The influx of new information is relentless. It never stops coming. It never will.
How can we fight back against this onslaught? What principles can we use to guide and harness our focus?
Our guest today has an uncanny ability to absorb, analyze, and apply vast amounts of information across diverse subjects. Andrew Coates is a coach, writer, and speaker. He’s written for several publications, including Men’s Health and Muscle and Fitness, and is the host of The Lift Free and Die Hard Podcast.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How to optimize your learning process
- Time management and when to adjust priorities
- Tools for capturing ideas and turning them into impactful content
- How to self monitor and avoid burnout
Referenced Resources:
If you’d like to connect with Andrew on social media or ask him a question directly, you can find him on Instagram at @andrewcoatesfitness. You can also read his articles, blog posts, and more at www.andrewcoatesfitness.com.
Referenced Material:
E273: The Productivity Myth: Tips For Making Sustainable Progress Without Sacrificing Your Sanity
On June 1st – 2nd we’re hosting our Speaker School in Phoenix, AZ, where you can find your voice and refine your message in a judgment-free environment using our research backed evaluation, video analysis, and feedback from your fellow attendees. We’ll also cover topics on slide design, how to present more effectively, and how to be more articulate. This is for everyone ranging from those who need more confidence and are battling social anxiety, to someone who is getting paid to speak in front of large numbers. We keep the number of participants to 10 or less to make sure you get enough reps. Spots are limited, so lock yours in today HERE!
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TRANSCRIPTION
Brett Bartholomew 0:11
Hey Brett here, there is nothing more transferable to every profession situation, walk in life, whatever, than skills pertaining to people communication and power dynamics. I mean, that’s just the reality. Being more socially Agile is only going to get more important in the future, AI and anything else is not going to make people irrelevant. What it is going to do is highlight the differentiation between those who have really locked in their people skills, their social agility, their ability to listen well relate, well communicate, persuade, all those things, and those who are really only reliant on technical skills related to their trade.
Research makes it clear, those who are able to be more effective communicators across various contexts, not only earn more, but have higher life and relationship satisfaction. And we’d love to be able to provide a way for you to check your blind spots which we all have, by the way, myself included, or just be a part of your overall professional or continuing development. So please go to artofcoaching.com Check out our one to one mentoring, our live workshops, online courses, Route, mentoring, digital community, whatever, we have something for every single budget, we have something for every single walk of life. We have served folks from over 30 profession and we would love the opportunity to serve you. Let us earn your trust. Let us help you get the results you deserve. Go to artofcoaching.com now
Welcome to the Art of coaching Podcast. I’m Brett Bartholomew. And at a young age poor communication nearly cost me my life. Now, I help others navigate the gray area of social interaction, power dynamics and communication so they can become more adaptable leaders regardless of their profession, age or situation. This podcast is for everybody who is fascinated with solving people problems. So if you’re in the no nonsense type who appreciates frank conversations, advice you can put to use immediately and learning how others navigate the messy realities of leadership. You’re in the right place. I’m glad that you’re joining us. Let’s dive in.
Today, I’m sitting down with Andrew Coates. Now Andrew is a coach, writer and a speaker and he is renowned for his exceptional ability to absorb, organize, and really apply vast amounts of information across diverse subjects. That’s one thing that always made him stand out to me, his intellectual curiosity is boundless. And so I thought, hey, we all have to deal with reams of new information coming at us daily. And it can get really messy in terms of learning how to identify what’s really useful, what’s useless, how do I make sense of this in my own messy head. So I want to have a conversation about that. We delve into how he navigates that relentless influx of information, how he does it without succumbing to overwhelm.
So you’re gonna discover some strategies, literally nothing scripted, straight to the point of how to enhance your own learning and productivity, how you’re going to be able to deal with the fact that Listen, no matter what part of life you’re in, more and more information is going to continue to come at us. And you’ve got to find a system that works for you. So Andrew is going to talk a bit about his background, everything he’s done from a writing standpoint, everything he’s done from a coaching standpoint, very practical. And then we’re gonna get into really analyzing his mind. I know you’re gonna love this. He’s very transparent. He’s very personable, and maybe you’ll see yourself in him as well. So without further ado, let’s lock and load here is Andrew Coates.
Welcome back to another episode of The Art of coaching I’m here with Andrew Coates. Andrew, been minute.
Andrew Coates 4:04
Yeah, it’s always great to see you at live events and interact and it’s a little bit I’d say surreal you being on your podcast, I’ve listened to the art of coaching before and you’re also someone who I’ve been consuming your media for a long time long before I met you
Brett Bartholomew 4:21
Appreciate that
Andrew Coates 4:24
The people watching the video I’ve got actually a signed by you copy a conscious coaching which it’s great book, I love it, I can’t wait for your next one to come out. So it’s an honor to be here. Thank you for having me.
Brett Bartholomew 4:36
Now likewise. And it’s a no brainer to have you on especially in light of some of the context that I’m gonna lay out. So we just got done at the time of this recording, running our speaker school workshop, and in the past six weeks, we’ve ran about nine or 12 either events or workshops and within those things, obviously a lot of information is shared back and forth. Right whenever you go to any kind In a professional development, no matter the format, we all kind of get hit with a deluge of information. And you are somebody that I’ve always looked at you take professional development, far more serious than most in the sense that you don’t just show up and kind of check a box.
You synthesize information, you write about a lot of that information, I would say that you’re pretty prolific in terms of just downloading, assimilating and then writing, whether it’s either social media or on blogs, or on other mediums that you have. And so I thought, what would be interesting is we’ve done episodes on how to maximize your learning, we’ve done episodes on those filters, but having somebody else here that just, your brain works so fast, you’ve taken so much, and hearing how you do it. Our audience is always interested in other people’s processes, whether it’s creative, whether it’s learning. So I’d love to know just at the core question here, What is made you just so fervent about your desire to go anywhere and everywhere and learn? And then how do you manage the intake of all this information? I’m giving you a broad canvas to paint here at the beginning.
Andrew Coates 6:06
So actually, there’s a lot of different dimensions to this. So I enjoy the process of learning. I enjoy reading books, I don’t watch much TV anymore. I’m a huge fan of The Witcher video, which are figures behind. Yeah, I quit halfway through the third season because I thought, well, I thought the producers made a mess of it. Despite how great Henry Cavell is, I love the video games that I actually relax and play Witcher three is a video game some time, right? But most of the time, I’m just not interested in TV anymore. I grew up on television. And I’m much more interested in sitting down and reading maybe it’s a fiction book.
Or one of the books that I just picked up and I read most of it on the flights to and from Orlando, I just came back from the Olympia giving a talk. It’s his brand new book called The NFLG of velocity by Erik Jorgensen. He did a book The almanac of navall, Ravi Kant. So it was so good. I figured this would be great. I love this. This is really interesting stuff. And to me, that’s actually pretty relaxing. So when it comes to like, books are one of my favorite things, I do a lot of audiobooks. So I’ll go through about probably about maybe 80 books a year, which sounds really ridiculous. I listen on, high speed. But the goal is not to try to memorize and absorb every piece of this. What I’m looking for when I’m consuming any form of media, is I’m looking for attitudes, philosophies, things that inspire me.
And to go through a broad cross section of resources. So that way, I actually know where those resources are when I need to go back and reference them. And occasionally you’ll hear something he’ll say, oh, you know, audiobooks aren’t as effective as physical books that maybe comparatively, but guess what? What do I do? If I really enjoy the audiobook, I usually buy a physical copy. And I reread it right. It’s a simple way you may have in your lifetime to do 10 to 12 physical books a year for the more aggressive readers given you have young family. There’s not necessarily a lot of time for that. And for me, I would rather actually spend my free reading time going through a course like I’m currently doing prescript level one muscle doc Jordan shallow state, it’s a great anatomy biomechanics course.
