S2:E18 - Wolf’s Den: Eugene Teo

Hello, my name is Mark Ottobre and welcome to The Wolf's Den, the show that punches you in the face with information, education, and motivation. Today's guest is Eugene Tao. Oh, it's gonna be one of those days.

Okay.

Eugene is the muscle mechanic. Eugene has traveled the world educating trainers on rehabilitation, performance, and everything in between. Eugene thinks outside the box to often yield, you know, big, big results. So welcome to the show, Eugene. We've had some pre-camera Caffeine, I think we should start with our caffeinated beverages and just talk a little bit about how, you know, I'm a, actually, you know what I do for my caffeine? I get a shot glass every day. I've got a, what's it called? A Game of Thrones shot glass. And I get my cold press from First Press Coffee and I measure 30 mils so I don't ever go over my caffeine. So I have 30 mils of cold drip coffee a day and that's it. I'm good for the whole day. So today I've had a full little thing. So I've had over my 30 mils. I've had about 120 mils. And now I'm also having a Four Sigmatic coffee which has the Lion's Mane Chunga. So you were talking about how sensitive to caffeine you are as well. So this is hence the laughs off camera. Yeah. How much coffee a day are you having?

Yeah. Well, you gotta remember that I'm a very little Asian man, so I can't handle that much coffee. Well, I shouldn't be able to, but I am a recovering coffee addict somewhat. So many years ago when I was a slightly bigger Asian man, I was, when I was personal training, I'll have a lot, had a lot of coffee. Now how much? Well, for one thing, I love the taste of coffee. That's why I have it. And So for me, a long black tastes like watered down cat piss. It's got to be an espresso for the full flavor. So you can really taste all the snobbiness to it. But the issue is when you have an espresso, it's only, it's like that. It's gone in a second, you know? And so you'd have to get a triple espresso or a quad shot at least just so you get some volume. So you actually get a warm beverage. It's middle of winter. You sort of nurse it up to the gym from the cafe. And sip on it for maybe 2 minutes, not 30 seconds. So you get a little bit of more mouthfeel from it. Anyway, I would do that and I would have about between 3 to 5 of those in the morning before—

Jesus Christ.

Well, I would—

3 to 5. So you're having like 12 cups of like 12 shots.

Yeah, I would do it 'cause I'd get my own broth before I start clients.

I'd be like shitting my pants.

Well, I'm surprised I didn't.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah.

But it wasn't like, How do you go to the toilet?

Like I would bring, get my own one and then my clients would bring me one or two throughout the first few clients in the morning and then, and you can't say no to that. It's like, you know, it's like slapping God in the face. You don't do those kinds of things. And then of course you gotta have a pre-workout one. But the most important thing is you've gotta stop before 12. Otherwise, you know, like cortisol, you're gonna die. You get cancer and die from that. You go after 12:01, you're fucked. So it would be like 15 shots before 12 o'clock. And you're right, like the red flag is, hang on, like I did that for a good 12 months straight. The red flag should have been in my head was, hang on, you are not shitting your brains out and you're still able to function without like getting the jitters and feel like you're on cocaine right now. And you're able to sleep still without any issue. And like, that's probably with that eventually, hang on, that's probably not right when you are not 200 kilos, you are a very little Asian person who really doesn't have that high tolerance for certain things. So how can you get away with this? And that became part of my demise back then of realizing, oh, you've actually dug yourself into this deep, deep, deep ditch and 15 shots is just keeping you just treading water right now. And then eventually, you know, you start to take that shit out and then you drown. So I did drown figuratively and had to rebuild myself out of that hole. And that's what took me down the path of learning a lot about the physiology of men also like things like sympathetic dominance, stress, and how your body is not as resilient as we think it might be and having to repair that from the health perspective. And then now, well, since that point, I didn't need coffee. Like after that point in time when I rebuilt everything, I was at a point where I realized what real energy really was. Like stimulants are a very quick, dirty way to give you energy via just uprooting this whole catecholamine response from the stress response. Whereas that is very different to how your body is actually designed to be producing ATP on a cellular level, where it should be going through slightly different mechanisms that you are just supercharging through coffee. So when I found out, oh, hang on, part of this whole energetic cycle to produce energy or to produce ATP is dependent on things like your B vitamins or your magnesium, your CoQ10, your carnitine. If you keep throwing in caffeine to try to jack that up, but those key things are missing, then you are going to run into a ditch eventually. You are gonna deplete things even faster and then eventually it's gonna bite you in the ass. But then I realized what if you stop the caffeine but just put back in those key things that may have been missing, your body creates a whole lot of energy because the fact is you got a whole lot of energy on your body is waiting there to be used, but your body technically—

I noticed that you grabbed here first.

Well, that's it, you know, that's where I hold it. But that's where, let's just, I'll cover up my dick on camera. Come on, Mark, come on.

Well, not on this program.

You can go to YouPorn. But yeah, like you'd be surprised. Like people realize like one thing I really try to tell people that I really do believe in is that like when dieting or going through a fat loss phase, it should actually be quite effortless for the most part. If your body is set up in a way metabolically or however you wanna define it, where you have the right nutrients in there, where you don't have these deficits in nutrients. When you do create the caloric deficit that's integral for fat loss, your body should know, okay, I no longer have energy coming in from food. I will go access it from here, from here, from your dick or wherever else it might be. It knows how to go there.

And to you, I'm never going into a calorie deficit again.

Yeah. And the thing is like that should be, to your brain or to your body, it's no different. Your body doesn't care where it gets the ATP from. Is it from a stick of butter or is it from body fat? It's like, eh, I don't really care if it knows how to access it. So when I started letting my, teaching my body or getting my body into a state where I could do that by making sure I was getting the right nutrients in, making sure that I wasn't abusing things that like caffeine that would deplete myself so much from just supercharging that stress response all the time, I had abundance of energy. And then it was, at that point using caffeine now only when I really wanted that extra level of cognitive performance or strength or whatever, 'cause it is obviously an ergogenic aid. Like it's one of the most well-researched things out there, probably second to maybe creatine or maybe creatine second to that as like very good things that has a lot of benefits for the body. So that's where I was. So now I only do it when I am, I have it very, very sparingly 'cause I don't need it. I really don't need it that much. I have it quite sparingly, maybe when I teach and then I teach every single fucking day. So it's all the time.

So what a good analogy that I might remember I remember hearing from another little Asian man, his name's Douglas, Chinese medicine doctor. He said, you know, coffee really is a loan and every time you have it, you're taking out a loan. It's almost like, you know, you're like, oh, I figured out the keys to life. I'm gonna get a loan from the bank for 100 grand and I'm gonna live off the loan. And you're like, dude, one day you're gonna have to pay back that loan. Like, no, no, no, I'll just take another loan next year. And then that loan accumulates interest and one day you gotta pay it back and that's when people fall into problems. My coffee story is nowhere near as interesting as yours. I used to have 1 to 2 long blacks a day and each time I would have one, I'd be going to the toilet and Reece would be making fun of me like, where's Mark? Oh, he's, he had, he went to the, he had his coffee and he's in the toilet. So we went to Italy, my wife and I, and we ordered a long black and they said, oh, you want Americano? I'm like, I'm not American. I want, I want a, I want a long black. Like, yeah, Americano. I'm like, no, no, I'm not going to Italy and everyone thinking that I'm American when I'm an Aussie. You know, I was, very much an Italian background. So that actually converted me. So initially I started drinking short blacks, came back to Australia, I was like, all right, I'm only gonna short drink short blacks. And then I even realized Bob Gill, who I think, you know, he muscle tested me, he said, Mark, you're part of that 20% of the population that raises their blood pressure too much. So he muscle tested me with a cold drip, the first press cold press. So I started on the, and that was fine. That didn't cause any stomach irritants or raise blood pressure. So I started on that, got rid of the hot coffee. And then since I've been experimenting with different kinds of coffee, it's 'cause, you know, I really don't tolerate hot coffee and traditional coffee.

Do very well.

So hence the Lion's Mane and Chaga from the Four Sigmatic or the cold press. But I really find like, this is 50 milligrams of caffeine. I like using it if I'm doing like an interview like this or admin stuff. Whereas I find that the 30 mils of, you know, cold press in the morning, I love the flavor, just gets just enough just to get me going. And then I normally train, but normally don't have it on weekends. But you're a special guy, so I want you to try it.

Well, this is going to be a workout. Yeah. To try to get into here and work out what's happening. I was gonna take a bit out.

So first question, actually, how do you pronounce your name for the viewers at home? I know it's not Frank Tow or Tow as we spoke about.

Frank Higginbottom.

Frank Higginbottom. How is it? Is it Tio or Tow?

Tio.

Tio, okay.

Eugene Tio.

So tell me, what are you doing lately with your training?

That's a very good question. That's a very deep question because I'm not even sure what I'm doing with training right now. It has been a very interesting explorative couple of years because the way that I have trained in the past versus how, and also how I enjoy training as well has had to change because of my lifestyle of traveling all the time and teaching.

Well, maybe we pause that for just a sec. Let's go to the genesis of Eugene. Where did you start your, as a kid, tell me about you. 'Cause often your voids in life dictate your values. Well, not often, always in life your voids dictate your values. I know for me, I was the fat kid, got into training, felt I was unintelligent. Sort knowledge and really it's become this thing of, you know, I never know enough and I always wanna be stronger. I always wanna be better. And that was my driving void that drove a value. So for you, I mean, were you the skinny kid, the fat kid? Tell us about Eugene growing up.

I was the small Asian kid in a very, very white culture. So there was always that stigma of, hey, you're a little bit different. You know, like I can put dental floss around your head and you can't see anything anymore. So it was always that in the back of my mind, like shit, I can never look at dental floss same way again, just out of terrifiedness of being blindfolded. Um, like anything can be a blindfold at that point. But, um, I never got bullied or anything like that because fortunately I was able to navigate most of my childhood. And you know, you get bullied here and there, but I was sort of like—

Did you grow up in Victoria?

Yeah, Victoria.

Yeah. What school did you go to?

Um, like high school?

Yeah.

Uh, St. Kevin's. So Catholic boys, white school with a lot of round eyes. So, um, for me— Fucking round eyes watching this. So for me it was, I know that I'm a little bit different in the way that I look or the way that I also, I'm a very small person, a diminutive kind of person. So I always went towards training for size, training to become bigger. Like I never grew up looking into bodybuilding at all. Like that was, I had no idea what it was until I was literally out of high school. When I went to a personal training course, like, oh, this bodybuilding is actually a thing. But I've always been fascinated by the idea of building muscle and getting bigger, growing yourself in that way.

