Hey, it's Cooper here, and this is Run a Profitable Jim. Today I'm really honored to have a special guest with me, John Goodman , author of The Obvious Choice.
This is a great book that , um, we had John come and speak at at our summit last year, and it's really potent for me because years ago when I was trying to figure out how to keep clients around in my gym, I was trying to work out like long-term contracts and how to hold people to contracts.
And my mentor at the time, Dennis said, Chris, do you wanna spend your time coaching people or do you wanna spend your time suing people? John's career as a coach spans decades. He's amazing at this, but he is also a master of psychology. He's really good at retention, he's good at keeping people around.
And today I'm gonna be asking him some specific questions from the book, the Obvious Choice with the theme of how do we keep people around better. When I finally gave up on the idea that I was gonna lock people into contracts and force them to stick around my gym, I realized that I had to get a lot better retention. I started looking to the best in the world.
John Goodman is that, and I'm really, really, really excited to have him here with me today. John, such an honor to have you back on the podcast, man. Thank you.
Hit the button, man. Let's do it. Good to be back.
Yeah, I know. So I just showed our audience a copy of this book, which , um, you know, I've got a , an advanced copy, but they can get it in stores pretty soon. I wanna start with like, why write this book specifically?
Ooh , yeah. That book shifted a whole bunch of times over the course of writing it , it actually st started , I don't think I've told you this. It actually st started with a book that I was writing for coaches. It was gonna be another book for coaches that I was writing. And I remember I got back home, I started writing it when I was in Mexico like two and a half years ago.
And I remember I got back home and I kind of looked at Alison at one point. I looked at my wife and I was like, I care about this way more than I thought that I did.
Oh ,
And the ideas grew and grew and grew . And I think that's what writing, I mean, I talk about in that book that the best way to learn is to teach. It doesn't matter whether it's writing, right? You could be teaching verbally, you could be teaching via video. It doesn't matter. But the best way to learn is to teach.
And the best way to understand yourself is to force yourself to explore a topic in a way that you have to communicate it to others who might not have the same level of understanding or biases or backgrounds as you do. Because that does something different in your brain, doesn't it? Where it forces your brain to get out of itself and say, okay, I get how this works in my own head, but other people are not me.
How can I explain this in a new way? It forces you to really gain this, this, this more worldly kind of understanding of the thing. And you know, it st started Chris with a frustration that I'm sure you see with your people a lot, a lot, a lot. Which is that people just working really, really hard and not getting anywhere these days.
And they're particularly, and this isn't just what the book is about, but they're particularly getting sucked into this belief that the only way to build a business is to become famous on the internet. And that is so gloriously wrong and inefficient.
Not to say that you can't leverage media, not to say that social media can't work, but you should probably work at it a different way than just trying to get likes an engagement. And so there's this misconception then where people think that the only way to be able to do dope stuff in the real world is to first do dope stuff on the internet. Whereas actually, it's the opposite.
You first do dope stuff in the real world, and then perhaps you amplify that by talking about it in a dope way online. And so we were having, we still have a hundred plus conversations, dm like inbound DM conversations a day on my social media accounts of people who might be interested in our services or whatever. And it was crazy to me.
'cause we have a , we have a minimum of you have to be making at least a thousand dollars online already in order to work with us, right ?
Yeah.
That's not a high minimum dude. , it's not a lot. And , uh, and it was crazy to me, and many people were disqualified based off of that. Like, people who define themselves as online trainers or online nutrition coaches, people who you go to their Instagram account and it's beautifully branded and they're putting out content every single day or every few days, and they're clearly spending a lot of time and effort.
And then you speak to them and it's like, oh, you know, so like, how many clients you got? How you doing? Like, oh, I have four clients, but one just dropped off. Oh, cool, cool. How, how much you making, you know, maybe like 1 50, 1 75 a month. It's like, yo, how are you feeding your family? Yeah. Like, what is going on here? And so the book started by really thinking through that. Like, what is going on here?
How did we so clearly, so clearly move in the wrong direction, in this glorious, inefficient direction where we're trying to get famous on the internet instead of becoming famous to the family first? Well ,
I wanna ask you what you mean by the family, but yeah , I think, you know, we just actually saw this , uh, you know, in prime time on Netflix, right? With Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul. You've got this internet person who's famous for being famous versus Mike Tyson, who is famous for being like the best boxer of all time.
