Hard Business Lessons I Learned Running a Coaching Business

From today?

Made you hungry. Perfect.

Okay, I've got a good one actually. I don't want to take it— do you want to take it in turns asking questions? No, no. Maybe I'll ask one and then you ask one. Yeah. Yep, cool. What are your thoughts on morning routines?

A bit wanky. Yeah, to be honest, like mental masturbation. Yeah, they're wanky. Uh, I think they're for people who want to signify their own self-importance, that they offend people. But look, rituals— I think there's a difference between having a ritual and having a routine. Like, routines are great, but what's the thing that's important? What's the thing that you're trying to do? If you get g'd up by having a cold shower, then awesome, go do it. I think the only thing that I'm skeptical of with morning routines is how long some of these morning routines take. And look, some people wake up at 5:30 and they meditate for half an hour and they're great. Cool, if that's what you got to do. For me, I get up every day and I guess I have a— everyone has a routine. I think the question more importantly is how long does your routine take and does it put you in a good headspace to achieve what you're actually trying to achieve? Because at the end of the day, it's only results.

Yeah.

I don't really care how you got there. It's like getting on stage on a bodybuilding show. No one really cares what you ate. They care about how you look. So is your routine producing the results or is it detracting from it? And you're, I mean, the whole thing of routines and rituals I think is to put you into a state where you can achieve your best. So I'm not like anti, but I am cognizant of how long these things take and also what you're trying to achieve with them. And is there a better way to achieve? And reliancy— are you relying upon this to achieve a certain result? Because I personally don't want to rely on anything. I want it to come within me. And that kind of state of slow flow uncertainty is, I think, is a good thing that you want to get, because otherwise you're trying to manufacture a world where everything is perfect. And the reality is not everything is perfect. It's going to be days where it fucking sucks to get up and you don't want to get up. But again, if you have a routine that makes you feel better, then awesome. But just just how long do these routines take? Because I think sometimes with the routines, people can put a lot of pressure on themselves. Like, I have to do this and then this and then this and then this and then this. If this doesn't happen, then I can't do the thing. Yeah, you don't want that because then you're putting obstacles in front of doing the thing. You just want to be able to do the thing, right?

Yeah.

So get your state into like—

what time do you wake up in the morning, both of you?

Generally at 6:30.

Yeah, he's earlier than me, usually about 7, 7:30.

Awesome.

Sometimes I sleep in if I have a late night, but usually it's about 6:30.

I love it. It's addictive, waking up early. You can't go back once you— yeah, awesome.

What was the next one? Oh, it's really good.

What are some of the biggest mistakes you've made in business when starting in flyers or as a new coach working with clients, maybe you wanna ask that if you like it. One of the biggest mistakes you've made, like starting out as a new coach or in business.

So this question is, I feel like a great one for Mark because he's had a lot of personal development. I've seen this personally. The person that he's become is astronomically evolved from the person I originally met, and that is through business growth of managing a team and also managing a business. My question, Mark, is if you can give us sort of your evolution from when you originally started enterprise and your perspective of, I guess, if you had perspective of how it would be running a team and how that sort of played out over the years.

Well, it's, yeah, you're right. It's, I mean, you've seen, you've had a, you know, passenger seat, so to speak, a co-pilot seat in many ways that you were, you were very close for what, 9, 8 years, 9 years, 8 or 9 years. Yeah. So when I started business, I was a bulldozer. There's another way to say it. I was an absolute bulldozer.

He made me cry.

Yeah, I made him cry. And, you know, I think I grew up in a world like the Polyquin Strength Institute. There was no pain. There was just, if you didn't do it, Charles would kick you. Or insult you in front of the room, or call you out, or call you fat. Or there was no room for weakness, right? The guys who were weak, they didn't show up to the course.

