The surprising similarities between fitness and finance

All right. Welcome to tonight's Fireside Chat. I Ram Ramit Sethi, CEO of I Will Teach youh Be Rich. Dates don't exist. So whatever day, date, month, it is irrelevant. We are here together tonight. We are talking about the similarities between. Wait, let me reorient myself. Good evening. Tonight we're talking about the similarities between fitness and finance. I have found these similarities to be striking. And for any of us who have thought about money, whether it's saving money, earning money, investing money, and also for those of us who have thought about fitness, feeling healthier, changing our body, losing weight, gaining muscle, whatever the case may be, that's what I want to talk about. Because I would say that these two things have been two of maybe the top five most remarkable insights or things that I have learned in the last 15 years. Fitness and finance. So the fitness side, I want to just give you a little quick background on my story and then let's talk about some of the similarities. I'm curious by the way, how many people here have some kind of fitness goal? Whether it be, you know, I want to lose 10 pounds or I want to look like this or I want to be able to run a 5k. I'm curious what some of those goals might be. So type those in the chat room and while we are getting those, I'll tell you a little bit about my journey. I started off as a skinny, skinny Indian guy. I used to call myself that. And I would laugh as if it was a joke, but I think deep down I didn't really want to be skinny. But I just thought those were the genetic cards that I was dealt. And I remember in college being about what, 6ft, Cass? 6ft, 127 pounds. And like those are certainly some proportions. So I remember I one day made a bet. As I told you a couple nights ago, I like to make big bets. And I made a bet with my friend and my part of the bet was to see if I could gain ton of weight in 60 days because I had never been able to gain weight. So I used to work with this guy named Brian. And I said, you know, Brian used to work out at the gym. He was a somewhat big guy. And I was like, brian, can you take me to the gym and show me how to work out? He's like, yeah, he's a great guy. Takes me there. And while we were he was showing me some exercises. He said, alright, what do you like to eat? Do you like Thai food? Was like, yeah. He's like, do you like Japanese food? I'm like, yeah, do you like drinking this? Do you like that? I was like, yeah, I like that stuff. He goes, all right, you need to eat all of that. I was like, okay. And that began my journey of learning about fitness and food. And I remember years later, I moved to New York, and there was a gym across the street, and it took me three or four months just to get the courage to walk across the street, street and ask them, like, I want a trainer. Because it wasn't about the money. I had the money. It was knowing that if I walked in and said that, that I was actually serious about it. And I wasn't sure if I was like, I didn't know what a trainer entailed, but I figured it had to be complicated and hard. So I walked in and they pulled a trainer right there. And that trainer ended up being my trainer for over five years. And he completely changed the way that I thought about my body and about what kind of muscle I could put on. And then after about five years, I switched to another trainer, who's my current trainer, Chris Colson, and he does a different type of training. I was doing strength training, then I started doing bodybuilding, and I learned about macros. And, you know, I was able to really fine tune the way that I wanted to look. So if you see photos of me during my wedding, you will see a very lean look. You know, I was 40, 45 pounds heavier when I was really bulking up. So I've learned a lot. And I would say that the biggest insight for me was that I learned that it's not a mystery. I could demystify it. If I want to put on 10 pounds of muscle, there's a process for that. It's a plan. It's almost mathematical. And if I want to lose weight, if I want to look a certain way, or if I want to train for performance, that I can do that. And so instead of these kind of vague things that are not in my control, like genetics or like, I really want to lose five pounds, it became a process. And I knew that, okay, I want to gain 15 pounds, it's going to take this many months. This is what I do. Change the food, change the training. And I've achieved that many times now. And I'm still working, always working on a different goal. So that was my fitness journey. Cass, I think we have some photos on my Instagram feed of my fitness before and afters.

Yes, there is.

Those are, like, some of the most popular photos. Yeah, they're the most popular ones. I ever post because they're so visual.

Yeah.

I could tell you a million stories about training and this and that, but you see this skinny dude teaching a class on personal finance and then you see me having put on, you know, 20 pounds of muscle and you're like, oh, shit. Okay, got it. A picture really does say a thousand words. So that was my fitness journey. Cas, do we have any comments about what goals people might have right now as it comes to fitness?

