Establishing Accountability and Goals for Your Health and Fitness with Rob Dionne

In this Episode

• [01:35]Rob walks us through the beginning of his transformational journey. We hear about the specific moment that he realized he had let himself go physically.
• [04:29]What made the biggest impact for Rob during his transformation? He explains how he began getting more physically fit, and how that led to changes in his views on food and eating.
• [07:54]Stephan mentions his previous Marketing Speak podcast episode featuring Aaron Ross, who discussed the concept of having a “forcing function.” He applies this to what Rob has been saying. Rob elaborates on this, agreeing with the concept.
• [14:00]Rob talks about listening to Louis CK talking about how what stops most of us is the fear of failure. He then gives an inspiring speech about how important it is to say “yes” to new experiences.
• [17:10]Stephan discusses his goal in joining the gym, but reveals the problems with having no social pressure to follow through. Rob asks a question with the purpose of reframing the issue for Stephan. We also hear about the difficulties of being trained or taught by a loved one, and the importance of accountability.
• [23:48]We hear more from Stephan about accountability, both in how hard it is to have only for yourself. He and Rob then talk about learning lessons from the universe, with Rob using the examples of his sister and niece.
• [31:57]When you pay, you pay attention, Stephan points out. Rob agrees with the concept, and explores more complicated aspects of the issue. He also elaborates on two kinds of people who hire him as a personal trainer.
• [37:38]Stephan points out that investing alone isn’t enough, and gives an example of how people behave in the office and at the gym. Putting in time (without effort and goals) doesn’t lead to results.
• [40:37]Someone who just clocks in and clocks out is called a “clocker” in the book From Impossible to Inevitable by Aaron Ross. Stephan also talks about his interview with Cal Newport about his book Deep Work.
• [44:46]Rob gives advice for how to reconnect to your body, if you’ve been disconnected from it. We also hear about the importance of focusing on the journey instead of the destination.
• [49:25]Rob talks about the problem with being accustomed to immediate gratification, and how it can lead to jealousy and doubting yourself and your path. Instead, try to be gentle with yourself and accept your own path.
• [51:14]Social media can be counterproductive and make us narcissistic and insecure. Tim Ferriss suggests going on a “low information diet,” but Stephan suggests we need a low social media diet instead.
• [55:30]Rob points out that some people are excited to follow or join in, while others (like himself and Stephan) need to lead to feel empowered.
• [61:46]We hear a final pitch from Rob about his podcast, Open Sky Fitness, and the related Facebook group.

Jump to Links and Resources

Transcript

‏‏Hello and welcome to Get Yourself Optimized. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer and today I have Rob Dionne with us. Rob is a creator and co-host of the Open Sky Fitness podcast. He is a certified personal trainer, a nutrition expert; he helps men and women over the age of 35 lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle. Rob’s been featured in Men’s Health, Rdella Training podcast, Wellness Force radio, and many more. Welcome, Rob. It’s great to have you on the show!

‏‏Thank you so much for having me. This is awesome. I’m really excited.

‏‏We were talking before the episode started recording about personal transformations. I had this big transformation where I’m literally unrecognizable from the guy I was, if you look at the About page on getyourselfoptimized.com.

‏‏I’m looking at you right now.

‏‏It’s shocking, right? You had a bit of transformation yourself. Your journey started in your thirties. Can you kind of walk us through what exactly happened?

‏‏Yeah. I think I had a pretty traditional or very common way of growing up. I was an athlete growing up, like just so many of us. Then I graduated from college, and I started a career and I moved to Manhattan. My wife and I moved in together. At that time, we were just dating. I didn’t pay attention to what I was eating. I stopped necessarily working out. The next thing I knew, I was 30 years old; we had just gotten married. At this point, we moved to Los Angeles. I was about 30 pounds heavier than I had ever been in my life. The way that I realized that was I was standing at the edge of a waterfall and we had this underwater camera at the time. She snapped this picture of me. I guess there were digital cameras at that time, but she snapped this picture of me. I didn’t see it until we got home, when we developed the film. I was mortified by what had happened to me because I didn’t have time to suck in my gut.

Our bodies just don’t respond that same way year after year.

I didn’t have time to flex and kind of stand like the guys that we stand when we’re standing with our shirt off. I was kind of disgusted, and I realized I had let myself really slip in these last few years. I didn’t know how to get back to it. I had tried after that many things, but only the things that I would’ve tried when I was in my early twenties because that was the only knowledge base that I had. I knew that my body reacted a certain way when I would do certain exercises, but I wasn’t a 20-year-old body anymore. I was a 30-year-old body. I think that’s what most people don’t realize when they’re trying to get healthy again is they think that they are the person they were 10 years ago or 20 years ago when they were healthy. Our bodies just don’t respond that same way year after year. After that, I really started digging down deep into what can motivate me to be healthier and starting on a journey of nutrition.

Now I probably eat in a way that most people would just think is really extreme, especially my mom. My mom thinks I am the most extreme person in the world because I grew up with pasta, meatballs, bread, and all of that stuff as a kid growing up. But now, at this point, I’ve transitioned my diet over the last 10 years. I’m 39 now, almost 10 years to a way of eating that is not necessarily outside the mainstream because the mainstream has changed quite a bit. That’s been my journey over these last nine years. There’s a lot inside of that, but I’m just kind of giving you the entire picture in one screenshot so you can kinda see that it was a long journey from the time that I was standing on the side of that waterfall until today, where I feel like I’m probably healthier than I’ve ever been in my life. I feel like I just keep getting healthier.

‏‏Yeah, that’s awesome. What was the biggest thing that impacted you over this course of time, got you the biggest impact? Was it the nutrition changes? Was it certain lifestyle changes? A new fitness regimen? Was it a mindset shift? What made the biggest impact for you?

‏‏There are multiple things that happened at different times. One of the first shifts was I was just starting to be a personal trainer at the time. I was living in Los Angeles and I had a client that I probably had for six months or so. I felt like a complete hypocrite, and he asked me at some point, “Would you train me for a half marathon?” And I thought, “Yeah, sure! I’ll train you for the half marathon.” I’ve never done a half marathon, but yeah, how hard could it be? I thought to myself, “Wait a second. I haven’t worked out in a while and I’m kind of falling off track here. I’ll run that half marathon with you. We’ll train together, and we’ll go. We’ll do it together. It will be like this thing where we coach each other. We help each other rise to the occasion.” That’s what I did. And then I invited other clients to do that with me. And then I invited clients to do 5ks and 10ks and mud runs and half marathons and marathons and triathlons. I just started signing up over the next year-and-a-half, two years. I just started signing up for everything. I figured if I’m going to spend $50 or $100 or $250, I’m going to do it.

My only metric was to complete the race. Do not stop. Complete the race.

