What Jason Ackerman Learned From 10,000 Hours of Coaching

Jason Ackerman-BLOG
 

Chris: 00:02 – Welcome to Two-Brain Radio. I’m your host, Chris Cooper, here every week with the best of the fitness industry. Got a sec? We would love to hear from you. I write emails to my mailing list every day, and it’s a highlight when somebody takes the time to respond. If you’ve got feedback on my show or a guest you’d like to hear on Two-Brain radio, email podcast@twobrainbusiness.com and don’t forget to subscribe to Two-Brain Radio wherever you get your podcasts. Jason Ackerman has been a coach for a long time. He’s also coached tens of thousands of coaches around the world on the CrossFit seminar staff, and now he has a brand new book called “The Best Hour of Their Day.” In this episode, Jay and I are going to talk about what really matters when you’re coaching people. Is it technique? Is it smiles? Is it cheerleading? Is it being a technician? And Jay’s going to give you some amazing actionable directive steps for making the classes that you run at your gym the best hour of your client’s day. I think you’re going to really enjoy this podcast. This man is such a deep well of knowledge that we can talk on different topics and we have in other episodes, too. Today, Jay Ackerman with “Best Hour of Their Day.”

Chris: 01:10 – Jason Ackerman, welcome back to Two-Brain Radio.

Jason: 01:15 – Thank you very much for having me. I always appreciate you having me on the show.

Chris: 01:20 – Yeah man, you’ve got so much knowledge that we’ve had you on for a couple of different topics now. And so your bio has really been featured here before in the how to sell your gym episode especially. I thought that maybe we could spend a few minutes just catching up, like, you know, now that you’ve sold your gyms, what’s keeping you in the fitness world?

Jason: 01:40 – That’s a great question. I think ultimately what it comes down to is I love it. I was talking to somebody last night about how they weren’t working out enough, you know, they have let life get in their way. Work gets in their way and often the first thing for them that goes is training and eating right. And I was telling him how I’m the exact opposite. I wouldn’t take a job if I felt as if I couldn’t work out when I wanted to or I wouldn’t commit to something if I felt like I wouldn’t have the opportunity to train and eat right. So I think it’s that foundation of I love doing it so it’s more fun for me to help others.

Chris: 02:22 – That’s really interesting. And it reminds me of a James Clears’ book “Atomic Habits,” where he’s talking about, you know, instead of setting goals, setting an idea of the person that you want to become and then back filling that with what do I need to get there. That’s really interesting. Tell me about the nutrition business. So after you sold your gyms, you know, you were still traveling for CrossFit L1s and you had this online nutrition business. Tell us about that.

Jason: 02:48 – So “Own Your Eating” is still alive. It’s still doing well. We still get a few clients. We have a certificate course that’s accredited by CrossFit. You know, if you have your Level three or eventually take your Level four, you can use us for credits. That’s still going well. And I enjoy it. I enjoy helping people with nutrition. As anyone listening knows, it’s a challenging and daunting task because nutrition is rarely, hey, eat meat, vegetables, nuts, seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar, right? It’s, hey, how messed up did your parents make you? And you know, what type of obstacles do we have to overcome? Which I love and I’ve really loved diving into the psyche and all of that, but it’s tough. So, you know, I’m still a big part of it. My wife, Roz, runs the company, but you know, like I said, it’s still alive. It’s still there. But I wanted to venture out and get back into what I enjoy even more, which is the coaching of coaches.

Chris: 03:50 – Yeah. And you’ve been doing that for a long time. Like how many people, if you counted up all the seminars that you’ve done, how many people, coaches, have you coached in person now, Jay?

Jason: 04:00 – Well, you know at the last trainers summit for CrossFit this past October, they were—every summit Dave Castro kind of has this kind of like funny running gag throughout the two days. It’s in the middle of week and this year it was all about how many seminars, you know, who’s worked a hundred, who’s worked 200 and then we got patches reflecting how many seminars we worked. And as they were going through it I was like, I’ll probably be around a hundred that’s pretty cool that I’ve worked a hundred and he got through all the one hundreds and I was like, oh man, I guess I didn’t work a hundred seminars. And then he gets to the two hundreds and I had worked 204 at the time. Now a little bit more than that. So you know, I was in my mind immediately, I was like, that’s a lot of weekends, you know, that’s a lot of time on the road.