Someone said, I want to become more fit in order to execute dancing better.

Cool.

Always. Another said, always be able to carry my groceries in one trip.

Wow. I like that specificity.

All the New Yorkers know can empathize with that.

See?

So someone said I have tons of goals. Climb, climb. A five second goal is by the end of the year, get back to collegiate track fitness.

Wow.

Another said, reducing body fat. Squat three 15 times five reps. Whoa.

Big time. Okay. Yeah, Great. So what did we hear with these goals? Some of them were just like very, very simple. I want to get more fit. Some of them were really quite specific, functional. I want to climb a five. I'm assuming that's rock climbing or kind of performance and strength related, like 315 by 5. The squat, which is like a very advanced number to be going for. I kind of love hearing people's goals about that.

Yeah.

I want to ask everybody if you have a financial goal, what might that be? Has anyone here just like, you have a fitness goal, what is your financial goal? I would be curious now as people are typing that in. Cas, I have to tell you, I think you were surprised when I told you this, but I don't really like, like, I'm not a Mr. Goal Orientation. Sitting down and mapping out a goal and like working towards it. I've never really thought like that. I do now with my business because I have amazing coworkers and some senior people on our team who are very goal oriented. But for me, I'm like, yeah, I'd like to experiment, have some fun, try some stuff. But at a certain point in life you probably do need to set some goals, especially in a business if you're large enough. So I just want to say that because if there are people out there who don't have a specific goal also, okay, like perfectly fine. I'm much more or less just experiment, like sniff something interesting out and follow it as opposed to let me build an Excel model of everything. What are people saying for their financial goals?

Let's see. Be able to travel six weeks a Year. Wow.

I like that goal.

Retire with 1 million.

Okay.

Stuff still meet the max for 401k contribution after this crisis.

Okay.

Hit one year emergency fund of savings.

Very nice.

Payoff car by the end of the year, have 15k saved at the same time. Okay. Purchase a condo in Hawaii.

So I like that. All different levels, right? We had some that were very modest and some that were really big. A million bucks. Travel six weeks a year. I like that. I think with financial goals, one of the things that I have really learned is when people pick an arbitrary number, I really like to push them. I like to say, why? What is 1 million? What is it gonna get you? What does your life look like at that point? And what they will typically say is, well, I can do what I want when I want. And I'll say, okay, we'll break it down. It's a Tuesday. What are you gonna do? And that really forces them to get clarity. I would like people to get as specific with their financial goals as I want to be able to take a taxi in August if I'm going to a meeting so I don't have to sweat on the subway. That was one of my rich life goals when I moved to New York. Another one could be, I'm only going to fly business class. Right. Notice the difference. One of them is three bucks, one of them is $1,000. But the principle is the same. We're being really specific. But overall, I love these goals. They're diverse and they're interesting and there's meaning behind them. A lot of times there, it's not clear what that link is between fitness and finance, but I discovered that link and reinforced it over the last 10, 15 years. And I just find it absolutely fascinating. So, again, you don't have to be into bodybuilding or you don't have to be into. Well, I was gonna say you don't have to be into investing. You better be into investing. If you're not, what are you doing here? You should. But what I really want to share is just a different way of looking at the linkages between these two. So let's go through a few of these and then let's talk. If people have questions or comments about fitness and finance, they can type it in.

Yeah. So if you have questions, please type it in the question box. It's on the lower portion of your screen. If you have comments, type it to the left. It says comment.

Okay. Similarity number one. Most of us don't track our spending. We don't know what we spend. We also don't track our food. So this is really interesting. Cass, would you agree that tracking our food has probably been one of the biggest revelations in the. The last five years?

Yes, absolutely.

What was, like, one big lesson that.

You were shocked to realize how heavy rice is? It's so heavy. Oh, and peanut butter, too.

