What to Expect with 1:1 Coaching | ETP#112

[Aaron Straker]: 0:34

What's up guys? Happy Tuesday. Welcome back to another episode of Eat, Train, Prosper. Today is Brian and myself, and we are going to dig into what our one-on-one coaching programs look like. This came in from a question from someone, and they just said, hey, I'm looking for details in what to expect as a new client. And Brian and I thought it would make for a fantastic episode to inform some of the listeners who have thought about reaching out to coaching with either of us before. But then also for new prospects in the future to be like, hey, we have an entire episode kind of covering this. And these are things that I'm sure the both of us would agree on to look for in a new coach. Maybe even we can talk about some potential red flags once we've covered those sorts of things as well. Before I kick it over to Brian for weekly updates as usual, I would like to say that I am proud to say that I have gotten all my meals in for tonight and

[Bryan Boorstein]: 1:27

Thanks for watching!

[Aaron Straker]: 1:27

it is only 8 p.m. my time. I am usually eating my final meal at 9.30, 9.45-ish on Tuesdays after wrapping up the podcast, and I am very excited that all I have to do after the podcast tonight is brush my teeth and go to sleep.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 1:44

Nice, well I'm sure you must be feeling quite full, huh?

[Aaron Straker]: 1:48

Not really, to be completely

[Bryan Boorstein]: 1:49

No,

[Aaron Straker]: 1:49

honest.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 1:50

that's hilarious. To add on to your explanation of this episode, I also think that another tangential benefit of this will be for other coaches that are looking to kind of glean some insight into the way that we've been doing it. And I know that at this point in my journey, as a coach, at least half of the people that sign up with me for one-on-one coaching are not just trying to get a better physique themselves. but they're kind of trying to learn some of the ways by which I go about things and my processes and things like that. And so hopefully this episode can provide a little bit of insight into that too. Okay, so in this episode of As the Headaches Turn, Aaron and I have still been kind of communicating offline a little bit about this and it's in both of our updates. So the good news for me is that I think I... I am on the very tail end of this, if not completely over it. And so thank God, man, that was a brutal like three or four weeks for me. But last week after our episode, I had kind of hinted at that I was gonna go set up an appointment with an optometrist and get my vision checked. And so I did that the next day and it turns out I have 20-20 vision. So I can't blame my vision. And so for a moment there, I was kind of like, well, shit, you know. That was really the thing I was putting my cards in. I thought that for sure my vision was causing my headaches given how it started in San Diego. So a lot of people floated the theory that maybe it was like elevation-based coming back to Boulder. But because it started in San Diego, I was convinced that it wasn't due to the elevation. And then there was the theory the prior week that maybe it was blue light. And so Laura had suggested I wear these blue light blockers which look super intelligent on me. And because my headaches have started dissipating since she suggested that, I've been kind of timid to not use the blue light blockers just in case they're the thing that is really working here. But to be honest, I think that I don't know what caused them and I think they've mostly just run their course. And I feel at this point that the last few days, basically, it would be like... I feel a headache beginning to come on and I just stop what I'm doing and I walk outside and I take a few breaths of fresh air or I go for a walk and then I come back in and everything seems to be fine again and that may happen like once or twice a day, but that feeling of the impending headache, it never actually comes. And I don't know if that's because I'm managing it now and I'm like stopping what I'm doing. There's a number of confounding variables, but overall. The headaches are mostly dissipating and so I feel great about that and I'm probably just going to continue wearing blue light blockers for the moment until I stop having even these like slight excursion feelings of there being a headache coming. And yeah, at this point I think it's mostly manageable and not a huge burden on me at this point anymore. So thank God for that. How about you? How are they coming along?

[Aaron Straker]: 5:10

So last week when we had the podcast, they were about the worst they'd ever been. Like those few days they started, they would come on during training, like first working set kind of fade away throughout the training session. Last Tuesday when we recorded the podcast was the first one, I mean, I just had it all day long. And then even Wednesday or Thursday, I can't remember, I was like, I'm gonna go train at like 7.30 PM. So I only have a headache for like two hours before I go to bed instead of all day. I have traced it down. There were some, like when you look up like tension headaches or headaches when training, one of the first things that comes to mind or comes up and people message me about this blood pressure. I was like, yeah, it makes perfect sense. I'll take a look at my, my weights up. I've been training really, really hard, you know. Fortunately, one of our friends here had like a blood pressure cuff that they gave me for like two days and I took it like 16 times. Blood pressure is great. It's actually some of the best blood pressure readings that I've ever had consistently. Yeah, so each they were all around like 116 117 over like 68 69.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 6:15

Wow.

[Aaron Straker]: 6:15

It's like, okay, fucking sweet. Yeah, and I did it like five or six times. I did it in the morning, you know, prior to going to the gym when I would get back from the gym, you know, at night I did that over like three days all were right around in there, you know, so it's like, okay, it's definitely not that I've pinpointed it down. It's some like muscle in my neck or something

[Bryan Boorstein]: 6:34

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 6:35

like that. It the worst day. is my press day, which I do on Tuesdays. You know, and today is another one where I still have the headache now. It's faint, but I can feel it like right here. And it persisted like right as I was warming up, my first exercise in the anterior delt press, it showed up. And then I realized that on leg day, it only shows up like when I'm really, really pushing myself on the hack squat where you're like giving it everything. And I pulled like a very minor pull. or maybe a strain would be a better term, something in my back, kind of like, think like really high spinal erector, you know, like mid back area, like on the other side of the spine. And that is like a... I don't even really want to call it an injury, but it's like a floating injury per se that will happen with me. It's generally the left side. It generally will happen when I am overhead pressing, I'll pull something in my back. So I think that's what it's stemming from. Ironically, I did get a massage today that was brutal. And then I went to the gym. you know, like a couple hours after, I was like, okay, well I'll get my back massaged and trained, you know, push. And still showed up. So still finding like how to kind of manage that, but it hasn't been as bad as last Tuesday. It was like

[Bryan Boorstein]: 7:50

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 7:50

the worst of it.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 7:52

Well, that's interesting. And I know that you've mentioned that kind of upper back, lower trap injury in the past, you and I have discussed, I've mentioned how it always used to happen to me when we were doing thrusters, like heavy thrusters in CrossFit.

[Aaron Straker]: 8:06

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 8:07

And it's the same idea, like overhead pressing and for whatever reason, creating extra tension in there. So I have a question actually. So... If you say you generally will only feel it when you begin kind of getting into the hack squat, don't you generally do your leg extensions before your hack squat?

