My guest today is Mike Lee. Mike is a personal trainer and an educator who's been working in the fitness industry for 11 years. In that time, he's been a face to face personal trainer, a CrossFit gym coach, a mentor to new coaches, a CrossFit gym manager, and owner, and an online coach and educator.
But the story behind this journey is fascinating.
Mike was in his early twenties when he fractured his back, he put it down to over training overworking and not making enough time for recovery.
The doctors told Mike he would never deadlift squat or Olympic lift again, but Mike, wasn't happy with that answer.
For the next nine months, Mike had to rethink his training and how he worked with his clients.
This was when he started to move some of his clients online so he could make more time to prioritize his own.
It was at this point in his career that Mike took a holiday and managed to earn pretty much the same wage that he would've if he stayed working at the gym, his online business had reached a level where he could travel and work if he wanted to.
Currently Mike is coaching clients with back pain and doing injury rehab. He also works with a lot of athletes who want to increase their performance. Mike is also writing and coaching educational courses for coaches.
If you're a personal trainer looking to build and grow an online business, you're going to get a lot out of this episode.
We talk about Mike's transition to online coaching, how he grew his business and what he thinks of the fitness education system.
Mike is certainly an ideas man, and he's definitely got a knack for seeing the gaps in the market that can be filled by online personal trainers.
I hope you enjoy this episode with Mike Lee.
Let's get stuck in.
[00:01:48] Mike Lee: As you've probably done as well as that I've played with various titles, but you know, fundamentally I'm like I'm a personal trainer and an educator.
[00:01:57] So, you know, I, I. Do personal training with my clients and I do education with other coaches. So I write programs. I teach seminars on effectively how coach, various elements of fitness. It's a bit more specialized within Olympic weightlift and more specifically the functional fitness side of, of Olympic weight lifting.
[00:02:19] But yeah, fundamentally I am a personal trainer and I try not to move away from that. Yeah.
[00:02:26] Stretch: Stay in your lane mate, as I
[00:02:27] Mike Lee: say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:02:30] Stretch: Yeah. So your business now are you working face to face online, bit of both
[00:02:35] Mike Lee: what's happening? I try to keep a little bit of everything. So my remote clients I do majority of it is remote training.
[00:02:44] So writing programs for various people I kind of have almost just two avatars, which is athletes and then people in pain. There's not really much in between. I don't have a huge lot of fat loss or like body building clients as much anymore. And it seems to be just one or the other at the moment.
[00:03:01] And I do probably about seven or eight hours of personal training, more for the social aspect. If I'm honest, like talking to another human being actually next to someone is, is super important, I think. And then finally I do about eight to 10 hours a week of writing fitness content for the PFCA, which is, I guess, the education branch of March on it's run by body, March and Jen Robinson, and recently joined them to build out a weightlifting course in some weightlifting seminars, which has been going really.
[00:03:37] Stretch: Yeah, wicked mate.
[00:03:38] Mike Lee: It's a new, new challenge as well, which is, is cool.
[00:03:41] Stretch: There's so much to tap into and I wanna talk to you about mate. It's great to see that you've got your hands in lots of different pies and you know, you're learning new skills all the time and still, obviously growing in your personal training career.
[00:03:51] How long have you been in the game for?
[00:03:53] Mike Lee: Probably like looking down at the date now in my, my corner. I guess it's 11, 11 years now. Which feels like a really long time, but I guess the actual, actually the past three years have just gone super fast. So yeah, 11 years is, is how long I've been, been doing this.
[00:04:09] Stretch: Showing your age now.
[00:04:11] Mike Lee: I know no, clearly I'm not 21 anymore.
[00:04:14] Stretch: And how long have you been doing online coaching?
[00:04:17] Mike Lee: So about six years now. So I started going online because I had a, a full PT book and there was part of me that just was like, this, this can't be sustainable for me. So what I started doing was like trying to get my mornings back. So I just do PT basically from nine till eight, as opposed to 6:00 AM till eight cuz often 6:00 AM men getting up at four 30 and that's the part of the day that I wanted back for no other reason than to sleep.
[00:04:47] So I started moving all my early clients to remote coaching. And it's, you know, it's a hit to your income initially, but it's slightly more passive. And I kind of developed a system where most of my remote coaching. Is actually PT clients that have graduated to remote coaching. So I'm like, I trust that you can do this on your own.
[00:05:07] I've spent some time working one to one with you. Let's put you onto remote programming and we'll touch base now and then with maybe a PT session or, or a call depending on what they wanted. That was the beginning. And obviously since then, it's started to grow more like a bit more organically, like I've people all around the world now, which is, it's quite cool.
[00:05:27] Cause I've a lot of people who have never actually met in person, which is I always find really interesting.