So I think, do you think like that is leading a lot of, especially young people to think Mm-Hmm . Well, the first step in being successful is to get famous.
I mean, perhaps I've never thought about it with the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson thing, perhaps.
I think, I think what it comes down to is this, is that the , the gay , the , the book, the Obvious Choice book is ostensibly about understanding that there are different games that are out there, choosing the right game for you to play, figuring out the rules of that game, playing the hell out of it, and appreciating that there are are other games that are also good opportunities.
And there are ways to play that other game. And there's lots of other people that are going to teach you what I call good information that simultaneously bad advice for you. And so, you know, there's the game of trying to be an influencer or a creator or an entertainer. I consider those synonyms. Mm-Hmm. . And then there's the game of building a business.
Now, those two games, neither one is better nor worse, but they're fundamentally different. They have different rules of engagement, time horizons, odds of success and award mechanisms. And nothing's new about this. It used to be of course, that if you wanted to be an entertainer or an influencer, right? If you wanted to be an entertainer, what you did is you went to Hollywood. Mm-Hmm.
, you took the trip, you went to Hollywood, you knew what to expect, you knew that it was probably gonna take a long time. You knew that you were probably gonna be mistreated by all of the people in power . You knew that you were gonna make basically no money and have to wait tables on nights and weekends. well , a chance that one day you're going to make it.
And if you do make it, there's going to be outsized rewards for the chosen few . And most would , and if you knowingly sign up for that and you make that trip, hell yeah, dude, hell yeah. Go for it. That's inspirational. The differences right now, the games I don't think are different. You know, there are absolutely examples of outliers like the Jake Paul.
Yeah, there are absolutely examples of outliers who have played that game in our new media climate and who have made it really, really big. And there are outsized rewards for them. Now, you could, you could talk about this in a few different ways. Um, one is, Hey, how wonderful they're making a lot of money. Number two is, yeah , I don't want that attention.
You don't have to study Logan and Jake Paul for very long to realize just how miserable their lives have been for , uh, an extended period of time. And would you trade places with them? And the answer might be yes, the answer might be no. And just about anybody who has made it to that point, you know, would you trade lives with them?
My answer would be no. But number three is you look at what they sell, and this is the part that's more interesting to me, is, you know, what you can sell once you become a famous entertainer. If, if that's the point, are generally only low priced , commoditized items sold based off fear and emotion. Look at what all of your favorite influencers are selling every single one of them. Some sort of flavored waters.
Yeah. Cosmetics, vitamins, supplements, cosmetics, hair extensions. It's all the same thing. And through , and, and not only that, even if there's success with these things, there's not successful extended periods of time sustainably because it's so spiky. The , these products are so commoditized, these businesses are so difficult to build and scale that most of the time these people never even walk away with any money.
I mean, the most extreme example is Prime with Logan Paul and KSI and look at the lawsuits that Prime is currently fighting between the bottling plants. And the reason for that is you beverage companies are like the most difficult companies in the world to scale .
Yeah .
And when you add into that virality and spikiness of sales, it becomes new impossible. You can't inventory it. Not to mention, of course, the fact that you're selling flavored water. There's no differentiation. And so I think what, what we as a society have come to figure out very clearly, Chris, is that, you know, to entertain around a subject only requires a very low level 1 0 1 level knowledge of that subject.
Mm-Hmm. . And so there's no trust involved. Nobody's buying books from entertainers. Maybe they're buying books, but none of these books are successful for any period of time. You know, there are exceptions like , uh, green lights for Matthew McConaughey, right? But, but for the most part, nobody's really buying books. Right. Your favorite fitness influencer, it's just a different game with different reward mechanisms.
It's a, it's a treadmill that they've decided to jump onto , perhaps understanding what they're getting involved in. Perhaps not. If you gain online influence as a byproduct of doing remarkable work in the real world, and then you talk about it and amplify it, that's wonderful. I mean, that's what you've done, Chris.
Yeah, thank you. That's, that's , that's
Wonderful. That's wonderful. Yeah. But like, your business is bigger and more profitable and more reliably sustainable Right. Than all of these other people who have big audiences who are getting all the attention. And you get to live in your small town in northern Ontario, , and ride your bike whenever you want.
It's true. Yeah.
And you don't get bugged. It's true. Like, it ain't bad. You know what I'm saying?