So when you finished school, was there the traditional, like, you know, Chinese or Asian expectation that you're gonna go off and be a doctor or lawyer or these kinds of things?

Pretty much because—

It's like you're stereotyping. You're like, pretty much.

I am one of 3 and I'm the youngest. So that's gonna really tell you that I'm definitely the black sheep where my eldest is a doctor and then my brother, my older brother, he is a dentist. So there's two doctors and—

There you go, I'm not stereotyping at all.

Not stereotyping at all. And I was like meant to go to law school and then I joined the gym instead, which is the logical choice. So it was, yeah, it was a little bit different, but it was just what I've always been drawn to. 'Cause I love the feeling of, training. Like I'm the person who, it didn't really come from a void of like, I wish I looked like that or whatever. I just really enjoyed lifting in the gym. I really loved exploring and feeling the way that the gym would make me feel in terms of that empowered feeling. And that's probably maybe where one void could have been. Maybe I felt powerless or not as powerful being that small.

So when did you say to your folks, you know, I'm not gonna go to uni, I'm gonna, I mean, did you go to uni?

I did go to uni.

Yeah, what'd you do in uni?

I was studying business. I was studying commerce. And that was more my way of just making sure that my parents don't want to have an aneurysm or kill themselves or kill me at the fact of me not becoming a doctor.

And when you went home and you said, you know, folks, this ain't happening, I'm actually gonna be a personal trainer. What was that like?

They were very, it's weird 'cause they were accepting but also not accepting. Like they would say it as like, okay, we're gonna support you through it. We're gonna help you and like understand your decision.

How old were you?

I would have been 17, 18 at the time. And, but I know in the back of their heads they're like, this is something that's gonna, this is his part-time job. This is his job at stacking shelves. He's gonna be at the gym for now until he finishes uni. Then he's gonna go, you know, get his major. He's going to go into finance or whatever. And then he's going to do everything else under the sun, like the perfect Asian boy. And it wasn't until they started to see me develop and started to see what I can actually do with what I did in the gym, they started to, that's when they started to accept it. And it took many, many years.

How many years?

It would have been like my mom first got a glimmer of it of like what I can really do with my body when I did my first competition. Because prior to that, I spent 3 years building towards my first show as a natural teenage bodybuilder.

How old were you when you did your first show?

I was 19.

Okay.

Yeah, I was 19. So it was something where I'd spent the 3 years prior completely unhealthily obsessed with training and eating and just trying to eat, sleep, that was it. Like I would miss birthdays, my own birthday, I would miss Christmas, everything just because I couldn't weigh out my chicken. I remember one of my Christmases, I did go to the family dinner, but I brought my scales out to weigh the turkey out and I freaked out because like, I'm like, it's not chicken. I'm meant to have chicken now, but I'm having turkey. I'll just, I've got to accept that.

Did you have a coach at the time?

Yeah, I did. I did have a coach. So I was working with Lucky Atsepentalis at the time and he was guiding me through everything. And he never told me to necessarily do that. Like he would like, but he didn't tell me not to. And I've always been, I'm the type of guy who's gonna be very diligent in anything. Like that's where the Asian genes do shine through where it's like, hey, this is what's meant to be done. I'm happy to do that. I won't complain, I won't piss and moan. This is just what I've decided to do. So I'm happy to just forego celebrations or whatever it is to just be part of my goal. So obviously doing that, my parents don't understand it. They were like, why are you getting so big? And it was fat big at that point. Why are you doing all this to your body? And you're skipping out on all these events, you're not partying or whatever, what's happening? And then it wasn't until I competed and my mom saw what I'd done, she was like, oh wow, okay, the last few years of you training and you're putting your body through that, now it makes a bit more sense. And that was part of a little bit of a shift. And then like, I guess it was from there over time, like as I grew into, in my business, as I grew with my own training, as I grew as a person out of the gym as well, and I started communicating with her better as well, she started to really understand what I was doing and then accept it. And then now it's not even a point of contention at all that I'm not a doctor.

Fantastic. So just to recap on that, You really started as the skinny kid. From the skinny kid, you got into weights about 16, 17. You started training for your first comp, pretty much competed when you were 20, 19? 19. 19. Added the slabs of muscle. When did you start PTing?

So when I was 18 or so. Right. Yeah, I was fresh out of high school.

And where were you actually working?

I was at Fitness First. So it was the point where that was the gym closest to me and I was training there already. And while I was getting my PT certs. And I definitely know it was like within the year of being there, I started working there because I just, I was always there every single day. 'Cause I just got to know everybody. And then one of the guys was like, hey, look, do you want to actually like start looking at working here? And I said, yeah, okay.

Like, yeah, you don't have an unfamiliar story. I know I can relate to a lot of what you're saying. I mean, I started a little bit differently as the fat kid. So my thing wasn't about being big. It was actually more about being lean. And then I competed and did very terribly in my first show. And then that drove a hunger of knowledge and wanting to do better. And then really just wanted to get into PT. So it's very, very interesting. I see a lot of parallels. I know our first meeting was at a Poliquin event, BioSignature. I remember coming up to you and saying, hey, you're that guy who wrote the Teen Nation article.

Yeah.

I think it was like Nat Green or something. And you're like, nah, dude.

No, that's the other Asian guy.

Yeah. I was like, oh fuck, all you guys look the same. Yeah. And you're like, nah. I'm like, okay, cool. Cool. And then you came to one of my courses, Eat Your Way to Abs. And I don't know at the time what I think was maybe the third or fourth one I had run. It was one with Tony Doherty, right?

No, no, it was even before that. No, this, you had, you had Kalina and you had the Heavy Metals.

Oh yeah. Dr. Bruce Jones.

Yeah. Bruce Jones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That would have been back in like 2010.

Yeah. Yeah.

It was a while ago. And then I can definitely relate to the Christmases, the weighing. It's a very common. So for me, understanding your voice avoid. There's no wonder why you're going around where you're doing and educating as many people as possible. So you went from hardcore bodybuilder, fair to say, to when did you make the transition to go, right, this, I don't know, it seems to me at least you went, this sport is not quite for me. And you went to more of a, I don't know, I wanna say rehabilitation strength or like I did, I find it very much the same. I went, this is, I don't really fit into this place. There's more to health and fitness than just this, this element of bodybuilding. And you kind of look at it and go, oh, I just want to be known more for performance and do things more holistically. What was, I know what the trigger was for me. The trigger was for me in 2005. I remember being backstage. It was my third bodybuilding show I ever did. And there was two guys and they were talking openly. And one of the guys said, oh, I've been competing for 12 years. And the other guy goes, oh yeah, how's it going? Been? He goes, oh, well, I'm just so depressed. You know, my wife and I, we haven't been on holidays. We're having lots of fights. I'm on antidepressants, but you know, I've won most of the shows, I've come second, but all I've got is these trophies. And he was painting this, you know, the next 12 years of my life if I continued competing. And the next 12 years, if I continued competing, didn't seem very bright. It seemed very bleak. And I thought, wow, there must be more to my life than just competing. In fact, that was the moment where I go, right, I'm actually not gonna compete. I need to find a way out of this. Because at that point I had just identified myself as a bodybuilder. And then that conversation, they weren't even talking to me, but it was that conversation that demonstrated to me that went, this is not for you. This is not your life. This is not what you're supposed to do. That was the moment for me. But I'm wondering what was the moment for you to kind of get out of that world and then just start, not to say you're out of that world completely, 'cause we still work, we both work with bodybuilders, figure competitors, bikini, et cetera. And I think we work with them quite differently. Work with them almost as outsiders of that world, guiding them to better results because we're kind of able to think outside the box because of those unique experience. But yeah, what was it for you?

So I look back on it and I first, I do like to dwell, not dwell, but I like to think back to like what was really driving me because you know, when you're much younger, you just sort of coast through life without any real direction or any understanding as to why you do the things you do. You sort of things, things just sort of happen to you, the whole victim mentality where you don't really know why you act the way that you did or whatever it was. So I've always been curious to deconstruct myself and say, okay, why bodybuilding? Why this? Why that? Why anything else under the sun? So what I realized was for me, bodybuilding as a sport or as an endeavor wasn't even about looks. It wasn't even about, hey, I want to look like that guy. I wanna have 20-inch arms or anything like that. Like of course you get it. Like that's what you see on the surface. Like of course he's doing bodybuilding 'cause he likes the way that he looks as a bodybuilder. Like I'm not gonna say I didn't enjoy that. But when I look at it on a slightly deeper level, what drew me to bodybuilding was it is probably the one most obvious sport where to succeed or to get the goal that you want, you actually physically have to grow into that thing. You can't shortcut it. You can't just sort of get there before you're meant to be there. If you want to be a national level competitor, win a national show, you literally have to grow into that. And even if you were to take drugs to try to get there, you still have to go through the growth to be able to improve yourself physically to get there. And I think it was that deeper meaning for me. That's what drove me into it, that you have to physically grow into it. And then very much like you said, like you crave a lot of improvement, you crave a lot of trying to understand and try to be your best and try to be better. That's what it really was for me of like, this is a very, very simple way that I can look at improvements. It's a very simple vehicle that I can now drive to show to the world, hey, I've grown into something else. This has been the last few years of my growth and I can physically show it to you. You can tell the second you look at somebody who's a bodybuilder, oh, they've clearly gone through a lot to be able to do that in a very, very obvious way. So that's where I was at for many, many years. That was the only thing that I saw as a direct metric of improvement or a direct metric of growth, that how much muscle have you put on in the last year? Because it's pretty obvious in terms of how you can assess that. So when I did my last competition, that was where I had the most successful prep in terms of how I went about it.

When was your last comp?

2015. 2015.

Would you compete again?

