Hey guys, today I have a very special guest, John Richardson. So many of you already know John on a deep level because he’s probably coached you at some point if you’re a member here at The Hell Yes community. He is our head coach, our lead trainer here at Hell Yes. He coaches the Three More community, and he was the leader and the frontman of Zero to Coach.

For those of you who don’t know him, he is definitely the most popular and most loved coach here at HYC above myself. Our community members have really formed a strong bond with John that I have absolutely loved watching unfold over the last couple of years. He brings a flavor to this community that I don’t. He has become a dear friend of mine and confidant. He gets to see the best of me and the worst of me behind the scenes. He has been a really strong structure to lean on and bounce ideas off over the last couple of years.

John has been a coach of some kind for the last 15 years. Everything from collegiate sports to CrossFit to mindset and discipline. He’s one of those people that actually truly has a passion for watching people change and grow. John is an elite athlete, a deeply experienced coach, a father, a husband, and recently an Iron Man. I know this episode is going to be a real treat for those of you who have worked directly with John, and it’s going to be very valuable for those of you who have not.

So without further ado, I’m you’re host Becca Pike. This is episode number 32, and it is time for your weekly dose of Hell Yes Coaching. Let’s go.

Hey, guys. I’m Becca Pike and welcome to The Hell Yes Entrepreneur podcast, the number one show for entrepreneurs looking to create their first six-figure year. If you’ve got the drive and you know how to hustle but you’re not sure where to channel your energy, we’ve got the answers. Let’s dive into today’s show.

Becca: Hi John Richardson. How are you doing?

John: I’m doing well Becca. Thanks for having me on the show. I’m honored to be here.

Becca: Well, I’m excited that you’re here. I guarantee that there are a lot of Hell Yes members that are excited to see you on the podcast. So John Richardson is the head coach here at Hell Yes Coaching. I don’t know if you know this John, but you are very beloved by all of our members.

Anytime I talk to anybody that’s in Three More of anybody who’s been coached by you, they always say, “John Richardson, he’s amazing. He’s like the best coach.” They’re all like obsessed with you. What are doing? What are you doing in these teachings?

John: Very happy to hear. I’m excited about that. That’s why I do this. I hope that that is the feeling that they have about me. It’s music to my ears to hear it. It’s exciting.

Becca: Yeah which is interesting because I’m going to dive right into your deep dark secret, but you had a hard time identifying yourself as coach in the beginning, remember?

John: I do.

Becca: Which is interesting because you’re such a good coach. I saw it. It probably sounded like I was trying to blow smoke up your butt, but I was telling you all the time you’re really good at this. You had what a lot of people deal with all the time, which is just imposter syndrome. You came into the coaching world feeling that way, and you have taken it by storm. Everybody loves your coaching. Can you tell us a little bit about what was going on in your mind in the very beginning of your coaching career?

John: I remember our conversations and I’ve had similar conversations with some other coaches. Like hey you could just call yourself a life coach. I had what I think a lot of people that I talk to, early coaches, feel like I need a certification, or I need a training.

What I failed to realize is that I had multiple years of trainings. No certifications, but I had been a coach for a long time. I had always assumed sort of a leadership role. I gravitated towards helping people. It was just kind of what was natural. I just didn’t call it coaching.

Once I finally realized that, I had a second aversion which I think maybe some have. I didn’t think anything negative of it. I projected other people’s feelings of it, and assumed that they would think it was negative. Until I basically just said for the first time publicly, “Hey I’m John Richardson, I’m a life coach.” I don’t think that I was as good a coach as I could be. That limitation that I put on that word held me back in a lot of ways.”

Becca: People put a lot of identity into titles. This was one of them. I was just talking to girl who has been mentoring people for literally like 11 or 12 years. She’s been mentoring them to grow their business, but she’s been working for a corporation. Just basically the way I see it is she was working under the illusion of safety, right.

So she was in the corporate world, and she had this illusion that her job was very safe. She was mentoring people to grow their business. She never saw herself as being able to do this outside of that, right, because that safety net wasn’t there. When I was talking to her, I was like, “Why don’t you this for yourself?” She had been let go of her job and her world had crumpled.

I was like well, you can become a coach. She was like, “I don’t know how to coach.” I was like well what do you mean? This is what you’ve been doing for 15 years. The title of it and the identity that went with it, titles hold a lot of weight. A lot of times people can’t transition between the two.

John: Yeah absolutely. I see it all the time. People don’t want to use the term life coach for some reason. I think I know, but I don’t want to assume why people don’t want to. They’ll call themselves like a performance coach or like a mindset coach or a health coach or a wealth coach or whatever. It’s all life coaching.

So I just cut right to the chase and just tell people hey call yourself a life coach. Then what happens after that will be a lot easier. You can find your niche. You can find your specialty. You can find the people you want to work with, but it’s all life coaching. But there’s no reason to think anything negative about it. We all live life. We all want to be better at it. Why would you not want to be a life coach? Why would you not want to help people live a better life?

Becca: Yeah. I think that there’s like an obsession with having a niche. It’s almost like people don’t want to just be a life coach. They want to be a mindset coach for women over 40 that are divorced, right? Like very specific. That’s what I see the most with the aversion to the actual word life coach.

I feel like when it comes to the imposter syndrome, there’s this idea that you have to, again, just have titles, and have certifications and stuff. I know people that are doctors, right. Let’s say that they study nutrition and kinesiology, physiology, right? Human body. There’s other people that I know that have learned way more than said doctor by reading books, being self-taught, watching YouTube, like diving into biohacking their own body.

They literally hold triple the knowledge of this example of a doctor, right, but they don’t gain the respect. They don’t feel like they are capable of helping people with their health or with their fitness because they don’t have that title. I find that to be super interesting as well.

