Intentional Progression of Serving with Meghan Callaway

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 194. Today I'm sitting down with Megan Calloway and we're talking about the intentional progression of serving.

Are you ready?

Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up, coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and if this is the first time that you're here, welcome. I'm so super excited to share this very special interview with you with Megan Calloway. Megan has been a coach for nearly 19 years. She loves to educate, empower, and excite people with her coaching and content. She truly is a representation of service, both in raising the industry standards as well as service, serving her clients and customers and truly her colleagues as well. She loves to help people get stronger, move better, and find joy in training and learning. In 2017, she launched the Ultimate Pull up program, which she talks about inside of this episode. Her Pull up program is currently being followed by thousands of people of all genders from at least 89 countries, and she was also featured in the New.

York Times this past March.

She's also has an ultimate Pushup program, Ultimate Lower Body and Core program, and Ultimate Landmine program and Ultimate Pistol Squat program. She considers herself a calisthenics athlete. She's played competitive soccer for 27 years.

As well as playing ice hockey and baseball when she was growing up.

She also shares in this episode how she has used pivotal moments in her career that most people would consider to be the end of their athletic career as they knew it. She talks about how she had recovered and became her own advocate in her recovery from a very, very instrumental car accident that had happened to her that no one could anticipate. And one of the biggest takeaways that I got from this entire episode, which is why I titled it the Way that I Did title it, is Megan's ability to turn everything that is happening to her into a way to serve other people. She is truly rooted in service and authenticity, which makes her magnetic and puts people instantly at ease when working with her or conversating with her. And we talk all about the ways that you Actually can do that too, in your business and in your work. So without further ado, let's go ahead.

And roll that interview. What's up, Megan? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

Things are good. Things are good.

Good. I love it. I'm super excited for today. I. I couldn't. I was so excited to hit record early because I was like, oh, my gosh, no way. You're gonna share some amazing things. So I can't wait to dive into today. So for those of you who are tuning in and have not seen or heard the pleasure of your work, I'd love for you to share a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there.

So I always joke, this is my least favorite part of podcast, talking about myself and everything. So I have been a coach now. I am coming up on 19 years, which dates me. I originally. I mean, I still do work with general population. I started out that way. I'm a little more specialized now in that the people who seek me out, who want to work with me are people who are so fascinated by learning, they want to understand what we're doing. It's not just about me kind of being a cheerleader per se. People, the people who seek me out, they just truly want to learn. They want to be taught. They want me to be super picky with their form. So I do attract a certain type of clientele now versus back in the day when I was starting out. Also, of course, I knew much less back then. I work with people of all ages. I work with people of all genders, athletes, non athletes. I love the people that I work with. I. I consider myself extremely lucky. I have played sports most of my life. I grew up playing soccer. I played competitive soccer for 27 years. I also played ice hockey and baseball, both on boys teams. I don't play any team sports now, but I still do consider myself an athlete. And I think I train at a pretty decent level. And I'm quite heavily into calisthenics, so that's kind of my athletic background. I love cats. I've been studying Swedish for the past couple of years. I'm back to kind of refreshing my French because I used to be fully fluent in French.

That's amazing. My husband's fully fluent in French, actually.

Oh, cool. Yeah, I am again now. It was surprisingly easy to kind of pick up where I left off well over 20 years ago.

That's amazing. Okay, now. So the real question, though, is, can your cats understand the French?

They just love when I talk to them in my cat voice. And I have no shame. I honestly don't care. I do share. I keep my personal life relatively private on social media just because it's. I mean, I'm not opposed to sharing details about my personal life. And I've shared very detailed things kind of in past blog posts, but I kind of. Right now, my personal stuff. I share a lot of cat stuff, and I talk on my cat boys all the time. Who doesn't? If you have pets, you understand they're like your family. And I have had a few. I had this one random person message me and my cat. She had been playing with her catnip and was really high. And so I was talking to her back in my cat voice and like, I don't care. And so he said, he's like, what are you smoking? So I was like, dude, are you serious? And like, obviously you don't get it.

You know, Megan, I actually love that you shared that you don't talk about your personal life so much, because the truth is, I actually don't either. I mean, I talk about my kids sometimes because they're just so. Part of. They're just so prevalent and part of my life. But, yeah, as I'm watching them get older and I want them to have autonomy in how they want to put their digital footprint into the this world. And the Internet is a wild, wild west. So I feel like for me, it's just interesting because you'll hear these coaches out there that are like, share your coat, you know, share your vulnerable stories. Share your. Your personality. And while I get that, I also, for me, protect what doesn't need to be shared if it doesn't have the point to serve my client. Like, my ideal client doesn't need to know that my favorite color is purple.

Totally. You know, I'm all for people sharing anything they're comfortable with, but for me, I kind of. I'm just trying to think of the best way to describe it. Nothing is kind of off limits, but I share stuff when it's relevant, when I want to. I don't feel pressured to ever share anything. And back in the day, I kind of did more, and I did share some very personal stuff. But now it's like, people are kind of. They want to work with me. For me, I think I'm pretty authentic online anyway, who like what you see is what you get. And I am very transparent with my clients, but I don't necessarily think I need to be that transparent with hundred plus Thousand people who follow me or sorry, who follow me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so true. So true. So I'd love for you to share, if you wouldn't mind, what are some of the things that you have done in your career over the last 20 years that have helped you stay motivated and stayed continued to grow your and deepen your sense of education and development in the fitness space?

