On the show today, I have Lance Goyke, a personal trainer working remotely with private clients and as an EXOS personal trainer at Google. He received his Master of Science in Anatomy & Cell Biology from Indiana University School of Medicine in 2017 and his Bachelorâs in Kinesiology from Indiana University in 2012. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the National Strength and Conditioning Association.
A self-professed âGodiniteâ, in 2018 Lance completed the altMBA, a four-week online workshop on leadership, marketing, business development, and entrepreneurship designed by Seth Godin.
Listen in as Lance speaks on his approach to setting goals, including why he prefers to set annual themes instead of annual goals. We also discuss the harsh reality of facing trials and discomfort on the road to successâwhich Lance aptly sums up with the maxim, âHard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.â
We then do a deep dive into how we navigate different resources to verify âscientificâ claims. Finally, we share our thoughts on educating coaches working with different types of clients and how to identify their ideal client avatar.
What Youâll Learn in This Episode:
- [07:51] Lanceâs thoughts on goal setting and intentionality
- [13:30] What it means to âmerely do the workâ Ă la Seth Godin
- [16:40] Short-term discomfort versus long-term discomfort
- [17:50] Staying vigilant regarding âscientificâ claims
- [28:35] Educating coaches of different knowledge and experience levels
- [30:28] Coaches who are outliers on the bell curve
- [36:57] Deciding your client type as a coach
- [39:44] Carving out your place in the market
James Cerbie: Now we’re recording. Now the guinea pigging begins. Weâre trying a new recording platform software here for the podcast, and I asked my good buddy, Lance Goyke, to come on and help me guinea pig it. So, who knows if this will actually ever see the light of day? I think it will, but we will find out.
Lance Goyke: I’m excited to test it out. I love that you’re already grainy on my feed. So, this is looking good.
James Cerbie: Yeah, that’s why I like to have seventeen different notifications about how it looked. The recording will look better than the live, so we’re going to put that to the test.
Lance Goyke: Yeah, let’s do it.
James Cerbie: But how’s your Tuesday going, man? We haven’t caught up in a while.
Easing into the episode with Lance Goyke
Lance Goyke: We really haven’t. Tuesday today is particularly busy, at least for me. I’ve got quite a few clients. I got a monthly call with a friend. I have a podcast with the owner of Rebel Performance. That’s crazy. Got a little bit of a headache. Not doing too bad, though. I’ve been struggling with some seasonal allergies and they’re doing a little bit better today. So at least I’m not living in Santa Cruz like you used to be because they are just evacuating every month of the year.
James Cerbie: What are they doing now? I’m not following this.
Lance Goyke: So, they had the fires a couple of months ago, which you know about.
James Cerbie: Yep, I remember that one. That was fun.
Lance Goyke: Now there’s fewer trees and we’ve had a lot of rain. So now debris is falling everywhere, and you don’t know what it’s going to be, how heavy it’s going to be and where it’s going to land.
James Cerbie: There’s so many different parks and trails and stuff around Santa Cruz. But I remember while we were there, there was one I’m totally blanking on the name. Itâs probably going to come to me in thirty minutes when we’re talking about something else. Yeah, there was a woman who actually got killed because a tree branch fell and landed directly on top of her head.
Lance Goyke: Jesus.
James Cerbie: Yeah. Just stay on your toes out there, people.
Lance Goyke: Yeah, I guess that’s why we all exercise, right? So, we can maybe survive that a little bit more likely.
James Cerbie: Yeah, maybe pounce out of the way. I know, itâs like you’re not going to⌠I guess you would maybe hear it, but if you’re in a conversation, or if you got headphones in because a lot of people go walk through those mountains, not mountains, but theyâre mountain hill trail things out in the woods.
Lance Goyke: Yeah, totally.
James Cerbie: But they’ll walk with headphones, listen to a podcast. It’s like you’re not going to probably hear that last little…
Lance Goyke: Thatâs terrible, man.
Dragon Ball Z and its Impact on Getting People to Train Harder
James Cerbie: Yeah, that’s a real bummer. We’re off to a great start. What a morbid way to begin this episode. Let’s change subjects here, because I posted something on Instagram yesterday saying you’re coming on. And I was like, what do people want to hear us talk about? And one of the first comments, and I’m so glad that this found its way in there was, Dragon Ball Z.
Lance Goyke: Oh, my God. I thought people were going to reject that. I thought people would look at this as the second show with Lance. I’m not listening to that because I can’t hear him talking about Dragon Ball Z anymore.
James Cerbie: Yeah, there was actually a request to have more Dragon Ball Z based conversation, because I think that most people in our fitness, strength conditioning industry, whether or not they want to admit it, have at one point in time or another watched Dragon Ball Z.
Lance Goyke: I’ve been thinking about it a little bit more. It was maybe my first exposure to training and getting better there, I don’t know.
And the main character is super carefree, and so I can really identify with that. Letting things go and being serious when you need to. But just working hard and getting better. And even I started, I shouldn’t say this because I haven’t done it in a few days, but I started meditating and that’s all part of it. I’ve been trying to eat really well. That’s all part of it. I’ve been training hard when I train and then resting when I rest.