I’m going to show up on that day which means that I gotta train for it because if I show up, I’m gonna be really embarrassed if I can’t complete it. My only metric was to complete the race. Do not stop. Complete the race. I didn’t care how fast I ran. I didn’t care how fast I swam. I just wanted to complete it without stopping. It was just years of doing. You ask about the nutrition, well then through that process, I was realizing, “What can I eat before I do a race? And what makes me feel good before I do a long run? If I’m trying to drop a couple of pounds, what does my body now respond to?” I had kind of built a ritual, a routine, and habit around having to exercise. Now I needed to start tweaking different areas of my life, and I think it’s just like business in that way. We kind of hit a pace and then as we do that, we start making slight, strategic changes along the way in order to keep moving forward in the right direction. That was kind of how it all evolved for me.

After I did all those endurance competitions, I was like, “You know what, I’m getting a little small, and I want to change gears here.” Now I was really leaning down, I was down to 165 lbs from 194 lbs. That was my honeymoon, I was 194. I was like, “I’m getting really svelte. It looks good, but at the same time, I don’t feel strong. I kind of feel weak. I’m gonna switch gears here. I’m gonna do a men’s physique competition.” I signed up for one. Didn’t do any prep; just gave myself six months. Six months from right now, I’m gonna sign up for men’s physique competition. And then I was like, “What do I do in order to achieve that?” That was my process. Then I spent three months putting on muscle mass. I spent three months cutting all my body fat and then performed. I did actually two in a row. The first one I did I got fifth place, the second one I did I took first place.

‏‏Wow!

‏‏This is something I realized about myself is I have to give myself goals that are in the future, that I will feel like I’m failing if I don’t prepare. I’m one of those guys, I think that a lot of us are. If they do something and they sign up for it or they put it out there and they let people know that they’re doing it, there’s a certain amount of accountability that you have to come through because you just promised you were gonna do it. Those were really important life lessons for me and how I kind of got myself into the habit of creating a healthier lifestyle. Just one aspect of the path.

‏‏Yeah. This reminds me of an episode I did with Aaron Ross who wrote From Impossible to Inevitable. It’s a great book, by the way. This was from my other podcast show for Marketing Speak. Great episode. You gotta listen to it, by the way. So Aaron talks about having a forcing function. In this case, a business book, here he’s talking about a forcing function that you’re gonna have your employees kind of commit to. It’s basically making a big commitment, making it public, but one of the examples he gave in his book was there’s a big difference between somebody saying, “Yeah, my commitment to losing weight or gaining muscle mass is I’m joining the gym.” Nothing’s gonna happen from that or very little. Comparison with a forcing function of, “I just announced on Facebook that I’m going to be running in the LA Marathon. I just signed up, and I’m committed. I’m posting to the world that I’m gonna be running this race. I’ll be posting progress reports as I train and get ready for that race.” So now, everybody’s watching this person and expecting them to follow through on their word. That’s a forcing function and it sounds like you did that.

‏‏Yeah. I think a forcing function is a great definition. I’ve never heard anybody give a specific definition to it, but it is a phenomenal way to hold yourself accountable when you invite other people into the fold. If you, like you said, join the gym, there’s no specific goal there. There’s no end date. There’s no timeline. If I’m just gonna join the gym because I wanna “lose some weight,” even if I say, “I just need to drop like 15 to 20 lbs.” Well, by when? That’s gonna be the question because it’s an open-ended invitation to do nothing, until absolutely necessary. When I signed up for the half marathon, oh my god, that was the worst race I’d ever run in my life. I’m not even kidding! Stephan, it was horrible! I was running and I invited one of my best friends who was also a client at the time of mine because we were working and doing this challenge together. He had done multiple half marathons in the past before. If I wasn’t running with him, I would have stopped. I would have stopped. I’m not even kidding you.

But right when I finished, and I completed, I think I literally that afternoon went home and signed up for something else. It was just like because I realized I would never have done this had I not set that goal. And then, like I said, I just invited everybody to do it with me. Once I did that, this is another thing, maybe it expands on that theory. You say, “Hey guys! I’m doing this marathon. I signed up for it, and I’m doing it. Who wants to do it with me? Who’s with me?” Go Tom Cruise! Who’s coming with me? That is the moment when you can find out whether or not you are not only a cheerleader for yourself but a cheerleader for other people. Not only do you have the self-drive, but you’ve created a support system. You unwillingly created a support system. This translates into every single part of your life. Whether or not it’s your health, whether or not it’s the business of your life—if you’re creating a business, good luck doing it on your own without anybody’s help, without anybody coming along for the ride. There are so many lessons that come along with this that it’s hard to describe.‏‏

I agree and I really want to unpack this for our listeners because this is so important. There are a few concepts here that we really need to unpack. One is this concept of it’s not just about the goal, but you have this hunger to sign up and do the next one. It’s not just, “Okay, I hit the goal. Now I can sit back and watch Netflix or whatever. I can binge watch that show I’ve been holding off on until I’ve completed this goal.” No. You’re hungry to do the next challenge. When you did that half marathon, and you were like, “I just hated my performance in that. I would’ve stopped,” that reminded me of when I first started speaking on stages. I was 24 and I was terrible. I was absolutely horrendous! My first speaking gig, I managed to get in as not only a general session speaker for this conference, but also I was the chairperson for the conference and I did a post-conference workshop. I was the big name on this conference; it was called How to Market Educational Programs on the Internet. I sucked. I was so bad.

‏‏Was it the pressure, or was it just because you didn’t have any experience?

‏‏I didn’t have the experience. I just had never gotten trained on public speaking. I didn’t know how to keep the tempo and be light, fun, and entertaining. It’s like herding cats, as a chairperson, keeping everybody on time, being fun and entertaining in the introductions of each speaker and everything. Oh my god, I just sucked. That didn’t stop me though; I knew I sucked. I looked back at it and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m gonna nail this! I am gonna nail this!” It feels to me like you did a similar sort of thing. This just is fuel for me. The suckage is fuel. I’m going to use that to turn that into something great, and I did. The great thing about public speaking is if you get billing on these different conference brochures, all these competing conference organizations, they poach each other’s speakers. I started getting phone calls from all these competitor conference producers. IIR would call me and I’d say yes to everything. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! And I kept sucking, but I sucked less. And I sucked a little bit less. And then I started getting good. And then I started getting amazing because I’ve done thousands of speaking gigs now.