I think an advantage I have and the best coaches have, they are passionate about learning. They love to learn. They love to grow. I think they love. Maybe they don't necessarily love it, but they love to admit how much they do not know. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you actually truly know. So it pushes you to keep learning. I'm super passionate about my own training and my own improvement. And that kind of propels me to keep learning both for my own benefit and for the people who work with me, who follow me. I'm passionate about that and my three E's. I kind of talk about it on Instagram and I do this with my coaching, with my content free and paid. And even in terms of my own training, I always love to feel like I am being educated, empowered and excited. And I like others to feel the same. And I think if you feel that way, you are going to be more inspired to keep learning, to keep growing, to keep bettering yourself, exploring, admitting what you don't know. So that's been. That's been a part of my life for much of my coaching career. But I only ever really, truly thought about those three E's in the past couple of years. One day I was just reflecting and it kind of just came to me and I really liked the way it sounded.

I love it. I love it. And now one of your third E was excited. So what have you done in the moments when you have felt like this is mundane and this is. And you have not felt excited? How have you reframed that for yourself and for your clients?

It's funny, for myself, I can't think of the last time I have not felt excited about my work, about my training. There's constantly new opportunities for my work. I consider myself truly blessed with what I do for a living and for my training. Same thing. So I guess that was kind of. I know there's been other aspects of my life where I haven't felt excited. I'm sure a lot of people over the past couple of years, we've had many moments where it's been tough and we haven't felt overly upbeat or excited. About life and just what's been happening in the world so that I can fully relate to.

What about for your clients? How do you help them reframe when they don't feel excited?

Partly educating. Educating. Kind of like what we're doing, potentially why we're doing it. Form is a big thing. The importance of form and just the coaching and the cueing and even kind of giving people light bulb moments. And it might sound boring to a lot of people who are listening, but somebody realizing for the first time the importance of a tripod foot, how important that is for training. When people finally get it, they have light bulb moments. And I love having clients achieve those light bulb moments. So that excites it, empowers, it, educates them. So I think I am lucky in a way. And I joke with certain friends in the industry. The people who work with me are generally quite easy, quite low maintenance. They come to me, they're already fairly motivated. They want to learn. They know what I'm already about. But in my earlier days, I didn't necessarily attract that type of client. Yeah, 100% of the people who work with me, they really do want to learn. They really want to know, they want to understand. They like the coaching, the cueing, the correcting, and just not expecting instant results overnight. Not wanting to jump from program to program, which I know so many people do. Achieving results and learning is exciting to a lot of people, so you don't have to keep mixing it up constantly.

So I love that you're talking about this because I feel like this is true both for business and for training and for, I think, for people and for clients.

Right.

We're kind of talking about the human condition. But there's this sticking point that I feel like we all tend to get to like, almost like a, you know, I. I call it like an almost bare breakthrough point where most people will quit. They're like, this isn't working. I need to jump the program. I need to change. You know, it's, it's. It's this like the tipping point, essentially.

Yes.

How do you. How did you find it and help your clients find it where you were like, I, you know, making the decision to, you know, pivot or making the decision to keep going.

I like to preach consistency, but a huge thing is becoming proficient at the fundamentals. And a lot of people think the fundamentals are too easy for them, they're too boring. But what I tell people, and I have to remind myself this as well, with my own training work, everything the people who are the best of the best. Have become that way by becoming absolutely elite at the fundamentals. And they practice these fundamentals all the time. You don't just do it in stock. And once you develop those fundamentals, you can add additional layers. So the layers can add to the excitement. They will help you keep progressing. And this applies to work, training, business, life, everything really. I love it.

How do you define the fundamentals.

For training or for anything?

Well, give you. You can answer that. Like, give me. Start with training and then tell me how you've also. How you've also applied that to business training.

This is just a very, very basic. Just so a lot of people understand the different movement patterns. Become proficient at squatting, hinging, lunging, pushing, pulling, carrying. Just kind of. Those are just several of many different movement patterns. Become proficient, figure out which variation works best for somebody. So, for example, I'm not going to make everybody barbell back squat. Very few, very few of my clients barbell back squat. You don't need to. Somebody might do better with goblet squats. They might do better with landmine squats, front squats, you name it. Split squats. This is just a crappy explanation, but get good at the fundamentals. From there, you can kind of add additional layers. Somebody might get really good at goblet squats. Then they might decide that they want a front squat. So that would be something you could eventually introduce, but you would never want to introduce front squats to somebody who could not goblet squat. Goblet squats are far more basic business. Another one, even just a fundamental, is consistency. Do the easy things consistently. You don't have to be perfect all the time. You don't have to do hard things sporadically. You want to just get good at the easy things and do them consistently. From there you can keep progressing. And a lot of people, they. I always joke, consistency. I just consistently. Sorry. Consistency trumps intensity. I always joke. I always cringe when I say the word trump.

But I know it's like that's not another word.