James Cerbie: Yeah, I love it. Just the concept of⌠because it really does have that bit to it where you train really hard, you put in all the time, effort and energy, and then you’ll be rewarded by leveling up to be a Super Saiyan, which was this unheard-of thing. And then next thing I knew, we were on like Super Saiyan six, so it slowly degraded what that meant.
Lance Goyke: And it does, and I’ll say that from a storyline. It degrades the value of that. If you go re-watch it from the start and everyone’s weak and then you see that happen. It’s very exciting. There’s a lot of nostalgia from a story perspective, but now they’ve made more story and people are just at these God levels, literally. That’s what they call them. There is no comparison here. But what I will say that I think is good about that, is it shows the value of community.
So, if you’re around a lot of strong people, you’re going to be stronger than if you weren’t. They’re going to ingrain those habits. It’s not like it is osmosis, but it is contagious.
James Cerbie: Yeah, once somebody raises the bar, then we have so many examples of that taking place throughout history. What is it? The book? Was it The Rise of Superman?
Lance Goyke: I haven’t read it.
James Cerbie: I think it’s somewhere over here on the bookshelf.
Lance Goyke: I think it’s on mine, too.
James Cerbie: Yeah, I didn’t get all the way through it, but they’re talking about flow states and it’s more about adventure, action, sport-based athletes, climbers, skiers, snowboarders, people that go do these crazy things and how the bar just continues to be raised. And every time something happens, no one can do that. And then someone does it, and then it’s opening the floodgates.
Right, it’s the person that ran the first four-minute mile or cracked the four-minute mile.
Lance Goyke: That’s what I was going to say. The bannister.
James Cerbie: The thing that’s not possible. And then once one person does it, it’s like, âOh, this is doable.â And then three, four, five, six, seven, many of the people cross that line. So, I do agree. Yeah, I think that is something potentially people don’t spend enough time being intentional about in their life in terms of what they’re creating.
Are you surrounding yourself with the right people for what you’re trying to achieve? Because I don’t care what the outcome is. I’d be willing to bet that you will be the average of the five people you spend the most time with, whether it’s strength, whether it’s your income, your knowledge. And we can funnel that down as much as we want, but I think thatâs something that people aren’t nearly as intentional about as they should be.
Lance Goyke: Yeah, you got to define what it is that’s important to you, and then structure your life to be good at that. I just want to mention, Tony Hawk doing a nine hundred.
James Cerbie: Yeah.
How to Take Goal Setting to the Next Level
Lance Goyke: Four-minute mile. Shaun White winning everything. Michael Phelps winning everything. And we’re recording this February 2nd, 2021. About a month ago, it was the New Year, it was January 2nd. And I try to take the time, not necessarily to set New Year’s resolutions, because I know those have a negative connotation, but I think people shy away from goal writing, writing in the sense of sailing. Am I going the right way, just because they’ve heard something on a blog, or whatever, that says it’s not cool to do a New Year’s resolution because come February, you’re done with it? You’re not going to do it anymore.
So, I like to just sit down and decide what is important for me. I am a small business owner and I work for some other people and I work for a bunch of clients. And those people are important to me. And I have a relationship that I need to maintain. And I have family across the Earth, the country. And I need to make sure that I am making time for the things that are important. But if I’m going to have a workday, I also need to have, not my priorities straight, but my priority straight. Does that make sense?
James Cerbie: One hundred percent in agreement. I think that the act of goal setting is really important. Itâs something that I started to actually change a little bit on how I do it recently. Itâs a quarterly, annual thing for me. I’ll sit down and try to think about where I see my life in 5, 10, 15, 20 years, because that is really going to force you to get really clear on the things that you care about. If I’m going to draw out what my perfect world is, it forces you to figure out those big items.
And now I have the opportunity to slowly reverse engineer my way back to figure out the things that I need to be focusing on now to potentially make that a reality for me in the future. And one of the big things I changed is, I don’t spend much time on annual goals anymore. They used to be one I spent more time on. I would try to get clear on annual goals, and I think it’s a very difficult thing to do well. I spend way more time now on quarterly.
Lance Goyke: Why is it hard to do well?
James Cerbie: I think so much can change because everything is so fluid and dynamic. You set up something out for a year, but I don’t know what the world will look like a month from now, three months from now, six months from now.
So, I want smaller quarterly goals that are very measurable and specific. And then I chunk that down into two-week targets using scrum method, which I picked up recently from my brother-in-law and I’m a huge fan of. I found that to be a far better way of doing things. It brings way more clarity for me because I don’t get so lost in this. One year feels very fluffy. But a quarter is three months. That’s really easy for me to hone in on, and then go into two week chunks from there.
Lance Goyke: So, then a provoking question. If one year is fluffy, surely five, ten, twenty years is fluffy. How do you reconcile?
James Cerbie: I actually don’t think so, because the five, ten, fifteen or even twenty year one for me is actually not that. You’re not trying to get as specific.
Lance Goyke: I see.
James Cerbie: There is some specificity there, but it’s not something that I feelâŚlet me see. I’ve got to make sure I phrase this right way. The twenty-year vision is more painting a big broad picture. It’s me seeing the forest. And I think sometimes that’s easier to do when we think really long term. But then one year is this awkward middle ground where it gets really difficult for me to get specific on where I can be in a year, whereas I can get really specific on where I can be in three months. So, it’s not that I don’t have an idea of what I’m trying to accomplish this year, but I either want to go.
