Unlocking Fitness Success: Personalizing Programs with Alex McBrairty's Behavioral Insights

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 337. Today we are talking about unlocking fitness success and personalizing programs with Alex McBry's Behavioral Insights. 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 in 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.

Welcome back to the PT Profit Podcast. My name is Chris and I work behind the scenes here at B. Simpson Fitness. And the unique thing about this particular episode is I also happen to work behind the scenes at Alex McBrairty's business that he has founded called A Team Fitness. So I have a great opportunity to introduce this episode from a very involved perspective. As one of his coaches on his team, Alex McMarity is returning for his second appearance on the show. His last appearance was about two years ago. And so in this episode we're doing a deep dive into a very specific realm of how we coach our members at A Team Fitness. With the influence of Alex's psychology background, he is here to share how we craft personalized fitness strategies that align perfectly with the individual personally personality traits, ensuring that each client not only meets but exceeds their health goals. We'll dive into how that looks on the back end for onboarding the big five personality traits and and our communication, style and frequency with our members, as well as the outcomes and retention that we are able to achieve through this style of coaching. And before we dive into that episode, if you have been enjoying the PT Profit Podcast, I ask that you go on to Apple Podcast or your platform of choice, give a five star rating and leave a review. We know that it makes such a huge difference and the reach that we're able to achieve, the people that we're able to get in front of and it helps the show grow. So it's greatly appreciated. It makes more of a difference than you may realize. Thank you for tuning in and let's roll that episode.

Welcome back to the show, Alex. It is a pleasure and a privilege to have you here. I'm so excited to jump in. How are you doing?

I'm doing well, Beverly. I'm excited to be back. It's been too long since we've chatted and I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, I'm excited to. I'M excited to dive in. So for those of you who are not familiar with your work, can you please share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve, and how you got there?

Sure. The very brief synopsis. My name is Alex McBrardy. I'm an online fitness and nutrition coach. Been doing this now for over 10 years full time. And really what we specialize in is I pull my background from psychology and specifically motivation and mindset to help people essentially figure out who they want to be, what type of life they want to live, and then we tailor their fitness experience to help them meet that end. Pretty much in a nutshell, we like to view fitness as a medium, not as the end in itself. And so understanding that process, we tried to help people figure out what the end actually is for them so that we get them there faster.

It is so good. And I'll be sure that we. We link up that previous podcast that we did together because you really broke down your methodology and how specifically you do that. So I'm excited today to really dive into how coaches can learn from you in terms of breaking down your model, in a sense of using behavioral personality components to actually help their clients adhere to programs. So can you walk us through a little bit of your framework around. Around how you build out programs for your clients in such a customized way and then actually get your clients to do the work?

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it's interesting in using the word customize, because that's obviously a big word with fitness coaches. We're all trying to customize our programs for our clients. The one size fits all the. That model of just the same thing. Yeah, it was very popular for a time. It's still in some cases, in some circles, it might be with big group coaching programs or apps or whatever, but I think as time has gone on, the market has really established that people want something built for them. They don't want something built for somebody else. And so it's great to see a lot of coaches customizing their programs. And what we've discovered is that's actually not enough, because what coaches are realizing or what coaches are doing, even though they're customizing the program based on the person's movement, assessments on their goals, on the equipment they have access to, especially now in the online world, or maybe even in some cases, their specific biomechanics, if they're really into that realm and they can dive deep into that. And all that is fantastic from a applicability standpoint of the program. But what we're finding is coaches are falling short in that customization and personalization are not the same thing. And so what we do in our program, and I didn't even think twice. It's funny because, you know, I recently hired a new team member, and it wasn't until I was training him and walking him through the process that he stopped and he was like, nobody does this. This personalizing, which we'll talk about. And because it's just, again, with my psych background, it's just. It's always been normal for us. This is just something that we do. But to get back to the topic, the personalization is really going a step beyond just customizing the specific exercise variables and the nutrition protocols and is really going into how do we actually tailor this for the personality and for the preferences of the actual person that we're helping. And the craziest thing about this is it doesn't really hear about that. And it may think a lot of coaches may get a little uncomfortable thinking they have to shift their whole model or it's going to be this big ordeal of changing everything, when in reality, you don't have to change, likely you don't have to change anything about the way your model works now. It's just making small tweaks to things so that it resonates with people and so that they feel. The best way I can explain is they feel more seen and heard inside of your program, and then they get better results. They stay longer.

