Want to learn the secret to building a successful online coaching business in the fitness industry? We've got successful online coach, Zack, shedding light on it all in this episode. The man behind many transformation stories, Zach shares his journey from personal trainer to online coach, revealing how he found fulfillment in the art of coaching. But it's not all smooth sailing. He opens up about the highs and lows of personal training, reminding us that it's not just about making money, but also finding passion in your work.

Ever thought about how a business coach might fast-track your progress? Zach shares his insights on this, explaining how a mentor can make all the difference. But beyond business, we venture into the realm of mental health. Zach stresses the importance of a holistic approach to fat loss, recognizing that physical fitness is just one piece of the puzzle. We discuss the impact of mental health on client success, highlighting how crucial it is to manage personal stress effectively.

--------- EPISODE CHAPTERS ---------

(0:00:00) - Online Coach's Lessons and Success

(0:03:40) - Benefits of Hiring a Business Coach

(0:13:51) - Simplifying Nutrition and Fitness for Consistency

(0:21:27) - Fat Loss and Personal Training Journey

(0:25:55) - Mental Health's Impact on Client Success

(0:33:37) - Finding Balance and Uncovering Personal Stress

(0:37:56) - Personal Growth and Building a Business

(0:48:27) - Transformation and Hiring Strategies

(1:00:00) - Seeking Help, Delivering Value, Successful Business

(1:02:47) - Business Role Models and Success Reality

(1:13:54) - Job Losses and Need for Support

For those who don't know, Zach and I are good friends and we've been good friends for a while, but Zach started his business a year and a half ago now.

Coming up to two years now.

Yeah, as an online coach and has been massively successful, and I know a lot of people watching the podcast would like to become online coaches or tailor their business to what you're doing and the way you go about things. You've been a massive success. So, first off, I just want to ask why did you become an online coach? Yeah, good question.

Firstly, thank you for the kind intro mate.

My head's inflating.

I'll give you the honest answer around online coaching.

So where I first fell into it.

I was doing a little bit of personal training in just like a local studio in the town next sort of near uni. I did that purely because it was an incredible hourly rate, like that was kind of how I fell into it. I quite liked the gym, like I was pretty sporty and it just seemed a natural job to do. It worked well. The problem was then that I broke my wrist, remember when I did that. Yeah, it was just a whole night there. I was like a year's on it, but I then obviously couldn't work in the gym for a month and I was kind of like well, I've got no money coming in now.

And then came across some people online you know we'll talk about Adam later, I'm sure who kind of helped me transition online. And again, I'll be fully honest, and a lot of coaches out there won't admit it it was money driven initially because it could be very lucrative. If you know what you're doing, there's a lot of money in the trade. But I'd say as soon as I really got into online coaching, like I started kind of delving into a bit more of the coaching science and got a bit more practice at my trade, that's when I really did start to fall in love with the art of coaching, and I think that has just kind of grown ever since. So yeah, it definitely was money driven initially, but we've discovered a bit of a passion along the way, which is cool.

Yeah, you talked about p-ting before. This is something obviously we've discussed off camera. You know just going out for dinner and drinks and stuff. But you weren't that big of a fan of p-ting. You liked working but you were more wanting to get online quickly. When you found out about it, what would you say were the negatives of p-ting and the positives of p-ting?

Yeah, P-ting is great in the initial instance because it's very social. Like you know, you get to meet some cool people. The problems that come with p-ting is that, especially as a young person getting into the industry, you get walked over a lot and you kind of end up bending over backwards for everyone else and it's not actually massively fulfilling when you're, quite frankly, turning up to take a load of money off somebody, just to stand next to them and count their reps, you know, and stuff like that. It's not actually massively fulfilling. And the thing for me was that I remember when I had that month off of the gym and started my online stuff I obviously had been p-ting prior I had a couple of clients working in the gym. I left for a month and came back and resumed the p-ting sessions and all of the clients had progressed more in that month where I hadn't been there, compared to, I felt, like the two, three months I had them and I kind of started to realize like right, I think if I just am working for the money here, I'm never going to be driven to go and actually do more and improve and develop, whereas actually when it came to the online side of things, when I first got you know and I'm sure again we'll talk about Rob and Stu and Brad later on my kind of original three best clients and actually being able to create a change in someone's life.

When you can do that and be responsible for someone's life, having a drastic improvement, that is the most fulfilling thing in the world. Like I always say to people, like if I didn't need a wage I'd do it for free, like it was just absolutely immense. So I think it was just. It took a bit of time to discover what I really wanted out of the job. And don't get the wrong money's nice, everyone likes money, but the fact that I get to wake up every day now and just do work, that I enjoy work, that's fulfilling and I'm excited to spring out of bed like you just can't beat that. So it was never gonna last long in PT because I was purely just turning up for an hourly wage.

And one thing that always sort of like sorry, a bit closer. One thing that always sort of stuck out to me from early on was you went with a business coach pretty quickly, I'd say not straight away, but maybe a month in. You were with Adam and he's an elite business coach and he's taking you and his team to you know great heights, obviously with a lot of hard work from yourself. And what would you advise someone in terms of if they're looking for a business coach? Because this sort of mentor, in a way because this is something you always say to me is like get one, like it's the best thing you've ever done. But if someone's looking now and listening to this and wondering you know I'm a bit on edge should I do it? Should I invest the money? What would you recommend to them?

I think with this sort of stuff you've always got to look at and I think the tricky thing for people is that it costs money. Right, and when you're in the initial stages of a business and you haven't got a big pool of money sat there, it can be scary to go and invest a load of money in a mentor. Right, you're thinking, oh, it might cost me 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 pounds. But at the same time you've got to look at like, what's the cost of you not doing it right? What's the cost of in 12 months time? Your business is still only pulling in 500 pounds a month and you're only just covering your outgoings. You know when you could potentially be looking at earning 50, 60, 70, 80,000 pounds by the end of the year because you've got someone there to fast track that progress. Your cost isn't the 3,000 pounds, the 5,000 pounds of the mentorship. The cost for you is the fact that you're not earning the bigger money down the end of the line. And again, there is a lot more to it than the money. Obviously it comes from the fulfillment and the enjoyment for the job. But at the same time you've got to look at right, if I want to get somewhere fast.

There's going to be people who have been there, lived it, breathed it, made the mistakes and, you know, can now guide me through those potholes and guide me down the wrong way, down the right way, sorry. And it just means that ultimately, you can just save yourself so much stress and so much aggro because every time you've got a problem, you turn around and go when this happened to you, what did you do? They go I did this, you replicate that and nine times out of 10, you fix the problem. So it just means that you get there so much quicker. You avoid all the mistakes. And, yeah, generally it's just been like I said. Like I said before, it's been one of the best things I've ever done. I would never have been able to achieve what I've done so far just trying to figure out my own Googling random stuff. You know, it just would never happen like that.

So what they do is kind of just like provide you the structure that you follow a few lessons they've learned. Obviously, adam has been very successful in this space and serves his team, so they're sort of providing you the structure. You know how to run payment systems, things that are out of my right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They teach you all the behind the scenes stuff, which not the boring stuff as well, but like the stuff which is you don't really think about when you think about starting a business, if that makes sense, yeah, yeah, Stuff which people skip over. They're teaching you all the behind the scenes stuff and how to excel your business and grow properly, right?

Yeah, definitely. I think that's where I definitely chose the right person in Adam and his team. So, again, there might be some PTs and coaches watching who have been targeted by these sort of mentors and stuff before, and I think it's always good to look at what is this mentor specialty? Right, Because there are other names out there for you know, mentors that take coaches who have already established businesses, who want to really become household names, and there are people like Adam who take people from absolute zero, from scratch, no idea what they're doing to being able to basically get out of their other jobs and do it full time, and that's exactly what Adam and his team do. So it's got a nice phased approach to it where, like you say, in that initial phase it's like right, how on earth do I take payments from people? Because when I was PT and I was waiting for bank transfers, but then, like I said, you not I hate saying you get walked over a little bit in PT, but at the same time, I was 19 at the time and I'm asking these people for a couple of hundred pounds a month and I'm like, can you please bank transfer me please? I need to pay my rent. You know, and they're also kind of like you know they've got busy lives, they don't kind of see it as that important. So you end up getting your payments three to four days late from clients. You know you're worrying about how you're going to cover your outgoings Whereas, like you know, I got taught from day one.