John: Yeah, totally. In a lot of ways, and I think this is an example of that, the certifications can hold people back, right. You feel like you have to operate within the confines of whatever that certifying body says you have to do. The cool thing about life coaching is that there are certifying bodies. But when we put together the Zero to Coach, we looked at it and we said, “Hey we can operate in a much broader and more serviceable way if we don’t operate within the confines of what that certification is saying you have to do.

Becca: Yeah, yeah absolutely. For anybody listening, I feel like this is such an example of Hell Yes Coaching as a company kind of walking the walk and not just talking the talk, which is we really believe that people need to just get out there and start heling people when it comes to coaching. So anyone that comes to us that wants to become a coach, we used to have a coaching certification.

Here’s the real truth. It was very successful. It made the company a lot of money. It did really well. But after we did it for, how long did we do that? We had the certification for like a year.

John: About a year, yeah.

Becca: A little over a year. It was going swimmingly, but John and I were like, “You know what? This isn’t on brand.” What we were doing is we’ve always said people go out and they search for certifications. They search for more titles and more titles so that they can feel ready so that they can then finally go out and start coaching and helping people.

What we noticed is that’s what they were doing with Zero to Coach. At first we were like no, it won’t be that way at Zero to Coach. We’re going to push them. We’re going to get them out of their comfort zone. They’re going to go out, and they’re going to start helping people.

What happened is it was again what I call certification procrastination, right, where people will jump from certification to certification just trying to like feel like they’re ready. They’re like after this cert, I’m going to feel ready, right?

Anyways about six months or so ago we got rid of it completely. Like we swallowed our pride. We had spent a lot of time and energy building this part of the business, and we completely got rid of it. We said okay anybody that wants to be a coach is ready enough to be a coach. To go right into Three More and start getting clients and just ask their questions there.

It was just a really big push to get people out of their comfort zone and say hey, you don’t actually need this. You need to get out and start talking to people and helping people.

John: Right. Yeah coaching is a skill that you’re always going to be better at it. Like I hope that I look back at my coaching ability now and think man, I didn’t know anything. Like if in a year from now I’m that much better of a coach, I know that I’ve evolved. I hope it continues on, right. I’m going to be a better coach in the future if I keep leaning into building my skillset, right?

That’s the same way with a beginner coach, right. You are a coach the day that you decide to coach somebody. The day that you have a paying client, you are officially a professional coach. Your skillset will continue to evolve for the rest of your life. The more you lean into it and the better you want to be at it, you will be better at it.

Becca: Yeah, absolutely. If you are not embarrassed by the things that you said on Facebook a year ago then you’re not growing fast enough. Like your content should be growing. You should look at your content from last year and be like, “Wow, that could have been better.” Like I can do that better now. You want that. That means that you’re growing, right.

I really believe that our brains always grow faster than our content. So we have a lot of people that have programs, or they write blogs or something. Your brain should always be a little bit sharper than when you created that program or that blog.

So going back to Zero to Coach, for you what was one of the limitations of Zero to Coach that you said you know what? This can just be done right in Three More.

John: Yeah that’s a good question. I’ve thought a lot about it. A lot of effort and thought. I remember you and I meeting in your office talking about the content and the programming and developing it in a way so that they’re build their coaching skill and building their business. All of that worked. I stand by the content. I think it was really good.

The biggest limitation that I saw is that we had too much of an event around the announcement of, “Hey world, I’m a coach.” Right? We wanted it to be scripted and we had the blog post. What I saw with a lot of people was like, “Oh I’ll wait until I have this certification, until I’ve finished the 12 weeks, and then I’ll make the announcement.” That’s not the way that we designed it.

Within the program it was that you make the announcement that you’re a coach well before you really feel comfortable. Knowing that the certification was kind of the light at the end of the tunnel for that announcement, it kind of got delayed.

Then there was this monumental thing, this hurdle that they felt like, this mountain that they had to climb to make the announcement. Then there was a lot of expectation on results of it. It ended up being exactly what we didn’t want it to be, which was that you needed this certification to come out to the world that hey, I’m a coach now. That’s not what we wanted.

So that was an unintended consequence I think of calling it a certification of having the training. Even though it did everything that we wanted to do, and I still think it’s an awesome product and program. In a way, we did handicap people. We held them back when they could have just gone out and said, “Hey I’m a coach and I’m going to figure it out as I go.”

Becca: Yeah. How many people have come through since we got rid of Zero to Coach and went right into Three More and started getting clients because of it. They didn’t have to go through that 12 week of certification. They didn’t have to pay the $6,000. They went right into Three More and they leaned into the community, and they got the exact same results, if not better and faster.

John: The product of being a good coach comes from coaching. It comes from reading books and there’s values in what we had. We just delayed what you were going to get to on your own anyways, probably, if you were motivated enough.

Becca: Yeah, absolutely. So let me ask you this. Three More is not just for coaches. Of course we have coaches that go through it, but we have people that own brick and mortar businesses. We have chefs. We have the whole shebang of industries in Three More. What do you think is the main issue that people come into Three More to resolve?

John: Probably it’s confidence. We can narrow that confidence down either into their product, into themselves, into their ability to sell, into the consumers, things that they project off onto the consumer. I’ll say broadly it’s confidence and being able to confidently say who you are, what you do, and how you help people is the one thing that I think people benefit the most from Three More. They go through the videos. They come on the calls. They go out into the world very clearly able to tell people who they are, what they do, and how they help people.

Becca: Yeah. Even people that have been in business for five or six years. We see this all the time. They come in and they think that they know how to succinctly tell people exactly what they do, and they don’t. There’s always this room for polishing and changing and helping inspire.

That’s something that we teach a lot in Three More, which is like if people aren’t messaging you and asking to work with you. If they’re not trying to buy your products, it’s literally because they’re not inspired enough. You haven’t inspired them, right?

That’s really hard for people to hear. They’re like, “No, no our business is really good.” It’s like yeah your business might be amazing. Your product, your service might be phenomenal, but if people aren’t contacting you to work with you then you haven’t inspired them to reach out to you.”