Jason: 04:48 – But then I started thinking about the question you just asked and I’m like, hey, 50 people take 200 seminars. That’s 10,000 people. Not to mention people at boxes, people that have taken other seminars I’ve been a part of, you know, before the Level 1 or doing my own nutrition seminars. So it’s pretty cool. You know, I’ve had, you know, speaking of “Atomic Habits,” I recently read that book and other books that talk about those 10,000 hours that you need to put in. And in my mind I was like, man, here I am, 41 years old and I’ve not really put those 10,000 hours into anything. Cause I think we often think about it as like guitar or you know, jujitsu. And I’ve put a lot of hours into those types of things but not the 10,000 and then I realized I have, and it was in coaching.

Chris: 05:37 – So as someone who has put their 10,000 hours into coaching coaches, and congratulations by the way, it’s really interesting to look at your new book called “The Best Hour of Their Day” and ask yourself, you know what, what are the top lessons that this guy thinks that coaches need? So why don’t we start there? Why or what lessons I guess, do coaches need more than anything else?

Jason: 06:05 – I think, you know, I’ve said this before, it’s like you can teach anyone how to coach an air squat. It’s a challenge to teach people how not to be an asshole. Right? Or you know, to be the person that people want to be around. And I think that’s the biggest lesson. You know, when it comes to the book, “The Best Hour of Their Day,” it’s not a, you know, step-by-step guide on how to be a good business owner. If you want to do that, read “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief” by Chris Cooper. But you know, those are the types of books that help your business grow. This is more so, you know, the intangible things. A lot of it’s honestly mostly mistakes I’ve made. And most of those mistakes were just not being a good person that other people want to be around. Not stopping and listening to other people’s perspective, not, you know, being empathetic. And I think that’s a struggle as a coach, you have to really put what you want aside for that hour to make it the best hour of their day. The book isn’t called best hour of your day, you know, it’s best hour of their day for that reason.

Chris: 07:09 – I think that’s amazing. And we’re going to dig deeper into that very soon here. But you know, two years ago a lot of coaches were talking about developing the soft skills. To me, I think what they’re referring to as the soft skills are the real skills of coaching. So what’s more important Jay? Is it the ability to teach or spot problems in the air squat or is it the ability to empathize?

Jason: 07:34 – I think at the end of the day you need both of course, right? You, you know, Mother Teresa or some other Saint or you know, whatever out there is probably a shitty CrossFit coach. Right. You know, but she’s probably really nice and you probably really want to be around her for an hour, but your squat’s not going to go up too much. So I think you probably need both. But I think first and foremost you need to develop those soft skills because without them you could have the best eye in the world. But if people just don’t like your communication skills, if people don’t like being around you, it doesn’t matter. And I think any one listening can probably think of a coach they’ve had in the past, be it, you know, high school, college or a coach in the box they go to that they avoid their classes, you know, off on a tangent. But if you’re a box owner and your members want to see who’s on the schedule, that might be a problem. Right? And I don’t think it’s right or wrong. I don’t think you should go and remove everyone’s names, but you should want your members to not care because they love everybody. And if there’s someone they don’t love, and it could be for other reasons, but maybe it’s because they don’t like their soft skills.

Chris: 08:46 – You know I had to learn that the hard way myself, Jay, I thought that being a great coach was being like the expert. And when I had to replace myself in my 6:00 AM class, I did it with a girl who was very bright and bubbly but young and uneducated, you know, she was a college student, and attendance went up in that class and that blew my mind. So I know that you’ve learned a thousand little lessons like this along the way. What made you want to put those lessons into a book?