Okay, so can you walk us through how specifically you change, you make it different? I mean, the fact that you said personalization is different than customization, like that is almost like a gut punch because I know for me, when I hear it and say it, they're interchangeable in my. In my. In my vernacular. So I'm curious, how do you break that down? How do you separate it and how do you personalize programs?

Absolutely. So before we do that, we have to talk a little bit about what personality traits are. I think everyone listening probably has some familiarity. Some people may have even taken a few of the personality tests because there's an assortment of them, right. Most popular ones being like the Myers Briggs, the disc profile, etc. And essentially what personality traits are for those who are unfamiliar is a default pattern of thinking and behaving. It's kind of our disposition for interacting with the world. And this can be informed by a number of different things. Genetics being one learns behavior through childhood. So witnessing or observing how our parents interact with the world. So if we have a really anxious Parent who's always that way around us. As we're growing up, we tend to become more anxious ourselves. That's just what we've learned. But then also our continued experiences as we go through life, because our experiences change us and change our perspective on things and can shift how we default to interacting with others. So that's important to understand personality traits because essentially how we make these tweaks is we try to figure out what are some key personality traits that people have, what is their disposition for interacting with the world? And then we figure out how do we tailor pieces of the program to agree with the way that they already want to interact. Now, how we do this is we take, like, a condensed version of a personality test. So the problem with personality tests, Beverly, is that most of them are not scientifically valid. They're basically just as good as your Pottermore quiz results or your horoscope.

Well, it's also interesting, too, because people take those. People take those tests often with contexts. So when you have the context of like, well, this is how I behave and at work, when I have a boss looking at me versus, like, when I'm chilling at home like a villain. Right. So when you take the test with context, it changes the answers. So how do you get to the root of discovering someone's personality?

Absolutely. And so we'll talk about that. But the thing to preface, which I'm glad you said, is the context matters. And that's absolutely true. And so the one thing I caution against anytime I share, the way that we implement some of these personality stuff into figuring people out and personalizing their experience is that we are, and this is the mistake of a lot of personality tests. We are not categorizing people. We are not categorizing them or making presumptions about them. Ultimately, what we're doing with the way that we measure these personality tests in our program is we're establishing a baseline. And that baseline that informs us, or whoever the coach is working with that individual, what types of questions to ask them to then figure out what we need to know. So that's probably the most important thing, is that this is just the starting process of knowing what information together now with these personality tests, again, a lot of them, very few of them are actually scientifically valid or have what's referred to as predictive power. Predictive power is basically just the answers you get on the personality. What it says or how it says you are in terms of your traits, does that actually reflect in your behavior? And most of them are pretty Much junk right there. They categorize you, they give you some sense, but very much in the same way as like a horoscope word where it's so ambiguous in general that it pretty much applies to everyone in some.

Way or which houses. Which house are you going to be.

Exactly right now, with the exception of one in particular, and there's one called the five factor model, or the Big Five Inventory, which is the one personality test that has actually been shown to be significantly more scientifically valid than the others and have a greater level of predictive power, not just in the ability to actually predict the behavior that's likely to occur from the personality traits that that measures, but also across different cultures as well, which is important, essentially, what the Big Five is. It tests five different personality traits, and the easiest way to remember what those traits are is with the acronym ocean. Okay? O, C, E, A, N, ocean. And it stands for openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Okay, interesting. Okay, now very briefly, what all of those are. Openness, essentially, levels are measures, our level of openness to new ideas and new experiences. How adventurous are we? How likely are we to be able to accept abstract ideas or ideas that might be contrary to beliefs that we hold? How open are we? Now, this can play a lot of different roles within the coaching context because you have imagined, if we just jump right into its applicability, someone who is high levels of openness is going to be more open to trying new areas of the gym, trying new pieces of equipment, doing new exercises or new nutrition strategies. They're going to be more open to the idea of doing something different than what they've done in the past. Past. Contrast that with someone who might measure low in openness. They might be a little bit more rigid in their old ways. The dieting myths that they've learned, the diets that they followed, the workout protocols. When you try to change things, it's going to make them feel more uncomfortable and more anxious to shift things.

Therefore, less adherence.