I think the other thing that I've noticed about some of these influencers who've been around for a while is that they have to become , um, more and more kind of hyperbolic or extreme to stay , um, you know, kind of in the center of attention, you know? And unfortunately, I would put Jordan Peterson in that category.
Okay. Where, where, you know, he has some, some really important things to say, but also he , the show has almost gotta become extreme to hold people's attention. Mm . I can also remember sitting
There become radicalized. I'm not familiar with Jordan's material. Will I read his book at one point years back, but looks good . I'm not familiar with his
Yeah,
Yeah. With his, with his material, his platform. Um ,
Just an example. But, but yeah,
But like, but, but, but the idea that you , you kind of by definition get radicalized. Yeah. I think is an important idea. You know, a lot of people when they start, you know, maybe there's like the center line, right? And, and they're , they stand kind of slightly over on one side of the center line, like most of us do.
And so they put out a message like that, and they start to get a response, and then they put in another message because they start to become addicted to the increased response. And what happens then, of course, is the filter bubble. The algorithm then shows that to more people who think that way, which brings more people who think that way to you. And so you start getting bigger and bigger responses.
It becomes a self-reinforcing loop. And what that's doing is just radicalizing you more and more and more over time in order to kind of feed this animal. Uh , that, that's definitely a trap that, so, you know, in the book, people have fallen into, yeah.
Sorry, John , in the book, you , you say that like, trust is greater than credentials. So in this example, would you say that like followers and likes and comments, is that the credentials that people are chasing right now? Is that what cred means? And like, how is trust more important than that?
I think, I mean, trust is largely people who, you know, who know somebody else trust. I, I give in the book, I give this triangle, right? It's , I call it the trust triangle, which is a terrible name. Um, but at least it iterates. And so it's, you know, affinity, familiarity and community is really trust. Like, we trust people who we have some sort of a connection with.
You know, they're a family member, they're a neighbor. We sh we, we, we we're in the same community as them. We go to the same church as them. We trust their word or their recommendation about a thing, and we act on their word and their recommendation more than we trust an actual verified expert on that same subject, even if they know nothing really about the subject. That's true.
And so, and it's, it's weird that we do that, but this is just basic human tribal behavior, isn't it? Where the people who we're close to in our community are the people who we look out for, the people who we live close to, the people who we, we , uh, have some sort of affinity with, you know, we share religion with or something. And so maybe followers are that, but probably not, probably not.
I mean, a follower count . The only thing that I've noticed since my follower account increased, is that on that platform, people will answer my messages more readily.
Interesting.
Which is weird. You know, I'm, I'm , I spend a fair bit of time on Twitter , uh, as well. I've just never taken time to grow Twitter. And so I don't have as big of an account there. Mm-Hmm. . Now I have a good account, you know, people are following me. And there's people who I trust and like, and, and admire are following me, and I get to interact with them and follow them. But the number isn't as big.
And it's actually really interesting because I'll reach out to somebody like you if I'm a fan of somebody's work. I never resist a genuine impulse. Um, I think I have a , a personal rule, which is say the nice thing you're thinking, if I like somebody's work, I try to catch them in the act of doing something good. It's like, yo, that was great . Sort of just on somebody when you don't agree with them. Mm-Hmm. .
And so I, I will try to send people messages and just say, Hey man, I really loved what you did there. Caught you, you know, you did something good. And what's interesting is that when I do that on Twitter, I don't get as many responses when I do that on Instagram. The , oh my, whoa , thank you so much. I've been following you forever. It's like, no, you haven't, you don't even know who I am.
Like I know that for a fact. , oh yeah, we should get on a phone call, get to know one another. And the only reason is they go to my Instagram account and they see that following them . Oh,
That's interesting. This
Would not matter if I was not trying to build an authorship thought leadership platform that by definition is going to be worldwide. This does not impact in any way, shape, or form any of my businesses that generate money at all.
You're, you're doing it because you're building a network, but also your rule is never resist a generous impulse, which I actually just, I had to jot down . I shouldn't let that one
. It's a great, it's a great rule . It's a great rule . I have these, like these knee jerk , I'm, there's 46 of them . I actually just wrote them out. Um , but I have this list of rules, and they all have, they all start with a one line. And, you know, you know the system one, system two way of a brain thinking, you know, the Kaman thing? Yeah , yeah. Conman .