Jason: 09:14 – I think it was like many things in my CrossFit journey, accidental. I think that, you know, you were probably a big influence on it. We’ve talked a lot in the past and I’ve had you on our podcast and I’ve heard you talking just about writing every day. I mean you get up at what, 4:00 AM in Canada, so it’s like negative a hundred degrees and you somehow manage to get up and make it to the office to write. And other people like Seth Godin and Tim Ferriss who talk about, you know, just putting 200 words on paper type of thing and just trying to create those habits like we discussed. I started just writing for me for maybe a blog one day and then as I started doing it I said, wow, these are kind of cool stories and I would maybe post part of them on an Instagram post and people would respond to them and I just started writing more and more until eventually, I mean I limited it to 30, but I think at the end I had maybe 50 stories in there and I kind of dwindled it down to the best 30 or combined some, but it just came about out of my desire to create a new habit, really, and then start something new and challenge myself.

Chris: 10:24 – Well I think, you know what makes the book so great is all the stories in there, you know, you’re not just speaking from theory, you’re not lecturing at a university. This is all like in-the-trenches knowledge, hard-won battles. What are the biggest questions that you’re trying to answer in the book? Or the biggest opinions that you’re trying to change?

Jason: 10:46 – I think by reading the book, hopefully box owners, coaches or even members can just take from it, you know, again, it’s a lot of just listening to other people and then also being true to yourself. There’s a few chapters in there dedicated to my journey in the sense that as box owners, and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of—you probably have experienced but we get into this world because we love fitness and we love helping people and then oftentimes that overrides or takes priority over our own health. You know? And there’s a few times in my journey where I’ve completely disregarded my own training and like we talked about earlier, that’s the foundation. That’s what keeps me happy. If you look at my values, it’s health and then happiness. Because without health I’m not happy. So here I am not focusing on my values and then I’m expected to help other people and it wasn’t happening.

Jason: 11:41 – I’m a miserable person to be around when I don’t eat right or when I don’t exercise. And I came home, it was two days ago, and my wife and I, you know, typical marital arguments, like nothing big, but I left the house and I’m like, I’m going to work out. And I came back maybe an hour later and I was like, just pleasant to be around. She’s like, did you do drugs while you were out? And I was like, I guess I kind of did, like I improved something in my brain and you know, dopamine and endorphins are running and we have this little app on our phone that we use to kind of keep points of what we’ve done. Right? And some of them are chores, but some of them are, hey, we helped each other out and she added to it exercise because she realized how important it was for our relationship for me to exercise.

Chris: 12:33 – That’s really, really interesting. And so I think a lot of the clients at our gyms probably don’t know that about themselves but probably could if we can keep them coming back often enough to figure that out. So what are the key components of making their hour at your gym the best hour of their day, Jay?

Jason: 12:52 – So let’s look at tangible things that you can go in and change right away. I would say for one, something that gets overlooked a lot is just be punctual and run your class on time. Right, back in maybe 2008 I had a coach, like you, was the first coach that I hired. Great guy. There’s a chapter in the book about him. I changed some names so I don’t remember. I think I left his name cause he’s got thick skin. His name’s Matt and he would always run class like 15 or 20 minutes long. And I said, Matt, what do you—first of all now there’s two classes overlapping. And he’s like, who cares? We’re giving these guys more. And I said well what if they have somewhere to go? You know. And so start on time and end on time, whether it’s, you know, if someone’s showing up at 5 a.m. at your gym, they’re punctual, they have somewhere to be. Start on time and end at six.

Jason: 13:44 – And if someone’s showing up at 5:00 PM, they’ve had a long day and they want to get home to their family or to do whatever they do, end on time. So little things like that. Being organized and making sure that the class isn’t about you. And what I mean by that is, you know, we talk a lot about the whiteboard brief and how that’s really the foundation of a good class. But too many people at the whiteboard just talk and talk too long. And I tell people, if you’re standing at that whiteboard for more than five minutes, this is now about you. This has nothing to do with your class. So make sure that everything you’re doing is about the members, about your community and not about you as a coach. And it starts with that organization. Have a timeline and run on time.