‏‏It’s interesting. I was listening to Louis C.K., of all people. Great American comedian. He was talking about this exact subject. It’s funny where he pulls so much inspiration out of our lives. He was saying that we can’t expect to be good at everything for the first go-around. What stops most of us is that nervousness, that feeling of “I’m going to fail miserably. I don’t know how to do this. And if I do try to do it, I’m probably gonna fail.” Now if you look back and you say to yourself, “Have I ever done anything that I’ve never done before?” Which the answer to that question is “Yes.” Everything single thing that you’ve ever done in your life, you’ve had to do it for the first time. Every decision that you make that somebody asks you to do something, like you getting invited to do one of these speaking engagements, like the first person that asked me to be their personal trainer, I said yes and then I figured it out later. I didn’t know what I was gonna do. You didn’t know what you were gonna do when you said yes to this conference and then you went out, you figured it out, and you sucked at it. And then you’re like, “I can be better at this.”

And then somebody else asks you. Yes. I’m going to say yes to this because now I have a chance to get better at it. And maybe sometimes you even had to seek out other conferences and actually start doing a little bit of leg work and saying, “I need more in order to get this.” It’s the same thing with running. The same thing with the triathlon. Same thing with the men’s physique competition. It’s like every step of the way, you are saying yes to things that you’ve never done before, giving yourself the opportunity to learn and to grow. I think that that is why we’re here. We’re not here to sit in front of the Xbox. We’re not here to sit and watch the best Netflix series. We’re not here to just sit and not impact anybody. We’re here to make changes in ourselves and in other people’s lives. That’s why we’re here.

‏‏I agree wholeheartedly.

Stare at that most uncomfortable thing in the face and just allow yourself to be open to the possibility that you can handle that pressure.

‏‏So, why shy away? First of all, never shy away. Stare at that most uncomfortable thing in the face and just allow yourself to be open to the possibility that you can handle that pressure because I think that that’s the thing. Look, I’m not that guy who is fearless in front of the face of new challenges. I am not that guy. There are moments where I cower away and I hide in my bedroom and I don’t come out of my house for a day or so because there’s so much pressure on me that I just feel completely overwhelmed. Those days exist for me. And then I realize, if I just say yes and accept it before even realizing the amount of work it’s gonna take, if I just say yes, I will figure it out. I’m smart enough. I’m smart enough to figure it out. I think most people don’t trust themselves enough to do so.

‏‏Yeah. I really like what you’re saying about feeling that pressure. That gets me back to another point we were talking about, the forcing function. I think one of the key components isn’t just having a goal, but it’s that social pressure. It’s the willingness to put yourself out there, being exposed, and having everybody watch you. If you are setting a goal for yourself and it’s a SMART goal—specific, measurable, and all that, time-based, etc. But the thing is there’s no social pressure, there’s no accountability outside of yourself, it’s a lot easier to just let that go. I had a very specific, tangible goal for when I joined the gym that I was gonna add 15 lbs of muscle over the course of the next 12 months, and that didn’t happen. I haven’t been going regularly to the gym. I’ve been so busy with travel and all that, and I just make up good excuses for myself why I haven’t been to gym. It’s all very logical, and it makes sense.

‏‏But it’s bullsh*t.

‏‏But it’s a complete lack of accountability.

‏‏Let me ask you this question. This is a really good realization for yourself. What if I told you I have an event, and I need you to speak at it? I need you to deliver these key points in your speech, and then I need you to have a program that you can sell at the end of this event that will take up maybe the last hour of the event. You’re gonna speak for two hours or the last three hours. If I gave you those guidelines and I said that to you, would you show up unprepared?

‏‏Hell no!

‏‏So you just gave yourself the guidelines of exactly what you needed to do, but here’s what you didn’t do, You didn’t ask yourself, “How do I do that?” You said, “I wanna lose this much weight in this much time.” First, you set the parameters of what you want to achieve, but then you never asked the question, “How do I do it?” Because if you did ask the question “How do you do it?” Then the answer to that question would be like, “I need to show up three days a week with a specific plan that’s going to get me from A to Z, and I need to iron out my nutrition. Maybe I need to hire somebody to do that because I don’t know what I’m doing. I can do all the research that I could do, but do I have the time to do that? Maybe I should outsource that. Workout program, can I come up with that myself? If I wanna really see those changes in 12 weeks, I should outsource and do that too.” You have to ask yourself those questions. But if you were relying on you to come up with all the answers, now, you’re an expert at all of the speaking stuff because that’s what you learned how to do. You sucked at it at first. Just like if you went into the gym and you tried to work out on your own for 12 weeks, I guarantee you’re not gonna see that success. You’re just not going to. You just walked in, and you expected to nail it on the first go-around.

‏‏I did have a great support system though ‘cause my fiancée was a certified personal trainer. She would come to the gym with me and would train me, but it’s different when you’re getting trained by your…

‏‏Loved one?

‏‏Yes. You can get away with a lot.

‏‏I’m glad that you said that, and I didn’t have to. I was like, “Come on, now. Really?!” Because if you were paying for it and you were paying somebody like me, who is like, “Why the hell aren’t you here? What the hell were you thinking? Why are you not here? You’re paying me! I’m going to charge you because this is your set time. Why are you wasting your time and your money for something that you’re not going to achieve?”

There’s a difference between somebody who’s holding you accountable and somebody who’s supporting you.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏You have your girlfriend or your fiancé or your wife, people in general, you have that person to help you out. What happens is the accountability is not there because they’re not willing to have that hard conversation with you. You want them there to help support you, but you don’t want them there to have to hold you accountable.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏There’s a difference between somebody who’s holding you accountable and somebody who’s supporting you.

‏‏Well, it’s also a difference of when you pay, you pay attention. I did hire a personal trainer on my fiancée’s recommendation, actually. She actually found the guy for me. He’s great, but he was less than great in that he didn’t show up on time a lot of times. He was unreliable. I ended up firing him as my personal trainer and I didn’t replace him. I was making amazing progress with him. I had better posture. I looked better. I’m starting to put on some muscle. He was just so unreliable; I’m like, “Look, this is the third time out of four where you’ve been late.” He’d no-show sometimes. I’m like, “I know you’ve got stuff going on in your life, but this is not workable for me.” We parted ways. People will say, “No, I’m gonna change.” You gotta make the change yourself because people are gonna do what they’re gonna do. The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. If they say, “No, no! I’m gonna be different now,” and all their past behavior says otherwise, well, you’re probably safe to assume that it’s gonna continue to be the past behavior repeating itself.

‏‏That’s why I love having conversations like this with people that are in the business world because so much of what I do now is trying to build an online business. Building an online business, there are steps involved. There are certain things that have to exist. You have to have social media marketing, social media presence. You have to have automated email sequencing. You have to be building up your connections. Like you and I right now, what we’re doing is we’re building up our connections, we’re networking in a sense. There are all these functions that exist in every business, whether it be sales or whether it be anything. It doesn’t matter. You are building your business with all these foundational pieces that have to exist. If I was to say that, “Well, I tried Facebook ads. I did it for a couple of weeks, and it really worked out. I was getting some real good traction. My ad account crashed. Then I tried to come on, and it was three or four times my Facebook account crashed. And I was just, ‘Screw it! Screw Facebook accounts! I’m done with that. I’m not gonna use that anymore.’”