John: Yeah, absolutely. So much of what we talk about is ways to be inspiring in a really natural way. I think confidence inspires people. There’s a way to do that humbly. I certainly hope that that’s the way that we tell people. It’s like a humble confidence goes a long way in sales.

Becca: Yeah, absolutely. So I thought this would be fun too. Let’s take just a second and let’s shoutout some of the people in Three More that have really killed it. It doesn’t even have to be like that they’ve killed it in sales. Maybe just the way that they’ve showed up. One person that sticks out to me is Josephine. She gets on the call from Australia, right?

John: Yeah, she’s in Australia. Yeah.

Becca: So every time she gets on the call, it’s like 3:00 in the morning. I have people in my mastermind that I’m a part of who are in South Korea. They get on the call. It’s always like 1:00 in the morning every time we get on the call there.

To me it’s like that is the motivation you see in really successful people. Because every time you talk to these people, the people that are in South Korea, or every time we talk to Josephine, like it’s always like matter of fact. Like yeah it sucks, but what else am I going to do? Like I’ve gotta show up to the call, right?

Whereas a lot of people would put that as an excuse. Like I’m not going to come at 2:00 in the morning. Like no. These girls are getting up. They’re getting out of their bed. They’ve got a coffee in their hand at 3:00 a.m. They’re starting their day, and they are learning. That, to me, is some badass shit.

John: Yeah, absolutely. She shows up ready and she fought the certification procrastination battle as well. She jumped right into Three More. It was awesome.

Becca: Oh yeah. Was she wanting to get certified as well?

John: Yeah. She may have some training as a coach, but I know that was one thing that had been on her mind was, “Eh, I probably need to get another certification before I jump into this thing.”

Becca: Yeah, hell yeah. Now she’s in 30 More.

John: Yeah, she’s a boss.

Becca: She’s just going. Who else sticks out? Tyler Dorsey. Do you remember when she came to us and how drastically different she was from the first class that she came to in Three More until—

John: I mean even before that with Tyler, meeting her at Whole Foods before we started working on business coaching. The transformation that she’s made from solo employee in her own business to like boss woman is amazing.

Becca: Yeah. She’s got several employees now. She’s killing it. Bethany Boyles, remember her?

John: Yeah.

Becca: She came in. She got 27 new clients in eight week. Eight weeks. She’s an accountant, CPA. She came in, she showed up to all the calls, she watched the videos. She did all the things, and she was just like, “Yeah, it’ working great.” I was blown away. I was like you have 27 new clients. She was like, “Yeah, I know.” Like she was just so nonchalant. Who sticks out to you?

John: Well Bethany is really inspiring too with her content and her as a person. Like how open she is with things that are going on in her life. So it’s not surprising that like people gravitate towards that and have trust that like hey, she’s a winner at life. She’s conquering it. I trust her with my accounting.

I think there’s a lot of things about the way that she talks that people associated her as a winner. They find confidence like whether she was…It wouldn’t matter as much what product she sold. I would just trust her with whatever she says she’s going to do.

Becca: Yeah because of her vulnerability, right?

John: Yeah.

Becca: Yeah.

John: Yeah. Recent person that really impresses me with the way that they’ve just kind of stepped up and own their space is Joseph Fehlen in Wisconsin. He’s a travel agent. I think he had been playing small ball kind of afraid to step into the limelight a little bit and really own his space. He’s so funny and genuine. That’s really been coming out in terms of I think his confidence in himself.

He’s also found confidence in knowing what he’s good at, which is all inclusive vacations in Mexico. So shoutout. If you’re looking for an all-inclusive vacation in Mexico, look up Small Town Wanderer. Joseph, he’s the man.

Becca: Yeah, he has been interesting watch. I’ve watched him evolve and gain confidence. His sales is proving it, right? Like didn’t he, it was like a $600,000 year this year.

John: Yeah he’s definitely increasing.

Becca: Or something like that. It’s crazy.

John: I can’t think of an industry that’s been rocked as much as travel with COVID.

Becca: Yeah, absolutely. Another person, a more recent person, is JoBeth.

John: Yes.

Becca: Right.

John: And seeing her come alive.

Becca: She came to life. She had a lot of concern about coming into Three More. She was worried that she had a lot of reasons why she didn’t think it could work. I ended up talking to her about it later. She was like, “I knew it would work the whole time. I was just nervous.” She was like, “I just didn’t want to put the money down.” She came in and she asked all the questions, right. She watched all the videos. She was very vocal. She just came in and she just got what she needed, and I love that. I love that guys.

If you ever go into a program, here’s the truth. All programs work if you make them work, right. If you go in and you tippytoe and you feel like you don’t belong or you decide that you don’t belong. You start thinking that the things aren’t working then they’re not going to work.

If you go in like JoBeth Evans and you start asking the questions, you watch the videos, you raise your hand, you start like really asking for advice. That girl has…Do you remember she sent that chart where her sales have gone up like threefold since she joined Three More?

John: Yes. It’s been unbelievable. Just the opportunities that have come her way too. Like I think confidence produced those opportunities. When you’re out there, when you’re commanding and telling people the value that you have, more opportunities come to you. It’s not a surprise that she’s in front of grocery store chains selling out her entire ranch.

One of the things that when we’re going through these people that’s coming to my mind is like we had a CPA. We’ve got a travel agent. We’ve got a coach, and we’ve got a cattle farmer. Like all of these different industries are all having the same success from our program. It’s designed that way. So like our business principles, our sales principles could go to any industry. So if anybody’s listening to this and they’re kind of on the fence, like let’s have a conversation about it. I guarantee it will change your business.

Becca: Yeah. If you call Hell Yes Coaching, you get John. Like John is going to—

John: Yeah. We’ll have a one-on-one conversation, it will be awesome. I’d love to meet you.