Brett Bartholomew 8:20
Okay, now just to orient the audience, because not everybody here is kind of in that realm. Can give a little insight into like, so it sounds like your primary interest right now, if I’m hearing you is still fitness and kind of that area, that’s what you’re known for. You’re known in that space or is this not the case?
Andrew Coates 8:40
Not necessarily. So I get a bit of dancing over this, how my brain works everywhere,
Brett Bartholomew 8:45
Which is why we’re trying to kind of get to the process of for somebody that’s brain works like you, how do you filter these things down?
Andrew Coates 8:51
So the the book, I mentioned anthology of Balaji, this guy’s a tech guy, and he’s talking about the future of humanity, and technology, and he’s sort of a futurist, and he’s very positive about technology. We get a lot of this fear mongering, and negativity about the scare of technology. But what have we seen? Yes, we’ve seen people, certain industries die out because of events of technology through the past. But what we don’t always see we see the dystopian portrayals for movies like The Terminator, right, Skynet. Cool. All right, there’s a lot of AI talk right now. It’s not that AI is necessarily interest in mind.
But I’m open to exposing myself to ideas outside of the fitness industry, just as anybody in any industry should probably be looking elsewhere, as opposed to just consuming all the same information as everybody else in your field. So I try to reserve the time to advance my fitness skills. With that limited amount of time I have to baby sit down read of course textbook so that’s the prescript thing. Or Molly Galbraith sent me her Girl’s Gone strong menopause certification. So I’ve been trying to pick my way through that there’s no audio version of that. So I can’t do that way. So then I’ll go and do some Seth Godin on marketing or Jett Blunt sales stuff, or
Brett Bartholomew 10:07
What field is he in? Sorry, just orient the listeners again.
Andrew Coates 10:10
Yeah, Blunt. I’m not even sure what field is it, he’s just a sales guy. He’s a sales mentor and Seth Godin, again, just a big marketing guru. Or there are so many different other things. Ryan Holiday stuff, which is really just modern day stoic philosophy, right? And pull from these pieces in these interests. What are my main approaches to any previous careers and this career is something that Seth Godin talks about in his book linchpin, which is really similar to Cal Newports be so good, they can’t ignore you. And it’s just go above and beyond what you think the value you’re being paid for.
Because if you’re that employee in any walk of life, who decides, well, I’m paid this so I’m only going to make this amount of effort. You don’t stand out, you don’t go above and beyond, you don’t develop skills, you don’t get noticed. You don’t get noticed from within to get promoted. But you also get noticed by other people you interact with who may come along and go, you’re being underutilized here, come work for me.
Brett Bartholomew 11:12
Heads up, our only speaker School of the Year is coming up on June 1 And June 2, in Phoenix, Arizona, this is such a unique event, we keep it under 10 people, you get a chance to have a lot of reps, and you get a lot of feedback. In a judgment free zone, we mix in a lot of fun, we’d go through everything on slide design, how to present more effectively how to be more articulate. And it really doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to actually build a speaking career, continue to scale the one you have.
Or if you just want to get more confident speaking in front of crowds, we’ve had people that have came that have done TED talks, we’ve had people that come that have social anxiety, it is a very welcoming atmosphere. So if you enjoy and appreciate the opportunity to grow and improve and connect with other like minded people, and you want a chance to become more articulate, to become more fluent, to improve how you get your message across, do not miss speaker school.
Also, it is a perfect time of year to come to Phoenix, it is always right before it gets way too hot in the summer, you can make a little vacation out of it, you can go hiking, you can go to Sedona, you can go to Scottsdale, there’s so much to do. So go to artofcoaching.com/speaker. Now, that’s artofcoaching.com/speaker. Remember, this is our only one of the year early bird pricing is still available, we hope to see you there.
Andrew Coates 12:39
Go above and beyond what you think the value you’re being paid for. Because if you’re that employee in any walk of life, who decides, well, I’m paid this so I’m only going to make this amount of effort. You don’t stand out, you don’t go above and beyond, you don’t develop skills, you don’t get noticed. You don’t get noticed from within to get promoted. But you also get noticed by other people you interact with who may come along and go, you’re being underutilized here come work for me.
And it’s just this, this philosophy about going above and beyond. And I just fell in love with the process of actually learning absorbing things. So to kind of bring it all back, I like broad exposure to different ideas. And then when I find things that I think are more valuable, A, I’m able to go deep and more aggressively on those topics and two, you also get known as being someone who’s a great resource for knowing these things. So you can add value to your friends, I sent our friend Luca Hocevar a copy of that book, The Anthology of Balaji. Because I loved it so much. I said, Luca, you’re gonna love this. And so I just put up a copy in the mail to him, he’ll appreciate that. ,
Brett Bartholomew 13:46
Okay so to consolidate right, I think this is the fun of ad hoc interviews like this, because this was a question we got recently is when we’re dealing with people, and many times it’s ourselves where we’re multi passionate, which I certainly say that you are given that answer and everything I’ve interacted with you in the past. We’re multi passionate, we want to learn, what are the main principles, however, that guide that kind of bring you in and focus and say, Okay, there’s all these different books I want to read.
There’s all these different seminars I want to go to, for some, it’s what’s the need for the now what’s my biggest need. However, a lot of people really struggle with that because they’re really good at convincing themselves that they have a need that in actuality is a want. So just to bring this back in, how do you decide and prioritize this is what I’m going to learn and commit to right now, whether now is this year this month? Because there’s finite resources with our time, money and attention. So what are those core principles that you use to kind of silence the noise and focus in on what matters for you?
Andrew Coates 14:53
I don’t know if I’ve ever thought about it in terms of like, core principles that I could define. But you said part of right there. It’s like you What do you need? So I think it boils down to two dimensions, there’s things that are of interest where you have the the ability to absorb broadly. And there are the specific things that okay, I need this specific skill now, as you alluded to. So one of the things that I want to play around with a bit more is YouTube, I’ve got a couple of books that I’ve done in the past. And now they’re right in the queue, because there’s going to be an effort to grow YouTube next year.
So those things come right away, they’re up next. And it is identifying. And I think it’s just sitting down and having a clear set of goals, clarity on the things you’re working on. And then the discipline to not go and do– again, this is gonna be a trainer reference. But how many coaches go and do yet one more seminar on physical training skills, when they’re already really good at that because they’re playing within their comfort zone instead of going to learn how to public speak. I hosted an event recently here in Edmonton. And during my talk, because I got a lot of inquiries people interested in coming up and they wanted to be speakers by event now I brought in a lot of big names like Luca like Don Saladino
Brett Bartholomew 16:10
Is this a fitness only event was this broader event, what was the nature of it?
Andrew Coates 16:13
Well, it was to serve fitness professionals tap, and allied health care professionals. But it was a fitness and business event. So I get up and I ask, Who here would love to stand on stage like this one day and 80% of the hands went up out of a room of 120. But how many people will go and do a course in public speaking how many people will go to toastmasters or go do an improv class, or take your courses. No, they’re gonna go and do another thing to learn how to do a Romanian deadlift, well, or they’ll go do another nutrition certification, because it’s the familiar, it’s the same thing. So become saying, Alright, these are the skills I need. This is what I’m not good at, I actually am going to go get really uncomfortable, and suck at this for a little while and practice it. And that’s the lens that I try to look at it through.