And so system one is, is fast, reactive, emotional, right ? And it's just because there's just too many stimuluses. Like light is green , walk it , it , we have to be automatic for most things. System two is of course, slower. You process it, you think about the thing, and most of the time you don't need it .
But what I use these rules for in these quick headlines is to trigger my brain out of, its out of, its kind of , um, autopilot on any given day into, Hey, now we actually want to use system two here. And so never is this a generous impulse or , uh, give the gift is another one.
Oh, that's a good one.
Just knee jerk . The second, the second we think about the second you come across anything where you're like, so and so would like this give gift. Another one is buy two extra tickets. Anytime Alison and I buy tickets, take anything. Yeah. Anytime Alison buy and I buy two tickets to anything. If we're going to see a show, we just buy two extra tickets. We bought , uh, Moish Theater passes this year.
We bought like seasons passes and we just bought five of them instead two. And so tonight Allison is taking three girlfriends to go see Molan Rouge
Fun.
Last week they went to see Lion King, and I was supposed to go with her and Calvin and my cousin, but I ended up going to New York to record podcast, so I couldn't go. So she invited two of our neighbors, like two boys Fun , who had never been to a show like that before. Hmm . We took my parents on a double date to go see another show.
None of these things would happen if we didn't just have two extra tickets sitting there for Tuesday, November 19th at 7:00 PM And so just these little triggers to get us out of our autopilot , uh, I found to be quite helpful.
But obviously you developed this skill at connecting. It's, it's not just, oh, I read this in a book, I'm gonna start doing it. And you know ,
A lot of people, it starts with that, though. It starts with that. Like, Keith Azi Never Eat Alone. You ever read that book?
Yeah, for sure. And I was gonna actually talk
That
In the day, the Marble Method as a place to start. Do
You's That's
Fine. Don't describe that.
Well, I mean, you talked about like where I think it always starts where you hear something and you're like, that's so obviously a better way to operate. Hmm . And I'm hoping that my book will do that for people too.
Like, whether you follow the exact examples in that book or not, I'm hoping that you'll look at that and just be like, oh, that's so obviously a better way to do things than what I'm doing right now, and holy. And like, you know, it like, it's an uncomfortable truth. Like you recognize it and you know it. And what, what do I say? It's like , um, the most successful people don't actually smarter than anybody else.
They actually just avoid being stupid for longer. Like, you know, you know that these things are kind of true.
And so one of those moments was, God, I don't even remember how long I read this book 15 years ago, but Keith Razzi never Alone, one of the original kind of , um, networking books he talked about, I don't remember whether it was him or somebody who he knew, but basically this sales guy who sold enterprise level B2B software to companies. And so, you know, sales cycles were like years long .
You're talking hundreds of thousands or million dollar plus sales at a time, and he's selling by definition to chief technical officers of these businesses. And what he realized is that he can call them, he can call the busy CTO of a company and be like, Hey, I wanna make your job way harder by implementing the solution that's gonna save your company money. Will you get on the phone with me?
And it was actually kind of a hard sell, surprise, surprise. And so instead what he did is he realized that a lot of these CTOs are often the only major technical person in their company. Like they kind of run the tech thing and they're very lonely. Mm-Hmm. .
And so what he did is he started organizing breakfast, and he would call up three or four of them and he'd be like, Hey, I thought you might wanna meet other CTOs who work for these companies. You know, so-and-so from this company, and so-and-so from this company are coming, I'm paying for breakfast. Can you make it on Thursday? Uh, we're meeting at this restaurant.
And, and so, you know, obviously they did because they wanted to meet people like them. And he'd sit down at the table, this guy's a salesman, right? Mm-Hmm. . He'd sit down at the table and meet like , guys, I'm a fly on the wall. I'm only here to pick up the check you guys meet. And that's exactly what happened, right?
These guys met these guys, built friendships with one another, the salesman picked up the check, he became the most successful salesman in the history of his business. All that he did was he connected and helped these CTOs build relationships with one another. Well, what happens then when they're looking for a new solution? They ask their buddies what they're using.
This person is responsible for connecting all of these people to one another. It's the obvious choice. It's the obvious choice. And so I think, Chris , to your point, it probably starts with a story like that where it's like, yeah, of course. That's how people buy things. Mm-Hmm. . Um, and then, okay, how can I do more of this? You know, how can I, like you?