Becca: Which is so funny because people comment all the time how different you and I are. They’re like.

John: Oh yeah?

Becca: You guys are literally polar opposites. How would you describe that?

John: I don’t know. I guess I haven’t really thought about that. I guess it serves well as a brand with you being out front and then me kind of behind the scenes too if we’re polar opposites maybe. I don’t know.

Becca: Yeah, yeah. To me, I’m the front face. I’m much more spastic. You’re much more calculated. I’m much louder. You’re much chiller. Like I feel like I’m running around making messes and you’re like running being me cleaning them up. So like everyone sees my face on the front of this, but I’m constantly telling people like no John is a huge part of this company. You’re just not seeing him on all of the Canvas and the website and all of that.

John: Yeah. Well, you know, and the side that I see of you though. Like I know the social media side, and not to say they’re that much different, but I see cool, calm, collected Becca most of the time. So in my mind, we’re not that different.

Becca: Yeah. Me and social media Becca are pretty different. I don’t even do the social media posts anymore though. Like I have people that do that. So it’s so interesting. I mean before I get going, some of the things are me especially if it’s like pictures of my home or my kids and I’m talking on there. Like that’s usually me.

It’s interesting watching a persona being built through a marketing team that is projecting out to the world like what Hell Yes Coaching represents. I’m constantly trying to realign them with who I am. Like hey I wouldn’t say that. That’s not something I would say. This is something that I would say. This is the way I would do it better.

You know what I noticed is that these teams always make me really aggressive. I’m like what does that say about me? You’re always like making me cuss even more than I do. I was like I would never use the f-word there. That’s a dumb place to use it.

John: Well, aggressive and Becca Pike would, I think, be more aligned than passive and Becca Pike.

Becca: Yes, yes.

John: On the aggressive/passive scale, you definitely lean aggressive.

Becca: Yeah, I completely agree.

John: And appropriately so. I think that’s a virtue.

Becca: I was talking to the manager at Massage Strong, and we are having a hell of a time hiring people because of the pandemic and unemployment and all that stuff. It’s so bad. We used to hire two/three people a month. Now it’s like one person every three to four months. It’s real dry and real awful. I’ve stepped away from the hiring process all together for like the last year, and my husband does all of it.

My husband is amazing at what he does, but I would not consider him aggressive at all. So if someone comes and we want them to work for us and then they take another job, he’s like, “Aw man. Like we lost that person. Like they took another job.”

There was this girl that I had had my eye on. I was waiting for her to get her license. My husband came to me, and he was like, “She got her license, but she took another job somewhere else.” I was like go get her. He was like, “What do you mean? I can’t just go get her.” I was like give me her number. I contacted her and I listed out all the perks. I called her. I had a meeting with her. By the end of it I had her and her boyfriend and like two classmates all to apply to Massage Strong. This was within like an hour.

When I was talking to my business manager, she was like, “Becca, that is what we need so bad. We’ve been missing that aggression. We’ve been missing that I’m just going to go do it and get it done no matter what it is.” I was telling her. She was like, “You’ve got to teach me what to do so that I can do it because I know you’re going to step back out, step away.”

I was telling her. I was like you know, I don’t really know exactly. Like I can start trying to write it down, but overall in my mind there just is no answer that is no. Like I’m not going to strongarm this girl to work for me. If she were to say no, I would accept that. But I would strongarm finding people to work for us. So like even when I stepped in and was looking for people to work for us, there was no way I was going to end my day without at least one to two more people working for Massage Strong.

You know what I mean? Like it’s just, there’s an aggressive piece of my brain that I notice that a lot of people don’t have. I don’t know if aggressive is the word as much as not going to take no for an answer. I’m not going to stop.

John: Yeah committed was the word.

Becca: Yeah like there’s just no option b. Like we’re getting more people, right.

John: Yeah. Well I think like sales, people have a bad connotation of aggressive, right. The reality is if you’re in business and you’re not aggressive, somebody like a competitor of yours is going to be. So whether you were a great masseuse, and this applies to all industries with people where you need talent.

If you’re the business owners and you’re not aggressively recruiting talent, somebody else is. Guess what? They’re aggressively recruiting your talent as well. So you need to be aggressive in the way that you retain talent, the way that you capture talent, the way that you advertise for talent.

It doesn’t need to be like the worst imaginable way that you can associated aggression with recruiting. It could just be I’m sure the way that you did it. Hey how are you? We would love to have you at Massage Strong. This is what we’re about? Does that sound like a good fit? You know?

Becca: Yeah. The aggression never passes the threshold between yourself and the other person. The aggression stays in your own mind as the salesperson, right. I don’t know if anyone would ever consider me to have been aggressive to them to sell them on something, right.

So with her it was literally, “Hey this is Becca, the owner of Massage Strong. I heard that you got another job. Congratulations on passing your test. I just wanted you to know all your options. Are you willing for me to just sit down and read you all of the perks of working at Massage Strong and the pay? I would love to negotiate with you. If you tell me how much they’re paying you, I’m going to try to top that. Do you want to do that?”

Right? Like it was never aggressive towards her. It was always just aggressive in my mind. Like if she says no, I’m going to go for someone else. I’m going to go for someone else. Because I know that this job has better perks and higher pay than anywhere else. I know that she just doesn’t know that yet. So it’s my duty if I want her to enjoy her career to go and make sure that she knows all the options of where she can work and where she can get paid and what’s possible for her.

John: Yeah absolutely. You did that out of place of service. It was serving her to have that phone call.

Becca: Yeah, exactly. That’s what we teach people in Three More all the time, right? It’s like you’re doing it to serve them. If you’re a life coach and your actual mission is to help women who have been on the receiving end of infidelity, right.