Therefore, less adherence. Right now, an easy way you might address that is in our program, if we know someone tests low openness. This is why, when you are bringing on a new client, right, you get their exercise history, you figure out what they've done in the past, what's worked for them, what didn't, what they liked, what they didn't like. And now we know, okay, we know you've done these exercises and you're familiar with them, and we know that you hate new things. So our Initial program is going to start with mostly things you already are familiar with because then it feels more comfortable for them to get started. And then we start slowly build their repertoire of new things in a way that's more manageable versus someone who comes in high openness and they're just ready to go. We can get whatever we want and they're going to take it and run. Right. So it's not so. And all the other customization in this particular context, all the other customization pieces that you would normally do still apply. It's just a small tweak. Do we need to keep to the familiar or can we give them more new things? Right, but that's of course just in openness. Conscientiousness is how organized somebody is, how goal driven, in some cases how disciplined they are. So someone who's high in conscientiousness, they love a good plan, they love structure, they want to follow it, they want to know what's coming. Someone who tests love unconsciousness is a little bit more spontaneous, more likely to get into impulse. They might go against structure because they feel like it robs them of their spontaneity, but by proxy they're significantly more disorganized.

They're the program jumpers. Oftentimes you'll see them in program jumps that are shiny object or they can't get through the valley of despair, which is they have. The only way out is through. They just want to go back to uninformed optimism because that's the vicious cycle that they live in. Okay, got it.

Absolutely. Now, the interesting thing about conscientiousness of all of the five personality traits is it is the single one most predictive of someone's success. If they're high conscientiousness because they're more disciplined, they'll stick to the plan, they'll stay consistent with it, they're more goal oriented. Now I guess something else is a good time to mention too with these personality traits is they're not fixed. Sure, right. This may just be where we're at now, but over time you can become more or less of something. So that's important to recognize because I don't want people to think someone comes in low. Conscientiousness, that's the biggest predictive of success. There's no hope. Don't even, don't even try. That's not the case.

Context matters, but you can't make decisions without having information. Or sometimes you get lost and then what happens and what I hate to see and I've seen this in myself and I've seen it in coaches, is that they themselves will personalize their own process and think that they suck or that they're not good enough. And that's just really not it. They're just missing this. A key component.

Exactly, exactly. And so, for example, someone who tests low in conscientious, who comes in, we know that even though they don't like structure, everyone does better with structure. Everyone does better with a plan. So in that case, then it's just understanding, okay, A, we need to reinforce why it's important to have a plan, but we also need to reinforce why it's not going to steal their ability to still have free time and still be spontaneous and do whatever. But then it's also, okay, how do we give them a little bit more autonomy over the plan so they feel like it's less rigid. Right. So in that case, if we're scheduling a workout program for someone, we might set a day together where this is a day you're going to work out. But what you do from a list of options is up to you. Pick between these five different activities or five different workouts. Just pick one, do that. Right. So they get a little bit of spontaneity. They get to decide what they're feeling in the moment. They don't feel so locked in, but we're still starting to create structure because they know they're going to do something that day. So good, right? So small tweaks, but a lot of better adherence because now it agrees with them. They feel like, oh, this fits my person, this fits me. This feels natural, right? Extroversion, of course, probably the one that everyone is familiar with is how sociable are we? How likely are we to start conversations with people? How likely do we want to be around people and go out and exert all that energy? The low extroversion, of course, is just being an introvert, preferring to be alone, not being as, as drawn to the energy of other people, essentially. And this one's interesting in a couple of different ways because as you might imagine, someone who tests high and extroversion say they're start a new fitness and nutrition plan. If they're more likely to go out and be social with their friends, that creates extra barriers potentially in terms of eating out more, drinking more alcohol, getting less sleep, doing things that might negatively impact their results, they're going to be more drawn to doing well.

And I also think as someone who is like 99% extroverted, right? Like literally anything I've ever Done. Uninhibited, extrovert. Right. It's more for me, my own personal experience. It's more than just, you know, being sociable, because I can be an extrovert. That's not sociable. Sometimes. It's about how I process. Like, I need to be. I need to speak out loud to someone who, even if they're not listening, acts like they're listening so that I can, like, have a conversation with myself out loud. Right. My husband is always like, hey, I just read through your text message. Talking to yourself. Do you feel better? I'm like, yes, I do. Thank you. Right, so. So, you know, when I work out with women that come over to my house in the morning, I am more likely to get the workout done than I am if I'm left to my own devices. It's part of it.

Absolutely. That reminds me of something totally. Side note that I find kind of funny, because I don't know if you've ever seen the memes of, like, the couple in bed, and the woman's like, I wonder what he's thinking about. And he's like, just empty. Nothing. It's interesting because what they actually find is that people have different frequencies of their inner voice actually being active. So people who are more extroverted, they have a more ongoing internal voice. Like, it's. It's always a conversation happening.

Oh, always. My husband is an introvert, and so he tells me all the time, his mind goes blank, and I'm like, what. What is that like?