And I, the first time that we talked, man, I think we both said I have to go at least five times , because we were so, we were just, I remember what it was. I was by the water.
I rode my bike by the water, and we were talking about , and actually this guy, him and I are just so clearly aligned in the way that we approach business, which is why you and I are still around how many people selling the type of thing that you sell last more than two years.
Yeah.
If fly like was too close to the sun, they're gone.
Yeah. It's true. Yeah. Thank you. I've got some, some big questions about , getting people hooked and stuff. And I , I hate to pivot like this. Jonathan , do it .
Do
It , do
It . Follow your curiosity, man.
. Yeah. The thing about this book is that there, there are so many things . It could be 10 books, it really could, or a dozen, you know, and one of the things I'm most interested right now is getting people started, getting people hooked and getting them to continue long enough to actually change their lives. And , um, you know, yesterday when I was talking to Joey Coleman, who wrote Never Lose a Customer again.
Yeah . He actually referred back to your book. And so I wanted to make sure that we had time to talk about that today.
So I love Joey. He's one of my favorite people in the world.
Yeah. He's, he's wild. And oh my God , of course. He's like showing I got this advanced copy of John Goodman's book, and I'm like, well , I got mine right here. Like , now we're in this tribe, and you're the obvious choice. Here we go.
Oh, that's funny. That's great . Well ,
So can you just, can you give us a few minutes on like, you know, how, what is the best start for a client in a fitness program that's gonna get them hooked
The best start ? Who are we talking about? The the person buying the program? Yeah . Or the , Hmm . I mean, I think that you've gotta start people on momentum. You've gotta meet them where they're at. And so I'm always looking at, I'm always looking at parallel industries with this kind of stuff. Yeah. I think software is a really good industry.
Like software has this thing where they've got what they've called an activation point. You know, okay , at what stage of using the software is this person basically hooked in, right ? Mm-Hmm. , like , like the odds that they're going to continue being a user exponentially go up. And so the famous story is Facebook, when you've added seven friends , um, ah , you're basically hooked.
And so, you know, whether it's like SI I've heard the, the person who created this for Facebook, you know, the product guy basically say it's not exactly seven foots . Basically what it is, is once somebody has enough of a vibrant community of their own, they're hooked into using Facebook and they're not going anywhere. And so what's that for a client?
I have found over the years, how can you get somebody the quickest win possible and then use that to get their buy-in to do the real work? You know, you can't sell somebody on a year long deep health program on day one. Right. You kind of just don't have that buy-in, you haven't owned it yet.
So even if that might be the single best thing for that person to do, and the earlier they start that, the better, you're just not gonna be able to sell it. Yeah . And so oftentimes what we found has worked best with people are, Hey, there's lots of like, little tricks that you can do. You know, I'm not saying that this is necessarily the right thing for you, but it's this idea.
It's like, well, if you get somebody to eat a little bit more fish or have some fish oil and increase their fiber intake and do a little bit of, you know, light resistance training, mentally they're gonna feel better. If the resistance training, the, the , the fish oil and the fiber intake is probably gonna lead to a few pounds lost. Mm-Hmm. like within a week or so. Now what is that?
It's, it's , it's reduction in inflammation and bulk sitting in those system, basically. Mm-Hmm. , uh, you know, it's not, they're not losing that . But what that does then is it acts almost as like a reverse pyramid where your only goal when somebody starts a fitness program, I believe, is to get the buy-in as quickly as possible with as little leakage as possible for you to be able to do the real work.
So you come in after a week and the person says, and you say, you know, Hey Mrs. Smith, man, what's going on? And they say, oh, I just, I just weighed myself. Even if you tell 'em not to weigh themself , they're gonna weigh themself . . Oh, I just weighed myself and , uh, you know, I'm down three pounds. Oh, Mrs. Smith, that's amazing.
Now look, like , I want you to know this is because of a few initial things that you did, and there's always gonna be bigger, you know, drops at the beginning. But have you thought about what this might look like six months from now? Oh, yeah. I'd love to be so and so and so . Oh, would you like to talk about a plan to get there?
What, what we actually will do, I mean, we do this in our, in our business mentorship program, but what we actually teach our students to do is we actually teach students to , um, renew people and or at least begin the renewal process. Sometimes people renew right away, sometimes they don't, but renew people at the point of first win.