[Aaron Straker]: 8:26

So I did, and then when I moved to this new gym, there wasn't a leg extension until this week. So this is like the first week in, I don't know, probably eight weeks since mid-February. So more or less two months, eight weeks, maybe nine weeks that I've had the leg extension. And just to not change variables again, I kept the hack squat first. Because

[Bryan Boorstein]: 8:54

I'm wondering

[Aaron Straker]: 8:55

I've been like,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 8:55

if you would have done the leg extension first if you have no headache and then you get into the hack squat and suddenly you get a headache.

[Aaron Straker]: 9:02

I would think so, yes, because of the more copious amounts of bracing it requires, sort of thing. In the leg extension, you kind of pin yourself down with your arms, but I mean in the hack squat, I'm literally giving every single thing I have. This week, I didn't really tweak something in my back, but there was a muscle in there that was really tender now. So it is... It's hard to say, but one thing I will say is the headaches have not been showing up on my HIIT session day, which is on the air bike.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 9:39

video day here.

[Aaron Straker]: 9:41

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 9:41

Interesting. Well, it seems like we're both kind of progressing in the right direction. So that's at least positive. Last week, we touched on my mountain biking race that I signed up for in Moab. And one of the things that I mentioned was that I went biking with my pro cyclist friend and that he gave me some advice on some varieties of things. But one of the things that really stuck out, stuck out to me. which confirmed something I already knew but I wasn't actually doing was climbing hills. And I had mentioned that I really have a propensity to want to get out of the saddle and use the strength of my posterior chain to really like grind through those reps as a way to speak it. But that was really throwing the rhythm off and it was jacking my heart rate up. And so I actually in this last week during my rides and I've hit. four, maybe even five rides this week. It's been a huge cardio week. I've really been working on staying in the saddle more and just keeping RPM rate the same. So if I'm on flat ground and say I'm at random number a hundred RPMs, then as I hit the hill, instead of just standing up and taking a slower RPM rate with the same resistance, I just lower the resistance down and keep my RPM rate similar. And this has actually been really cool because it's allowed me to do a much better job of staying in zone two. And so that's been always the hardest thing that I struggle with and that people on DM will always hit me up and be like, dude, how are you doing zone two outside with hills and things like that? And it's always been, you know, you look at my chart and there's two or three excursions up to like one hundred and fifty four beats a minute and then back down to zone two and then one hundred fifty four and back down to zone two. And so staying in the saddle. The heart rate still spikes a little bit because you are working harder, so to speak, but I have been able to do a much better job staying in zone two and keeping my heart rate much more sustainable throughout, which I think has had effects on my ability to just go longer without feeling more fatigue. Because anytime that you jump that heart rate up into those performance zones, it then takes a few minutes for your body to kind of clear that lactate and balance back out. to more sustainable levels. And so that's been cool. And something I'm just obviously gonna continue to work on over the course of the next few months.

[Aaron Straker]: 12:12

Yeah, I will say these cardio conversations that we're having, you know, in these, I would say increasingly common forms, they are something that I, in the beginning, I don't think I appreciated enough or wasn't as excited about because I truly did think it meant a hindrance of the hypertrophy. However, I have been increasingly enjoying them and I've only been finding benefit personally in it. What I think I'm going to do this week is actually run that FTP, the functional power threshold. Is that what it stands

[Bryan Boorstein]: 12:46

functional

[Aaron Straker]: 12:46

for?

[Bryan Boorstein]: 12:46

threshold power here.

[Aaron Straker]: 12:49

FTP, okay. Test and then redo the zones in my watch just to get a little bit more accurate data because what's, I obviously like post, you know, I'll post to my stories each week and it's like, one, I don't think it's actually accurate, the zones, but there's, I might have like 2% in zone three and everything else, the entire like 20 minutes is just zone four and zone five,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 13:15

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 13:15

which makes. me look like I can push myself way harder than I actually can. But I think some of my things are just kind of skewed. So I will run that to then get myself a little bit better

[Bryan Boorstein]: 13:26

Yeah, so another

[Aaron Straker]: 13:27

data.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 13:27

just real quick update on the same topic is I finally figured out a couple days ago, or not figured out, but I finally stopped being lazy and updated the zones in my Apple watch. So that now, like my zone two was 126 to 138, which is fine. Like, I think that's where it should have been when I first started doing my zone two, like, you know, 130 135 at most was kind of what was sustainable for me. but more recently I've been able to hang around an average heart rate of like 139, 140, 141. And in doing so, my watch was essentially telling me that I spent my entire zone two ride in zone three. And that was really frustrating to me because zone three is like, was 138 to 152 or something. It was a huge range. And it wasn't specific as to whether I was at 140, which was part of zone three, 152, which was also part of zone three. And so I adjusted my zones so that now zone two is 132 to 144. And now when I go for my ride, it was like basically zone two 97% of the time. And then I had like a small excursion up or a small excursion down here and there,

[Aaron Straker]: 14:44

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 14:44

but that was much better. And so I've been fervorously trying to figure out how to do this on my polar chest strap. because the polar chest strap zones are all jacked up. It says my zone three starts at 126 beats per minute, which was the old zone two for my Apple watch. And so when I look at my polar post-workout, it says I'm spending most of my workout in zone three and zone four. And I'm just like, this doesn't make any sense at all. And people on the internet have been like, yeah, you have to adjust your age or you have to adjust your max heart rate or whatever. And like, I would do that and nothing changes. So if anybody

[Aaron Straker]: 15:21

Okay.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 15:21

knows, how to update the zones manually on the polar chest strap. Please let me know, cause this sucks. I, the positive is that the Apple watch and the polar do tend to trend similarly with heartbeats and metrics and stuff like that. So now I just find myself leaning more on the watch, which is not what I want to be doing. I want to lean on the polar chest strap, which brings up one final piece that I'm going to talk about before we finish this cardio conversation, which is, that the Polar Chest Strap has a fitness test function where you basically just lay down and you breathe for five minutes and then it tells you your estimated VO2 max. And so I don't quite understand how that formula works, like how I can be doing nothing except laying on the couch and it's gonna give me my VO2 max. But my Apple Watch thinks my VO2 max is around 43 and yesterday I did the Polar Chest Strap test and it put my VO2 max at 55. And so one of them is like, pretty average, like 43 is pretty average for a 40 year old, which means I'm nothing special, like average for the population, not just for athletes.

[Aaron Straker]: 16:29

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 16:30

And 55 is like stellar, even for athletes at my age. It's like elite. And I don't think I'm elite, but I also don't really think I'm average. So I'm guessing it's somewhere in the middle, but that was very confusing and don't.