Chris: 14:36 – What about the personal habits of the coaches, you know, between classes?

Jason: 14:43 – Yeah, I think, you know, as a box owner, you need to make sure the people that are coaching your classes actually care about members. And it should be obvious. If you’re having to tell your coaches to stick around for 15 minutes or to get here early, they probably don’t care enough. Too many coaches or you know, whether it’s just punching in or doing it for their free membership, you know, however your box is organized, but it needs to really be about giving back to the community. As you know, and anyone listening knows, I mean there’s 15,000 affiliates and they’re all basically the same, right? We all do functional fitness, you know, based on price and based on location that has an impact on your membership. But really, at the end of the day, it’s your culture and your community that separates you from the other boxes.

Jason: 15:30 – And that comes down to what’s going on in between classes. My good friend Chuck Carswell, not to name drop, but Chuck’s a good buddy of mine. He’s in the book and one thing he said years and years ago, and he says it all the time is ask one more question and I think that’s important to take away at the box level. And you don’t need to be, you know, insane about it, you know, but that just means, hey, when you’re talking to one of your members, find out one more thing about them. Find out what makes them tick. And it really—I love that when you like talk to a member and their eyes light up because most people go through their day and they don’t ever get to talk about things that they love and reminisce about their high-school football days.

Jason: 16:19 – I mean, if we ask Chris Cooper about his, you know, hockey accomplishments his face would light up—

Chris: 16:23 – That’d be a short list.

Jason: 16:23 – I scored four goals in one game and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, it’s fun. Too often it’s all about like we want to talk, but it’s nice to just to listen. I was in Kailua, CrossFit Kailua in Hawaii, and I started talking to the owner of the box and I kept asking one more question to the point that my wife was like, we have to go, like we have to leave. But this guy was telling me just these family stories and he’s like, wow, I haven’t even thought about these in years. And it was just fun to see that and that has to be something you enjoy. If you don’t enjoy that, you might not be a good coach.

Chris: 17:08 – Hey guys, Chris Cooper here. I wrote the bestselling fitness business book of all time, but I often think about taking it off the shelves. Here’s why. Business evolves quickly and while the ideas in my book “Two-Brain Business” still have value, my program has evolved. That’s where my most recent book comes in. In “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief” I break the entrepreneur’s journey into stages because the things that work in the first stage don’t work in the second and vice versa. Everything I put in that book is based on thousands of hours on the phone with gym owners and tens of thousands of dollars in research. I know what works, when it works and why it works. I’m not just going to try and inspire you with pie-in-the-sky philosophy and memes about grinding and hustling. I’m going to give you step-by-step instructions based on what the best gyms in the world are doing to succeed. You can spin your tires like I did 10 years ago as a struggling gym owner or you can avoid my mistakes by reading a book based on a decade of knowledge. Check out “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief” on Amazon. I wrote it to help people like you. And now, back to Two-Brain Radio.

Chris: 18:12 – Ask one more question is great advice. I hope everybody here starts practicing that today. What’s one thing that you’ve learned from being around CrossFit HQ and being on seminar staff that you would tell a coach in a gym to do?

Jason: 18:31 – Continue to learn. I think too many people show up these days at the Level ones and that’s kind of the end for a lot of them. And then I also work on Level 2s and they come back and they’re terrible, like terrible coaches. You know what I’m saying, you know, if you’re listening and you have your Level 2, you know what I’m talking about. You got feedback. And I tell them like, same thing we’ve kind of discussed, like they look at me and or the other coaches on staff. Like you guys are so good. I’m like, this is what we do and we’ve put in our time. There’s not many things you can do in life not having either a mentor or not having this desire to improve and actually get better at it. Right? So you need to have this desire to get better.

Jason: 19:20 – You need to seek out better coaches. And from box owners, we often get frustrated that our coaches aren’t developing, but we’re not doing anything to foster that. And one of my biggest pet peeves is, I don’t know which groups you’re involved in online, in Facebook there’s a ton of like affiliate owner groups and I know you’re in a couple of, but I see that question all the time. Level one or Level two, which should I, you know, do? You see that question pop up. And it’s so frustrating to me because if you’re a coach, that should not be a question. I don’t understand that. Like why would you not want to get better?

