Overcoming Imposter Syndrome & Building The Business You Want - Dr. Sean Pastuch

Just because you don't have the knowledge that I have in the subject matter that I have subject matter expertise in does not mean that you don't have subject matter expertise as compared to your client, who only needs you to be one chapter ahead of them. They don't know something. You teach them one little thing every time they come. They think you're the smartest person in the world.

Hey, what's up, Fitness fans? Welcome back to the Future of Fitness Podcast and interview series. This is your host, Eric Malzo, and this is number 134. I talked to Dr. Sean. That's huge. So, man, if you Google this guy, uh like I just did, you're gonna find quite a few podcast interviews, uh, a lot of interviews, a lot of content that this guy's put out there. He's a smart guy. Um he's also very humble and he's also very genuine. And I really enjoyed uh our conversations about all things, um, you know, imposter syndrome, uh, how to run a business, what it takes to be successful, mentoring business owners, um, just the industry overall on the space, uh, because he has interesting perspectives from from every different uh, I guess, level of success you can be at. And so you can find a lot more about him at ActiveLife RX, and he'll talk about all the things he's doing now. And uh yeah, it was it was great. It was powerful. So I hope you really enjoy it. And before we get into the episode, a couple things. Uh I just want to uh read one of our recent reviews by BK748. So not sure who that is, but I appreciate you taking the time to do it. And BK4748 says, Eric, not only is an extremely knowledgeable in all aspects of the fitness industry, he also brings on guests that are experts in their specific field, like Dr. Sean Pastige. If you're looking to enhance your fitness knowledge or just learn about new innovative companies, concepts, you need to listen to this podcast. Thank you. Great review, really appreciate it. And uh yeah, if you want to get your review read, uh go ahead and head over to iTunes, uh, give us a favorable review, give us five stars, and uh write something nice or not. Preferably nice. Nice would be great, and I'll read it on there, right? Uh also, this episode is brought to you by Elite Gym Insiders. So if you go to EliteGym Insiders.com, it is a free Slack community uh for basically anyone in the fitness industry, obviously, mostly for gym owners. So, you know, whether you're CrossFit, whether you're boutique, whether you're um yoga, Pilates, franchise owner, uh health club, you name it, you're gonna want to be in the group because A, it's an amazing place to network. Um there's a ton of actual, like real conversations, right? Like real valuable conversations, not just stuff about like, hey, where do I buy floor matting, which is great, but we're talking about like higher levels stuff. And if you're part of, if you're a member of the group, you're gonna be getting a lot of discounts. Right now, we're about to announce our uh our digital marketing partner with a great package. So if you're within that group, and once again, it's a free Slack community, so you just get in there and you're you'll have all the benefits of it. And you'll get to talk to people like Dr. Sean Pastuch, right? Uh so go to EliteGymIncenders.com. Why not? If you're in the industry, just go check it out and uh you'll get a lot out of it. I promise I manage that community as well. So um, excuse me. Lastly, before we get into uh the interview, I want to talk to you about certified course creation. So uh certified course creation, Kate Harameil and I uh founded this uh just not too long ago, uh within the last year, but we're we're busy. We're we're building great accredited online certifications, uh, and we're literally changing people's lives in so many different ways. So if you have a great uh set of knowledge in a very deep area, um very specific area that you think uh other people within the fitness, health, and wellness space should learn and would benefit from, and you can make a greater impact and have a lucrative online revenue stream, then go to certifiedcoursecreation.com or you can just uh hit me up at Eric Malzone at fitnessprofessional online.com and I'm happy to just have a conversation, talk about your idea, flush it out a little bit, see what the opportunities are within the market, because I have a pretty good grasp on what's going on uh in the market globally. So go to certifiedcoursecreation.com, check out our landing page, and learn a little bit more. And uh if you feel like this is something you want to pursue, hit me up. So now without further ado, all that gibber jather, uh, let's get on to a great interview with Dr. Sean Pastooge. Enjoy the show. We are live. Dr. Sean, welcome to the show, man. Thank you.

I appreciate very much you having me on.

Yeah, I'm I'm excited. I've had uh great conversations with you in the past. Um you are extremely uh authentic in the way that you approach things, not scared to be vulnerable. Um, and you've seen a high level of success and you influence a lot of people within our industry. So uh it's exciting to have you on the show. And I think a great way to start is always if you could just give us a little bit of your background, give us your bio and your story and kind of how you got to where you are now.

Sure. Well, first of all, Eric, I appreciate you saying all of that. Yeah. Uh second, uh that's how you want you want to start with a little bit of bio on how we got here. We could do a three-hour interview on how we got here. Um the the the short story for the people who are listening, and I'm sure you'll pry into a little bit more as we go, is I have a background as a personal trainer since 2005, and I became dejected with what I was able to do as a trainer because I was working with the clients who needed the most help. You know, I looked at the landscape and I'm like, okay, everybody in this place, the gym I was at, wanted to work with the hot chick and the jack dude. That's just what they wanted. It was it's the cool thing, you know, my client squaw, who cares? Right. I was like, cool, you can have those clients. I want to work with the people who feel like no one's looking at them. So it was very easy for me to ramp myself up. And at the same time, very difficult for me to deliver a high quality of service because they had so many different ailments that I was dealing with. So I would go to the physical therapy suite at the gym I was at and be like, hey, how do I manage a client who has this? Oh, well, just don't do this, this, this, this, and this. And I'm like, okay, but what do I do? Anything else? But that sucks. That's that's a that's a fucking abjectly terrible answer.

Yeah.

Um, so I apologize if cursing doesn't flag.

Go for it. Yeah.