Like if that’s you’re actual mission and you know that there are women that are hurting and they’re in pain and they want to heal themselves, but they just don’t know how. Then when you go out and you touch base with these people and you’re really interested in helping them find the resources and the tools that they need, you’re going to get paid for it. Right? If you go out just looking to get paid with no thought or care about whether or not they’re going to heal or have any results from working with you, it’s going to feel gross on both ends.

John: Yeah, it’s no good.

Becca: All right, let’s switch gears. I want to talk to you. So you made a really massive change in your life about a year ago, two years ago.

John: Almost two years ago.

Becca: So John and I met at CrossFit. So John used to live here in Kentucky in Lexington where I lived. We met at CrossFit. What was your first impression of me at CrossFit by the way? Because I want to tell you mine of you.

John: I don’t know. You’re pretty quiet actually. Like within the gym, you’re pretty quiet. We didn’t go to all of the same classes. So I don’t think I had like a monumental impression, just that you were nice. I like Mark. Mark and I were friends. You seemed like a good mom and wife.

Becca: Yeah which is fun because John was my coach in CrossFit. So how fun. He was my CrossFit coach.

John: What was your impression of me?

Becca: My impression of you was I just really like your wife. To me you were always Andrea’s husband.

John: Oh really? That’s crazy. I really like my wife too.

Becca: I know. I don’t mean that to be mean, but to me you were just like…Like I think I called you Andrea’s husband for like the first year. Andrea’s cool and she was super fit. When she was in CrossFit, she would just kill it. It was amazing. I remember just being like in awe of her.

John: I still am.

Becca: Does she kick your ass in things athletically?

John: She has been more successful at triathlon than me. I mean like when we compete head to head, no. Because I think men have genetic disposition to be superior in like head to head things, but from a place perspective, she’s like crushing the triathlon game. She’s just learning how to swim. So watch out. When she learns how to swim, she’s going to be really good.

Becca: Does she plan to do an Iron Man?

John: She is doing an Iron Man. She signed up for it.

Becca: When is it?

John: November of 2022. She’s got a fancy bike. She just woke up early this morning to get on the trainer. She’s all in on it. It’s really fun.

Becca: Yeah. She’s fit as a fiddle. I love it. That’s super fun. Okay so you lived in Lexington, and you worked a corporate job, and you worked a lot of hours. You were the breadwinner of your family I assume? I don’t know if that’s actually truly.

John: Yeah, yeah. I mean I was doing all of the right things by any conventional standard. Graduate school, promotion every year to progressive management experience. You know the whole nine yards. Paths to the c-suite, all of it, was the way things were going for me.

Becca: Yes. When you started working at Hell Yes Coaching, I remember thinking this man is conventionally brainwashed. It was climb the ladder. Especially the way that you thought about work like it was like per hour instead of the result that you were giving people. Which is a really hard thing for people to grasp that come from the corporate world who are taught and trained and brainwashed into this idea that your worth is calculated in hour spans. I kind of watched as you evolved into like, “Oh I’m going to actually just get paid for the result that I give.” Does that make sense?

John: Yeah, totally. Even as a person who’s been fully self-employed now for a year and a half, I still sort of struggle if a day goes by, and I don’t “make any money.” Like I don’t have a coaching call. I don’t sell a house. I don’t do one of my side hustles. I don’t have a business income coming in. I’m like aw man. I just totally lost money today. It’s just so silly.

You had like a really good…In one of our conversations you were like, “Why are you so hard on yourself?” I was like what do you mean? She goes, “Do you ever think like by the minute that you didn’t make any money?” I’m like no, that would be ridiculous. I think you said, “Well, it’s ridiculous to think about it by the day.” Even before that it was by the hour.

Just this association with time directly equals money. I do think time equals money in a lot of ways in that we undervalue the value of time as a society. Time and money are not so closely aligned that you need to put pressure on yourself that each hour is worth a certain result.

Becca: Yeah, exactly. I think that a lot of people are like, “Okay, I need to make money today.” Even if they aren’t that specific, they’ll say, “Okay, I need to make money this week or this month.”  A lot of people look at their income based per month, right? Well, this month was a good month. This month was a bad month.

I would even suggest broadening that out if you have the cashflow and the ability. I broaden mine out to a quarter. So if I look at quarters of the year, I look at okay, this quarter, this is about how much money I want to make. When I look at it that way, it takes the pressure off of the day to day and the week to week and even the month to month. I’m in a position now where like I want to take a month off sometimes. I probably take a month off like twice a year right?

Then I’m like that doesn’t even matter that that is a “zero month” because I’m looking at the quarter and I’m putting emphasis on the quarter. I swear that just that tiny change. Maybe some of you aren’t at that place yet. Maybe you want to just broaden out to the week or to the month, but that change brought a ton of peace to my mind because it wasn’t this pressure to serve and make money every single month. Every single week.

John: Yeah, absolutely. It’s freeing in the sense that you can sleep a little bit better at night. Then it’s also really encouraging that you can make up. So take the quarter example, right. If you have two months of no revenue at all, if you look at it by the quarter you’re like, “Well, in one month I can make a whole quarter’s worth of revenue.” That increases your ceiling, right. So it’s serving you in two directions.

Becca: Yeah, and it allows you to like listen to your body, right? Like some days I wake up and I’m so driven and I’m just so ready. I want to get on this podcast. I want to talk to people. I want to sell. I want to create value. I want to teach. Some days I wake up and I just want to go to bed. I want to watch Netflix. I want to just hang with my kids. I want to make a gingerbread house. It just allows you the ability to listen to your body.

I think that we’ve been taught as a society like don’t listen to your body. Like you wake up, you go to work at nine, you get off at five. Shut your mouth, do your thing. Even people that are working for themselves still have this built into their brains. I know this because it took me a long time to get to it as well back when I first started working for myself.

