Navigating Social Media - Dean Somerset

Everyone's got a humor account that they follow, or probably 20 or 30. Everyone follows an animal account and everyone has an account that they follow either for information, surprise, or like gym fail or something like that where they don't expect something to come up. In terms of where you see the greatest amount of content development, if you can attach some level of humor to your content, it'll be way more powerful than if it's just dry technical content.

What's up, fitness fans? Welcome back. This is the Future of Fitness Podcast and Interview Series. This is your host, Eric Malzone, coming at you from Whitefish, Montana. And this is episode number 106. I talked to Dean Somerset. Woo! This was interesting. We talked, uh, I didn't know where this interview was going because you know, most of them I have a loose framework of what I want to talk about, but I did not think that we were gonna go this far into social media. And uh, you know, when I asked him the question of you know what has shifted um the last two years for fitness professionals, he mentioned social media, and we got in deep. So this is actually a very actionable plan uh of how to approach your social media if you want to get more attention, which ultimately is what you know we all want. If we want to get more clientele, if we want to spread the word, if we want to make a bigger impact, right? We need more attention. So great overall interview. Uh, I'm gonna listen to this a few times because my social media could be a little bit better. Uh I'm presume yours probably could too. And you know, if you are one of the good guys or good women in the industry, uh, we need you having better social media. Because let's be honest, some of the things that are going up on Instagram, um, you know, it's not doing us any good as an industry, right? As a profession, like professionals. Professional people who educate themselves and then serve the public and server communities. Um, we need more people like you getting out there and doing it. So before I get into the interview, I have a simple call to action for you. And if you can just go to whatever you're listening this on iTunes, uh YouTube, um Stitcher, Spotify, all of those, right? Castbox. Um, go and subscribe to this podcast. You're not gonna want to miss a thing. I promise you, this is my promise to you. I will continue to put out amazing and well, I think it's amazing. Uh I will continue to put out great content that I think is really important for the people in our industry to hear if you do that. So go subscribe and then leave us a review. So um on January 8th, Jason Blevins wrote as a review. Thank you, Jason. Just listen to Dan John, dining and rereading. Love hearing wisdom from someone who's been in the game so long and known for getting exceptional results. I loved hearing Dan's keep it simple, stick to the basics approach. Great questions. Eric and an excellent job letting Dan talk. Some hosts try to stick to a script too much. Love the conversation. Uh Jason, thanks, man. Thanks for doing this. And if you guys go and leave a review, I will read it um out loud here on the podcast itself. So without further ado, let's get on to number 106 with Dean Somerset. It's a good one. Enjoy the show. All right, Dean Somerset, my friend, welcome to the show. My pleasure, man. Glad to have you. Yeah, everything's going well on your side of the things. Yeah, things are going really well. Uh I have zero complaints. And uh I'm, you know, my Friday just got a whole lot better because I get to talk to you. Like I was telling you before, I work with a lot of your colleagues, um, Tony Gentilcore and Sarah Duvall, and you know, so many people um really respect and like you. So uh it's fun to have you on the show and and highlight what you're up to nowadays. Um let's let's do this, ma'am, for maybe people who aren't too familiar with you. Give us a quick bio and give us your your background.

I'm a trainer and exercise physiologist in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and I work with people coming primarily from medical sources and uh referrals from other clients if they've got friends or family that are kind of beat up and broken and want to get back into action. Um I do a lot of online stuff, coaching online as well as uh content development and put out a lot of free content and some paid stuff too, and teach workshops all over the place. We just spent uh two weeks over in Europe. So having uh a paid two-week vacation in Europe is always a nice thing to do.

Yeah. What was it in Europe?

Uh we went all over the place. We started in London, then we spent a few days in Venice. Uh that was actually, we left about a week before they had the worst flooding in a generation. So we were walking through St. Mark's Square, and then we see pictures of people walking around with water up to their chest. So that was kind of a weird thing. And then Tony and I taught a workshop in Ljubljana, Slovenia, which is a portion of the old Yugoslavia. Um, Vigor Ground has a location out there. Luka Hosabar has a brother, but she brought us out there to be able to teach a workshop. And then we, my wife and I went to uh Paris for a couple of days, and then we went to London, and I did some filming with Shredder by Science, and it was a good time.

Yeah. That's awesome, man. Slovenia. That's uh, you know, I don't know too many people who have gone there. Um, I actually saw some of Tony's photos that he posted too. It looks interesting, it looks beautiful.