I know consistency is greater than intense or is more important than intensity. And a lot of people don't realize that and say somebody hasn't trained for years and then they jump into a workout program. They do way too much, it might be too difficult, they do it too soon and then they're too sore. They might just not want to do it and then they stop. You could do easier things, more fundamental things. Consistency, consistently, I should say, and build from there.

Yes, so true. So how do you Determine for you what is part of the process and what is the plateau in terms of, you know, I think for me personally I just see that the, the relationship between business and how, you know, programming is, is just so similar. I think that's why I love them both so much. In just the sense of every, every decision we all make is going to have an outcome. It's up to us to determine what we are going, what our next decision is going to be based on the assessment of said outcome. So for you, in both your programming and business, how long do you usually give something and, and stay consistent with something before deciding, okay, we need something needs to change.

So with my own programming, for my own training and my clients training, it's very. Each phase that we do is relatively similar. I keep in kind of staple exercises. I might change those staple exercises a slight amount, but they will remain. And then to kind of give the variety, you can kind of more of the accessory work. That can be where they get more variety. And the accessory work might vary based on their goals, based on areas we need to address. But I always preach consistency and following the fundamentals and you can kind of adapt as needed. But people, a lot of people think they're going to get bored if they're not doing something different all the time. I've actually found a lot of people get bored when they're changing programs all the time but are not achieving results. So people, it sometimes takes some time to realize this, but doing the same thing or similar things over time and achieving results, learning again, the three E's, feeling excited, empowered and educated, that can be far more motivating than just program hopping all the time. And as we know, program hopping doesn't work.

Yeah.

So it sometimes takes buy in. But I've been lucky. Most people buy in almost right away, if not immediately.

Because you attract the people that are tired of doing the same thing over and over again, that don't, but not getting the same result. And when I say the same thing over and over again, I mean program hopping over and over again.

Yeah, and it's really. Well, I shouldn't say it's really easy. I think it's really easy for good, good coaches to give variety, but while maintaining the integrity of the program and also the consistency. I think that's a skill that takes coaches many years to learn. And I'm sure in my earlier years, if I looked back now, I'd be absolutely appalled if I saw some of what I had my clients doing. I'm sure most coaches, if you if you look back and you don't cringe, you're probably not. You probably haven't grown a lot.

So true. I'm laughing because of my own experience. I remember when I started getting into pre postnatal and just cringing and thinking of all those things. Thank God the human body is so resilient because otherwise.

And even my own training too, even just some of the training I did back in my earlier days, it was pretty appalling.

So true, so true. I love it. So what have been some of your favorite things that you. What are some of your favorite education go to's that you started diving into back in the earlier days and as you continue to grow and develop as a professional?

So in my earlier days when I was really young, there wasn't social media didn't really exist and I we didn't really have many role models in the fitness industry. So unfortunately my education in the earlier days was pretty bad. I have a degree in kinesiology, but the program and it was a really good school, they don't teach a lot that is relevant to what I do for a living and really what you do in everyday life, it was not. Psychology was far more interesting to me than the kinesiology I took when I was in my. When I was 28, I was in a pretty bad car accident and so I was. I walked away in quotations unscathed. The car was written off, I was okay. But shortly after I started experiencing all these unpredictable, awful full body symptoms. And it lasted for five years before I could find somebody who finally told me what was causing all of my issues. And so I literally went. So the end result, I ended up having severe nerve irritation in the rib area that stemmed I think from the car accident and just the way my body was, how I turned based on the impact. And so because of the nerve irritation, I was having issues throughout my entire body, pretty much from my head to my feet. And even one crazy symptom because of the nerve irritation, the muscles in my feet had become so tight that once I got better and it literally took seeing a good physio who caught the issue, gave me a method I could do on my own to kind of help relieve the nerve irritation. My feet became a full size bigger within about a month because my feet were so tight and just so cramped from having the nerves just having been pissed off for five years. So that was one thing. But I was told in this again, this is when I didn't know what I know now. So I'm kind of I'm very. There are very good physios out there, very good doctors. But in my experience, it is very hard to find the good ones, just like it is very hard to find the good coaches in our industry. But I was told things from, oh, your hips are out, your back is out, which we know doesn't actually. Unless you have a dislocation and you're in serious trouble. You know, that's not even true. And I was just told, oh, you're tight here, you're weak here, blah, blah, blah. And I was just. I was made to feel like an absolute basket case. Really, like broken, dysfunctional, scared to simply move or breathe because I was dealing with non stop unpredictable symptoms for five years. So I'm trying to think. I got completely sidetracked there, but I had so many issues and it impacted my training, it impacted my work. I. My entire life. It was a struggle for those five years. But once I started, even kind of while I wasn't better. But once I found my guy who helped me, I really started to dive into Stu McGill's work. And I patterned a lot of my rehab after stuff that he like, stuff that he teaches. So he was a game changer for me, kind of in my late 20s and 30s. Stu McGill, I love Dean Somerset, Tony Gentlecore, a lot of their work. There's so many people I could name.

So, Megan, I'm curious, during your five years of me search, essentially trying to get to the root cause of your pain, or were you carrying your audience through this process with you?

No.

Okay.