Chris: 20:03 – Yeah. The answer should just be yes.

Jason: 20:07 – And I see other people chiming in. I avoid it because I don’t have the time to get sucked down that rabbit hole. One of the guys on staff, his name’s Dan Hollingsworth, I always see him commenting on it and I’m like, Dan, why do you do that? And it’s because he cares really at the end of the day. But you know, and right now, especially in the CrossFit world, they’re the same price. Back in the day, it was a little cheaper to go back and get your level one. But now I believe it’s $1,000 either way. So go on and get it. I have my Level 4 credential and we have to do CEUs for that and my mine’s about to expire in July so I need to submit it. And I was like, I went in and I said, I hope I have enough CEUs. You need 50, and I had like 102 and I still haven’t even gotten—some of the credits are still, you know, not posted yet. So it’s like clearly even—it never ends. It never ends and you shouldn’t want it to.

Chris: 21:04 – No, I mean I haven’t taken the level two but I’ve taken the Level one five times and learned something new each time.

Jason: 21:11 – What’s stopping you from taking the Level 2?

Chris: 21:12 – Nothing. Just still learning from the Level 1.

Jason: 21:16 – Yeah, it’s true. And that’s true. Like you can always go back, the level one’s always changing. The level two just changed. So you know, this year it’s brand new. The test is different. There’s nutrition portion to it. So there’s some great stuff happening. But yeah, we should always be—and I don’t want to harp on just it’s all about certificates and credentials, but that might mean as coach at a local box, just go to another box, seek out someone that’s been doing it longer or you know, there’s over 200 people on the CrossFit staff. You probably don’t live more than an hour or two from one of them. Go there once a month and learn from them. It’s the same thing I do in other aspects and I continue to do it at seminars every weekend.

Chris: 22:03 – OK. So these are like some of the most simple directives that you can do. What’s something that you’d like to stop that you see in coaches all the time? Something that kind of makes you smack your head and go, God, why do people still do that?

Jason: 22:15 – So something very small, and again, this is just, I’m not the only answer. This isn’t right or wrong. When you’re teaching a new movement, avoiding saying, don’t do this. Don’t do that. So in other words, all right guys, we’re going to do the air squat. Here’s what I want. I want you to keep your chest up. What I don’t want you to do is round your back or overextend. I want you to get below parallel. What I don’t want you to do is stop before your hip crease is—only coach the things that you want to see. All those other things are going to be opportunities to coach. But at the same time, I think we forget, hey, this might be someone’s first time ever air squatting and if I tell them don’t do X, Y, or Z, they may forget which one they should do and which one they shouldn’t do.

Jason: 23:04 – So the analogy I use, because years and years ago, I was lucky enough to train with some high-level MMA guys and Randy Couture was talking, a former UFC champion and he preached it. And that’s kind of where I took it from. But I was like, he was like, I hate the expression, don’t get taken down. So you’re in the middle of a fight, imagine, and your coach yells, don’t get taken down. Next thing you know, you get taken down, you’re on your back and you’re already upset. And I’m like, I’m in this bad position, someone’s punching me. I really shouldn’t be here. But then the second thing that’s going through your mind is, and I’ve disappointed my coach cause he told me not to do this. So it’s the same principle with CrossFit, you know, don’t do that. And now you’re like, man, I’m sorry. Do I do anything right? You know, it’s like when your wife tells you not to do something, like, do you like me at all? Like why are you here? All you do is tell me what I don’t do right. Why are we still together?

Chris: 24:01 – That’s so great man. You know, most of the debates that I get sucked into, and I honestly, I’ve tried to get out of most Facebook groups because I just don’t have time for the debates anymore. But, most of the ones that I get sucked into revolve around does a coach have to be full time to be a good, helpful, legitimate coach. And so in my mind there’s a difference between a job, a vocation and a coaching practice. Do you think there is a difference? Does somebody have to be a full-time coach to be a great coach? You know, where are the shades of gray there?

