At a billionaires party, this conversation occurred between Ernest Hemingway and Joseph Heller.
(I’ve paraphrased for brevity.)
"Joe, how does it feel that our host
made more money yesterday than your book, Catch-22, has earned in total?" Asked Hemingway.
"I’ve got something he can never have." Heller replied.
"What on earth could that be?" Asked Hemingway.
"Enough." Said Heller.
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Welcome to my end-of-the-month note.
Today I’m talking about enough––enough with your business and your fitness and how, counterintuitive as it may sound, having enough will make you more successful.
You’re welcome to share this email.
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Today’s stupid IG trend is to post reaction videos of dumb stuff others do
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Negativity and conflict get attention.
Post helpful material >>> crickets.
Call somebody else an idiot >>> likes!
I dunno bud, pointing out dumb stuff others do all day sounds miserable.
But for a content producer, likes are drugs.
Once you start using, you crave more and you’ll do anything for another hit, including sacrificing your own morals.
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IG is fine. Likes are fine.
Creating content is fine.
Big numbers, however, aren’t inherently valuable and it often leads you astray.
30 clients paying you $300 a month is $108,000 a year.
Go deep, not wide.
On IG, aim for enough.
When you do, you won’t fall into the trap of feeling like you have to do dumb shit to pander for likes.
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Here’s why I fired our previous head of marketing
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Soon after he was hired, he brought on an agency in an attempt to improve sales for the Online Trainer Academy (OTA).
This agency did extensive keyword research, built a new sales page, and ran paid ads.
The keywords were converting. People were hitting
the page and adding items to their cart. But they weren’t buying.
The problem, they concluded based on their data, must be the checkout page.
Our ex-staff agreed, and they spent more on ads and did more tests.
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Eventually I got frustrated and looked deeper into the problem.
They
got obsessed with the data they could see, and completely missed what mattered.
The highest converting keywords were terms like "starting a personal training career" – people searching for introductory level materials.
OTA isn’t an introductory level course. So, people clicked but didn’t buy.
Numbers can lead you astray.
Between salaries, ad costs, and severance, this cost me $105,000. It resulted in one $799 sale.
The mistake was an obsession with improving visible numbers without realizing that just because you can measure something, it doesn’t mean that it matters.
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We’re blind to 99.9999999% of what goes on in this world
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Last month I gave a talk to 20 trainers at a local gym looking to fill their schedule.
As it often does, the conversation turned to advice for growing on Instagram, as most assume that this is the only way to get clients.
Many of the trainers were posting content daily and seeing no business growth.
They wanted to know how to better utilize the platform to grow their accounts. Instead, I asked them a question:
What do you think is more valuable to you, 5,000 random people worldwide who have kind of heard of you or 30 wealthy and well-connected people who live 10
minutes away that respect you?
The first is tangible. It pumps up the ego. But it takes tremendous effort and results in little-to-no benefit.
The second is intangible. You can’t show it off. But it takes little effort and is how you truly grow a business.
Most trainers have more leads under their noses than they’ll ever need in their entire career.
- People they met one time.
- Others in their community.
- Old clients / old leads that fell off.
- And so much more.
They have enough already.
Instead of going deeper with people who already have a connection with them, going for
coffee, volunteering at local events, getting involved in their own communities, they’re trying to play the Internet game, getting addicted to ‘followers’, frustrated by lack of real business growth.
Go deeper with who you already have. I’d be willing to venture that it’s enough.
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Always leave 1-2 reps in the hole
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You could push as hard as you can
every day.
Some do.
However, the risk / reward ratio begins to skew.
Risk of injury increases and incremental gains diminish.
At the end of the day, what matters is not how hard you pushed on any given day but that you kept showing up.
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With this in mind, when lifting weights, some good advice is to leave 1-2 reps in the hole.
It’s the same,
metaphorically, with business.
As Nobel Prize winning behavioral economist Amos Tversky once said,
"the secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours."
The secret is to stop moving the goal line––to stop chasing––to avoid getting addicted to immediacy.
The secret is to be ok, right now, with doing enough.
When you do, you’ll see opportunities you’d otherwise miss.
You don’t get rewarded for doing more. You get rewarded for doing better. Hustle culture is
bullshit.
-Jon
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P.S. Please put yourself on the waitlist for QuickCoach.
This past month the first 2,000+ users were given
access. It is free personal trainer software.
This tool is simple. For you, it's enough.
100's of access invites are being sent daily but ONLY to the waitlist because demand is so high.
If you want in, please go to www.QuickCoach.Fit and enter your email.
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Jonathan Goodman
Improving fitness trainers.
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Thanks for reading. Here's a few additional ways that I might be able to help you:
My IG: @itscoachgoodman
My Book: Ignite the Fire (1,000+ 5-star reviews)
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