“I Can’t Afford a Coach” — But Is That Really True?

You're listening to Beast Over Burden powered by Barbell Logic. >> We're Nikki and Andrew, your personal professional coaches. >> We help you take control of your [music] fitness through hard but doable training and nutrition practices that fit your busy life. >> Build a stronger, healthier version of yourself with lifelong [music] habits. Hey everybody, welcome back to Beast Overburden. I'm Nikki Sims, coach and experience officer here at Barbell Logic. And with me is Andrew Jackson, fellow coach, founder of Turnkey Coach, which is how he's helping a lot of people train and a lot of coaches deliver coaching. [snorts] So on this >> people reclaim their time. >> Reclaim their time, which is one that one uh resource that we really have a hard time getting back. That's such a valuable one. Yeah. Which really ties I think it ties into what we're going to talk about today. Speaking of resources, is one reason I hear a lot from people about why they're not training is I can't afford it. And we talked about this earlier that sometimes we hear that and know that it's something else. It means that it's not valuable enough to them anymore, >> you know, and that's just the the reason that's easier for us to say to people is they can't afford it when really maybe we're not doing a good enough job providing value. But there are other times when people say they want to get a coach or say they want to get a gym membership, but then they immediately follow it up with, but I can't afford it. And in those times, you kind of have to really get to know yourself and be honest, like, do you actually want to get a coach and get a gym membership? Because if you really did, how would you spend your time and money differently? You know, if you say you want to train, say you can't afford it, but you actually have no idea where your money is going, I don't believe you. >> Mhm. [snorts] Well, you don't have to believe or disbelieve what they're saying. They believe or maybe you just disagree or see you would see it from a different perspective. They might believe that's what they think, right? They might ask. >> I'm not trying to rain on anybody's reality here, [laughter] but I'm just saying >> the perceived reality. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, it's funny that I started by talking about reclaiming time because I've thought about this a lot lately that I personally have experienced and I think most people experience a common misconception of what money is. I think I picked this up from a book I read somewhere or maybe it was a podcast, I can't remember, but somebody I heard articulate that money is a database for exchanging time. >> And I grew up most of my life thinking money was this thing that had intrinsic value and I needed to get more money of it. And I didn't I I needed to get more of it and I didn't have enough of it. And I needed to be extremely careful about how I spent it >> because there was only so much of it that I had. >> And I prioritized many decisions in my life, including what jobs, what what uh college degree I got, >> uh what jobs I took based on how I could get the most money or how I perceived. In fact, I when I went to go pick out my undergraduate degree that I wanted to register for, I I at the time these were there's there was the internet did exist, but I can vividly remember opening up this book uh about college and going down this list of the average uh starting income of a recent college graduate. >> Oh, I totally did the same thing >> by by major >> and number one at the time was computer engineering >> and I was like well I like video games I like computers >> and 70 thou >> and it was $70,000 a year at that time seemed like infinite money as a >> 15 16 year old Andrew who was working a paper out making >> 400 [laughter] 125 yeah it was like probably 25 cents an hour but it was I think it was 100 125 bucks a month, which to me was like >> infinity money because my biggest expense was putting quarters in the video machine video game. >> Weren't you guys get like big 2 liter sodas and just like hang out and drink a bunch of >> You go down to it was uh what is today? WCO I think is how it's been rebranded. But it was this Cub Foods is what it was called back in the day in Corvalis, Oregon. It was sort of like a precursor to uh Costco or you know but not quite but you know there's a lot of bulk stuff but by my little town of Corvalis there was this huge kind of Costco-l like store and you could get a BR and a 2 L bottle of squirt for like a dollar I think for like a$150 and then head down to the arcade and play Street Fighter 2 for I could make a cool last like 3 hours. [laughter] Me and Galen actually would go down there. Um yeah, get a BR, get a 2 L. >> Uh anyways, I could go on that story for a while. But uh so anyways, the point was that for most of my life, that was how I thought of money. And it's only been recently that I've had this shift