It's a really cool area. I mean, I think it's uh kind of under the radar as far as tourism goes. Like we went to Prague, Czech Republic a couple years ago, and I was like walking through a fairy tale, and then Slovenia was very similar. Like both of those areas weren't really decimated by wars when it came to like World War I and World War II. So a lot of really old architecture, but the community itself is still very community-based. It's not necessarily overrun with tourism or seeing crazy amounts of gentrification, but it's still everything like all the cars are new, the electrical's updated, they have plumbing, so all the things that you wouldn't expect to be in old eastern block areas, it's fine. It's sort of like being in Vancouver if it was one tenth the size of Vancouver. Interesting.

Yeah, I think there's actually an Anthony Bordane episode on Slovenia. Oh, that's right. That's where I get most of my news and insights on travel. So uh me too. Yeah, yeah, fantastic. So give me um, you know, a little like talking about the business that you have, like what what percentage do you think is education in person, online, speaking? Is it all pretty equal? Because um I know people always ask that question when they see because they many fitness professionals look like people look at people like you and Tony, right? And they're like, those guys have the dream life. Like they've you know, put the work in, they've figured out you know a spectacular balance of all the things that they do within the industry. Um yeah, give us some insights on how you balance it all out and then how much of that was intentional and how much of it was just you putting in the work.

Um, well, the intentional and putting in work are kind of coinciding with each other. So if you want something to happen, you have to put the work in for it. It's not just that it happens on its own, right? And I'm sure you would agree with that 100%. But um part of it came down to leveraging strengths. So obviously, being in a position where you can talk about stuff you really like, you have to know what you're talking about, and then you have to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. So I was fortunate enough to be able to work in a commercial gym that allowed me to do a lot of continuing education courses and build up a speaking capability. So it wasn't just something where I was like, I showed up on day one and said, Hey, pay me 500 bucks and I'll talk to you for two days about shoulders and hips. Like that wasn't an organic building process over the past 15 years to get to a state where I could feel comfortable saying to people, I know a little bit about what I'm talking about. So if you pay me money, you can come listen to it. Um, so it was something where I knew that I wanted to be able to travel and experience the world. How could I actually do that? Well, part of it was having money available to do that and having a reason to go to different places. So teaching workshops met both of those needs, but it was also building into a process to be able to get to that. It wasn't something where I was just like, all right, next week I want to be able to go to Slovenia. Um, that was a work in progress for a couple of years.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. And uh did you have, like when you're setting out on this journey, did you find yourself, I guess you know, I keep using this word intention, but intentionally being like the shoulder and hip guy? Or is that something that you just took particular interest to? You saw um, you know, maybe an opportunity to be known in that area, or how did that evolve for you?

Um, well, part of it was Tony and I came up with the idea of doing a workshop on shoulders and hips. So as a result of that, we started putting together the content, marketing towards it, creating social media info towards it, putting out content on the blogs and websites. So that kind of evolved into the process of us knowing what we're talking about with that kind of stuff. It's not that we woke up one day and said, hey, we're we're both hip and shoulder experts. We just put the content together to be able to organize for the workshop. And then the more people that saw us putting out content on that on those specific topics, the more we developed a reputation of knowing what we're talking about when it came to shoulders and hips. So it was kind of the directive of we both worked with people who had shoulders and hips. So we knew what we were talking about when it came to training them. So we just put together the content and organized it in a way that had a little bit of meaning and a little bit of connectivity to what we were trying to get from the audience and to resonate with a lot of people.

Awesome. Awesome, man. You know, I have uh, I was telling you before this this recording, I have a online community of fitness professionals, and uh, you know, I posed a question, and one of them, um, I think you may or may not know him, but uh Menachem Brody out of Tel Aviv, uh, he's he was asking me, he's like, you know, I really want you to ask, Dean, you know, what do you think um have been some of the biggest challenges within the fitness industry over the last two years uh as far as the evolution thereof? I know that's a huge question, but I think it um yeah, it was interesting to me because I like big questions, right? You know, uh things are changing, but you know, I know a lot of people, a lot of great people have left the industry because they feel like it's you know social media is is uh you know full of false promises that hurt the uh you know the people who um really are into it for the long haul. Uh, you know, that's one thing. But I'm I'm curious to get your take on on a on a big question like that.