[00:05:32] Stretch: We'll, we'll talk a little bit more about that. Maybe how you found those clients and how the business is going, you know, further on. Yeah. Before we do, like, when you, when you were working, you know, in the gym and you were delivering these sort of 50 hours or, you know, doing so much work working such long days, like how were you feeling at that time?
[00:05:49] Mike Lee: I guess there's two ways to describe there's there's imposter syndrome, right? There's the fact that I'm doing this thing that I actually really enjoy doing and I'm getting paid for it. And I'm like, is this like, because I was so actively researching training methods and everything around that, it felt like quite an easy thing for me to be delivering to clients, which is not actually the, the, the reality of it in, in a lot of circumstances.
[00:06:18] And the other one was I felt a bit hypocritical cause I was like, I'm delivering all of this information, but actually like I was sleeping like four and a half, five hours. I was eating whatever sustained me through the day, which consisted of a large amount of caffeine as well. So it was like, you know, three, three coffees and a pre-workout to effectively get me through my day.
[00:06:40] And then you're just like, And I had other PTs, you know, at the time that were 40, when I was like 22, 23 were like, just, you wait, just, you wait. And I was like, yeah, whatever granddad you know, and and you know, there was an element of the future is like you do burnout a little bit. And to me it was.
[00:06:59] I was finding less and less desire to train because actually in those hour and a half, two hours that I had in a day, I would rather sleep and catch up because my body just needed that. So that's, I think when I started thinking, I mean, I'm 22, 23, can't do this for too long. Mm
[00:07:22] Stretch: I don't think a lot of PTs get that in perspective. So young, like we step into the industry, we're very passionate about what we do and you know, it's, the culture is hustle culture and it is, you've gotta, you've gotta work more to earn more. And in a sense, I think you're damned if you do. And you're damned if you don't, because if you do keep pushing yourself, you know, it is that one way ticket to burnout and our health does start to suffer.
[00:07:45] So here we are trying to preach health, but yet we can't even practice it and look after ourself. Yeah. How, how was your health going? Did you notice any sort of health issues at the time?
[00:07:55] Mike Lee: Yeah. I mean, at 23, I, I fractured my back and it was it was like a compound fracture from overdoing it with weight lifting.
[00:08:03] And the hard part for me was that I moved relatively well coming from a gymnastics background. And so if you were gonna pick your part, my movement, you'd probably have a bit of a hard time going. Yeah. That was a drastically wrong thing, but I was just doing too much. Like I was probably training twice a day, sometimes three times a day, six days a week, trying to do like 35 to 40 hours of PT sleeping five hours.
[00:08:31] And I was like really relying on the fact that my body was young. And bouncing back except this time it didn't. And yeah, that took about nine months for me to recover from. And it forced me to slow down because I couldn't even get into a, a deadlift position with an empty bar. So I was like it in many ways, it made me better as a coach.
[00:08:51] Cause I was like, now I have to like orally, explain what I want them to see when I could just be showing them. And in some cases I just showed them and just dealt with the pain. Especially if they were brand new, but I don't think I told anyone that I'd fractured my back for like five months.
[00:09:08] Cause it was like this almost shame around it. Right. It's like, you're a PT, you're supposed to be healthy. And now you're carrying this injury. And I think a lot of, a lot of PTs that get injured, like have that struggle. You're not supposed to get injured. You are supposed to be the epitome of health and fitness and.
[00:09:23] Yeah. So yeah, that was the big defining moment for me.
[00:09:27] Stretch: How far from the truth, can that be mate? Sometimes? Eh , especially in this industry. I can, I couldn't agree with you more. I think you, you and I went down a similar journey when I transitioned to online, I did a very similar thing where it was like a hybrid model.
[00:09:39] You know, the clients that I was working with face to face, I was doing PT and I was trying to run Momentum Training the gym and just didn't have the time for the clients. So it was like, okay, I'd see them maybe once a month, face to face and then send them off, you know, with the program. How did you find clients accepted that when you were sort of pushing back on the face to face and saying, Hey, how about you go online?
[00:09:59] Mike Lee: I mean, for some of them, it was like going from, you know, 900 pound a month of expenses. If they're coming down three times a week to like 240 and I'd be like, what I did with them is like, you know, I'd like to see you once a month. But here is where I would spend that money to better your health. And it was like, you know, we can even go down the route of like, we can get you a new mattress and that would be revolutionary to your sleep.
[00:10:30] I was like, you know, two, three months of the money that you're gonna save on here. And you've got some like custom made blackout black outlines for your room, you know, literally little things like this. And I'm like, if this doesn't work for you, then we'll go back to PT. That's fine. But let's try it. And for some of them, you know, I have a couple of clients who they just, they just couldn't do it.