So then I was like, all right, my dad's a chiropractor, maybe, maybe he's onto something, I'll go into practice with him. So I went to chiropractic school, got into practice with my father, and found that while he is my first and still most prevalent mentor, I did not want to practice chiropractic the traditional way it's practiced. Ice, heat, stim, adjust. This hip is higher than this hip. This bone is rotated this way. I was like, yeah, maybe. But how do you know the hip is not lower than the other one? You know? So that didn't work out. And I decided I had to go find a new population of people to help somehow. And I started treating patients out of CrossFit Garden City, which is a big CrossFit gym here on Long Island. And I loved it. So I ended up opening my own gym, only to get uh sued by my neighbor for noise and evicted by Hurricane Sandy shortly thereafter. And I'm like, you know what? I need a business that is going to allow me to be impervious to this kind of stuff. And I didn't know how to do it, so I thought about it for a long time. And to kind of cut this long story short, and I'm cutting this long story short, um, had a patient who moved, asked for continued support. And I was like, I don't know if I can help you as you move to San Francisco. I'm in New York. He's like, dude, figure it out. So we figured it out, and that's manifested into a company that now has helped over 10,000 people worldwide and has educated almost now a thousand coaches worldwide.

Awesome. So with that person in San Francisco, what how'd you do it? Was it all online? Was it?

Yeah, so so uh he was a grid league athlete. I'm not sure if you're familiar with so for the people who don't, it was essentially CrossFit done in teams, but like where you were just gonna do what you were good at. There was no find the weakness, it was let's get specialists to be great at everything, and they raced down this grid. Um cool idea for a spectator sport, phenomenal idea for my business, because everyone who did it got fucked up. So um, this guy goes out to San Francisco, and basically what we were doing was writing him better exercise to support the things that he was doing when he competed. So if you think of it like, for example, a thrower, like a baseball player, your training doesn't necessarily have to make him better at throwing. It needs to make him more resilient at recovering from 80 to 101 rep maxes in a three-hour bout. So that's what we were able to do for this guy, and his name was Drew, and he refers to the next person, to the next person, to the next person, to the next company, to their clients, and it was just it snowballed from there.

Interesting. Is the grid still around? I used to actually watch those live events in Long Beach back when I was in California. It was really entertaining.

I have to uh no, grid is not still around. It was I I you know, I'm speculating. I believe the problem that they ran into was they were trying to play it off as if they had it all together, yeah. Which made it difficult for them to get their audience to be like, it's okay, we get it. You're making mistakes, you're new. Because their first event was in Madison Square Garden, which says we're not gonna make mistakes. Right. And then once you've done Madison Square Garden, you can't do the Los Angeles Fitness Expo. Like it you don't you don't go watch the Jets play against the Rams at a high school. You just don't. Right, right. So state stadiums get better, venues get better, and they started at like, you know, the top.

Yeah.

And I don't know where to go.

Yeah. It reminds me of uh my very first girlfriend that I had, and for her birthday, I I like broke my bank and bought her like a $400 watch, right? And uh my sister's like, no, man, you gotta start like small because now you got to top that every year.

I'm gonna buy her like a box of Q-tips.

That would go well. Uh that's an interesting story, man. And you know, so with with tell me a little bit more about Active Life RX. Like, how do who do you work with? How do you interact with your clients? How do you what what are the actual products and services that you guys are putting out there?

Sure. So before you even get to that, I actually want to I think it's it's a good moment to talk about something that my my good friend Dee Cashu talks about called the success funnel, which is where I feel like a company like Grid made a mistake and where we've been careful not to make our own. Yeah. Which is when you're new, there's this whole room full of things that you can do wrong, and no one cares because you're new. You don't have to have uniforms, you don't have to have, you know, perfect sound, perfect lighting, you know, a schedule that makes sense, a venue that's incredible, or for a company like ours, like, you know, reliable ability to get back to somebody with customer service, a program that works every time you click it, an email that is properly sent. In the very beginning, we didn't need all of that. Now, as we're as we've matriculated down the line, once you improve something, you can no longer go back to what it used to be. So now our clients expect a very high level of service from us in everything that we do because you're you're you're reaching kind of that pinhole for excellence that we haven't gotten to yet, but we're working towards. But so to answer your question, what we do is we worked with everything from professional baseball players at the major league level, uh five CrossFit games champions. Uh over, I think by now, I'm I'm throwing this out there, I could be wrong. I believe over 50 CrossFit Games athletes. And they don't make up 0.1% of the people who we've worked with because there's not that many of them in the world. Most of the people who we help are people like you and people like me who are ambitious about the things that they want to be able to do with their body and are frustrated that pain that they don't understand and that other people don't relate to, like their physical therapist, their orthopedist, their chiropractor, their massage therapist, who keep on telling them, oh, just don't do it if it hurts. We help them solve that problem. And that became very successful uh in a fairly short amount of time, uh, considering we had no idea what we were doing when we first started. And it has now grown into something where we actually do almost 50% of our business educating coaches and practitioners on how to do for their clients and patients what we do for our clients.

Awesome. You know, it's interesting. And I I the first thought that comes to mind when you talk about your, I guess, your ethos for lack of a better term. You know, when doctors come into play and even a lot of coaches, the first rule is do no harm, right, when a patient or a client comes to you. Right. And I think that's something that almost can be easily fallen back on to take no action.

Well, I'd love to jam on that with you for a second because I've given I've given that a lot of thought. And when I was in school, you know, it's oh, do no harm. Got it. So I'm not gonna make this person hurt worse. Right. What's never discussed is what's harm. So what happens to somebody if you push them too far and their shoulder injury that didn't need surgery ends up becoming surgical? Are you a terrible person? Maybe if you were irresponsible. But let's look at it from the other side of the coin. What if the person who now needs shoulder surgery had come to you and said, Look, I don't care about the ramifications of doing the wrong thing as long as we're trying to do something. I cannot avoid this anymore because I'm gaining weight, I'm depressed, I'm irritable, I'm gonna lose my job, I'm gonna lose my relationships. I would rather take the chance that this becomes a surgical problem where right now it's not and do the things than just know that I never need surgery, but I can only wipe my own ass and change a channel going forward. Yeah. So to me, and I gave you the extreme, we don't take people who work with us who might end up needing surgery because of what we did. That would be from an online company, that would be completely irresponsible. Yeah. And we don't do it. What we are willing to do is make people uncomfortable in their training in ways that we know are safe based on a quality assessment and constant conversation with the client. So to me, it's yeah, do no harm. And that includes emotional harm. And that includes social harm. And that includes self-talk harm. It includes all of the things that as a coach or a doctor, you do to somebody when you slap them with a diagnosis and tell them what they can't do.