I'll never say never. It's not at the top of my list and I'll get to why in a sec, but it's really because when I did that last prep, it was very successful. I'd done everything I'd wanted to do in terms of knowing that it was done very healthily. It was done quite effortlessly. It wasn't a struggle for me to get lean or to put on muscle mass. It wasn't a struggle for me to be able to maintain, you know, relationships, friends, family, everything else under the sun, being able to eat out and just everything else was just, it was a very, very healthy prep. I was like, wow, okay, this is really cool. Whereas the year prior it was a lot of suffering. It was the complete opposite. And then the years prior had been a lot of just experimentation, suffering, everything else to work out what the real best answer was. So I got to that point with that competition and I was like, okay, I've really improved all that I really can, not physically, 'cause of course you can always physically grow more and more and more. It's just how many drugs do you want to take or how much more do you want to train with? With it. I said, I've actually improved to my limits in terms of understanding the body and what it's truly capable of. So because of that, I didn't see that investing more time and energy and efforts into the competition side of things would necessarily add more improvement for me. So like, okay, it was, what else can I improve on now? Like what else would be the next bodybuilding metric for me? And at that point in time, it was very easy to transition more into business. 'cause business was starting to pick up at that point anyway. So I was getting a lot more demand. So I just very organically shifted into that instead. So people ask me all the time, I've lost about 15 kilos of lean muscle tissue, which is like a lot of muscle, especially with this structure. How much do you weigh now? I weigh around 74-ish kilos. So I was close, I was pushing 90 kilos at one point and it was, you know, similar kind of condition where it wasn't just fat. 90 kilos is actually quite a lot of size there. So people ask me like, you know, is it a big head fuck or whatever because you've lost so much size? And that thought never once crossed my mind. It never has at all because that's the, again, that's the surface thing. That is seeing bodybuilding as, oh, you want to look a certain way. That's not why I did it. And instead of me seeing the lack of size that I have now is like you've lost something. I look at it and say, look at how much I've gained. Look at what I've grown through in the last 3 years or 4 years since competing. You've lost tissue externally, but internally what's happened? Externally in business what's happened? Externally in relationships, in life, in family, the way that I have relationship with myself. All those things have grown exponentially and none of that would have happened if I was still directing all of my growth towards the tissue.

If I may just pause for a sec and just make a point of this to the class at Wolfpack, it reminds me of an analogy, right? So one of the analogies is, you know, with people who win the lottery, okay? People who win the lottery, 97% or 99% of them go get in a worse financial position than before winning the lottery, even though they have millions more than they had. And you say, why is that? Because their mentality and their mindset mindset didn't catch up to being able to manage millions of dollars. Where I look at what you're saying there, it's like, well, you got to 90 kilos, you learned all the lessons that you needed to maintain 90 kilos. And then you made a decision. Well, you know what? This life is not for me. Actually, I'm gonna take everything that I learned from this life and apply it somewhere else. 'Cause I have, it's the same skillset of disciplines, the same skillset of setting goals, achieving and going forward. But it's that mindset shift of almost taking stripping off the armor that is this muscle that often, you know, so many guys and girls, girls do it differently with like stripping down, they're stripping down and showing their bodies differently. The guys put on, it's this armor against the world. You know, you can't hurt me, but getting rid of that armor and going, right, I don't need this armor anymore. You know, the armor that I thought I was searching for, it comes from here and it comes from here and I can temper it. It comes from here, but I can temper it with the mind and I don't have to be the whims of, you know, my own self-defeating prophecy of, you know, so that's really fantastic. So let's take a moment just to drum that home because I know we've got a live studio audience here with the Wolfpackers and just to really make a point of that. So that's fantastic.

No, that is really important because like the person I was in that 2014, 2015 period was a very, very, very different person to who I am now as a personality in terms of insecurities, in terms of feelings of self-worth, self-esteem, of understanding of who I was and why I was, again, what was really driving my behaviors back then. I was very unaware of what it really was. And then like looking back on now I can see, okay, I was at that point doing training or doing bodybuilding, yes, for improvement and that, but what really drove it deeper than that was also a lot of need for approval or sort of fill a lot of voids that were there in my life. Again, like, well, why do the girls stripped down so much, so obsessively? Why did I bodybuild so obsessively? It was to seek approval. It was so I would gain respect from people because I'm now bigger, because I'm now fitting the mold as someone who should be gaining respect or whatever it was. And that's been part and parcel in terms of how I've been able to so successfully lose or not, but happily not be as big anymore because now that I've done the mental shift and the mental growth and the personality growth, Now I don't have that void or that insecurity or that thing, that demon back there in my mind that now I'm very comfortable with myself at any kind of body composition or any kind of body size. So I don't miss the muscle or anything like that.

The demon that says you need to be bigger. You're not good enough.

Correct. And I think that's one thing people when they get—

You'll be happy when.

Yeah.

Yeah, get rid of all that shit.

Yeah, they get into these competitive sports, particularly body compositional based stuff. And they don't really deeply understand that why. And the really dangerous and also enticing thing about bodybuilding as a sport is externally against most of your gen pop people, it's seen as healthy. It's like, oh, you're eating your vegetables, you're eating healthy foods, you're doing your exercise, you're training and whatnot. It can be very easily seen as a healthy endeavor. And because you are so productive and so regimented with your lifestyle of I gotta train now, I gotta see I've got to eat now, I've got to prep now, I've got to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because of all that stuff, you can very, very easily delude yourself into thinking that what you are doing is actually a very, very good thing and that you are above other people, the gen pop people, and that you're taking control and charge of your life without realizing that, hang on, yes, you are controlling an aspect, but really you're being pushed by what Steven Pressfield would call the shadow life where you're chasing after something that looks very enticing and it looks like something that you really want, but actually isn't. And it's taking away from where your real passion, your real gifts, your real whatever it might be really lies. That real project, that real one thing that you gotta get off your chest and get out there to the world. You're being diverted away by the shadow life.

So you trained as a pretty much hardcore bodybuilder, would you say from when you started to 2015? And then from 2015, there was a shift You said, I don't need this armor anymore. And then your training, what'd you start doing? Strength training or was it?

Yeah, so it never really was a complete like 180, like, hey, fuck this, I'm gonna go do this other shit now. It was just a very organic, just me experimenting, playing with things and working things out. But yeah, I was getting into a lot more heavily focused strength training at the time, simply because the only reason I went there was earlier that year when I was still competing and stuff, I'd met Sebastian Oreb at a course and I really loved not just the idea of strength training, but I really loved him and what he did and who he was as a person. And I was like, yes, the presence that you have, the way that you compose yourself, the way that you have a lot of surety and a certain different confidence in what you do, that is what real power is. That is what real strength is. And I'm always someone who says, hey, if I see somebody who I admire or who I see as a potential mentor, I want to spend a little bit of time or a great deal of time walking in their footsteps in as many different ways as I can, whether it's as a mentor-student, let me learn from you as a Padawan, or if it is more along the lines of, hey, I see what you're doing, I'm gonna copy in your successful footsteps and see what I gain from that and see what I will take from following the same path that you followed.

[Speaker] So where did the rehabilitation and I suppose focus on getting people back, where did that focus come from? 'Cause I know for me, my first real exposure with it was, well, Ida Portal, then Christopher Sommers, then, you know, Andrew Lock who I've known for 10 years. And now, you know, a lot of those methods have become a lot more popular. But what was your first, I suppose, taste?

Right. It was none of that whatsoever. It was purely breaking myself.

Right.

It was breaking myself and then trying to reverse engineer why did that happen? And also—

When did you break yourself and how'd you break yourself?

Many times in many different ways. Thankfully nothing ridiculously serious. Back in 2012, I herniated 2 discs when I was about 12 weeks out of competition. And I was very curious as to how, why that happens because externally my movement was impeccable. 'Cause I've always been very much a technician. And also I have, my structure is set up in a way where I'm not gonna be really bashing up anything where I'm not this tall, lanky, long, long levered person who's gonna be more prone to a lot of instability and all that kind of stuff. So it was very, confusing or interesting to me that I got injured so severely where I couldn't walk for a little while and it was quite scary. But then I managed to bounce back from that literally within a few months from quite a severe thing. And then later down the road, I had the similar kind of injury or similar kind of sensations. And then the day after I was, well, I injured myself in that second instance during snatch grip deadlifts. So what I do the next day, I wasn't in as much pain, but again, I couldn't move much. It was like a 5-minute ordeal to get up off the ground every time I was getting up off the ground again. And I would lie on the ground so I could, 'cause it was the most comfortable position for my back. But the next day I went right back to what injured me of snatch grip deadlifts. And that's what fixed me. And then I did for that next 3-week period, every single day I was doing snatch grip deadlifts to rehabilitate that issue in my body. And around that period of time as well, I was working still in the gym, personal training with clients. And I have no formal lens of rehabilitation or anything like that. So when a client would come into me and they'd be like, look, I've got this soreness, I've got this, that, or the other, you know, what do I do? I'm not a rehab guy. I'm not someone who fixes people. I was like, I'm a personal trainer and you come here for personal training session. Let's see whatever we, let's try to do whatever we can do to help you, to help me do my job of training you. And okay, your back hurts, you can't deadlift today. But maybe you can do a rack pull and maybe you can do this supported row, maybe you can do this, that, or the other movements instead. Let's just think of it on the fly and see what happens with your body. And then I found the more I did that, they'd walk out of that session being like, oh shit, my pain's gone. I was like, well, that's interesting. 'Cause I didn't intend to do that. I just intended to work around whatever your pain was and do it as much as I could in that session as a trainer, as a personal trainer, not as a rehab guy, not as a fixer, not as anything like that. But it happened to have that beneficial process.

You've had physios and chiros come to your courses. Am I not mistaken?

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. And being not formally trained in either of those things. No, no. So, so I mean that, that's how did you fulfill that knowledge gap? Because I know a lot of guys watching this that, you know, the thing that I kind of want to break down is that a lot of people watching this are personal trainers and they might think of, you know, Eugene, he just was born with this knowledge and, you know, it's like he just knows stuff. Well, he doesn't just know stuff. That knowledge came from it came from somewhere, you know, he had a void and the void was you hurt yourself and then you started seeing other clients who were injured and then you read a bunch of stuff to the point where now you're outside the box and people who are formally qualified are coming to you and going, why aren't my clients getting better? Your clients seem to come better. So speak to me about what books, what mentors, what seminars, how did you acquire this knowledge of rehabilitation?

It didn't come from, Any of those, right? At all. It came from observation and experimentation. If I had to put it down to any like two big things, it came from things like, hey, why did that client come in in pain? And we just trained around that pain in some completely loose fashion. How did that improve them? And it would, that was a very experimental process. 'Cause I've got no idea why that happened. But then again, you've got this whole pool of clients to work with that then try, okay, eventually another client's gonna get hurt. Let's try doing something similar. And then you hone in and you start to work out a system of, oh, okay. I've seen now a dozen clients who all came in with elbow pain at some point in time and I worked around it. And then I got success with X, Y, and Z protocols. I'm gonna now see the next client who comes in with that elbow pain, I'm gonna go straight to that, those protocols and see what happens. And then that was a very beneficial thing. So it was very much a lot of experimenting of trial and error and of also a lot of bashing my head against a brick wall trying to find the answer and then eventually realizing, okay, my head is very bloody right now, let's try something else and moving on from that.