Okay. All right. So we have. We have. We have a couple that we know who asked us. They've been asking us for some fitness advice recently, Right. And they've actually been, like, really getting pretty advanced. They're, like, losing a lot of weight. And then they came to us recently and they mentioned, we feel like we've plateaued and we don't know what to do. And I think they were asking about going on some weird, esoteric diet or something. And so you and I looked at each other. I remember this. And we basically were silently saying, should we tell them? And the reason that we were doing this is that we don't give unsolicited advice about fitness or food because, like, people do not want to hear it. They're super defensive about what they put in their mouth. Food is value in this country. So if you tell someone, like, oh, did you. You know. Well, the reason you're struggling is, like, look what you're eating. They will hate you forever. So we keep our mouths shut. We don't judge. We don't care. When we go out to a restaurant, we're ordering cheesecake just as anybody. But we said, would you guys like us to share something we learned? And they were like, okay. So they came over, and we took out the food scale, and we gave them a few different types of food. Peanut butter. And I was like, okay, this is how much peanut butter I eat every day. And I was like, guess how much that is? And they put out, like, a whole spoon. And it turned out to be only this much bigger. Biggest shock of your life is when you see what an actual portion is, especially of rice. Peanut butter, olive oil, granola.

Yeah, all the good stuff.

It's like 13 almonds. Yeah, that's like a. You know. Yeah. All the good stuff, so. Or chips. Tortilla chips.

Oh, yeah.

When we handed them the bag, I was like, what do you think's a serving? And then they went like this. They poured it upside down. And I was like, okay, More like take a tweezer in there.

Yeah. I'll never forget when I first started doing macros, too, like, years ago. It was. It just blew my mind.

Yeah.

How much things weigh.

So when you say weigh, just so if you've never experienced this. It means you basically get three numbers to eat, and it's like protein, carbs, and fats. And then almost like a puzzle, you get to create your own eating plan for the day, for the week, for the year. So let's say you have, like, a lot of protein, which most people probably should. You're gonna add maybe more chicken. More. Yeah, that's what it means by weighing. So you want all the numbers to fit. And if you guys are curious where to learn about this, Sohee Lee has a good book. And. Or if you want someone to do it for you, you can hire Chris Colson, the trainer, who will just do your math macros for you. Okay, so that's similarity number one. We don't track our spending. We don't track our food. We kind of expect it to magically start growing for us. You know, our. Why am I not losing weight or gaining muscle? Why is my money not growing? But we don't actually track it even for one week. If we did, it's the biggest revelation you could possibly imagine. The next one is, we eat more than we know or we spend more than we know. So the common thing in personal finance is people get to the end of the month, they get their bills, and they look at it, they're like, I guess I spent that much. We don't actually track it, and therefore we spend more and we eat more than we know. I've talked about this weight loss program that we tested for three years at iwt. At the beginning of the program, I asked our students, I said, what if you discovered that you were actually eating a thousand calories more than you thought you were every day? And the answers were instantaneous. They were like, I would be mortifying. I would be horrified. Like, that's not possible. But I would be totally embarrassed. Understood. We went through a few weeks of education. We did some delicate tracking, and by about, I would say, like three or four weeks into the program, we showed them what they were actually eating. And many of them were eating, I would say, 750 to 1500 calories over what they should be eating every day for their goal or actually for what they were currently at. And they were shocked, but by then they were ready to hear it. And that's the key. If you just go to someone and you say, like, you're in $7,000 of debt and based on the way you are paying it off, you won't pay it off until 2060, that's it, they'll never listen to you again. Eyes will glaze over and they will shut down. If you tell the average person, you know, for your height and weight, this is. You're eating this and you're actually eating like a thousand calories more. And it actually explains why you're not hitting your goals. Eyes glaze over. Screw you. So there's a lot of compassion that goes into giving this advice. People are not robots, and they're not just ready for you to magically tell them the math. The math is actually the least of it. And I had to remind myself of that when we started talking about love and money. It's not just the math that's the easy part. It's the communication and the building the bonds that takes the time. Okay, another similarity. In fitness, we love to debate minutia, intermittent fasting, keto, whole 30 don't eat carbs after 11pm and in personal finance, we do the exact same thing, don't we? What do we do? Ally bank has 0.04% higher interest rate than Marcus. What do you think? Ah, well. What do you think about this stock? It's a little different, but the expense ratio is basically the same. What would be much more effective would be to set a few key rules and then to be consistent about them. Every single day or every single week, I'm going to have a target savings rate. I'm going to work out three times a week. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, and not worry about these tiny details that seem to paralyze so many people. Okay, and then last similarity, and then we'll take some questions and comments. In fairness, fitness, fitness and health, we value anecdotal advice and quacks like Dr. Oz. There's so many quacks in fitness. I don't understand, like, some of the stuff. Cass, what are some of the things we've seen posted on Facebook about Apple cider vinegar? Let's not even get into the whole sugar stuff because that'll just. Yeah, that'll rile everybody up. But there's a lot of quacks. Guess what? Same thing. In personal finance, we have, you know, your grandma, grandpa who pass on these generational things, but they don't really even know. They never read a good book on personal finance. You have quacks out there telling you that real estate is the only way to make money and you should leverage up. Guess what? Those people have gotten real quiet in the last few days, haven't they? A lot of quacks out there. We can do a whole Nother Fireside chat one day on how to distinguish credible people from quacks. But suffice it to say, most of us value anecdotal advice like what our friend told us. This person's doing whole 30, as opposed to actually getting a good book or a good program. Find someone we trust and follow them. And that has been, I would say, one of the key determinants of my success and learning about fitness and personal finances. I had great teachers. I. I continue to seek out great teachers, and I want to honor them by following what they say and then continuing to learn. So that's some of the similarities between fitness and finance. Both of those have been massive revelations for me, as I've learned, some of the key points, like track what you eat. Compound interest is incredibly powerful, almost unfathomably large. And if you get just these few things right, then your goals become very, very achievable. Cass, what do we hear from people?