If that was the case, what you would say as a business person? You’d be, “No, dude. You need to figure that out because Facebook is one of the best ways for you to get in front of your audience. That’s one of the best ways. If you wanna build up your email list, if you wanna push people onto your funnel, these are one of the most important things that you need to learn how to do. I know that it crashed a couple of times and maybe that was your mistake, maybe that was their mistake, but you need to solve this problem.” You apply that same logic to you and that personal trainer. You allowed yourself to not make your goals, your health and your business goals, they’re running side by side. They’re the same thing. All of the lessons learned are exactly the same. You’re willing to give up on your personal training, on your fitness goals faster than you’re willing to give up on your business because I guarantee you, looking at your website and all the things that you do, all the success that you’re having, and all of the enthusiasm that you seem to be generating throughout all of these stuff, you’re doing all that work.

‏‏Two podcasts a week.

‏‏Two different podcasts a week. You’re putting in a lot of work! You’re putting in a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of thought. Then one guy doesn’t show up three times, and you quit and then you quit for yourself, too.

‏‏Yeah, I quit on myself. That’s the thing. I recognize it now. At that time, I didn’t have that distinction. I hadn’t gone through this process that I went through of setting strong affirmations for myself. I have an affirmation that I’m a man who does what he says he’s gonna do. A man who does what he says he’s gonna do is one who does gain the 15 lbs of muscle and does not say, “Well, this is just not working with this guy, and I’m too busy to find a replacement. I don’t know where to look for a replacement trainer.” I was in a different place, mentally. I was also in a place where I was just addicted to sugar. Now, I’ve been for a year now, completely off of sugar, off of desserts. I have occasional fruit, but I don’t go crazy with fruit either. I’m pretty strict with my sugar intake, it’s very minimal. I’ve maybe had three desserts in the last six months. On special occasions like my birthday, I’ll have a dessert, but other than that, nope. That wouldn’t have happened in the version of me that just kinda copped out on this personal trainer situation.

You either choose to learn from your mistake or you choose to ignore it and just keep making the same mistake over and over again.

‏‏Exactly. These are all realizations that you’re having about yourself. What are they? They’re just life lessons. You either choose to learn from your mistake or you choose to ignore it and just keep making the same mistake over and over again.

‏‏They say that the universe sends you feathers to give you a little tap on the shoulder and say, “Hey, you need to make this shift.” If you ignore the feathers, then they turn into bricks. Those are really uncomfortable. If you keep ignoring the bricks, well then eventually comes the Mack Truck. It runs you over, and you really don’t want that. Sometimes it takes a few bricks before we get it. “Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. I need to make that shift.”

‏‏Yeah, totally. It’s interesting. It makes me think of, I was just talking about this earlier, my sister just contacted me recently. I host a podcast. It’s all about health and fitness. My wife is the co-host with me. My family has never listened to an episode, maybe one or two. I have four older sisters. My mom, my dad, my grandmother, they all live back on Long Island. Nobody listens to my show. The funny thing is that because so much of my life was spent around trying to figure out why I had a certain amount of unhealthy things that were happening that I couldn’t explain. Here’s what I mean. When I was a kid growing up, I was unbelievably gassy. I had digestive problems all the time. Never talked to my parents about it because my sisters had kind of the same issues.

Recently my sister, this is the Mack Truck moment for my sister, she ended up reading, I posted on Facebook a blog post that had come out in conjunction with one of my latest podcast episodes. And she’s like, “Rob, I’m unbelievably gassy, all the time.” She’s 40 years old. “All the time. I’ve always been. My daughter now, who’s 7 or 8, is also super gassy all the time. Is that from something I’m eating?” It’s like, “Yeah. I don’t understand. Why would you…?” She works in this office, and she feels really uncomfortable. She ignored this thing in her life for so long, and now that her daughter has the same problem, is having some of those same social issues that she probably was dealing with as a kid but didn’t want to face. Now, she works in this office, there’s all this stuff now facing her that she has to deal with this one thing.

It is amazing to me to touch base with her and realize how disconnected from our bodies we allow ourselves to become. It’s our bodies. It’s our relationships. It’s everything. We just become so unbelievably disconnected that we turn off, we go on autopilot, and we just accept that we are this way. We have no choice in the matter. We are built this way, whether or not it’s digestive issues, whether or not it’s how we deal with psychological issues, how we deal with somebody interacting with us in an aggressive way. We accept that that’s the way we are built. In reality, it’s just not true. In reality, we have nothing but choices. It’s how we react to every single situation that gives us the outcome. It’s amazing to me that all these kind of Mack Truck moments, I see them now quite a bit because of my Facebook group and stuff. They’re always popping up with people because of the conversations that we’re having on the show. I do totally agree with you that the universe throws you feathers, then eventually it hits you with a Mack Truck.

‏‏Let’s go back to unpacking a few of these concepts. I wanna go back to the disconnecting from our bodies because that’s gonna be something we can really dig into as well. Back to unpacking these concepts. When you pay, you pay attention. I think it’s so critically important. I had sent an employee of mine to a Tony Robbins event Unleash the Power Within. That event changed my life. That started me on my journey of personal transformation, doing the firewalk, walking on those 2000° hot coals at UPW shifted my whole mindset around what I was capable of, fear, and everything. My whole mindset shifted. It was right after that event that I started making all these major changes. You see the impact in the before and after photos. I was literally unrecognizable from the guy I was a year prior, just within a year of that event Unleash the Power Within. I sent this really valued employee of mine and I thought, “This is gonna be a great event for him.” You know what? I paid for it, and he blew off the last day of the four-day event, which was all about health and alkaline foods and water and quality of the meat that you’re eating. He didn’t get any of that. I’m like, “What?!”

‏‏Terrible.

‏‏“Seriously? You just didn’t show for the last day?” “Well, I had to…” He said some excuse. When you pay, you pay attention. When somebody gives you an information product or access to their membership site that they paid for, it just doesn’t register. Here’s an example. A really great internet marketer gave me free access to his online training. I’ve only watched about 30-40 minutes of the training because I didn’t pay for it. Even though I value him, I’ve had him on my other podcast, on Marketing Speak, and I know his content’s great, I’ve only gotten 30-40 minutes in. Now if I had paid for that, I’d probably have watched at least 10 times that.