With that said, your understanding of insertions, muscle groups, fascial lines. I mean, that is very technical knowledge.

As well.

So where did that come from? Because that's not average Wikipedia. Yeah.

Let me tell you that like people think like to overcomplicate a lot of stuff about attachments or whatever thing you gotta go to some anatomy course. Of course I think you should. I think if it's a very much more streamlined way to learn things is to go to a course where you'll learn about the anatomy, go to university, go to whatever it is you wanna learn and to do to learn those things. But I'm also of the opinion that as good as formal education is, anything that you do with education is to be really be self-driven. So if you are literally Googling fascial lines instead of Googling midget porn, obviously it's high up there on your priority list and it's very, looking at you Liam. It's obviously something that I'm very motivated about because I'm going to forego the midget porn to look into fascial lines instead 'cause I want to understand that. Whereas—

never thought I'd hear in a sentence, forgo the midget porn, but thank you.

My pleasure. But see, the mistake a lot of coaches make is they wait to go to a course. They wait for the fascial anatomy course to come along to Melbourne or to say, okay, I'm going to go learn from it now just because it's here and it's convenient. They didn't go and seek out the information because they had a deep desire to understand it. They didn't want to go down 15,000 different rabbit holes on Google to work out everything there was to know about fascia or whatever it might've been, good or bad, and be led down the wrong path or the good path. They only do the education because it's there. They think I'm gonna go to university now and just learn about this stuff. No, no. Like that's important, but it really has to be self-driven from pure self-interest of I want to understand this, which is, that's why I'm happy to tell people, look, go Wikipedia stuff, go Google stuff. Like I don't, even if it's wrong, even if it is the complete a complete bad thing because there's a lot of bullshit out there on the internet, of course. And how do you filter through that? It's like, no, well, you filter through it by looking at the shit stuff and looking at the good stuff. And then hopefully you as a person, you as a, your own screening tool of your brain should be enough to be able to decide for yourself what to think. When people go to courses and they're being told what to think and they're coming out with Yes, I am now qualified in fascia. I'm now qualified to understand this. They're being taught what to think, but they don't never really understand how to take in that information, absorb it, digest it, integrate it with everything else they've heard from every single other aspect, including the Wikipedia, including the doctors, including the really bullshit information. And then really deciding what you are then gonna project outwards.

Well, I like this phrase, it is, to a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And quite often I see people going to these courses and they ascribe themselves a new identity, whether it be, you know, they go to the latest strength course or the latest nutrition course or the latest calorie counting course, whatever it is. And they say, well, I am now this practitioner. And the problem that I've always found with labeling yourself, you know, whatever it be, even like a bioprint, bio-seed, whatever, screening assessment, hormone coach. Now, I mean, although it's useful for marketing purposes, they've labeled themselves in this box and this is the way now they're gonna think. And instead of using it as a tool, tool in their arsenal, they become the tool. And everyone now actually has to fit into this toolbox. And mostly they don't fit into that toolbox. 'Cause I know for me, I haven't been formally educated. I never went to uni. The most I did was TAFE at Box Hill, which is actually my Cert IV in design. And obviously my Cert IV and stuff in personal training and all that stuff that you need. But you know, I've been able to build a wildly successful business and do the things that I've done without any formal education. It's exactly the same process as what you're talking about. It's, I have a problem. How am I gonna go solve this problem? Be proactive. And that's really how you did it. Hey, it's, it's, here's a client, they've got elbow pain. Okay, well, let's look into elbow pain specifically and not wait to, you know, then the latest ART course comes down and they tell me how to fix elbow pain when it's 2 years away. No, I've gotta fix the elbow pain now. Let me get on the phone and be proactive about it. So you take that education into your own and run with it. Absolutely fantastic.

And it was, it literally always came from a problem, whether it was my own problem or client, a problem of other clients or friends or family. I was trying to say, I wanna help fix this. I don't wanna waste time just sitting on my laurels with it. I'm gonna be proactive exactly right. Cause I don't wanna even have to wait to refer you out. Cause by the time I refer you out, that could then mean a month of back and forth going from different practitioners, different practitioners of being not active at all. And then at that point, you're probably gonna stop seeing me as a client. You're not getting as many results. It's like, how can I, bridge that gap and not have to be so dependent and reliant on other people? How can I then just do it as efficiently as possible and help this person as quickly as possible and cut through a lot of the bullshit? Not because it's all bullshit out there, but because it's so hard to have to depend on others when people don't have that belief in themselves, or at least the belief to be able to say to that person, you know, I'm not too sure, but let's try this out and see what happens. People don't have the balls to be able to do that because they're scared. Of being shown up as an idiot. I say it's not wrong to tell people that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about and that you are just gonna have a crack at it. People need to realize that that's completely fine to have a crack at whatever it is with pain or whatever it might be. Of course there is some danger to that. So don't do anything stupid. But if it's coming from a genuine place of seeking to help and seeking to understand, and it's an intelligent thought process to why you're doing the thing that you're doing to try to help them, hey, you know, that's what we do as trainers. That's what we should be doing as people. Not even as professionals.

Yeah, have a hypothesis of this is how I think it's gonna work and go forward. Very, very good point. So, I mean, I'm guessing that you accumulate and acquire and I don't know, maybe you don't, but you're reading a lot and are you reading a lot, researching stuff or not really? Okay, so let's scrap that. Conflicting information, I did wanna ask you, how do you go, 'cause you mentioned it before, how do you sort through conflicting information? Whether it be, you know, this diet approach is hormone-based or this diet approach is calorie-based or, you know, do squats for rehabbing your lower back, don't do squats for rehabbing your lower back when you've got contradictory information, how do you decipher that?

Right, so.

And do you have an example of something, say recently?

I'm trying to think about an example 'cause I think that would be a good thing. But for now, the first thing that I do and I think is so integral to anybody is before trying to jump through all these different concepts, all these different theories or methods that are out there, the first thing you really need to be honing in is again, your lens, how well you can logically dissect and use reason to be able to determine if something is bullshit or not. So if someone comes to me and let's say they're talking about a rehab protocol, so say saying, but hey, you should be stretching versus you should not be stretching or versus versus you should be doing soft tissue work versus you should not be doing any soft tissue work. Two complete dichotomous contradictory statements. Now what I do when that information comes in is I wanna hear it out and I wanna understand where their context came from. I'll learn why do you say stretching? And they might say, oh, because I've had this issue and it helped me somewhat. Okay, that makes sense now as to why you do that because it helped you and it worked for you. And then I'll go to this other person and say, why do you not stretch? Why do you just, do this method of training instead or whatever it may be. Oh, that makes sense as well. So we have two things that make sense. And that's the thing. People for the most part don't actively try to do dumb shit. They're doing stuff because it's working for them or it fits into their lens. I wanna work out what their lens is. And then I want to then pull in all the information and say, okay, which one is going to be probably the most efficient for me? Not because stretching is worse than training or anything like that. Anything like that, but for my specific context of doing things as efficiently as possible, as enjoyably as possible with as much compliance as possible, which one now fits the best lens? Not that I wouldn't ever stretch or that I wouldn't ever do ART or whatever it is, but in most of the contexts that I work with, it doesn't, it no longer fits. So the way that I start to weed through a lot of the bullshit is first of all, understanding that there actually isn't that much bullshit. Which is very, very different because everybody's always complaining. There's so much shit out there in the industry. So many charlatans or zealots or whatever these buzzwords are. I was like, you know what? There are definitely some really people out there who are very, very, I guess the word is that they're trying to push out these things for business.

Push out an agenda.

Yeah, they've got a deeper agenda. And of course, like you do need to be wary of that. But for the most part, people are putting out these kind of hormone specialists, training your hormones or whatever it is, not for an agenda, but it's 'cause it's literally all they know right now. It's really what they've learned and it's what fits into their lens.

So really, I really like that 'cause I always say to people, it's a matter of context versus content. Because let's say for example, I say, you know, Eugene, don't have carbs after 4 o'clock. That might be the right advice for you. But if I said it to someone else, it's completely wrong advice. And you know, 'cause it's the wrong context, even though the content is the same. But I love your addition of talking talking about it as not just context versus content, but understanding the individual's lens for what they're saying. And you know, because they're a hormone coach, of course that's their agenda is to be, to make more hormone coaches and to see the problems of the hormone rather than expanding. I think that's what really, I don't even wanna call it an expert, but that's what really makes, I think a masterful practitioner. And I was gonna say before is it really is almost a sad day. I don't know if it's a sad day, but a lonely day when you look at yourself as, You know, I'm actually the best person for the job because in that day it's, well, shit, I need to take responsibility and I actually can't ask, I can ask people's opinion, but at the end of the day, I need to make my own mind up. And it's a very confronting day as well. I've faced it many, many times where no one else is gonna solve this problem other than me. This client literally cannot go to anyone else. They've come to me to solve this problem. So I need to get on the phone. I need to call people. I need to research. I need to look into this. I need to try this. Track this to get this person a result. So I think everyone can do that. And obviously that's what you do. And that's why you've ascended so rapidly in the ranks of PT and fitness world. But yeah, not a lot of people are doing that. So it's great to see.

Well, yeah, I mean, at that point in time, it is terrifying. It is very scary. So it's either, it's now, it's then now not a test of how much do you know, it's now just a character. It's now a test of when you're backed against to all of that, are you someone who's going to let that freeze you up and make you while away and disappear? Or are you going to then take that fear, take that terrified nature and then use it as fuel to then to put yourself out there? And people are so terrified to do that. I'm not 100% certain as to why that is, but you know, as a population, people are terrified thinking, I don't know enough. I don't wanna get it wrong. I don't wanna get it wrong. And all of that isn't a lack of knowledge. It's not a lack of you don't know enough about hormones or you don't know enough about biochemistry or the Krebs cycle, none of that. All of those things, if you're not wanting to get it wrong, is actually you're not believing in yourself. It highlights a lack of character and personal development, not a lack of content because you'll never ever, ever be a complete expert in everything. You can always find, you say, you know what? I just don't know enough about the human body just yet. But no, what is it that makes somebody else myself or anybody, but yourself able to say, you know what, I'm still going to try it. I'm still gonna put myself out there. It's not a test of your, of how much knowledge you've accumulated. It's more about the character within, the mind, the heart, however you wanna contextualize it.