How do you maintain control, like spending or eating too much?

Okay, so when you start off, it. It feels like a battle. I remember talking to these students of ours, and they would say, I walk past a pizza place, and it feels like I am battling not to go in. Or I'm eating at a table, and it feels like that cheesecake almost luring me to take a bite of it. I have a principle in mental mastery called hot to cool. And this is one of my favorite principles, which is hot. Emotions are words like guilty, anxious, overwhelmed. And these are words that people typically associate with money and food. Right. You sit down, you're looking at this. I shouldn't eat that. But hot emotions. I want to go from hot to cool. Cool means, you know what? I could stop in that pizza place, but I don't really feel like it right now. Or cool could mean, you know what? I think I will have that cake because it looks good. And, yeah, I think I will. So instead of, like, anxious and battles, you have a plan. Plan that you yourself have agreed to. So nobody's forcing you to do it. That's key. And then you feel really good about executing it. I'm going to give you a couple of quick tactics as well. How do I maintain control? Well, how do you maintain control about brushing your teeth every day? It's a ridiculous question, right? It's not like it's a battle. It's become a habit for you. So how do you build the systems and habits around you so that you. You go from hot to cool? So it's as cool as brushing your teeth? Well, there's a few things. We don't have too many snacks in here. We do have a few. I think, Cass, you like to snack on chocolate. I like chips. But aside from that, we sort of know what we're going to eat, we have a plan, and then we go shopping for that. With finance, it's very similar. There are a few things I really love to spend money on and actually I don't really care what it costs. So I will go there, I'll buy it, I don't care about the price. But for most things, it's automated. I have a few key goals. Am I hitting my target savings? Am I hitting my target investing numbers? And if I'm doing that, the rest of it is a minor detail. So I would say for you, what are the three key things you need to do to move towards your goals? Could it be, I'm going to go to the gym three times a week or I'm going to go for a walk in my backyard three times a week? Could be any of those things. Is it I'm going to start my plate by adding more protein? Or similarly, I'm going to achieve a 15% savings goal per year. Start with the good. And don't worry so much about removing the good bad. This is a classic mistake people make. They try to eliminate all the stuff they love. But I'd rather you just start with the good. Start with the vegetables or the chicken or whatever. Start with your savings goals and your investment goal and then the rest of it will naturally get under control.