‏‏I definitely think that there’s a lot of truth to that. Here’s the thing. He didn’t go to that Tony Robbins event because he wanted to. He went because you suggested it. The guy that gave you that information that you didn’t watch probably offered it to you, and you said yes because it’s free content. You know that there’s value there and eventually, you’ll get around to it. There are two sides to that coin, in my opinion. I definitely think if you went to Tony Robbins and you said, “Hey man, I really want to go to your event.” He goes, “Okay. Come right in. Don’t worry about it. It’s free for you.” You wouldn’t give a shit, even though you really wanted to go. But if you had gone there and he’s like, “Man, I’d give it you but I don’t feel like you’re really gonna give it your all if I don’t make it worth it for you.” There’s that aspect of it. People can pay for things, but they’re only gonna pay for it if they really need it. If that friend had offered you those same workshops, would you have bought it without having been… I’d bought friends’ books on Amazon because they’re having a book launch. I buy five of their books, but I’m not gonna read it. I’m only buying it because I’m doing them a favor and then I give those books away to other people.

You know that there’s value there and eventually you’ll get around to it. Share on X

‏‏Then they don’t read it either because they didn’t pay for it.

‏‏Exactly. Nobody reads it because I just gave it to them. Exactly. Giving books to friends – it can’t be, “Hey, read this.” It’s gotta be, “Man, I gotta tell you about this book I’m reading.” And then somebody’s like, “Really? That sounds really interesting.” You say, “Yeah, when I’m done with it, if you want, let me know.” He’s like, “Yes! Give me that book. I want it when you’re done.” Then usually if they really do want it, they’ll just go buy it on Amazon because they don’t wanna wait for your slow reading skills to get through that thing. They end up jumping right in themselves. There’s definitely, like I said, two sides to that coin. There’s something that happens in the personal trainer world where a lot of my clients are very wealthy. I think that this is interesting because it ties into what you were talking about earlier in terms of motivation. There’s two different types of people: people that have money that use it because they outsource everything in their lives. They’re thinking, “Because I bought this, that’s enough. That’s gonna translate into me being healthy.”

That’s when I have clients and I go; they don’t wanna do a hard workout. They just want me to show up there and help them, just basically be there with them while they’re doing a workout that they could do on their own because they don’t really want my opinion. They just want to show up at the gym, and they want somebody to be there with them. They’re not gonna see any results. Their body’s not gonna change. I have to accept that as a personal trainer sometimes, but it’s really unbelievably frustrating for somebody like me who is a goal set-minded person, who just wants to achieve things at all times. It feels like if I’m gonna put $100-150 down every hour that this guy shows up to my house, I’m going to work. I’m gonna work on that. But then I have other people who show up and they’re unbelievably interested in changing their lives. Those people I love working with. I think you probably do too. Those are the people that really inspire me because they just have this unquenchable appetite for information, and they’re just willing to just dive right in. I love those people.

‏‏Me too. I love when I get those guys as clients, but I also get some that are just not that – they sound good until you start working with them. Then it’s like, “Well…”

‏‏And they pay, and they still kind of expect that it’s just gonna happen without that much work because they think the money is doing the work instead of them. The only thing that you’re giving them is the information that they have to then take and apply for themselves. It’s the same thing all throughout business, all throughout nutrition, all throughout fitness. It’s like, “I tell you what to do. If you don’t do it, you don’t achieve your goals. If you do do it, and you have to do it with a certain amount of intensity.” I wrote an email out to get a guy on my podcast, and I said, “Hey man, I really like what you’re up to. Come on my show.” What?! You probably get this, too. I’ve had people invite me on their show, or invite themselves on my show, which is even funnier! They don’t know anything about me. They did no research. They’re not taking any real initiative, and they tried to somehow expect you to just cater to them.‏‏

Or even worse, they get their VA to do it for you, and the VA doesn’t even bother to do the research.

‏‏Exactly. When I start my process of trying to find people to be on my show, I start with my VA. She comes up with a list for me. She’s like, “Here’s 10 people that might be good for the show.” It takes a lot of research to find people for your show. I look, and I go, “Okay, this person’s good. This person’s good. This person’s good. This person’s good. Send me more about them, and let me know.” She does that. I’m like, “I have an email template. Create it for me.” I’m along the whole step of the way because we have to outsource some things because there’s a lot of work involved for most of this stuff. We have to outsource slightly, but if you’re not putting your personal touch in there, if it’s not coming directly from your personal email, if it’s coming from info@ or from theassistant@ then who’s gonna pay attention? It’s really important that if you are investing, don’t expect that your investment is enough. I wrote this blog post awhile ago. It’s buried somewhere deep, deep down in the barrels of my website, where I made this comparison to people at the gym versus people in the office.

The people that come into the office, the 9 to 5ers who punch the time clock, they walk in, they sit behind their desks at their cubicle, and they just enter data all day long. And then they go and check out at the end of the day. Then they go home, and they complain to their husband or their wife that their life stinks because nobody takes them serious at work. Those people that punch in and out, those are the people that go the gym and just literally walk on the treadmill everyday. They just go, they bring their magazine, they walk on the treadmill for maybe 2.5 miles per hour for 45 minutes to an hour, taking a nice little stroll on the thing. They listen to their headphones. Maybe they listen to a podcast. Maybe they listen to us right now. Maybe they’re reading US Weekly. Who knows what they’re doing for that 45 minutes to an hour, catching up on their Netflix shows? What they don’t see is they don’t see results. They don’t see all that time they’re putting in doesn’t translate into results, it just translates into wasted time. And then you work your way up the ladder. I’m just gonna jump right ahead, there’s the boss, the guy who runs the office.

As opposed to the person who comes in and just punches the clock, enters some data, and then punches the clock and leaves, there’s the boss. He shows up early. He knows what he’s gotta get done that day. He delegates all the stuff that needs to get done, and then at the end of the day all of the things that needed to get done are done. Then he leaves, whenever it’s done. He can leave early, maybe he has to leave late in the day. That’s the guy in the gym that shows up, and he has multiple different ways he can do it. He can show up with a personal trainer. He shows up early. He gets his warm-up done. He utilizes that hour with his personal trainer like a madman and then he leaves when that workout is done. Then there’s also the guy that shows up at gym. He has a book. He’s tallying every single thing that he’s working on; he’s keeping track of all his nutrition.

That’s another boss in the gym. And those guys, you can see them because you know why? They have their headphones on. They’re not listening or talking to anybody. They’re not looking at anybody. They’re just focusing on the job and the task at hand. There’s the difference. They’re so unbelievably focused and tuned into exactly what’s happening in front of them. That’s a boss. That’s a boss in life. They’re the ones that drive the train. Those are the people that drive everything forward. If you’re thinking you’re gonna be that guy who punches in and steps on the treadmill all day long and just reads US Weekly or Vanity Fair and thinks you’re gonna get the results that you’re gonna get, just because you’re in the same gym at the same time as that boss every single day, you’re not doing the same work.

‏‏That’s so true. That reminds me of a couple of things. First, in the book by Aaron Ross…

‏‏Let’s unpack that.