[Aaron Straker]: 16:46

Yeah, I wouldn't know. I haven't done one of those in so long. I don't, I don't know if I want to, because I don't think I want another number.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 16:53

Well, I think

[Aaron Straker]: 16:54

Because

[Bryan Boorstein]: 16:54

I just need

[Aaron Straker]: 16:54

I,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 16:54

to do a real VO2 max test. Like

[Aaron Straker]: 16:56

yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 16:56

I need to go to a lab and put all the stuff on and do that whole

[Aaron Straker]: 16:59

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 16:59

thing. But

[Aaron Straker]: 17:00

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 17:01

do you have another update real quick? And then I just have one last one.

[Aaron Straker]: 17:05

Yeah, I mean, the one that I'll say is my gaining period is going really well. We have moved the goalposts yet again. So the first goalpost was between 204 and 206 pounds. So let's call that 208. And then things are looking good there. We moved it to 210. Things are looking literally just as good at 210 as they were at like 206. So we're moving the goalposts again to potentially a 215, which will be... very interesting because I have a lot of, you know, photos and those sorts of things from the last time I was that size. And I did get a DEXA in like 2017 when I was around like 212, 213. I think what I'm going to do is I'll be in Denver, the Colorado area in a couple weeks. I'd love to see you, Brian and your family. I'm going to get a DEXA when I'm there and see what muscle mass looks like to, you know, 2017 Aaron. Um, that sort of thing when I'll be, you know, within pounds of the same.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 18:08

Yeah, we were talking off air and I was noting that you look large, you're taking up more of the screen as we talk. Um, but yeah, I mean, overall, dude, the pictures you post online and stuff, it's insane. Like you really don't even look like you've put on a lot of body fat from the front. I know you've mentioned that it's more about when you like turn around around the love handles and the low back and stuff like that,

[Aaron Straker]: 18:27

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 18:28

but, um, you're holding it really well. So, so that's dope.

[Aaron Straker]: 18:32

Yeah, it's been cool.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 18:33

Yeah. Um, cool. So my last update is, uh, is very, uh, a future update, but, um, over my birthday this coming year, uh, I'll be 41 in, in mid to late August. And, uh, when I first started elementary or kindergarten, I was six years old and this kid showed up from Switzerland and he couldn't speak English and he was just in his cubby crying and six year old Brian took pity on this kid and he became my best friend, his name is Simon, and we were connected at the hip from six all the way until 12 when he moved back to Switzerland. And we stayed in touch, I visited Switzerland four times at least, and he's been back to the U.S. probably every two or three years since then. So he's making another trip to the U.S. this summer, and he's mostly gonna be in Seattle, Utah, and Boise. but he's making a special trip by himself without his family to come to Boulder and spend my birthday with me. We are going to go up into the mountains and do a bunch of hiking and just kind of get to hang out again after a number of years. So A, we won't be having an ETP that Tuesday, August 22nd or whatever date that is, future things. But mostly I'm just really excited to see my bro and reconnect and be able to show him the beauty of Colorado and stuff like that. So just found out about that this week. So throwing that out into the updates, but that's really all that is. And yeah, I guess we can move on to one-on-one coaching. So Aaron, I know you have your upgrade group now, which is obviously group coaching. How much one-on-one work are you doing on top of that?

[Aaron Straker]: 20:21

So, yeah, I mean, upgraded, or sorry, one-on-one coaching is my bread and butter still. I plan that to be for a very long time. I feel like I'm really just now after, you know, I always get confused if it's, it's been over five years since I started. It's been over four years since we started traveling. I feel like only now am I just, just really hitting like a really good point with. being very, very convicted in my coaching and delivering results that I'm proud of sort of thing. There's been a lot of times, the majority of times where clients are happy, but if I'm being honest, I thought we could have done a better job. And I think some of that just comes back to being overly critical of myself. But one-on-one coaching with clients is like my bread and butter still. Upgrade is for other coaches. And that is the difference there. And that is... Not so much just to really quickly differentiate. We're not teaching macros and all that other entry level shit that you should already know. It's all about running a professional coaching business. So having really complete back ends, how to stay organized, like a lot of integrity-based things and efficiencies. So basically what upgrade is, is a back door into how myself and Jackson run our coaching businesses, and then all of the tools that we use. we turnkey incorporate into your business.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 21:54

Okay, cool. Yeah, that's good clarification. So how many one on one clients do you tend to run at a time?

[Aaron Straker]: 22:02

So I mean, it obviously varies. I personally find my max in the high 40s. Once I get to that, it is a little bit of like the anxiety of the check-in days kind of build. And I personally don't, I don't feel a need to go higher. I mean, I know coaches that have well over 100 clients. And I'm not going to bad mouth anyone, but it's you ask three questions and you get one and a half of them answered sort of thing. That's just not how I want to run my business. Like I focus on quality and all of my clients can attest to, I give thorough answers probably more than they care to know oftentimes. And it's from an integrity standpoint in what ends up being something that I think I've shared before that I don't like. because I put my name on the business, it's hard for me to separate myself from the business. And if someone's like, oh yeah, I signed up for that, wasn't worth it, right? That I take as like a personal attack at me, probably for worse, not for a better thing, but I just have structured it so that that never becomes a thing. And that's the same reason why I'm very hesitant to ever go with the assistant coach route,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 23:24

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 23:24

because... I can't guarantee that other people care as much as I do. And I have a control problem, simple

[Bryan Boorstein]: 23:30

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 23:30

as that.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 23:31

that was actually going to be one of my questions down the road was if you ever were going to venture into that route where you have like coaches under you and stuff like that. And so that answers that I guess.

[Aaron Straker]: 23:41

I mean, never say never. I mean, it's obviously a very lucrative model. And then, you know, the way that people do it well, like I know Jeremiah does

[Bryan Boorstein]: 23:51

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 23:51

that, right? He does it very, very well. He has a really bad-ass team under him, but then he spends, you know, much more time, like basically like shepherding those coaches. And then he, they have like, you know, they have their team meetings where they bring their clients in and he helps like over, you know, over, not overshadow, but you know. whatever that term would be, overlook everything sort of thing. So, like I said, never say never, but right now I'm just as focused on ever, like still taking clients, right? I have a good, I have been very light marketing earlier in the year because Upgrade was launching and that was taking so much of my time, but now that that's like up and most of that, you know, work is front loaded, I have more capacity for clients and the right types of clients that wanna come in and just, if you're serious, I am. I can guarantee you I am way more serious than you are about it. Ha ha ha.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 24:44

Yeah, yeah. Well, do you want to get into some kind of your processes and like what you go through with a new client here? Like when someone first contacts you out of the blue, say it's a DM on Instagram and they're like, hey, I'm interested in your coaching, blah, blah, blah told me that you're the best. And, you know, I think I'm in, but you know, what's the next step type thing?