And that's exactly right. So people who are more introverted, their internal voice will actually shut off for periods of time, and there's quite literally nothing going on.

You think it sounds like silence. And I'm like, I. I don't think. I think I. I just. I. I can't even meditate without binaural beats. I'm like, that's something I'm working on. But, like, it is so loud up there.

Yeah. And now someone who is more extroverted, who is likely going to be more communicative. That's great. Because they're more likely to express how things are going. They're more likely to reach out if they need help. They're more likely to actually interact with you. And they're probably going to be slightly easier to connect with from the beginning because they're going to be more likely to share things. Someone who's introverted. This is probably the biggest piece with this level of high or low extroversion. Someone who's introverted is going to want less communication, probably. So it reminds me of a story of a gentleman we had in our program where as part of our program, we proactively reach out. We talk to people almost every single day via text. And it's something a lot of people in the program love. And this gentleman joined, and it was about three weeks in, and we were on our video call for the week, and at the end, I was asking him how things were going, like, how are we feeling? What's going on? And that's when he finally worked up the courage to tell me. He's like, alex, you text me too much. It's like, when I'm home, I don't want to be around people. I want to be in my world. And then you show up on my phone every single day. Please stop. Right. And this is interesting too, because I think a lot of, especially now, there's definitely a push in the, in the industry to be more available and to be more present with your clients. And I think, by and large, that's a fantastic way to go about it, because that's what I do. But there is something to be said and why I love this example of everyone's going to have their preferences, and some people might not want that. And so now, in retrospect, had we taken a closer look at him testing low in extraversion, in which I don't think we were doing this at the time, but for him, I'm sure he would have tested low. That would have given us at least the indication to ask the question, how much communication do you prefer fur? So that we don't bombard with too much for someone who doesn't want it. That also raises another really interesting point about introverts. In this case, people who test low and extroversion is if they're unhappy about something, they're less likely to voice it.

Yes.

And so in that case, too, how we approach this is now, we provide ample opportunities via inviting them in conversation, via text, video, whatever, email, to actually share their experience. Introverts don't really like starting conversations, but they're more open to entertaining one if someone else starts it. So constantly having that avenue of how are things? How are you feeling? We obviously, we have forms that people fill out every week where we measure their motivation and we ask them specific questions about this. For that reason, we invite it on our video calls every week. We invite it via text message. Like we strategically, especially more so for people who test low at extraversion, invite them to share how things are going so that in the event they start to become dissatisfied about something. We can catch it. As opposed to an extrovert who. They'll tell you, they'll let you know.

Sometimes they'll still want the door. It still won't be invitation, but they'll tell you.

Yeah. Sorry, were you gonna say them?

No, I said, this is so interesting. This is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So agreeableness is basically someone's level of empathy. How likely are they to care about the feelings of somebody else? So someone whose agreeableness on the, like, very extreme end, you can think of them as like a yes man or a yes woman. They're always saying yes. They're always. In some cases, they struggle with boundaries for that reason. Someone who's low in agreeableness might be a little bit more stubborn or a little bit more skeptical, a little less trusting from the onset. And so someone who tests low and agreeableness, something that coaches can expect is these are going to be the individuals that ask more why questions, why are we doing this? Why is this going to work for me? Which those questions are great. So understanding that they're coming and being able to answer them, People who are low in agreeableness are going to be more likely to need an explanation before they agree to whatever it is you're suggesting to them. Someone who's high in agreeableness is going to be more likely to be receptive of your feedback because they value what you're saying a little bit more, they're a little bit more trusting and they're kind of putting their faith in you faster, which is great. Downside of someone who's high in agreeableness is externally like in their world, again with the boundaries, they're less likely to say no. If people are pushing food on them, they're less likely to say no to social events, even if they know that A, they don't really want to do it and B, it's going to involve food and drink and whatever. Right. If someone's asking something of them that takes away the time they would have spent exercising or whatever, it's going to be harder for them to turn that down. But in the direct coaching relationship, someone who's high in agreeableness is going to be more likely to tell you what you want to hear, even if that's not what's happening. So, for example, we have a woman in the program who started, we got her log in her food, which is something we do for everyone, and she had her nutrition goals plugged in. Everything was good. She was tracking. She was tracking food Log looks fantastic. It came to update her progress over the span of a couple of weeks. No changes, nothing was happening. Which is the common scenario that all coaches see, right. They're checking someone's nutrition log. Calories look good, macros look good, food choices are pretty decent. Nothing that jumps out, but no changes are happening. And then it invites the difficult conversation of, hey, what's like, is there something else going on here? And we finally discovered that anytime she would eat something that she deemed as bad, she would omit it from the food log because she didn't want us, the coaches, to feel like she was failing in our program. So she was protecting our emotional state by just omitting all the negative things she was doing. When in reality that's the very thing that was preventing her from actually seeing the success. Yes. And so understanding that someone's high and agreeableness is going to be more receptive to your feedback, but they're also like, it's one of those too good to be true moments. Right. If they're just on board saying yes to everything. Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. 100, let's go can be great. But it could also mean that there's actually struggles occurring that you're just not witnessing. So to be vigilant for those things and the best way to do that is just to have objective measures that you can pull of how good someone's or how much progress someone is making and constantly compare those to what they're verbalizing to see if everything is matching. And then the last of the five personality traits, probably the most important of them all, neuroticism, which is essentially just how likely is someone to be a worrier? So people who test high neuroticism tend to have more anxiety symptoms, more depressive symptoms, less emotional stability and more negative self talk. They worry a lot.