Sink or swim was the—

it was sink or swim. And I know guys at the Polyglot Institute now still, and they still kind of have that mentality, and they burn out their team. And because there's not everyone who's cut like that. It was a special group. And there's a photo— remember we went to Montreal? And that photo, we went to Montreal, you look at who the coaches were in the room, you're like, fuck, man, we're in the room with like legit best coaches in the world. Like now they've all done amazing things. And it was a— it's kind of a unique human that was really dedicated. I mean, the fact we went 40 hours to go to Montreal to do a private mentorship. Like, it shows the level of dedication. Not everyone's going to do that, and the expense— obviously these things aren't cheap. You do get a certain level of A-player in the room, and I came out of that thinking this is how everyone is, or this is how everyone should be, but also not having the empathy and understanding of reading people where they're at. And yeah, I am unique in these, then I do have a big level of resolve, and I need to use that resolve with other people. It's not my resolve selfishly hoarded to myself, and this is my resolve, I'm not going to share. I need to use that resolve to actually build people up and contribute to their life. And I think, you know, the ego of wanting to be the guy, and also combined with not having the empathy, the deep-developed empathy for people, and expecting— I think I tell this story, so I've really offended Reece once, and it's one of these things, you know, guys being guys. Reece trained a competitor, and I made a comment, I said if I trained them, they would have won. And I thought nothing of it because we were, we were just like, you know, having a barbecue, talking shit to each other, but it really cut him up. And years later, he told me like it really pissed him off, and, and I was like fuck. I was a real asshole. That was a real asshole. That was a real dick thing to say. And this is what I mean by the reflection of how much of a bulldozer I was with things. Like, this is where I'm going, get on the train. And that did attract certain people. It attracted people who wanted that, wanted the direction, but it didn't attract leaders. It attracted followers, if that makes sense.

Almost like a cult kind of.

Yeah, a little bit, right? It's like power god mode. And the problem with power god mode is there's always a bigger power god. And also, people aren't really loyal to you. They don't really have your back. And I discovered this time after time. Now it's a completely different approach. It's, how can I contribute to you? How can I give to you? How can I It's not about me, it's not about me at all. It's what can I do for the team? What can I do for my people? How can I lead with it? How can I make you better? And it is a different energy. It's completely different energy. And it is that death of ego. And I think, and I say this now, but I know 10 years from now I'll have another understanding of it and deeper understanding. But yeah, the lessons I think in business that I've learned have been out of just harsh realities of reflecting on the way I've managed myself in situations. With making mistakes comes experience, and with experience comes better decisions, right? If you say, I wanna have a dollar coin, but I only want a dollar coin with a head on it, like not a tail, you're not gonna get one. It's always gonna head to like So if you want to get to where you're going to go, you're going to make some mistakes, right? It's just the reality of it. And some of those mistakes are going to be more painful than others. And hopefully, like, guidance, mentorship, you don't have to make as many painful mistakes. But I've certainly made painful mistakes, and some have been my fault, some have been not my fault. Like, it's just the reality of the world. Some have been bad actors, some have been my mismanagement, misreading, bad decisions. But you learn from these things, and then you realize it's actually about me, the way I show up these things.

Absolutely.

So people can do wrong by you, but you also don't have to entertain that. You can show up in a different way. I don't know if that answers your question or if I've got too far off topic, but under— like, if you came in now to you haven't been to visit for a little while and you see the level of our team and it's just a different level of care and understanding and connection within the team. Everyone does have each other's back. Everyone's there for the right reasons. And as a result, people want to be part of our team, right? And everyone feels free to speak up and say what they want and lead. And like the course that we just ran on the weekend, which was the Elite Results. Before I ran that course, I told all my team, like, you guys need to take 100% ownership of this. This is your course. I'm only gonna be out there for like, you know, a couple hours a day talking, but you guys are also doing presentations. It's about you. And as a result, it was the best course we've ever run. And because the team had ownership, of what we're doing. So it's just bringing people together.

I think it's very important as well as a coach to be practicing what you're preaching, but also when you set clients a certain protocol to have actually done it yourself, because I can't tell you how much, you know, empathy it's given me and understanding. It's different to just prescribe people something and not actually do it yourself. But then when I started really following through with the things that I was giving them, like trialing it, I really understood a whole new level of empathy. It wasn't just like, oh, just do this, you know, you're weak if you can't do that. It's like I actually try and I'm like, damn, this is fucking hard for myself who's trained for years, let alone someone that's new to all of this. I think it's very important for us coaches to practice what we preach and be empathetic with clients.