This is beautiful, right? Because it fits into my basic concept on almost everything. I like High-low stuff, right? So, my high I’m going out twenty to twenty-five years. My low I’m coming into quarterly in two weeks.
Lance Goyke: Conjugate method of goal setting.
James Cerbie: You heard it here first people. But it is a good question and I’m not by any means, I wouldn’t say I’m good at it. That’s a constant refinement of figuring out what works best for me. I just know from experience that setting one-year goals for me just feels like a voodoo black magic. I feel like I’m just making things up out of thin air, whereas a quarter just feels very real and I can start to line up the dominos to figure out am I heading towards my trajectory of what this 20-year vision is.
Lance Goyke: So, let me give you some more context here. So, I like the idea of goals. It makes a lot of sense that you want to be focused on doing something and then I can direct all of my resources into doing that. I’m really not that good at it. My proclivity is not to think about it all the time. Like, I don’t think what am I going to accomplish in five or ten years? I just think, what am I going to do today? What do I want to do today? Well, I got a headache. Well, I guess I’m not doing anything today. I feel great today. Let’s jump into some code. Let’s respond to those emails, write some programs and get some video coaching going on, whatever it may be. You mentioned one-year goals just being cloudy. And I totally agree, especially with my experience. It’s been that way. I still find it valuable to think about it. I might even set a year goal and I’ll never accomplish, not even close.
And I know that usually by the end of February. I’ve done it, I think at least three years over the last ten years or so. So, it seems pretty spot on. But one thing that I would do is having a theme for a year. So, this is the one thing that I am working on. Previously, it was this is the year of putting things out there, creating content and shipping it so that other people can see it.
For me this year, it’s about creating an audience. And here I am on a podcast to spread my name. So, hey, that’s good. I didn’t even put that together. I was just doing a favor so we could test out some technology.
James Cerbie: Yeah. And this new fancy camera.
Lance Goyke: One thing that I also want to bring up, because I know that you’ve done a Seth Godin course.
James Cerbie: Yeah.
What it Means to âMerely Do the Workâ
Lance Goyke: The marketing seminar. I don’t think youâre a âGodiniteâ like I am. And I have a friend who’s a more of a âGodiniteâ, maybe. But I do really value. I really identify with the short, pithy stuff that he says. It’s just enough to get me thinking about something and then I can take it off and do with it what I will. And his books are kind of like that. So, I just read his newest book called, The Practice, which is about, he would say, merely doing the work, not just do the work, but merely do the work. You just have to put in the effort. And over time, an analogy that maybe we would understand in the fitness region is you can burn a lot more calories with aerobic work. So, if that is the goal, you’re going to you need to be super dedicated. You need more duration, more volume of training.
Whereas if I do high intensity interval stuff, it’s definitely efficient. I’m not going to require as much time. But if the goal is to burn the most calories, you’ve got to go with the aerobics stuff. And I like to take the aerobic mindsets when it comes to work. And so, if I’m planning for something, I can say, okay, well, this is the year of building an audience and getting my name out there.
So, my practice this year has to be towards that. And I think Seth has a lot of just good arguments for that. But if I know what it is, then I can say from my point of view, it’s really easy for me to sit there and say, I don’t want to do this because it’s today and that won’t make me happy. But if I step back, I can use my logical brain for a second and I can say, okay, well, what do you really want? And will this get you there? What is your goal for and what is this action for? And do they align? Because if they don’t, you might be wasting your time here.
James Cerbie: I’ve been on a very large Naval Ravikant kick recently. Have you listened to the, âHow to Get Richâ podcast? Which is excellent. Have you read the book? The Almanac by Naval.
Lance Goyke: The âNavalmanacâ.
James Cerbie: I like that. That’s good.
Lance Goyke: Itâs free too If you look it up. I think I paid two bucks for it.
James Cerbie: I bought on Amazon because I like paper. like hard copy books, but yeah, they give it away for free as a PDF. I think you can get for it for free on Kindle potentially too. It’s just if you want the hardcopy, you have to pay for it.
Lance Goyke: I paid for a Kindle.
James Cerbie: Okay, I stand corrected. The PDF is free. Everything else costs money.
Lance Goyke: I really like that. That’s a good one to get you thinking about.
James Cerbie: That was my favorite book of 2020, without question, and I think that moving forward, that will probably be the book that I gift more than any other because I think cover to cover, it is loaded with too much good advice that’ll get you thinking on things. He gives some of the best concrete, âI’m not trying to sell you shitâ advice on how to build wealth that’s very principle based, and then ties it in with happiness and meaning and all these other pieces. It was just so good.
It’s a fantastic book. We’re going to be starting up our RP coachânot really a course, but more of a membership thing here soon. And yeah, everybody who signs up, Iâm going to send them a copy of that week one, because we’re going to be talking about a lot of training stuff, obviously, to help coaches find clarity, to deliver better outcomes and to simplify things, but we’re also going to have some business and marketing talk in there as well, because you need to be able to sell. At the end of the day, if you can’t sell something and make a little bit of money, then it can be really hard to support yourself and do what you want as a coach, regardless of the profession.