Well, I think the biggest change has been algorithmically more than anything else. So even just a couple of years ago, a trainer who had very little social media presence could still have a reach and connect with an audience without investing crazy amounts of money into boosting posts or running paid advertisements or sponsored links or anything like that. Because the algorithm allowed the trainer to actually put something onto a business page and that business page actually reaching the people who had chosen to follow that individual. So now the algorithm's changed so that reach is considerably lower unless people pay to promote those posts or advertise or whatever. Um, so that's had a massive impact on the way a lot of trainers are able to get content out. I mean, even just a couple of years ago, blogging was one of the most common ways that you could produce information, and blogging seems to have gone the way of the dinosaurs. So now a lot of the people who are putting out regular content on a website or anything along that line have switched into Instagram. So it's way easier to put up an Instagram post than it is to put up a 2,000-word blog post complete with uh references, links, video, all that kind of stuff. You can put up an Instagram meme or a video of 30 or 40 seconds, write a quick blurb, and have that reach two to five times as much people as a blog, whatever. And with Facebook having a cap of 5,000 friends, you're limited as far as how many people you can interact with on that meme or on that uh social media platform. Uh Twitter seems to be changing as far as how trainers are accessing it and what content is being put up on that. YouTube is still powerful, but Instagram seems to be where more people are going for their information from health and fitness. Now, the downside of that is an average trainer getting into things where they have the best intentions to help training clients is going to be going up against companies like Bulletproof Coffee or Beach Body, who are putting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars towards boosting posts and advertising and marketing. So they're drowning out a lot of the smaller time players who are putting out quality information and content and just spreading BS garbage. So when I was in my local grocery store yesterday getting food after being away for a couple of weeks, they're they're actually selling bulletproof coffee. So it's like a pound of bulletproof coffee, a little thing of MCT oil, and that costs 50 bucks. And you figure that that's in grocery stores in Canada in the middle of nowhere, where people are promptly going to go out and buy that saying, Oh, this is gonna help me to lose weight. Sure, put an extra 300 calories into your coffee without changing anything else about your diet, that's not gonna help you to lose weight, but it permeates into that state. So in order to get that coffee into a grocery store, they had to pay the grocery store to have shelf space. They had to pay that grocery store to supply the product into that, they had to pay the grocery store in order to get it across the border into Canada and do stuff. They had the balance in their books to be able to say, okay, we have the money to do this, and now they're perpetuating the myth of what bulletproof coffee actually does. So a trainer getting into things with a zero-dollar marketing and advertising budget can't win. They just can't. But what they can do is speak to what they know and create a little bit of a soapbox for themselves and try and push into a thought process and say, you know, here's stuff that helps, and let's disseminate that as best as possible. You can still get a little bit of a viral impact, but compared to even what it was two or three years ago, the algorithms change to really reduce the guys that aren't spending money and really push the guys that are spending money.

Yeah. Yeah, it's incredible insight. So, you know, I always can I when I think about content that that I'm creating personally or or those that I work with or creating, I always want something that, you know, social media is undeniably powerful. And I do agree, everyone's turning Instagram and you know, even having a conversation with Tony recently about you know how to take advantage of the 20,000 people that follow him and swiping up and all that. Like, you know, it's interesting and it's it's very valuable. I always get concerned because what happens when Instagram changes and becomes a book of today? You know, how how are we developing you know, we look at uh content that's more evergreen, you know, let's talk about the classic blogging, for example, right? You know, once it's out there, it's got SEO, it's got a lot of things that are valuable that social media can't really do for you. I mean, you can search within Instagram, you can search within Facebook, it's actually Facebook's got an incredibly powerful search engine. Um I chose podcasting because I think you know it's evergreen, it stays out there, and I think it's a medium that's that's still gonna rise very quickly. But is there any type of if if you're talking to a fitness professional and be like, okay, here's my five-year plan on how I can create content that will stick around and not just social media. Do you have any insights on that or things that you would you would suggest for people?