Jason: 24:39 – I don’t think you have to be full time, but I also think it helps. It’s just again, it’s time under tension. You know, if you coach two classes a week, you’re going to coach like you coach two classes a week, and it’s like anything else you do in life, you know, whatever your hobby is, if you put more time into it, you’re going to be better at it. And coaching is a skill that you can develop but also a skill that you can lose. And the more time you’re there you’re just going to also have the experience of seeing other people, coaching different types of athletes. So certainly a full-time coach is ideal. And then obviously what you’re doing out in the world is what’s helping people achieve that. Back in 2007 and 2008, it was very hard to do that. But now, I mean, I think maybe, I don’t know, you probably have a better knowledge of this, but 50% of boxes maybe have full-time staff?

Chris: 25:35 – Yeah, it’d be hard to pinpoint that statistic for sure. But more importantly than anything else, like when you and I found CrossFit, even the box owners weren’t full time. Now it’s an actual, it’s not just a vocation anymore. You can be an owner operator and make this your career. And a lot of careers are actually being built on those platforms too, which is fantastic. So this is the question I ask all professional coaches, Jay, what’s your limit? You know, how many hours of coaching, how many clients can you see in a day before you can’t put out at the Jason Ackerman level anymore?

Jason: 26:12 – Well, I’ve not been in that situation in a while, but I would say if I went back and opened a box or you know, really wanted to be full time somewhere again, which isn’t, you know, out of the realm of my, you know, thoughts, probably four to five classes a day, five would be like the upper limit. Like you said, that fifth class is diminishing and it would also not be in a row. So you know, I coach the 7:00 AM and the noon and then back to back in the afternoon. But I mean if you do more than that, it’s just, you know, coaching is not an eight hour and obviously that’s part of the challenge out there. But coaching is not an eight-hour-a-day job. You can’t expect that. And like you said, that would include 15 minutes before, 15 minutes after. So four hours of coaching is really six hours on the floor and six hours of dealing with and interacting with people. And it’s hard. It’s hard to do more than that. Absolutely.

Chris: 27:17 – OK. Jay. So to wrap up, what I’d love to have you do is go back to one of the first comments you made, which is it’s the best hour of their day, not the best hour of your day. What does that mean and what does it look like in practice?

Jason: 27:28 – I think I really hit my stride with this actually after I’d sold the boxes. I was coaching in Florida when I was living there and it was a box called North Naples CrossFit, great community. And I think that’s really where it hit home with me, what that looks like. And it’s a lot of the little things we discussed, it’s show up on time. I mean, I coached the 3:30 twice a week, but I was always there by 3, 3:15 at the latest. And that means, you know, whether it’s lights on, the music’s on. I’m kind of looking around. I have my timeline either written out or in the app, whatever the programming they were using at the time and actually doing some laying out of the class because it needs to be organized.You know, the people are there and they deserve to be coached by a professional. And it’s very obvious when you’re not prepared. And that might look like, I can tell if you’re looking at the whiteboard and seeing the workout for the first time or not, immediately. But you know, and also knowing I had the luxury of coaching the same people very often. So knowing, OK, you know, today is snatching and Theresa’s going to be here and I know kind of her limit and Eric’s going to be here and I want to push him to do this. So really thinking about that ahead of time and giving everyone that, making sure they know, hey, I’ve thought about you and I’m aware of it and I’m going to look at your form going around.

Jason: 28:53 – I would do that all the time. Hey, let me see three reps to make sure that’s a good weight for you. Or let me, you know, let’s check this out. And making sure they felt like they were actually cared for and almost like they were the only one in the class. I mean, that’s where CrossFit started from with Coach Glassman, right? One on one to two on one to four and eventually you know or more. But making sure they still feel that. And then all those other little things, spending five minutes or less at the whiteboard, making sure the general and specific warm-ups make sense. You know, setting goals for them. And I think too often it’s like, hey, here’s the workout. It’s Fran, set your weight up, versus hey Coop, I want you to be sub six today. And you know, Theresa wants you to try to go unbroken on your pull-ups.