Short-Term Discomfort Versus Long-Term Discomfort
James Cerbie: The thing that made me think of Naval with what you were saying is he talks about this acute period, short-term discomfort versus the long-term discomfort. And if you know the direction you’re trying to go, and you’re choosing between two potential projects and one is going to suck now, but one is going to suck later, always choose the thing that’s going to suck now. I couldn’t agree with that more.
Lance Goyke: That’s just a decision-making rule that he uses. The quote from another coach, Jerzy Gregorek was, âHard choices, easy life, easy choices, hard life.â
James Cerbie: Yep.
Lance Goyke: I just said that to somebody yesterday, actually. That really stuck with me.
James Cerbie: Yeah. I highly recommend the book. If people listening haven’t read it yet. Go listen to the podcast. I think he just lays out too many important principles that you can use to live by. You may disagree with me, but that is my opinion.
Lance Goyke: He’s not always the most likable person.
James Cerbie: He gets himself in trouble on Twitter sometimes because he goes after things for not being science. And I tend to agree with him more than I disagree on that. I especially like the basic rule of thumb, which is that if the field of study has science in it, then it’s probably not science. Right, if you have to put the word science in the title, it is probably not science.
Lance Goyke: And I think the only exception he had was neuroscience.
James Cerbie: And computer science. Heâs obviously a big computer guy. That’s a big one, and this drives me insane because I hate going on social media because it seems to be this place where everyone just finds really dumb things to argue about. And what’s fantastic is that the majority of what people are arguing about are not falsifiable, and neither side has the ability to actually prove âright or wrongâ.
So, what is the point of the argument? You’re just arguing over opinions. This isn’t something that we can actually test and conclusively come away with data and be like, âOkay, well, party A is likely correct because the data says this.â And I lose my mind. It drives me insane. That’s one of the reasons I can’t stand going on social media because it’s just a bunch of people wasting oxygen and carbon dioxide arguing about things that weâll never get a conclusion on.
Lance Goyke: I love that. Another claim that he makes is if you’re going to read stuff, you just spend more time reading science. He also recommends reading philosophy.
James Cerbie: Which I do want to get into.
Lance Goyke: I haven’t gotten deep in that. I’ve read some of the stoic stuff. Iâve read a little bit of, itâs a Japanese oneâŚnot feeling good about yourself, something like that. I can’t remember the name. And those are fine. Maybe they’re not as original as he wants, and that’s going to get to my point. I don’t know. I had to get away from it because there is too much pontificating and not enough action for me, not in the reading, but in my life. I’m prone to be a thinker, not an actor. So, I needed to bias myself. I need to surround myself with those other people. Like you were saying earlier. He does mention if you’re going to learn stuff, learn from the source, like if you want to learn about memetics and means, go read Richard Dawkins, Selfish Gene. If you want to learn about evolution, go read Darwin’s, On the Origin of Species. Don’t read necessarily a newer thing because you’re going to get something that’s watered down.
Why Reading More Source-Based Material is More Beneficial
I’ll just give you my opinion first. I guess not that you asked for it, but I think maybe the goal should be to be able to read those things and to comprehend them. But I don’t know that it’s always the best use of your time to start there, especially if it’s not well written. Usually, those things are very well written, something like, On the Origin of Species. But I agree that if you’re going to look at the data and not get this filtered view. If I read somebody else’s interpretation on evolution, then Iâm removing some of these details and maybe that’s giving me more signal, less noise, but maybe it’s removing some of the signal and maybe some of the important signal. The converse that I have is, if I take a Biology 101 course, I can get a lot about evolution in one lecture, one chapter, one page, even. Itâs just bold term after bold term after bold term.
James Cerbie: So, I tend to be in agreement with reading more source-based material. Actually, I was talking to Ty about this the other day. Ty and I had a phone call, and I made the point that if you’re going to give me the choice between two subjects. Subjects isn’t the right word. But if I get my choice of one of two materials, material one is an undergraduate textbook on some topic material two is a binder of the last yearsâ worth of research, really in the weeds on this topic. I will take material one.
Give me the undergraduate textbook ten times out of ten because that’s going to teach me the principles and the basics of the foundations, because we have to remember time is what we’re playing with here. So, if something has been around for a very long time, I’m comfortable putting my weight behind it. If something is still really new, like we don’t know. But that’s very valuable to change six months from now, one year from now. But the undergrad textbooks are the things that people overlook because they seem really boring.
I’m also a big fan of, if you can’t reiterate, if you can’t get yourself to an understanding or get yourself to an answer just using your understanding of the basics, then you are in the land of I have to memorize this thing, and I try to avoid that as much as possible. And I actually saw that a lot in grad school. The vast majority of people I went to grad school with, a lot of people that were in my classes, they lived in this.
I have to root memorize this thing to regurgitate it on a test. But they actually weren’t good at being given a question and then formulating an answer and working their way to a conclusion, just based off of their knowledge of the principles and the basics of the subject material. And so, I’m a big basics and principles guide because if you are really good at those things, then you can work your way through a lot of problems as opposed to trying to memorize things that are really highly specific.
Lance Goyke: Were these fellow students, PhD students, or is it a collection of masterâs level stuff?
James Cerbie: Pretty much all PhD students.