[00:10:49] They're like, I'm just not gonna come in. You know, it's the fact that I've paid this money that is actually motivating me. Like I have such a high value on the finances that I'm paying this money almost to make myself go. So it's not about the, the saving of money or anything, but a lot of them did well with it.
[00:11:06] And for those that didn't, I tried to like shift them a little bit. I'd be like, well, I've got 7:00 AM, slot available three days a week, you know rather than like saying they can come in at 6:00 AM, is it doable? But I did have to just say to people, a few of them where I was like, I'm just not doing 6:00 AM anymore.
[00:11:24] I was like, I would be, it would not be good for me to preach to you. Like, you need to do this, this and this for your health when I'm not doing it myself, I was like, 6:00 AM for you. When you live 15 minutes away is like a get up at five 40, throw some coffee in the general direction of your face and, and roll into the gym.
[00:11:43] Whereas for me, it was like 35, 40 minute train, make myself look presentable for a day of work. Because I've got three hours of back to back. So I was like, yeah, for me, I just wanted to get that lifestyle back. And fortunately, because a lot of my clients were relatively long term. They were quite understanding of it.
[00:12:03] Stretch: Yeah, definitely. When you say you wanna get that lifestyle back, is it, is it your own health that you're really trying to prioritize there? Or was it just your mental health? Like what was, what was the driver behind that, do you think?
[00:12:14] Mike Lee: It was a bit of both like my relationship at the time was, was suffering because of it.
[00:12:21] And we both worked in the same industry and I think because I was out all the time, we just never really gotta see each other. And she tended to do later sessions, so she'd come home like 9, 9 30. So I was like, I'm gone by that time bed. So there was that side of things, but there was also like, you know, fracturing my back just kind of shows that you're just not recovering from the load that you are you're putting through your. And most of the time, what you need for better recovery is more time to recover. Whether that's sleep, whether that's prioritizing your food, whether that's just down regulating your system, whatever it is, I just didn't have that time.
[00:13:02] So yeah, I think I had like a pocket of 30 minutes after training my day. That was like quite chilled where we'd all go grab a coffee. Which again is like finished training that was like super high stimulating and then throw some more stimulating stuff to get you through the next three hours. And you know, that would be like 4:00 PM.
[00:13:21] So it's like putting some pretty strong coffee through, at 4:00 PM to get you through. It's like my, even my, even the sleep I was having well, wasn't, wasn't good. You know,
[00:13:32] Stretch: That was a very well, well sound yawn.
[00:13:34] Mike Lee: Yeah, it was right. Do you know what? I'm actually off caffeine entirely at the moment. But I mean, this would be a, a big old tangent, but I, you know, I got, I got sick about five weeks ago and I was like, forced off all coffee.
[00:13:47] And then as I got better, I was like, maybe don't go straight back into drinking, like two cups of coffee a day. Like, see if you get to 10:00 AM and you feel like you need it. So, and I haven't really, so Yeah. I might have one as a social thing, but like, it's something I've taken out for a while.
[00:14:06] Experiment. I'm not, I'm not anti caffeine. I love coffee.
[00:14:09] Stretch: yeah. I'm with you. I'm with you on that one, mate. But like you say, I think in the personal training days, I was very similar to you. You know, there'd be a coffee before work. There'd be a coffee after the morning clients there'd be a coffee after lunch.
[00:14:19] And then, you know, maybe if you're feeling flat for the evening, it's like, oh, I have another coffee so I can get through the evening sessions.
[00:14:25] Mike Lee: . Do you know what was a crazy moment for me? I think it was my second year of PT. And did you, do you remember Monmouth in borrow market?
[00:14:32] Yep. Coffee place. So I did my tax return that year and I'd spent three and a half grand at Monmouth.
[00:14:39] Stretch: Ooh. That's a lot of coffee.
[00:14:40] Mike Lee: That's a lot of coffee. Right. And that was three times a day. Plus the occasional, like buying coffee for someone else or like a brownie post-training and I was like, Every day.
[00:14:52] And I was like, oh my God, it actually does add up to that. I was like, that is, that is this disgraceful amount to have spent on coffee when I could have just got a coffee machine I could have hired a barista for that.
[00:15:05] Stretch: You could have bought a pretty good mattress for that and some nice black curtains.
[00:15:09] Mike Lee: exactly.
[00:15:09] Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:15:11] Stretch: Well, let's let's fast forward a bit now, mate. So then you've got the online business now and obviously you started transitioning the, the PT clients you had, and I think that was a great way to do it. Obviously, you know, you've been working with them, they know you, your style of programming.