Yes. Yes. So I'll give you an example. In 2013, I herniated two discs in my back, right? And uh went to the ortho. They gave me the three options do nothing, get some injections, get surgery, right? I'm like, well, I don't like any of that. And like, well, yeah, and you're never gonna lift again. And I was like, I don't like that either. And for someone who values the movement, right? That pushing yourself, trying new things, you know, just an athlete my whole life, that could have easily spiraled into, well, you know, I'm gonna stop, I'm gonna stop training altogether. Um, you know, I'm going to uh, you know, just get fat and eat potato chips and maybe sell my gym and go on to something else, right? And it just, I'm like, I couldn't, I can't, I can't do it. So I you search out other things. And that's when I found like Eric Goodman at uh at foundation training. He helped me quite a bit um to get active again. I realized, well, you know, it's not necessarily maybe I shouldn't lift for a little while, right? But I can do other things. I can go swim. I picked up endurance, right? I did other things, and it helped me stay sane. And I think for a lot of people, I'm working with a client um one-on-one right now who just hurt his knee, right? Um, he's a coach, he hurt his knee, he hurt his hip. And man, I can see him spiraling into depression, right? Because he can't do the things that he loves to do. And I think when you say what I love about what you just said is when you think about the concept of do no harm, it's not just the physical part of the body that we're talking about. It's the whole human, right? And all the intricacies that go into that.

Well, so so I think that what the I'd love to tell you a story.

Yeah.

And then and then I'll I'll get to kind of what I was just gonna say. There's a better order to one of the first workshops that we ever did, uh, we've changed the format, but we were deadlifting at this workshop. And there was a reporter who came to cover the workshop, and she asked if it was okay if she brought a friend with her. Sure, bring a friend. So at the time it was like, yeah, I'll take anybody who wants to hear what I have this. So her friend comes and her friend is not participating in any of the weightlifting stuff. I'm like, just curiously, why aren't you participating in any of the weightlifting that we're doing? Oh, I hurt my back and the orthopedist told me I can never lift more than 55 pounds again. I said, Oh, wow, okay. That's interesting. How did the orthopedist land on 55? Like, why not 54 and why not 56? And you can see kind of like a little light bulb and wheels start to turn. She's like, I don't actually know. I said, okay. Would you like to, if it was at all possible, to be able to lift more than 55 pounds ever again? She's like, yeah, I'm a really competitive person. I love sports. I would love to be able to lift heavy weights again. So I said, okay. Would you be open to trying to lift more than 55 pounds today in this room with the supervision of myself and my staff, knowing that we're not going to let you hurt yourself, but that we might allow you to get uncomfortable.

Like, yeah. I guess I would. 45 pound deadlift.

50 pound. 55 pound. Really, really, really nervous going up to 60. Because the 55 is that number, right? She's been told that's your number. Pull 60 pounds off the ground. I said, Are you okay? Yeah, fine. Why are you asking? I'm like, well, because you're never allowed to lift more than 55 again. You just lifted 60. Oh, I guess I did, yeah. That day she deadlifted 205 for eight. And right now, she is in competition to be on the United States Olympic team for skeleton. And part of the test to be eligible, I don't know how this became a part of the test, but in order to be eligible to be on the skeleton team, you have to hit a one rep max power clean above a certain weight. So she did that. If she listened to her doctor who told her you'll never lift more than 55 pounds again, none of that is in her the realm of possibility for her. And I think that what I wanted to say before that, but I thought the story was a better fit before I said this, was too often the doctors forget that their patient wants to be empowered. They don't just want their pain gone. And when you can empower somebody to have the the certainty of, okay, this is what I need to be looking for that might actually set me off. And at that point, I have to make a decision about if I want to take that chance or not. That's very different than just never go over this weight and never feel that thing again.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it's powerful. And I I can't, I probably can't even count how many times I've heard great stories like that. You know, my doctor told me I shouldn't do this anymore. And then they do it in.

It's not that the doctor's a bad person. No, they're not. It's the problem is the doctor doesn't empathize with the reason that you want to do it. And to them, you walked in the and and part of it, the onus is on the patient. You walk into the office saying, Hey, my back hurts, make it go away. Okay, what hurts it? This. Great, stop doing that. Job done. Yeah. You need to walk into the office and say, hey, my back hurts when I lift heavy weights, and I want to be able to continue to lift heavy weights. Can you help me do that without back pain? And if the doctor says, No, great. That doesn't mean you can't do it. It means that doctor can't help you do it. Yeah. And now it's a different conversation.

Yeah, well, and also what the doctors, I mean, a lot of times, they're, you know, they're seeing patients every 15 minutes, right? Like they just need to.

But it's even even the physical therapist who who might spend a half an hour with you. Right. Like they're there the physical therapy schools, and I'm not blanketing all physical. Therapists. There are some phenomenal physical therapists, phenomenal kairos. Nothing that I ever say I want people to know is ever meant to be a blanket statement. It's a statement to the generality. Physical therapy school doesn't teach you how to get somebody out of pain onto the field performing at a top level. Physical therapy school shouldn't teach you that because 90% of people in the world aren't looking for that. And if physical therapy is going to continue to be a thing, if chiropractic is going to continue to be a thing, you need to serve 90%, not 10%. So all of that comes after school and with the ability to have the mindset of taking some chances and being willing to gear your entire practice after only going after that 10%. And then influencing the 90 below who saw it or recognizing 10% of 300 million is fucking 30 million people. That's a lot. It's a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great insights, man. And there's a you know, not to pivot too much here, but I do really want to make time for a conversation that we identified before we recorded about imposter syndrome.

Sure.

You know, and uh I I it's such a common thing. You know, every mentoring client I've worked with, um, every even partnership people, I told you this before, it seems like even the higher up you go into a large company at the C level or founder level, the imposter syndrome seems to get more powerful at times. And uh I know you work with people one-on-one and in personal development too, is kind of one of your one of your things that you do. And uh how do you first of all let's let's define it. Like how do you define imposter syndrome?