Lance Goyke: I have had a similar experience. When I was doing my master’s degree, mine was a one-year master’s, which is one of the reasons that I wanted to do it. It was anatomy, and it was local, which was another reason. And it was it had a focus on teaching. So, it was the perfect program, I’ve got to do this. But what that meant, being a one-year program, it was kind of meant for the undergrads who didn’t get into med school, who needed a little bit more proof that they would put in the work. So, a lot of my fellow students were people who were just bitter at the world.
And I don’t have anyone in specific, but it would come up over and over and over again. And similar to what you’re saying, a lot of people don’t like to sit there and dive into all of that stuff. They just want to do it the way that it’s always been done. You see that a lot in organic chemistry classes because it’s a totally different type of class. There are mechanisms and there are principles like the principle of, how do you replace atoms like a nucleophilic attack.
But once you understand a nucleophilic attack, you can understand how biochemistry works.
Organic Chemistry and Why You Either Love It or Hate It
James Cerbie: Yeah, it’s kind of awesome. I love organic chemistry.
Lance Goyke: I did do.
James Cerbie: It’s funny because there tends to be a really big split. Like there’s no middle ground. You either love it orâŚI love it. Granted, I had two phenomenal professors which really helped. But yeah, organic chemistry is a great example. Once you understand nucleophilic attack, electrophilic, and the big one, honestly, is if you can understand leaving groups, right? If you just understand the concept of stabilizing a negative charge, a lot of things start to make sense as to why this attacks, and why this leaves, or why that’s even a possibility. Please continue.
Lance Goyke: So, what I will say for people who haven’t taken something like that, organic chemistry 1 is built around a lot of these rules. And then towards the end, you learn some predictable patterns to memorize. So, if you’re coaching a squat, you’re looking for, somebody kneeâs caving and somebody’s weightâs shifting forward, and maybe their back arching. Right. Those are just my three patterns that I’m always looking for when I do this. And you’ll get similar patterns in different, as you were saying, leaving groups, like alcohol’s sometimes become Ester’s or whatever. And it just depends on the environment, the chemical environment around it. So, you learn these rules and then you start to apply some of these patterns. You start to use it with these patterns. And then to me, organic chemistry 2 is, âOkay, we got a lot of patterns and some of them don’t really follow the rules.â So, start memorizing.
James Cerbie: That’s the way that every education works, though, right? It’s, âHey, we’re going to teach you all of this stuff,â and then at some point in your educational journey, someone’s going to come along and tell you, âYou know, I love that you learned all these things, and I’m going to be here to tell you that I’m going to poke some holes in it because we taught you a simplified version,â which is really powerful. And so, I want to make sure that people understand I’m not going to contradict myself here.
I still think the basics and foundations is the most important thing to learn. It will give you the most power for anything you’re going to do moving forward. But as you get more and more in the weeds on any subject matter, you eventually start to poke holes in certain elements of that story because that’s where the current research is. But we don’t have enough confidence and data in some of those things yet to change that foundation-based story yet. Yeah, very much in agreement.
The Importance of Surrounding Yourself with the Right People
It’s funny, coming back to the concept of surrounding yourself with the right people. I was telling Kelsey this the other day, my goal honestly with rebel performance is to grow it to a point to where I can have guys like you and Kiran, Ryan LâEcuyer and Ryan Patrick, and these other amazing, awesome coaches on board, because I know that you guys will all make me better because I hate being solo, because I’m not being appropriately challenged by my networking community.
And then, the real big picture goal is to have it be successful enough that we can just go buy 20 acres. And I’ll just peer pressure all of you to move to our ranch. We’ll have the compound. Weâll just hang out with each other every day because that’s honestly what I want to create, because the best parts of the grad school experience or any of my internship experiences early on, like when I was at IFAST or when I was with Cressey, the best part of those experiences are just being surrounded by the right people who challenge you and force you to get better.
And so that’s what I really am hoping to create because it creates a flywheel effect where it just feeds on itself and things just keep getting better and better.
Lance Goyke: Yeah, the existence predicts the future. I don’t think you were in Santa Cruz when we did this, but our buddy, our mutual friend Tony Juliano and I set up a retreat in Santa Cruz. We rented out an Airbnb, a really big one. And we just brought like 15 of the fellow coaches of Google and just sat there. And Tony and I lectured about stuff. We didn’t get too in the weeds on anything. We spent an hour and a half talking about the shoulder, I think. But it wasn’t more than that. We didn’t spend a day talking about the shoulder, I guess, which could easily be two days. This was pre-pandemic, obviously. So, wait until it’s safe. But you could do something like that virtually with maybe coaches who are kind of in your area, or even not in your area, and you’re just trying to create that environment for yourself.
I mean, James does that by having a business, and I do that by getting engaged to a fellow coach. Iâm always around it.
James Cerbie: Yeah, I mean, that’s one of the reasons why I’m not I’m going to move away from⌠I don’t love the course model because of that reason. I think it’s something that’s more membership based makes more sense because you can tap into that factor and it’s more conversation based.
Lance Goyke: How do you account for the fact that people will be at different levels?
James Cerbie: That’s fine within what we’re talking about. I think that will be unanimous. As long as you have somebody at the top who can help moderate and steer and lead from the front and help lead the conversation, then you end up having a really phenomenal network effect almost of people having different conversations, because if you think about the internships or in grad school, that’s a lot of what happened.