They also have high stress. And when they have that much stress that's pumping in the background, it's going to prevent any goals. Well, not any, but like it's going to be a contributing factor.

And you're absolutely right. And it's a never. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Right. Because if they're experiencing stress in their life, then they start to write these stories in their head that make it feel worse, which then makes the actual event seem more negatively significant, which then leads to worse or negative emotions. So it's that constant cycle. Now someone who tests low in neuroticism is going to be more emotionally stable. They're not going to be as impacted by that stress. They're Going to be able to deal with it better and all. That's fantastic. The big thing to keep in mind with someone who does test high neuroticism so they stress out a lot is more reassurance, more reassurance that things are going okay. So another example of someone who was worried about failing in our program was a woman that we signed on who we discovered tested very high in neuroticism, so was a big worrier. And she pretty much between our weekly check in calls, she would be constantly worried of whether or not she was following the plan perfectly. And that led to a lot of anxiety. It led to a lot of challenges in her actually again sticking to the program counterintuitively because she was so concerned about getting it perfect, she didn't want to fail the program. And so knowing someone who is going to worry more. This is where the frequent text check ins comes in really good handy because we can send quick messages, be like, hey, tackle it today or hey, how you feeling? Or hey, you got this. Or just those quick motivational quips that can push someone out of their head for a moment, get them to stop worrying so much. Right. So those five personality traits are ultimately what we measure to begin to implement some of these very, again, small tweaks in the program that make a big significant difference in what people experience. And what's interesting is also the interplay of them. So for example, what we would consider as the dream client would be someone who's high in openness, high in conscientiousness, high in extroversion, high in agreeableness and low in neuroticism. So they're open to pretty much doing whatever you tell them to do. They'll stick to it because they're driven. They're going to be more communicative with you about how things are going. They're going to be more receptive of your feedback as you make changes and they're not going to worry about it. Those are the people that show up and they said, boom, let's go, let's rock. They have an off week. They can brush it off. They're like, oh, it's all good, you know, I understand it was an off week. I had a few extra beers on the weekend with, with the friends. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna get it together this week. No big deal. Right?

But the rarity of that person sounds like a unicorn.

Absolutely. These are the people that are just easy, they're easy to coach. They just need a little bit of direction and they'll Run with it. Now the, the reverse of that. The. What we would consider to be the difficult client is basically the exact opposite. Someone who's low in openness, low in conscientiousness, low in extroversion, low in agreeableness, high in neuroticism. Right. So they don't want to go outside their comfort zone. They're super disorganized. They don't like, they can't stick to a plan. They are super introverted, so they're not going to be likely to open up to you about what's really going on, nor share when they're struggling. They're low in agreeableness, so they're going to be super skeptical about every piece of advice you give them and they're going to worry about it the entire time. Now, the important thing to make about these distinctions because I know a lot of people, again, are getting to the point now where they come across these difficult clients. And I put that in the quotes on purpose and think that it's just these people are impossible to help. And the reality is that's not true. Because if you know that they have these traits or these preferences and you ask the right questions to figure out what they need, you can tweak your program or exactly what they need so that they actually adhere to it.

What's also interesting to me too, because I am curious about this and I know that you said this and you mentioned it, but I'm wondering if you could flesh it out just a little bit more because some of these traits are colored through contacts. Right. So people get, get, you know, they respond in high stress level. You know, their level of agreeability, for example, can change based on their traumas. Low T, Big T. Like how have you noticed these contexts shift when you're working with people?