I’ll even see entrepreneurs who they completely make their own schedule. They get up at 9:00 in the morning. They get to their computer, and they don’t even know really what they’re doing. They don’t even have a task for the day. Because all their stuff is kind of just done. It’s almost like their nervous system hasn’t calmed down from the corporate world yet. They don’t even know exactly how to just take time off or just do tasks here and there that create a result at the end of the month.

John: Yeah, totally. I think that comes with and intention because it’s so easy, especially like. I’m speaking from personal experience. I have a home office. I come in here because it’s the middle of the day because that’s normal working hours, and I do exactly what you just said. I get on the computer, and I look at my email. I’d already read my email. I don’t have any new emails.

Becca: They’re just all emails from me just dumb shit that you just keep deleting.

John: Or you just create work. I’m like I’m just spinning in a little vacuum of work because it makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something. The reality is if I just took a step away, my mind would create actual value work not just like busy work.

Becca: Yes, exactly. That’s exactly what… Okay at the beginning of every week I look at my calendar and I’m like, “Okay, what are the things that I actually need to do?” Because I know what’s going to happen. If I don’t write down the things I actually need to do then I’m just going to go do a bunch of bullshit that I don’t need to do at all, right?

So I will look at my week and I’ll be like, “Okay, I need to record a podcast on Monday. I need to teach a class on Tuesday. I need to write a blog on Thursday.” Those are the top three things that I need to do to progress my business, right? Then I wrote those down, and then I just kind of make that mental shift in my head that that’s all that I need to do, and if I want to do more, I can.

It really takes me out of that whole like I’m just going to sit at my computer and spin in circles and scroll on social media. It really allows me to be like okay what else do I want to do with my time? Like I really want to go to CrossFit three times this week. I want to go on a hike. I want to walk my dog. I want to go and play pool at the, we’ve been going to a pool place lately. So anyway, yeah. I completely agree.

John: Yeah. You get just as much done, right?

Becca: More done.

John: Yeah you should even say more. Because what happens when you’re on that social media scrolling thing where you just blindly find yourself there, you start to feel really crappy about yourself.

Becca: Dude, social media is a suck hole. It will suck you in. I know this because I get sucked into it. Lately probably in the last year I’ve gotten so much better at just not even…Like I put out on social media. I put out content, but I don’t take it in as much. I don’t absorb it. I don’t consume it as much.

One of the most powerful things I ever did was just decided that I’m not going to scroll or do any type of absorbing of social media at all during work hours. Like I just don’t. I do the things that I need to do. They’re usually writing or speaking or teaching. Other than that, social media doesn’t really come into my life during work hours. That’s been really nice.

A lot of people will be like, “Well, my work is on social media.” It’s like yeah, well I get that. You’re self-employed. You think that you need to be on social media because of work, but here’s what doing work actually looks like on social media. Writing a post or a blog, which doesn’t include consuming whatsoever. Also going into Facebook groups for the purpose of networking.

So like in the very beginning of my business, I would go into Facebook groups, mom’s groups, CrossFit groups. Just communities that I was a part of. My whole goal was to leave the most valuable comment on the thread. I would find threads, and I would leave the most valuable thing I possibly couldn’t. It wouldn’t say DM me. It wouldn’t be a call to action or a pitch or anything like that.

But every single time if someone was asking, “Hey, how do I create a logo for my business?” If I went into that thread and I gave them like step by step guide and then who to call and then resources and then tools, guess what that looked like? That looked like some boss ass shit. I would have people commenting or like DM’ing me asking me how I know this, if I can help them more. It always lead to more sales.

So anyways if you think that you have to work on social media, I want you to consider what that actually means. It usually means like 30 minutes a day of you contributing value to the world and not consuming social media.

John: Well said. Yeah because you know what people do when they see that awesome comment? They click your name, and they’re look at you and they say, “Oh, she has Hell Yes Coaching. What is that?” Then they go to your website and then they have a consult.

Becca: Yeah, exactly. But yeah. So back to what we were saying. You used to live in Lexington. You were the breadwinner. You were corporate world. You were doing all of the things “right” that we were taught to do.

Then you quit your fulltime job. You moved your whole family to the sunshine state. You’ve been growing your hair out like a surfer boy and living your best life running Iron Man’s and having so much more free time. I’ve just noticed how drastically different you seem with your stress and with the entire quality of your life. It’s been really fun to watch. Tell us what happened. How did that even go down?

John: So I think for a while I in the corporate world had fought this feeling of lack of fulfilment maybe. I know this dissonance of I know y’all are telling me that I should really be happy right now, but it kind of sucks. Every time I felt that way, I got a promotion or a complement from a mentor. Just enough to sort of move me along.

Eventually one day I was in my office and the VP of HR came into my office and was like, “Hey, how’s it going?” Like for some reason I was like ah it’s really terrible. Like it’s so awful right now. That lead to like this toothpaste out of the tube moment where I’m like I’m not taking this back. I’m going to see where this goes.

I ended up resigning from my job as executive director and started working as an analyst. That also gave me a lot of free time to invest in other areas. So I was able to keep a good salary, but also like hey what is life coaching? What does moving look like? Andrea and I talked, and we both had this calling for adventure. I always thought that it was a sabbatical. At some point in my career, I was going to take like six months off.

I also knew that when I retired, I wanted to move to Florida. Andrea and I were talking about things that we really like, and both of us like being outside. We like the beach. We like the sunshine. We just said like why not move to Florida now and thus create life exactly how we wanted it to be. That was a very hard decision, right? It wasn’t like something we just decided overnight. We prayed about it. We planned for it. Over the course of time with just trusting in ourselves and trusting the Lord, things fell into place to make that happen.

I moved to Florida without knowing a single person, with no job. The only safety net that we really had was that we were hardworking smart people that just knew we would succeed. Beyond that, there wasn’t a whole lot of falling back on anything. Really when you think about it, we were falling back on ourselves. If I had to choose something to fall back onto, there is no better bet than betting on yourself.

Becca: Yeah.