And yeah, I say the two most powerful forces in coaching are empathy and authority. So it's even more than that, because empathy, yes, it's hard for them the first time, but also understanding that they've struggled with the mentality that they have, a conversation that goes on in their head about how they can't do it and how they're not good enough and how they've never been good enough and how their siblings said they wasn't good enough and their mom said they wasn't good enough and their kid at school said they weren't good and they've lived with this guilt and shame their whole life. It's stepping into their model of the world and going, well, now I'm asking them to do something, and this is so confronting for them. Having that level of mental empathy, not just physical empathy— that's physically hard. They're coming with all this monkey chatter and shit, and how do I navigate that? Because I'm the first person in their life probably that's ever told them they can do something that's really fucking hard, right? You need to have the empathy of understanding where this person's at, but you also need to be the unquestionable authority. And the unquestionable authority is someone who's walked the walk, talked the talk, studied the material, read the books, been to the courses, and actually knows their shit and how to get from point A to A to point B without a shadow of a doubt and have that unstackable level of proof that they can do it. So you need to have that authority to say, you know what, you're being a bit like— you can actually do this. And have that level of certainty and command in your voice of when you tell someone to go do this, they feel that your certainty outweighs any doubt that they may have. Do need that as well. And when you stack the two together, I think that's when you create really magical relationships, because then the person knows not only do you care about them, but you actually have the level of skill to lead them to where want to go.

Yeah, I agree. It's very much about love and compassion and authority. Also, like, if someone isn't where they need to be, it's like, I need to just be easier on myself, but they haven't gotten results in a while. Like, I had a client like this, um, recently, and I'm like, yeah, like, I am compassionate, but if we look at the data, you need to be a little bit— well, I just showed it— like, you need to be a little bit harder on yourself, honey, at the moment. Um, and you just got to show them kind of with love.

Yeah, yeah, compassionately call them out.

Yeah, exactly. Rhys, I know you're a big— well, both of you, big fan on giving clients what they want but as well as what they need. Give like kind of a maybe explanation of how you do that.

So as well. If I was to go off the top of my head, probably the classic example that comes to mind is I had a client recently who she said, I've got this event coming up and I'm going to be peer pressured, and how do I get out of it? And basically what I said to her was, I said, look, is it that you don't want to drink, or is it that you do want to drink and you don't know how to navigate the situation? And I felt like putting it on her to sort of ask that question, then I would understand where she was actually at. And it was, even though she said to me that she didn't want to be peer pressured and get out of it, when I asked that question, she did want to drink and just didn't know how to navigate that. Now, if this was a competitor and they're getting on stage, for sure it'd be a different conversation, but this is just a client who actually came to me of how do I make nutrition fit my lifestyle. It was a very different conversation, and basically it was just educating her on how to sort of make that work within her plan. And I feel like that was a really good example of when that would be a good place, because she was able to have that experience and it actually didn't impact our progress together. So I feel like that's a good example of that.

And if people want to enjoy themselves a little bit but really not lose their progress, they've work so hard, so hard for during the Christmas break. What are your suggestions with their nutrition?

We actually had this conversation recently of how best to navigate that, and like you said, there's no real one best way. It's more understanding where the clients are. And what I found was, you know, some clients are doing a meal plan, some clients are doing macros. It's really going to vary from client to client how you set that up, and also their relationship with food on how restrictive you are with that client can vary from client to client. For example, some clients I might just say give them some framework of, okay, if you know you're gonna have a little bit extra food that evening, you know, you might sort of just have your protein veg throughout the day, and then you've obviously eaten a lot less that day, so you have a lot more wriggle room later that day. Or some people, the day is the day and just enjoy yourself. And then again, another example is going to be clients that are doing macros. It's like, cool, what we can do is just make it either fit your current macros, or we could just, if you're dieting, call it a baseline day where you're going to eat a bit more food. You're eating baseline calories, so how much is actually going to set you back? But it's going to give you that extra wriggle room that's going to allow you to enjoy the day. And even more, if you're doing macros and you're doing specific macros, we could just call it a calorie day where we could set a protein protein target, if that would be a good idea, or we have no protein target and you just feed calories. So there's so many ways you can approach it, and it's just understanding your client and where they're at.