So the way I would define imposter syndrome, that's a great question. I've actually never been asked it before, is somebody who feels as though they are presenting themselves as something that they are not. Right. So for the purposes of fitness professionals, which I imagine is who most of your audience is, what that would mean is you're afraid to sell your services for X amount of dollars because you're not sure that your services deliver the outcomes that you promised they're going to. And you're like, I'm not really sure that like I'm as good. Like, oh, I found out that Tony Gentlecore charges $125 an hour. And I don't know that. I was just chatting with him, so I threw that name out there. Um, so I have to charge less. Maybe I'll charge 80 because I'm like, you know, 75% is good. Some bullshit you made up. Yeah. You know, it's it's that's what imposter syndrome is.

Yeah. And it's it's so prevalent. And I think in anything you do, when I when I first started training people, I came from a sales and marketing background. So I got my, you know, um, I got my baseline certifications and I started training people, um, charging them money. And the imposter syndrome was so powerful. I'm like, I don't really, you know, I ask people, I'm like, well, how do how do I how do I start? They're like, listen, you just gotta start somewhere because you're gonna screw up. And that's that's part of the learning process too. And it was a hard thing to overcome. And I see, you know, as you know, I graduate personally into higher ticket items and sales and things that I'm doing in my life, um, it's a constant battle and it never ends. It started then, right? It started right after college, started in college, shit, started in college, right? Playing sports and things like that. And then it's it's just always there. So, how do you help people identify when it's when it's part of their life, when it's there?

I have I actually have a very uh straightforward tactic that I use for this nice that one of my coaches taught me. And it's called the unsustainable week. So what happens is somebody is thinking, like, okay, I'm not good enough to sell this for this price. I won't be able to get people to buy it, and I won't feel good about selling it at that price because I'm not sure that I can actually deliver what I'm telling them I can deliver. So the question that I always like to ask is, well, then why charge anything? If you can't deliver, just fucking pack it up and do something else for a living that you can deliver on. I believe you can deliver because just because you don't have the knowledge that I have in the subject matter that I have subject matter expertise in, does not mean that you don't have subject matter expertise as compared to your client who only needs you to be one chapter ahead of them. They don't know something. You teach them one little thing every time they come, they think you're the smartest person in the world. Now, if we look at that from a how do we apply it, A, you have to believe that to be the truth. If you don't, there's no place for you in the world of working for yourself. Plain and simple. If you don't believe it to be true, you have to give yourself the chance for it to be true by trying what I'm about to describe, which is called the unsustainable week. So the unsustainable week is a situation in which you take everything else from your life and get rid of it for one week. You don't talk to your wife, you can talk to her, but when you're done with everything else that you're supposed to do, she understands she's not priority one during that week, unless if something is imminently uh problematic that she needs your help with, in which case, families first. Your wife, your kids, your education, your music, your fucking Netflix, your friends, partying, drinking, whatever it is, you do not have time or energy for it because you are going to designate all of your time and energy while you're awake to proving yourself right that you can do this thing. So, what that means is let's say you're a personal trainer and you're like, I'm thinking about getting into you know selling insurance because I'm just not I'm just not making it. Okay. Well, what if your life depended on it? Could you take one week and fill your schedule? What would you do if you knew that there was a gun to your head and the trigger got pulled at the end of the week if you didn't get 20 training sessions scheduled for the following week? What would you do? The gun doesn't care why. You're fucking dead. What would you do? And for some people, they're like, oh, that's not really that motivating. Like, okay, you're married? Yes. What would it mean to you to be able to take your wife out to dinner? What would it mean to you to be able to spend time with your kids without thinking about your work and your problems? Spend one week so that you can fucking do that. And in that week, after you've written down and planned what you're going to do, because this doesn't happen that you can't do it tomorrow. You have to make a plan for what you're going to do during that week so that you can just be executing the whole time. After that week, most people have a full schedule. And they're like, okay, but I could never do that again. Exactly right. That's okay. What you can do now though, because you're full, is you can bring somebody else onto your team, teach them how to do what you did, teach them how to teach the next person how to do it, and all of a sudden you're building out a company that has processes in place that make what you by yourself couldn't sustain, extremely sustainable. Yeah. Even if they only perform at 50% as much as you did. Yeah. So that's what I have people do.

It's powerful, man. And I think one of the things that's really important when you do an exercise like that, I I just read um, it took me a while to read it. Jen Sincero, do you know her book, You Are a Badass? It's great.

Um, yeah, my wife has yellow, yellow cover?

Yeah. Yeah. I I personally I have to say, I I've heard about it so many times, but I looked at it, I'm like, oh, it's a book for women's empowerment, which is great. I'm like, uh, it's probably not for me. And I read it, I'm like, this is fucking brilliant, right? And it talks about me and the same things that you're talking about here. And uh one of the things that comes into an awesome exercise, like you just said, is that you have to find some way for people to feel it. Like you mentioned, like, you know, a gun to my head. Ah, I could say, well, yeah, someone wants a gun to my head. But no, you have to feel that fear in some way.

It has to be or the loss of opportunity. Yeah. I had a client, he wouldn't mind me talking about it. He's talked about it. His name is Jono. And at the time we started, he was making less than, I think, $400 a week. Yeah. And I'm like, dude, you got you got yourself to five training sessions in a week. That's great. You need to be at six next week. I don't know, man. That's that's gonna be hard. I'm like, dude, you like gum to your head, and like that did not connect with them.

Right.

And then I was like, okay, what would you love to do with and for your wife that you currently can't? And he told me, I'm like, cool. How about doing that? Yeah. And the next week, I think he had 15 sessions booked. Awesome. And then and now he trains trainers on how to get sessions. Like it's crazy. In the span of a week, his entire life changed. And he he ended up getting his wife pregnant, having a baby, and changing his entire career. He, I think he 5x his income in the span of a month and a half.

Yeah. Is that um is that Jono out of Australia, New Zealand?

No, so he's out of Greenwood, South Carolina, which has an average household income of $27,000. So for people who are like, yeah, but like you live in New York, $27,000 household income where this guy is. And he crushed. I remember we I did a workshop recently with Stu Brouwer of what the fuck Jim Talk. And it was just a straight up sales workshop, which by the way, major imposter syndrome. I'd never given him one of those. And I'm like, well, give it and find out how people liked it. So gave that workshop. Jono came. And other people at the workshop were like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Stu's in Charlotte, big city, Sean's in New York, big city. And I'm like, hey, Jono, would you mind telling everyone their story? Tells them, and they're like, well, where are you from? He's like Greenwood, South Carolina. And they're like, assholes puckered. They're like, I know Greenwood. Like, yeah, you do know Greenwood. And he's doing that in Greenwood.