And so somebody might be five days into the program and they realize the support that they've gotten, that they've never gotten before, and they've seen some initial changes. Now those changes are always gonna be superficial if they're only five or six or seven days in, but what's happened is you've given that person belief that this is finally gonna work when other things haven't.
And you say to them, you know, would you like to talk about what this might look like long term ? We'll actually take people who have signed up for a 12 week commitment Yep . And we'll, at day six, sign them up for a year, man .
And so
We'll just prorate that. Now, even if the person isn't ready to sign up for the year, at least we then start, we say, we , we then begin the conversation that this is not actually a 12 week process.
Yep .
Um, and it gives us permission to talk that way.
You know , I think this might be a real epiphany for those gym owners who are listening and, you know, they, they ran like a six week challenge. For example, you know, starting around 2018, there was the new U challenge, and then there was of course, gym launch and all these others. Mm-Hmm . . And these challenges got a bad name. But the reality is that challenges attracted a ton of people.
And the reason that they, you know, didn't work was because Jim's like mine couldn't convert people into long-term clients. Sure , yeah. And they
Work to get people signed up on day one, but they're , they're creating the expectation that this is 60 days that I'm signing up, and then I'm gonna do something else. That's the , that's the, that's the conversation. So
What you're saying is that the bridge from that might start on day six, or at least the conversation starts on day six into the long term . It's,
It's the first win at the point of first win. I mean , first win the job of the job of the six , uh, depending on how the gym is structured, right? Yeah . Like the job of the coach that is front facing with the client is to identify the first win. I always, I always love those points where, you know, you'd get, I , I remember my client ed, I trained him, I trained him four days a week.
And I remember like six months in, he walks into the gym and every day , up until then, he was wearing his painter shorts and his old ratty t-shirt and whatever, right . And he'd bring in like a, like a plastic , uh, Aquafina, you know, water bottle Mm-Hmm. that he'd be drinking. And then one day he walks in and he's got Lululemon shorts on
,
And he's got a shaker cup with protein powder in it. And I just looked at him and I looked at my phone and I was like, got him
The activation point
For a , it's, well, I mean, this is the point where that mm-Hmm . person now self-identifies as the type of person who does fitness. Yo, that is a point. And that is a moment where you recognize it and you call it out, and you write a code and you get all of the trainers in your gym to sign it, and you mail it to their house. And that's the point where you get them hooked in.
You get the commitment to do the real work to change that person's life. A challenge is never gonna change somebody's life. It could be the impetus of it. I mean, even the design of the, of the obvious choice book, like these are the little things that nobody notices other than guys like me and you that geek out on books.
But the first chapter of the obvious choice is way shorter and way faster paced than the rest of the book. Mm-Hmm . And at the end of it, by design, it has a very simple process. This bug book process, it has a very simple process where you immediately are going to have things illuminated in your world that you are going to be able to quantify and say, this is where I'm doing things right.
This is where I'm doing things wrong for me, based off of my patterns. And you're gonna be able to get better and feel better as a result. That's by definition, that's by design. Right? I learned that from coaching. Right. It's a reverse pyramid. First chapter is like 1300 words. Yeah. It's really short.
And, and I know that I can't get in and do the real work with you in a book the almost necessarily a little bit denser or a little bit more in depth or thought provoking or counterintuitive stuff that I get into later on. I know that I don't have permission yet to do that with you until you've gained a little bit of momentum and until you've had a quick win.
That is really interesting. Because, you know, most business books, honestly, they should be an essay. You know, they've made their point in the first 20 pages, and that's it. Well , your books, I mean, I finish all of your books, right? Like , uh, David Goggins, I don't think I've ever finished a David Goggins book. It's like, okay, I get it . I
First started a David Goggin's book. Are they ?
Yeah. Yeah. I don't wanna , I don't wanna crap on this guy, but it's like,
Shoot , it's not for me. Yeah . It's exactly , it's not for me. I don't need to be that hard. I'm okay being soft. I love getting into my shower and it being cold, and then , um, waiting for a few seconds , uh, outside of the water for it to warm up. Like I'm fine with that, you know, . Yeah, exactly. Well,
Let's talk about storytelling though, because
, you know,
Goggins is good at storytelling, and that seems to be kind of like the, the arc that, that connects all of these other different phases of the, of the client's experience with you. What role does storytelling play? And, you know, if we went back to your example of Ed, I mean that , that's a great story, but, you know, it reinforces our relationship, right? It does Ed know that you're telling that story?