Social media content is good, but even better than that is a web post or a page that directs people to that social media content and then captures their email. So email marketing, you're guaranteed to reach 100% of people who have subscribed to your email list. Whereas if you go on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, you're subject to the variations and algorithm and what they deem to be a necessary change. So right now, I think that the uh algorithm on a business page is like 1% of followers get to actually see an organic post that you put up. And the more people who like, comment, share, do all that kind of stuff expands like maybe up to 8%. Great. If you've got 100,000 followers, you might have 10,000 of them actually see what you put up, which is a really dismal actual link click if you want to consider that. Whereas if you have 20,000 people on an email list, 20,000 people will get that email. So you're guaranteed that if somebody signed up with a valid email address, they're gonna get the information you put up. And that's not gonna change based on an algorithm. Now, the GDPR, the thing that came through in Europe, where they say people have to have the option to buy in or link in or whatever, that's changed the rules a little bit in terms of you know ethical bribes and buy-ins and opt-ins and that kind of stuff. But as long as you have an unsubscribe button on every email, which pretty much all of them do, the person can say, I don't want to be a part of this list anymore, click unsubscribe done. So you're not tracking anyone who doesn't want to be there. But at the same time, you're reaching the people who said that I want to see what you're putting up.

Yeah.

Emails to be king. And I mean, I was hearing presentations five years ago where they said the exact same thing. If the algorithm changes, you're screwed. Email is king. And this was in 2013. So now it's becoming apparent that, oh, yeah, well, you might have a follower account until the algorithm changes and you don't reach the organic level that you were reaching before, which is happening on Facebook and Facebook owns Instagram, so it'll happen there too.

Yeah. Yeah, I would even say longer ago is when I started doing I started an email list about seven, eight years ago. Um that I own, and it it was by far the the best ROI. But you have to be consistent. And that's you know, people have to want to hear from you. Yeah, and you have to find new and creative ways to to keep their ear, uh, which is just part of the fun, really, of the challenge of it, I think, is you know, you have to enjoy that that part of it. Um, it's interesting because I had a conversation yesterday with another guy on a podcast that uh on my other show, and it was um, you know, he's a digital marketer, and he said websites are are obsolete, everything's about click funnels, you need to be able to direct people specifically where you want to take them. And I disagreed. I was like, you know what, I still believe because you you can control certain things, email marketing and your website. You own those. Those are yours. So I still think a good website is extremely beneficial. I think people over the age of 35 still Google everything. Although I had another discussion with somebody who's under the age of 30. She's like, you know, when I when I want to find out if somebody's, you know, um you know has value, I just search them on Instagram to see how many followers they have. I was like, really? Like that's that but that's the truth, right? They just want to see, but then you get into the issue, and this was a hot topic, uh, also, is like, what about people who buy followers? You know, people, you know, is that is that valuable? Where does that ethical line stop?

Well, the funny thing about that is that depending on how deep down the rabbit hole somebody will go and research, they'll research you on multiple social media platforms. So if they look at your Instagram and they see that you've got 50,000 followers and then they click over to your YouTube and see that you're active on there, but you only have 3,000 followers, they click over to your Facebook and see that you've got 6,000 followers, they're gonna start putting two and two together and saying, oh, something happened here, what's going on? If you're active on everything, you should have roughly the same number. Or if you've got like a ridiculous disparity of one platform to another, they're gonna start seeing that and start clicking through. And the funny thing was that my nephew and niece, my nephew's 17, my niece is 15. I was chatting with them about social media because, like, not trying to market or anything like that, but just saying, what do you guys do? Because I'm like 37 years old and I know what my bubble is, but I don't know what they're doing or what the next generation is. I said, Do you use Facebook? They kind of looked at me with a screwed up face, like, oh, why would I use that? I'm like, what about Twitter? They're like, What's Twitter? I was like, oh wow, okay. So what's big these days? They're like Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat. Yeah. That's it. For somebody who's in their teens or early 20s, if you're on any of those platforms, they'll see you. So if you're marketing to somebody in their early 20s, being on Facebook probably won't reach being on a blog, unless somebody is in an industry where they say follow this person and they find your blog that way, they probably won't follow you. If you're on Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, they'll follow you. I'm not on Snapchat and I barely go on YouTube. So I'm trying to hoop for the younger generation.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. It's funny. Um, and Snapchat, like, I dude, I don't even know what Snapchat looks like. I couldn't even tell you what it is. I mean, I understand the concept of it because I have, you know, 16. I my my nieces and nephews vary in age from all all teenagers. And uh, when I first heard a Snapchat, I'm like, that sounds awful. You know, the fact that you can just like send a photo that I'm like, you understand it doesn't just disappear once you send it. Like people can screenshot it and then save it. Uh so that was, you know, it's a fascinating world to me. I'm do you have any suggestions? But people like if you want to get a following online now, you really have to niche down, right? You really have to find something. It seems to me like you really have to find something and then go super vertical on it, right? Like, you know, um Sarah Deball, you know, she is the pelvic floor specialist for postnatal, right? That's a very niche area, and she owns it. Right. Do you think that's the way to get a following now, or do you think there's a step, do you have any steps that you would suggest for people to get there? And and how long does it take to get a following at 50,000? I mean, I've been on this online thing for 10 months, right? Really. And uh, you know, my following is modest uh on social media. It really is. And I realize it's maybe just it's it's a long road to get there, but some people seem to get there fast. I don't know. I don't know. I can't figure it out.