of realizing that it is simply a database uh for storing time so that you can store your time into a uh thing that you can go then give to another person who has stored their time in a way that they can collect money. And so you have this >> common exchange platform for, you know, for me, I'm really good at coaching people to get stronger and building software. >> And so people give me money for the time that I've invested in doing that. Somebody else is out there who is really good at raising cattle and, you know, turning it into ground beef and selling it to the store and all that stuff. Uh, so they get money for that and then I give people money to give me the beef because I don't know how to do that. Mhm. >> And so when you can flip the script on what money is and how you can make decisions about money that are more grounded in the real scarce resource, the only scarce resource that all humans have on Earth is time. We all die. We all have a set amount of time available and eventually it runs out. We don't know how much that is or when that will happen, but it is truly the only scarce resource. Everything else is almost infinity. I mean, you could argue technically there's only a limited amount of stuff on planet Earth, but it's uh nearly infinite. Um especially, you know, if we expand it out to the universe, right? But the question of uh I it's cost too much or I don't have enough money. I 1,000% agree with you is that what they're truly saying underneath that is uh that is not worth my time right now >> or I don't think that it's worth my time and I'm choosing whether it's conscious or unconscious to spend my time aka my money somewhere else. >> Yeah. And I think you also hit the nail on the head that when you can get the conversation off of it costs X number of dollars to are the things that you're going to get from investing in it, you know. So the conversation isn't this is an expense line item in my budget that I have to choose whether or not to keep. It's am I going to invest my not only my literal time but my time database of money into this thing that's going to transform my life. >> Right. >> Yeah. It becomes very difficult to say it's not worth >> I can't afford it. >> Whatever that is exactly >> you really can't afford not to. Yeah. >> What can't [snorts] you actually afford? >> Right. probably to die 10 years earlier or to become a sick aging phenotype [snorts] as Sullley talks about where you >> how much of your time and money are you going to spend caring for yourself or that others are going to have to spend caring for you because your body withered away and wasted away and you spent the 20 last 20 years of your life in about in and out of the medical system. >> Right. I can't afford that. >> Yeah, I don't want to pay for that. That's not how I want to pay. [laughter] >> You're not going to have much of a choice. I mean it's >> we've had some interesting conversations over the last few weeks with our friends who you know our parents and our friends parents have kind of hit that phase of life mid70s where there's a pretty big change and you see this bifurcation in the people that have invested in taking care of themselves and those that haven't. >> Yeah. >> And it's not pretty. >> Yeah. That endof life economy is an incredible resource extraction machine. >> Oh my god, I hate it. I hate it so much. How much >> hundreds of thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars a month to stay in a, >> you know, assisted living community. [clears throat] >> Um, that, >> you know, there's no happy ending there, right? >> It's not like you stay there for a few months and get better. It's just how long are you going to last and how how how much can you afford to >> right? How many of the resources that you worked so hard to build for your family are going to be given to this giant company who's basically just milking you for your money to stay alive. >> It's insane. Like you literally we've talked to more than one person >> Yeah. who are having to spend their entire life's asset >> to stay in a almost vegetative state, >> right, >> of life for [snorts] years >> with dementia >> and there's nothing they can do about it. And you know some in some you know you could argue like there is a bit of a coin toss there is a bit of a chance element to this. There's a bit of a, you know, political say what you will about what should be allowed or not allowed in terms of end of life care, but you know, some of those variables you can't control. There's a big one you can control right now. >> Yeah. >> And that's whether you choose to build muscle and exercise consistently, which are the thing. This is as close to a fountain of youth as you can get. >> Get strong. enjoy your day-to-day more before you can't. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And so I think shifting the I mean if somebody's uh haggling about the equivalent of you know a couple of coffees a day anymore. I mean I can't get out of Starbucks without spending like 10 bucks anymore. >> Oh my gosh. Seriously. Yeah. >> If I go with I mean I'm I think I can get a black drip coffee for $4, >> I think. So, >> maybe you put >> even a bit of steamed milk, >> you're over five bucks. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> And that's what we're talking about here. We're talking maybe like two dinners out a month [laughter] anymore. Like, I can't spend >> less than $100. I mean, I don't know. Somebody's probably gonna call me bougie or something because Okay. Yeah, I could go to Wendy's or something for We went to Taco Bell. It cost us $50. [laughter] $50 a Taco Bell. Are you kidding me? I used to go to Taco Bell. I'm going to start sounding like old man yell in the clouds here. Like I used to be able to >> dig an entire feast of Taco Bell out of the couch cushions. [gasps] >> Meaning he was digging money out of his couch, not taco. >> Exactly. I [laughter] I could find enough quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. Pennies I I would still keep pennies back then, and I'm starting to sell like an old guy here. But >> uh I could cobble [laughter] together I could cobble together three or four dollars from the couch cushions, pay for half a tank of gas and a meal for six at Taco Bell. All right, [laughter] it's a slight exaggeration, but $50 for two people at Taco Bell. I could like you physically could not have eaten that much Taco Bell back in the day. >> No, that would be pretty bad. That would be explosive. Yeah, >> a little bit. [laughter] >> $50 even in today's money was still pretty explosive. >> The pricey bell movement, [snorts] [laughter] >> but point there being was inflation. Uh that was an inflation rant. But a a decent dinner is going to be 100 150 bucks. >> Probably because you're going out dinner with me. I'll take responsibility. [laughter] >> I mean, we've been hitting happy hour [clears throat] dinners. >> It's the best time of day to eat. Yeah. >> Still at like a $100. I don't know, 80 bucks maybe, but whatever. >> Well, this is that also goes to another point that I'll make when you're done. Are you When you're >> a point. Yeah. I mean, I think I've made my point and derailed a bit, but it's just we're the the amount of money that we're talking about relative to the value that you get is uh the the money is not the problem. It's a value perception problem. >> Yeah, [snorts] >> I really do agree with that. And it I also think about this came up for me personally like holding myself accountable to certain things like in my head I started thinking about like if I am going to or the decision pathway for me to complain about my body like if I'm not >> this is a complex >> yeah if I am going to complain about my body and then not do anything about it I don't think those words should come out of my mouth. or if they do come out of my mouth, it should be something where I'm planning what to do about it, you know? And it goes back to also, you know, you and I have talked about that phrase like, "Oh, I wish I could." >> And it's like, do you really wish you could? Because if you did wish you could, you would. You would have already. And it's that also when you tell people, "Oh, I can't make it cuz I am too busy." When you really just don't want to go. And it's like being truthful about these sentences. >> Yeah. >> So, it's like it's like I try to hold myself accountable. Like if I say I wish I could afford that to something that I really want to do, but then I go and spend $200 at Amazon, I'm just like, well, that's all me. Like, I actually could have afforded that. But then I just responded to the thing that I could get the most easily. the the path this is the dark side of the path of least resistance to dopamine. >> Yes. Yeah. Like I was talking to someone who wanted to start coaching but he's spending money on video games and streaming services, >> right? >> And I was like, >> "Yeah, streaming services. There's a great one." >> Yeah. We were talking about this with some friends over the weekend of how the cable companies have or the uh >> you know the production companies have come full circle to have won the unplug the great unplugging. >> Yeah. Now we're paying to watch commercials again. >> Back in the day, you know, everybody's like, "Oh, everybody's going to unplug and stream internet and it'll be amazing and free." Fast forward 10-15 years and we're all paying like 10x what we were for basic cable a thousand channels and uh DVR. >> Yeah. [laughter] If anybody's playing >> you can't even see your local football team. >> Yeah. >> I just had to have rock help me figure out how to watch the football I want to watch. And it was like four different services >> for how much it was going to be like $1,000 or something. >> Oh, it was definitely close to like 150 a month. >> Yeah. Uh, if anyone is playing the drinking game for Andrew doing back in the day, you're probably having a good time by now. [laughter] >> Uh, yeah, I I have I