We've worked with Adam. It's like, right, set up with a payment system that does buy red debits and now, like, my payments just go through, like and they just do themselves and if they fail I get an email and I can chat to clients about getting them sorted. But it's those little things like you say that get you set up. And it's the one time things at the start that you need to set up. But then also, once you've got those things out, the way you've been now looking at right, like how do I market effectively, how do I actually get on the phone with people when actually starting people up, and then actually, how do I create amazing results? Right, because you know we've spoken about this a lot where business becomes a lot easier when you're genuinely just really good at what you do. And I've actually got some slides prepared for a presentation I'm doing this weekend at Adam's event where I'm going to talk about some of this stuff. But you can now look at my current client base now 64% of our current clients. You can trace a line of referrals back to the first good result. All of it just sprung off the back of that and it made my life so much easier.

But I never knew how to coach until I joined up with Adam and, you know, learned from people like Nathan, like Jake, like Sam. So it's really got to be looking at like, what skills do you lack? And if you are an established coach and you can get an amazing result and you've got a well established business already, yeah, maybe the pathway that I went down won't be the right pathway for you. Maybe you need somebody who can just teach you how to turn the turbos on with scaling a business. But for me, I needed everything from basically ground zero. Otherwise, you know you're almost sort of pissing in the wind with trying to do one thing, trying to do another. You have no idea, like, what that direction really looks like and what your next steps are. To have someone map that out for you and make that incredibly clear so you always know what the next two steps ahead of you are. It's amazing and it's something you can also transfer into fitness coaching as well Is that we obviously want to have that big end goal in the future.

Like a lot of the guys you know, they want the six packs and they want the biceps to size of Brighton down the end of the line. But there's a lot of work that needs to be done in that time and it can be quite overwhelming. I just hit the plant. It can be quite overwhelming. Think about like there is so much work to do in that time. There's so much that needs to be done. But if you can understand what the end of week one should look like, what the end of week four should look like, what the end of week eight should look like, you at least know that when you're getting to those stages you can tell whether you're on track or not.

And if you're not.

You can pivot and you can adjust and you're not kind of sat there thinking on my days it's never going to happen. You, know.

Obviously, I think when you started out correct me if I'm wrong you were sort of just like a men's online coach is what you specialize in. Now you're specializing in fat loss for men and I think that's really big Cause. I think there's a lot of people from COVID and just having a bit of a sedentary lifestyle who are packing on a lot of weight and have lost that confidence. And what I've seen from following you on Instagram and watching your clients on Instagram is these guys just look like they've got a new life after they've had the results. They look happy. Some have started fitness accounts. Rob, who will touch on later, works for you now and it's just like that's such like a nice thing to watch how these people's lives sort of do with 360 just by, you know, gymming and a few lifestyle changes and nutrition changes, and that's huge. What are some common challenges which you found with men who are trying to lose fat and like, how would you address these problems when it when they come to you?

Common problems, I'd say there's always going to be a thing around like a lack of knowledge, right? I think typically with the guys that I tend to work with they tend to be early 30s, late 20s, that kind of thing there's always this assumption that more training, and training harder and just spending more time exercising is gonna be the thing that potentially helps you lose weight, helps you get in shape, and I think that's a very outdated way of thinking and for me, I feel like the biggest part of my job is now how do I remove friction? How do I make this as easy as possible for a client? And don't get me wrong, there are certain clients of mine who just love training and I'm like cool, we can get you in the gym six, seven days a week if you want, that's fine.

But if you're someone who genuinely doesn't like the gym they don't like exercising, they don't like doing this stuff it's not gonna be realistic to expect somebody to go and train six, seven days a week and be able to bring themselves into an environment that they're not happy in. So for me, it's now about, like, if that's not the way for them, how do we now create an approach that actually works for this individual, and that's where I think a lot of people, a lot of coaches and PT's out there, say that their training is tailored and personalised, when I can tell you now that's it's not the case.

You know 98, 99% of people it's not. They're just they haven't really got that ability to kind of generally tailor things. But the biggest challenge then comes from how do we create a process that works for this individual, and that lack of knowledge makes it virtually impossible for the individual to do it on their own, because they only know one way. It's typically I need to start going to the gym every single day, smash the gym for two hours, and then they think that you know, cut out all the junk food, live off salads.

Yeah, I mean, you will lose weight in the short term, but you're gonna bounce back incredibly hard and go the other way as soon as you have a terrible day at work and you know you need some sort of comfort. You're not gonna be able to stick to that process long term. So it's then, yeah, the big challenge, like I said I've probably repeated myself twice now but the challenge is understanding that for that individual, how do I make this process work for me when they don't know any other way? And that's the biggest shift I find that we have to work on.

Sammy, who I had on the podcast performance nutritionists. She was awesome when we were talking about stuff that and she said basically what you just said there is you strip everything back, you go to a chicken, broccoli, rice salad. People just lose motivation after like a week and a half and then they fall back to their old habits. She said what she looks at doing is if you're gonna get that takeaway, let's make some smarter choices and get that takeaway. Let's get some veg, let's change the you know the battered stuff to this, let's get a lean meat sauce, blah, blah, blah. And she says that's how she sort of has. Her success is not by trying to drastically change things because people don't wanna do that. People don't wanna just eat salad all day. People wanna enjoy themselves. People wanna be able to eat out. What's your view on what you guys do and I know it's quite similar from our discussions on being able to be like if you want that takeaway, get it, but make sure that's make a smarter choice on this. What's your view on?

that? Yeah, no, very similar, and I think that's definitely the approach to take. I look at that in a similar way of yeah, definitely, can we, you know, swap the chips for vegetables? You know, get a salad, a side salad, instead of your fries. Or, you know, instead of like, say, the battered meats, it's like can we get something a bit leaner?

Those are definitely important considerations, but what I also like to look at is how can we look at potentially being a bit more proactive as opposed to reactive, rather than turning up at the restaurant or turning up at the takeaway, trying to then decide like, oh, where can I make a smarter choice? It's like, can we look at this over a four to five day period as opposed to just like one meal kind of thing? So if we know we've got like the trip to the restaurant on Friday, or we've got a family coming over for a takeaway on Friday, it's like can we do something on Tuesday, wednesday and Thursday to almost kind of combat the potential I hate saying damage, because it probably gives off the wrong kind of vibe on that but can we use Tuesday, wednesday, thursday to kind of create a bit of a buffer for ourselves, knowing that we've got a bit more of a calorie dense evening coming on Friday, for example, and put ourselves in that bit of a better position. So even if you did want to go and, you know, not swap your chips for a side salad like you could almost do the work in the days leading up and the days after to kind of compensate for those extra calories on a Friday night, for example. So that's the way I try and tend to look at.

It is like can we look at this with a bit of a zoomed out lens and see where we can make those adjustments so that actually if you do just want to enjoy yourself and not think about it, then you've got the license to do so, but you've got to make that choice beforehand. I think the problem we tend to see with a lot of guys is that they go and do the takeaway on the Friday night, then they feel guilty and then spend the next three, four days restricting themselves to high health because they feel like they've got to a point of failure, whereas actually if the takeaway was part of the grand plan at the start of the week, then actually that takeaway is never going to be a failure. You're never going to feel the need to punish yourself in the following days, if that makes sense.

Yeah, completely agree. I think another thing I was going to touch on was staying consistent, and this is huge. I struggle staying consistent in a lot of aspects, but something I'm getting a lot better with just from building discipline. And what I see with your clients is a lot of them and I can't speak for all of them because I don't know all of them, but from what I've seen they're all really consistent in what they do and I'm going to guess that's down to them, but it's also down to what you and Rob do. Is there anything in particular that you guys sort of try and tailor into your training to keep them consistent, whether that's dropping the messages, doing check-ins, questionnaires. Obviously I've never been a part of your team, so I'm not sure the behind-the-scenes stuff, but what type of stuff do you guys do to keep them consistent? Obviously it comes from themselves, but in terms of your end, what do you guys do?

Yeah. So obviously we have the typical stuff like obviously we run weekly check-ins and things like that and make sure that we're regularly reviewing progress, first and foremost because I think how do I go down this in a way that it makes sense? I think a lot of guys will. Yeah, like we said earlier, they struggle to see what the shorter term milestones look like between where they are now and the dream end result, right. So I think a big thing for us is now looking at.