Yeah, absolutely. I like the rule of mainly, like, if they're using Cronometer, they've got like a deadline to schedule something in their food diary, whether it's like 500 to 1,000 calories worth of just oil, and then fitting in everything around that, meeting their protein target before they go out to the event, making sure to stay within the calorie range, and then they just don't have to worry about tracking at the event.

Yeah, because it can be super stressful for some people. Obviously, again, competitors, different chart. Like, if they've got a comp or an event coming up, it's a different chart. But if it's just literally they just want to have a better relationship with food and improve their lifestyle, it's like, okay, what does this client need? And then having the tools, like, as coaches, the more tools we have in our tool belt, better we can help people.

So I know you've hired a lot of mentors in your career. How would you explain just how fundamental it is to continue upskilling throughout your career and not just kind of stagnate with your knowledge?

Well, the way I look it is if there's a skill I want to learn, I'd find someone who's really awesome at that skill and ask them, you know, spend time with them. So everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, and if there's this particular skill that I feel like can take me to another level or I value, then it's the fastest way. So is sitting down with that person. And almost all the time these things will cost money or time or something. And in the beginning, they were fortunate, people saw my passion and they gave me time, which I was, you know, forever grateful for. And then you learn those skills and it helps you to with the next thing. Yeah, I think the level of conversation in the room will keep you— you are the product of the 5 closest people to you. And if you see— and one of the things, say for example, in our Wolfpack group, when we get new trainers who come in and, you know, we've had trainers there for like 3, 4 years and they're talking about how they just hit 7 figures, or they're talking about how they charge, you know, $150 a session to $200, and the other trainers in the room are going, what, like, this is real? It pulls your thermometer— your thermostat, rather.

Yeah.

For what's capable for you. And even you might not get to that level, you might just push it by 10%. The level of— got a guy who I speak to quite a bit, he spends $30,000 a day on Facebook ads and $30,000 a day on Google ads. And I'm like, holy shit, next level. I'm like, that's a lot of money. And his business is obviously very big, but having conversations with him, it just kind of fries my brain a little bit at the multiples that he does business at and the decisions that he makes. Like big decisions for him, like big decisions for me, like really holy shit decisions. As some daily small decisions for him. And it moves the thermometer, or the thermostat rather, of what's, what's possible, what's capable. And challenges your thinking and your psychology of, oh, actually, um, gives you a different frame of reference.

Yeah, Grant Cardone's book actually did that really well for challenging my money mindset a bit. Things you can consider, like, why would you spend time worrying about this little thing when it really doesn't matter? Just spend it and focus more time on, like, making more money, whatever.

Yeah, delegating the low priority tasks to to do the high priority tasks that are going to make you money rather than cleaning the house yourself. If you can earn $150 an hour—

and so easy to get stuck in those little traps of just, oh, but it'll only take a second if I do it myself. But being able to think outside and how can I delegate this is—

yeah, empower, delegate, embrace people on the journey.

Yeah. So how did you start like delegating people? I mean, your business the most was like hiring people through Fiverr to do the necessity.

So my first like hire was a named Andrew who was a trainer. And I had probably like 5 trainers on board before I hired a receptionist because I was doing the whole thing, managing the books. So it was really like the first thing I started with was delegating trainers. And then once I had, you know, 5 or so trainers, I realized pretty— actually at 2 trainers I realized I couldn't write all the programs and do all the nutrition and had to start teaching these guys how to do the training and the nutrition and the screening. And it was just— it was a sequential period of this is eating up way too much of my time, I need to delegate this. This is eating way too much of my time. I need to delegate this. And I just started delegating all the things that I didn't enjoy, figuring out a system, training them up. Reece was obviously here before. It was no different with him when he started. He was rep counter. So I do all the training, I do the nutrition, do all the programming. And I realized pretty quickly, if he's got 30 clients and I've got 30 clients and this other guy has 30 clients, that's 90 programs that I need to write and 90 nutrition consults, and then the regular check-ins, plus all the new sales that I'm doing and the hiring of the other guy. Yeah, I need to start training this guy up to take of the training, the programming. So now he's sending me programs, he's doing the nutrition, I'm assessing him, making sure he's trained up. It just becomes, I suppose, a sequential, sequential thing to now where we've got it is I just do assessments for the guys at my team. I don't even train them up anymore, as in my manager and our team, and we've got master coaches who will train my guys up. I just do the final assessment. I'll pass or fail you. If you pass, awesome, you can start doing this. If you fail, you'll go back to your team, they'll train you up, they'll send you back to me when you're ready. But my assessment assessments are very hard and very strict, but now I'm just doing assessments. I've gotten back so much more time. So it's, it's a sequential, it's a sequential thing that you're going to move on to these things once it's appropriate. Obviously you have to monetize these things as well, so it has to be, it has to be profitable to be able to do it. Yeah, otherwise you're going to be out of business before you know it, right?