Brett Bartholomew 17:05
Yep, that’s helpful. I mean, I think this was a core reason for us really pivoting away from anything fitness, strengthing conditioning, and opening all of our work to a wide variety of professions, because we actually found other professions will do those things. Often. I mean, every profession still has their own kind of curse of the technician. But I’ll never forget, when we started promoting more of our stuff, and I really transitioned out of fitness and strength conditioning, I was like, Oh, wow, there are a lot of people that want to learn these things. Because the stakes are a little bit different. A lot of the fields are a little bit more mature, kind of in their development.
They know what a lack of communication or problem solving or improvisation skills cost them. And there’s not really that signaling of like, Oh, you’ve got to do this and do that. So of course, I think that’s gonna balance. With you, I wondered this, because again, extremely multi passionate, your brain moves so fast. anybody listening can hear it right now, what is one of your approaches, even managing your time when juggling all these things?
I mean, I’m hearing you say, you run events, I’d love to know how much time you spend writing a week, and nobody’s ever going to have balance. Nobody’s ever going to have that. But what are things that you do no matter how quirky they are? Or no matter how kind of just basic vanilla they are? How can somebody multi passionate, whose brain has a million things you’re interested in better manage their time,
Andrew Coates 18:24
you have to schedule it. I mean, it’s overly simplistic. And another skill is, especially in my world being fitness, if I have a client cancel on me because I work in person full time, I still do that I have online businesses as well. Instead of, oh the client cancelled two hours notice, and you have a free hour. It’s like if this then this, and it’s like, Okay, I’m gonna go and sit down and write for an hour. If my client doesn’t show up, so that way, you’re actually using your time effectively. We’re not perfect at this. No one is, but I’m trying to be more disciplined. Here’s another misconception, because when you’re doing a lot of different things. Like for example, I was giving a talk ready for an Olympia event. I had my own event three weeks ago, guess what? My writing volume went to zero in that frame of time because my time was allocated elsewhere.
So you have to triage you have to look at art, what are my immediate priorities? And I can’t do it all. Now for someone who writing is a mainstay of what they’re they do. Am I suggesting that you stop writing for a protracted period of time? No, I don’t think so. I also stopped recording my podcast which I’ve been doing regularly for six years. I’ll get back at it soon. But I had to make some tough decisions. I’d also been feeling a bit burnt out I’ve been accumulating some physical injury so I was a little bit worn down. And so I actually did a few less workouts recently because Okay, I need to give my body a little bit of a break. It’s also telling me I was taking on too much. So instead of trying to get a little bit of writing in and distracted, not focused and do the podcast and not be really emotional. We invested in it.
It’s like, Alright, here’s my timeline, I know I’m going to crush this event in person. I know that I’ve gotta go to the Olympia that’s going to chew up some time. I’m going to probably need a week to kind of decompress afterwards, while I train clients. I got a little bit social stuff this weekend. And then next week, it’s going to be foot on the gas with writing stuff. I’ve already talked to my editor, Muscle and Fitness about some project ideas there. And I’ve also said no to other speaking engagements, and telecom and I haven’t like February. So that’s another thing as well as you have to be able to turn around and get really clear on hat’s advancing your agenda. A great book, I like to speak in book metaphor. So essentialism, by Greg McKeon. Right, awesome book, if you haven’t read it, it’s great for anybody because it gets you really good at two things.
One is identifying what’s really important essential to you, and what superfluous, what feels productive. Here’s a really important thing that’s related to all this. A lot of people, including myself, can fall in this trap, we get really caught up in consuming information, you reference how much information I consume, okay? It’s why I do things like audiobooks, because I can do it while I’m driving. I can do it while I’m cooking when I can’t otherwise study for another course. And that’s your habit stacking pretty classic idea. But that frees me up for the the other time to do the most important things like building presentations, writing articles. Otherwise, if all I’m doing is just continuing to consume, it’s an emotionally soothing way to procrastinate from doing the hard thing.
Brett Bartholomew 21:34
Yak shaving. Yak shaving, great term that we kind of talked about in originated from a gentleman and MIT. But people are really good at distracting themselves with what seems like the main thing, when in reality, they’re not addressing that. It’s the idea of, I’ve got to go to the store and grab this. But the minute you go out to your garage, you hear the door squeak. So now you’re fixing the squeaking door. And then when you went to into the drawer to get what you needed for fixing the squeaky door, the drawer came on hinge and now you’re fixing the drawer, people just got to be able to stop and say no, keep the main thing, the main thing.
Andrew Coates 22:08
And there’s another dimension to this too, that I want people to recognize. With a course or a book, or something of that nature that you can consume. It’s an easy thing to follow along, usually a clear formula. But what you’re avoiding maybe starting to write, put together an article put together a presentation put together, start that YouTube channel or that podcast, or maybe it’s building some aspect of a new business that a project that side hustle, you’re working on whatever it is, right. And those things don’t have a clear outline or formula, which is why people avoid them as one of the reasons why they avoid it’s the hard thing you know, you’re supposed to be doing. So therefore, what do you do?
You go do the easy thing that you can follow along? Oh, here’s a course outline, read this chapter in this order. And you feel great about it, because you don’t feel like you’re sitting around watching TV. And here’s another curse and a danger. If someone gets so caught up in all this stuff, that they feel guilty to be able to sit down and spend an hour watching a TV show they love or spending a bit of time with family like you can’t, that you always have to be hustling and grinding. And you’re not efficient when you do that. Anybody listening?
Have you ever been in this situation where you’re sitting down, you’re supposed to be either a family, friends or some leisure time, you’re picking away at your phone, and none of it’s recuperative, it’s stressful, it doesn’t leave you feeling any more relaxed, you feel guilty the whole time. Or you’re supposed to work and you scroll on your phone for an hour you feel guilty about it. Now you’re further behind you feel worse, you’re not recuperating. It’s actually identifying those behaviors, and trying to both relax the guilt and the shame of actually taking recuperative time so that we are more focused when you’re actually working. Those are actually some of the key ways you can actually get more of the work done.
Brett Bartholomew 23:57
Yeah, no, I agree. And, and by the way, just a couple of things, side notes for those of you following along, he talks about some excellent points that are in Episode 273, where we talked about the productivity myth. And then we also have some episodes as well. And we’ll put these in the show notes all about why do we have so much trouble relaxing and avoiding that kind of pitfalls so that you can have sustainable success. Another mention just so you don’t feel overwhelmed here and a lot of the books again, I told you, he is a very prolific learner in the intro. If you go to artofcoaching.com/readinglist, the majority of the books that Andrew is referencing is going to be there.
Now, you mentioned writing you mentioned putting together a presentation let’s pivot a little bit, because I’d love to hear your process for how you do that, especially in the context of so many of our listeners have a day job. They’re incredibly busy. Many of them will feel guilt, if they were to come home after a full day of work and start kind of pecking away at things because they’re like, hey, I need to be around family. I need to do this. Some of them might even work weekends. So I just love didn’t know at the most basic level? What is your writing process like? Whether it’s a simple blog post or anything more complex? Talk to me about how you write do you use pen and paper? Do you outline? What do you do?
Andrew Coates 25:13
Alright, so it all starts with idea generation, a lot of people struggle to come up with ideas is the most important part. And number one, I’m hoping that you’re writing about something that you’re interested in writing can also serve as a proxy for any type of content creation. So if you’re writing about shit you’re not interested in, it’s going to be torturous. Yeah, there’s a problem. So if you’re writing about things you’re interested in, great. Now, again, I’m in fitness. But this works as a broader metaphor. When I’m working with my clients, my clients are my inspiration for ideas for short form social media, or long form writing articles. The first thing I ever wrote for was a website called Tea nation, it’s big in the strength and conditioning world.