Most of the best learning experiences were when you had a bunch of people in a room with a whiteboard. And we just started having conversations about different topics and questions. And people in the room were at different levels, but everybody got benefit out of it because whoever maybe was leading it got the benefit of teaching it back. And then everyone else in the room got the benefit of being pulled along with that question and that journey in the story of what we’re trying to unpack and unravel.
Lance Goyke: I agree with that. My biggest concern these days, if I’m instructing someone, I don’t know, not biggest concerned. But I think our society is really good at not leaving behind the people who are kind of struggling with stuff, but I’m more concerned about leaving behind the people who are leading the pack. How can I ensure that they’re not just reteaching something that they’ve already talked to 15 other people and that they’re actually still growing out of it?
And I think the answer to that is if you get to that level, all of that is stuff that you do on your own. All of that is reading original research like we were talking about before, because now you have the textbook, you’ve seen the textbook, you’ve maybe even read the whole thing. And it all makes sense to you. But now you need different perspectives, or you start to apply it to particular clients.
And with all of their ifs, ands and buts, you start to say, âOkay, well, maybe this rule is not as important as it would be, otherwise.â
How the Bell Curve Plays a Role in the Coaching Industry
James Cerbie: I think when you reach that level too, that’s where you’re going to go to start trying to find specific mentors that have a specialty in whatever area it is that you’re interested in. I like to think about this as a bell curve, and a lot of who I’m trying to figure out how to better help is the chunk of the bell curve where the real meat potatoes lie, because I think that there is such an enormous gap in the industry between let’s randomly call it the top 10 percent of coaches versus the bottom 90 percent.
And I just don’t think it’s that hard to get yourself to the top 10 percent in terms of your ability to confidently onboard a new client program for them, deliver results, coach them through movements. Obviously, as we move farther out on the bell curve, things get more and more complex, and that conversation gets more and more into the weeds. And so, I think as you get more and more advanced, that’s where it’s important to have levels to what you’re offering.
So, the RP Coach Course is going to be designed for coaches that probably have zero to maybe six yearsâ experience, but they’re just lacking confidence. They feel like impostors. They’re really confused about a lot of different topics. So, they don’t feel confident in their ability to bring someone in, take them through a basic assessment, right. Then, a basic program and deliver them outcomes and results, and then coach them through movements. It’s just there’s too much noise. They’re getting bombarded from thirty-seven different directions.
And we need to simplify things for this population to get them really confident with a core, principle base model. From there, once you’re really good at these things, then we can have a conversation about making you an assassin and really getting into the weeds on more specific topics. You don’t need the Oxygen Course and really detailed, elaborate human physiology on the front end. You just don’t. My understanding of that subject matter is great, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m better at delivering outcome and results for some thirty-five-year-old guy or girl who just wants to look good, move well and get strong.
Lance Goyke: Yeah, absolutely. That’s another example. The hard part is, it’s less rewarding as you get better at it because you don’t get the same gains. You might not have the same, âAha, now I get it.â
Doing 20% of the Work While Learning 80% of the Material
I think about the Pareto Principle a lot. I kind of like the Tim Ferriss model of learning. How can I do 20 percent of the work to learn 80 percent of what it is. And that is important, and I think you should start there. And I believe that Tim’s message, âJust work smarter, do the things that are going to matter,â but also that last 20 percent can be really important to differentiate you if you want to get to the top ten percent.
James Cerbie: Yeah, very much in agreement on that. The number of emails I get from coaches and people on a weekly basis who just are very overwhelmed and have no clarity. They’re overthinking things to way too much of a degree. Guys, what we do is not rocket science. To use the bell curve example, again, it’s like the vast majority of you are going to be working with humans that lie in the meat of the bell curve out on the very far end of one side of that bell curve, we have people that are in real pain. Out on the other very far end of that bell curve, we have the very top one percent of one percent of athletes on the planet who have to go win a gold medal at the Olympics and peak for something highly specific. And then there’s all this stuff in the middle, and all the stuff in the middle just isn’t that hard. As we push out to the farther sides of the bell curve, it gets more complex.
It gets harder. Thereâs a big difference between, âOh, I just want to be jacked and look good,â versus, âI want to go step on stage and get a bodybuilding competition.â Two enormously different conversations. So, a lot of people, I think, are trying to take the middle of the bell curve and turn it into the outskirts for no reason at all. Don’t make things harder and more complicated than they need to be.
But as you start to work with these populations on the fringes, then, yeah, we need to dive deeper in your level of understanding. Otherwise, you’re never going to be able to deliver what those very specific people are looking for.
Lance Goyke: And a lot of that just starts from creating momentum. Instead of reading stuff, write somebody a program and just observe it. We talked about Darwin earlier. It’s what Darwin would have done. He just sat there, and he looked at those finchesâ beaks, and he was like, âMan, that’s weird.â And then all of a sudden, he’s changed biology forever. I will say, I have one cautionary point of view. There’s this kid that I mentor who lives in the Netherlands. He’s a great guy. I really like him. Hi, Tim.
James Cerbie: I actually know Tim. Hello, Tim. I spoke with Tim before. Yeah.