I think a lot of people get hung up on their failures a lot and kind of only really think about the stuff they've done wrong, but a lot of the time they don't understand what the good stuff looks like in the short term. Again, there's little things like on the app we use, for example, like you get a little summary screen at the end of your workout to let you know all the new personal best you've hit, and that's massive and a lot of the guys like that and that takes the focus away then from we tend to see a lot of the guys when they first join us, their mindset around the gym is I'm gonna go to the gym for an hour and a half and but what they're actually doing. That time isn't necessarily part of the thought process, whereas actually you can't progress from doing an hour and a half in the gym other than just going for longer. And if you wanna constantly see progression, it's the feeling of achievement. Right, that's where it all stems from. If people don't feel like they're achieving stuff in the short term, they're not gonna be able to stick to it long enough to get that achievement in the long term.

So we need to now help people understand what a successful gym session looks like and help them understand that they have progressed from the week before. And that's what those little personal best summary screens do and stuff. And we then tend to find that people get more invested in the progress within the gym as opposed to just going to the gym. Because, like I said, you can't progress from going to the gym for 90 minutes other than doing 95 minutes, 100 minutes, 105, and you're gonna come to a point, if you go down that route, where you're gonna have to live there. You're gonna run out almost in progression.

But with things like with our lifts, with our kind of cardio and things like that, there's always performance markers we can improve on. So there's always something they can go and aim for the next week and walk out the gym feeling proud of themselves. And that's where I think the consistency comes is that we build out a process for people and help them understand where those progression points are and they actually walk out the gym feeling proud of themselves and they've got something out of being in there, as opposed to having to go in there and sweat through an hour and a half just because they feel like that's the right thing to do. If you know what I mean.

So like sort of the extrinsic reward type thing, like you said, the reward system after each thing. What sort of software are you using?

for that it's called Trainerize, so it's like a coach to client platform thing.

So we just sort of pay a fee to have all our clients on there and it's very well built actually and it allows us to keep an easy track of a lot of stuff. And I think that's a big, big point for us is that we want to try and keep the whole thing as simple as possible. Whilst we obviously have a lot of stuff that we have to work on, we want to make sure that everything is as frictionless as possible for the client, so everything that we can ever need to know will be stored in one place. It's really accessible and it's really easy to use, because when you're in a state where you're a bit resistant to making change, you will find any friction point you can and any reason you can find to not go and do the work. So if we can remove any issues of I don't know how to track my workouts, I don't know what workout I should do, I don't know how often I should be going, if we can map that all out in one place, it's really really simple. You've just then got the ability to turn up and basically look at a phone screen and know exactly what you need to do that day and it just takes all of that thinking out of it.

And you can imagine that when you've got clients who are working maybe nine, 10 hour days at work and they've got a lot of stress going on, the last thing they want to think about is when they get out of work and head to the gym. They don't want to have to decide what their workout is themselves. They don't want to have to try and figure out oh shit, what was I lifting last week? It might have been 20 kilos, but it might have been 22, I don't know, I'll just do 20 again. It just eliminates all that risk of complacency and just yeah, it just clears everything up and makes it nice and smooth and nice and frictionless and I feel like that's a big thing for the guys. It's just making it frictionless for them Again just adds to that feeling of they know that they can get in there and do stuff and it doesn't necessarily have to be a chore, you know they can actually go and enjoy that. Yeah for sure.

In terms of like programming and stuff, and obviously this is stuff we've done at rugby. We get like high-trophy program size programs, you know whatever our need is for rugby. Is there like a set program in terms of reps and sets, which you guys obviously Rob, does a lot of the programming, I think from what you said, yeah, at the moment you guys sit down together and run through it. Is there anything you do in particular for these guys in terms of losing fat, or is it just like a generic program tailored to what their needs are and what you guys do?

Yeah, so I think, when it comes to fat loss, you've got to remember that fat loss overall comes from like the nutrition and lifestyle change. To be honest, like the gym program itself. And what the gym program consists of, I'd say, is probably the least important thing in a fat loss journey, which a lot of people won't understand until they've been on the journey or they've coached the journey, the program itself. We just now need to look at what does this individual need? So if we've got someone, for example, who is, you know, massively overweight, we don't necessarily need to go in there and have them Pumping heavy weights and, you know, trying to get absolutely massive. We need to just build like a bit of a work capacity will be my first thoughts. It's like, can we get them in there? And of course, we want to avoid the mindset of I'm going to the gym for 60 minutes, but for me, I'm thinking how much work can this person get through in a 60 minute period? And that will be our progression model. So we're never going to be putting them under stuff that is going to put their joints in danger. We're never going to be putting them under under stress is that their body isn't able to deal with. We've got to kind of meet them where they're at and understand, like, what is this person capable of? And can we just add 1% of that every time, right? So for some people when they first start out like, say, if they are Really, really overweight, their joints aren't going to be in a great position to go and do things like running, to do things Like jumping around. They're not going to be doing things like that, they're going to be more doing pretty cardio, heavy stuff, machine-based work that they can use to kind of almost get their joints to a position where they can facilitate the hardest stuff. And as we kind of get that bit of a better ability, the body begins to adapt to that. We can start adding in those complexities to the point where now obviously you know Rob's been for a hell of a journey, rob's in a great condition right now. So we've got him more on like a functional type Training plan, like similar to probably sort of stuff that you self and I do, where he's doing a bit more running, he's doing a bit more like the metabolic conditioning and things like that.

But at the beginning it was very simple stuff, like we just don't want to ever throw someone in a deep end and risk injury, because ultimately the Problem with injury is a lot of general population clients. As soon as they get the slightest injury they think, right, that's me out, I can't do anything, whereas you self and I know, because we spent most of our time in rugby at rehab anyway you know that you get an ankle injury, you've still got a right length that can work and you know, you know there's benefits, that you've got core, you've got upper body, you've got conditioning you can do. We know that because we probably quite enjoy the training side of things and we'll find that way to make it work. But for a gen pop client the second they get the slightest little niggle, an elbow or a slight achy knee or a slight little back. They're like whoa, I'm not doing anything.

And then when that happens, you know happens, they're avert back to old habits. So you again, to summarize that, because I'm going on for like ages, you just got to meet the client where they're at, understand what is the biggest priority in terms of work on to right now. And if I've got someone who is morbidly obese, I'm not trying to make a bodybuilder out of them, I'm trying to get into a point where they can enjoy moving and being active, because that is going to be the overall thing that is going to facilitate the best result for them in terms of fat loss. And of course, we get the guys who go on to do a little bit more with the photo shoots and you know they get into more that sort of bodybuilding starting, which is fantastic, but they're not training like that from day one. They've almost got to earn the right to be able to go and do that, because if they try and do that from day one, body's gonna pack it and they're not gonna get nowhere.

Yeah, I think that's really really well said. Obviously, a large portion of well, the main focus of this podcast is mental health and Sort of talking about my journey and the people that come on. What I'd like to talk about is mental health of your clients and in terms of what I see from the outside is I See people who are a bit lost. I see people who have sort of let themselves go in some ways and, you know, just need a bit of guidance to put on the right track. And what I've seen from when you started and where you are now and I touched on it earlier is these people's lives have not just 360'd, not 180, 180, 360.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, then the full, huge change to their physical bodies. But you know, happy body, happy mind. And I just want to ask from your point of view, all these guys are so much happier, they look confident and I think that's huge. Dealing with them on a day-to-day basis, do you see a lot of difference in when these people first come to you and they're like Zach, I need your help to where they are now, and they're confident. You know they got their tops off on the beach show on holidays, like Stu, for example. Me talked about Stu, like I think you said his goal was he wanted to be confident, sort of being on holiday and and he has that now and he has that and that's gonna bring him in a good mental space from not feeling worried about his body. But I just want to ask, in terms of your clients in general, from when they first joined to where they are now, do you see a huge difference mentally, in sort of the way they conduct themselves?

Yeah, 100%, I think, in my view anyway. Of course I'm not a Psychologist, I'm not therapist or anything, but the way I view Mental health and this, this kind of mindset side of things, I almost try and see it as like a continuum, right. Like you get kind of a middle spot where there's they're not really kind of either side. You get people who probably struggle with more Mental health what we would call mental health issues, where they're kind of maybe in the negative. But we also we have a big aim to try and bring people up to that kind of neutral position. But I don't necessarily want to just stop at that neutral position. So we want to almost look at like once we dealt with mental health issues and done again without sounding like we are Therapists and counselors because we're not when the work that we have done Helps them to get up, back up to that sort of neutral point. It's then looking at right, how far into the positive Can we get? How far into the positive can we get and move away from it being about mental health and it being about mental performance? Yeah, and that's something that I'm absolutely massive on we got again is it comes with Meeting clients where they're at on that continuum.