This was pretty much before social media even existed. And this is one of my big mistakes that I made. I'll never make this mistake again. But even just during these five years, I barely told anybody. Pretty much nobody knew what I was going through. Just because I had been made to feel like such a hypochondriac by all these different. Not all of them, but a lot of the different people I saw. I was told things from your spine is injured, you'll never be able to squat again. You have one leg that is shorter than the other. So I was pretty much told every possible issue you could have. I was pretty much told I had that and I literally had none of them. It was just severe nerve irritation in the rib area. And then of course, being like that for five years, you're going to start to compensate. So I had to relearn how to do everything. Once I got better, I had to relearn how to run, even how to walk, how to squat. You name it. And I was functioning during these five years. And I played soccer for the majority of the time, but I was taking an obscene amount of ibuprofens before the game, which is awful to get through the games weekly or sometimes like two or three times a week, physio sessions, just to even be able to play in my games. So it was a lot.

I can't even imagine. I mean, physically and mentally, because we're all mentally. It was the brain.

That's why I kept playing for. I should have stopped playing sooner, but I highly identify as an athlete and I still do, and I could not bear to lose that part of me. So I just kept going, going until I finally just could not do it anymore. And I did come back and play after. Once I got better, I did start playing again, and I eventually decided to stop just because for me, with what I do for work, I didn't want to risk getting injured and it kind of just stopped becoming fun, just the caliber of teams we played. But it was really nice to be able to stop playing on my terms. And I could go back anytime if I wanted. It's not like I couldn't.

So good. Have you been feeling any, you know, since that time? Once it was healed? Have you had any residual. Residual experience since that time?

Nothing, no. It literally took finding one person who was familiar with the ribs and even a friend of mine who was one of the great doctors I saw in the earlier stages. She was fantastic, but she couldn't figure out what was going on, and she had the confidence to refer me to somebody else. So many people don't, and they're just willing to keep you on as a lifer patient. So I have so much respect for my friend who did that. And even as she said, I was telling her after I found this physio, she said very few people are familiar with what is going on in the ribs. And the ribs are super, super complicated. So most people, they literally looked at every other part of my body, but nobody thought to look at what was happening in my ribs.

Oh, my gosh, that's so powerful now. How long ago was that? Since then?

It feels like a lifetime ago. I just turned 42. It was from about 28 to 33. And kind of what led me to this physio. And I wish I had known about him earlier. So I did a workout, and the next day, basically my legs felt like they were. I'm just trying to think. I've never. I don't really drink. I'm not a big drinker. But if somebody were drunk and they basically had no control over their legs and they felt like they had almost like not numbness per se, but I just didn't feel like I had a lot of control over what was going on in my legs. And it just felt very, very strange. It was scary. And then somebody I know, he said, this is who you need to see. This is the person who can help you when nobody else can. And it ended up being the guy who figured out what was going on. Yeah. And the last set of symptoms just completely baffled the guy I was seeing before the physio that was treating me before. And he's like, he tried to say I had one leg that was shorter, which I don't.

You don't. And that's actually really rare now that I'm like learning all this.

Yes.

As we start to dive into, I mean, social media is just, it's got the law of polarity. Right. We, you cannot have the good without or the light without the dark. And so for all of the negative aspects, there is a lot of really, really good, powerful things about social media.

So I did talk about that about, or sorry, I talked about that a lot kind of in my 30s. So I blogged about it, I spoke about it publicly, stuff like that. So that's kind of more me sharing my personal side. But just recently it hasn't been relevant and it's such a distant memory now that it hasn't really come up that much.

Yeah, that's great. It's a great, I love that. That's amazing. But thank you for sharing. So now as you started to go into this new phase of your life and new phase of your career, what are some of the things that you're starting to educate people on that excite you and help them, you know, feel empowered?

Well, pull ups is a big one. And not next week, but the following will be the five year anniversary of when I launched my ultimate pull up program. So five years ago, that's when that came out. I've always been super passionate about pull ups and calisthenics, but I decided just over five years ago I was originally going to put this program out as a blog post. And a good friend of mine, she's like, no, no, no, you have to actually do more with this. This is really good. You have to do more. So I ended up launching a pull up program. The response blew my mind. It took off right away, right at the very beginning. It is still, the momentum is still exploding five years after the release date. So that's one area I'm super passionate about. Muscle ups, push ups. Really anything that makes people feel good as far as training.

And specifically with the body, because I feel like there's a lot of stigma around. You need to just lift heavy. You need to lift heavy. And we're like, well, your body is also, you know, could be anywhere from 145 to 200 pounds. That's not heavy.

Well, exactly. And I put out a Instagram post. I've done two of them because they were quite popular. A lot of people have been led to believe that unless you do barbell hip thrusts, your glute training is useless, which we all know is bullshit. There's so many other fantastic exercises. I used to do heavy barbell, glute bridges and hip thrusts back in the day. And I joke, it took longer to set up the bar than it did to actually do that. It took forever. It was awful. But then unless you have a good pad, it doesn't necessarily feel that comfortable. And a lot of people don't even like doing them, but they think it's the only thing.

So it's so funny.

Yeah.

My clients used to hate it. I stopped doing it because exactly what you said. Number one, it took too long to set up. And number two, my clients actually used to hate it.