Um, I I don't really know the exact way to get a huge following, but I know the people who have gotten big followings have some commonalities on them. They connect incredibly well with their audience. Um, they've got a lot of time and money invested into the quality of the images. So they're gonna take it not just with a crappy old iPhone, but they're gonna take it with a DSLR, edit the photos, Photoshop where necessary, clean things up with filters, and then publish it. They're gonna do stuff like try to be uh as engaging as possible with their audience. They're gonna back engage with other audiences that they want to connect with, so liking and sharing other people's posts and commenting everywhere that they can so that it's not just a one way street. But the classic algorithm of social media dominance seems to remain the same. If you can have posts that include one of the three elements of humor, animals, or surprises, that's going to be what gets people interested in what you actually put out. So if you can be funny while holding a cat and shock people. People at the same time and accommodate social media. And then if we think about the social media follows that everyone out there has, everyone's got a humor account that they follow, or probably 20 or 30. So somebody's posting up like funny memes or jokes or whatever, everyone follows an animal account, whether it's something like We Rate Dogs or like uh the dodo or something like that. And everyone has an account that they follow, either for information, surprise, or like Jim Fail or something like that, where they don't expect something to come up or something like that. So, in terms of where you see the greatest amount of content development, if you can attach some level of humor to your content, it'll be way more powerful than if it's just dry technical content. If you mix a dog or an animal or a cat or maybe like a unicorn head mask in there to surprise people and have an animal involvement in there, that's gonna go over way better than just a video of you deadlift.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I you know, I I uh I looked at your website, I followed Tony's website, and you guys both are hysterical writers, right? It's really funny, and it keeps me reading, you know, past the first couple sentences, which is the most important. Another guy who comes to light is Mark Fisher for Mark Fisher Fitness. That's hysterical. I mean, his content, if you check out his YouTube channel, people, like it is funny. And uh, you know, it's got so much character. And now I think about like Tony Genskoyo's jokes about him shirtless with his cat, right? Like I'm like, oh that okay, now it's all circling back. So just to review some of those things that you said for for people who are are listening. So, you know, quality of images is is really important. Um engaging with not only your audience but other people's audiences and things like that is really important. And then humor, animals, and surprises. That was kind of like the big things.

Yeah, and education comes in so far down that list that if you want to make education important, you have to include other stuff as like a corollary to that educational content. So if I want to teach somebody about, let's say, a deadlift or a foot position or something like that, it either has to catch people by surprise, it has to be funny or it has to have an animal. Like that just seems to be the way it is. Like, if I can't catch somebody by surprise with a deadlift post, or I can't include some humor about deadlifting, how many thousands of posts get put up today about a deadlift? No one's gonna care. So I gotta catch people's attention somehow if I want them to actually pay attention. Yeah, like just a video of me deadlifting in my basement and I say, oh, it took 405 for a ride, that might get like three likes. If I do a video of me deadlifting and then I do the splits right afterwards, okay, cool, that might get 20 likes. If I do it while my dog is photobombing in the background, that'll get like 600 likes. And it had nothing to do with me. It was just the dog in the video doing nothing, but just like walking by and it's like, oh dog, oh my god.

Yeah. Oh man. And of course, there's also sex appeal too, right? I mean, you can't deny, you know, the Instagram. I mean, when I take my shirt off, yeah, yeah, right, exactly.

My mouth brings the voice to the yard every time I take my shirt off, right?

Yeah. Uh Dean broke the algorithm again. Great. Uh do you I mean, could you imagine that we'd actually be having this conversation 10 years ago? And that this didn't exist 10 years ago.

And Instagram didn't exist 10 years ago. So why would we be talking about something in the future that didn't exist?