Yeah, and that's a really great point. So I think the important thing to mind, because I said earlier, we're not using these to categorize. They're not. Yes. No. High. Low. This really is a way to think about these personality traits is on a spectrum, on a sliding scale. And when we talk about what someone's personality traits are, what their disposition is with these questions, there's, with these surveys, whatever we use to measure them, ultimately what we're doing is we're just putting somewhere, putting them somewhere on that spectrum. And then you're absolutely right to your point, Beverly. External circumstances, things that are happening in their life at that moment as they change as a person, as they go through life. But we'll take the acute Things happening in their life could push them a little bit further in one direction or the other. Right. So if someone is normally, we'll call it middle of the road, agreeable.

And.

Then they have a really shitty day at work, suddenly that's going to push them much less agreeable. They just don't want to deal with it. Or for example, say someone who's typically pretty low neuroticism, they don't tend to worry that much, but then they get this huge wake up call. Right. Maybe they get laid off at a job they've worked for 20 years now, suddenly that pushes them real far into worrying more about things or the instability of things. Right. So you're absolutely right in that what's. And this is why context matters. Where they fall might start somewhere, but it's an ever evolving process. Right. They're constantly moving.

Yeah. So I'm curious, how often do you retest and what does the process of onboarding look like?

Yeah. So I would say with retesting, it's interesting because we have a lot of communication with our clients. Like I said, we text them nearly daily, we have video calls once a week. There's other social media stuff that we'll do to interact with people. And the way I like to visualize, at least for me, how I'm interacting with people is the more communication I have. If I think of their life as a wavelength. Right. The more I interact with them, the more I can plug in and ride the wave with them. Right. So we're doing it together. And what that means for me is better at anticipating what's coming because I'm seeing the wave. This is why it's really hard for me to take time off. Because if I step away for a week or vacation, I feel like I've removed myself from that wave. And now when I come back, I got to try to figure out what's going on to get back on and ride the wave with them again. Right. So to your point of how, we don't retest these per se, but what we do and what we find is once we understand their baseline, we ask the questions, we start interacting, then it's just about getting to know the person. If you are, if you can recognize these traits in people and you're interacting with them consistently, you will notice if things are changing or not or how you need to interact. So it's, we ride the wave with them, we start to figure out what are the changes, what's happening, what do we need to do differently now, how we test it the first time is when they created this, this five factor model or the big five inventory. It's essentially a survey of questions. And as questions, for example, for openness, it might be I am imaginative or I'm usually the first to try new activities statements, if you will. And what participants did when they were developing this, this framework was they would note whether they agreed or disagreed to the state. For neuroticism, it's I am a worrier or I'm easily, you know, I get anxious easily or extroversion is I'm the first to start a conversation with somebody or I like to be the life of the party. Questions like that. An assortment of different avenues. Now I'm trying to remember the top of my head. I think the original survey might be like 56 questions long in total. There might be one that's even longer than that. What we've done for the purposes of our program, we basically have condensed it. So we have three questions, three statements, 15 in total, for all five personality traits. And we use this as part of our intake form.

So there's three questions per, there's three.

Statements per personality trait, correct. To which the person responds if they agree or disagree.

Got it. So now, so now do you, you were beginning to tell me, but do you tailor the questions for your context or do the questions translate?

We directly took the questions from the validated survey because we wanted to be as accurate as possible. So there is a caveat to this. The problem with creating your own questions for the context of what you need is because it's not been measured, you don't actually know if it's valid. Got it?

Yeah.

Right. We don't know if there's predictive power, does it? Is it going to be true? So what we did, because we didn't want to give on top of all the other information we gather, exercise history, medical history, their goals, their etc. Especially being an online program, we need to know what equipment they have access to, et cetera, et cetera. We didn't want to give them a 56 question survey at the end.

Yeah, we didn't want to lower the barrier of entry, but at the time, this is when they're the most excited, regardless of all their personality.

So we basically decided to split the difference. We're going to take three. And again we pulled our statements directly from that validated survey to try to maintain some level of accuracy. So we pulled three for each personality trait. They decided whether they agreed or disagree. And then we basically evaluated when they sent us the intake form. Now, again, we understand that this is not the full validated survey. We know, again, we can't categorize people based on the questions we're getting. But what it does give us is it gives us the baseline to figure out what questions to ask. It's essentially, we're not measuring if someone's high openness or low openness. We're. We're measuring if we need to ask them questions to figure out if they're more open or less correct. Right. And then it's the questions, the answers we get from the questions that we ask. Whether it's on the initial call, whether it's on the onboard call, whether it's in their first strategy session call, or just ongoing, perpetually, which is typically the case, we're figuring out how best we can tailor these pieces or what. What they're likely to need.