And anything I’ve ever put up there is because of stuff I’ve done with real clients in real time, or in my own workouts, the idea comes to mind, here’s the key, make sure you capture the ideas, if you’re having a conversation with someone, let’s say you work with clients, having A, a notebook or B a laptop, or a tablet, I hate cell phones for this because it doesn’t look professional to anyone who’s outside of it, or even to your client. Just a funny little thing. And just make sure you say that, listen, you just gave me a great idea. My clients love that when they see a social media post, or they’ve been referenced in an article, then they feel very proud. So there’s five seconds, it took me to go make a quick note, because you’ll forget, you think you’re gonna remember this stuff.
It’s like, you pop up in the middle of the night. And you think of something notebook next to your bed, I promise you because you go back to sleep, and you think you’re going to remember that it’s gone, especially with all the stimulus, we get into distractions. Forget about it. So you have to capture it in real time. That’s actually one of the most essential parts. And then, if you get in the habit of doing this, I had my notes section on my phone. That I mean, obviously, if I’m a client, I’m not using I use the tablet.
But I have this section. And I’ll build upon things, I’ll have just one note. And I’ll keep throwing ideas in if I’m making a presentation or whatever. And it starts to be scripted in my mind. So that’s actually my way of getting a loose outline. Then I’ll turn around in a dedicated piece of time where I’m sitting down, I’ll actually framework either the article or the presentation out. And then once I got the framework, I feel a lot better
Brett Bartholomew 27:28
Real quick, just though because we might have some people that don’t even know they’re like, whoa, whoa, like, what is even the process of like a framework? How do I distill, right? Like, because the curse of knowledge is so real. And they get this idea of a framework, right? We see it in books, we see people take a lot of what seems like complex ideas, and boil it down to some kind of acronym or whatever. But talk to me, even just like for somebody that’s like, Man, how do I distill what I have into a framework getting to the real core of that, because that takes practice.
Andrew Coates 27:59
It’s point form, like me, it makes a headache, make a few headaches, that what you want to talk about baby, you’ve got five major points that you want to talk about in an article. Let’s keep it simple. You write those down and then they have their own sections. And then you break out the sub points, what are the things you try to say? Whether you’re formatting the way you write the words of a social media post, or something bigger? The best question you can continue to ask yourself is, what am I really trying to say? Because a lot of people aren’t good writers, let’s just acknowledge that you can get better as a writer by practicing, there’s a handful of books messaged me on social media will literally give you a personalized recommendations or writing books, no problem there.
And if you get a little bit better at this stuff, it’s going to make your life a whole lot easier. But most people struggle with writing. So you’re going to probably have to get it this practice of what am I really trying to say. And if you can, then finally, like just spill it out about the message that is going to help the person who’s going to consume this, then that often is the best way to express it. Once that’s down on paper, then you can tidy it up, clean up some wording a little bit clear some clutter, make it mentally shorter.
And then it’s you continue to practice that over time. That’s the great thing about short form written social media, which I built a social media following on, you get so much sheer practice. I wrote all these things on Twitter, it’s the Twitter format graphic. Here’s the genius, the the old character limit 140 characters, you have to edit it down. So that way it’s succinct, but has impact and it forces you to choose your words better. It’s actually an incredible exercise in writing.
Brett Bartholomew 29:44
Yeah, I think that that’s a huge thing to acknowledge just right out of the bat. Because so many of us have things that we want to express and finding a medium in which to do that. Really trying to think what is the best way that I can To express these ideas, and sometimes it just really is slowing down and thinking, what do I want to say? And I ask people to really embrace constraints because they don’t often know what they want to say. And so just saying, alright, you can give them a symbol, just index card. And so you get three points to make your core message right there. Or you have to treat that like a billboard, or when you’re trying to figure out what do I want to say, I say, if they didn’t have this realization, if they didn’t have this information, what is the worst case scenario that would happen?
Like what happens? If this doesn’t get out into the world? What could be the issue? So we just had somebody give a great presentation on self determination, theory, autonomy, mastery, competence, all this kind of stuff, all this can and it was like, Okay, this information is interesting. But if somebody doesn’t realize this, what happens? Well, we could have real issues with motivation. All right? And what happens if that person doesn’t feel motivated? Well, now all of a sudden, they’re not going to achieve something that could help other people. Okay, but then what, but then what, but then what, people have to excavate into 5 7 8 Different why’s of the ultimate in absentia of this idea what would happen.
And it’s always going to be more simple. And it takes a long time. It could be like, for us, when we’re really trying to get people to understand the nuance of communication? Well, it’s not so you can just be, and you know, this better than most, it’s not. So you can just be this super eloquent person. That’s not what it’s about. It’s because most of our issues in life are centered around communication, and you can alienate people. And you can lose so much of the progress that you hope to reach as a professional or as a person, or you just miss an opportunity to make an impact. Right. And I think that has always been interesting about your work is,you get your ideas out there.
And you’ll go and go and go. But at the end of the day, there’s a central message here, there’s let’s bring it all in how long did it really take you to kind of find that? What kind of constructive criticism did you have to embrace? Do you think that you just, I mean, I imagine there were times we have to look at this interface, man, my work is shit, and get better?
Andrew Coates 32:18
I’ll try to tease out an answer that there’s something embedded within all this, right? And yes, if you’re getting up and giving a presentation, you have one shot at it, right? You m&m One shot, then the stakes are a little bit higher. But I tend to look at this a little bit more broadly. And again, this is something that Seth Godin does a really good job of in his book, The practice, but more books sorry, guys, you work really hard to develop the skills, okay, you practice, you get better and better at it. But you also cannot really marry a really strong emotional reaction to the outcome of any specific thing
Release it, you do your best work, you ship the work is, as Goten often puts it, and you move on to the next thing. And social media is fun like that, because you get a lot more bullets in that chamber, you get to put more stuff out. Yes, you will learn from the reactions, but you don’t take it overly personally, if you can divest the emotional attachment to Oh, shit, that post didn’t get any likes. All right, cool. What’s the information that something about it was resonant? The way that you chose the words? Maybe the topic didn’t hit home with people? Okay, cool. It’s on to the next one. Let’s try again. And if you get enough practice, and enough, fire enough bullets off, if you’re paying attention to the process, you generally get better and better, you get a feel for what people like what resonates with them.
And it’s not about just feeding people superficial, fluffy stuff that will make them feel good for a moment. It’s about figuring out okay, what’s actually going to really get people to pay attention to your message. And social media is a very superficial touch point it is. And the people who criticize that are missing the point, what is it trying to do is it’s trying to get people to your longer form resources, like your podcasts, which have this level of depth and nuance, or a big piece of writing along from piece of writing or a book, which really goes big in depth, or anything else. So I tried not to actually get too emotionally hung up on any particular reaction to a post, I’ll post it, I’ll interact with everybody who was kind enough to comment or share or message me about it. And let’s say it doesn’t hit as broadly.
But it’s meaningful to a handful of people. And I say to myself, well, it was actually really important for those people. I feel good about the message. Maybe I can find a better way to have it impact more people. But I don’t punish the people who are kind enough to respond to any piece of content long form short form. That didn’t do well. No, I’m actually very grateful and I’ll engage with them. I’ll send them voice messages on social media and answer the questions. And I’m very grateful for every one of those touch points whether at the specific thing that I’ve created creates a lot of buzz and attention or very minimal.