Yeah. But I mean, it's just mind it blows my mind that we'd be talking about, okay, in order to get great content education out there through social media, we're gonna have to have a dog. Uh we're gonna have to surprise somebody, and we're gonna have to, you know, it's it's just an interesting state of how fast it happened, is the point I'm trying to make. Is like 2007 is when the iPhone came out, right? Changed everything. 2007 was one of the most crazy years technologically ever of everything that came out. Uh and here we are talking about these things.

Yeah. I mean, who would have thought Chewbacca mom would be able to put on some weird mask she got at Walmart, laugh for 20 seconds, and then have her kids' college educations paid for.

Yeah.

Just from uh a weird Facebook Live video that she had like 200 friend contacts, and that thing blew up to like 100 million views, and she got on like Ellen and met Mark Zuckerberg and had her kids' colleges paid for because of this. So that had the all elements humor, surprise, and an animal. Because Chewbacca's an animal, right?

Yeah, yeah, he is. Uh that is hysterical video. I watch it, I watch it 10 times because her laugh, you know what, made my guy.

Yeah, just today you watched it 10 times, didn't you?

Yeah, exactly. Just this morning. I was like, I could prep for a Dean interview or I could watch this video again.

Chewbacca mom. That's the way to go.

Oh, it's so funny, man. It's so interesting. And it's it's tough because you know, I think uh I I have I think most people nowadays have this relationship. And I I didn't intend to talk to all this social media, but it's really interesting, it's really relevant. Because, you know, I I think like me, like a lot of people, I have this this friction with social media where I kind of want to retreat from it because there's so much it's so fake, right? I mean, in in so many ways, it's just so not real, um, but it's so necessary. You know, if I want to spread the word and get an audience and and do the things that I want to do with my life and my my career, um, you know, I need to be there. And uh how how do you do how do you personally deal with that? Or do you do, I mean, I don't know, I haven't checked your honestly haven't checked your social media accounts. I don't know how active you are, but how do you deal with that kind of that humanization part of it, right? Where we all want to be authentic, but we need we need a following. True.

I mean, part of it is that I don't post on a schedule, I post when I have something to say. So that adds a little bit of authenticity to it, but also a big realization is that people will find their own groups and they will find their own realities. So I mean, we could look at what's going on with politics or religion or anything like that. People will gravitate towards what they feel to be their side. So if somebody wants information on coaching or deadlifts or a funny meme about deadlifts and coaching, they're gonna find the people who put that kind of stuff out and say, I like you, I'm gonna follow you. But they won't find that if they don't have somebody putting that out. Now, another big realization that a lot of coaches and trainers need to have is that for many people that they come into contact with, you are that individual's point of entry into the fitness industry. So it's not like they have access to 50 million different accounts or bloggers or whatever that all talk about the same stuff. They might, they might not. Uh, NBC used to have a really good slogan for a lot of their rerun TV shows. If you haven't seen it, it's new to you. So when somebody hasn't seen the information on deadlifting, foot position, hip hinging, spinal stability, any of that kind of stuff, it's new to them. And you are their point of entry into the fitness industry for any information. Now that doesn't matter whether you have 300 followers, 300,000 followers, or whatever. Those people that follow you are getting information and you are their only source of information. So put out good content for it. It doesn't have to be something where, oh, well, this has been talked about so much. Okay, but if the people who follow you have never seen it, it's new to them. That doesn't mean that you can't put out content about it and put your own spin on it, or put your own personality on it, or maybe do it while wearing a horse head or a Superman cake or have a dog photobombing in the background. I mean, you have the ability to do all that kind of stuff if you want or not. It's a matter of what's your personality and how do you relay that information. But also think of it as like developing a back catalog. If your client comes to you in six months and says, hey, my knee is hurting whenever I deadlift, what do I do? Oh, I put up a post about that six months ago. Here you go. Here's the content that you're looking for in my back catalog. You can use that on YouTube, you could use that on Instagram, you could use it wherever. If you're looking to do online coaching, do video tutorials of exercises, put them onto YouTube and save the links so that way you can have those links available for your online coaching clients or your in-person clients, or somebody who just emails you randomly and says, How do I do this exercise? It can be a 30-second video. But without that catalog, it becomes a little bit harder to put that content in front of the people who are asking for it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. And I'm reflecting on this particular podcast, it started to pick up quite a bit of steam over the last few months. And a lot of it is that I have so many episodes backlogged that when people find me up, you know, they oh, what is this? Future of fitness, interesting. Oh wow, look at all these other ones. And then I start getting all these old ones getting downloaded, right? So we're starting to see all that. And the same thing happens on the YouTube channel. I've I've personally um already planning for 2019, but YouTube's gonna be a big push for for me and what I do and my my clients as well. So yeah, that's interesting. So I've Dean, I've asked um, you know, as of this recording, which is early November 2018, um, on my other podcast, I've asked almost 300 different uh fitness professionals from all over the globe what piece of technology they think is gonna have the biggest impact in our industry in the next decade. Right. So I've got a lot of social media is top three. Um, I won't tell you what the other ones are because I want to know your input. You know, besides maybe social media, what is there any technology that you're thinking maybe you're investing time and energy in, um, maybe even money uh on things that are gonna advance the industry or make just make a huge impact.