[Aaron Straker]: 25:07

Yeah, so I mean, one thing with me is I'm always super, super transparent, right? And I guess the reason being is I hate being like salesperson, you know, like used car salesman-esque. Like, I hate being on the receiving end of that. So when I got into this, I was like, I don't want to fucking do that to people because I know how it makes me feel. So I'm like, my prices are up on my website, right? Exactly what the process looks like is up on my website. I'm very, very transparent about a lot of that. And one thing I should say is I haven't actually updated some of the things on the website because at the end of last year, I rolled out training with like clients as well. And I haven't been like very, very vocal about that and any marketing yet, but really it's like, I wanna know what your goals are, right? And I like to get specific with goals because Ryan, as I'm sure you're aware, you're gonna get, I want abs and I want 10 pounds of lean muscle mass. And I'm like, yeah. It doesn't fucking work that way, right? Unless you plan on going on gear, it literally just does not work that way. I'm happy to explain why, but like, what do you actually want? And I would say like nine times out of 10, people just wanna be leaner. You know, like people think they want more muscle, but I'm like, well, okay, we can put more muscle on you, but you're only gonna get fatter than you are right now. And you're like, okay, I don't want that. I just wanna be leaner, right? So really digging into what exactly you're looking for. And then... Really, what kind of big lifestyle blockers are there? Are there any kind of really big lifestyle factors that will likely get in the way? Are you, do you work one of those crazy swing shifts? Are you a night shift nurse in the ER or something like that? Getting into that and then once we have a bit of conversation and I feel confident that I actually can help that person, I'm like, hey. Here are the next steps. Here is my application. It's going to ask you some more questions about your goals, some other big picture things. Then we're going to schedule a console on the back end of it. And that's just to go through some of the more questions for me to get more information out of view, for you to ask me any and all of your questions. And then we kind of go from there. And one thing that I have found, because I have my pricing is on that application sort of thing, I do have a small fee, a small refundable fee. to get me on the phone, I've been able to weed out a lot of the tire kickers and the price chasers, those sorts of things. That was something I'm sure you come through where it kind of bothers you in the beginning or you think, am I doing something wrong? But if a client, prospective client is going to try and price comparison you to your... What is it called? I'm not gonna say any specific companies, but the like $75 a month companies or whatever, like by all means go, go ahead. And then

[Bryan Boorstein]: 28:05

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 28:06

once you run through the rounds there, I'll be here again, sort of thing. I think the whole of that is, you get what you pay for oftentimes.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 28:13

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 28:14

And if someone isn't willing to spend the small refundable deposit to get on the phone, like they're not serious about coaching in the first place, and I would rather route that. from square

[Bryan Boorstein]: 28:24

Thanks for watching!

[Aaron Straker]: 28:24

one as opposed to like square three or four.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 28:27

Yep. No, that makes sense. I agree. I actually find that I find myself almost trying to talk people out of working with me at first, because

[Aaron Straker]: 28:38

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 28:38

I want to know that they're in. And so when people come to me now, because they see me working with Cass a lot, a lot of people will inquire with me thinking that I'm some extension of N1 and that they're going to be learning the intricacies of the N1 system when they come. work with me. And so one of the first things I have to tell a lot of people is, Hey, I am not N1. The programming you're getting is the way that I have created programming through 25 years of training myself and through three years of influence from N1. And so yes, my N1 influence is recent. And so there is certainly some bias in the way that like I select movements, the execution patterns we use, uh, even a few of the like small programming concepts, but for the most part, like I don't follow the programming model that N1 does in the way that we construct, you know, set progression throughout a session, or even in the way that we may periodize metabolic and strength cycles and things like that along the way. So trying to talk people out of working with me is sometimes my first step. And so I like to obviously first get someone on the phone and I don't have a refundable fee at this point, but that is an interesting idea. Um, I haven't actually had a call with somebody where I've spent a bunch of time and then had them not decide to work with me. Cause I think for the most part, like I give them my prices and I tell them like they're kind of already maybe more bought in with me beforehand. Um, but I've also mentioned on here before that I only tend to work with three to five one-on-one clients at a time due to how busy I am with outside stuff. And so I tell people that as well. And I'm like, Hey, you know, I have. for clients currently, like I have one spot open if you're a good fit. And so they're already, I think a little bit more bought into the process at that point, then maybe it would be like in my past, actually let's backtrack a little cause you said you work with upwards of 40 people. And I remember when I was at my peak of one-on-one coaching, I would hit like the mid thirties, high thirties and feel like, oh my God, like this is an overwhelming amount of people. I feel like I'm just constantly communicating with people all day long. I'm either communicating with them, checking in with them, or writing programs for them. And so it was like this fully encompassing thing where I just didn't have time for anything else. And so that's amazing that you found systems that work for you so well that you can confidently handle upwards of 40 like that.

[Aaron Straker]: 31:12

Well, there's a big difference and I think this is great to talk about. First and foremost, I am a nutrition coach. That is the 70%, 75 plus percent sort of thing. Where when you were at that kind of peak, was that still a good mix of the CrossFit style athletes then?

[Bryan Boorstein]: 31:31

It was almost entirely CrossFit athletes, yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 31:34

And I mean, by the nature of the CrossFit style of training, constantly varied, requires much more management on your part. Whereas like with hypertrophy training, and this is, I think somewhere that I think we like kind of vary a little bit, but I, and I'm not sure if we've ever talked about it kind of publicly on the podcast. I'm a big fan of keeping training programming the same for weeks and weeks and weeks. Like I want to squeeze every ounce of progress out. And I will... I basically instill that with a lot of clients too. And they're like, I'm like, do you want to make progress or do you want novelty for your like ADHD sort of thing? And sometimes I'll be not never a dick, but like, oh, it's getting stale. I'm like, is it? Because we just added another 10 pounds, in three reps on the leg press. That doesn't look stale to me. Like that's progress. That's hard earned one to one objective progress sort of thing. And that's where I think that time, from a pure time standpoint, week to week, with what you were doing was vastly different, much more demanding from a time standpoint.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 32:43