And what if they, like, mess up for a day or two? What do you have to say about that?

Everybody messes up, including me, including you, including all of us. You know, you might just like, stress eat. Okay. You might have a friend come in from out of town saying, like, hey, let's go out. What, are you going to only order chicken and rice with your college buddy? No. Similarly, you might overspend on something. Guess what? It happens. The way I think about it is because I eat at home and like, 98% of the time I am on plan. If I go out to a restaurant with my family or my friends and I see something I like, I'm going to order it and I'm going to eat it guilt free. But I also know that tomorrow is a fresh day and that 98% of the time I'm on track, on plan. So I think part of it is having a system, but part of it is also just like patting yourself on the back and not beating yourself up. If you go off track, that's okay. Tomorrow's another day. Let's start again. Let's be compassionate and. And over time, we will move in the right direction.

Do you think it's easier to translate financial habits into fitness habits or vice versa?

Can you ask it one more time?

So do you think it's easier to translate financial habits into fitness habits or fitness into financial?

That is an excellent question. I don't think I've ever been asked that question.

Yeah, that's a really good question.

Well, let's think about it. I don't know. Let's talk it out together. So if you optimize your money, you build all the systems you are more likely to work out. I've seen that from IWT readers. But it's still very challenging because you have to get up from out of your seat and you have to physically be active or changing your food or whatever. If you change your food and your fitness, is it easier to change your money? I would say it's probably a little easier to go from fitness and food to finance than from finance to fitness and food. I think food is pretty challenging for people to change. It's like your identity. Yesterday we did dinner with the Setees and we had this classic question. How do you get over the feeling of being bored eating? And if your worldview on the world is that you need every meal to be different? And, you know, and I really love pasta or I'm Indian, so I love this and I can't stop that. That's challenging. You have to kind of rewrite your identity. So I think that food and fitness is pretty challenging, personally.

And also. So our trainer, Chris Colson, he gives us these exercises that are pretty difficult. And he. I always, like in the moment, I'm like, gosh, this is so tough. And he's like, it's not supposed to be easy. And I think for a lot of people, like, and I go through it, it's like, oh, well, this should be easy to get abs, or this should be easy to do this, like. But it's actually really hard and it should be challenging too. Even though you have the systems, it's still going to be challenging.

Love that. It should be hard. What a great reframe. Cool.

Okay. Oh, a question for me. How many snickers do you have in your snack collection?

Oh, wow. Yeah, Good question.

I ate them all, so zero. Okay, next question. Let's see. Can you make a lot of money owning a gym?

I don't know. I do have some students who are Gym owners. You can. You can. I don't. I don't know their exact financials, but I would say most gym owners are not very financially savvy. You know, they do. They do what everybody else does. They don't think about, like, they. They love the craft of lifting, but if you're an owner of a gym, you also have to love the craft of business business. And I see some gyms where I'm like, man, you guys, you just do like, two or three things and you could double your profits. And for anyone who's a more advanced business owner, if your business is doing like 100,000 plus, I have a business called Six Figure Consulting System. You can DM me. And typically, those folks, we show them how to double their profits within 12 to 18 months. A lot of them do it faster than that and grow quite a bit. There are some basic things they can do, and it doesn't always involve getting new clients. That's the thing. Gym owners and a lot of business owners think the only way to grow is to get new clients. That's not true. So I would love to help them, but I don't think many of them are especially savvy.

Oh, so someone said just found you through your interview on Lacey Phillips podcast. Thank you.

Yeah, I really enjoyed that one.

What? When did you do that? Recently?

Yeah, that just came out last week. Lacy Phillips. We talked about what to do right now with your money. We talked about generosity. We talked about, if you're struggling, what do you do right now? But I really love that Lacy said, okay, well, what if you're not struggling? And I think that is a segment of the population that is often neglected. We spend so much time talking about people in credit card debt and people struggling, and we should. We should address that. We should not forget that there are lots of people who have been following I will teach for a long time or they have savings or they have an idea. They want to start a business. What about them? So I really enjoyed my conversation with Lacey Phillips.