So if we look at people like Rob, for example, where is that now? Our Conversations on the day today, as much he still what you know he works for me. Now there are still elements where he is my client and you know we do a lot of work for him. We are now looking less at Mental health of Rob. We're now looking at like mental resilience because he's got a lot going on in his personal life. There's a lot going on. He's got a lot to deal with work wise and you know I'm quite demanding as a Boss or employer, whatever you want to call it. You know I've got quite high standards because ultimately, what we built in terms of teams, nsf, comes from high standards. So for us it's now looking at when does that mental performance come from, where's the resilience, where is the consistency, whereas potentially, when we first started with potential other clients is like right at the moment we're feeling my heart to swear they feel fucking miserable.

Six out of seven days of the week.

I'm like right, can we just get to a point where we only feel miserable five days of the week, then four, then three then two, yeah, and you know, I think those things are just as important progress measures, and you can take those over to actions and behaviors as well.

Like I won't name names because again, this guy's a bit more private with with kind of how he likes to do with coaching. But We've got one of the guys on at the moment who works a very stressful job, probably works more hours than anybody I know, has a family to look after and, you know, generally developed some quite tough and challenging eating behaviors around His stress and very much a comfort eater. And when we got to first start up I'm talking, you know, probably six days out of seven days of the week he would fuck his diet up the wall and go absolutely mad on food anything he can find, whereas now you know, don't get me wrong he's no bodybuilder yet. We've still got a lot work to do. But we're at a point now where those real big slip-up days we may be getting one every three weeks, which as much as in the moment when he has that big slip-up he goes a bit. Oh, I feel terrible.

I'm like, look, we used to have six of these a week when I'll get one every three weeks. That is a hell of an achievement. So it's just about, then, understanding what does this client need to achieve to be able to feel better about themselves and also giving them the Space to be able to understand what that looks like, because it can be very Difficult to understand what that looks like when you're in it. I'm sure you can imagine yourself like when you're In the midst of a mental health struggle, like you get pretty ton of vision right. You can't see external things, where for us, it's just that ability to hold the space for a client and help them see. With that zoomed out lens we can actually open up a whole new perspective and I think that's absolutely huge.

Yeah, yeah. So what I talked about on the podcast, I think, with Joe, about like the five pillars of mental health, and one of them, which was the main one for both us, was exercise, no matter how small it was, and I think it's just, you can't beat it. In my opinion, if you get it like for me, people don't know me. For me, when I struggle, I do scroll, like with my ADHD, my anxiety, I do you scroll on my tiktok. I look at my phone two hours have gone by and like waiting for that hit of dopamine, I'm waiting, wait and wait. I'm like I need it, I need it. And then it was only one, like I saw a video and it was like stop doom scrolling, like you don't even remember what you watched two posts ago, yeah, and I was like I Can't remember anything, I just watched. But I'm doing it and that's. I think it's sort of like recognizing these problems and For an exercise for me it can be as little as putting my phone down, going for a walk without my phone and it's my girlfriend who started I started doing that with, and that that was massive, sort of just like being able to be present in my mind. Go for a walk without my phone and it doesn't matter how small, like the amount of exercise you do, you go back. You never feel worse than when you left, yeah, like I've never gone for a walk about my phone and gone back and gone. You know what I feel worse, I've always felt better every single time, ten out of ten. And I think when you just grow into it a bit more and I spoke about this with Joe is people get that Misconception that exercise has to be tough and exercise has to be strenuous and you have to sweat and has to be rubbish. When it's not the case, you can learn to really enjoy it and I think that's what you've got your clients doing is they probably had past experiences when they went to the gym. They didn't really know what they were doing and they felt a bit uncomfortable. And even I find the gym a bit Like uncomfortable. You get loads of people in there and like I've gym Maybe like seven, eight years now and I still get a bit like a bit on edge, yeah, but then I think just tailoring them like tailing their experience through that and getting them to enjoy it has like paid dividends and obviously in the results that you have on your Instagram. I think that's massive exercise, in particular, in terms of keeping a positive mindset.

You're someone who's a very positive guy. From being around you and the way you conduct yourself day to day, you never really see. You never see the problems. You can point out the problems, but you always find the solution just from getting to know you the last few years and being around, and that's something I've always admired about you in terms of pushing that onto clients and stuff, because I'm sure like I'd be a bit skeptical Going into an online coach being like is this guy gonna mug me off? Is he not like? You sent me a DM? Yeah, how do you keep a positive mindset for your clients? And that starts with you. That starts with you. That starts with Rob, portraying yourself well to them and getting them to trust you. Is there anything in particular that you find helps and keeping that positive mindset to help them and get them through their journey? Hello, the question.

Yeah, there's. There's a lot to it, and I think the first thing for me is the problem that they're presenting isn't always the real problem, and that's what I think I've. One of the biggest things I've learned as a coach Over the last little while is that the first problem that someone presents is often a smokescreen for something else.

So for me, I think the biggest thing that I like to do, and it's maybe not necessarily something that someone watching can kind of go in and just apply on their own, but I Will just sit and hold space right, as opposed to me coming in and going right. What's wrong when you go? I'm stressed and I come out with all these solutions of like go for a walk or I don't know, get a stress ball, you know, chucking shit at the wall, having it sticks.

Quite frankly, I think the biggest thing for me is just to sit there and listen and this is really ironic now in my mind because it does come from a Position of you always here if you're struggling, talk to somebody, and I am the worst in the world at that. I'm absolutely dreadful. Like I will wait until I feel like the world is crumbling around me and I'll go, please, I need help, and I'll sit in the corner quietly and try and whisper to someone can you just give?

me a hand.

But the ability to just give someone that Space to be able to unload this stuff. And it's tough when you're first getting into coaching to not take that Negative stress in as well. That's that's the tough. But you got to find a balance between I'm now not taking the stress away from the client, I'm just giving them the opportunity to be able to get out in the open. You'll often find that when someone has that space to talk into, they'll talk themselves back into the reality and they'll they'll uncover the actual issues themselves Just by you sitting there, just going tell me a little bit more or just actually giving them that space to speak With no expectation of you know, I'm never gonna get on a call with a client and say, right, by the end of this you are gonna feel absolutely fantastic. But at the same time I'm gonna ask you some questions. They're gonna probe a little bit deeper and help you understand a bit more about the way you're feeling. And when we can do that With the client, they can start to understand why they feel a certain way and they understand potentially the actual reasons beneath life. I give you for an example like you know, it's not something I talk about massively publicly, but I struggle with my food quite a lot over my last year of university Obviously we're only just finished that and and I always said to myself, it's because I'm so busy I haven't got time to cook. So, as much as I wasn't terrible, there was times where I would make decisions that probably weren't desirable in terms of the goals I was trying to push towards. I can sit over my hands up and own that. It was only when one of my own coaches, a lady called Jen, who was very deep into like client psychology and stuff, staffed out and had a chat with me that we kind of came to this realization that I'm saying I'm not sorting my own food out. I'm getting takeaways because I'm busy, but actually it takes eight minutes to do chicken and the air fire and you can chuck a bag of vegetables in the microwave while it's on. So eight minute dinner, but I would walk 15 minutes down to roosters or 10 minutes down to roosters, sit there and wait for 15 minutes for it to be cooked, walk home with it and eat it, and that took up an hour and I was doing that without a problem. So then we can then sit there and go. Actually, is it a time problem or is it something else? And it was like, actually it can't be a time problem, so I'm finding the time to do that.

It then transpired that actually I was stressed out and I'm a nut because I was trying to write a dissertation. I was trying to coach fitness clients, to coach business clients, trying to keep on top of my own stuff. I was seeking comfort. And the second that Jen and I uncovered that it was like I was like, oh my days, I could never see it before and it was so obvious. But it took just Jen sitting there and letting me talk a bit more about it and start to uncover my own thought processes. But then when she kind of said to me you're seeking comfort, I was like what do you mean? She's like well, what foods are you typically reaching for? And I was like well, I ran through this, this, this and this, and she said how many of those foods does your mum typically cook for you when you're at home? I'll say I live away from home these days and I was like about 90% of them was stuff that I grew up eating. It was mum's cooking, it was comfortable feeding foods and I'm like it was a mind blowing and ever since that moment I can.