John: So in hindsight, there was no hard part about any of it. In the moment it was absolutely really terrifying.

Becca: Well and I think it just takes a level of, like you’re saying, self-trust. Like I’m sure that there was conversations in your mind where you were like, “Okay, well what if this doesn’t work? What if I can’t find a job? What if I can’t meet people?”

The truth is I can. I trust that I can. I trust that I can make this work. I know me and I know that I’m a hard worker. I think that that’s one of the things that has led me to where I’m at is kind of everything’s a gamble in life. If I’m going to bet on anybody that’s going to survive, it’s going to be me, right? I bet that there was a lot of conversations like that.

It’s so fun to watch you now because I know that you guys are hardworking, and you guys have things to do when you’re down there. But just watching you on Facebook, it’s like you guys have just been on vacation for like a year and a half.

John: I definitely don’t feel like I’ve worked for a year and a half. I definitely feel like I’m on vacation almost every single day. Because the weather is awesome. There’s pools that are open year round. We live two hours from Disney World. Life is just really good. We’re blessed. Andrea and I both are just very thankful for the courage that we had to make a decision that was in the best interest of our family.

Becca: Would you have done it sooner? What would you say to John six years ago, five years ago? What would you tell him?

John: I wish I had done it sooner, but I don’t think I would be as successful. I don’t think I was mature enough or had enough confidence in myself. Life just didn’t play out in a way that would have lead itself to it working as well as it does right now.

Becca: Can you pinpoint what changed in your confidence level in yourself? Can you pinpoint what happened that made you think, “You know what? I can do it now.”

John: I think I’d be really hard to pinpoint like one thing. Like I maybe could take a guess at one thing, but I think it’s just life. Going from birth until age 35 whenever I made that decision. Life events transpired in a way that gave me the confidence in February of 2020 to put our house on the market in Kentucky and move to a house that we did not own. We didn’t know where we were moving to even. It just played out so perfectly. Very blessed, like I said. There’s not, I don’t think, one moment.

I think that’s the way a lot of businesses are. To round back to an earlier conversation on are you ready to coach. Like no, you don’t need one moment. Like your whole life has put you in a position to be uniquely where you are at this moment to do exactly what it is that you want to do.

Becca: Yes, yeah. I love that. Do you think that there’s a little bit of just like fuck it? Do you think that as you’ve gotten older maybe? I feel like I’m noticing that as I’m getting a little bit older, I’m having a lot more moments of just like I don’t care what people think.

John: Yeah.

Becca: I don’t think I was ever really debilitated by what people think. I’ve always been a little bit more on the outside of that, but it’s getting even stronger now like this not caring thing where I think that I have just a lot of moments now where I’m like fuck it, I could move to Australia. I could move over here. I could do this. I could quit coaching right now and I could start making quilts. I don’t know. I would make it work.

John: Yeah you’d be the best damn quiltmaker in the world.

Becca: I can do anything that I wanted. I would be the best fucking quilter ever. Somehow you would like to join along. You’d be like my head quilter. It would be great.

John: We’d have an empire. Yeah, I do. I think that comes with life experience. It comes with age and accumulative wisdom and knowledge that we’ve gained from just being alive. But I also think, like I have an appreciation for the old guy that’s wearing sweatpants with a polo shirt tucked into it and a hat that makes no sense. Like he’s just like I feel like wearing this today, and I don’t give a damn.

Becca: Yeah, exactly. Sounds like my three-year-old, how she goes through life.

John: Right. It’s like when you’re three you don’t give a damn. Then all of a sudden around six you start to give a damn a lot. Then you just start giving less a damn around 35.

Becca: Yeah, it’s a bell curve. It’s a bell curve of give a damn. The give a damn bell curve. I’m definitely on the downside of it.

John: Yeah, me too.

Becca: That’s awesome. Okay before we go, let me ask you this. So I’m actually interested in this. I’ve wanted an opportunity to talk to you about it. But you are an elite athlete. Like there is no one on the planet that can say that people that do Iron Men and triathlons that they are not at the top of athleticism, right. You have been an elite athlete your whole life, and you have coached elite athletes for a large chunk of your life.

I want to talk to you, and I just want to open the floor to you about the mindset that it takes to reach such endurance. To reach such strength. I want to know almost if you can tie it into entrepreneurship, right. So like a lot of the same qualities, basically discipline on all levels, seep through between elite athleticism, entrepreneurships, and success. What’s your take on this?

John: I believe, and that’s an interesting question, one that I’ve thought about quite a bit. Because I think there is a really direct correlation between like successful athletes and people just being successful at life whether it be in the corporate world and entrepreneurship. Probably a stronger association with entrepreneurship. I think high level athletes tend to go become entrepreneurs because they are competitive, they’re successful, and they want to swing big.

What I’ve learned about myself as I’ve given it some thought is like I think that I can either do something or I’m going to choose not to do that thing, right. If I ever don’t do it, it’s because I didn’t try hard enough or I didn’t want to.

So like CrossFit, for example. I remember coming into the gym and not being able to power clean 75 pounds. Just feeling so weak. I could have like decided hey I don’t ever want to do that again, which I almost did. I almost didn’t go back to CrossFit. Or I could make the decision—

Becca: I can’t imagine a world where you couldn’t power clean 75 pounds. Is that real? Like are you telling me…

John: No, I kid you not. Like I was so.

Becca: Man.

John: And I couldn’t—

Becca: The only reason I’m saying that, the only reason I feel safe saying that like I’m not being a jerk is because John can power clean—At your peak, what did you end up power cleaning? What’s your PR, do you know?

John: 300 pounds.

Becca: 300 pounds. You went from 75 pounds to 300 pounds in how long?

John: A couple years. Two or three years. At that moment, I had no reason to believe that I would be good at CrossFit. Like there was no statistics or facts to land on. It was always easier for me in athletics than it was in school or like career, entrepreneurship. For me to just be like no I can do that. I’m going to figure it out, right.