Yeah. And also a lot of people do them. They don't realize it is a really technically demanding exercise, particularly when you load the weight. You need so much lumbo pelvic stability. You need a lot technical ability, knowledge. People don't get that and then they think it's the only thing they should be doing for their glutes. So I love to show people different ways to achieve a very similar goal in a way that is best suited to them and something that they will potentially enjoy so much more. So that's just one example. I love. Core is something I'm passionate about. And of course we know core is not just abs. Core is so much more than that. That's something I'm passionate about. Cardi. I love that. Personally, I love cardio, but I know a lot of people don't. So I don't share a lot of cardio based stuff on my platform, but I kind of, I do share more of my own training stuff in my stories. I do some mobility, but I know some people out there are a lot more knowledgeable. So certain areas, if it's kind of not within my lane, I always refer out or share work of others. I think that's a mistake a lot of coaches make they're scared to talk about other coaches or to refer out.

Yeah, you brought. I have so many things, so many things I want to ask you, so I'm going to. I'll go back. But you brought up this really incredible point earlier where you were talking about, you know, you were talking about how, you know, it's hard to find the good ones in turn, and you were feeling broken and dysfunctional. And I think part of this is. Goes back to, number one, is that people don't know what questions to ask and they don't know how to be good advocates for themselves.

That is the big thing is being. Sorry to interrupt you being an advocate. I am sure the people that were treating me probably found me so annoying, most of them, because I wanted to know what they were doing. I asked questions. I was a huge advocate for myself and something. One kind of silver lining from all of this. I learned so much about my own body, but I also learned so much about what you do not want. Based on my work with these certain practitioners and the good ones. I took the good from the good. I took the bad from the bad. And it has been life changing for me for my work, for my own physical health, even just being an advocate for my mental health, helping others. If I know somebody, for example, is dealing with something and I know they're seeing something or they're seeing somebody, and they tell me stories and right away there's so many red flags. I will kind of know now based on my own experiences, how to guide them or to advise them.

Yes. And again, one of the red flags, you know, it ties into what you were saying. And this happens a lot to a lot of coaches. And I think that it happens. I'll share for me, just from my perspective, it happened to me when I was new and it was me trying to deal with my own insecurities and my own feelings of like, I need to be right. It was the sense of dogma. Right.

Yeah.

And I think that as people grow and this is like a red flag, if people are not wanting to collaborate, if people are not wanting to share expertise or have the confidence to say, this is something I'm just not sure about, let me connect you with someone or I'm going to dig deeper and figure out. We can figure it out together. To me, that is a mark of either inexperience or, and.

Or ego or insecurity, too. It's ego, insecurity and experience. 100%.

Yes, yes, yes. And so I just find, and you said it earlier, true masters Become masters when they know they don't know anything.

Yeah. And learning from mistakes.

Yes.

Making mistakes. It sucks when you do, but if you can learn from your mistakes, they are so valuable.

Yes. And evaluable. Just like you're saying. Because now you're a huge advocate for your clients. Now you can show them. Oh, this is a red flag.

Yeah. And even, not even just necessarily trainings like life mistakes, work mistakes, everything mistakes, if you can learn, it is life changing.

And that takes courage.

Huge courage.

Yes. Oh, my gosh. Okay, can you dive a little bit more into. I'd love for you to talk just a little bit more about the different types of glute exercises that you have used and found in your experience to actually really target the glutes without using the barbell.

There are still so many hip thrust variations people can do. So that's one of the things. You don't need to do them with the barbell. Somebody might like them with the barbell or, sorry, with the dumbbell or a kettlebell on their hips. Band resistance. I love band resistant hip thrusts. I love mixing it up by using a single leg or one that I really love, a kickstand. So you have the one leg set up like you regularly would. For people who don't know the other leg, the foot is slightly ahead. You're lightly resting your weight on your heel, and you use that as a kickstand of support. So that can be a great way for somebody to really load that single leg stance, but with a slight amount of support. So you can use. There's a lot of different hip thrust variations. You can do similar stuff with glute bridges. I'm a huge fan. Of course, there's so many different hip hinging variations. You can do split squats, deficit split squats, step ups. I could go on forever listing all the different glute exercises I love. And then of course, you have more of the banded glute exercises like lateral glute walks you could do. People bash clamshells. I don't mind them. They have their place. But of course, if that's the only thing you're doing, that's probably not going to be a good thing.

So I also hear, yeah, a lot of people bash lateral lateral band walks.

Which again, they have their place if they're done properly. But that's not the only thing you want to do. Of course. It's like a tiny, tiny tool in the toolbox.

Yeah. You know, and it also goes back to, like, people want dogma and people want to be right.

Yeah. And everything. It's exciting because what works well for one person might not work well for somebody else. So good coaches know to figure out what works best for each person. Troubleshooting, adapting. It's not just black and white, and everybody does the same thing. And I love to load the glutes. Oh, sorry to interrupt. I was going to say I love to load. You can really, really load the glutes. But then there's other stuff. Deceptively challenging exercises where you will make your glutes, like, you will shock the crap out of your glutes without even going overly heavy.

Ooh, like what?