‏‏Let’s do that. There’s this thing in Aaron Ross’s book From Impossible to Inevitable called a clocker. And that’s exactly what you’re talking about. The person who is basically renting their job instead of taking ownership of it.

‏‏Yeah, that’s a great way of looking at it, too.

‏‏Read about clockers and how to deal with them in the Impossible to Inevitable book. Then the other thing that I was thinking about is I interviewed Cal Newport on this show, on Get Yourself Optimized, talking about Deep Work. That’s his new book, Deep Work. It’s a great book. Most people, especially knowledge workers, are just doing shallow work. They’re clocking in essentially. I don’t clock in. I don’t track my hours, but I found that so much of my time is in shallow work because we just get acclimated to doing that, just spending so much time in email. If it’s something that’s a low value, shallow activity, like answering people’s emails and you spend so much of your day in that, that’s the kind of job that’s you’re gonna be replaced by robots because robots are gonna be great at answering emails. You need to be working on deep work, not shallow work. It’s not just discipline. You need to be trained on how to do deep work. It’s not something that you just will your way through it. You have to know exactly what to do. You have to make some behavior changes, and you need to know what those behavior changes are and environmental changes and everything. You’re talking about focusing like a boss. I like that, Like a Boss, that funny music video.

‏‏I don’t know it.

‏‏You gotta watch that. It’s hilarious. It’s Lonely Island. Have you heard of these guys?

‏‏No, I haven’t.

‏‏Most hilarious viral video. Their music videos, they’re awesome! You’re gonna focus like a boss, but you can’t just power your way through it. You need some tools. You need to be trained. You need to know what to do and have practiced your way through it, so it’s not just a kind of, “Intellectually I understand what I need to do.”

‏‏Yeah. You need to create a strategy around achieving the goals that you’re setting out to achieve. If we just assume that we’re going to be able to achieve that goal without having a game plan, we are grossly mistaken.

‏‏But it’s more than just a game plan. It’s more than just having the goal, it’s the fact that you have trained, like you’re training for a marathon, you’re training to do deep work. Without that training, you’re gonna suck at deep work.

‏‏I think we’re saying the same thing. It’s that if I’m training for a marathon or I’m training for deep work or if I’m training for nutrition, whatever I’m training myself to do, there is deep work involved in order to make a real change. If we’re talking about a true change in our habits, in our lives, you have to do that work. Whether it’s therapy, whatever it is. You have to dig deep in there to figure out. I mean, everybody’s got their baggage, but you have to figure out what that baggage is. You have to unpack that baggage. There it is! Unpack it. Unpack all of that.

‏‏Let’s go back to this concept of disconnecting from our bodies because I’ve had that. You’re talking about your sister being in that situation. I was so disconnected from my body. I’m still not perfect. I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m so, so much better. Any tips or suggestions for our listeners on how to reconnect with your body, if you’re just used to feeding your mind but not connecting the mind and body, that vessel that we’re living in.

‏‏Just like anything else, you have to have a reason for doing so. Usually, when we make changes in our life, we’re doing so because we’ve come to the end of some kind of rope. The initiator of that is some kind of frustration. We never change anything. With this election that just went by, now nothing’s gonna change. We were all really pissed off before the election, the day of the election, maybe a day or two after the election, but, let’s be honest, eventually what’s gonna happen is that we’re gonna be like, “Well, I don’t have to worry about this for another four years so let me put that on the backburner. I’ll just start going back to my life.” You have to be up against something that is unbelievably painful. Now for my sister, it was gas, feeling uncomfortable, and noticing that her daughter was gonna go through a life of the same exact kind of embarrassment or uncomfortability that she was going through, therefore she sent me a message.

When something comes up in your life and it’s uncomfortable, that is the time that you’re going to make the change.

When something comes up in your life and it’s uncomfortable, that is the time that you’re going to make the change. Now you have an option here. Do you change it just enough until you start feeling comfortable again, or do you realize that if you’re doing just enough, what you’re doing is putting a band-aid on a bullet wound? If that’s your decision, then fine, more power to you! And that’s what most people do, when we’re talking about health and fitness. They do P90X 60 days, 90 days. They find these challenges that they can do that’d get them the six-pack within x amount of time. How do I drop 10 pounds? I need to do a cleanse. All of these different fast-forward get-me-healthy kind of gimmicks. This is really what’s unfortunate about the health and wellness world these days. What do you do? Well, first, you have this emotional and mental breakdown that you’re at the end of your rope and you don’t know what you’re gonna do. Then what you do is you start seeking out people that maybe realize that this isn’t just a two-month fix. If you’ve been messing up your life, if you’ve been really neglecting yourself for the last 20 years, this is why my wife and I, our specialty is men and women over 35 who used to be athletic, used to be in good shape, used to consider themselves healthy, and then after a 10, 15, 20 years of having a career, raising kids, and ignoring their own bodies, now they want to get back to that place that they were when they were younger, but the thing is that they’re 20 years older so they don’t have that young body anymore.

Their body responds to everything differently now. So now are you making the choice to do something that’s a quick fix or you’re making the choice to actually change your life, turn 180° which does not happen overnight. It takes years sometimes to make that real change, sometimes decades to make that real change, especially if you’ve gotten yourselves into the bowels of being unhealthy. Eventually, you start to shift your focus, and you move that ship facing back that 180°. That is going to be the process. I have this hanging on my wall right now, “The process is the result.” If we are only focused on the result, we miss the process. If we only focus on the end result. It was Aerosmith, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” It was interesting. I was a kid, I was in high school when I heard that in the song, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I etched it into the back of the remote control of my stereo. It said, “Life’s a journey, not a destination.” Now there are just so many lessons within that that if it doesn’t resonate with you, you’re missing something because what you’re doing is you’re focusing too much on the end result and not the process. That turning of the ship, 180°, that is your result, the fact that you were doing so.

Eventually, maybe that 180° turn doesn’t look the way you thought it was gonna look. What I mean by that is six-pack abs. You don’t have guns of steel. You’re not chiseled for marble. Maybe it’s not what it looks like, but maybe it looks like, “I have more energy than I’ve ever had in my life. I have more brainpower than I’ve ever had. I can run around with my kids now at this point. I can hike to the top of a mountain without having to stop. I have all these different things. I eat vegetables. My diet is so much better. My relationships are so much better because I don’t have this brain fog from just feeding myself Cheetos and terrible foods that don’t give me any kind of energy.” There are all these different transitions along the way, and all of that comes from focusing on the process and not focusing on the results.

‏‏Another way to put it, this is what Tony Robbins says that progress equals happiness.

‏‏That’s right.

‏‏If you are making progress, even if you haven’t hit that ultimate destination or goal that you’re after, if you’re making progress towards that, you’re gonna get the happiness chemicals released in your brain, the serotonin, dopamine, and all that is because you’re making progress.

