💪S.S. 62 Why smart people make stupid decisions

1. Why smart people make stupid decisions – Jonathan Goodman

Knowledge creates three types of people:

Those who know what they know and are confident enough to admit what they don’t know
Those who know what they know but have no idea what they don’t know
Those who go to extreme lengths to justify what they know

I want to talk about people in the third category, the ones who only want to hear what they already know, or already believe to be true.

It’s not that they’re uninformed. In many cases they’re more informed than the rest of us. They quote experts we’re not familiar with and cite studies from journals we’ve never heard of. They can argue circles around us.

At the same time, they know all about the experts we respect and defer to. They’re familiar with every study we consider important.

But what they know is why those experts are biased, if not nakedly corrupt, and why those journals are engaged in a grand conspiracy to block the information that would validate their own beliefs.

These people are almost always wrong. But then again, so are we. Almost all of us are wrong almost all the time.

Being wrong is a fact of life. As screenwriter William Goldman famously said about the movie industry, “Nobody knows anything.”

Maybe you’ve heard that quote. But you probably haven’t heard the rest of it:

“Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one.”

That’s the important part. It’s not that we can’t know things. It’s that we can’t have certainty. All we can do is make the most informed choices possible, and hope it works out.

The best way to make a stupid choice is to block out much of the information that would help you make a smart one.

2. How to produce high-quality content – Alex Cartmill

Alex is head coach of the Online Trainer Academy.

How much content you produce matters much less than the quality of your content.

That’s the opposite of what some gurus are teaching right now. But don’t be fooled. More isn’t better. Producing more only helps if the content has a purpose.

Volume serves a purpose if each piece supports your previous content and builds a foundation for future content.

How often your readers hear from you is far less important than how they feel when they see your latest post or email. They should expect two things from your content:

Something familiar
Something new

Familiarity begins with your unique voice and personality. And your audience should know, before they begin reading, that your content will provide direct value to them. It should relate to their lives and address the hurdles they want to overcome.

“New” doesn’t mean a completely original message each time. Most of your content should reinforce what you’ve already said, without repeating it word for word.

How do you know if your content is worth sharing? Run each new piece through these basic filters:

Does my personality shine through? Or could this come from just about anyone?
Why would my audience care about this? Does it help them follow through on their health and fitness goals? Does it make my clients more likely to succeed with my program? Does it convince fence-sitting prospects to become clients?
If I saw this post in my timeline from someone else, would I stop to read it? Or would I keep scrolling?

You can meet all those standards and still post a lot of content. But if you begin with quantity as the goal, you won’t build a foundation for future content, and you won’t build an audience interested in what you have to say.

Play the long game, my friends.

Go deeper:

--> Ten Proven Ways to Win More Readers

3. The right (and wrong) way to hustle

Here’s what podcast cohosts Jonathan Goodman, Carolina Belmares, and Ren Jones talked about this week on the Online Trainer Show:

Ren opens Episode 19, The Secret to High-Quality Online Assessments, with a few words about the infestation of “six-figure business coaches” relentlessly spamming fitness pros on social media.

“Here’s what I hate the worst,” he says. “I do a video probably every five seconds online. And somebody will message me, ‘Hey, let me know when you start doing video.’ It’s the internet, for gosh sakes! You can know everything about a person before you pitch them. Do a little reading.”

“I’ve got no problem with cold prospecting,” Jon adds. “I respect the hustle. It’s hard. My issue is that these accounts are sending me messages that appear to come from one person when they don’t.”

All that comes before the team gets anywhere close to the subject of the podcast: How to assess a new client without testing them in person.

As Jon notes, you first have to let go of the idea that the majority of in-person assessments are useful or accurate. He tells you what you really need to know before you start training that client.

In Episode 20, Convert More Clients by Understanding These Two Things, Jon explains the key to client conversion: “Emotion sells, logic justifies.”

That’s why your marketing begins with the benefits of your service—the parts that speak directly to your customers’ pain and frustration.

The features of your program are what you do to achieve those benefits—the parts that help the client justify their decision to hire you.

The better you communicate the benefits, “the less they’re going to care about how you achieve that goal,” he says.

You’ll find every episode here:

--> The Online Trainer Show

P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways we can help you:

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