And you have a few more podcasts coming out. Yep. You've been on a few recently, right?

Yeah, Chris. Chris Harder did one with him. That was really fun, too. That was really deep on generosity, and I really enjoyed that one. I have another interview I just did with Sadiq. I'm forgetting his last name. S A D I K. We talked about fitness and finance, and so we went deep on fitness and finance. That was a fun one, too.

All right, next question. Oh, I just had one. Shoot, I can't find it. All right, I'll do this one. What do your workouts at home look like these days?

They're modified. You know, it's not the same as having a gym, but we do have a little bit of equipment. We have some kettlebells, we have a small bench, an adjustable dumbbells. Set of dumbbells.

Jump rope.

Jump rope. So I basically took a video, sent it to Chris, and I was like, are you alright? Can you make the workouts work with this stuff? And he's like, yeah. So there's a lot of things that I would not have thought about, which is why we have a trainer, you know, doing these different exercises. And we do basically, you know, legs, chest, et cetera, et cetera. We make it work.

Most important is that we're just trying to stick to our schedule as much as possible.

Our diet or, like, the food we eat is like, pretty consistent, very consistent. And then the training is pretty consistent.

Yeah, I didn't realize how important these routines would be, like, especially during this time. That's a bit crazy. But they make me feel somewhat normal.

Well, what do you mean?

So just developing the routines and sticking to them has been important for me to feel, like, productive and focused and. And normal, even though I know things aren't. Do they feel that way for you?

Well, you know, I remember the first week that we were here and Earnable was launching. We were also just like, getting settled and a lot of uncertainty and I didn't train. I skipped all my training for about a week, which is like, unheard of for me. And I remember Earnable closed on a Friday night. And then what did I tell you Saturday? I'm like, it's time. I'm like.

And then the rocky music started.

Let's get in there. Oh, Yeah, that felt good.

That's an aggressive rendition.

Yeah, this is the heavy metal version. But I was like, you know what? I had to like, I just couldn't manage the launch, all these things and then this. And. And so I had to be compassionate with myself and say, you know what? Like, I have to just pause that. And I know, I trust that in myself that once I'm done with this stuff, I'll go back over here. And I did, and I felt really good. I didn't feel guilty or anything. I just had to make the choice. And now I'm like, cool, it's good to be back.

Yeah, I think that has been a big learning for me and I'm curious about for you. But with fitness for so long, I was like, okay, if I go into the gym and do, do five days of cardio and I lift weights and I do this and I do that. I'll hit my goals faster. But actually Chris has taught me that slower and being more consistent and doing it right is most important right the first time around.

Yeah. And I think for people who, maybe they're not at the same frequency you were at, but they were like, if I, like, I really should get in three times this week or I really should try. And I think when you are, when you're promising yourself something that you are not following through on, you start to lose trust in yourself. And to me, that's one of the most dangerous and devastating things. If you say things and you promise yourself something that even you don't follow through on, then who can you trust if you can't trust yourself? So I would rather restructure it, pick something manageable, achieve it, and then slowly increase from there.

What are some best practices for automating my macros?

Get a trainer.

Yeah, I mean, and my fitness pal.

And my fitness pal. I mean, pay the problem away if it's serious to you. You know, it's interesting. Like there are people who have struggled with their weight for decades and what's that old phrase? If you have a problem that money can solve, you don't have a problem. Like, if you can afford it, you can pay the problem away. If you can't afford, you know, some trainer, you can still get a macro consult from Sohi and you can, it's very inexpensive to get like a one time setup and at least you can practice it and learn it. So, so that's. As for automating it, I would say the way that I have automated it is I basically eat the same thing every day. And depending on the macros which Chris sends me, I will adjust, for example, how many almonds or how much chicken I eat. But like the basic structure stays the same. I like that because I don't mind it. Cass, you're a little bit different. You want some more variety. So you adjust it for.

What is your favorite technique for building habits?

I guess putting the systems in place so I don't have to think about it. An example would be when I wake up in the morning, I don't want to think about what to do. I have it all blocked off in my calendar and when I double click the calendar entry, the correct Google Doc is right there. And when I click the Google document, it is even bookmarked to the exact place for me to go to to start Writing everything is thought down to that detail. That is my best way for keeping on track. Last question.