Like, does that reinforce your relationship with you? What kind of stories are you telling about Ed publicly, et cetera? Yeah.
Humans evolved to tell stories alone on campfires. Mm-Hmm. like, I have this, I have this , um, illustration in the book, right? Where you show when the first communication existed, and then it's like a timeline.
And so, you know, when humans first communicated to cave paintings, to the printing press to blah, blah , blah , and it's like written communication 0.01% of human beings being able to communicate like we did not evolve to communicate in nonfiction books,
Right?
That's not how we understand. That's not how we retain. That's certainly not how we pass along. That's certainly not how we , um, it become empowered to do anything. It's all through storytelling and stories kind of morph. The best stories actually are very, very specific, almost comically specific in one way. They should really apply very specifically to about 1% of the people listening to them.
And so for those people, it hits really hard, like when I talk about Ken Goofy Jr . Baseball codes , as a way to demonstrate how valuable it is to let your geek flag fly in business. Like you might collect Ken Goofy Jr . Business codes. If so, we can high five when I see you next. Um, 'cause you're my type of people .
But even if you don't, the fact that I used an almost obscurely specific example in that story to demonstrate that point makes it more memorable for you and allows you to then pick that up and place that into your own life. That's just pure evolution. That's just how we remember things. And so, anytime I think you're with a client on the floor, you're trying to empower your team, you have to talk through stories.
And the best way, I mean, business writing story, business storytelling, I think is one of the most valuable skills you can gain. And so I'll give you like, the easiest blueprint to do it is grab a piece of paper. This isn't in the book, but grab a piece of paper and you write out five steps. This is how I, I don't do this anymore 'cause it's so natural, 'cause I've done it so long.
But this is how I used to write all my blog posts. This is how I wrote my first bunch of books. If you, if you read the obvious choice, you'll notice that it's kind of split into sections. Even within the chapters. The sections are 600 to 800 words long, give or take. And they're all kind of the same.
And so you start with, you write down five things, story, leave a couple spaces problem from story number two, problem restated, genuinely steps to solving and then conclusion. Okay? Yeah . Now, what I'll do is before I'll actually write anything or think about how I'm gonna think through a story like the , the two brain, you know, I basically just got up there and told stories for an hour.
, I mean, but what, what I'll do is I'll sit down and I'll write bullet notes underneath all of these. So on one piece of paper, I'll have these five things. I'll have four or five lines in between, and I'll write down bullet notes right within each. And then once you have that, it actually becomes really easy to weave the story.
Because what you're trying to do with a story is hook somebody with something very, very specific. Mm-Hmm . give the problem from it, but then restate the problem. So it applies generally to them. Um, my friend Jason calls this the bricks and mortar approach. He's the, the editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. He taught me this.
And so the bricks and mortar approach, and the idea is you go brick mortar , brick mortar , brick mortar, the brick is the story, the mortar is pulling it back. Why it matters to the reader. Mm-Hmm . Then you go brick story mortar, pull it back. Why it applies to the reader. And you'll notice that as you read any of my work, is it's a story, but then it's like, all right , here's what it matters. It's a story.
All right , here's what you do. It's a story. Here's how to think about this. And then you conclude the story, and then you maybe move on to the next one. Right. The conclusion of a story is usually like some hard hitting punch. It's usually some feel good , you know, happily ever after. Uh, that type of thing makes you smile, makes you feel something.
Um, ideally emotionally, sometimes I achieve that, sometimes I don't. But,
But I think there's an obvious example toward the end of the book where , um, what's that? You know, you're , you're kind of like giving your autobiography in terms of, you know, this span of years. I was doing this, this span of years I was doing that. Mm-Hmm .
. The how i, how I make my money. The , the epilogue. Yeah . Yeah, yeah. Exactly. I like that. I I like that. Yeah.
So what I wanna do then is just kind of briefly pivot toward ai. I know a lot of coaches, especially online coaches, are worried because they're mostly, or they, they think that they're selling a program and they think like, I , AI can outperform me.
And, you know, the representatives from Garmin were live in Two Brain , uh, a couple weeks ago, and they're talking about how like Garmin clipboard is taking your data from your smartwatch and writing you tomorrow's program based on that and changing it if you slept poorly. But why should we not be worried about this stuff? Or should we be,
I mean, the vast majority of coaches, like coaching is a mastery profession when you , when you think about the programming aspect of it. Mm-Hmm . within any Mastery Pro profession, it's very easy to learn the basic rules and then it takes a lifetime to master it. And, and there's actually very little difference until you get to that mastery point.
