put on by the National Board of Medical Examiners. That's the same people that do the physicians. So physicians and wellness coaches now go through the same type, not obviously not the same level of education, but in terms of the exam process and the credibility and the comprehensiveness of it, it's a different animal. So it gets away from that woo-woo piece. And that's been a big focus for us at the Cattle's Coaching Institute is to say we got to make sure that we're one of the accredited programs because that keeps us on that cutting edge, that keeps us from falling into that woo-woo piece that you talk about, because that's so accurate that that's a perfect term. But that went away for those who are staying up on it, that went away in September of 2017. So it's uh it's pretty cool. It's it's been an interesting transition. And then even for us at U.S. Corporate Wellness, that's one of our biggest selling points, is all of our coaches have been through an ICHWC approved training program. There are there might be one or two other companies in the country that can say that, but not everybody's caught up to that yet. We're lucky because we were engrossed in that as a trainer running the Catalyst Coaching Institute, so it's just a natural extension. So it's it's a great question. We love it when people ask that question because the industry has changed so dramatically in the last 18 months.

So, what is that? Uh, if I want to become a health and wellness coach, you know, what is what does that process look like now? How extensive is it? How much how much time does it take? Um, you know, what what what can I expect?

Yeah, it's not as long as you might think. You can it's 35 contact hours initially, and then another 10, 10 to 12 uh for the second piece of it. And you could get through it. Our structure right now is we do four programs a year in Colorado, and then we just schedule one in New Jersey for all the East Coast folks, it'll happen, I think, September sometime. And and so that takes care of about half of it. And then everything else you do remotely, you've got to do a certain number of coaching sessions, you've got to pass the exam internally with us, and then sign up for the national board exam and pass that one. So for you, you know what though, a really important thing for your for your audience, if anybody out there is thinking about doing this, don't delay more than a year. Here's the deal on the ICSTBC. They are changing, basically, they they did an entry-level program to give everybody a running start. But in October of 2020, if you have not applied to take the exam by October 2020, I'm really sorry. Because it like seriously, I don't want to we're early enough now to joke about it. When next September comes, people are gonna be freaking out because they're gonna almost double the requirements of classes. And guess what? We're not gonna do those double classes for free. So we're gonna charge more, you're gonna pay more, you're gonna have to take more time, the exam's gonna get harder. It's gonna be brutal. By the way, I just thought of something since a lot of your listeners it's through the podcast uh as compared to the YouTube, but uh our podcast, the Catalyst Health and Wellness Coaching Podcast, our third, I think it's our third ever episode, talks about the national board exam. Two of our coaches help write the questions for the national board exam. They went out to the their offices to help write those. And so we did an interview with these two coaches. They did an awesome job. They can't tell you what the questions are, obviously, but they can tell you how to study and they can tell you how to repair and what that looks like. So if anybody is kind of thinking, you know, that kind of sounds interesting, but I have no idea what he's talking about. Go pull up that third episode because they go into all the details of how that works. Awesome. Awesome. And that was episode number three. I think so. It was one of the first five, I know that for sure. Okay. And I and I actually we interviewed the two people that are in charge of the ICHWC about a week ago, and that one's gonna post April 2nd. So Leanne and Nicole were wonderful. They were very generous with their time. They laid everything out for everybody about how the process works. So that one's not live yet, but depending on when people hear this, it will be very soon, a couple weeks from now when we're recording this. Awesome. Awesome.

So uh the future of being a health and wellness coach, like where do you see, yeah, like what where does the opportunity stand? Where do you start to see it fall in the traditional hierarchy of like, you know, fitness pro, medical, professional, um somewhere in between? Like where do you see all that? And maybe just because I like this too. Any technology uh that you see coming into play that that people have to be aware of as well?