Yeah.

So enough of your excuses about where you live.

Yeah.

And if I can tell you another story, I have a guy who just sent me a DM on my Instagram. His name is Dane. Dane is in our coach immersion program right now. And the biggest the coach immersion program is meant to teach people how to assess their clients and build a plan to solve their problems instead of modifying around them. And it solves for all of the what-ifs. It's 13 weeks long. It's intense. I'm not going to plug it. I'm not looking to plug it here. The point is, we make a promise to everybody you'll make your money back before the course is over. It's $2,500, and the biggest fear is it's too expensive. Like you will make your $2,500 back before the course is over. And the likelihood is it's going to take you about four weeks once you decide to make your money back. Which means you can make $2,500 extra every four weeks if you feel like stopping there. Dane sends me a message today talking about, dude, it finally clicked. I feel like I know what I'm doing. And in the last week alone, I made half of my money back. And I have a bunch of people to talk to next week that are going to be big packages, which are probably five or 10x what I spent on the work on the on the on the program before it's even over. Awesome. I'm like, there's that moment where he felt before like he didn't know enough and he couldn't deliver. And then there was a talk in there where we went over imposter syndrome, and he was like, I get it. I can do this one chapter ahead. And now he's on fire.

Yeah. That's awesome. Awesome. So I'm curious too. You know, when we talk about Jono, um what did he do, man? What if he how did he how'd he fill it up? I mean, is that his to teach? Or no, I'm I mean, I taught him.

So um so I have a video on YouTube for anybody who wants to get the long form of this. I believe it's called How to Sell More Personal Training Sessions. But and it's on YouTube.com slash theactive life. It's free. Do it. There's a guy in California named Daniel Hung, watched the video a bunch of times, went and applied it in the gym, made $10,000 that week. It works every time if you do it. Um, what I did was I taught Jono how to take a commercial gym that successfully sells sessions. If you can hear lapping around right now, my dog is drinking out of the bowl. I'm sorry.

You're good.

I did a podcast with my wife once, and it sounded like she was just chomping away on food because she was sitting next to where the dog was, but it's the dog drinking its water. Um, so you need to look at a CrossFit gym, which is where he was, or a group fitness environment, which is where a lot of people are, as a floor shift. So in a commercial gym that does the job well, they're going to assign their coaches floor shifts during which they're supposed to prospect for clients. Your job is to walk around the gym, find people who need more than you're currently providing them, and give them that more. Spot them, give them a better exercise, hand them a towel, make their day better. Most trainers in that gym will sit back and just wait until their member profile comes for a new member because they hate prospecting on the floor. I did that, and that's how I got to be full-time in five weeks instead of six months if you ever get there at a gym as competitive as Equinox. But what I taught Jonah was make yourself a schedule for the times that you want to see clients. Then be the second coach in every single class on the gym's schedule for free during the times that you want to see clients. And look for things, and you're not coaching the class. You're the second coach. You're there to help people one-on-one in the group environment with their technique, with their all that stuff. So you're gonna find people who are frustrated in every single class that they're not getting the technique done, that they're still rounding their back when they deadlift, that it still bothers them when they when they do this exercise, so they have to modify to this exercise. You're gonna pull these people aside for 15 seconds and show them that you understand what it is that's in their way, that years of being here they haven't learned yet. And then you're gonna offer them a free, full assessment so that you can demonstrate it to them. That assessment is going to point out to them all of the problems that they have, where there's opportunity to make corrections, and it's gonna uncover the goals and the internal conflict that they're having with the problems that they have. Then you're gonna sell them a package of training sessions to solve their issue. 12, 24, 48, whatever it is. And the purpose of this whole thing is not to keep them as a personal training session forever, a personal training client. It's to use personal training to develop skill, capacity, and confidence to do the things, and then to matriculate them off of that to a remote, even though they're in person, program design situation where you're constantly bringing up their low-hanging fruit that a group class is not designed to do. So, yeah, it starts off as $1,200 or $2,000 to work with you, but by the time they're three or four months in, it's only $300 a month. And people would buy that, and then they would buy the next six months at $300 a month up front, and that's taking him to take care of a $300 a month client 45 minutes a month, and his hourly rate just went to what $400. Something around there.

Yeah.

So, but they're not buying the time, they're buying the solution. They're more than happy to pay him $400 an hour if they get what they want out of it. Because they're not paying them hourly, they're paying them to get what they want. So all it takes when you're making $400 or less a week to 5x your income is to get yourself what 4.3 times five, so 24 people who you're writing a program for every single month. And if you add that all up, it takes you 20 hours a month. If you divide that down, it's four and a half hours a week to make in a week what you it what you used to make in a month. That's cool. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's what that's what we teach everybody.

Yeah. And it's uh it's it's an amazing tactic. And I think there's a lot of people out there who, you know, have the drive uh to do it and they're willing to do whatever you say. And those are the best coaching clients, right? Ones who be like, hey, just do this, and they'll do it. And they see success and they remove fear because at some point they either have imagined that feeling that you're talking about of the gun to the head, or they're actually in that situation where like their bank account's negative, and they're will they'll do anything, right? Yeah, and that's that's where I was.