Now, when I do get that feeling of like, oh yeah, I haven't got time, I'm just gonna go and get something quickly from Sainsbury so I can put in the microwave, I'm gonna go and grab a takeaway I sit there and I think do I genuinely not have time right now, or am I reaching for comfort because I'm lacking elsewhere in my life and I'll go? Actually, what have I done today? I've been at my desk for 10 hours straight dealing with stressful clients, dealing with stressful business clients, dealing with stressful things with tax returns and all the other sort of stressful stuff in business. Yeah, it's no wonder that I'm wanting something comfortable now because I've had a bloody hard day and the second I realized that I can go. Okay, cool, that's fine. I need to take a couple of hours off tomorrow to get myself a bit of me time, bit of time to de-stress, bit of time to relax. Let me make the right decision now and if I still want this stuff tomorrow, I can have it. Then I wake up in the next morning, phone off for the morning, go for a walk, go for a gym, get stuff done, and I feel immense again and I don't have thoughts of comfort food.

So I think the biggest thing to come from all of that is it's awareness is the biggest thing to allow you to then be able to go deal with your problems yourself.

Being aware of why your thought patterns work a certain way will be the key for you to be able to then go and do. What is it called? I have a little framework I use with certain clients like RSRs. It's like recognize, stop, replace, yeah. So I can Recognize, stop, replace, yeah. Recognize, stop, replace. So I can sit there and recognize that I'm now starting to lean towards comfort foods because I'm potentially stressed out. I can stop and go and rationalize it whilst I stop and go. Okay, is this the right move? Probably not. What do I then replace it with? Okay, I'm gonna go and actually have the chicken and vegetables that I'm having the fridge ready to go, because it is going to take eight minutes and it's gonna serve me towards my goals better. Yeah, and it takes that moment for you to stop and breathe, to actually analyze your decision making, which you will never be able to do if you don't understand why you're making certain decisions. If you know what I mean, perfect yeah, awesome.

So another thing I wanted to touch on was your clients, and you've had some amazing clients so far, but first of all I was gonna talk about Rob. Rob was your first client and he's now work alongside you, if I'm not wrong, and working for you now, which is, I think, sick. But talk about Rob and how you guys met and stuff.

Yeah, so when I first started online coaching properly and kind of obviously had started working with Adam, knew kind of what I was doing. In that sense I got, I signed three clients up in the first week or two, rob being one of them, and yeah, we've kind of had a long way. So where did Rob start? Rob was probably someone, like we've said earlier, who lost his direction of it, lost his way, keen sort of into like motorbikes and things like that. His problem was he drank a lot, smoked a lot not very good foods, in fairness, but again, probably off the back of a lot of personal struggles with relationships and things like that. That happened in the past.

I won't dive into it too much because obviously it's his business, but Rob was at a point where, yeah, very directionless, kind of just staying still in life and not really kind of going anywhere. He was. I think he had some family members and kind of friends who now, with Mitz, weren't really friends, they were just methods to make him feel better about himself because there was no one else but who were into the gym, strength training, bodybuilding probably not the most desirable characters to be around I'm sure he'll agree and hopefully no one will see this and they don't think it's them. But either way, the thing with Rob was we needed to get to a point where he actually had a bit of confidence in what he was doing right. So he went through phases for maybe two, three years prior to working with me, where he would do the same thing everyone else did, where they'd go to the gym and maybe do it for like two, three weeks, smash the living day like Sabbath, and then again just get bored because they didn't have these milestones in place.

They didn't have the structures in place to be able to maintain it long term. You do a couple of weeks cut out all the junk food, eat salads, maybe lose a couple of kilos, then again get bored, lose motivation, go back to the same stuff. So it was a bit of a yo-yo cycle on that front for quite a while. Obviously, I then started doing a little bit more on social media came across Rob, we had a couple of conversations and he ended up signing on. So obviously in that time we had a lot of work to do Over the I'll keep it brief so we're not running on too long but over the first. How long was it? He started with me in the September and I think by February or by February or March time he had lost 13 kilos, got not a bad little six pack on him as well and just kind of totally transformed the way he was kind of operating.

We also did the first photo shoot, which was pretty cool. Off the back of that we then spent a bit of time doing a bit of muscle building with him, which he didn't really like, and we kind of realized maybe bulking wasn't the way forward for him. We kind of it's a lot harder mentally to kind of do it right. We then shredded him back down again, did another photo shoot. At that point obviously uni was starting to pick up and be quite busy for me. Client numbers have grown by this point near we're talking maybe a year or so down the line and I did just need a little bit of help with how I was going to continue to grow, to be able to kind of obviously go and carry on building the business. I didn't want to just sit where I was until uni was finished because I was done another year ago, right. So initially Rob came on board almost like as a bit of an apprentice, so like at the time there was a lot of programming to do which I didn't necessarily have much of the time to do. So I first just got Rob basically to take programming off my hands so he would be writing clients training programs. I would still deal with the nutrition, the actual client management and one-to-one work with clients. He was almost just sort of behind the scenes helping me out with that workload in terms of gym programs. It then developed a little bit more where I kind of got to a point where Rob had done the first photo shoot, kind of almost completed it and got to a point where, very self-sufficient, didn't really need much coaching anymore, maybe just the odd chat every now and again around the personal stuff, the mentoring stuff. Yeah, exactly Just a bit of a mentor there really, as opposed to needing a fitness coach. Like he's in great shape, he knows what he's doing, he didn't need me sitting there doing weekly check-ins for him and nutrition audits and things like that. So that was fine.

We then started to look at like, right, what's Rob's next purpose? Because if we just sit here and just continually build a bit of muscle and shred again, build a bit of muscle, shred again, it's going to get boring and there's not really as much of a purpose to that. So Rob then came on board as what we would call almost like a success coach support coach there's a couple of terms for it in the industry where, again, he would still take care of the programming. I was doing the main bulk of the coaching, but he was almost just there, just like an extra layer of support for all our clients. For example, if I was busy, if I was driving down the motorway, kind of going to do events or going to see people, he was almost just on hand to answer the basic questions and just give people that little bit of extra support in case I wasn't around.

Maybe. Office of insights from his own journey, which again led us onto a point where we started discussing right, you know, where do we want to take this long term? And for me, I probably wasn't necessarily ready to take on another full-time coach at that time because it was quite a big step and I didn't really know what I was doing Got a bit of a push from Adam and Nathan to be like, right, let's just do it and we'll figure out how to manage it later. Like we'll just chuck ourselves in the deep end and we'll sink or swim, and that was quite cool. So we eventually got on the discussion right, let's start giving Rob one-to-one clients now that he's more experienced with a bit of support coaching and he's got ideas around programming, let's just make him a full-time coach, which obviously we couldn't do straight away because we needed to bring in enough money to be able to pay him and be able to take him out of the other job.

So we spent a little while where he was working part-time for me, still doing his engineering job, his nine-to-five, and got to the point where we knew that we wanted to take him out of his other job and bring him in full-time to Team ZSF at some point.

But we were at a kind of stage where it was like we weren't quite bringing in enough money off his clients to be able to justify it or for him to be able to actually kind of come and afford to leave his job because he was getting paid like a fee per client at that point. If you know what I mean, we got to a point where he couldn't really handle too much more in terms of workload because he was still working his nine-to-five. He had, like, other commitments and you know we were a bit limited. So we were just like we had a bit of a fuck it moment and we were just like, right, sweet, I'm gonna pay him a load of money take him out of his job and yeah, I mean it wasn't exactly profitable to begin with, but I was just like Well, we'll make it work with me.

Prophecy ball now.

Yeah, Prophecy ball. Now we're doing a good job. All that matters. All that matters.

But we just took a bit of a scene cost swim approach where I was like well, if my back's against the wall and money's going down, I'll find a way to get money going back up till we're in the green again. It didn't take long and that's the way I do things. I'm just like let's just do it and we'll figure out a way to make it work later. So we're at a point now where Robert's left his engineering job, which was very unfulfilling for him the environment wasn't massively positive surrounded by people who, again, weren't necessarily in the same sort of growth mindset that he was, to a point where now he works full time for me, coaching his own one-to-one clients. When the business does has his own clients, who's doing everything with them, all their programming, the nutrition, the weekly check-ins, catch-up calls, onboarding calls, the whole lot. So he's a fully fledged coach now and he is absolutely smashing it.