Like when I was 10, and I’m sure it’s easier the younger you are, like I wanted to be in the NBA. No I was not going to be in the NBA, but I didn’t have any aversion to believing that I could. So like with CrossFit I was like I’m going to be a regionals athlete. No reason to think that. I ultimately didn’t even get close to that, but I wanted to. That drove me to be really successful I think.

In triathlons, like I want to go to the world championships now. That’s what I’m training for. I’m much more likely for that to happen than for me to go to the NBA. When I first started triathlons, I don’t even know how to ride a bike, but I still thought that I could do it. Now I’ve made the decision that I’m going to do it or I’m going to fail trying.

Becca: What is the world championship in triathlons? What does that mean?

John: It’s complicated to explain, but essentially you have to be in the top three or four of your age group at an Iron Man Triathlon. Then you go to Kona for the World Championships of Iron Man.

Becca: Stop it.

John: Yeah. So it would be really good to take the family to Hawaii for any reason, but especially cool if it’s for the World Championships.

Becca: Can you take my family to Hawaii too?

John: Sure, let’s go. 2023. Plan on it in October.

Becca: You know who would be great at triathlons? My husband.

John: He would. He’s looking super lean by the way. Shoutout to Mark.

Becca: He is extremely lean. Listen, it’s like he doesn’t even taste food. Here’s why I say that. Because if he learns about like an optimal diet. Let’s say that he learns that really high fat, low carb diets are great. If he decides he wants to get in 14 vegetables a day. Like these are conversations we actually have. Like, “Today I’m going to try to get 14 vegetables in.”

It’s like as soon as he thinks about it or as soon as he hears about a diet change he needs to make, he makes it and just never looks back. Never complains about the food. Never complains about it. It’s like he never even sees another macaroni again. He’s like not human. Anyways he’s been living on high fat nuts and seeds and vegetables and really lean grass fed meats now for like a year.

John: Sounds like the recipe for a good diet.

Becca: Yeah. He’s going to live to be like 145. He’s going to have three wives after me because he’s going to live so long. I’m going to only be around for like a third of his life because I’m over here just like I ate a grilled cheese sandwich this morning for breakfast, and that’s the truth.

John: A good grilled cheese is good for the soul every once in a while.

Becca: Okay so the mentality of becoming that type of person. To you, it boils down to…

John: Yeah everything is decision. You can either choose to do something or choose that you don’t want to do it. Like if you choose to do something, you’d better make sure every effort is followed to do it. Or at some point it’s just not worth it anymore. I see it with entrepreneurship. People say they want to be self-employed, but they don’t want to do the work.

It’s not going to be easy to be self-employed. You’re going to have to do a lot of things that feel uncomfortable. You’ve got to read some books. You’re going to have to go have uncomfortable conversations with strangers. If you really want to be self-employed, that’s the decision. Just make the decision and everything gets a lot easier.

It’s the same way if you want to have a six pack or something. Some metric of athleticism. Like if you want to achieve that thing, yeah it’s going to suck to go to the gym and it’s going to suck to have that diet until you decide that it’s worth it. Then all of a sudden it doesn’t suck anymore. Entrepreneurs and people who are becoming self-employed adopt that same mindset of this is a commitment that I’m making.

To piggyback off of the conversation about money, give yourself a little bit of runway to make it work. Because I guarantee you with consistency and hard work and time, you will be successful 100% of the time.

Becca: Yeah. I completely agree. Check your why. Like a lot of people, their why just isn’t strong enough. If you wanted to run an Iron Man, do you think that you would be as motivated if your running of Iron Man was specifically because you wanted to lose weight?

John: If that was important to me. For me personally, no. But I think that…

Becca: Yeah, for you personally.

John: No, no.

Becca: Yeah, no. That wouldn’t be a strong enough why for me either. Like the pain to pleasure ratio of my weight isn’t, it’s not strong enough to push me towards doing something big. When I started Massage Strong, there was nowhere in Lexington to get a really fantastic deep tissue massage unless you just knew someone in the back of a corner lot that had been practicing amazingly and had no sign on their door. You had to know someone to know someone to get a good deep tissue massage.

I wanted to revolutionize Lexington, Kentucky, which is a very big growing town. It’s a growing city. I wanted to be at the very forefront of that. Now if I was just doing it like just for the money, yes the money is fun and it’s fantastic for my family. But like there had to be a stronger why. I would envision myself being able to work post-op on people that are just coming out of surgery that need scar tissue release or people that have been in back pain for 20 years and they don’t know where to turn. I wanted to be that place. My why was really strong.

John: Yeah. The why is important.

Becca: It is.

John: That’s what makes the decision easy.

Becca: Yeah exactly. Because if your why is strong, it doesn’t matter what you need to do to get there. It doesn’t matter that you need to get up and train. It’s not supposed to feel good. You’re doing it for a purpose.

John: Yeah. Like if it was easy, everybody would do it.

Becca: Exactly. Yes. All right well John, thanks so much for being here. Is there anything that you just really want to say? Anything that we didn’t cover? Anything that you’re like I’m just going to leave my little mark on this podcast and drop this bomb?

John: Well, I’m really thankful to be here and thankful for Hell Yes Coaching. I know I’ve told you this, but I’ll also say it publicly. Like you’re awesome Becca. Thanks for the opportunity to be a head coach. I appreciate every opportunity that I’ve had to have a consult with the Hell Yes community, the clients that I’ve interacted with, the 30 More and Three More programs. It’s all been a true blessing, and it’s my pleasure to be in this role.

Becca: Yes and if someone wants to contact you or contact Hell Yes Coaching or ask questions, how do they do that?

John: Send me an email, that would be the best way. It’s [email protected].

Becca: Awesome. All right thank you so much for being here. We’ll see you guys next week.

John: Bye.

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