I love the way we started this podcast absolutely ridiculously with jokes. And now we're onto like some super deep stuff. So it's a good contrast, but no, absolutely. You're absolutely right and I see it all the time. People are like, I need to do another course. It's like, no, you don't need to do another course. You need to apply what you know. Why aren't you applying what you know? Oh, but wait a minute, there's this course in macronutrients. Yeah, but you just did a course in how to coach like macronutrients. Like I don't understand what, you've got the software. What else do you need to know? Go apply it, go do it. And it stems from, yeah, I'm not good enough and I don't know enough and I don't want my neck out there. I don't wanna get it wrong. Well, if you always have that mentality, then you're never really gonna get anywhere. And it's a great lesson and for all the Wolfpackers here and everyone watching on YouTube and all listening in on SoundCloud or iTunes. So I wanna go back to my original question at the start. The first question I asked you, what are you doing now with your training?

My training, how the hell do we get into midget porn from like a training question? That's what I'm curious about.

We're like, both of us are like black holes of just rants.

Vacuous expanse, I like it. My training right now is really, It's hard to have, really hard to define honestly the last year because part of it stemmed from, I wonder what the minimum effective dose really is. What is the minimum strong, the minimum volume, whatever for me personally, how little do I have to do? Because my priorities shifted altogether where my priority now is I train twice a week simply because weekends I'm teaching, the day before I'm teaching, I am getting ready to be teaching. So I wanna make sure I'm in a peak state. And just relaxed. Monday I'm recovering, curled up in a ball crying. Tuesday to Thursday I've got available to train, but normally Tuesday I'm on the road. I'm traveling in between somewhere. So I'm not really in the best environment to be training. And I know that if I did get off the plane and go train, I'd probably dig myself into a deep ditch of recovery where I wouldn't be able to perform again come Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So it really only is Wednesday, Thursday I give myself to train. And I'm not gonna spend a few hours at a time training to make up for the whole week, it's gonna be a short sharp session because again, all this other is I haven't eaten much. I haven't done much in terms of refueling my body and I can't repair or recover as much from that training. So I've had to find organically what is the minimum to be able to maintain and maybe slightly progress from where I'm at and how do I train as efficiently as possible? Because yes, you can do everything, single thing under the sun and make progress. But then what, how can I make what used to be a 10 exercise, 2 to 3 hour leg session, how can I condense that into 10 minutes and still get probably not just as much, but how can I still get benefit from it? How can I still keep my head above water? How can I keep swimming with it?

So if you and I did a workout, what would one of these workouts look like?

Depends what you wanna do. But if there was anything that was a major focus across most of my training, it's posture. It is having some kind of postural component. Because so much of what I do is sitting in a plane. It is sitting at a desk. It is consulting. It is also a lot of teaching and talking, which is a lot of anterior chest. It's a lot of mouth breathing, a lot of chest flexion, a lot of upper trap dominance. So I'm trying to do everything I can to posturally restore things and keep myself moving better, keep my pliability, maintain that. So it always has that kind of focus in there.

So would you say that really right now you're training for life, you're not really training for bodybuilding, powerlifting, it's just stay healthy, stay moving and stay active basically. Active body gives you the active mind and all the rest of it.

And if there was a moment which probably will come now that I'm not traveling as much, if I was to say, okay, now I wanna add on a lot of tissue, I wanna add on a lot of size, I would honestly do the exact thing that I'm doing now a little bit more of it. I would train a bit more frequently, a bit more volume, more intensity 'cause I've got the consistency to progressively overload a little bit more and I would eat more. Simple as that.

So are you getting in and contracting muscles doing the, or are you getting in and just trying to lift as much weight as possible? Like what's your?

It depends on how I'm feeling on the day. So let me try to think of an example of what I've trained recently. So the other day when I was training, I, I came in and I started with a seated on the ground cross-legged, like you're back in primary school overhead press.

Okay.

And I was trying to get as strong as possible on that. I was trying to lift as much weight. I was doing like sets of 3 to 5 at that point. And so the question is, okay, why are you doing that? Obviously for loading, progressive overload. Why have I chosen that exercise? Because the postural demands of being in a seated position will now place onto my thoracic spine. Whether that will then tie into my upper back and get the mid back, the rhomboid, lower trap area, how will that get that much, that much stronger? And then I'll think, okay, I'm doing that exercise. What am I gonna do that with to make that exercise feel even better? So I would, I paired that exercise with a supinated close grip cable kneeling cable pulldown. So the question is, okay, why do you do that exercise? And why do I do it submaximally? Because that exercise was not about training tissue or strength. That exercise was about improving scapular motion, improving external rotation to improve the overhead press more. It was a prep for the overhead press. That's why I chose that. And that was done very, very quickly, rapidly while I was in a kneeling posture more to ingrain proper technique because I'm not gonna be as stable. So I have to rely a lot more on my proprioception and some of the fascial tissues to stabilize me stabilize my body more against this unstable environment. So that was like an example of where I started. It was just that, and that could have been a workout in itself. But then because I had more time, I started to add to it some more work around motion at the scapula. So you may know, you probably would know Vince Gironda's lateral swings. That was something I would go into. So one theme that I like to play with a lot with movement and training is starting off with rigidity Starting off with stability, like the overhead press, very stable, very rigid posture. And then going once you've created that central rigidity into something that's very free flowing, very fluid. And that can then become a very, very high volume thing, a very metabolic pump stimulus, or it could just be more about, hey, you want to improve movement quality as a whole. You want to improve coordination. You wanna stimulate lymphatics. You wanna stimulate connective tissues or whatever else it is. And that's how I start to look at I look at my training in that lens. So it's, that was 3 exercises, but how you push it, that seated overhead press could very easily become a push press. It could very easily become a push jerk. It could very easily become a pine neck press. It could, that lat pulldown could very easily become a chin-up for maximal loading. Okay, that shoulder stuff could easily become a short dense giant set for shoulders for hypertrophy. You know, so there's many ways you can then diversify from that, but I pulled it all the way back to its minimum.

So right now for you, how are, I know it's a slightly different topic, but how are you working with clients? Are you working with clients at the moment? How do you work with clients?

Yeah, I do work with about 2 dozen clients now, which is whittled down significantly from what I used to.

Is this one-on-one or online?

Online, yeah. I do make myself available on occasion when I'm traveling or even well, I'm back home now for private consults with people where it is in person. 'Cause I love doing that. I love working with people and trying to work out what their issue is. Literally they come in and say, hey, I say, what's your issue? Like, what's your problem? And let's work around to try to solve that. And with clients, the clients I've had now, I've had them for many years. That's why they're still around. And at this point they seek me just for convenience. Like they know they don't really need me. Because they have the knowledge there, but they like the convenience. They like not having to think, they like being able to be mindful 'cause they are coaches themselves, they are business owners themselves. They wanna just come in and know that they're gonna have an effective, efficient, hard workout, whatever their major goal is of strength or powerlifting or bodybuilding or life, whatever it is. Maybe they just want something different to what's out there because they're just stuck with the same old hypertrophy models and they wanna explore these different patterns. So they wanna understand, hang on, when you train in the gym, like training is our sport. We are barbell athletes and we are only unfortunately training muscle tissue and connective tissue. Nobody's looking at training. Maybe we're training the cardiovascular system as well, maybe, but running sucks. But people aren't training the nervous system and not in the way of talking about, oh, are you training high threshold motor units? Are you training like a neural charge up work? No, it's about, are you training your coordination? Are you training your proprioception? Are you training your balance? Are you training your vestibular system? Are you putting demands on those systems? Are you putting demands on your lymphatic system? Are you trying to improve peripheral blood flow? Are you trying to coordinate complex motion? Those are all other systems that need to be trained alongside muscle tissue, connective tissue. It's where you start building too much muscle and too much tendon strength, too much tendon stiffness as well. And you don't have the requisite coordination, the requisite proprioception, requisite awareness of your tissue and body in motion, that's where we have a lot of issues. And that's where a lot of issues start coming from with respect to pain, performance, mobility, lack of development of strength, muscle mass, whatever.

And this is where I also see that like what you're saying there, a lot of athletes who have a sport that demands a lot more, I suppose, difference in their training, be it speed, cardiovascular, aerobic, et cetera, whether an AFL footballer or soccer player, they hit the weight room and they just skyrocket. Everything just happens for them. Or it seems to me that these athletes, everything happens for them. And it's because that training is so diverse on their systems that everything is bringing up at the same time. Let's get into the one, 'cause I know we've already covered so much content. Let's get into the one word game. The one word game is a word association game and the word association game. So for example, if I say Superman, or if I say superhero rather, you might say Superman.

Superman. All right.

So you know how to play?

I think so.

All right, let's go rapid fire. Okay. Protein powder is gonna end well.

Protein powder is overrated.

Worst supplement?

Probiotics.

Really?

I don't know why I went there, but hey, that's where my brain's going right now. It went to midget porn, now it's going to probiotics.

Okay, worst supplement.

If you wanna expand on, I'll tell you it's like why my mind would go there because again, it's overrated because it's something that we don't know enough about about gut or what probiotics really do and what specific strains do to really want to be throwing shit into the, into the body and saying, this is gonna help your gut issue. If you even have a gut issue to begin with, because most people don't. Most people have a psychosomatic issue, not an actual gut issue.

All right, we'll get back to that after the break. Favorite supplement?

Lion's mane. That was a very slow rapid fire.

A mentor.

Gus.

Who's Gus?

He is a coach that I had for about 3 to 4 years when I was through Body Movement 2011, 2012 through 2015.

What's his last name?

Tanidis. So he's a local guy who I met. I was working with him in the fitness first and the recreations. And one of the first interactions I had with him, he wanted to punch me. Like you literally grabbed me here. I was about to say, to just knock me out on the gym floor. So we became best friends.

It's always the way with guys. I don't know what it is.

Yeah, well, like he is a hard ass. Like he's the kind of guy you do not fuck with and who is intimidating. It's like, it makes you wanna just wet yourself just when he looks at you a little bit funny, but highly, highly intelligent and very much keeps to himself. And that's when you know somebody knows something, when they don't need to beat their chest. And show the world it is because they have that self-assurance in what they know. So, and then there was me, you know, 18-year-old punk kid who was just like, I think I know everything.

How old was Gus at the time?

50.

Right.

Right. So yeah. So the first interaction with him, one of them was like, he walked past me. He was getting out of the way of somebody else and he accidentally nudged me just by accident. I thought, oh, we're playing now. Just shoved him. You don't do that. You don't do that. And yeah, so he spun around and grabbed me. I was about to to just waste me on the floor and yeah, I wet myself so I was bad. Not actually, come on, man, give me some credit.

But yeah, a respected peer.

Oh, probably Sebastian Oreb.

Best bodybuilder of all time. He'll be on the next episode, by the way. So stay tuned for that one.

The best bodybuilder of all time?

No, no, Sebastian Oreb. Best bodybuilder of all time.