I have to say, like he is absolutely killing it and actually it's been quite cool for me as a bit of a next step coaching wise, because again I feel like I've progressed in certain aspects very quickly. Like I look at other coaches I work with sort of within the OTE who have been doing this maybe like five, six years, and I'm almost sort of getting to stages in certain parts of the business and stuff anyway, where I'm almost doing things that they didn't do until year six and seven but I'm doing them now Things like hiring a coach Like a lot of coaches won't hire more coaches for good five, six years until they've had all that experience themselves. And I've had that opportunity just to accelerate things a little bit quicker. And I'm actually loving now developing Rob as a coach and almost using what I've learned in the last two years of coaching clients to understand that it's not about the gym program, it's about how do we create this frictionous process for somebody.

It's really rewarding for me to be able to go and coach him on that and see almost there's like this cascade effect now where I'm passing my knowledge onto him and he's almost doing the job that I've been doing for the last two years with all the new guys that are coming in, much like how Adam built his first fitness business, then now kind of coaches and mentors fitness coaches to go and do the same. It's almost like that same cascade effect, which is really really cool. So yeah, we're now at a point where Rob left a place that was very toxic and he's now absolutely thriving. You know a lot's going on in personal life, don't get me wrong and it's not been just an easy transition where we've come out of a job, there's always a lot of risk and a lot of worry to it, but the guys are absolutely flying.

And to think that it all just stemmed from. We were like, ok, cool, let's give this guy a gym program and do a bit of dieting to the point where now life, like you said, has done a complete 180.

I think on 180 probably is a bit of an understatement. He's now got purpose, he's fulfilled, he's doing a job that genuinely makes him happy, he's excited for every day, he's reformed his social life and he's met a new partner and she's absolutely fantastic and, yeah, just life for him, from what I can see anyway, and what he tells me, is just a million times better.

So one bit of love about that as well, as you're promoting from within and not hiring someone who's not, in a way, bought into Team ZSF like Rob was the first guy. Rob was the first one and I'm sure you were panicking on that phone call. You were like, oh yeah, let's do this, let's do this it's the first call.

Rob was number one and I love how everything sort of stemmed from him as well, like you said earlier, sort of like a branch out of Rob brought this guy in and that guy brought this guy in, and so on and so on and so on, and now he's been able to join your team. I think that's awesome and just from seeing him on your page and what he posts, he looks like a different bloke. He's shredded. He's done those photo shoots, which I'll touch on quickly as well. I think that's really good, not just selling point, but motivation for people. They want to look good in a photo shoot.

That's something not many people do. I've never done anything like that. I'd be like, oh yeah, I want to get shredded for that. A bit of motivation. But I think that's awesome that you've been able to hire him, and would you do that again if there was someone right for the team? Or do you think you'd, if you were to hire someone, would you bring someone externally, or what's your sort of thought process on that? Because it's worked amazingly so far, from what we spoke about behind the scenes as well.

Yeah, I would always prefer to hire from within and again, I get that because obviously Adam sort of hired me from within and he's done that pretty much for his whole team. And the reason that I so good is because, again, like I said, where Rob was number one, he's seen everything from the ground up, like he knows, he's been through the journey, he understands my values, my principles, he understands what we are kind of about, you know, and that's the thing where we're not just generic, you know chicken, rice and veg, gym program, bodybuilder coaches, like we've got some quite nice values and quite nice things we kind of do within the team and ultimately that's been built around him Like he's been there since they. You know he is just as much Mr Zed as I am because he's been there for a moment one. But the thing that I always tell people is that I probably wouldn't have hired another coach so early if it wasn't him. It was just a bit of a. He was the perfect fit, it was a perfect progression and it was like it just made sense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in future again would I look to hire from internally, 100%. I'd love to bring someone into a coaching role who really understands what we're doing, where we're driving or where we're going, but at the same time it's I wouldn't want to just hire from within for the sake of hiring from within. If the right person isn't there, then of course I'll look externally.

But yeah, having someone who really is on the same wavelength as you and has really kind of bought into that vision is priceless, because I can ask this guy to go and do anything. He will run through brick walls for me. Yeah, you know and I have to give him so much credit for that the amount of hard work that bloke puts in. You know, when you know, quite frankly, if I drop the ball on something and I'm like, mate, I need you to help me out here and it's beyond really what I'm paying for you can guarantee he will run through brick walls and sort me out and help me out to get to where I need to be Legend. You know. That's the beauty of it, because he's really he's benefited from the process and he now understands the true value of it and he can really radiate that onto other people.

Yeah, yeah, let's talk about some of your success stories. You've had, and you've had some pretty good ones, rob obviously being one of them. Yeah, but one which always stood out to me was Aaron Slugger. Is Aaron Slugger Aaron Slugger? Yeah, so he. When I saw him the first time, we talked about oh, you've brought someone new on you know he knew someone on your team.

I think you said it could be wrong. Good friends with Brad. Yeah. Yeah, brad and his transformation is insane. Yeah, talk about what he's done in such a short period of time as well.

Yeah, so Aaron has dropped like 30 kilos over the space of I think it was 11 months. He did 30 kilos in something silly like that. And I think the big thing for him was I look back at our first call we ever had and I saw a guy who was shy, introverted, unsure of himself. We basically went through this contact call and he was giving me like one-word answers the whole way through. It was like you could just tell he wasn't confident enough in himself to open up. And you know as much as weight loss is great and you can tell he's totally transformed physically, like the change is ridiculous. The big thing for me is he's now so much more confident in himself, like just the way he even comes across.

Generally when you chat to him you never see the guy with that smile on his face. He's always like buzzing for life, like again he's gone and kind of got himself out there, got in the gym. I'm pretty sure he's got a girlfriend now. I'm pretty sure he met her in the gym. I believe all they're from the same gym or whatever. And yeah, you know he's going off traveling.

You know he's now just leading a totally different life from. He's one of those examples where he kind of got bogged down in lockdown, where he worked from home, where he had a desk basically at the end of his bed in his bedroom, still living with his sort of his mom's house, and he would basically wake up in the morning, chuck him close, walk three feet to his desk, sit down, work from nine to five, go downstairs, sit on the couch for three hours and go to bed again and like that was what life was for a long time before he kind of joined up with me. And now we've just got to this point where he's going out, he's trying new things, he's meeting new people, he's just got that more active lifestyle to him and, yeah, just like a totally different guy. And that is just so fulfilling for me to not even just be the physical change, but just the way this guy lives his life. He is just a different person.

Yeah, that must have wanders for his mental health. Yeah, obviously I don't know Aaron. I've never spoke to him before but it's funny in terms of mental health is, obviously anyone can suffer from mental health problems. You don't choose them, I didn't choose mine but it's a way of dealing with them and I have the utmost respect for the people that are getting out of bed, changing their routine. I'm sure that was so hard for him Obviously never spoke to him, but that's not an easy thing to do when that's your routine, that's what you're doing. You're walking to your desk, you're getting out of bed, you're putting clothes on, you're going back to bed. That's hard to break after a while and the fact he's done that and he's done so well and I think he's got a fitness account now.

You know, I was looking at your Instagram and I was just looking through. I was like what legends Like that guy's life is just turn its head. I've a lot of your clients are, so that's just awesome in terms of mental health, but also physical health. It comes back to the point. Why I wanted to bring you on is just to show people get out and exercise and change these rhythms.

The guys that are on your team. They're doing this. They're doing this day to day. They're disciplined, they're waking up, they're going, they're getting it done. They might not want to, but they're doing it because they're doing it for their mental health, they're doing it for their physical health and, like you said, it's changed him in terms of he's met a girl, he's got a gym, you know, got a girlfriend.

That's awesome. You know new friends, more confident. He's gone from one word answers to you know a smile on his face every day, like that's priceless, like you can't, you can't put price on something like that. And you're coaching and that's why I think it's just like so rewarding what you're doing as well. And we talked about off camera. But when you said you do it for free, like I do this for free, I lose money from this and I love it. I've been doing it short, short time now, but like this is everything Like getting to meet people on this and talk about like your stories and the stories of your clients. I just think it's such like an amazing platform and I know you're the same and what you do.

Could I just touch on just something else as well? We're on that topic. This spring to mind, I think, when we are looking at combining this transformation process and the physical health with the mental health side. I think the biggest thing that not enough people talk about is that I think the mental change comes from understanding that you are capable and I think, like say, it is very hard to break out of those habits and those routines when you are just in a place where only you're getting out of bed too, move three feet, work, eat your dinner and go to bed again. That's quite a hard thing to break out of and it can seem like such a mammoth task.