We've all been there, yeah. I had zero dollars left. Like, you better fucking figure something out here. Right. Um, and and that's another thing, too, is well, we'll get to that actually. But the reason why a lot of trainers and coaches and gyms find themselves, in my opinion at least, find themselves so frustrated with people not being willing to pay them and buy from them and all this stuff, is twofold. One, you're trying to solve inexpensive problems with an expensive price point. Your members really don't fucking care what their snatch looks like. You do, because you prioritize that highly. But Mark, who just wants to lose 20 pounds and hang out with his friends on the weekend, doesn't care that his snatch doesn't look great. Would he like it to be better? Yeah, sure. Would he throw 200 bucks at it? Maybe. But he's not paying you $4,000 a year. He's just not. It's not worth it. Yeah. But if when Mark tries to bend down to pick off his daughter, he gets knee pain, and so now he can't get down on the ground to play with his kid, and his kid keeps asking, Daddy, why don't you play with me? Well, it's just, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. That's a problem that Mark would happily throw $4,000 that he's not comfortable spending, by the way, at to solve. So if coaches want to make real money in the gym, they have to solve expensive problems. You can't keep solving $5 problems with a hundred dollar price tag. And the second thing, the reason why coaches aren't doing well with that, is they don't put any emphasis on learning how to effectively sell, how to communicate their value. So coaches just think because there's there's been people in the space who are like, you just have to be great and people will find you. That's not true. It's just it's patently false.

And it's it's the worst, it's the worst messaging that holds the fitness industry back.

It totally is. It's it's that combined with you're not in it to make money. Those two things uh hold fitness back.

Yeah, the martyr, the martyrdom that goes on in the fitness industry while I'm helping people, and I just love helping people, and that's all I need. Like, no, you need money.

Right. Yeah, you love helping people. Did you wake up excited this morning to help Jane for five bucks? No, you didn't. You didn't. So, how how much thought did you put into Jane's session while you were bartending at night because you needed money to make your ends meet? Instead, you could have been taking one of our courses, working with you, Eric, watching YouTube for free all night long to get better at things that right now you're not very good at. But it's not about the money. So you do it for a cheap price and you bartend at night to compensate, so you're not that good of a coach. And people who listen to this are gonna be like, that's pretty harsh. Yeah, so is an empty bank account. Yeah. Like it just you're getting paid exactly what you're worth right now.

Yeah.

There's so many things to think about in that last 20 minutes of conversation, and it's so universal within the fitness industry. And uh it's it's pretty wild, you know. Because here's the thing: a lot of it comes down to this too: fitness professionals don't make a lot of money, they um project their money issues on their clients. You know, I've talked to many gym. owners about like, listen, there's a really good chance that your clients make way more money than you do. So 115 hours in a session, $150 an hour a session is not going to break them. If you're solving a problem, they'll be more than willing to pay it. Right. But we always put our money issues as a fitness professional, right, on them. They're like, well, I could never, I would never pay $150. So why would I pay $150? You know, I would pay $25. So they'll pay $25. Yeah. So yeah. And then and then you get the the law of the perceived value too, right? It's like if I have two pens identical, right? One selling for $20 and the other one selling for a buck 99 or 95 cents, I'm automatically going to say, you know what? There's something to that $40 pen. Right. And I want, I want to know more about that $40 pen. And you know, I think a lot of things people need to look back to is how much money do you really want to be making? Okay. Let's reverse engineer this.

You want to I like I I like where you're going with this. I'm interested to see if you can do it the same way I do it.

Go ahead. Yeah. I mean if you want to be making $120,000 an hour or a year, right?

And that'd be a good hourly rate.

Yeah. That'd be amazing. You know, like how do you back it? How many hours do you want to be working? Right? And let's, what is that rate? It's that simple. Dude, I I do that with clients all the time.

Yeah. And true. Well well do you mind if I if I go even deeper onto that with the people who are listening? Yeah. Here's what Eric was just saying. Let's pretend you want to make $100,000 a year. That's your that's your unicorn. When you get there you're going to want to make more. But let's say that that's your unicorn right now. How many weeks a year do you want to work? 50. I'd like two weeks vacation. Great. How many I want to work way less than 50. I'm just pointing out I work from vacation.

Yeah that was my personal thing. I was like oh jeez no way.

Yeah no I I I struggle to to enjoy vacation if I don't bring work with me. It's something I'm personally working on. But the person out there who's like I want two weeks vacation I'm making the math easy Eric. All right? Yep. Great. So you need to make $2,000 per week working with clients. How many hours per week do you want to be working with a client? I want to be working with a client 20 hours a week because it takes me 10 hours to get ready for 20 hours and they're very intense hours. Fine. Then you need to clear $100 per hour that you work with a client. What that means is if you're getting 44% in a gym that doesn't understand your value, first of all, get the fuck out. That's a terrible split. But second of all whatever the gym takes from your session you have to add that to 100 if you're going to work 20 hours a week and charge that price to make sure that you get to $2,000 per week of training sessions. That's how you get there. And if you charge less than that what you have to recognize is that your actions do not line up with your with your ambition and that's it. And if you're like well I could never I could never charge that cool then don't be a coach because you're going to be frustrated you're going to bring yourself down you're leading yourself down the road to unhappiness.

Get out now before you're there yeah and the beauty what I really like about today's day and age too is you know that hourly model is still there right I mean it's it's the most basic and most popular model of trainers making and trainers and coaches making money. But there's so many way more ways to do it now. You know there is there's a million ways to make a million bucks right there's even more ways to make $120,000 a year. You know you can mix up your personal training with small group training with you know occasional workshops and events and and all these things and you can map it out so you can hit that number right but you have to be real about how much you're willing to charge in order to get to that number. And I think it's an exercise that's so simple and someone can do it right now. If you're listening right now, go grab a piece of paper, do this reverse engineering and figure out how much money you want to make and what that looks like on a weekly basis.

I I posted this exact process on our Instagram account called Active Life Professional. If you want to know how to do this go to that Instagram account and look up the post that says it's something like do this and you'll never worry about money in your life again. It's it's within the last two weeks I posted it. And there's a lit literally the process that we just described is written there line by line. Do this then do this. This is your math now do this math then do this.

It's done there for them. Awesome.

Awesome so And you know what can I add one thing to that? Yeah of course I want to make sure that I layer some empathy in there that that feels like empathy because the things I'm telling you are not like hey do this or get out. I'm telling you that because I don't want you to go down the path of becoming unhappy. So for some of you guys today you're like I get it but I I'm new I can't charge $100 an hour. I disagree with you. But okay respect. What I need you to do then is write down on a sheet of paper that you're going to frame and put in your room what do you need to be able to do in order to be able to charge $100 an hour? And when are you going to do that? Maybe you think I need to get this education. Great. What is your sign up date? Maybe you think I need to have this many hours of shadowing great how many hours a week are you going to shadow and what is the end date of that so you can charge it. I'm not expecting everybody who listens to this to be like okay cool I'll just charge $100 now because that's what Sean said I have to do and otherwise I can go fuck myself. No, I I get it. There's a gap between where you're at and your ability to do that mentally not reality but in your own mind. So what's the plan?