‏‏That’s right. Here’s the pitfall here. Here’s the problem now with immediate gratification on social media, immediate gratification just everywhere in life. What happens is we’re on the process, we’re doing really well, we feel really good about ourselves, and then we see somebody else that has done it, trying to achieve the same thing that we’re achieving, they’re doing it faster, and they’re doing it better. And then all of a sudden, you start judging, “Well, maybe my process is wrong. Maybe I’m not doing my process right.” Then you get into this state of being jealous, and then you start trying to figure out whether or not the process that you were on, the path that you have chosen, is the right one. This is a pitfall that I don’t think most people realize exists where we get into this place of comparison and this place of not being able to give ourselves the self-love enough. You talked about happiness, but even the self-love, the empathy with ourselves. Not just sympathy, but the empathy with ourselves for making mistakes and for failing along the way.

The true connection to ourselves is having that empathy as if we had a 4-year-old child that just failed at riding their bicycle for the first time.

I think that is the true connection to ourselves is having that empathy as if we had a 4-year-old child that we were talking to that just failed at riding their bicycle for the first time. You’re gonna talk to that person the way you would normally talk to yourself if you failed? You wouldn’t do that. Why don’t we talk to ourselves that way? What we do is we compare ourselves to the kids that are zipping around on the bicycles, that are already doing jumps, ollies, and all these kinds of cool tricks, and we look at ourselves, “I can’t even ride. What’s the point?” Yes, you wanna make sure that you are happy with the process, but you also wanna make sure that along the way, when somebody shines juxtaposition next to you and you see them further along than you, just realize that you’re on your own path. You’re on your own journey.

‏‏Social media is really making this a problem for us because we are given this fake view of other people’s lives that we have to achieve that in order to be successful as well. We’re constantly comparing ourselves. Social media’s actually making us unhappy, and it’s making us narcissistic. It’s not good for us. I actually uninstalled the Facebook app from my phone. I don’t want any of the notifications. I don’t know what to call it. It’s like an addiction that when you are sitting in line or waiting in the cash register to get rung up, you just pick up your phone kind of mindlessly. You’re waiting for the Uber to pick you up, and you’re just on Facebook. Instead of just being present and letting your brain have a break, you just keep hitting yourself with these dopamine hits. I just think I need to go on a social media diet. Tim Ferriss calls it the low-information diet in The 4-hour Workweek because there’s too much information, and we just get overwhelmed. I think it’s a social media diet. I also have an app on my computer called Rescue Time, and I set it to block low-value, distracting websites, and applications for x number of hours through the day. I can’t get onto Youtube. I can’t get onto Facebook. I can’t get onto all the news sites and everything until later in the day. It trains me to wean myself from these distracting websites and also the sites that put me in that place of comparison.

‏‏Yeah, totally. Some people are much worse than others. This can be a real major player for a lot of people, and they don’t even realize it.

‏‏One other thought that I wanted to talk to you about before we close off this episode, I really loved what you said earlier about “Who’s coming with me?” I want us to leave our listeners with something that they can do, some tangible implementation of that, that they could put in their lives. Whether it’s in fitness or nutrition or in the workplace or with a problematic relationship. Like for me, I had this sugar challenge that I was in with my fiancée and my youngest daughter, who was 19 at that time, she’s 20 now. It just wasn’t working. I was cheating all the time on that sugar challenge. My daughter was failing spectacularly and was sending photos of her eating sundaes and stuff. And I was like, “You’re supposed to be on a sugar challenge. What the hell?” So my fiancée, after two weeks, was like, “Okay, I’m out. This is ridiculous. I’m gonna take care of myself. I’m gonna eat clean. You do whatever you want.” I had failed, I cheated on the sugar challenge three or four times in that two-week period. Clearly, I was not a man who did what I said I was gonna do.

That shifted though for me when Orion, who’s also a podcaster, she’s got the Stellar Life podcast. She said, “I’m out. You do whatever you want.” I went to my daughter, and I said, “Okay. Do you want to try another week? If you’re in, I’ll lead the charge here. And we’ll do this.” Then I became the leader instead of my fiancée. That shift for me made all the difference. Also the learning that I had from Kabbalah class about restriction versus suppression, understanding that I was suppressing my urges, which is painful and takes energy, it doesn’t feel good, versus restriction where you gain energy from that. It feels great. You feel empowered, in charge, and happy that you’re saying no to these things that are ultimately not good for you. Knowing that distinction of restriction versus suppression, being able to recognize that I was now entering restriction because I was the leader and I was gonna show my daughter what it was like to model the behavior that I wanted to see in her, made all the difference. It was like that, “Who’s coming with me,” but in a slightly different structure, but the same idea.

‏‏Yeah, you have to figure out if you’re that person because there are people that are followers that are willing to follow and excited to follow. It’s good if you know that you’re one of those because there’s quite a bit. There’s quite a bit of people that can really dig in when somebody places a challenge in from of them, and they’re like, “I’m gonna do this with you.” And then there are people like you and people like me I think too, because I’m not a joiner. I’m not that kind of guy. If somebody else lays a challenge out there, I just start picking it apart and figuring out why I don’t wanna do their challenge. It only really works for me if it comes from me. You asked what is something that people can do. I don’t know when you’re gonna post this podcast; I’ve been talking about for the last few weeks on my show I signed up for a 10k on December 4th here in Los Angeles, in Santa Monica. And I said, “If you guys wanna do this with me, you’re welcome to.” I know that everybody that’s listening to my show is not listening in Los Angeles, but what I’m saying is find something in your area that takes place that same weekend. And let’s start training for it together.

I’m creating a community that is all about being healthy, transitioning, making healthier choices, and making positive change.

Let’s start talking about our process. That has begun this thing, where people were taking initiative around where they are, and they’re signing up for it. Their job is to find other people to do it with them. Those people don’t necessarily have to join the Open Sky Fitness podcast group, they just have to find people that are around them that they’re creating a community. I’m on Facebook; I’m creating a community that is all about being healthy, transitioning, making healthier choices, and making positive change. What I’m doing is influencing them to possibly affect other people around them in a good way and challenge them. What I’m doing now is I signed up for the Santa Monica race, it’s a 5k, 10k, 15k, and half marathon that’s taking place on December 4th in Santa Monica. I’d challenge anybody to pick something, give yourself a week out or four weeks out or six weeks out, however long. If you think you can train for a 5k in six weeks or train for a 10k in six weeks, put it out there for yourself. If you think you can’t, then what’s the worst to happen? You fail? That’s the worst that possibly happens, you don’t finish the race. You wasted $35, but what happened? That whole entire process, just like we talked about earlier, how much did you get from that process? It’s not about the race day, it’s about that process. That race day is gonna be held over you. I would say that’s one great way to jump into some kind of routine and light a fire under your butt to get you really going.