And I just move on to the next one. If I bombed something, which I mean, I’m sure there are articles that go back that aren’t as great as other ones. But if I bombed something, okay, cool, not a big deal, I’m gonna go to the next one, and I’m gonna go do the next one, I’m gonna get better at it. And you probably will gain more skill by simply doing more practice and more work, while strategically going and resources are going to make you better. It’s why I’m careful about books on writing. So if I’m choosing a couple of really good books on writing to make sure I’m doing the big things, well, 90% of writing is getting a handful of key things, right. And there’s a couple of good books,
I’ll shout one out on writing well, by Williams in there, right. And there’s another newer version that’s similar. Everybody Writes by Ann Handley, you read one of those books, it’s gonna make you a substantially better writer, if you apply the lessons and you know, the basics. A lot of the really fluffy, creative stuff like you think, oh, I need to be an English major, actually, to be honest with you, if you’re an English major, and you write that way, it’s actually going to make you worse, not better. You have to learn as you’re better off writing or reading a book on copywriting. If you’re trying a sales writing, in order to actually be an effective communicator to the modern audience.
Brett Bartholomew 36:22
Yeah, well, I think, just really kind of consolidate a lot of the some of the most important things, but if somebody’s writing and creating a framework of any kind is, aside from defining the purpose, the so what really got to know your audience and the vehicle. This is something that’s part and parcel that I’m dealing with right now is, there were some aspects of the book that I’m working on at the moment that I just had to continue to simplify, simplify, simplify, because I got about 300 pages, that’s all I’m able to be able to do with this publisher. Because there’s so many other things that have to go into that.
And you just really have to think about how are they going to digest this, and I’m somebody that I can tend to abhor things like sick simple acronyms where a lot of frameworks can fit or I’ve been used one unconscious coaching, the three R method and the three R framework. But the reality is, from a cognitive ease standpoint, it’s a lot of what your audience wants. So I think one big huge piece there too, to complement things that you’re saying is, know who your audience is, and know who they’re not. For me in my next book, I’m not really trying to write for people that need some scientific dissertation on everything, because they by and large, wouldn’t understand the point of the book, the point of the book is to get to a larger audience and how people actually use this stuff, not just have this kind of, I’m sorry for the terminology, but we’ve used it before people really get caught up in mental masturbation.
And they think, wow, because I’m really passionate about this stuff. And I love it, that I am entitled to learning everything there is to know about it, and these 300 pages, or if you’re writing, you can feel the pressure to think that everybody needs to know everything you know, and that’s not the case, you really have to decide what information is essential. And then what might be supplementary. And that goes into having to kill your darlings. So I think if you know your audience define the purpose, and then can prioritize what’s essential for this topic right now? And then what is supplementary that can really go a long way towards managing overwhelm? Any thoughts on those things? Or anything even that you disagree with?
Andrew Coates 38:22
No. I don’t know if I have anything to add. But you’re absolutely right. That the audience part, and this is something that I tell anyone who wants to start writing, especially if you’re trying to get published on publications relevant to your industry, you have to know the voice and the style of the publication you’re trying to write for. Here’s a little side piece I go all over the place with this. I think a thing that people get really caught up in, when they’re trying to get featured in something. A they’re chasing status, this is a very important lens to understand the world through humans are status recognition machines, were pattern recognition machines, and one of the fundamental algorithms that humans live by ancestrally was status, right?
It was the sort of thing that could get you kicked out of the tribe or get you more resources or more mates or what have you. It’s a little different in modern terms, especially when it comes to things like social media, it can get very maladaptive. But what people ultimately are often doing is you always have to check on your motives for why are you even doing some of this stuff? Are you doing it because you actually want to help people? Are you doing it because you’re chasing status? And one of the ways you can tell if someone’s chasing status is they go in wanting to tell their story. And so one of my editors, quote, and Samuel, he says, No one cares about your story. Right?
o if you’re going into a situation like this, this will parallel what you’re saying this will get to the point is, how do you serve the person you’re trying to help? How do you serve the audience of that publication? And how do you serve that editor, so you make that editors job easier when there’s a lot of competition for getting within the pages of a magazine or featured on their website. And I think that’s a really critical lens to look at it through. And it goes back to what you’re saying you ultimately do have to knowing who your audience is who you’re trying to serve. And if there’s a misalignment there, maybe the misalignment in your motives
Brett Bartholomew 40:27
Yeah, no, I think that’s a great point. That’s an excellent point. And I get what you mean, but I just want to orient this for the audience. I don’t think there’s always something wrong with telling your story. You’re never really an expert, until somebody invites you into their life is one. And sometimes people want that cheering. But to your point, right, if somebody goes on and on and on, it’s to a degree, even why we mix up how we start this podcast, we do the introduction on the front end, and then we just try to talk as people, right. And that’s because sometimes, especially with this podcast, we always wanted to do something where instead of chasing celebrities, we met with people that are out there doing real things.
People like you people that don’t always, we’re not always going to be given a voice right on the Dax Shepard podcast or the Joe Rogan podcast. And with that, though, you get people that aren’t really media trained. So you get people that can get really excited that when the microphone turns on, and they’ll tell their story, but then all of a sudden, it’s 15 minutes, and you’re like, hey, love you Love this. But we’ve got to get into the content baby, we got we got an hour here. So I just think, it’s people, of course, will care. They want to know your story. It’s about even that though, you got to apply that framework, right?
You’ve got to say, what is critical about this right now? What are the main things I can get across have done, boom, boom, boom, or I went through blank, blank, blank, and then just leave it and say, now I want to make sure that I honor your time. If there’s anything I didn’t make clear, you want to talk more about, let’s go. But that’s the inciting incident that got me interested in this space. So I think I heard you correctly when you were saying that it just don’t ramble. nonsensically about your story, but kind of get cogent.
Andrew Coates 42:08
Maybe look at this way, how can your story be valuable and interesting to someone else? This popped up in a book I read, the type of book that perform is the least well, out of all the book categories. There are books about people, right? We’re not talking like biographies of like a blank and that sort of stuff. But books written by people about themselves. I’ve got a client, he’s a retired lawyer, and he wrote a book and he’s actually telling the story of a successful businessman. He’s a Matey man, up in northern Alberta, northern sorry, yeah, northern Canada. And in my client, Neil, he chronicles his story. And he’d been his lawyer. So this gentleman, Gordon was not really all that interested in writing his own book, but he was interested in having a story told.
So Neil tells a story about someone else. And there’s a whole bunch of things about this. That should be interesting. The reader as opposed to Neil telling his own story. He goes to his 50 year law class reunion, and is a classmate of his who’s got a book about himself. And there was clearly strong interest in that group, about the book about the other individual, this may tea man, but the guy who wrote the book about himself, people weren’t particularly interested in. And it’s not to say there’s necessarily straight up narcissism, but we identify it through that lens, and we see that so when you’re telling a story, just make sure that that story is meaningful, resonant to the other person. It’s very valuable to them, as opposed to sounding narcissistic and self aggrandizing. I think that’s the key.
Brett Bartholomew 43:49
Yeah, no, and terrifically important to just when you present and because sometimes people can tend to use platforms, as therapy. And again, we have compassion, we have empathy. We understand why people get excited about these things. But I’ve seen plenty of speakers where they’re 20 minutes into their talk, and they’re still thanking their mentors, and they’re still doing this. It’s no, you have a responsibility. And so it’s just important to remember that, whether you’re writing whether you’re speaking, you’re not just going to get one shot, you have a chance, and this isn’t the time to let everybody know everything about you. Everything about this, everything about that. It should be invitation, it should be like, hey, here are some thoughts on this. Here’s some points on this. But then let it go. Is there anything else you want to talk on that before we kind of switch gears?