Yeah, no, that's that's a really, really good point. And then, like, just to kind of put a bow on that point, I'm the same way, like, I don't have people change movements either. And that's not to say that I don't think there are a variety of reasons that you would change movements. I think we've even had an episode where we've talked about here are reasons, you know, to swap a movement out. And it's like injury or staleness or lack of enjoyment or you know, a ton, a ton of different reasons that you may change a movement out. But I also have that same conversation with people in the beginning that it's like, Hey, this program that we're going to create, barring any of these potential issues that may arise over time, it's not really going to change week to week. And so yeah, that side of the management now is much simpler. And I think that I could handle a much larger roster, if it ever, ever came to that for me. But Where was I going with all that? I think to backtrack. So person contacts me, they're interested in my programming. I try to talk them out of it. I let them know the prices. I also generally have a verbal nine month agreement. And in the past I had people actually sign a contract to be like, hey, you know, I'm going to commit to nine months of this thing. And more recently, I've stopped that because I don't know. I'd much rather just have a conversation with someone and have them tell me that they're in. And, and, and I've had one person break their verbal contract with me over the last like four years where they didn't stay at least nine months. And so for me, that's good enough odds that I, I am good with that. And I, and I would prefer to just kind of have that like handshake deal of their intention than to try to make somebody sign a contract. So I have these like, three to five people that I take on. First step is we have this consultation call. I wanna learn all about their background. That is the most important thing because I'm working with advanced people that have 10, 15, 20 years of trading experience. I want to know what you've done, what's worked for you, what's not worked for you, why you think it's worked for you, why you think it hasn't worked for you. Man, there's so many different avenues that you can go down with that. But that's always our first consultation call. And then from there, I tell them to think about it. I get off the phone and I'm like, hey, take two or three days and think about this and make sure that this is something you absolutely want to do. And then assuming they get back to me and wanna progress forward, I have a set of kind of next steps that we go into from there. But what does that look like as far as your process at that point?

[Aaron Straker]: 35:22

Yeah, one thing I wanted to clarify, the refundable fee is so that people like before, and I think this is very, very common. You get people just like no show sometimes like, oh, I thought I booked it in my time zone or like all these different things. And I realized like after a couple years of like periodic no shows, I'm like, if someone's going to skip it, like I'm at least getting paid for it sort of thing because I'm here in my office, like camera on, like ready to talk. And if you just like ghost me. I'm at least getting paid. And it's one of those things, like it's not a lot, it's 50 bucks, but when you have to put money down, it just changes. You're not going to blow off that meeting sort of thing. So that's the real reason I have it, because I was just getting super sick of getting the periodic no-shows. But very similar intake, like I want to know what does your current nutrition look like? What does your current training look like? I want to know, is there any doctor prescribed medications? Any history of... disordered eating, anything like that, any movement pattern restrictions as their particular foods that you really, really don't like, right? Because every once in a while, you're gonna get the client that sends an application and it's like, yeah, I refuse to eat vegetables. And I'm like, you know what?

[Bryan Boorstein]: 36:34

Hehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 36:34

That's perfectly fine. I'm not gonna work with you, right? Because I say this thing, it's kind of like a little bit of like this cocky thing, but like I don't play a game that I can't win, right? And what do you have? Like when you wanna get lean, There's foods that are very high volume that make that significantly easier when you don't, especially with the thing with nutrition, there's three macronutrients, right? You have three levers to pull. When you remove an entire food group, right, you're already reducing a vastly limited set already.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 37:05

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 37:05

Go, go work with one of the fucking carnivore coaches or something like that.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 37:09

Heh

[Aaron Straker]: 37:09

Like I'm

[Bryan Boorstein]: 37:09

heh heh.

[Aaron Straker]: 37:10

not interested.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 37:12

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 37:13

So I want to get some of that stuff out in the beginning. And then once we move into the console. Like I said, some of those first things I want to know, what does the lifestyle look like? Do we have zero kids and a very, you know, are we time poor or are we resources poor sort of thing? Cause we generally find ourselves into one or two categories. How do we feel about cooking? Do we need to outsource it? Are we going to, you know, get a lot of our prepared meats from like the chicken pound or something like that? I want to get a lot of this information. And then I want to know like what rate. do you want to progress at, right? If we want to move fast, we're going to go with a meal plan, right? There's not going to be a shit ton of variety, but we are going to have precision and precision leads to the progress. If we want to move a little bit slower and have a little bit more flexibility, we can go with a macronutrient based plan, but I explained it's going to need to kind of fit into this framework of where I know we can be successful with. Talk job, other commitments, what are our non-negotiables? date night with the wife, husband, that sort of thing. And then we go from there. And then I'm very, I would say similar to you, like it's very rare at this point that I get on a Zoom call with someone that doesn't move forward. And the real reason there is like, I'm incredibly convicted in what I can do and what I know. Like this is my bread and butter. Like this is what I do all day long, day in and day out. And I can explain things well. One thing where I think some of my earlier influences kind of differentiate me is I've moved a lot into the functional nutrition space too. So a lot of my clients were getting lab work. I wanna see what thyroid looks like, what our sex hormones look like. I wanna know if we have any red flags that are gonna make our fat loss phase, climbing a massive hill in the proverbial wrong gear. If we're starting. from a maintenance calorie standpoint, and our thyroid is super low from a functional standpoint in terms of numbers we're looking for, we know it's only gonna get worse as calories come down and that's going to slow our rate. Might change our kind of game plan a little bit of like, let's put some things in here. Let's put some specific nutrients in, selenium, iodine, and tyrosine to help us see if we can get that up. when we are at a higher energy availability state sort of thing. So it's one of those things like understanding labs, you know, I'm so appreciative of the time and the money that I spent to learn that because it's like cheat. It's like cheating. It's cheat

[Bryan Boorstein]: 39:51

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 39:51

codes because a lot of people and things look great, especially people will tell you things are good because, you know, and I'm sure like when you've ever worked with a coach, you want them to have a very high perception of you sort of thing. So you end up kind of like. hiding things a little bit or making it seem better than they are. And then you get a peek inside and you're like, oh yeah,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 40:12

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 40:13

things don't look great sometimes. So that is one where I feel like I kind of stand out a little bit in terms

[Bryan Boorstein]: 40:21

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 40:21

of that. And then always having health at the forefront of things and making sure that we're not doing anything to jeopardize that based on the ambition of the client's goals.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 40:32