Actually, it's quite, um, like common to see either people that are really good at business or they're really good at like the technical side, but very rarely both. And I feel like you're a good example of someone that has learned both other of necessity.

Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah, I've had to learn both.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I guess, yeah, you can't— a lot of trainers, they'll just go straight for the business side without spending the necessary time kind of upskilling in the—

yeah, I think I've probably spent equal time doing both, really, is I really am passionate about coaching. I love coaching. It's one of my biggest passions is getting the most out of people. And the business, I enjoy business. I enjoy the creativity side of things. So you combine those two things, it's a combination, right?

What's one of the biggest mistakes you see mistake people make when they start out dining?

Mindset.

Mindset.

Mindset. You know, it's almost New Year's, Christmas. I say people eat all the calories in Christmas, they eat none of the calories in New Year's, and then they wonder why they're on a yo-yo platform. People want to do a thing rather than become a thing. Become the person who eats healthy foods that build and nourish your body. You don't do a diet. I mean, you can do a diet, but a diet has an endpoint. So what do you do after the diet? You go back to what you're programmed to do. Yeah, like I related to computers, no one sees the programming, the code behind the computer. We just accept that when we press the letter A, A appears on the screen. And we all run our own code in terms of who we are as people. We say we are an unhealthy person, we say we are a healthy person, we say I don't sleep well, we say certain things about ourselves that then become true. And people want to remove the diet and not make it a part of themselves. They see it as an external factor rather than part of who they are. And often the fitness industry sells general clients the all-in-all all-or-none mentality. And in my experience, all usually gives you none. So rather than having an all-or-none mentality, teaching people to have a flow mentality, which is it's going to be Christmas, there's going to be New Year's, there's going to be a wedding, there's going to be a birthday, there's going to be a bar mitzvah, and you're not going to get overweight and unhealthy because of one of these things. It's because you stack these things on top of each other, and it's what these things mean. It's when you go to Christmas, you have to eat everything because it's Christmas. That's a very limiting belief. You can still enjoy Christmas Christmas, eat things and be merry. But then what do you do the next day? You go and train? Do you get back to the food plan? Or do you go, I know I'm just going to eat until New Year's and my diet starts New Year's? Because you're constantly putting things out in front of the spectrum of time, which isn't consistent with who you are as a person. So rather than have this all-in mentality, you want to flow with, this is who I am, and how does a healthy person navigate Christmas? What are some constraints that I can put myself that make sense? Do I really have to eat until I feel sick? You might do that one day out of the year, say Christmas. But the rest of the time, if you're doing that, well, don't wonder why you're putting on weight. Yeah. And what does food mean? So yeah, I think the biggest thing, you know, people look at calories, they look at foods that you need to eat. It's the internal chatter of what you make all these things mean, because you can show any diet works under the right constraints. It's how do we relate to these things in a relationship with food, ourselves, and our diet.

Absolutely. And that's why I'm a huge fan of gamifying training with clients and really making it part of their identity instead of focusing on just weight loss and training as a means to burn calories. If I can get them to go in and really enjoy their training and gamify it and build that confidence over time with them building strength from our previous programs, that it builds confidence and they, they really start to create an identity as opposed to someone that just goes in to burn calories.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.