Like making somebody do, for example, like, a deficit split squat for the first time. That's one. I did a new. A deadlift variation, and I probably use more than I should for my first time with it. And I lift consistent consistently. So it's not like I hadn't been training, but a. I'm just trying to. The name that I use is a kickstand RDL reverse lunge combo. So you start in a regular, like, just in a square stance, and you step back into a kickstand rdl. So it's like you're reverse lunging into the kickstand rdl and then you just step forward again, pressing away, using your hamstrings and glutes. And I did it for the first time, and I think just because of the step, you're having to decelerate more than if you were doing a regular kickstand RDL. And I used £100 for the first time, and I did a fair number.

Of reps. You're like, oh, let's try this.

During this pandemic, I built a really good home gym, and I have been absolutely loving. I haven't been back to the gym just because. And I mean, I do plan on going back to the gym. Don't get me wrong. I will be there. But I have such a great setup at my house. I love it so much that it has just been so perfect for me. So I have £100 plus additional resistance. I can make it a lot harder adding bands, using a slower tempo. The list goes on. But I used 100 pounds for the kickstand rdls. I think I did. Yeah. I did 10 reps per side, and I used a negative tempo during the lowering. So needless to say, my hamstrings and glutes were quite sore the next day, even though, again, and this is another mistake people make thinking that you have to be sore for the workout. To be effective. We all the good coaches know that is not true. But that's something that a lot of people need to unlearn. A lot of clients, I'm sure you found you have to kind of help them unlearn that.

Yeah, it's true. And I also actually have to unlearn it for myself sometimes for me, I would just go long periods of time of like, oh, no, I haven't been sore. I'm not doing it right. In fact, I even had that visceral response for you of, of listening to someone who has trained consistently for years upon years. You know, do you ever find that you are chasing sore?

I learned the hard way in my earlier days, so now I don't. My mistake. Luckily, I don't necessarily do this now, although I have my moments. When I was first learning muscle ups and some of the more calisthenics or, sorry, the more advanced calisthenics, it was so new and so exciting to me. And I'm a perfectionist. So instead of having a set, number of sets I would do, I kept saying to myself, if I wasn't satisfied, I'd be like, one more set, one more set, one more set. And then that led to me being ridiculously sore in my upper body after some of the calisthenics workouts. And I wasn't happy with that because I knew I had overdone it. It prevented me from being able to train consistently. So maybe instead of leaving two days between, I might have needed to leave four or five days between because I wasn't recovered enough to train. So me, I don't chase soreness, but I sometimes chase perfection. So I'm having to really force myself to, to leave several good, or at least one good set in the tank. And it's pretty much, it's never for the lower body stuff. It's always for the more advanced calisthenic stuff that I'm still mastering. That's just me. Somebody will have other somebody. It might be more their lower body. It might be bench press. I like, I'm just giving examples, but for me, it's always a calisthenics.

I love that. And you also. I just want to circle back because you talked about the pull ups and you're in your ultimate pull up. That was actually how I met your work. That was when I the, when I was introduced to your work. So I remember that. That was such a. I remember when that blew up because you were right, it did blow up.

Yes. Well, the funny thing though, and this will get into this later with business. I did not have a big audience back then, I believe I don't know the exact numbers. I think think I probably only had about 5,000 followers on Instagram, if not fewer. And my email list was tiny. But because people were so primed for this launch, I'm so passionate about pull ups and teaching and doing and people were genuinely excited about pull ups in my product before I put it out. The second I did, it just took off and it has never, it hasn't stopped in five years. Which to me like this has been. I can't even like I'm still pinching myself every day. I can't even the messages I get every day. I just got a new one today from like a senior athletic director at Fordham University and he has been using, he told me he's been using the program himself, but he's also been using it with. He works with football players. He was saying he has a lot of 300 plus pound linemen who have been using it and he is cheerleaders and dancers and swimmers and he has been using my program with these athletes. So hearing stuff like this because I never know who is using my program, I don't know who has bought it. So hearing stuff like that every day, it just is so humbling and just blows my mind.

That is amazing. I love that. And I also love that it has continued to build momentum. So this is actually a great segue. I would love for you to talk a little bit about, you know, what it was like back then. How did you come up with this program, what caused you to do it and then how has it started to just grow your audience and how have you used that momentum to continue to build?

So I've been passionate about pull ups for much of my life and prior to the car accident I was okay at them. But during the like for the five years after I was not able to train properly at the time I was in so much. I'm always hesitant to use the word pain because I know so many people have it so much worse than I did. I was in severe discomfort all the time and it was also really stressful because it was always, it was always something new and unpredictable. So I never knew what the next day would bring. So I wasn't able to train properly. The second I found the physio who helped me, I was just so excited to get back into my training and pull ups and so I started doing them again and I kind of learned from doing them stuff that I wasn't doing well. Stuff that would really help. And I just kind of put together a lot of stuff in my mind. Then I started slowly compiling this program and it started off very small, but as more and more ideas came to me based on my own training, based on stuff I had been doing with my clients, mistakes I'd seen other people in the industry making, or even just people I saw in public gyms, mistakes they'd been making, it gave me so much to work with that this program just grew and grew and grew. And when I launched it in 2017, it was 160 pages, so it was big. But the following year I had so many different ideas and I also realized even more the importance of shoulder and elbow health. So the following year and everybody who bought the pull up program, who originally bought it, they received the upgraded program. And now everybody from 2018 on, it's been like the, the upgraded program. There's now a 40 page section, a bonus section with additional stuff for elbow health, shoulder health, breathing, bracing, because all that stuff is so important. So it just really took off. But in the earlier phase when I first started this program, like I said, I was just going to put it out in my blog until my good friend convinced me otherwise. And she's somebody who's been in the industry for far longer than I have. So it kind of took off from there. I ran several pull up challenges, kind of getting people to do pull ups in cool locations. If they couldn't do pull ups, it could be a pull up progression somewhere. So I had somebody doing pull ups in downtown Manhattan, on a tree in Australia, you name it. It was just so that was very cool. For building up momentum. A lot of the coaches in the industry, I consider myself very lucky. I have always received a lot of fantastic support from coaches of all genders and backgrounds in the industry. So they were supporting me in my work. They were really excited about the program, they were promoting it, they were using it with their clients. My current, like my, my own audience was excited. So it was kind of the perfect storm, so to speak. And it, when I launched it, it blew up. And then as I talk about all the time, the best marketing is not paid marketing. The best marketing is getting people excited about what you're doing. So they will talk about it, they will share your work. And so even if people don't want to hear about you, they're constantly hearing about you. So my work was constantly out there, even if people were sick of me.