‏‏You inspired me. I was about ready to sign up because I actually live in Santa Monica.

‏‏Do you really?

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏What’s the matter? December 4th? Did you get an excuse?

‏‏Oh, I’ve got a very good excuse.

‏‏What is it?

‏‏I’m gonna be getting married.

‏‏Congratulations!

‏‏December 8th.

‏‏That’s December 8th. That’s four days earlier. Come on, you got time.

‏‏Oh, I leave on December 3rd for Costa Rica. It’s a destination wedding.

‏‏You get a pass. If you were in town, you know there’s no way I was gonna let you off.

‏‏I was totally gonna do it, and then you told me the date. I’m like, “Dammit!”

‏‏You could sign up for something the following week. If this comes out before Thanksgiving, a lot of people are doing Turkey Trots; those are great little 3-mile runs before you dive into a bunch of pumpkin pie and turkey stuffing. There are so many great races, especially in southern California and all over the country, especially around the holiday times, that you can just use as your little driving force to help you kinda get the ball rolling. Yeah, I love doing these little races. I love collecting medals, spending $25, collecting a medal at the end. I feel like such a winner. It’s so cool. It’s like, “I did something that most people aren’t doing.” I give myself a good pat on the back, and I feel good about myself. I think everybody kind of gets that same rush, that same high, as long as you’re willing to just dive in and try it.

‏‏Yeah. It’s great to have that accomplishment, especially if you could break some sort of record or something, like when I was in high school, I broke a school record. It was the 4×800 meter relay. I was one of the relay team, and my fastest 800m was 2 minutes 6 seconds, which is pretty good. I was pretty athletic, but then I kinda let it go. I’m exactly in your target market, over 35, used to be more athletic, and in much better shape.

‏‏And then life took over.

‏‏Yeah, I got lazy, or I was not intentional in terms of my health. My food intake is much better than it had ever been. I’m off of sugar, and I don’t eat a ton of processed food. I eat all-organic, and I don’t eat red meat, any meat other than fish. I’m pretty good, but I still have a long ways to go.

‏‏It’s all about learning what works best for you, and that’s the only journey that you need to be on, nobody else’s. You figure out what works best for you, what gives you good energy levels, and then once you start getting back into a routine of working out, then you’ll start figuring out how your nutrition has to change within that scope because now you’re putting different stresses on the body. The body needs to adapt, so it’s gonna need different building blocks and different tools in order to rebuild. Then things might have to change in that respect. It’s all an experimental process. It’s actually really fun as long as you’re willing to look at your body like it is an experiment and not necessarily as this place that you don’t like looking at when you look in the mirror. Everybody’s got their body, and they choose to do what they will. And it’s funny; you made it almost sound like you chose not to be healthy. We’d never choose not to be healthy; we just choose to ignore that part of our life for x amount of time until it comes at us like a Mack Truck. It’s gonna come at you like a Mack Truck at some point. If you can feel the feathers, then it’s probably time to start making a change. If you could feel it like it’s just a smack in the face, if you hadn’t woken up yet, you got a problem. And if it’s hitting you like a Mack Truck, well, chances are it’s almost over. What’s the point at that point? You know a lot of those people because they’re like, “Ugh! I’m already done.” That’s unfortunate, but most people do ignore the signs the whole time.

‏‏Yeah, ignore your body and you’ll eventually pay the piper, for sure.

‏‏That’s right. It’s either you pay now or you pay later. If people say, “It’s so expensive to get organic food. It’s so expensive to eat grass-fed meat. It’s so expensive to eat high-quality foods.” Well, you either pay now or you pay later. It’s your choice. Hey listen, do you mind if I do a final pitch? Here’s the deal. My show, as I mentioned, men and women over 35, our whole purpose is to help people like yourself to kinda get back in the game and figure out what it is that they can do in order to have the most impact, like that 80-20 rule. Something that they could do 20% of the time that gives them 80% of the results. If you wanna dive in, one of the things you could do is you could start listening to the Open Sky Fitness podcast. Totally cool! We have about 115-120 episodes at this point. We cover all kinds of topics. I’ve done all kinds of interviews.

I think Mark Sisson was on your show, he was on my show as well. He’s an amazing guy. That guy is an encyclopedia of information; I really do love him. I actually went to his house for this promotional Primal Kitchen event, which was amazing. What we also do is we have episodes, where we don’t bring on guests and we just talk about specific topics. Like in this past week, we talked about gut health and digestion; and a lot of this stuff was what geared my sister to contact me about her having gas and not being comfortable and finally ready to deal with that. That’s a lot of our conversations. If you wanna listen to that, the Open Sky Fitness podcast, you could totally do that. Or if you wanna take a backseat and don’t wanna jump in all the way, even though I know you don’t have Facebook on your phone, we do have Open Sky Fitness Podcast Group on Facebook. We have a great small community of people that listen to the show. It’s not a Facebook page, it’s a closed group, so you’d have to ask to join. We just want really cool people, who are on the journey, who want information, who are willing to share their story, who are willing to help and cheer other people on that are on their journey. That’s the group that we’re creating. I chime in as much as possible to help people, but it’s becoming such a great thing. Even during our conversation, different posts are coming up that people are sharing their stories and sharing what they’re doing and asking questions and other people are answering questions. There’s lots of interaction there. If you wanna be a part of that, it’s called the Open Sky Fitness Podcast Group on Facebook.

‏‏Awesome! Yeah, I’m gonna join.

‏‏Definitely join the group. And introduce yourself. Say, “Hey guys! My name is Stephan. I live in Santa Monica. I have this podcast, and Rob and I were talking about this recently. I just think that we can really help each other. Here’s what’s going on with me and what I’m struggling with.” And I guarantee you, people will be like, “Right on, brother! I feel you. I am struggling with the same things. Here’s how I dealt with it.” And then the conversation starts. It’s pretty cool.

‏‏Yeah, I’m definitely gonna get a personal trainer. It may or not happen until I’ve gotten the wedding out of the way, but I’m gonna get a personal trainer.

‏‏Do it! Yeah.

‏‏I’m gonna get fit, really fit – add those 15 lbs of muscle that I’ve been talking about adding on.

‏‏Do not edit this part out! I heard you. You said you’re gonna do it. That means you’re putting it out there.

‏‏Yes, and I’m a man who does what he says he’s gonna do.

‏‏That’s right. You have integrity. Love it.

‏‏Alright, thank you, Rob.

‏‏Thank you! Thanks so much. I really appreciate you having me on the show.

‏‏Well, it’s been a pleasure. So, listeners, I’m going to create a checklist; I’m going to delegate that. Go ahead and take something out of this, and don’t just learn it but apply it because the magic’s in the application. Alright, guys, we’ll catch you on the next episode. This is your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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