Andrew Coates 44:35
No, you didn’t? Well, let’s see what else you got?
Brett Bartholomew 44:37
Cool. Yeah. So when we look at this as well, I’d love to know what tools you use. And I mean, this is one of most common questions. Whenever we talk about learning people love, whether it’s OneNote or Evernote or Google Docs or a leather bound journal. I mean, it never seems like there’s enough podcasts on this and what really people you know, are looking for is hey, is my way okay? And they we kind of have this idea that there’s this one size fits all method. I’m not so worried about what you think is optimal, because you know, it’s different for everybody. But what are you as Andrew Coates use, no matter how messy it is, let us into your office, your desk, whatever that is your phone, if you will, and tell us some more there
Andrew Coates 45:18
just, I think there are, there’s this search, we can spend a lot of time I think it’s more productive procrastination to look for the optimality, we can look for the hacks we can look for the program. I downloaded Evernote forever ago, I never use it, I use the notes file on my phone. The search function. It’s like the people who spend a lot of time organizing their emails into files, which function on email is so good that you just search for what you’re looking for. Same thing with, I just use Pages. I’m an Apple guy. So I just use pages right Microsoft Word effectively. And if I’m working on an article, or what have you presentation, I have a document for it. That’s it.
And I don’t use any sort of special filing or organizing system. But if I’m making notes, I will make sure here’s a make sure to make it searchable. I use keywords. So I make sure that keywords are sort of in the title of the note, presentation, blah, blah, blah, what have you. So that way, if I have an idea, and driving and I think of something I want to include in a presentation cool. I’m probably not going to dig for that note, I’m going to pop up a fresh one at a red light because I’m not texting while I’m driving guys.
And presentation, don’t make the quick note, put the thing away so that way I don’t lose that idea. Again, it goes back to the idea generation idea capture in real time. I don’t have any fancy special systems. I love the idea of having the leather bound journal, I got them I buy them, like, but Sir Richard Branson. Apparently he’s really famous for those. Guess what, I don’t tend to go look back at them. And I don’t carry them around with me very often. So I find that the most effective thing is, is basically effectively a Word doc, and my notes thing. And that’s it. That is literally all of it.
Brett Bartholomew 47:11
Yep, no, that sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off.
Andrew Coates 47:15
It’s just that simple. So I don’t have all these complex apps that I use for this stuff.
Brett Bartholomew 47:20
So mainly, whether it’s an idea or an article or anything like that, it goes there first you have kind of this stockpile this shoebox, so to speak of things that live in your notes.
Andrew Coates 47:32
Yeah
Brett Bartholomew 47:33
What if you are in a situation I know for me, if I’m walking or if I’m just kind of away from my phone, right, I’ll use the voice recorder app on my Apple watch. I love the voice recording and all that sometimes even email it to myself with a headline, it kind of says, Hey, related to book or related to podcasts, and we’re going to do on blank, you ever use voice recorder.
Andrew Coates 47:54
So I’ve tried, and in a couple of situations where something like again driving, I really wanted to grab, but then I don’t go back and reference that. So it’s entirely what you will use and what’s practical, you just describe something that works for you, which is not something that works for me. Doesn’t matter how you capture it, the key is that you’re capturing it. But notice, we’re still talking about simple things, either. We’re talking about there three, three ways audio, video, or writing. That’s it. Everything boils down to those three things. Right? Presentation, you know, inform inform a content long form content presentation can be well, it’s audio and visual, right?
Yeah, sure. They’re writing slides on it, it sort of has components of all three articles are writing a book is writing a podcast is audio, maybe a double at the video on YouTube, like like Rogen does. But everything is one of those three things. So you first find the means to capture your ideas on one end the inputs, and then the way to express the ideas on the output. And that is sort of a choice about what’s your medium that you’re sharing on, you’re writing a book, right? That’s obviously the medium. This is a podcast. But we don’t need to overcomplicate it, we don’t you need to use fancy tools. If you find a fancy tool that really works for you, great, but how many people are getting bogged down? LIsten, if anybody who’s struggling with this stuff, ask yourself? What’s the bottleneck? am I struggling with trying to find all the productivity tools, can’t get rid of them stop reading productivity books, start doing the thing.
Brett Bartholomew 49:29
Now there’s a lot of issues with that a lot of people read the same books over and over and over again. And not that there’s not value in that. But I think that can be a very, very intricate kind of self soothing technique as people really looked at their bookshelf. It’s kind of like Alright, how many more things I mean, I remember this even when I was in streaming condition, I’m just sitting there like, Alright, I think you got enough books on periodization. Right. On the other hand, there’s almost nothing here on psychology and communication. And then I just realized, Okay, well, maybe I need to be part of that solution.
And that’s a lot I have what inspired me to write my book. And but yeah, I mean, I think people just need to sometimes take inventory of these things and think, am I overcomplicating it here? Can it really be simple and also just budget? I think, now this is a contentious topic, and it goes into the question I was going to ask you next about how you budget but just coloring this real quick. I think another thing that gets people into these overwhelm states is, and we had somebody reach out to, oh, I want to do this. But I just I rarely have the budget. And it was easy to kind of go into just financial advice around that. But what I said is you need to look at what the nature of the courses you’re investing is, they were going to a lot of these things where it was 10 20 speakers, 60 minutes at a time.
But which those things can be valuable, they have a point, they have a purpose. And if you’re speaking at them, they can be used for marketing, or it’s good idea that way to get exposure to a lot of ideas. But there’s also a truth that those are kind of junk food seminars, there’s a limit to how much you’re going to be able to extract. And I found this even back when I was going through, I spent a significant amount on my Con Ed. And then I remember one time just spending more than I had ever really thought I was going to spend on something that was three days massive, deep dive one primary topic, and I thought, Man, this is nice. This is nice.
I’m kind of tired of, of doing all these kinds of things where it’s just person after person after person. And it’s not even a common theme. What I wonder for you is, once again, we all have finite resources, time, energy and money, how much do you tend to allocate? And you don’t need to give like an actual number, it might just be a percentage of what you bring in a year, how much you allocate to Con Ed, specifically in terms of traveling going somewhere? And what’s your way of thinking around that? Because there’s a lot of people, I think that’s a cost as opposed to an investment. And I think they could use some tips there.
Andrew Coates 51:49
I think it fundamentally starts with changing the attitude about cost to investment, that’s one of them. I think those type of events like I’ve really enjoyed and those kinds of events, where you have a lot of different speakers is what changed my life. My first time I met you was that Luca, host of ours 2017 fitness and Business Summit, which, you know, that’s where I got that book side. And there’s a ton of great stuff there. That blew the doors open on what I thought was possible with my career. And that’s not eating to fitness, I think that can be true of any industry.
Brett Bartholomew 52:22
Absolutely.
Andrew Coates 52:24
But there’s another lens to look at it through. These are also vacations for me, these are chances to get together with my friends in the industry, many of whom I spend more time with. And I have more in common with some of my friends here locally up in northern Canada above the wall and Edmonton, Alberta. So, again, I was just at the Olympia. So I got to walk around and I saw one of my old friends from Newfoundland that we used to go to university together and lift at the gym together. He’s actually a very well known IFBB pro bodybuilder named Frank McGrath, we hadn’t seen each other in over 17 years, it was really exciting to see him.
So I drive a lot of fulfillment out of the interpersonal side. So that’s the dimension I like to add to these things. And I come away from them fired up. Now, a lot of traders come away from these things fired up only to not execute on a thing.