I mean, Alex, this is so good. So now how you started to talk about it, but can you expand a little bit more on how you came to this particular personality test when there are so many out there? I mean, not even just the personality tests. We've also got like, astrology and human design and enneagram. I mean, it's just like, how did you come to find this and nail this one? And then how did you sift through the question?

Yeah, so that's a really great question. It's interesting because some of it stems from my background in psychology. So, like I said, I studied motivation, mindset and motivation at the University of Michigan and really in the social psychology department, which is the study of psychology between groups of people. And I just remember listening to the professors and the graduate student advisors often talk about. About the clashes they would have with the personality psychologists. And they would constantly talk about the lack of scientific validity or how they was just like, making stuff up, or they would often equate it to horoscopes and astrology and not really being a real science. And they're just making stuff up and telling people what they want to hear and all this stuff. And so I remember actually coming out of that experience having a really negative view about personality psychology. Like, they're just. They're making it up. There's nothing going on here. But then as I'm going through life and as I continue to study these things, then I'm starting to realize, and with my own experiences with the Myer Briggs and the disc profile and whatever, it's like, okay, this feels, like, not really tailored to me. This doesn't really feel like it's. It's me. So I continue to look into, all right, is there actually any truth to this stuff? Like, what does the research say? What are we doing here, people? And it was in that exploration that I discovered this five factor model. And really, I have to give credit the way I originally discovered the big five inventory. There's an author, Vanessa Van Edwards, she wrote the book Captivate, one of my favorite books on social interaction. And that's what she does. She, she, her tagline is the science of people. And so she's all about charisma and communication and one on one interactions and body language and facial expressions and whatever. And in her book Captivate, she was talking about this, these big five personality traits. And I found it very interesting. And as I began to look into it, that's when I started to discover that of the research that's available, this is the stuff that's showing that it actually is real. There's some ground to stand on in all of those ways we previously mentioned. So as I'm kind of sifting through, it was actually reading that book that not only did I discover the big five, but I started to consider how it might apply in the context again, because in her context, it was in understanding these traits when you're communicating with people. And so it was an easy leap to go from that to, okay, I'm communicating with members of our program. How can I begin to figure this out, understand people a little bit better? And then from there it was all trial and error of, okay, if I'm just trying to understand these people better. Now I'm starting to get answers to things and become aware of things. Like the gentleman who told me he didn't want me to text him every day. It was too much. Now you start to see, okay, well, this person really doesn't want me to text, but this person loves when I text them every day. Like, there's clearly some differences here. And then it was just putting the puzzle pieces together to figure out what does it all mean.

And then, you know, how can I help my people get results? Because at the old, at the end of the day, that's what we're doing.

A hundred percent, 100%. And the craziest thing is what happens when you do this well, when you do this well, you get people in your program who say things like, my coach just gets me, or this program is perfect for me. There's a running joke in, in amongst our members that I'm psychic because I'll ask them questions and they'll be like, how the heck did you know?

Yeah.

Right. And so it gives you that level of awareness and even crazier than what happens when this goes well and people will express. And the cool thing about that when they say things like they just get me is obviously your retention rates are going to go up. As a coach, people are going to stay with you longer. But the craziest thing is you don't have to get results as fast if they feel seen and heard. Right.

Well, and it's also interesting because for the people who need fast results, you just need to, you know, depending on their level of agreeability or whatnot. It's about the tiny wins. Can you show them how they're succeeding along the way? That's will deepen the buy in. Not in you as a person, but in the process. Because like I tell my clients all the time, this is not the first time that they've tried to get healthy and fit before for like not the first time. So they have conduct.

And it's interesting with people that want results fast because there is obviously a level of people just don't want to wait to feel better and get all the things that they want reach their goals. But to some degree, I think it's because they are skeptical if it's going to work for them because they failed so often in the past.