Yeah.

And so that has never really stopped.

So good. Because it's.

Yeah. And the three E's again. And back when I wrote, when I released that program, I hadn't really talked about the three E's and I didn't even necessarily really or I didn't really realize I was doing that. But my program, it is very educational, it is very empowering because people were improving and they were getting excited about it, what they were learning, what they were achieving. And even some people, they might not have necessarily been able to do a pull up right away or potentially ever, but they made amazing progress and are still working towards that goal. And so many people have achieved their first pull up or many pull ups or better pull ups. I recently I received a message from a lady who is turning, she will have just turned 70 and she sent me a message and she said she's following my program and she was so close to doing her first chin up. And again it's a pull up program and yes, chin ups are slightly easier for most people, but most of the same concepts apply. So she said she was so close to doing her first, she called it a pull up, it was a chin up. And so a few weeks later she asked me if she could send me a message and she ended up, she sent me this amazing photo, this amazing story how it was the, I believe it was something, some army fair in Minnesota. It was some big deal and they had this pull up contest and so she was really nervous and her son in law who was in the army, he went and he did a pull up beside her. And so she ended up doing her first chin up just before the age of 70, took a photo, sent me the story and she was so excited. So stuff like that like to me like hearing stories like that is far more meaningful to me than any amount of money. I just love the stories and the happiness and the excitement and the empowerment.

Yes, I love it. I mean what I just, just listening to you talk, it is so clear to me how deeply rooted you are in your sense of, of service to other people and passionate that it is, it is magnetic when I, when I hear you speak. So I, I want to a thank you for pouring into me and into my community. I really appreciate it. And also I'm curious, you know, what would you say to someone who is like right at the beginning of their journey and trying to build the momentum? What would you say? How would you help someone stay in the game of building momentum?

First of all, there's so many routes I could go here. You want to figure out who you are, who you are as a coach. What you're passionate about, what you believe in, kind of just be strong in who you are. I think a lot of people aren't and they're kind of scared to be authentic. And again, you don't have to be authentic by sharing literally everything about your personal life. Just be authentic about who you are, what you do, what you stand for, what excites you. That is authenticity as well. It doesn't just have to be talking about your personal life. So that I'm a huge believer in obviously learning from others. Find good people you can learn from. They can be a lot of people, obviously, in your own industry, people outside of the industry, there's always different lessons you can learn. So there's that. Figure out the type of person, the type of audience or client you would like to work with in your earlier years of coaching. And I'm sure most coaches can relate. You almost worked with everybody and that kind of teaches you who you enjoy working with, but also who you can really, truly help. Because now I don't really. Most people who seek me out know what I'm all about. So I. But if I get messages from people and I know I will not be a good fit, I will be very upfront with them and say that. And if I can, I will send them to somebody I know who will be a better fit. So there's that. Are we talking just kind of like coaching or more like social media as well?

I would say you. I mean, if you. Yeah, you could talk social media as well and coaching, like, what would you differentiate.

A lot of the same philosophies go hand in hand. Again, consistency, find what works. Or first of all, become proficient at the fundamentals, whatever those fundamentals are, whether it's social media, whether it's training stuff, apply those fundamentals consistently and just really try to become as proficient at them as possible. Don't chase after quick fixes, trends. A lot of people, I joke on Instagram for a while when TikTok kind of became more popular, a lot of coaches, or I shouldn't say a lot, but some coaches, they kind of started sharing valueless TikToky kind of stuff on Instagram, which again, there's a time and a place, but if that's all you're sharing, I'm like, you want to be giving. You want to give value to people and you can give humor. Like they're obviously humor is good from time to time, but if you're not really giving any value, what's the point? So they're like in it, but it was trendy. So stop chasing after trends. You can use trends. I'm kind of a believer in like value versus viral. So I like to make sure everything I'm doing is giving value at least 80% of the time. Minimum 80% of the time. If and like the viral stuff can kind of be good for getting more views, potentially bringing more followers, but it isn't necessarily offering that much. So that's why I do think it is important to really don't overlook giving value even if that value might not be as sexy so to speak. And then with your own coaching and training, same thing. Focus on value, focus on fundamentals, focus on consistency. That isn't sexy, but that is what produces the long term results. And then kind of mix in the fun, mix in the trendy if you want.