Lance Goyke: And I know he’s going to listen to this, so, hi, Tim. You are loved. You are a great man. He doesn’t train as his day job, but he does train because he really likes training, meaning he’s a coach to other people. He runs into a particular issue because, one, he’s not there. It’s kind of hard to get into the thing. So, he just says, I’ll train you for free because I like doing it.
And that’s a good way to start. And creates forward momentum, right? Now that was really hard for me to say.
James Cerbie: A lot of momentum in a short period of time. I think that’s what got you.
Lance Goyke: So, for that, that is good. And I love that, but what you’re going to run into if you are struggling with things like this. You’re reading these things and maybe they seem clear, but you don’t know how to get it into action, I would say, yes, create forward momentum. I got at that time.
But for Tim, one thing he ran into, and we haven’t even talked about this directly. So, Tim, this is our next coaching call right now.
Determining the Client Type You Want to Work With
He had one client who was super normal, middle of the bell curve, and then he had another client who did not respond to cues, had a lot of pain everywhere and wanted to be really active. And I got to tell you, that’s the hardest person to work with. So, for something like that, I just want, people who want to become coaches, I want you to look out for that because you might be training somebody who is an outlier, who is not a normal kind of run of the mill person that you would coach.
Pat Davis talked about this when I saw him in San Francisco at the, Rethinking the Big Patterns Course. He said, âI want you to sit there and I want you to push your knees through the ground. And when you do that, you should feel your hamstrings.â That was a pretty good Pat voice. I didn’t even mean to do that.
So, he said that, and he said, âIf they don’t feel their hamstrings, I’m probably not working with them. I don’t work with those kinds of people.â I work with people who are super able bodied. He didn’t use these words, but able bodied, and they have physical literacy, and they can turn their freaking hamstrings on when you reach your knees down.
I pretty much exclusively train people who can’t do that. And it’s harder. I know to expect that. I think it’s harder, at least. There are different challenging elements to it, right. You can’t be quite as cool about your programing because you always get to slow down and say, âokay, well, you’re not doing it right, so slow down. I want you to feel it. Can you feel it? Okay, now try to speed up. Now keep your rhythm. Keep moving, keep moving. Are you burning in the right spot? Is your back turning on. Okay, stop. Find your hamstrings again. Go again. You got the hamstrings? Good, good. Two more, and done.â
Something like that, right. But if I’m Tim, I have only ever trained one person, and I run into someone like that. Well, why is it this cue working? I would just caution you to remember statistics, right. So, if you’re only training one person, that’s a case study. It’s definitely data, and it’s definitely important, and It definitely means something. And whether you want to or not, it’s going to shape you, especially if you’re paying attention. But don’t mistake by thinking everybody’s that way.
James Cerbie: Yeah, and that’s where it’s really important as a coach to understand your comfort level. Who do you want to work with? What lies within the scope of who you can realistically help? Because, yeah, in Tim’s case, that’s probably a scenario where maybe we refer that out. Or if you have another coach, there’s a mentor who can help you work through that process. But I will also say this, as a coach, you do not need to work with and help everybody. Right, I think the analogy here that’s really good is if you mow lawns, right. Let’s say you mow lawns for a living, and you come over and mow my new lawn, and you notice that my gutters have a lot of leaves in them, which they don’t.
But let’s just hypothetically say they do. You’re like, âWell, I notice your gutters are a little dirty. Do you mind if I maybe jump up there and do that for you? Itâs not normally what I do, but I’ll just cost X amount of dollars extra to do it.â While he’s up in the gutters, he notices some other problem and then he starts working on that thing. And next thing you know, I’ve gone from the guy who shows up to take care of the lawn to managing the gutters and these other three problems. The issue with this is that every time you start adding in more, you will, one, increase your expenses as a business, because now I got to go buy more stuff to figure out how to manage these gutters.
And you’re never going to be able to actually streamline your system and your service and your processes enough to where you can get really good at the one thing that you want to nail, which in his case was be mowing lawns.
Because let’s take the example of someone else who’s not doing that. They come and mow my lawn and they’re gone. And then they pick up three more clients that day, mow three more lawns, and they shaved ten to fifteen minutes off their process because they realized the other three to four times I did it, that they could fix this, this and this and make the process better.
Discovering Your Niche So You Can Thrive in the Service You Offer
So, while one person is busy just trying to do more and more and more, the other person is figuring out what’s the one thing that I want to narrow in on, who’s the one person that I really want to help?
And when you’re first getting started, that can be terrifying and scary because you just want to work with everybody to make money, which is fine.
But you need to start honing in on what that looks like for you. Otherwise, you won’t ever really be able to be efficient with what you do. I think that’s part of the reason why I’m trying to set up Rebel the way I am, because I know the person that I want to work with and I know what I’m best at.
So, I know the type of person, if I have a conversation, I’m like, âOkay, you’re going to be far better off with Lance. He’s way better at this thing than I am. You’re just not the type of person that I help.â Similar thing that someone comes in, âMy primary goal is I just want to be as big and jacked as possible.â Awesome, you’re going to see Ryan LâEcuyer. He’s better at that than me.
He’s great at helping this type of person. And this comes full circle back to the Seth Godin thing, right. You’re trying to help this person with that type of problem, and you have to understand what that is, right. And that’s the same thing with Kiran and Ryan Patrick. I’m trying to organize people, organize a team to where it’s like they are way better at this thing than I am. They’re better at helping this type of person with that type of problem.