Jason: 29:40 – You’re giving little, dangling those carrots for them to actually feel like they left accomplished, because CrossFit’s terrible at the end of the day, right? We all know how terrible it is. It hurts. Oftentimes you leave and you feel discouraged. But if I can leave you with a win, then all of a sudden you want to come back again. And if you’re the coach that’s always leaving people with the win, they accidentally enjoy being around you, right? It’s like dating someone. Like, if you just make them feel good over and over again, you know, in passing ultimately they’re like, I want to be around that person, and that’s who you want to be as a coach.

Chris: 30:20 – And I think actually Jay that you just pointed out, the missing link in going from one on one to two on one et cetera, up to group is that the group members still have to feel like they’re being coached individually. And I think that a lot of gym owners in my experience miss that. And is that something that you’re seeing in coaches too?

Jason: 30:39 – Yeah. Well, and it’s hard. I mean, so many boxes. I mean, we talk at the level twos and I’ll often ask like, how many do you coach? And then there’ll be people with significantly less experience than me coaching 20 to 30 people in a class. You know, and having done that myself, I know I’m not as effective as a coach. And you know, this is a business ultimately and you need to make money. But part of that is the issue. How do we figure out how to make that happen in these larger classes? Is it limit class size? Is it bringing on more secondary coaches? And there are ways to kind of mitigate that problem. But really at the end of the day, even if you are that coach coaching 30, find one win that you can give somebody, just one little thing and it doesn’t have to be always a PR, you know.

Jason: 31:30 – Again, Fran, the ultimate example is, hey, today your only goal is to go unbroken on those 15 thrusters. Like that’s a huge win. I remember the first time I did that in Fran, you know when I’m broken for the first—I don’t care if it takes you a minute longer than your previous time, but I need you to do that. And I love it at the level ones, I always tell people at level one, so the workout, you know, not a complete spoiler, but it’s thrusters and burpees and around the second round people pick up the bar and they, I can see it in their eyes. They’re like, what is happening? Like, cause they go crazy on round one and then immediately they’re like, I cannot do that again on round two. And I’ll find that person that I can tell doesn’t want to do it but can do it. And I get in their face and I make sure they hold onto that bar and go unbroken. And then afterwards they’re always so grateful and thankful. Like I’ve never pushed myself like that, because now it’s eye opening. Now it’s you can do that all the time without me. It helps when someone’s in your face yelling, but you don’t need me there. So if I can show that to, you know, Theresa or Eric at the box, now when they come to someone else’s class, they still know what they can do. And that’s, you know, again, now it’s making it the best hour of their day even when you’re not there.

Chris: 32:47 – Well, being put on a podium would definitely be the best hour of my day. And I’m sure that most people don’t even get to hear praise anywhere else in their life like I do. So, I think this is an amazing book. It’s probably more important to read this book than to take your Level 2. Would you agree with that Jay? Just kidding. I’m just kidding. But critical. I mean, you know, people go to the seminars and they learn cues and tactics and stuff, but you know what most people call the soft skills I think really are the real skills and Jay’s a living testament to success in coaching. He’s coached probably 10,000 other coaches by now easily and this is really the message that I think all coaches should hear. So Jay, thanks a lot for writing this book, man, and thanks for sharing some of the highlights with us.

Jason: 33:35 – Well thanks for having me again Coop and thanks for all you’ve done for the community as well. I would not have had the opportunity to write this without you, so I appreciate it.

Chris: 33:43 – Thanks man. Take care.

Andrew: 33:49 – Thanks for listening to Two-Brain Radio. Be sure to subscribe for more great episodes, and if you’d like to learn how a mentor can help you build a successful business, book a free call at twobrainbusiness.com. Chris Cooper’s team will show you exactly how you can add $5,000 a month in revenue and move closer to your Perfect Day. Visit TwoBrainbusiness.com today.

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