Yeah. So this is actually an interesting point that you're bringing up and I'm curious where you see this fall in personalities and how you manage it in terms of managing expectations of the truth about what an expectations on two accounts. Right. In terms of where's the level of responsibility for you as a coach versus the level of responsibility for the actual client and how you can navigate those really hard conversations sometimes and then also managing expectations and of what exactly is going to happen? Like how do you navigate that and where does this come fall in personality components?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely important. So I think I am a little bit of an outlier in the sense that I. Unless someone is being outright offensive, I would never fire a client. Because in my mind, if someone is struggling in the program for. For whatever reason, it just means we haven't gotten through to them yet. We're not speaking the same language yet. And it seemed, it always seemed weird to me to quit on someone just because you together have not figured out what that person needs. As long as they want to be there and they want to achieve their goals and they're not being outright offensive. Then it becomes, all right, how do we figure this puzzle out? And the personality traits does give us obviously a lot of extra information, awareness to figure out, okay, what's going on in the past. A lot of this too is figuring out again, what are their expectations, right? Not just setting expectations from the coaching perspective, but what are they anticipating getting. And I don't want to equate it to a negotiation where one person has one price, one person has another, and you kind of haggle and until you get down. But in a manner of speaking, that's kind of what it is. They're coming in with a certain level of expectation. You have a certain level of expectation, and those aren't always the same. So sometimes you got to work on it, figure it out. But yes, obviously setting expectations from the jump is very important. And knowing, again, being more aware of what some of these dispositions are that people have with their personality traits does give you extra understanding of where some of their expectations are coming from. And regardless of what the topic of conversation is, if you're trying to come to an agreement, the most important thing is being able to understand the other person's perspective. So you come to an agreement, okay.

That, and, and, and then it gets, it just gets easier. Then you know, you're still going to have hard conversations, but then at least expectations have, are managed.

Right? And this is the thing with getting results not as fast is if. Again, because part of the reason people come in with these really high expectations of immediate results is things that they've been told in the past about what's true and what's not, but also because of some level of hesitancy of, and desperation of is it going to work? Is this going to work for me, I need to see something so that I can truly buy into it. But another way to get buy in is to make them feel seen and heard. Because there's no better way to gain someone's trust than for them to feel like you actually see them as a person and in their entirety. Because if they trust you more, then they're more likely to take your feedback. When you explain the reality of what they can expect, they're more likely to be receptive of that. It basically lowers everyone's defenses when they feel like someone's truly seeing them. It's really good.

It's really amazing what you have been able to do and put together because I think as I'm listening to you, I have, you know, as someone who naturally coaches and I think a lot of personal trainers who get into this, we do a lot of this unconsciously, but it's Sometimes based in assumption, based on our experience. Right. Of context that we've had. When you have really take, you know, systematize this so that people can like really understand what it is that they're unconsciously doing. Which is so good.

Alex. Yes. But every now and again it takes a new team member to be like, you know that this isn't normal. Right.

You know, Yeah, I. This is so good. I'm like, when are you going to put together your certification so we can all learn how to do it too? Like, that's the neck. That's the real question to be out.

Now you're just hyping me up, Beverly.

No, but I mean it's so good. I mean I can only imagine what the success rate has been.

Right.

And then also when it's not going in the way of expectations that it's really just a com, it's just conversations of like, well, here's the data of why it's not what to do and you decide. The level of responsibility no longer becomes like a pointing the finger conversation. It's more like this is what it really means to make a data driven decision and be able to be discerning with what's happening in the data. And I feel like a lot of coaches miss this.

And I think it's. There's a growing trend too, in a positive way of. And I know I fell into this trap early in my career of thinking that as a fitness coach I needed to make master exercise and nutrition. Which is true. But it doesn't stop there. It's also about mastering your understanding of people so that you can finally put the two together.

Yeah. And communicating to people in a way where they in and where you can. Where you're clear.

Yeah. 100%.

And do that. And sky's the limit.

Yeah. Because when you do this, people will stick around longer and because they're happier and they stick around longer, they'll have more opportunities to tell people about you. You'll get more referrals and then your business will grow.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Alex, this has been so good. Thank you so much for pouring into me and into my community. For those of you who want to connect with me, you and learn more about your process where some of the best places I can send them.

Absolutely. So I would definitely connect with me on Instagram. My DMs are always open if you have questions about implementing this. If you want to learn a little bit more about how we do it, I'm always happy to chat. So Definitely follow me on Instagram 18fit underscore. And also if you just want generally more insights into fitness psychology or how we implement psychology into different fitness related things, definitely check out my newsletter which is@meaningfullymundane.com publish there every week. New stuff, very insightful things, things that you can take and integrate with your clients to understand them a little better and get them to understand what they're doing a little bit better.

So good. And the newsletter and I love the emails. You are such an excellent writer.

Well, thank you.

We'll make sure we link all this up. Thank you so much Alex. I really appreciate it.

I appreciate you, Beverly. Thank you so much.

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