And it allows all of us to, I think, be better at what we do, because it allows us to stay within that domain to continue to refine and get better at what we do.
Lance Goyke: Yeah, and I would add just because we talked about business stuff a little bit earlier. So, I do some ads. James knows I did some software engineering as a side gig, I guess. And so, I’ve been making websites and helping people kind of formulate their business pitches with that. And I have one woman who’s a physical therapist who wants to get into airway management and diagnosis of small and wide airway problems. And it can be a wide field.
But if she can be super specific about that, she’s a PT who speaks the mile functional therapy language, which is something you probably haven’t heard of. But if you have, you totally know what she’s talking about, what she’s doing, and you already trust her. And so, if you’re especially if you’re starting out, it’s really hard. And I was really susceptible to this, but I just want to work with everyone. Everyone’s just a human, and they have problems and I fix them.
That’s fine. They all fit the same bucket to me. But it doesn’t really work that way when it comes to marketing. People don’t think, well, surely there isn’t one coach who’s better than everyone, and I’ve never even heard of this guy. So, if there is, it’s obviously not him. But if I think, oh, well, I’m seeing a lot of things that remind me of stuff that I’ve already looked up.
Or for the example, for Dr. Summers, she says, âAre you struggling with dry mouth in the morning? Do you clench and grind your teeth,â yada, yada, yada? And you read that symptom list. You’re like, absolutely. That is totally me. How do I work with you? You have to carve out this small segment of the market to differentiate yourself. We are living in; I’m reading the book now. I think it’s Chris Anderson, The Long Tail.
We are living in a world of the long tail. Wal-Mart has adapted, I would say. But a lot of these, Searsâ big businesses that used to be a one stop shop for a lot of different things, that’s going away.
We’re going away from the HIITs, the number one thing, and we’re dispersing this market as kind of like the bell curve. But it’s unilateral. We’re spreading it out. We’re pulling it out. And that’s what made Amazon so effective. The book market is untapped. If I go to a bookstore that can only hold ten thousand books, but if I’m online and I have a warehouse, I can hold a million books or appropriate numbers, wherever.
James Cerbie: Plus, Jeff Bezos, I heard him talk about this at one point. He said that he started with books because he knew that the most successful people who make more money tend to read a lot of books, and so they have more money to spend.
Lance Goyke: Interesting. I haven’t heard that one.
James Cerbie: That could be totally made up. I saw that somewhere. I read it, heard it something. It was supposed to be a quote from an interview. So, I could have been totally stooped. But yeah, the thought process was apparently, well, successful people read more books. They have more money. Let’s offer books first because these people actually have money to spend.
Lance Goyke: That’s interesting.
James Cerbie: I mean, it makes sense, but that could just be a post hoc analysis at its finest, right.
Lance Goyke: So, I had listened to the, Everything Store, which was kind of like a documentary book about them. Again, I could be misremembering this as well, but I think he had started with books also because it was available. It would be really cheap because they’re tiny and you wouldn’t need a lot of storage space. It’d be easier to ship. Oh, and because he thought in the beginning, he was like, âI’m going to have everything. We’re going to sell everything, but we’re going to start with books.â
And that’s unparallel to have that kind of vision and mindset to do it.
James Cerbie: Yeah, and he has been rewarded with a lot of money. If you can bring something to the world, a scale that the world wants but hasn’t yet figured out how to get, you’ll be able to do quite well. I see weâre at fifty minutes here. I’m not going to lie; the second coffee is starting to kick in and I really have to go take a piss.
Maybe we wrap this up, so I can go do that. But this has been a great conversation. We didn’t talk about anything that I originally thought we were going to talk about, but I love it. I love these types of conversations. I want to have them more. I hope people listening enjoy this type of conversation. If all I talk about is sets and reps, I lose my mind. This is the stuff that I find really interesting and fascinating.
Where to Find Lance Goyke
So, fantastic conversation, man. Where can people go to find more about the great and powerful Lance Goyke?
Lance Goyke: Luckily, I have this obscure name, so I have lancegoyke.com. The hard part is you have to know how to spell it so, L-A-N-C-E G-O-Y-K-E dot com, and I’ve been working on a new project that’s going to be live soon. I’m going to sell, I think, some courses. I wrote a book that’s going to go up there. It’s more directed towards people who want to work on their fitness, not necessarily the coaches, but that is found at mastering.fitness. No dot com. I didnât get the dot com.
James Cerbie: Alright, thatâs still pretty good, beautiful man. Well, thanks for coming on. I really enjoyed the conversation. I need to hop off of here and run to the restroom real quick.
All right, folks. And that is a wrap, thank you for tuning in for another episode of Rebel Performance Radio. You can find all the show notes, relevant links, resources mentioned, all that jazz at our website. Rebel hype and performance dotcom or does Google rebel performance? We will be the first result. And lastly, I do have one small ask for you if you enjoyed the episode today. Please take 30 seconds to subscribe and leave us a review. Otherwise, thanks to time for tuning in. Have an amazing week and we will talk soon.
Links:
- Follow Lance Goyke here: https://www.lancegoyke.com/
- Explore Mastering Fitness here: https://mastering.fitness/
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