Yeah, no, I love the the blood work piece. And that's actually an area that I feel so much more confident. Just over the last year, like since I started getting into all this cardio stuff, I've been so excited about what the changes are in the blood work as a result of the changes that you make in your nutrition, your lifestyle, the addition of cardio, things like that. And also following all the Peter at Tia stuff, I've learned so much about all of these different blood markers that I had no clue about before. Like when I look at my blood panel now, I know 85% of them, like what specific part of the body that correlates to and where you wanna be in the range, because just being in the range is obviously not a good thing. Always, sometimes you wanna be toward the higher end of the range, and sometimes you wanna be toward the lower end of the range, or sometimes you just wanna be below the range or above the range. And so I find that stuff just completely intriguing. And it brings me back to something you said in the very beginning when we started the podcast over two years ago, and you were talking about how nutrition just has all of these different arms or levers that you can really look at and pull. And that's why you find it kind of more interesting than training, which I think at the time I maybe was semi-insulted by, because I'm like, no, fucking training. Training's the thing, you know? And I still like, I think training is significantly more complicated than most people give it credit for. But yeah, I mean, the nutrition and the blood work and all of the factors that go into that make it so intriguing as well. So I guess the next step is like, you know, we have a client, what does the process of communication look like week to week? And so for me, I generally will take 10 days. I tell them I need 10 days to write the first week of their programming because I want to write out a draft given all of the information we had and the conversation that we had on the phone and all that stuff. And as I write out this program, I wanna have a communication back and forth with them, especially cause they're an advanced athlete. I wanna make sure that each thing I'm writing is conducive to kind of what their vision is of what they can handle, their exercise selection. a number of variables that we don't have to go into right now. But literally when I'm writing that first program over the first 10 days, I will be in communication with the client back and forth to make sure that that it's suitable for them and something that they're excited about utilizing, progressing, going forward, et cetera, et cetera. And then weekly, once we're kind of into the nitty gritty of the training, we're in week one, week two, week three. What I usually ask them to do is submit a an intake form of sorts. Actually, intake would be the wrong way. It would be like an assessment form, weekly assessment check-in form. And so, there's 10 to 15 different questions on there that are both objective and subjective about how their week went, their RPE, their soreness, the level of perceived fatigue, the amount of calories they're eating, how their sleep is. a number of different things like that, what movements they're enjoying, if they have any nicks and dings that are popping up, stuff like that. And so I asked them to submit this form 48 hours prior to when the next training week is due. And so that gives me sufficient time to be able to review this form and then make the necessary changes to the training. At which point there's then another conversation that occurs. And my preferred way of doing this, I know everyone has their own thing, like some people do a check-in on Zoom where you're talking face-to-face each week or something along those lines. What I do with my clients is I generally do WhatsApp. And so we'll connect on WhatsApp, we'll have our own private kind of WhatsApp conversation. And the reason I love that is because you can do voice notes that are as long as you want them to be. And then you can also speed them up and listen to them at like 1.5 speed. So. that saves everybody time and it still gets the information across super clearly. So for at least the first number of months that I work with a client, every single week after I read their check-in form and update training, there'll be somewhere between a four and a 15 minute voice note from me kind of talking through the week of training, what changed, what to expect, some movement specific execution pieces. et cetera, et cetera. And then of course, throughout the week, uh, as they do their training, they have the freedom to upload videos into the true coach app where I will be alerted and I can review their video within 24 to 48 hours and give them some specific feedback on that movement that then they can kind of look at week to week. They can look back at that movement the next week when they get there and see what my comments were the prior week. and go forward from there. And so it's this really like constant process of communication and making sure that we're on the same page and have a mutual understanding of what we're doing throughout the whole process.

[Aaron Straker]: 45:48

Yeah, so I mean, very, very similar to what I do with like the ongoing communication and stuff. So I would say kind of like, okay, we've signed up, right? With my background in technology sort of thing, I've orchestrated things where like post payment, you land on my like new client onboarding page and it's like, hey, here are your three next steps. And it's like download chronometer, right? I don't force all of my clients to use chronometer, but I will say I have all but one. using chronometer someone wanted to stick into macro factor. And I was like, you know what?

[Bryan Boorstein]: 46:21

Hehehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 46:22

I told him, if we can make progress, right? And I was like, you send me a couple of days in there, like I'll be good with it. And we are cruising along. So he has proved me wrong, you know, in that standpoint. But clients use chronometer. And the real reason there is like, I pay for all my clients to use chronometer so I can view all their food logs, right? So I can,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 46:41

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 46:41

you know, go in and verify. I like to use this kind of statement, verify. don't trust, like I don't want to have to trust that that's, you know, what you're doing. I go in and look when I need to. So there's that. I use Telegram for communication. The main reason there that I don't use WhatsApp is WhatsApp is pretty much used exclusively around the world for communication. And I wanted to be able to differentiate work and personal life so that I don't miss like the message from my mom sort of thing because it got buried in like work messages sort of thing. So I use Telegram for that. And I have a private chat with all of my clients there. And then I have my Google Sheets based system that I sell, Shameless Plug, for what a lot of the upgrade orchestration is built around. And that is for us keeping track of sharing files, right? Lab work gets uploaded into there. If we have DEXA scans, right? A GI map, different things like that that I've been recently doing. Those go in there to share files. we have your weekly check-in sheet, right? Where we're gonna have our fasted morning weigh-ins, our check-in photos go in there. I have a lot of orchestrations that I've built to give us averages so that we can have snapshot data, say like, okay, what is our current periodization? Is it muscle gain? Is it fat loss? Based off of which one of those, I have models that I have built that help put us, hey, this is our upper and lower threshold for rate of gain, rate of loss. Are we within that? So to hold objective data is what we use that for. I have a check-in form where I am collecting then subjective data. What worked well? What didn't work well? What specific questions do you have for me? How are you feeling about the overall protocol we're doing? And then I want to know biofeedback, right? Stress, sleep, hunger, energy, digestion, some of these other, what I call non-direct impacting factors of muscle gain, fat loss, and obfuscation of those. sort of things to know, okay, if stress is like, peaked the fuck out for a few weeks now, I know the goal is fat loss, we need to add calories back in to keep your head in the game so you don't crash and burn sort of thing. Use that, and then I, like you, submit what I call asynchronous check-ins. So what I tell my clients specifically because I am on the, oh boy, I'm gonna botch this. Eastern, like what's the opposite of a hemisphere? Hemisphere is like north to south, like whatever. I'm... I'm in Asia, right? So I am in the future. So what I say is like, hey, if our check-in day is Monday, submit your information Sunday night, take your photos on Saturday or whatever. By the time you wake up Monday morning, your check-in is back to you and you're ready to start the week sort of thing. So that is how I structure it. I use Loom. Videos are generally like four to 15 minutes. Like you said, sometimes if I'm doing a blood work review or the most recent one was a... was a stool sample review, right? Those get a little bit longer. Those are like 30 minutes sometimes, even though I don't mean for them to be that long. It's just what happens sometimes,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 49:48

Right,

[Aaron Straker]: 49:48

and there's a lot to cover.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 49:49

right. Passion, man.