Yeah, great questions. And I'll answer the first one and I'll probably forget the second one so you can circle me back and go, what about the second question? Yeah. Um so where is it going? I'll I'll tell you where we're seeing our graduates use this. So, first one is clinicians, personal trainers, triathlon coaches, running coaches. So that group that already has an audience, already has business, already is doing something kind of sort of related to this, they're going through the certification to broaden things up, to have more access to more people, to be able to offer more services. It's a wonderful uh with all your business training that you provide to people, you you talk about the kind of the funnel and working towards that actually being clients. And what that does is it expands your funnel out. You have more people instead of only people that want to go to a gym or only people that want to lose 20 pounds, suddenly you've got people that say, Yeah, my life sucks right now. Could you help me with my stress and my sleep and my life balance? And that, oh yeah, totally. I'm a certified wellness coach. So that's that's part of it is people that already have something they're doing, and they're expanding that audience from 5% of the population to 70% of the population, maybe more. Right. Um, the second area people are doing it is as a small business. So they're literally going through the program and starting their own wellness coaching. And for some people, it's those same folks, like a physical therapist, that is I'm 53, so they're they're a physical therapist, they're in their 50s, early 60s, they're thinking, I love being a PT, but at some point I'm gonna retire, I could use a little extra money. So they go through certification now, they pick up five or six clients, they can do it on whatever schedule they want, and they see that as kind of just some extra bonus money as they go into retirement. So that'd be a second group. Third group is the folks that are more early career, and this is what they're gonna do specifically. So they go into it and they start their own business or they work for another company. There's a lot of wellness companies out there. I mentioned U.S. corporate wellness because that's us, but there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of wellness companies out there. And so they could get a job for one of those companies. And then long term, part of the reason for the ICHWC is they're working towards it being approved by insurance. So at some point down the road, and I always tell people, be careful what you ask for, because all those people that are listening to this who are in healthcare are saying, oh no, no, no, no, you don't want that.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's also nice to know that you're going to get paid something. And so that's part of the ICHWC national board exam, is working towards the point when it's approved by insurance. And you're seeing a lot of data out there now with physicians having such limited time with patients. You know, they have four to six minutes with each patient. And if you can partner a wellness coach with a physician, everything changes. The follow-through, the outcomes, everything, the ROI for the insurance company improves dramatically. So that would be another area. Um, I actually remember your second question, technology. There are so many, because that's where the money is, Eric. We're in the coaching world, our margins on coaching don't change much. If we have 10,000 coaching sessions a month or 200 coaching sessions a month, we're clearing pretty much the same on every session. Whereas technology, if you've got a million people using your tool, it costs you a lot to get the first hundred covered, but the next 900,000 people, it's all margin for you. That's not the world we we play in, but that's where all the venture capital money is going. So, yes, you're going to continue to see that. You're seeing that with you know Fitbit and Garmin and all these groups out there, and every day there's 10,000 new apps that are available. So we'll continue to see that. To me, that just is another reminder of how important the coaching is. Because as wonderful as some of those things are, and we've got some we use in our business that we think are super cool, but as wonderful as those are, we're human beings. The app is a great way to get us started. It's a great way to kind of remind us, keep it on our radar screen. But when it comes down to it, we're real unique people. And what motivates you is different than me. And what motivates you today is different than what motivates you next week, or maybe this afternoon. And so that coach can help you work through those things on a personal level, and that's where the real change takes place.

Yeah, awesome. Well said, man. Well, Brad, I know um, I know you have a busy day today, so I'm gonna kind of wrap this up. So if people want to get more information, I mean, there's so many things that you do, right? I mean, uh functional mental toughness, um, catalyst coaching, uh, US corporate wellness, like is there all of those places, right? But is there a couple places maybe they can go get a hold of you personally?

Yeah, if they're if they want to get a hold of me, email is uh bcooper at uscorporate wellness.com. If they like some of this mental toughness stuff or the human performance stuff, that's pretty much what I use Twitter for. So if you're into that and you want to connect on Twitter, I basically post new concepts, uh, retweet people's studies. I follow a lot of professors that are in the uh optimal human performance area. So I'll retweet some of that stuff or comment on it. So if you're into that, my Twitter is at catalyst number two thrive. So you gotta be able to spell really well to follow me, but it's catalyst number two thrive. And then if you have any questions, I'll give you the email. And if you're into the wellness coach certification, you want to check that out, it's catalystcoachinginstitute.com. And then the last one I'd say is what we talked about before with the podcast, the uh catalyst health and wellness coaching podcast. That's actually available through the catalystcoachinginstitute.com website. Cool so you can either directly through iTunes or or pop it up there. But um, some some some pretty cool pretty cool guests have been real gracious. So yeah, appreciate you letting me mention that. And uh great job, man. It's great to see you again.

Yeah, this was a lot of fun, man. I really enjoyed it, and uh, you know, we'll we'll I'm sure we'll get you back on at some point.

Sounds great. Take care, everybody.

Yeah, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Hey fitness fans, don't leave yet. It's your host, Eric Malzone, and I have a quick favor to ask. Actually, three favors. So, number one, if you're a fan of our show, I asked you to do something that takes under three minutes. Go to iTunes, please, and subscribe to our show. Please, please, please. It means so much to us, it's so important. And then give us a favorable review. We would really, really appreciate it. And uh, I can't tell you how much it means and helps us out. So I know it takes two minutes of your day, and uh it means a lot to us. So please do that. Number two, go to our YouTube channel, our fitness marketing alliance, and uh please subscribe to our YouTube channel there. Number three, if you like this episode or any of the episodes that we've released, share it on social. That's huge, that's a big deal for us, and we're we put a lot of work into these episodes, uh, trying to give you great actionable content uh for the fitness industry. So that would mean a lot. And that's it. So we have some big plans coming up for this show. I'll be talking about that in the next couple episodes. But thank you so much for listening. It means so much. And uh if you have any questions, please reach out to me. I love to hear from everybody. Eric, E R I C at Fitness Marketing Alliance dot com