Okay, if we're talking looks, Lila Brada.

Favorite athlete?

These are definitely not rapid fire whatsoever in terms of my answering over because these are actually quite interesting questions. Favorite athletes, it would be, I don't know names, but I would be a class of athlete would be dancers.

Comfort food?

Chips.

What type of chips? Hot, cold?

Crisps. Potato crisps cooked in avocado oil. That is my heroin.

We're at a bar. What are we drinking?

Probably whiskey.

Right. Least favorite exercise?

Burpees.

Favorite exercise?

Snatch grip deadlift.

A book you recommend?

Kevin Hart. I cannot make this up.

Podcast that you listen to?

The Wolf's Den. Yeah.

On iTunes and SoundCloud and on YouTube. A hated food?

Food? There isn't one. Like, none.

Really? Licorice?

No.

I hate licorice.

I'll get that up inside me.

Coriander?

I'll get that in as well. Sprinkle that shit on.

Okay. At the same time. Something you would like to see more of?

More thinking.

Something you'd like to see less of?

Probably tits and ass.

On Instagram, I'm guessing?

Yeah.

You know, the really good thing about Instagram, it's got the unfollow button. I figured out how to use it the other week.

The mute button.

I just use the unfollow button. Unfollow.

So I don't follow many people, but I just, sometimes you have to for just for, you know, whatever.

Social means.

Yeah, because you're a sellout. So then, but you can mute them now. Yes. I find very useful. So everybody is muted.

A movie. What about a movie?

Deadpool. Deadpool comes to mind, yes.

You enjoyed that movie? Number 2.

I didn't see number 2.

Number 2 is really good. I think number 2 is better than number 1. Yeah, personally.

I know I haven't seen movies in so, so, so, so long, um, but I feel like Deadpool 2 wasn't very well promoted or anywhere near as much.

It wasn't well promoted, but it is, it is definitely— I got the unrated on DVD.

That will be good then.

And, um, yeah, it was very good. It was very well done. I thought it was better than the first one. A hobby or a pastime?

Guitar. Really?

Yeah, a bit of Boyce Avenue. You follow them?

Yeah, I do, I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's weird that you go there, but okay.

We say guitar, Boyce Avenue, that's what I think of.

Okay, and we'll deconstruct that later.

And for Christmas, Eugene really hopes he gets a—

I can't use that word on the wall. Don't say that one. Set him up for that one. Don't say what's really on your mind either. Do it. He hope— Don't, don't, don't poke the bear. Trust me, don't poke the bear.

He wants to get donuts. He wants to get donuts. He wants to get a PlayStation 4.

Correct.

PlayStation 4 Pro.

PlayStation 4 Pro. I didn't even know that was a thing, but that sounds pretty fucking awesome.

It is, it is pretty fucking awesome. Get God of War 4 as well. It's an amazing game.

Okay.

Thank you for watching the Woosten. We'll be right back after this quick break and back with Eugene. My name is Mark Ottobre. We are back with The Wolf's Den. Our guest today is Eugene Teo.

Teo.

Let's pick up from where we were, Eugene. Let's have some, I suppose, business discussions on how things have grown for you. Your Instagram account is at 73,000 followers. Now you've done this without showing your tits and ass.

How have you done it?

You don't know that for sure. I don't follow your stories that close to the ones you're posting at 12 AM or 12 PM rather.

No, but serious question.

How have you done this? How have you managed to acquire such a grand following without, I suppose, selling out and showing the flesh?

There's a few different layers to it. First of all, it's consistency because people don't realize, like they see a lot of what I post now and think, oh, you're doing this weird circus shit. For just for the Gram. It's like, no, no, I was doing this stuff. And if you dig back 2013, 2014, when I first got on Instagram, I was showing the exact same stuff and talking about the exact same things as well. It's always been there. And like my thing from day one has always been, I care about showing guys what I'm doing, showing people whether it's creative or not. I'm just showing people part of what Instagram, what social media really is, which is showing a piece of yourself. Of course, it's a very curated, cultured version of it. You want people people to see more of. But I use social media for what it is. And it literally is, it's a way to show parts of yourself. So people connect with that.

How do you feel about like Facebook now versus Instagram? I noticed that you're not as much on Facebook. Facebook not important anymore in your opinion?

It's definitely important. But, and I, part of me wishes I still was on there, but it has become so diluted where it is a mess and it has lost that personality to it. Not my one. My one has somewhat as well, but Facebook as a whole, as a social medium has now become advertising. It has now become where you go to see crazy cat memes and all this other weird stuff on there of, of hot topics. More, it's more of a, of a newsfeed, which is what the whole Facebook thing is now, as opposed to an insight into connecting people. It is more there just to stay up to date with the current trends. Um, and that it sounds like, hey, maybe you want to be part of the current trends for sure. But really I see social media and what, what people can use social media for to really garner success is people really connect with the personality. They don't connect with the business. They don't connect with the content even. They don't even connect with the trending stuff. They connect with the personality behind it. They connect with the person. So if you'd lose that or the vehicle to present that such as Facebook has limited your ability ability to be able to push that out there, which Facebook really has, then it's gonna suffer. And I saw that happening a few years or a couple of years ago, whereas Instagram for now still has that ability for people to really connect with you as the person.

I noticed I always bring you up in kind of a conversation when people talk about Instagram or Facebook or just how you've kind of built what you've got right now with your touring and that. And really, I remember you posting, I think it was I think it was 2014 was when I started seeing your posts and it was these long-ass posts and they're only getting like, you know, a couple of likes, 10, 14 likes. I remember thinking, oh yeah, well, that's a lot of effort. 'Cause I know, you know, blogging for so many years and podcasting, I know how much effort it takes in to just write one of those posts. And then I noticed, you know, next day, next week, it's like, wow, he's getting consistent. He's putting all that effort into this and the likes just started to accumulate or accumulate. And that really is, and I say to people, You know, Eugene's a great example of, you know, he shares the content, but from sharing the content, he had to dig deep within himself and reflect of what do I believe to be true? Put that out, be willing to be challenged on what you believe to be true. And then hopefully one day, maybe, maybe with the promise in the future, that's gonna develop traction and then more people will be watching. Is that a fair kind of summary of how it's been built?

For the most part and you know, when I think about it, I, when I write those extended posts, 'cause I still like to do those, I still write quite lengthy things but I actually don't put a whole lot of thought process into it. It will literally just be me like I'll decide, okay, I've got a video I wanna post, I've got something I wanna share and it will be a 5-minute process of how I'm gonna word this, how would I tell this, how would I teach it to somebody else? How would I help them understand this movement, this concept, this strategy, whatever it is, how do I do it? In how would I tell it to you right now? How would I tell it to a layperson? And then I just write the way that I would speak it. And that's important for me because I think one thing people forget about in the learning process, there are a few different stages to how to learn something effectively that people need to understand. Now, forgetting what you already know is a big part of it. But on the other end of that, once you've already taken in the information, the final piece to help accelerate learning the most is teach it. The sooner you can go from taking a concept and even just mildly understanding it and then going and putting it out there and teaching it, sharing it with others, that's what will help you accelerate the learning process and elaborate on it and ingrain it so much more. And that's like part of like when I run workshops and probably you do the same thing as well as where you want things to be hands-on. Like, hey, I'm gonna show you a cool thing. I'm gonna show you something. I want you now to go immediately teach it to your neighbor, teach it to your partner, teach it to yourself, teach it to whoever it is and use it straight away. And that's what I do. So when I learned something or when I find something out for myself in the gym or out of the gym with nutrition or whatever else it may be, the second I do, I'm just one thing excited to share people that with people. But more importantly, I know even maybe subconsciously, I know that if I actualize and put it out there on paper or on text or whatever it is, it's gonna help it become a stronger link in my brain. And it helps me learn selfishly in that sense. And that's part of like, that's what makes it so easy for me to be able to do these kinds of posts. So I'm not sitting there thinking, trying to manufacture the perfect thing with the key buzzwords, the SEO, anything like that bullshit. No, no, no. Here's how I wanna talk to somebody and explain to them why I do these things that I do.

So do you have a reason or a method of distinguishing between what becomes a post versus what becomes a story versus what you put on Facebook? Mm-hmm.

Yes, for sure. So for one thing, Facebook is just gone altogether.

Oh, you use nothing?

Pretty much. It just comes from my Instagram now.

Okay.

Where it used to be, I would write—

You're not personally posting, this is going to Eugene fan page?

Yes. Yeah. Like I actually very, very rarely post on my actual Eugene personal page. Like I don't think I've posted in the last couple of years. It's weird. Like I get all these, like I've an open timeline on personal Facebook. Nothing's set to private and I get requests. I'm like, why the hell do you want to request me to be a friend? Because I've got nothing on there new whatsoever. But that's probably why, because the people think, hang on, he hasn't posted in 2 years, maybe he's got something private. Like, no, I don't. But yeah, post on the actual page. And that just comes straight from my Instagram feed. I used to write extended posts on there 'cause Facebook would be, used to be a place where I could write, you know, a couple of hundred words without a photo, without a video. And then Instagram was more about how do I get that response of, oh, here's a photo, here's a video to draw them in. And then it was more posting. And then what would then go on to the, on the story was more in the moment. It was in the moments and more lifestyle. So if I did have to think, I didn't do this intentionally, but this is where things have just organically gone to. The Instagram posts specifically, that is the hero. That is what pulls people in of like interesting exercise, interesting concept, interesting cover photo, whatever it is that looks good. Will just get their attention. And then the content keeps them around. 'Cause like, oh, actually he's not just doing some dumb shit for Instagram. Actually doing it because of XYZ reasons. And they want the value from, they get the value from that. And then the story is there for a lot of extra content, like question answers or whatever. I can interact with people a little bit more, but it's also there for people to connect with the person, with the personality. 'Cause again, that's why people are really on social media. They think it's there for knowledge, education. Like, no, no, they're not there They're not there for that. They really aren't there for that. People are actually there to be entertained. People are there for connection with a person.

Do you have a, I know one thing that I struggle with is the line of professional self versus opening up. And I suppose it's really for me more happened since having children. It's like, there's things that I'm just not, I used to be an open book, share everything, don't care.

For sure.

Had kids, I don't really wanna share so much anymore. You know, do you have that now? I mean, you don't have kids or?

Yeah, no, I don't have kids. Well, not that you know of.

None that you know of.