How do you find a good trainer? And what do you look for in a trainer?

Ah, okay. So I developed a set of interview questions and I did interview Chris before I met him. I asked a bunch of friends who they recommended and my friends wisely said to me, well, what are your goals? And I had aesthetic goals. I didn't need motivation. I was like, I don't need that stuff. I don't need. I just need someone to show me the programs, show me the correct lifting technique and be there on time. And I had a few needs. I need them to help me when I travel and I need them to be responsive on text. Most people, I would say first off, you should just ask yourself, like, do you have any personal goals? Honestly, a lot of people don't. They're like, I want to look a little better or I want to feel healthier. And when you like kind of unpeel it, which trainers are very good at, you will discover that deep down people have some really emotional needs. They'll be like, I want to be in photos with my kids. I haven't taken a photo with my children in four years. Or I've got something coming up next year, my reunion. You can ask your trainer, what type of clients do you typically work with? These are, this is what is on my mind. What kind of clients have you worked with like me and can you take me through what you did with them? And they'll tell you, you know, if you're a mother of three that works from home, you might have a very different experience than like a 75 year old retiree man. So you want to ask those questions, obviously. Ask about how much they charge. Ask, do they recommend, do they prescribe macros? What's the communication style? Can you pre purchase a block of training sessions in advance for a discount? You can ask that if you like and then like try it out, try it out for a couple sessions. Yeah, most of these trainers are probably going to be pretty. Technically they're good. You also have to find someone you actually like because you're going to be with them a lot. You might spend more time with your trainer than almost anyone else. So the same thing applies to virtual, although the likability factor may be not as high. Cass, you want to add anything?

Yeah, that was. Those are good answers. I would also say just building on some, someone you actually like. I think it's important to approach it as, I'm just gonna, you Know, test it out or experiment and see who I like. Because yes, they have to be knowledgeable, but they also have to be. You have to like them. And then did you mention photos of past clients?

Oh, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, yeah. So if you want to kind of check out their work, I would ask for past client before and after photos and they should have some that they would share with you.

That's a good one. You know, I like your comment about treat it as a test because whether you're looking for the right book, the right therapist, the right trainer, the right anything, you know, I think sometimes people get fixated on the perfect person forever. Yeah. And like, the truth is, probably the first person you hire is not going to be the right fit. And in my case, after five years, I decided I want to switch out of strength training and go to bodybuilding. So there was a different calculus at that point. Honestly, try three or four. Do two sessions with each of them. If you can afford a trainer, you can probably afford to experiment a little. It's not a waste, it's an investment to see who you click with because that person is going to be a big part of your life for the next few years. So that's my advice. Okay, so let's give a couple of quick things. You should click on one. People asked about macros. You can check out Sohee Lee. She has a good product. She also has macro consults where I think you can hire her to do your macros for the first time. If you want to talk to our trainer, the real Chris Colson.

The Chris Colson.

The Chris Colson. Man, I'm bad at, but I know all of my own handles.

We both use him. He trains men and women. He's awesome. And he does macros workouts, which is really important.

Yeah, it's good. It's good. He's doing virtual training, including for us right now, YouTube. You guys know my YouTube channel? What else is there? Anybody we want to give a shout out to?

Oh, what if they would like to sign up for your awesome emails that you send out?

Okay, go to iwt.com and put your email address right in there. There's a quiz and you'll start getting amazing emails. Also, you know, we talked about the hot to cool principle. I feel like a lot of people who are asking these good questions would benefit from this mental mastery course. So go to iwt.comproducts. this is an amazing one to do right now during quarantine every day. It's a short video, it's fun, it teaches you a totally different way to look at the world. And if you walk out of quarantine having changed the way you think, whether it be about fitness, food, finance, whatever, man, you're going to look back on this as a time where you really invested in yourself. That's a very inexpensive program we have, so I would encourage it for those of you who have never tried one of ours iwt.com products, mental mastery, thank you very much. I will see you tomorrow night.