You need to have one that's all yeah a plan goes a long way and I think there's something that uh there's a piece here that people don't acknowledge regularly enough or maybe they're not even aware of yet is our subconscious beliefs that guide us through all this. You know, I know that's a woo-woo topic to most people but I can tell you right now it's real shit. Yes in there, right? It's in there. You've had things programmed since before you can even remember of how to get that. And there's a lot of interesting ways to start reprogramming that um in different ways. And I'll I'll share something that sounds kind of crazy right. So I've been working with this. So um I have a uh a really good tattoo artist who I'm going to go get another uh get a piece of art done in about a month. Him and I have got really gotten to know each other because his principle was like I want to know the person so I can design the art and then put it on them. Right. And him and I started talking deep philosophical philosophy a while ago and he's like, you know what? I want to run you through something that I've been testing. So here's what it is. Every morning I have to wake up at 5 a.m right first thing I do is I take an ice cold shower or jump in a lake for a bath right uh right after that I go uh I dry off I put some clothes on because I'm probably shivering a little bit and then I I start doing Wim Hof breathing. Right. And during that session I have a four minute recording of myself listening to my goals right of everything that I'm going to be doing because I know I have subconscious beliefs that fuck me up right from whatever they came from. I don't know but I know they're there. And I've been doing this process for about 25 days. Is it uncomfortable? Yes. It's uncomfortable every time I get up in the morning and it's warm in bed, my wife's still there, right? And I'm going to go jump in a fucking cold shower. Right. But I can tell you right now, it's working. It's just working. And once you start being opening to okay maybe there's things I'm not seeing that are forcing me to think a certain way and you start finding ways to break those patterns and start reprogramming there's an incredible amount of power to that too. And it's not just about the number because we can we could talk Sean all day about hey here's the numbers here's what you need to do but in order to get people to actually do it or believe in it or have that confidence that when they talk to somebody that person subconsciously believes them in what they're saying. That's another thing too you know you can go to someone say hey I know I I can uh I can help you with that back issue. And they're going to be like yeah if you're like hey I I see what's going on there. I want to help you. I know I can let's talk you know give me 15 minutes. You know there's there's there's a difference to how people say it. And that all comes in your beliefs and your and and where they come from.

And some people want to hear it one way and some people want to hear it another way. Yes? I want someone to walk up to me and say hey dude the bottom line is you need to be better at this and I can help you.

Yeah.

Okay. But if I walked up to the average person and said that they'd be like go fuck yourself. You're a terrible thing. So you have to know who you're talking to and how to talk to them. And all of that comes you know what when I teach people sales stuff the first thing I teach them is people stuff. Like this is who you are. I'm not telling you I'm telling you how to figure it out so that you can understand the reason why you talk to people the way you talk to people is rooted in who you are not in how they want to be talked to. It's not because you're following the golden rule of treat people the way you want to be treated it's because you only know how to treat people this way because it's the only way that you have been treated that you like. But people don't want to be treated the way you want to be treated. They want to be treated the way that they want to be treated. So if you're going to understand them you have to first understand yourself and if you're going to be able to sell to them you have to know how you need to be able to meet them where they're at to effectively communicate empathy and and capacity to help them.

Yeah yeah that's great. Let me ask you a question is there a uh is there a book or a reference that you found a ton of value in when it comes to sales and how to approach sales or people so sales if there's two books that I've read that to me make sales simple for the person who struggles with sales.

The first book is Way of the Wolf. It's a very straightforward format for this is what you're supposed to be thinking about when you're selling somebody on something. The other one is how to build a story brand. Yes. Awesome so that book is more going to be about how do you represent what you are and in my opinion if you put those two books together and you know nothing else you'll be very effective. Now there's a there's a third book that I would recommend to people to figure out who they are first but it hasn't come out yet it's my book and I'm waiting for artwork to be done.

What's the title of it?

It's called I Can Do Anything how to what I should know the subtitle um how to God damn it because I changed it so many times. The idea of it is how to how to have big goals um affect people positively without asking the world permission.

Awesome. I love it man I love it.

So I I ran a mentorship program a bunch of times where it was a group of people who went through it together and and the goal was for me to have them hit their goals before it was over. And that program was successful over and over and over again. And someone was like you should make a book out of this I was like all right I'll make a book I'll write a book about it. So I wrote a book and I just shared my experiences for how I came up with each of the lessons and then make the lessons for people to do. It's great. It's great man.

I love it. You know I what I like about this interview too is uh some of the notes I had taken before about things I wanted to cover we didn't really cover any of them but we covered really cool stuff. And I think it's really important for people in this industry to know you know that there's what they're facing is there's there's ways out and there's a great way to make a living in the fitness profession. There really is. You can have it all in this profession. I see people leaving all the time because they give up but you have to be all in.

Yeah you do like you you know you you don't get to here's what people forget let's pretend you're a lawyer because that's a safe job.

Yeah.

Everyone who's a lawyer makes money. Sure. A that's not true. You know people think that's true but it's not but B, when you graduate law school you're somebody's bitch and you have $300,000 of debt. So you went to three plus extra years of school where you weren't allowed to make any money because you were immersed in work then you had for the pleasure of that $300,000 in loans and you come out and it's your job to underline things for somebody who's making money while they pay you $50,000 a year. You can't even pay your loans back. Like it takes three to five years most of the time for a lawyer after school. So you're looking at six to eight years from the moment they got into the profession to the moment that they're actually making money that allows them to be whole financially. And they are busting their ass doing nothing else all the way through if they ever get there. And in the fitness world we're like I like to work out I should make a hundred thousand dollars doing this but it's not all about the money. I just want it now. What the fuck is that? I don't know but you you you know what I mean like you don't you don't have to take a super long road I started in the fitness world in 2005 and didn't make I didn't make it into the black financially on my own personal life until 2016. And in 2015 making a hundred thousand dollars it I never doubted that I was going to do it ever. I haven't made a million dollars yet I never doubted that I'm going to make that because I want to um but I had no idea how I was going to do it in 2015 until I did it in 2016. You know it was it was you might be so close to what you really want and you still might quit because you don't know that it's right there.