And for the majority of clients, you really don't ever need to , they don't need that mastery component. Like, unless you're trying to put people on, on podiums, they really need a good enough program that they're going to do reliably, sustainably, for long enough for it to make any difference.
Right.
Nothing has changed with this. Your clients 20 years ago could have walked down the street to a gas station and pulled up an issue of men's health and gotten a workout that probably would have worked just as good as your workout would have worked.
Man , that's brilliant.
None of this is any different than its always been, you know, is, are the workouts that these AI systems that Yeah, sure. Monitor your sleep scores and whatever. I mean, I'm a guy who was a Cassio watch. Like, I don't want all of this quantified self data, but some people do , oh , these, oh , these workouts gonna be any better. Maybe .
But the reality of it is, there was always a point of diminishing returns for the vast majority of clients. For the people who are gonna pay your bills are all always gonna be general pop . The point of diminishing returns when it comes to the quality of programming is relatively low. And it's kind of always been democratized.
Not always, but as long as I've been in the industry more hour than Since 2005 , uh, it's always been there . I mean, I used to tell people, like, like people, when somebody would come to me in the gym and I'd be having a, a , a consultation to see whether they'd be a good client for personal training.
If they said to me, I'm just looking to for three sessions, and then to get a program, I would say to them, , you know, what I'm gonna recommend to you is actually to save a lot of money. I'd love to see you here. Yeah . You know, I think you're wonderful. Down the street there's an so Gas station,
,
There's Men's Fitness, there's, there's Muscle and Fitness, there's Men's Health there by any one of those magazines. Or you can go on this website, it's called T Nation . Find a workout to do. Oh , the basket . Find a workout to do. It's going to cost you $8. You're not gonna have to do the three sessions with me. There's nothing that I can do in three sessions that's better than what those magazines do.
Wow. That takes guts.
I need to get to know you. And occasionally they did, but most of the time I got buy-in. 'cause they didn't actually want that. Right. They didn't know what they wanted when they came in. But, and so, you know, what, what are we really selling? We're selling people the belief in themselves.
Um, we're selling people the support, we're selling people, the community , um, the convenience, the external accountability that we all need. I think that there is a misconception, Chris , between what makes a good coach and what people consider to be a good coach. What makes a good coach are things like your education, right?
Are things like your ability to program what people consider to be a good coach, which is really what's most important because these are the people who are hiring you. And we all know that if somebody hires you, then you have an opportunity to help them. If they keep coming back, then you certainly have an opportunity to help them. Mm-Hmm .
What people consider to be a good coach is often somebody that they like, somebody that they feel like supports them. Somebody that they feel like communicates clearly and is able to make something specific to them in a way that these magazines can't. And , um, you know, there are things that you know about the client because you've gotten to know them. Like, oh, tell me about a time when you felt your best.
Tell me about a time that's really special. You know , close your eyes, think about it. Oh, I remember this time when I was on a cruise with my husband. Oh, where was the cruise? Oh , it was an Alaskan cruise. Okay. So I was on this cruise with my husband, and I remember I walked in and I was wearing this red dress and my husband just couldn't keep his hands off of me.
And, you know, you kind of , it's so embarrassing. You kind of feel like all of the other men are like looking at me and all of the women hate me. Like, oh , if I could only get back to that , well now I'm calling your workout the red dress workout. Mm .
Now I am , now I'm telling you that we're doing squats, not because they work big muscles, which , um, creates a lot of fat loss, blah, blah , blah , blah , blah . I'm telling you that we're doing these squats because the muscles and the leg are really gonna give the dress at shape. It's just one example.
Yeah. Well I think it's a great one, John , and we're gonna leave it there because like I said, this could really be 10 books . I really encourage people to , to get their, yeah. Get their hands on the obvious Choice book and read through it and really think through it. I mean, it, it really does give me hope about the future of the, of the coaching business.
And in fact, I think people, people need coaches more than ever because we're not selling knowledge. But you , in hearing that, you have to understand what we actually are selling and , and why it's different from selling your program. John , thanks so much for coming on again, man . I really appreciate you. Appreciate you, Chris. Thank you .