Brett Bartholomew 53:11
Yeah.
Andrew Coates 53:11
A lot of this also is what I started out earlier about you actually expose yourself broadly, and then figure out where you need to go. Do you realize that speaker that Oh, wow, Brett Bartholomew, he talks about communication, I realized that’s a gap in what I’m doing. Let me go check out what oh, I’m gonna go listen to his podcast, I’m gonna go do a deeper dive, oh, he’s got a course on this cool, this is what I need. And then you go and you search broadly, until you find the things that you actually realize are the deficiencies. Admitting those is probably the hardest step. And then you actually dive deep. And that’s how you allocate this stuff.
I’m also big believer in this. Develop the business skills, work on whatever skills you need to increase your income, your livelihood, be smart about your livelihood, to the point where time becomes the issue, not money, right? And where you can. This is an old mantra where you can spend money to save time, it’s probably a pretty good investment. I struggle with aspects of it because I’m still a one man show. I don’t outsource much. I’ve hired people to set up my email marketing before I hired a guy to build my website for me did a really good job, that sort of stuff. Because those would have been just time prohibitive for me to figure them out.
But yeah, you only have so many hours in the day. Sure. And that at certain point, you can’t do everything. It becomes just going on right like, Oh, I really like that person in the industry. They’re doing great, but they do that thing. Now I need to do that thing. No, you haven’t mastered the things you already you’re trying to do. You’re spreading yourself too thin. If anything, I think a lot of people would be better served, condensing their focus down to maybe one specific thing that they’re trying to grow and build whether it’s a social media platform along for media thing or whatever aspect of the business. Alex Hormoz he talks about this, you get these people at four Buy businesses hoping that one idea takes off? No, you put all the time and effort into that one thing and make it grow, literally force it to take off,
Brett Bartholomew 55:08
Yep. I think that’s a great point. And constantly just engaging in this reflection of thinking, why am I going to this? Is it constant intake because of insecurity. And I feel like I need to know what I just, you just gotta focus these things, and you need to not run from the hard stuff. I think that was one of the most inspiring answers I gotten from an internet attendee. And we’ll add that, if you’re listening, came to one of our workshops in Cardiff. And I said, What was it that brought you here, and he said, You know, I’ve done a lot of Con Ed. And I was finally just ready to focus in on some of the hard stuff. I’ve ascended to leadership positions more and more.
And almost everything that comes back to a core struggle point is, is something related to people and the management of it. And I sat there and I took a look at the Con Ed I was doing and it didn’t align with that. And so I thought, Alright, it’s time to do that. And then you have to kind of go seek those things out. Now, just switching gears here for a minute, you mentioned. And I think it’s really great that you mentioned this, because there’s a lot of pride around this and a lot of stigma, and there shouldn’t be, it’s something that we’ve done a number of episodes on, you mentioned that, hey, a period here where I burn out, I think it’s really important for people to know, and have an idea of what are the things that can start to whittle away.
Like for me, for example, right, a little bit of self disclosure, I can only be around people so much I do the podcast, I speak quite a bit, I do a lot of coaching. And this isn’t something that I’ve always had. I mean, my entire life. 15 years are spent around people and music and this and this. But I can get kind of just like almost like a nerve that’s been touched too much my nervous system gets so locked in, when I’m teaching that afterwards, I need to be just reclusive for a bit. So if I go from teaching and teaching, and then family comes in visits, and then there’s this and there’s that, and there’s too much interaction, there’s too much social stuff, all start to get worn down a bit,.
I have to step back periodically. And it’s why even though we have a business, I make it a point of saying, hey, there’s a certain time of year, I’m not going to speak that much. There’s a certain time of year, I’m not going to do this, I’m going to recuperate. So that’s one example for me, what are some things both maybe common and uncommon for you that you’ve really been able to be like? Yeah, this has a pretty big neural or emotional hit on me. And I have to be very, very mindful of it.
Andrew Coates 57:29
Their dimension is this, I think they’re important. Like there’s the classic, it’s almost cliche, as someone who comes into the fitness industry, like many entrepreneurial efforts and thinks, Oh, I get to do this nine to five, but work life balance, there’s no such thing like you can discard that thought right out the window. Two there are going to be seasons, where you will have to work very, very hard to build and get ahead on things there are going to be again, these are really cliche answers. There are going to be people who will literally outwork you. I mentioned our friend Luca hosts of our you just watched Luca and his work ethic. And sometimes I look at Luke and I’m like, Oh man, like that makes me tired. And sometimes I’m like, I got a little bit more in the tank.
So then I have to start listening to what’s going on. And for me recently, it was a combination of things, I noticed that I’m 45. So I’m not a kid anymore. But I feel pretty good most of the time. But I was noticing that my sympathetic nervous system was just like more on all the time, I was consuming a bit more caffeine, which I think is part of the problem, right? They usually sleep pretty good, good sleep opportunity. But I was noticing that I’m accumulating injuries, I guess my training is an outlet for me. And I wasn’t even necessarily just like beating the living hell out of myself training. But I’m noticing that while my shoulders are bugging me, it’s not like oh, I lifted something heavy and it hurt in the gym.
I took a step two weeks ago, and I pivoted and all of a sudden they felt my knee twinge. And it’s not been okay ever since I still haven’t even had time to get in front of a physical therapist because of having to get ready for this event. And so I got to do that now this week. And I actually do think I may have a partially torn meniscus lateral meniscus and that’s not good. So we’ll see. And I walked around for two days nonstop at the Olympia on this knee, I got a knee sleeve at one point I bought what from a booth just to be able to continue I’m actually okay. There’s a time to push through it a bit. But then there’s a time to go, okay. Hey, the wear and tear is adding up the physical wear and tear is adding up the mental wear and tear is adding up.
Notice if you’re emotionally reactive to things in a way you aren’t normally or god forbid you’re a little bit more abrupt or a little bit less patient with other people. And if you notice that sort of thing, especially if it’s slightly out of character, okay, that those are little warning signs to say, Okay, let me look at everything I’m doing. What’s really important what’s essential here, essentialism. What isn’t right now, where am I trying to do too many things. And that’s one of the reasons why I said alright, I gotta go all in on my event. I gotta go all in on this presentation at the Olympia. I will forever get to say I didn’t official Olympia event. It was a small side thing, but it was still very cool. Very cool. Right. Thanks Michael Palmieri, Olympia U great guy brought me involved in that.
And so anyway, I will literally always be able to say that I didn’t want to show up and just do a poor job. So I put the time and the effort in necessary. And that meant and I never sacrifice workouts for anything, but I sacrifice some workouts, again, give my body a chance to heal a bit. And but I didn’t think about writing, I didn’t think about I put some of the courses that I’ve been working on. Because I was gifted a couple of things. Renaissance periodization nutrition course, right, i beta tested it for the guys, they’re friends of mine, I get to hang out with them at the Olympia they’re great people.
And I’m supposed to finish this course I’m supposed to be done by now. But I just put it aside, I’ll have some more time after this. Like, when I’m a little bit more recharged, I’ll do it. But I just made this decision to say okay, I’m not going to try to juggle all these things. I’m gonna take care of my clients, by clients, or what let me do all of this other stuff. There are non negotiable, but we’re scheduled drops down a little bit because it’ll ebb and flow. I don’t need to go gas pedal to the floor trying to acquire new people to fill every possible gap right now, I can take a little bit of rest on that I can always work on that later January’s coming soon enough. We’re good. And these are the thought process. I know that was a little bit meandering and nebulous. But that’s what was going on in my brain for all that.