But if we can now get somebody to a point where we've got this long list of things to do today for their own physical and mental health, obviously we phase that in and it's not like an initial big lump of things to do, but we build that up over time. It's the ability for somebody to say I'm gonna do something and then go and do it, and no matter what realm or what industry you're working or what area of life you're trying to apply this to, if you can do hard shit and just stick in and do things you say you're gonna do. That just gives you such a better platform to go and excel elsewhere in life. And again, we can relate that back to Rob. Obviously I'm not trying to dive too much between clients, but I bet he would have never thought that he could have the courage to go and jump out of a job that he's been doing for 12 years had he not been through this process and understood that he was capable of so much more than he realized.

He understood that he spent six to eight months, or however long it was, nailing down a diet process, a training process, and going in and nailing it every single fucking day. Quite frankly, and on moment one, that would have felt impossible. So what he's then feeling at the end of that eight months is I have genuinely done what I thought was impossible. So of course I can go and do other stuff. I now understand that I can turn around and say to somebody I'm gonna do this and I will go and follow through with it, because that's the kind of person I am now. You can apply that across all areas of your life and that is just invaluable.

Yeah, I completely agree, and it comes back to point as well. As one thing for me which I changed my mindset on was it sounds so little, but when I was in the gym, sometimes if I was lifting heavy and I had five reps to do and I was really struggling, if I was on my own I'd sometimes do four. No one can tell me, no, it's in my head. But by doing that fifth and completing it and doing the extra, like you said, that just transforms into day to day life. It makes you more confident. You're like I can do this, I can do this, and it's such like a minor switch.

But when you program your brain to always do below what you want to do, that just mentally, doesn't mentally ruin you, but it does have an effect. After a while it ticks over in your head. I'm gonna read five pages of this book Actually, I didn't read it in the end. That just ticks over into I'm gonna wake up, I didn't wake up, I'm having a lie. And then that ruins your mental state. And that's one thing I found for myself was making sure if I say something I stick to it?

Yeah, because ultimately, you imagine, like your every action that you make is a vote towards the person that you wanna become, right? So we've got the person over here who you really want to be it's the dream, ideal version of yourself who does get up on time, who does go and do that extra rep in the gym, who does stick to their routine. And you've got the person over here who stays in bed till 10 o'clock, who doesn't go out and push themselves to achieve more. Every time you make that decision of like oh, I won't bother. Today you're putting a vote in the box for this person. Every single time you make a vote, you do an action where you go and get to the gym when you don't want to. You do the extra rep, you do your meal prep, you stick to your thing. You're putting a vote in the box for that person and you imagine the cumulative effects of all those votes going in on either side.

You can then start to see wow, that's why I'm potentially becoming a person I don't wanna become, because look at how many actions I'm voting towards this person as opposed to this person Right. And when you can start to understand that, when you start to face obstacles and this is a big thing I see from clients as well when they get further down the journey is that when they start to face obstacles, their perception of it is different. It goes from being I've got an obstacle in front of me so I can't do it, to I've got an obstacle in front of me, let me figure out how I'm gonna overcome it. And that's the point where clients tend to become a bit more self-sufficient when they have that ability to know that right, I've dealt with hard stuff before and I can figure my way around things. When they see the obstacle, they're like right, how am I gonna get myself around this and navigate it? As opposed to, ah, it's not gonna come stuck, I can't do it, you know.

Yeah, awesome. Another thing I wanna touch on is I know there's a lot of young people out there who want to become entrepreneurs and obviously I've started my own clothing brand when I was 13,. I've had a very entrepreneurial mindset, which has helped because of my ADHD now I'm better understanding myself is that's what it provides. I've done my own stuff for ages just out of the love of doing it and wanting to make some money and do nice things with my friends and stuff. If you could give any advice to someone who's looking to start out today with their own business not just their own business, but maybe tailored to online coaching or just in general. Obviously I'm not an online coach and what I would like to go into is my own supplements and vitamins. If you'd give any advice from what you've learned and the lessons that you've been taught from Adam and people that are over the last two years, what advice would you give to someone looking to start out their own business today?

Yeah, I would say the biggest thing is just speak to someone who has done it and knows how to do it. And again, I will shamelessly sit here and plug. If you're a personal trainer who wants to get off the gym floor and wanna go online, if you are currently in an online coaching business that's not working, get in touch with Adam Haley on Instagram and just have a chat with him, because the bloke does this day in, day out, builds businesses, builds online coaching businesses and teaches us how to do it, and it just speeds the process up so much more and you can sit there and say, oh, I'm not paying money, I'll figure it out myself, but you're only holding yourself back when there are genuinely people who can just take all the thinking out of it for you and give you those frameworks. I think that's just the most underrated thing. I think it's probably I don't know if females are the same, but I tend to see it a lot in guys where guys just won't ask for help because they can get make them look weak.

But ultimately, it's about how quickly and how easily do you wanna make this happen, because there are things out there that will just speed this process up for you, and if you're not taking advantage of that, then you're only doing yourself a disservice, because it has never been easier to start a business and a lot of people will argue with that because they think there's so many people trying to do it so it's more competitive. But the people who are using the mentors and the other tools to their advantage are going one way, and the people who aren't using these things and don't know what they're doing, they're fighting for the scraps of the bottom, like they're never gonna get anywhere until they start to think bigger. So you need to move yourself out of that scrap at the bottom and go right. How can I put myself in a position to go and play to win, as opposed to just clinging on for dear life, hoping it works?

Yeah, in terms of attracting clients and this is hard, like marketing, that's a hard skill and obviously Adam teach you a lot about this but in terms of attracting new clients, what is it you do in particular which has made you guys as a team so successful? Cause I know you have a lot of clients now from, obviously, the point when we knew each other, when you just have work Like that's gone quick and you're only on Instagram for the time being. Is there anything in particular you're doing marketing wise?

I think that the biggest thing is just being really good at what you do makes business a lot easier. Right, I think you can go into depth about how to do your reels better. You can go into depth about copywriting. You can go into depth about sales calls, whatever it wants to be, but ultimately, if you've got something that is valuable and you've got something that can genuinely help people, that does 99% of the work for you. Okay, cause I can speak to people who read the stories. They know Rob, they know Harry, they know Brad, aaron, stu, whoever it might be 90% of the marketing's done because they're like I know Rob, I've seen him do this and I know if Rob can do it, then I can. So just delivering yeah, delivering is the easiest thing.

Of course you do need to know how to write a good Instagram post and how to do sales calls and things like that, but you're gonna make life so much easier for yourself if you genuinely have a product that is worth paying for and that people want. That would be the number one thing. And, of course, looking at the more physical things, yeah, we only really use Instagram. I probably shoot myself in the foot a little bit on that. I should diversify. But I don't really like Facebook. I don't like TikTok. I don't really have much interest in doing YouTube and things like that. So for me it's more of an interesting. Maybe later down the line when, if we're at a bigger scale, I can employ people to do that sort of thing.

But right now, instagram's what I enjoy. Instagram works for us and I'm like saying I'm okay at it. So that's how we kind of go about that. Yeah, just showcasing what we're good at, and people wanna be part of that. At the end of the day, we don't need to sit here and try and arm wrestle people over the line. If someone doesn't wanna work with us, I can sit here and genuinely say that's their loss. Yeah, sure, do you have?

any sort of role models, not in the space, but in business in general, cause I know we spoke about Alex Hormose and he's big for both of us and we both read his book and I know you follow his value equation quite religiously in what you do. Would you say there's anyone that people could look up to in terms of role models in business, but also just in day to day life? Yeah, of course.

So obviously you've got Alex Hormose. Again puts out a lot of good stuff and if you're one in general business knowledge, that's really really good. One person I really look up to is Tommy Mallett. You know who runs Mallett London. He for me. He did a podcast. There's two podcasts. He did One with John Joseph Borgery, so that podcast was the British entrepreneur, and he did one on Lewis Morgan's podcast as well, who's the guy who founded Jim Shark alongside Ben Francis and then obviously split off.

I would say, go and listen to those two and have a look at, basically, tommy's work rate and his attitude towards just being limitless. And that's the thing I think is massive for him is that you can tell the bloke genuinely has like such big ambitions and he just can't see a reason why things won't work if he puts his mind to it. And he's someone who was dyslexic as hell, could barely read and write leaving school. And you know he probably owns and runs probably one of the biggest leading footwear brands in the world. Now he's probably competing with the likes of Gucci and Blenciaga or whatever the design names I don't really know them, but he's one. And then the British entrepreneur guy, john Borgery. I really like him as well. He's a bit more of a mellow character, bit more of a chilled out guy. He shows a little bit more behind the scenes of his life and kind of what he does, and that's quite cool.