I'm very private on social media. No, but it's a really important thing for many different reasons. First of all, from a pure business perspective, from congruency and consistency, when somebody comes to your page, when somebody comes to your shop, the second they walk into a physical brick and mortar place, they need to get within that first 10 seconds an idea of, okay, this is what I've come here for. I've come here for good coffee. I've come here for convenience. I've come here for a good time. I've come here for a good meal, or I've come here for McDonald's, cheap and easy, whatever it might be. Um, they need to be able to understand that immediately. If they can't, if they don't know why they're there, they get confused subconsciously. They get this cognitive dissonance that then disrupts their ability to connect with you. So if somebody came onto my page, like if you came into, into this gym, for example, you can tell it's high-end, it is professional, it is driven by excellence, it's driven by results and knowledge and integrity. You can tell that the second you walk in here, even if nobody was in here whatsoever, it's just there. But what if we came in here and the equipment was in shambles? There was even things like the color scheme was off. What if, um, the personal trainers were dressed tatterly? What if there was I'll hold a lot of incongruency with what was here. What if there was, you know, a lot of Bosu balls in here? That would be quite confusing. You'd be like, hang on, why am I really here now? And that would then confuse the client. Social media is the exact same thing. Your Instagram feed is the exact same thing. Where if you go in there, your person, your consumer needs to know immediately why are they there? What are they gonna gain from it? What is the theme of your social media? Now, If one post is content and one post is a relationship thing, or one post is food, and then one post is a random cat meme, and one post is some random esoteric motivational quote, and then there's more content, it's like, what the fuck am I here for? It's confusing. And that will immediately create a disconnect from the person because I don't know what— who— I don't know who they're talking to anymore. So that's important. So that's part of why it's important to know what is your message, what are you trying to deliver? And then anything else outside of that shouldn't be on there. Whether it's family, like kids, whether it's relationships, whether it's anything else, if it's not part of what the business or what your main message is, it just doesn't belong on the social media in a big, big, big way anyway. Maybe it's going to feature here and there on special occasions, but for the most part, it's not going to be there. It's not going to be a part of it. Um, so that's important.

What, what advice What advice or tips do you give? 'Cause I imagine there are trainers at seminars and stuff where this question maybe, I don't know, maybe, maybe does not come up, but what advice do you give today? And how important do you feel Instagram is in terms of today's day and age trainer profile and growing a successful business as trainers?

You would be foolish to ignore it. You would be foolish to not give any credence to the power, the exposure that social media Instagram or Facebook or whatever it might be. These are platforms where people are, simple as that. People are gonna be there. And if you're still stuck in the model of ignoring how powerful that is and capitalizing on it or using it as a way just to connect with your consumer, like you can still have like a brick and mortar place, but you still gotta understand like most of the clients who come to you, they're still gonna be on social media. And the more touchpoints you have with the client in and out of the gym, the better as a personal trainer, because that's gonna create this intense relationship with them. 'Cause you gotta understand that's what we're doing. That's what we're doing with people, okay? That's what you're doing when you have a client who comes to you. The fact is what keeps them around as a client is not your knowledge. That's what we were talking about before. They're not there for even the results. They are, because they can get that result, they can get that knowledge from any other person. Why have they chosen you? Why have they chosen you? Person to come to you over your equivalent twin at another gym who may be more convenient, maybe cheaper, maybe better? Why do they come to you? Is because they connect with you. What's gonna give them that connection? What's gonna ultimately give them that addiction to you is the volume, the intensity, the frequency of exposures to you in every single different aspect. The more you can give them these different touch points, the more intense you can create that connection to that person. And then that's where you get someone going from, from random client, 12 weeks they're out, to raving fan, to somebody who is actively going to promote you and share you and want to be a part of you in every conceivable way and who will follow you no matter what. Like you can manufacture that, not in a manipulative kind of way, but that's just like how I want to connect with people. Like that's how like I wanna have any relationship. I don't want it to just be some boring blasé thing. I want it to be deep. I want it to be meaningful. And that people have got to understand that social media is a way, is part of many other ways to be doing that. It's another feature of it. And if you're missing out on that as a business owner or just as a person in general, not even if you don't have a business, that's missing out on a key part. But again, like we say, you've got to be, the way to connect properly is having that congruency in your message and knowing what you should be sharing. And that comes from, you know, back to that first question as well, is like there are many ways to it where, The bigger you do get on social media, you have to realize that comes with a lot of good. It also comes with a lot of bad where there are certain things literally in terms of the celebrity status or whatever you want to call it that you don't want to be sharing, that you don't want out there, that you don't want people knowing exactly where you live. You don't want people knowing exactly where you frequent. You don't want people knowing about all those personal things that can become very dangerous and can be used against you in a very negative way because you have no idea who is out there looking looking at your stuff. And that's really, that's the dark side to social media, unfortunately. People need to realize and respect that, you know, there can be people out there who are quite malicious. You can't control who's following your stuff, simple as that. So that's where you have to be careful. And that's, but that ties right back into being congruent with your message and what you want to put out there is indirectly being careful. Indirectly it is already doing that. As long as you are congruent with what you really care about and you have, before the congruency, you gotta have the clarity on what the fuck you really care about in the first place. But that's the issue. People don't have clarity. They don't have any idea on their values. They have no idea on what they really want or what their message is or why they're doing the things that they're doing. They got no fucking clue. They're just going through life blindly, victim mentality, getting just life happening to them, not through them. And as a result, their social media is a mess. Or everything, their business, their life is a fucking mess. And they're being taught all these cool skills about here's how to rehab this, here's how this macro, here's how this drug works. But they don't understand that it's all gonna come right back to clarity in yourself.

Absolutely. Do you get a different type of client coming to you on Facebook versus Instagram?

Oh, not necessarily.

No, not necessarily. Do you get more from one or the other? You get more from Instagram?

I do get more from Instagram. Yeah. That's just because of the volume because I am on Instagram. More. And I'm sure if I post on Facebook more again, it would, it would go there.

You said something before about what you're known as. What do you want to be known as?

Someone who helps people connect the dots. Someone who is helping others. Now I don't, I actually don't like to use the word help because that's something that signals, symbolizes people are helpless, that other people are completely in the dark and people don't know shit. Or it also has been something that's been overused as a very nice, pretty, happy word to rope someone in when you have another agenda. But the fact is, you know, I really thrive on being able to help people and to help to show them something, show them what I've really learned. I want people to say like, look, I've like, I'm happy to explore and happy to put myself out there. I want to help you. Solve whatever problem it is the best that I can.

You said something before about like protection with social media and obviously your social media has grown to pretty much an exponential point at this point. Are you not posting anything from your home? Are you not, are you just, is it all just in the gym, other locations or do you post things from home?

No, like I do post like when I'm cooking at home, that's gonna go straight up there. Simple as that. Like, so yeah, like there are aspects of my life that I think like I'd love to share with people. But then I always think back in my head, is this, the questions you gotta ask yourself when you post something out is whether it's story or social media or whatever is, is it congruent with my initial message? Simple as that. Is this part of that shopfront of walking in here and sensing excellence? Is it really gonna add to it?

[Speaker] What is your message?

[Speaker] My message is maybe if there was a word for it, it would be creativity. It would be understanding that not necessarily trying to be different or having variety, but always seeking to open more doors and understand that there's no single way for anything, but particularly with training and movement.

So, okay, specifically training and movement. So when someone goes onto your Instagram page, what they're seeing mainly is training and movement and that's pretty much it. There's no nutrition there or there is nutrition It's just not anymore.

There used to be when I was all up in the air, like I don't know what my message was. And there's always gonna be that point in time where you do need to just to be able to find that congruency. You've got to play with a lot of shit and realize, you know what? I don't like that one. I like this one more. Unless one's okay. Oh, I love that one. I'm gonna go do that one now. And you gotta fumble through that. So that was, you know, that now it's a very consistent message of, hey, here is me showing movement. Here is me showing training. And it's a little bit bit unorthodox. Like, I don't show my typical squat and deadlift and whatnot. I don't show those kinds of movements. I don't want people just to come and see that stuff. I'm not a motivation craze of how strong I am. I'm showing people how to think more, more laterally. I want people to think outside of the box, not to be random or creative on Instagram, but because that's how I literally think people need to be looking at the body more and looking to expand their horizons outside of the typical approach of training, because there's so much more to the human body.

It seems like quite the demand on one's yourself though, when you're, I suppose, under the spotlight and you're always continually trying to come up with, I suppose, innovative content. Is that fair to me to say?

Okay. Okay, that's a very, very good question. I get asked that a lot. And the fact is I don't sit there trying to think about something innovative at all.

I don't.

I don't. People ask me, hey, do you sit there thinking about what exercise will be useful to post on social media or what will get a lot of likes, will get a lot of traction or how can I create something that's gonna look a bit wacky? I do none of that. What I post on my social media is literally from me in the gym and I'm trying to solve whatever problem it is that I'm having. So I said to you about my training program earlier where I did this seated cross-legged overhead press, 'cause a problem I have is I'm trying to maximize time and efficiency. I'm trying to maximally stimulate that mid-back, lower trap, rhomboid section of my body. I'm trying to create a lot of rigidity security and stability. On social media, it looks a bit weird, but it's actually quite intelligent and well thought out and it's there for a reason. So everything that I do there, it's not innovation for the sake of innovation. It's innovation out of necessity to fill a need for myself, to fill a gap, to fill a problem that I'm having. And this is the most efficient, effective way that I know right now to solve that.

How many hours a day would you say, or other hours would you dedicate towards putting that content up?

Not much.

Not much? Just an hour. I'm doing something in the gym.

I'm training and I think, you know what, people, this is not your typical squat. People can learn something from me doing the seated cross-legged overhead press. So I'll film that instead of filming my deadlift session or whatever.

And what advice would you give to, you know, budding trainers say in this room at Wolfpack who wanna build a presence online? I mean, good and bad, I mean, give the reality, what advice would you give to someone going, yeah, I, you know what, I want the 100K followers. I mean, I suppose there are things as you already outlined that come with that, but yeah, how important is that? And is it a worthwhile goal to chase?