So good. I think you know, one of my biggest takeaways that I learned for myself that I continue to remind myself in terms of, you know, re reiterating the basics is to remember to just be okay with who you are. Be more of who you already are.

Yes. 100.

I think there's such this huge focus on change. Right. You need to be different. You need to be different. It's just imagine what you know if. Imagine what you would do. This is what I tell myself at least is imagine what you would do if you had a hundred times the confidence of being who you already are.

Yeah. And something. I am so grateful that I never abandoned who I am in my earlier days. And even when I started to become it was still when I don't consider my big or consider myself big time at all. But when I had a small amount of followers on social media but it was more than I had in the earlier stages. I cannot tell you the number of times I was pressured. Oh, you should start wearing like wearing less clothes in your videos. They would be way more popular and. Exactly. And so first of all, I will say if somebody feels, if that is authentic to who they are and it makes them happy and feel good, absolutely do what makes you happy. Me, I don't enjoy doing that. It doesn't make me feel empowered. It is not who I am. It never has been. And I think if I went and did that, I would have lost the respect of so many people. So many people would not. The people who take me serious now, I'm sure probably about 50% of those people would not if that was what I was doing now. Because that is clearly not who I am. But other people, it is who they are. And I'm all for it. So even though in certain areas I've grown a lot as a person over the past five years, even more so probably the past three years in terms of my confidence, sense of self worth, self esteem, you name it, I went to therapy. Gosh, I've lost track of time. I think about four and a half years ago. Four, four and a half years ago. And I went really consistently for a year. And it has been one of the best things I've ever done. And just having that confidence, I've always kind of felt confident in certain areas. For whatever reason, in my less lesser confident days, I still had the confidence to know, no, I do not want to do this. I do not want to share videos or photos where I'm wearing less clothes because that is less or that is not authentic to who I am. Even if those videos, I'm sure they would have been more popular. But it's not all, it should not be all about the popularity. Being authentic is what works. It really does. You can tell when people are being fake.

Yes, so true. So true. And it's exactly like I used to be a former actor, right? So it's, it's when people could send, they wouldn't know that it wasn't good or couldn't tell you technically why it wasn't good. And I put that in quotes. But they just had, they just had this sense because subconsciously it was like there's something not right. They couldn't name it, but they knew it.

Yeah, you can tell when people are comfortable.

Yes, so true. Megan, this has been so incredible. You are such a bright star in our industry. I just think that part of what you bring to our industry is that is the true authentic, courageous self and you know, sharing what's, and really carrying people through a, an experience and customer journey. So thank you so much for again for connecting, pouring into us and I want to be mindful and respectful of your time. So what are some of the best places or where are some of the best places I could share or bring people to learn more about working with you?

Probably my two, my two hubs, so to speak. Megan Calloway Fitness.com is my website and everything is on there. And then people can also find me on Instagram at Megan Calloway.

Okay, great. Now we'll definitely connect them.

Oh, actually, sorry, Megan Calloway Fitness. I always forget because when I first joined Instagram I created another account and I've not been able to close this account even though I have not. I've never used It.

So I. Oh my gosh.

I keep mixing them up. I think it's Megan Calloway Fitness.

Okay, well, we'll make sure you link it right.

You'll know. You'll see the profile photo. There's one of me as a soccer player, which is my account I don't use. And then there's the other account. So I laugh. I should know. I really should know who I am by now on there.

But speaking of being authentic, I should know who I am.

I should know. Clearly I don't.

But make sure that we link up all the right accounts. Especially since you're about to. Well, about to whenever in the near future. I know that you're currently working on like an Instagram program for us.

Yes. So it is in the early stages. I was originally going to just cater to the fitness industry, but a good friend of mine, the same friend who actually convinced me to make my pull up program a big deal, she said, well, why would you just cater to the fitness industry when it is literally applicable to everybody? Which is true. So yes, I'm sure it'll be largely for fitness people, but it's going to be for everybody. It's not going to be quick fixes, it's not going to be trendy, it's not going to be sexy, so to speak. It is going to be what works. It is going to be what I have done, what a lot of other people who are really successful on social media, what they've done. And I think a huge part of this course, it's going to give people so many different light bulb moments because so many people are overlooking the most basic things that produce the best results. They think they need to be incorporating just different trends, quick fixes, magic. You don't just like training. And there's so many different training analogies. I will apply to this course. It's true. So I. It'll come out sometime in. Probably in 2023 sometime.

Okay, great. Love it. We'll make sure that we keep an eye on it, put all the links out there.

So it's going to be a course, not a, not an ebook. It's going to be an actual course people will take.

Love it.

With like modules and everything.

So exciting. Yes. All right, Megan, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you for listening to the PT Profit podcast. If you like this episode, chances are your friends will too. So it would be a huge service to us if you would please leave us a review and share with your friends. On your social media channels. When you leave us a review, be sure to take a screenshot of it and email that screenshot to my team atinfo simpson fitness.com and we'll send you a very special Instagram podcast that will show you how to create compelling content so that your ideal clients come to you and you go from wanting clients to a wait list of clients ready for your services. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.