[Aaron Straker]: 49:50

And then we iterate week over week, right? We might bring in some supplements. We might pull other ones out, depending on things. I have a newer guy who started, and he's lower testosterone, and he's like, hey, I wanna go the natural route. you know, if I can, so we're throwing, you know, the kitchen sink at that. I'm really excited about that one. He's like super, super into it too. So I feel like we're gonna get a good one-to-one to really see if we get any good information out of that. And then yeah, you know, iterate week over week. We have Telegram for communication for when things pop up. Training videos, what's nice is Telegram, you can just pretty much upload, you know, unlimited anything in there. which makes it really, really nice too. And that is very, very helpful part is being able to review some of the training videos and stuff because there's always things that come by. Like for instance, this week, one of my guys sent me a video or sent me as like some of his results and his like his bicep curls, he was doing like 35s for like 18 reps or something. And he's like 165 pounds and I'm like. I'm calling bullshit, like send me a video of that sort of thing. I was like, either I'm right or I'm going to have this massive fucking ego hit. And yeah, things could get cleaned up a little bit. And I was

[Bryan Boorstein]: 51:10

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 51:10

like, okay,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 51:11

that's

[Aaron Straker]: 51:11

here's what

[Bryan Boorstein]: 51:11

still

[Aaron Straker]: 51:11

we want

[Bryan Boorstein]: 51:11

pretty

[Aaron Straker]: 51:11

to do.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 51:12

solid if it's just cleaned up a little bit, you know? It's not bad.

[Aaron Straker]: 51:15

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 51:16

So question real quick, just a little bit off-tension, but you mentioned the guy who wants to increase his testosterone naturally, and so this is a conversation that I had with the guy that I met with last month, and

[Aaron Straker]: 51:27

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 51:27

he has talked about how his view is that a lot of guys with lower testosterone tend to be exposed to a ton of... I'm gonna mess this phrasing up, societal estrogens. What's the actual way of saying that?

[Aaron Straker]: 51:45

I believe it's Xenoestrogens.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 51:48

So basically things like EMFs from your phone, from your computer, different like plastic bottle things, stuff like that.

[Aaron Straker]: 51:57

And what can happen is, I mean, I'm a few years out of when I actually like learned about this, but there's specific things that can get into the body that are there. They fit into the estrogen receptor, but are not specifically like the estrogen hormone. Right. So there's like, you know, like using the lock and key example, there is bound to be some other key that's been manufactured somewhere else in the world. that will fit into your front door sort of thing. It's just like a prop, the likelihood is low, but it will happen with enough keys out there. So there are things like that. But yeah, that is the way that it was explained to me

[Bryan Boorstein]: 52:35

Is that

[Aaron Straker]: 52:36

years

[Bryan Boorstein]: 52:36

a route

[Aaron Straker]: 52:36

ago.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 52:36

that you take with that client as well? Is that something naturally that you're trying to focus on?

[Aaron Straker]: 52:41

I mean, besides like, hey, clean up like your BPA, you know, plastic bottles in glass sort of thing. What I found more so are like really like I've never come across it. You are kind of the exception that I know of this. Someone who comes to me that I see with like low numbers that isn't really, really stressed, that isn't training like seven days per week sort of thing. And those are the first places that I'm going to look because they are. they're the largest, you know? So that's basically that.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 53:17

Yeah, maybe that's just because I have all those other things in order that that was like the next lever that he was going to pull, you know?

[Aaron Straker]: 53:24

Well, yeah,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 53:24

But

[Aaron Straker]: 53:24

you

[Bryan Boorstein]: 53:24

that's

[Aaron Straker]: 53:24

have to

[Bryan Boorstein]: 53:24

the main

[Aaron Straker]: 53:25

go somewhere

[Bryan Boorstein]: 53:25

thing.

[Aaron Straker]: 53:25

else.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 53:26

Yeah, that was the main thing he suggested to me was, hey, like get a protective thing for your computer. So when it's on your lap, it's not directly, you know, on a pillow because apparently

[Aaron Straker]: 53:34

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 53:35

the EMFs get through the pillow. And then I was Googling this because I was curious and apparently holding your cell phone in your pocket is even worse than putting a computer on your lap because the cell phone generates higher EMFs than the computer does. And so I'm supposed to get like a whole stir for my cell phone, which I still haven't done yet. But just one of those things that I guess, you know, just curious if you'd experienced that too. Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 54:01

Yeah, I haven't gone down those ones. I mean, there's a lot like, I'll be transparent what we're doing with this guy. Like he wanted to know about like Tancat Ali and Fadoja. So we're gonna run those and test like Boron for free testosterone. I wanted to keep it simpler. We're also like zinc and magnesium and like covering the bases sort of thing like vitamin D, K2, like making sure it's not from a nutrient deficiency, which I don't think so. calories up, like putting us in a hyper caloric state to make sure, uh, reducing training a little bit, systemically, uh, fatiguing trainings, where we're reducing, like actually loading in those sorts of things. That was all I can think of off the top of my head, but there might

[Bryan Boorstein]: 54:47

Gotcha.

[Aaron Straker]: 54:47

be some other things that I just care.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 54:48

That's cool. Maybe at some point we'll have an expert on and talk about testosterone at a more nuanced level. But basically, I kind of went over my process in the last stanza of speaking. So one thing I wanted to throw out there as well is that one thing that's been increasing in popularity with people recently for me in the last year or so has been just a one-off consultation. So I've been doing a ton of these. because I try to talk people out of working with me one-on-one and yet they still want insight for whatever reason. I would say the most common is, number one would be training program design. Number two would be some sort of insight into my coaching practices and things like that. The development of our train heroic program and the apps and things like that. But I do one-off consults all the time. So I do these at $200 an hour or 120 for half an hour and you can literally just ping me and we'll set up a time and you can talk about whatever it is that you want to talk about. So that's one thing I do. And then another thing I've been doing with a couple clients is writing one off programs for them. So instead of having them as a client that will be with me for nine months or whatever, they're like, Hey, I want to pay you to write me a three month. program that they understand isn't going to be changing every week or anything like that, but it's going to have a bunch of detail about like how you might progress through it, you know, when to take D load weeks, a D load template, things like that. And so I'll do one off programs for $500 for like a three month cycle for somebody. And this is primarily used by people that are going off on deployment, and they don't have access to the internet where they're going to be. And so I just write this all in an Excel sheet that they can download. So yeah, those are kind of the other two avenues beyond one-on-one coaching where we can kind of work together.