It's it's there. It's all out there. You know and that's the thing is like you know I I owned a a good gym. You know I founded a gym with Traverbohm it was a it was a good gym um I learned a lot about gym ownership and working with people and coaching people. And after you know eight and a half years I sold it and I decided to go into the online space because I want to live a different lifestyle. And my my one of my mentors at the time James he was like hey listen it took you eight years to figure out how to run a gym don't expect anything different in what you're doing now. And I was like in setting that expectation of like okay yeah I'm going to have to really dig in for a while and and learn right and fail and fail and fail and fail right but eventually if you don't give up and generally it's when it's darkest right oh like you know how many times I've thought over the past uh you know since I sold gym you're like maybe I'll just go into corporate America get a sales job call a day.

Mm-hmm. Because you know you can make a living that way. I could and and and and look I I before I opened my gym I got offered a seven figure not immediately but a seven figure job working in finance in Hong Kong. Yeah. And I was like first of all just so for the people who are listening it was a base salary that was substantial plus a percentage of commission that was well above market value because they thought they saw a lot of potential in me and they could groom me to be someone who was a huge earner for their company. And the person said to me when I told them no never let your best year be my worst month financially he's like do whatever you want but never let your best year be my worst month. His worst month that year was just over $7000. If I'm being honest, my best year hasn't done that yet and our company right now is doing well compared to what it was doing this time last year but it's flat. We haven't grown and that's frustrating and I want people who are listening to this to know as soon as we figure out how to no longer be flat, we're going to hockey stick again. But you have to stick out that what the fuck is going on moment where you're like it's been four months and the company hasn't grown. It hasn't contracted but it hasn't grown why hasn't it grown? What are we doing wrong? And all of a sudden it becomes a frenzy of self-doubt of you know are we is this even viable or do we hit our seal all of those doubts come into my mind too all the time the reality is you have to hear them and then ask okay if that was true what would it mean and if it's not true what would it mean cool I like the upside of what if it's not true and I don't really mind the downside of what if it is that much yeah yeah it's the worst case scenario.

And just like in fitness you're going to plateau it's there's going to be plateaus but generally those plateaus are the what happens right before you see an amazing breakthrough. Right? Because your back's against the wall and you're scratching your head you're questioning but then you're re-solidifying your belief with a new idea or concept and pushing forward again. And that's what you grow. It's not linear.

If you go back to the gun to your head scenario worst case scenario is you die. Right. You know that's a really bad worst case scenario. There's a lot of other stuff that can happen between that and you taking the gun from the bad guy getting him arrested and getting a medal from the city. Yeah. You know like there's there's a lot of stuff in between there. And it's not necessarily death. But so you know one of my favorite expressions that I that I tell my clients is the bigger the problem the more valuable the resolution because this thing seems so ominous it's like this big boulder in the way of the tunnel that you have to get down. Well what happens when you move the boulder out of the way like there's a whole rest of the tunnel now. And then you're going to hit another boulder and you're like this one's bigger and heavier. What the fuck do I do with this one? And I'm tired.

Yeah.

You figure out how to move that and you keep going. Yeah. And right now we're just up against a boulder.

Yeah. Well I I appreciate the uh the honesty and authenticity because I think that's what's unique and what's also needed in this market because there's there's fuck there's too many quote unquote business coaches who are promising astronomical things in an extremely short period of time and it's predatory. What we need what people need to see is like okay it's not about your next 90 days and how fast can you get to a seven figure funnel right it's how can you start laying groundwork so you're going to be successful for a very long time. Right? And that's uh and you know what those people don't do you know I won't call on any names as they're driving and doing their you know social media videos in their rented Lamborghini right like no that's not that's not the way things work. And if someone is at that level if that Lamborghini is owned it's because they put in 20 years of work to get there. Right? Yeah and that's that's what I would like to see more out of in in the online as the business coaching world evolves within the fitness and health industry that's what I would like to see. And I appreciate that.

If I can speak to that as a coach of people who are trying to grow their businesses I don't take a lot of clients because I don't have the bandwidth to do a really good job for a lot of clients. I had a client this week who I can tell on our call he was like he wasn't jazz about the way things were going. And I'm I'm trying to figure out like what could I do better for this guy. So I started asking him like well do you want to make more money? Like are you enjoying that your business is these things? And he's like yeah dude but my business is kind of new and I need more foundational knowledge. Like it's cool that I'm making some money but I need more foundational knowledge from you. I'm like okay I was delivering what I valued not what he valued because I forgot to ask you know and I have other clients who have businesses that make more money than my business where I'm like oh man can I actually coach this person? You know they've been where I am and I sent them a message and I'm like how are things going like you have no idea you've saved our family our business like there's light at the end of the tunnel for the first time in a long time it's huge. So you're gonna have your highs and your lows and anything that you do and it's about confronting the low and figuring out why it's not a high so that you can fix it.

Yeah. Awesome awesome well Dr. Sean I'm going to uh that was a great way to finish this podcast. Perfect. Where where do people find you man? Where where do they go? Where are the million places you are online?

Yeah so we actually clean that up a little bit. It used to be when I would do this on podcast it was like oh well here for this therefore if you google active life rx you're gonna find us um Instagram activelife rx youtube.com slash theactive life if you type active life rx will come up and then I have my own personal Instagram Dr. Sean Pestooch it's spelled S-E-A-N P like Peter A S T like Tom U C H.

Awesome awesome man well Dr. Sean thanks for coming on I had a really good time I have a feeling uh I'll be inviting you to come back on sometime soon.

My pleasure I love this stuff. First of all, who doesn't like talking about themselves? Yeah second of all um yeah second of all like I love putting out into the world things that I think people need so that they can be successful as part of my personal mission statement. So anytime you want me on I'm available.

Right on right on ladies and gentlemen Dr. Sean Pestooch. Yes sir 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 tell you how much it means and helps us out. So it 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 the 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