You Good? - Dec 31, 2021

Want to know how to beat Michael Jordan?

Don’t play basketball.

Choose your own game.

Our industry is saturated. It’s full of Michael Jordan’s––behemoth companies with massive budgets.

And you can beat them.

In order to do that, you’ve got to distinguish the game you’re playing and your desired outcome. If you don’t, you’re liable to take the wrong cues. And you’ll lose.

‘Cause Michael Jordan’s really, really good at basketball but then he tried to play baseball and, like, he wasn’t bad. But, let’s be honest, he wasn’t all that good.

The guilt from not doing it all can be overwhelming.

Everyday there seems to be a new hot trend we have to jump on or we’ll miss out.

But not everybody wakes up like Tony Robbins.

We can’t do it all.

But being selective isn’t enough.

We’ve got to be confident in how we’re being selective. If we’re not, we’ll always feel like we should be doing something else.

Guilt and the comparison trap soon follow.

But if we take the time to figure out our own game, we can play it. And when that happens, you start kicking ass.

Most advice out there is bad advice (for you)

K, let me take this back a step.

Honestly, most advice you see out there is good.

Very little of it is objectively bad.

Most of it, however, is bad for you.

Learning what advice to focus on and what to ignore is integral to your success.

You really only have to be doing one thing––but it needs to be the right thing––and you need to execute on it well.

If you choose properly, that one thing will serve you better than anything else.

I’ve got a few examples below, but first, here’s why you (probably) shouldn’t follow my lead.

I’m (likely) playing a different game than you

I don’t care about attracting customers right now.

All that matters is personal brand and personal community growth.

The first step is to grow my personal Instagram page.

It’s going well.

But I’m not looking for customers. I’m growing brand. My time horizon to see any tangible benefits is 2-3 years.

What I’m doing will take years to begin to pay dividends.

I have the money and time and resources to do it. And it’s the game that I decided to play.

Because of this, if you’re looking for customers right now, my IG strategy isn’t relevant to you.

Now, if you want to become an influencer, the conversation changes.

You’re playing a different game that’s, in many ways, similar to mine. In this case, you might become interested in my strategy.

But you can’t have one thing without the other.

Every decision has tradeoffs.

Content creators looking to build large international platforms aren’t playing the same game as trainers looking for clients.

Trainers looking for clients acting like content creators will fail.

This is why I said at the beginning of my email that content creation online, the way that most people do it, is a grossly inefficient way to get clients.

You see people using social media but presence ≠ Importance.

If you’re looking for clients, your focus must be on that singular goal. Spending hours every week publishing copycat content isn’t the most efficient path.

If you want to be successful then you’ve got to figure out the focus, and make it primary.

When you do that, creative and very powerful solutions sometimes arise.

Here’s an example:

Introducing: The Best of Sacramento Podcast

Imagine you’re a trainer looking for affluent clients and you live in Sacramento.

You’re a trainer. You don’t have a lot of time for marketing. And you want your marketing to count.

Start a podcast and call it The Best of Sacramento.

On your show, you’d interview the CEO’s of the best companies in the city.

None of these people would normally take your call.

But if you called and offered to interview them for your podcast that celebrates the leaders, innovators, and trailblazers thrusting our city into the future, they’d oblige.

Why?

Because status is a huge motivator––even for the uber successful.

Instead of posting copycat content on IG, you’ll find yourself on the phone for in-depth conversations with the leaders of your community, building a network, and likely being the only person that month that they speak that deeply with.

These are the rich and connected people who live in your city.

And, oh yeah, you just so happen to work at the gym.

This example has nothing to do with fitness but is better marketing for your fitness business than 99.9% of the stuff you see out there.

Not only that, but it costs nothing and will build your network and gain you access to mentors that will serve you for the rest of your life.

Another example:

You’re a high-end online transformation coach who charges $2,000-$3,000 per month.

Don’t send Facebook ads.

Join as many high-end masterminds for business and marketing development that cost 10-20k per year as you can find.

People in these communities are the types who are already spending $10k-$20k on masterminds. They’re the same types who will see the value in high-end coaching.

You’ll be the only fitness coach in the community.

A good friend of mine is Mark Manson’s online trainer (author of the Subtle Art of Not Gving a F*** and Will Smith’s recent book). He met Mark at a mastermind where he was the only high-end transformation coach. Mark hired him. One influencer client like this is enough to fill a multi-coach training business for free.

It’s not Facebook ads or Instagram content.

I can’t stress this point enough: BE HUMAN, go to where your ideal clients are, and connect deeply.

Many of the most successful trainers never use social media.

You just don’t hear about them.

Everybody’s yelling on social media these days. Why? I ask.

Maybe spending hours producing content on IG is the Capital B Best thing for you to be doing. But probably not.

I'm going to leave you with one though:

Even the Dimmest Light in a Dark Room Gets Noticed . . .

But a bright light in an already lit room gets ignored.

If you do what everybody else is doing––if you play their game—it doesn’t matter how loud you are. You’ll be ignored.

But if you play your own game, if you find the dark room, you don’t even have to do that good of a job to stand out.

I hope that this helped you see the light.

When you play your own game and go all in, you’ll be amazed at how fast things start to work out.

Till’ next month.

-Coach Goodman

P.S. Replies to this email now go to my personal email. I don't promise to get back to you quickly, but I do promise to read them so, please, feel free to reply and I look forward to chatting.