mean pushing 50 here. Um, it's I've I've crossed over into embracing it now. I think that I'm [laughter] I'm uh what do they call it? Ascending, I guess, is the the kids call it. I'm probably even post. I'm like ascending gramp at this point. [laughter] Um, but I am actually starting to look forward to being a grandpa. Don't tell Clara. She's only 16. [laughter] But um, uh, oh yeah. So, but the point of the streaming service was like perfect example streaming service. This is like the Drake meme where it's like paying for getting stronger and improving the quality of my life and potentially adding years to my life. >> Yeah. No thanks. >> Sitting on the couch watching Netflix, >> Love Island or whatever. >> Sign me up. >> Yeah. >> So that a great example of like of how people are choosing to Oh boy. how people are choosing to [laughter] exchange >> make money. Uh >> that is one way >> um >> can open up the only fans uh [laughter] conversation. I saw a stat yesterday that the percentage of the population on only fans has almost reached the same percentage of uh unemployment. Uh >> it's pretty dang high. It's over 5% of the population has an only fans page. >> Wow. That's a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of scary. It's one of the fastest. >> The big takeaway here is if you can't afford coaching, start an only fans page, [laughter] >> you know, for some of the people out there that might be viable solution. But [laughter] if that's how you want to trade your time, choose Gabriel. Remember kids, Only Fans might be a good paycheck, but is that how you want to exchange your time >> or your soul? [laughter] But yeah, I forget which tangent we finished on there. Um, [laughter] but the I think the the main thing that really stuck out for me and where this came from is if I say something, I want to make sure I'm actually being truthful. If I say I can't afford something, then I I I'll only believe that if I know where my wab line items are, >> if I'm, you know, if I actually have chosen not to afford it, then the way that would actually come out is, you know, I don't want to pay for that right now >> or I'm spending my money elsewhere. >> Yeah. And I want to be uh sympathetic that there are a lot of people that this might not be where the $200 or $300 a month should go. >> No, >> there are very there are very real reasons where that is not the case. They are not our target market. They're not the people who we're talking about. >> I'm not trying to say this and make people feel bad about spending money for their family or choosing. What you're talking about is are people that can afford this >> that are in a [snorts] uh a position, financial position where they're making tradeoffs between how they spend their money, not whether they're putting food on the table or paying for, you know, strength coaching. Uh you're talking about a very subtle and common and I catch myself doing it all the time. It's sort of like a how we've talked about in the past, don't on yourself. Uh this is another sort of verbal tick almost that I think like I said even I do is I'll >> tell somebody and it's coming from a place of good intention often like I wish I was there. >> I wish you were here. I wish I was doing that. it like the intention behind it is like I would like to be there or like I'd like to do that but it's kind of this insidious >> lack of ownership of whatever it is that you are actually choosing to do >> right [laughter] >> by sort of like you're you're >> sherking responsibility for the choice that you did make >> into make it sound like you're a victim of wherever you're at that. Oh man, I wish I were there. As if you didn't choose not to be there, >> right? Yeah. >> I wish I was able to afford training as if you weren't choosing to spend your money elsewhere. >> Yeah. >> Uh >> or maybe you're just letting yourself off the hook, like >> you know, and you know you can't afford it, but like you said, you're choosing to do something else. And so like I also know that there are cycles during you know the day, the week, the month where you feel more inclined to do something more able to and then others where you feel the stress of other things based on how the day was like you know all the rent comes out or the paycheck comes in >> and you feel more able to afford things or less able to afford things. >> Yeah. >> And I I know that's a a big one where you know you wake up and things are good. like I actually can start training. Like I I want to do it and then two days later rent hits you're like I can't afford it. >> Well, you know that I think that's an excellent point and I'm going to just go ahead and plug WAB once again. You already brought it up. >> Yeah. But >> it really does help flip the mindset that we're talking about because I can remember the way I used to budget was to either once a month or once a quarter download all of my expenses, put it in a spreadsheet, and I would just sort >> from top to bottom. back in the