Honestly, I think the the phone is still underutilized. So not necessarily for making calls because who wants to talk on the phone anymore? That's if somebody calls me, I'm like, eh, god, what the hell? If I want to, I'll email you back about it. Um but I think that the phone is gonna get integrated a lot more into what we do as trainers, not necessarily in terms of like messaging or video or anything like that, but in terms of what I use my phone for, it's my scheduler, my invoicer, I take payments on it. Um, I do video analysis with clients, I do picture before and afters with my clients on that. I take notes based on the workouts on that. I use it as a stopwatch and timer. I also use it for bar speed or bar velocity training. I've got an app set up for that. More and more of the digital products that we have are gonna be directly linked to our phones. So I can see a future where phones are gonna be like omnipresent everywhere, more so than they are currently. And you still see gyms where they have a no-cell phone policy, which I look at this like that worked five years ago, that worked a lot 10 years ago, that doesn't work now. And you'll see a lot of gyms who say no filming anymore. Again, that doesn't work because so many of their members film themselves, either for coaching feedback or for social media or for whatever. And if a gym is actively discouraging that, they're gonna lose that. So a gym that should be at the forefront would actually purchase tripods and encourage their training members and clients to use those tripods rather than setting their phone up on a wait stack and hoping that it actually lines up and that gets the angle right. You know, give them the equipment to do the stuff they want to do in a better environment and encourage the stuff that they want to do within reason. Obviously, if they're filming other members, it's gonna become a problem. But yeah, make it so that people are able to understand, okay, you want to film in here? Cool, we'll put the tools in here in front of you. But here are the rules don't film other members without their permission, don't be a creep in the change rooms, don't do any of that kind of stuff. Do that, and then we got no problem. But it's a way that it's gonna help everybody at the end of the day to kind of capitalize on that. So I think phones are gonna be more omnipresent than they currently are.

Yeah, that's really, really interesting point. And you know, because many gym owners, many facility owners, managers fight it, right? You know, always fighting it. What if you just wrote just take that wave and ride it? Um, but make sure it's done well. And uh that's a really, really that's a great point. I mean, you made a lot of great points on this, and that one's really uh top top one of the top ones. So you have a new product coming out too, um, or you've it's out, the shoulder and hip product. Tell us about that, what that is, who's it, who would who would want it?

Uh it's a video educational series for trainers, physiotherapists, coaches. We actually released it two years ago. Um, but the video product itself, we had great feedback from it. Everyone really loved it. So Tony and I completely updated everything on it, and now we're uh going through a new workshop series. So we called it the even more complete children hip blueprint because the first one wasn't as complete as it could be. This one's even more complete. We just did uh an event in Houston, Texas, and also Ljubljana, Slovenia. We have one coming up in LA in a couple weeks, and then we've already got our 2019 calendar booked for workshops. Um, we are hoping to film it at one point, but we want to run through a few workshops before we film it just to make sure that we get the feedback from people who've attended to see how we can make it a better workshop and put the best product forward possible. Because I mean, if we're I'm gonna put this out as a product, we don't want it to be us stumbling through things or having bad flow with it. We want to make sure it's the best product possible. But in the meantime, like complete shoulder and hip blueprint is out. We've got even more complete shoulder and hip blueprint in uh workshop stage right now. We'll be filming eventually and then we're releasing another digital product.

Right on. And uh so this will probably air late 2018, early 2019. Is there where do people find like the workshop schedules and any more information on that?