Brett Bartholomew 1:01:28
I think it’s great. Alright, let’s do a couple of just kind of quickfire questions, bring you back down to kind of just relax. You don’t have to get technical with this. And then I want you to share absolutely everywhere our audience can support you. Right, you gave a lot of really practical information, no nonsense information. That’s what our people really like. And they know that they can learn from folks in all different realms. So we’ll hit that. I’m going to take you back to an old school question that a listener said, Hey, I used to love when you ask this, but you’ve gotten away from it. And they’re right. I haven’t asked this in a long time.
Who,` just because we believe that not a lot of things are really black and white in the world of leadership and life. So the off color question day is, who do you think is one of the most misunderstood villains? Somebody and it can be any genre? Anything? This isn’t even something we care if the listeners are aware, but who is a villain that you think is actually misunderstood? It’s like, no, we need to take a second. We need to take another look here. We had one person say Willy Wonka, by the way. And so you can go a lot of different directions with this.
Andrew Coates 1:02:31
Oh, God, because I grew up on so many movies. I’m just trying to pull something out here. Ah,
Brett Bartholomew 1:02:38
That’s the point life is improv. No worries. Take your take a second.
Andrew Coates 1:02:43
I mean, it’s almost a cheap one, but probably Thanos.
Brett Bartholomew 1:02:48
Okay, from the Avengers. Yeah.
Andrew Coates 1:02:50
Yeah, the madman, right, and how he wants to bring the universe into balance. And I don’t know, it’s like, his whole thing is a snap his fingers and wipe out half the universe. And yeah, like that’s, in theory, a malevolent and terrible thing. There’s no application for that. If you look back at the history of the human species, where a warlike predatory, aggressive species that fights for status and land and resources and what have you. So there’s sort of an argument and that’s literally his that by calling the mass, like, the numbers, that you can bring the universe into balance, and sort of take away these arbitrary and brutal conflicts in just one theoretically painless snap.
Now, do I agree with what he did? Of course not. But at the end of the day, I think if we can take a step back and go, it’s like the Joker in Batman, that’s another super cliche answer, right? The whole like thing, the anarchist version of him in Christopher Nolan’s.
Brett Bartholomew 1:03:53
Yep.
Andrew Coates 1:03:54
One of the greatest portrayals of any character in cinematic history. But you’ll look at him and it’s like, is he a purely malevolent villain? Not necessarily? I think in both cases, they’re idealists, perhaps ideologues, they have their set of principles, probably not the average normal, everyday benevolent human beings principles. But they function on a series of principles. And I think that’s the thing. If you look at some of these villains in some of these popular, what have you, and if you can identify what are their principles that they’re consistently operating within?
You gotta look at them through a different lens. There are who’s the one, I saw a meme recently. It’s like the person who is like, really, actually, a villain who didn’t have anywhere near the consequence they should. And it was the old man who was the creator of the original Jurassic Park. And if anybody remembers that, I saw it in theaters when I was a kid. So old movie, brilliant for its time, beautiful CGI. It’s That’s the guy who actually caused all this shit when you think about it, it’s not Newman from Seinfeld as much as the guy who’s like idea was the resurrect dinosaurs?
Brett Bartholomew 1:05:10
Yeah, it’s a good answer. Alright, next one and two minutes or less for this one the answer? If there is something if you could give somebody a cheat sheet to know how to best communicate with you, Andrew Coates and communicate with the goal of hey, really connecting with you making you feel valued, understood all those things, aside from of course, listening, right? Like we all know, we want to be listened to what is something they need to know about how they should communicate, whether it’s your communication style, anything like that? What is something that people should know about you? If they want to have a great interaction with you and build trust?
Andrew Coates 1:05:48
I think there are a couple of dimensions one, I’m going to answer this sideways. And I apologize, I’m going to do this differently. Because what I noticed is when people are trying to interact with you on social media, they’re often out for their own agenda. So oftentimes, people will come in and they will feign interest in you only to turn around and try to promote them or sell them, which I find very off putting right I can’t stand that. I would rather see someone who gets my attention because of acts of service to the greater industry and is just generally doing things. Most of the people that I’ve had meaningful relationships with are people who, like I’ve just seen doing good work in the industry. You’re a great example of that.
I know who you are. You’re in this lineup of this event in 2017. I’m like, Hey, I like Brett stuff. You know, I’m looking forward to seeing him speak. Adam Borenstein was EREMA, p2p Mark Fisher, Luca, you know, the list went on in that one. And these are all people that I’ve gone on to have actually pretty good relationships with. But in large part because I was motivated to get to know them, because I felt they were doing great things within the industry and being of service to a lot more people. I think, if you can approach that will one lens, Be of service, okay? And people will find their way to you.
Brett Bartholomew 1:07:03
. Now I’m going to hold you to answering it directly with verbal communication. somebody sees you in public. They say I heard this right. And one minute or less, what’s the best way and the most authentic way to build trust or just connect what kind of communication style they use?
Andrew Coates 1:07:17
Come say hi, literally come say hi, right. graciousness, but come say hi, the weirdest thing for me is people are funny with social media again, the attribute status to it larger numbers. And sometimes people act like your nobody in the fitness industry is a celebrity. No one is too famous. No one’s walking down the street being interrupted. So guess what? Come say hi. In normal human being be gracious. I’m very easygoing that way
Brett Bartholomew 1:07:43
You bet you bury the lede. You’re Canadian too. So just be a thoughtful, nice person that says Hi, looks him in the eyes and actually take interest in what Andrew has to say. Yes?
Andrew Coates 1:07:54
Yes.
Brett Bartholomew 1:07:55
Thank you. Simple, right. Simple and easy. All right. Now, you’ve given a lot of great insight you’ve been super transparent. You’ve come on with no preparation anything like that.This is a podcast with real conversations and not everybody navigates it super well because we just try to be real people here. Where can we support you? What’s the number one place we can go hit us?
Andrew Coates 1:08:16
All roads go through Instagram. So if you send me a message, I will respond to every message I will probably respond in voice I prefer text one way I send voice the other okay. My voice has been rough just because of this weekend. So you may hear a different voice than you’ve heard on air here. Just if you have questions if you have questions about a the books I’ve mentioned, or any of the topics we’ve talked about, send me a message I will respond to it. I check everything all the hidden DMS. If you really want to get into more of my resource, I share everything on Instagram, you will find it there. But in my website, www.andrewcoatesfitness.com You can find links to everything I’ve ever had published anywhere, my podcasts, all that sort of stuff. Like just shoot me a message if you want something specific. I will literally handpick a book a resource something for you based on what you need.
Brett Bartholomew 1:09:04
Perfect. Andrew thank you again for being such a good sport being so transparent. Folks, remember, always support our sponsors and our guests. They allow us to do this. We try to bring a lot of unique topics you things that you can use every single day, no matter what field you’re in, what walk of life, what age, any of that stuff. So thank you once again and thank you to all of you that have been listening, Andrew, we’ll talk to you soon, buddy. Okay, go ahead.
Andrew Coates 1:09:28
Alright, everybody listening. How many times have you listened to Brett’s podcasts and how many of you have not actually gone and given him a five star review. Now again, if you’re driving to do that, don’t do it while you’re driving. But actually make a note of it, do it at the first opportunity. It takes no time but I’ll do that little free kindness to show the support because that actually makes a big difference. If you’re passionate listed here and this is giving you a lot of value. I promise you that is the least you can do to give back.
Brett Bartholomew 1:09:57
I appreciate that very much. I I appreciate that. Thank you very much and consummate giver. All right, Andrew, we will talk to you soon and everybody else. We’ll see you next week.
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