Probably not. It's probably not a worthwhile goal to chase to try to get this Insta fame or whatever it is. The first question you gotta ask yourself is, do you really need that level of notoriety or fame or followers or whatever you wanna call it? Whatever you want to call it. Do you really need that? How many customers do you realistically really, really need? You know, and you'll be surprised for most people out there, it's not that many and doesn't really come with a social media presence. You don't need, need that whatsoever. You don't. I even didn't many years ago when I first started, it wasn't part of my end goal. Like my goal has never been, I want to become a social media sensation, none of that. So the message that I would tell people is, Do whatever feels right for you. Don't try to manufacture something for somebody else. I never have. I've never manufactured anything on my social media literally to gain likes or anything like that. There's no been like, I'm just showing what I like to do. It's consistent with who I am as a person. And that's why it becomes so effortless, so easy. 'Cause I'm not trying to put on another hat of another person. I'm not trying to fake it for social media. I'm like, no, this is what I do day to day. That's why it's so easy. I don't sit there for hours trying to concoct the perfect spiel, the perfect movement, the perfect angle, none of that. And then I know, 'cause I'm just showing everything of myself, but then I know, okay, should I show everything being a squat deadlift or should I show seated cross-leg overhead press? I'll probably more biased towards that 'cause I think that's what's going to be more useful to people. And I have more to say on it.

Did you notice a big inflection from the point where, 'cause you spoke before about nailing down your message, which is, movement and basically training, did you notice a big inflection point where you were kind of dabbling in nutrition and doing all these things to then going, right, I'm gonna be the movement, I'm gonna do training and that's it. And then there was actually more people coming to you or was it always, so you're definitely when you honed down, you got clear in your head, it was like, okay.

Yeah, I mean, there were a few different turning points that really culminated in that because also when I started doing that, part of what made me focus more on the movement was I was doing so much touring, so much travel. And that was all I, well, when you get exposed to something so much, it just becomes your vocabulary all the time of what you talk about, what you do. So it wasn't like a split decision. That's what I look back and say, that was it. Like, 'cause I was touring a lot and I was realizing that, you know what, I'm not, it's not my jam to be talking about biochemistry or nutrition or anything like that. Like I think it's fascinating, I think it's cool. That stuff goes on my stories. 'Cause I wanna show people a little bit of what I do, but I don't really want that to be my main message. If people want another touchpoint of Eugene, they go to the stories for that. But if they want the clear message of training, innovation, creativity, complexity, and understanding the body at a deeper level, they go to my actual page.

So if I was to just, I suppose, summarize all of that, which is quite a lot, initially you started with, it's kind of like, fuck the social media for a second. Let's get clear on Eugene.

Yes.

Yeah. Yes. And in that, that took a lot of personal development development, trials, tribulations, you know, from bodybuilder to getting injured to, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then you go, right now I feel like I actually have something of value to share. And you know, I don't care who's watching. I actually don't give a shit who's watching. I just want to share this with people because I want to share this with people. And then people start going, ah, you heard of this Eugene guy? And then you go, wait, hang on, people are following me. Why are people following me? Hmm. And then you start kind of playing around on, am I this guy? Am I this guy?

Am I this guy?

And you go, wait a minute, one day I'm doing, this is all I'm teaching every single day. Now that's the goal. That is who I am. Okay. This is what I'm gonna run with. And that forms your strategy rather than people try and go in and go, all right, what does the market need? What does the market want? Let me manufacture something accordingly to that market. It really does start with a process of this is what, who I am. Correct. This is what I wanna share. This is who I am. Correct. Okay. I hope someone's interested in it.

I think that's it. I think, and then I go, I hope someone is interested. I don't care if they're not interested in it because you know what? Does everybody like you?

No.

Some people hate your guts. What? It's fine. It happens, you know? So it's again, people will, people aren't there to follow content or to gain knowledge. They think they are. People don't come to my workshops for the knowledge. They think they do and they get a lot of knowledge Of course. But really the reason why they chose me over any other course that was out there, maybe they're attracted to the difference or the points of difference that I maybe present out there. But really what makes them go over the line more is personality. Simple as that. They want to connect with you as the person. So if you don't let that shine through in any way, or you don't have that as your guiding light, when you go onto social media, when you have any interaction with the people at all, you are going to fall short and you're going to keep beating your head against that brick wall. And that's something that we need to understand so much as personal trainers or as coaches in the industry, 'cause we deal with people.

Okay.

This is not a, this is, this is a very personal industry where there are a lot of touchpoints, a lot of interaction with people. It's not some random conglomerate like your supermarket or anything like that, or a clothing brand, but even like a clothing brand, some of the best ones have a message, have a brand identity where maybe you don't connect with the person, but you connect with what the, You connect with the personality of the brand. Like Nike. Like Nike, exactly.

Where they're actually paying personalities.

Yes.

Like Michael Jordan to represent their brand. It reminds me of something that I heard on Tim Ferriss' show. You know, Tim Ferriss, you know, has like a million followers or whatever. Very, you know, what we would say, well-known guy, best-selling author, et cetera. But except the truth is with Tim, really only 1% of the world knows who he is. Yet he is wildly successful. Beyond most people's dreams or desires. And how is that possible? And I've kind of relating to what you're saying, you know, I've got a very modest, you know, it's nowhere near the tens of thousands social media followers, but we obviously, we do very well here at Enterprise. So our market is secluded to really Melbourne and that's who we're serving. And if you look at our following on that, it's, well, this is the product, this is what we provide and these are the people and it's not a worldwide business. It's not a global business. Global business and this is a reflection of who we actually target. And it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. But people watching say this show on YouTube and our YouTube views and all that are climbing, 'cause that's what we're really focusing now. 'Cause that's what my passion is, is developing great entertaining educational content such as this. And that's my thing. It's like, well, I don't actually, don't really care so much about the Instagram as I do about like, let's create innovative, entertaining, educational, have great interviews, put great content, great videos where people can connect almost like a TV show on YouTube. And that's been my focus recently with this. And obviously now there's been a lot of changes in the business that are allowing us to do that. But yeah, I mean that, that's a really, really great point. It starts with what are you actually trying to achieve and who you are.

And for most people, even myself, I'll tell you, it doesn't need a huge following. So why the hell is that a metric for success? It never is. It never will be a metric for it. It never should be. But for some reason people focus on it and say, oh, you're doing so well 'cause you got all these likes, you got all these followers. That's not what the metric really is. My metric is for me personally, and what I think most people should be, should be really connection. That's what you really do need and connection with the right people. And you'll be surprised if you have those right connections with the right people, you don't need that many. And the most effective way to be doing that is again, people connect with people. They connect with congruency. They connect with a very clear message. Someone who's very sure about what they're talking about and who's confident in themselves and aware of themselves. So don't try, if your first step into social media is trying to fit someone else's lens and trying to appease the masses or fit the gap in the market from that marketing standpoint, that is completely misguided. And I would happily say that's quite stupid because you're trying to already bend and compromise yourself. For some random person out there, which is always gonna be dynamic, 'cause there's so many other people, so many other personalities, so many other things out there to be appeasing, you're gonna be chasing a tail for the rest of your life. And that's why there's so much dissatisfaction and unsuccessful behaviors in the social media realm. Now I heard a guy, I think actually he was on Tim Ferriss's podcast, Tim Urban, who's got a very successful blog called Wait But Why, fantastic. And he had a very, very interesting thing where he was, again, asked, hey, how do you how do you go about writing? How do you go about putting out the content that you do? 'Cause he's got a very successful, just general interest blog. And he realized, you know what, the reality is there are probably a lot of people out there who are just like me, same personality, same interests, same likes, same dislikes, whatever it is that where we will just get on very well. Those are the people who I want to connect with. I don't want to connect with people who aren't like me, who I don't want to get on with, who I don't want to be friends with. So how would I best connect with them? The question you're really asking is how would I best connect with myself? Because if, say, we are the exact same personality type or whatever, we're gonna get on as friends all the time. I don't need to worry about how am I gonna please you because I know you're just like me. It's like, fuck, how would I talk to myself? How do I like to be spoken to? How do I like to hear a message? And then that becomes so fucking easy because you do know yourself. So you just write, write out content, record content, film content, whatever it is, the way that you would you would love to consume it, the way that you would love to interact with it. Maybe it uses big words, maybe it uses small words, maybe it uses long posts, maybe it uses short posts. It doesn't matter, 'cause it's gonna appeal to you, which means it'll appeal to a significant amount of people out there who are just like you, and those are the people you care about. And then if you look at the actual numbers of it, that probably will be millions. And like, how many people do you really fucking need out there to be able to make a living, to be able to expand, or whatever it is you wanna do with your life goals? Not that many. You don't need that many customers. Especially with what we do with personal trainers. You know, do you really need 25,000 clients?

Well, no, how are you gonna train 25,000? Most people complain, I'm fully booked, man, at 40 sessions a week, you know.

Even if you're an online coach or whatever, and if you're doing like the complete cheap-ass ebook, whatever, where it's no integrity whatsoever, well, not no integrity, but there's no thought process, it's click and button or whatever. Do you really need millions of people following it? Not really. You really don't, but people don't have clarity for it. They don't really, they haven't sat down to decide, first of all, what do I really need in life to be happy? How much money do I need to make? What do I need to be able to set up for myself to have that perfect lifestyle for myself? Is it $25 billion? Probably not. What do I need to be happy? I need enough money to exist, to maybe exist comfortably without having to have the pressures of life and finances all the time. But really what happiness would probably more come from is the process of being able to share yourself and put yourself out there more.

And you know, I heard something great that Gary Vaynerchuk said recently in one of his videos was, you know, it's the decision when you do make somewhat of a success of yourself in business, it's decision of do you want 3 suits or 7? Do you want 1 car or 5? And then that once you understand how much money you actually need to live, everything else as a business owner goes back into the business. And I reflect on that and it's like, well, actually I can make more money, but I don't want taking it home, I'm putting back in the business and doing more cool shit with it because actually that's what gives me the most fulfillment.

It's what you enjoy. It's what you enjoy.

Exactly.

It's the process.

You know, exactly right. I love the fact that, you know, you've come onto the Wolf's Den and the two pretty mostly, it's very technical guys and we like getting into the weeds, but we've pretty much done 90 minutes just talking about the esoteric mindset of, you know, you gotta get these fundamentals right because all that information is mostly out there and obviously you can come to our courses to do that. You know, it is there, you know, even like the free information there, but you need to get there. And I love the fact that we've, that's what we've really honed in. And I think it's a great message for everyone here at Wolfpack that they do that. So we are going to take a quick break for studio, studio, Live Studio audience questions for questions. And, but thank you very much, Eugene. It's been an absolute pleasure having you here. Let's give Eugene a round of applause. Keep watching The Wolf's Den. Remember to subscribe to us on YouTube for more great videos. Episode 1 was with Tony Doherty. Episode 2, Andrew Locke. Episode 3, Lucky. Episode 4 is now with Eugene. Episode 5 is coming up with Sebastian Oreb. And we've got plenty more episodes in store as well as some great content that you can check out. www.youtube.com, obviously Enterprise Fitness Melbourne, and you'll see it all there. Just click subscribe. See you on the other side of this one.