Um, if they want, then go on to my website, deansumerset.com, and I've got a schedule of events, and on that schedule it'll give a rundown of all the dates and locations of each of the workshops. Uh, if there's one in your area, great. If not, then just keep putting viewing it and hopefully one comes to you. Um the good thing about live workshops compared to doing something digital or anything like that, is you're kind of forced to pay attention through the entire thing, and it's in a more condensed format. So I I've got some people who have purchased a product I released seven years ago who are still working through the video series on it. Yeah. So it's like, well, great, I'm glad that you have that, and I'm glad that it's a resource for you. But it would have been better for you to attend in person and get through everything in one sitting rather than spending seven years getting through an hour of a video per year. That doesn't necessarily make the best use of the investment. It's there for you, and I'm glad they have it so now you can go to it if you ever want. But it makes things a little bit easier when you can actually go to an event, be forced to pay attention to it, get questions answered in real time, have the coach look at you when you're doing something and offer feedback, or if you have a problem with something, you'll all solve it. Check out the beat while the DJ revolves. Nice, nice, very nice.

Yeah, and I I have to agree. And I I learned by immersion, and workshops are the way to do it because you know there's so many other intangibles. There's you know, the relationships that you you make, right? Obviously, people get to meet you and Tony. Uh and there's also the the tangents, right? The most valuable things are sometimes when someone's presenting, they just go off, right? Just chase this squirrel, and you're like, whoa, that just blew my mind, right? And that's that's why workshops are amazing. And I'm I'm that guy. I'll I'll pay, I've paid thousands of dollars for online courses and then giving up because I just I just don't finish them. I need to be, I need to be there.

So the funny thing was that in the workshop we did in Slovenia, there was about six or eight people, all from Vienna, Austria, attending the workshop who didn't know each other. So they're all from the exact same city, and everyone's like, oh my god, you're you're from Vienna too. Oh, cool. So everyone was connecting based on not knowing that there were other people there from the exact same city. Yeah. And we were getting along really well. The funny thing was they all sat next to each other in the workshop without realizing they were all from Vienna. And one guy commented, it must be the smell. Okay, maybe I don't know. But like they all sat together. There was a group of physiotherapists from Triesta, Italy that all sat together, a bunch of people from Slovenia, and then we had people from Ireland, from Egypt, uh, one guy from southern Italy was there. So they all connected in just different ways that you can get through a digital video connection. So they were all leaving knowing each other and knowing people that they didn't know before that workshop occurred. So as a result, they're probably going to connect and do different stuff. So maybe they make some new friends, some bad decisions. I don't know. I don't play any kind of matchmaker, but whatever happens, happens, right?

Yeah, yeah, I agree, man. I agree. And it's so nice for people to actually get outside of video social and meet face to face. It's just that's a great thing. Yeah, it's a great thing. Well, Dean, uh, this has been I I knew it was gonna be a great interview because I knew you're you're a man of knowledge and uh insights and good humor. Uh, but I really, I really got a lot out of this. I am fascinated with how much you know about social media and and digital marketing and all those things. It's really impressive. So uh thanks for coming on and just blowing the doors off for value uh for listening to it.

I know enough to get by when it comes to social media, but even when I talk to guys who it's like that's their jam, that's what they do, I just leave feeling like I have no idea what I'm doing with anything in my life because they just blow me away. And it's like, oh, okay, I talked to you for an hour and I feel like a complete moron because you're using words and phrases I've never heard. And I've heard probably dozens, if not hundreds, of books on social media, marketing, promotion, all that kind of stuff, because that's just what you have to do. If you have a weak point, you gotta make it a strong point. It's not something I focus on as far as content delivery, but those guys who know what they're actually talking about, man, you want to feel dumb in a room. Walk into any kind of room where three or four guys who actually focus on social media marketing are talking about that kind of stuff, and you instantly feel like you regret every decision you've ever made.

What a great feeling. Yeah.

It's great because then it's like, wow, so much more room for activities. I can actually do more stuff now, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, Dean, thanks again, man. This has been a real pleasure. I appreciate all the value you put out there for the industry. And uh yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Dean Somerset.

Woo! Thank you very much for having me on. Hopefully, everyone had fun listening to me ramble on about different things. Yeah, absolutely.

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 ask 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 or 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'd love to hear from everybody. Eric E R I C at fitnessmarketingalliance.com.