day. [laughter] >> I mean, I still I mean, I this isn't this is only back in the day. We're talking like BY versus ay before wab and after wab. >> Okay, got it. [laughter] >> This isn't like back in the day as in like it's ancient technology. It's just before I knew about wab. I >> That's how Wab started. >> Yeah. >> I would put it in a spreadsheet and sort it sort [snorts] my expenses from top to bottom and I'd try to group them. But honestly, I I didn't even spend that much time grouping. I would just sort it top and bottom. That caused two problems. Uh one, I it would over I would uh overindex on paying attention to the large dollar expenses >> and miss the long tail of small expenses that if you add them up >> would many cases be more than some of the big buckets. Mhm. >> And then two, it put me in this frame, this mindset of each expense being a thing that I had to either justify uh or cut. And it would be like, okay, rent is was usually number one. Okay, I have to pay rent, but maybe I could get a cheaper apartment. >> And then I'd go try to and I would just be looking at it strictly from like, well, I'm paying and I literally did this one time. At the time, I was paying $1,500 a month in rent. Went out and found an apartment that was $1,100 in rent. Moved. >> Oh my gosh. >> Even though it made my commute longer, uh it was a middle floor instead of a top floor. >> Oh man. >> Like I I just was making a decision purely based on how can I make >> spreadsheet >> this spreadsheet line go from 1500 to 11. >> Oh [snorts] man. Uh, and I went and then there was another time I was I hit my gym membership. I was working out at a barbell gym/crossfit gym and it was a it was >> nice. >> I think at the time it was 200 or maybe a little over a month, which for a gym membership. Crossfit completely changed what people were willing to pay for that type of expense. by the way, like back in the day [laughter] and even today, because I know this because my mom and stepdad run a traditional kind of raball Uber service gym. I mean, they have a pool, a hot tub, they have classes, they have cardio room, a strength room, they have daycare, they've got a a crossfit room, blah blah blah. And people are like, "What? 49 bucks a month? I don't know." >> No, I know. So ridiculous. like, >> yeah, >> they're in that race to the bottom. They're competing with YMCA and Gold's Gym and all this kind of stuff and it's brutal. Um, and CrossFit came along and now people are routinely paying two, three or more. But anyways, I hit the the gym expense and I was like, well, let me shop that around. And lo and behold, there was a new CrossFit gym. It was actually a little bit closer and it was only $150 a month. So, I was like, well, >> go check it out. Now, fortunately, I cared enough about my training environment that the second I walked in, I was like, "Oh, no." >> Yeah. >> I didn't realize how good the gym is that I had. Uh, you know, everything from just cleanliness to the quality of the bars and the bumpers and, you know, whatever. But, uh, uh, in that case, the gym won out. But I was still making the mental error of evaluating each item as an expense >> cost versus value >> after wab. So that's before that's by after wab. Now I look at my money and choose each month where do I want to spend give each job each dollar a job and that is a totally different mindset uh that I think puts people in exactly the framework frame of mind you're talking about which is >> is this money which like we talked about earlier is this >> uh unit of exchanging my time being allocated to the thing that I value most. >> And so now I instead I'm going through my list choosing to invest in the thing one line at a time going forward. Not oh this is what how I spent my money in the past. Do I want to keep doing that? >> I don't know. It it might not sound like that big of a difference but to me it's a 180 flip. It completely changed changes how I think about my how I spend my money. >> Yeah. Cannot recommend Twine enough. Very worth it. >> Not just a spreadsheet, not just a budgeting tool. It is a uh mindset shift. >> Yeah, big time. Big time. Well, um I know we just yapped on about affordability. [laughter] So, we also have free resources on Barbell Logic and we also you can do a free call with us, but we have great articles and ebooks on our website. So, if you are ready to start getting stronger, but you're not sure where to begin, go to our website and download our free novice linear progression ebook. It gives you a simple proven strength program where you start relatively light, add weight each workout, and learn what to do when progress begins to slow. To find that, go to barbarogic.com/nvice. To get the guide for free to start training today, barbarogic.com/nvice. And yeah, lots of ways you can do this with actually without having to pay anybody. So, if you have the time, recommend it. Thank you, Andrew. Come back next week for another episode of Back in the Day. >> Byebye.