[Aaron Straker]: 56:45

Yeah, so I stopped doing the one-on-one consults and I mean, I did enjoy them and I do like that's something that's been a 180 degree turn from when I started the business. I used to, the consults mortified me and I'm just naturally very kind of like, I don't want to say like socially awkward, but like social anxiety, right? Like even in the gym, I'm still very, very quiet. I speak to very few people sort of thing. But when I know the frame of the conversation, and we're talking nutrition, lifting weights, blood work, my fucking bread and butter, I love it. So that is something I should actually bring back because I would enjoy that. And the hard thing with it is you have to price it to where it ends up being worth your time, unfortunately. And that does get kind of pricey, right? Because at the end of the day, I would rather just, of the times that I'm not already working, I don't want an extra 75 bucks. I want to sit on my ass and look at Reddit for an hour. You know what I mean? Like, and that's me being completely honest.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 57:52

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 57:52

I don't, you know, I'm not like scratching and hustling for every dime I can make. So it does, you end up, it ends up having to be priced enough to be worth your time. But I do, you know, kind of enjoy them. And there are people who are, you know, are in a financial position to afford coaching sort of thing, but they do have the, the kind of the resolve to be. individual intrinsically motivated to follow a program. So, which is basically the complete opposite of what most people who move into coaching me, they need that accountability. They don't have that intrinsic kind of determination. So that is something that I might bring back in the future. But what you said about the one-off programs for like guys on deployment and stuff, that's really, really cool. That's a fantastic use case there.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 58:38

Yeah, I'm much like you. I love talking about things that are my bread and butter. I mean, it gets me so amped. And the way that I make sense of it and make it worth it for me, sort of, is that when I do these one-on-one consult calls, I purposefully state that we're not doing them on video. And I literally go out for a walk, and I will walk an hour and get, you know, 6,000 steps in as we're talking. And so... I would probably be going for a walk anyways, I would just be listening to a podcast and learning something as opposed to helping someone. And so for me, it's kind of like a one to one exchange. Exchange. And I love it. Like I enjoy it. So, so I love those consults. And if anybody, you know, wants to book an hour or a half hour of my time and hang out with me while I go for a walk, I am I am fully on board with

[Aaron Straker]: 59:27

I'm

[Bryan Boorstein]: 59:27

that.

[Aaron Straker]: 59:27

sorry.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 59:30

So what did I miss? Are we? Did we cover everything? If there's anything you wanna add here at the end.

[Aaron Straker]: 59:40

I mean, I think we've covered everything. I'm sure we might get some follow-up questions from people who are interested or anything like that, which obviously would be fantastic. Brian will try and steer you away from his coaching.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 59:50

Hehehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 59:51

I will welcome you with open arms.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 59:53

Hehehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 59:53

Maybe,

[Bryan Boorstein]: 59:53

Hehehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 59:54

you know, if I'm confident that I can help you, right, I will. I don't think so. Yeah, I mean, that covers pretty much everything, you know, and this is, I mean, obviously I have some other things like with upgrade and stuff, but that's more of like a, you know. a one-off sort of thing, which you can, you know, go to the upgrade website. We'll have all that information up there, but yeah, I think we've covered coaching

[Bryan Boorstein]: 1:00:18

I'll

[Aaron Straker]: 1:00:18

quite

[Bryan Boorstein]: 1:00:18

add

[Aaron Straker]: 1:00:18

sufficiently.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 1:00:19

real quick that when I try to convince people not to do my one-on-one coaching, one of the things that I try to do is push them towards the group programs. And this is just because I feel like if someone goes through my group program for three, six, nine months, then they have a really good understanding of just the general programming principles that I use and kind of some of the expectations over the course of training. And so then if they come back to me, which happens somewhat often, and they say, hey, I really enjoyed the group program, but like now that I've gone through that, I really have this much more specific goal and I wanna work with you, then I'm like, awesome. You're kind of already indoctrinated into like the culture and the understanding of my methodologies and stuff like that. And so it's oftentimes a much easier transition. Another thing, just a final thought that I do with my one-on-one coaching is, is oftentimes I'll use a higher price tag for the first three months. And then just cause that's a lot more work for me to kind of get them on board and understanding the way things are type thing. And then once the process has smoothed out a bit, we can talk about whether it would make sense for rates to drop slightly from there, you know, 10, 15%, something along those lines. So that's another kind of route that I'll often go with people.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:45

Yeah. In terms of mine, I've done things in the past where I started my coaching business was very straightforward, one-on-one nutrition coaching sort of thing. And then for like two years, I moved into a group coaching program, which worked really, really well. Financially, I got a lot of great feedback from it. If I were to be very honest, why the reason I ended up moving away from it is... I wasn't delivering the caliber of results that I wanted to out of that because it was a group program. You had to make assumptions on timelines and those sorts of things. And it just kind of, I grew to not love it because I wanted my coaching to be correlated with, when you go to Aaron, you get the fucking results sort of thing. And I wasn't delivering at the results that I wanted to. So it kind of, peeled that apart a little bit and went back to a more individualized model, which is it honestly ended up being, you know, a little bit less money and more time from my standpoint. But from, from, from me personally, I feel a lot better about my placing now. And of course things can always change in the, in the future, but I feel really, really good around things right now. I feel very, very convicted, which is always fun when you know, like I'm sure you've known Brian, like when there was times with the CrossFit gym and stuff in the beginning, and you're like, is this programming for the week good? Do we have enough recovery period between Monday and Wednesday for some of these overlapping movements and those sorts of things where you're like, trepidatious through things. You're like, I'm not incredibly confident, you know? And of course I went through those with my coaching now, but I still do have some cases where I do not feel 100% confident, but they are complicated cases. Let's just put it that way there.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 1:03:40

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to the point that you made, I think that when I write group programs, I'm writing what I think would be effective for call it 80% of the population and understanding that there's a hundred percent going to be a 10% outlier on one side and a 10% outlier on the other side. And there's only so much that you can do within the group program structure in regards to that, as far as individual recovery or individual response to stimulus and things like that. And so that's one place where it would be much more conducive to have a one-on-one coaching relationship with this person, because then you can really kind of work into that nuance and find exactly where they are. spectrum.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:04:22

Definitely.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 1:04:23

Yep. That's all I got, man.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:04:25

I think so from my standpoint as well. So to listeners out there, hopefully this has been an insightful and informative episode into the way that Brian and I do some things for other coaches out there, hopefully especially newer coaches, insightful as well for some of the ways that we have ended up structuring our things over the years. As always, questions, anything like that, follow ups, you can, I would say most easily reach Brian and I on Instagram or... leaving a comment on YouTube would be the best way. We're quite diligent there. As always, Brian and I are appreciative of the continued interest in Eat, Train, Prosper, and we will talk to you next week.

[Bryan Boorstein]: 1:05:06

you.