Who else is there? There's Mark and Curtis Tilbury. I think are really good as well. You know the Striket Big the pair. They're pretty good as well. They do some good podcasts. So generally I listen to a lot of like business-y stuff like that. But then there's also people like James Smith who, as much as he is an online fitness businessman, he does just talk a lot of random shit on podcasts as well and just do what we're doing now and just talks to interesting people.

He was at Heartbury, wasn't he? He was at Heartbury yeah, not when I was there, but yeah, he's really good and yeah, I would just think like those guys are really good and if you have any other interests, just start looking into like what people can we start to kind of identify in that space where you can just go and listen to them and again, we see them all the time. Like, I spent a lot of time after I met Ollie March on at Performex, spent a lot of time listening to his stuff. I'm now yeah, he's a really good guy.

I'm now looking a lot into the other people at March on, like Gens, like you know, like Max and Billy, and like you know I went down to March on and train for the first time the other week met a few of them and I now am very much like interested in that little realm. So I think you've always got to be diverse with it and not try and like you don't want to ever want anyone to be almost like a God in your eyes. But I think just looking at you know who are the people that I aspire to be like, who have the traits that I want and who are doing the things I want to do, and just start to look at like why you know what's the gap between me and them. You don't want to become them, but you need to look at, like what makes them who they are and like how do I bridge that gap between where I am now and who they are?

if that is something that I want to pursue, I think one thing while we're on the March on guys that spoke about this with Sammy because she used to work at March on is especially with people like people that I look up to, like Hormozzi you know, oli March on that. You just touched on Chris Williams and people that are.

they're very meticulous in what they do and they're very disciplined and resilient and they just grind it out. If they're not feeling it, if they're having a great day, if they're having a bad day, they grind it out. They get it done. And I always naturally sort of like levitate towards people like that just due to like having so much respect, like I don't know what's going on in their personal life. They could have loads of rubbish going on, but the fact is they turn up every day, they train, they do exactly what they're meant to do. They're good family guys and they just get it done. And for me that like I have the utmost respect for people at that, because it's hard.

Business is hard and I'm just starting out. Obviously I've done a few little bits, but in terms of proper business, I'm just starting out and it's hard. There's lots of admin, there's a lot of things that go wrong, but they just put on a calm face and they just work through it and they have months and months ahead, like what they're working on behind the scenes. If something's released today, they finished that months ago and it's just all these interesting things which I've learned from them, which are just amazing lessons to bring into day to day life, which people don't see, because people see the best bits, people see the finished product. People don't see the grinding at five AM every day, seven days a week, sorting out wage bills, sorting out taxes, doing all that.

Yeah, I think we spoke about this through uni right Like with the evolution of like obviously where my business went, there was probably a couple of guys at rugby and at uni who were kind of. Obviously the money talk comes up every now and again. I don't like to sit around shouting about how much I am, but it was always something that people would ask. Sometimes I would let them know, sometimes I wouldn't, and I'm sure you can remember the exact names of the people who were like oh yeah, I'll go and do that, but never, did, and it's because they only see the success stories.

They see the oh Zach, tom, how much money do you earn? And you maybe give them an insight and they're like, oh, wow, that's amazing. But they didn't see the fact that I had to do 7,000 words in my dissertation in the last five days because there was so much going on and it was genuinely probably the most stressful few days I've had in the last few years getting all that done. They didn't see the three, four AM finishes to then get up again at six to go and get my stuff done for the day for uni. And people only see the highlight reels on Instagram, which are fantastic and they're great for motivation, but they're so unrealistic.

It's only been now, in the last couple of weeks since we've really finished uni, that I've been able to just kind of get a bit more of a person, of life back, and it's something I'm still working on massively, because the last year has been nothing but work, work, work, work, work and that's not sustainable long term. We did it for a purpose and I signed the contract with myself that I was gonna go and do that this year to make things happen. But no one sees that. No one sees the hard stuff because you're too busy doing the hard stuff to go and show the hard stuff if you know what I mean.

And you've just graduated now with a two one, didn't you? So you've graduated with a two one while running a I won't say how much, but a highly successful online coaching business where you deal with a lot of people and I see the stress it brings you. Like I've watched you do it for the last two years and I like we're like we just touched on. I think that's what people don't see is what I see, because I've talked to you about it and I'm trying to help in any way probably not in a lot, but like a lot of stress and people like you were playing rugby as well and you had to drop rugby and good rugby player and that must have been tough as well in order just to focus on this. People don't see the sacrifices you have to make behind the scenes in terms of your social life, like in terms of going out. And one thing I also really admire is you've done all this with your business for one, but you've also graduated uni with a two one.

Some people don't graduate with a two one and all they do is lie around and do nothing all day, and that just shows the type of guy you are in terms of waking up, getting shit done, making sure everything's right with your clients and then putting your life behind that in order to get a degree and you know up. Most respects you for doing that, because that's hard to do. It's incredibly hard to do. If someone's watching this and they've run a business and done a degree, I'm sure they can agree. That's not easy at all, especially when you've got people's lives in your hand and you're trying to help people and give all your effort to them, as well as trying to maintain social life and play rugby and stuff as well. So massive respect to you.

I'll end it on this.

And I think this is huge because we spoke about this a bit but what are your longterm goals for Team ZSF and would you like to? We spoke about maybe moving to Dubai at some point and you know these are all potential things, but what would be? Your longterm goals for the next two, three years and where you want to be Do you know what?

This is always a tough question because I've only been doing it for two years and so much has changed in that time already that I tried not to get too hung up on where I want to be in 10 years because I know, give me two months and I'll probably have a different idea. You know there are a lot of good things out in Dubai. There's a lot of. You know, adam lives there, nathan, jake, a lot of the guys I work quite close with and Adam's company who are great to be around. I went and visited for the first time. What was it Maze is about?

two months ago.

Yeah, it was amazing and it's great Dengarun but there's also obviously there's going to be drawbacks with everything right. So for me, the longterm goals and aspirations I suppose they're not even longterm right now the goal is that we're trying to get Team ZSF to a place where the support system is unbreakable, like clients can come in and we can categorically say that, like you know, as long as you come in and do what we ask, you're going to achieve a life-changing result. So we're always looking to upgrade the coaching and the service and whatnot. But for me personally it's also about getting a bit of that personal time back. I've spoken to a lot of my sort of mentors about this.

You know, since giving since sort of stepping away from rugby, I've not had that kind of competitive side of me on, like a sport or a performance side of things. So I'm looking to take myself out a little bit more of work over the next year and, you know, build the company to a point where actually it doesn't need me in there so much and I can step away and lead the responsibility to other people, which obviously has challenges in itself. But you know, I'm going to do my first high rocks in October, which is fantastic. We're looking at potentially putting a marathon on the cars next year, like I just want to start getting back into, you know, that rhythm of competitive stuff and ultimately, what was it that we were talking about with Joe the other day? So ultimately, I'm now trying to build a business and build a coaching service around the life that I want to live, as opposed to having to fit my life around work, and I think the byproduct of that is that I will be so much more fulfilled and everything that we do within Team NSF will be 10 times more effective. So we'll be able to then grow bigger, faster and everyone will be much happier.

Not that we're not happy right now. I think we're all like life is amazing. I wouldn't change a thing, but I think for us to move forward, I need to get a bit more of Zach back, as opposed to just being the workaholic entrepreneur, uni student doing everything you can. You know I need to get a bit more personal stuff back. So in the short term, that's what we're looking at. Obviously, long term, we want to grow this thing really big, help as many people as possible, impact as many people as possible and, yeah, ultimately just be a driving force for change mix. I think there is a lot of people who are heading on a very steep downward slope and I think it's only going to get well I don't want to say worse but it's going to get more harsh for a lot of people over the coming years. With AI coming through, quite honestly, I think a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. It's a little bit scary, but yeah, it's frightening.

It's frightening.

I think there's going to be a lot of people who are going to need the support that we offer, so I want to now be able to offer that on a wider scale, but never lose the quality of what we're doing right now. And if we can improve the quality compared to what we're doing right now, then yeah, I'm all for that as well. Awesome, mate.

Legend. Thank you for coming on, Appreciate it