[00:15:24] Obviously your initial influx of clients are probably the clients that you were working face to face with. Was that enough to sustain you for a period of time?
[00:15:31] Or did you have to start going out and finding more clients? Like how did the business grow?
[00:15:34] Mike Lee: It was a little bit like, I probably would say that I had like 10 remote clients for quite a long time cuz I was like happy. So I wasn't actively trying to grow the business in any way. I was like those 10, you know, they were bringing in, I think at the time, like 1500 pounds a month.
[00:15:52] And on top of like personal training and teaching a couple of classes at the CrossFit gym, I was pretty content with that. But then what I ended up doing is when I moved to that CrossFit gym, Because I just ended up building up the exact same cycle that I did just at a different gym. And so it was when I left there where I started actively going, well, why don't I just try and move all my personal training clients onto remote training and then see what I have with that time.
[00:16:20] And if I miss it, I'll go back and do more because there is demand for it in, especially in London, there's always demand for it. And if I don't, well, then now I have a business that I can effectively run from anywhere in the world. And I was running it at the same time as I was CEO of CrossFit at London.
[00:16:36] And that was, that was a challenging, that was the challenging period for me. It did bring me more clients in just because the, of the I guess the prestige of the title of that job, right. And I mean, what, I mean, what I'll preface that by saying, is that just because you're running a gym doesn't necessarily mean that you're the best coach for that person, but people attach it and they want that person.
[00:16:59] So I had a couple of new additions there. And when I left CrossFit London in the three or four months prior to that, I was making quite a big push to like build that up. And I think I had like 25 to 30 by the end of that. And I realized like when I left, I, I think it was the September of I think it was 2018.
[00:17:20] The September of 2018, I went to run the Hawaii trail run with power monkey. And I actually went to Hawaii for like three days. So I went to Hawaii and I went to Dubai.
[00:17:35] I went to North Carolina for my cousin's wedding, and I went to Italy all in space of five weeks and I earned 400 pounds less than if I'd stayed in London.
[00:17:44] Stretch: Wow.
[00:17:44] Mike Lee: And I was like, I think I've done it. I was like, I think I've actually, I've built the business where I could technically travel the world if I wanted to.
[00:17:52] And so that was a sick moment for me. And it also meant that then I was like, well, I'm just gonna keep building this. Right. And this is where I'm gonna go with it. And I started to put myself out there a little bit more started to reach out to people in different countries. So like looking at like Saudi and stuff like that.
[00:18:10] Especially one of my clients, Farra, she's been brilliant. And she, I started coaching her based on the fact that she was like constantly in pain, but she's a relatively athletic constantly in pain. And, and you'll have seen the type it's like, I've just got a knee in my left knee, right. Knee left elbow, right shoulder.
[00:18:28] My back plays up a little bit now and then, but I can still lift silly amounts of weight. Right. So I was telling her, I was like, you know, that's, it's not only is it not a sustainable approach, but it's not how it should be. Like, you can do these things out of pain. So I started working with her and she got outta pain relatively quickly.
[00:18:46] And that culture over there is very, like, it's almost like family oriented word of mouth goes so much further. And she sent me a few other people that were in like way higher levels of pain. And my Saudi clients now are almost majority back pain. Right. And I love training those guys, but almost everything I've done is word of mouth.
[00:19:08] And it's, you can have the best business strategy. You can have the most technical knowledge, but if you don't actually get the results for the people in the end, they're probably not gonna stick around. Or they're probably not gonna refer you anyone. Right. Like the most powerful referral tool is achieving or, or exceeding like your client's expectations.
[00:19:30] And with the case with Dean, which was one of my stronger back pain clients she had had back pain for like 28 years. She's in line for like three surgeries. She's on medications. And I was like, I'm gonna preface this by saying, I don't know if I can help you, I'm gonna do my best. And I think that's something that a lot of trainers don't do.
[00:19:51] It's like, they are the cure for every single problem. And that's not like you need to be able to say, I don't know, and I'm gonna try and find out, or I don't know, but here's someone who might, right, because they respect that keeps the level of respect between you and the client a lot more than them working with you for six months.
[00:20:12] And you still not being able to solve the. So yeah, I'm a, I'm great at tangent stretch. So just pull me back when I've gone.
[00:20:19] Stretch: Oh, mate. I love it. Cause what you're, what you're saying there resonates a hundred percent. I think it's, it's very, very powerful. I think, you know, a lot of personal trainers are accepting clients that they don't know how to help because it's that fear of like, I need, I need to get paid.
[00:20:32] I need the money and they don't have about turn, turn clients away. And, and we do have the best intentions. We do want to go and research back pain, knee pain the different things that we have to. But if you're working 40, 50 hours a week, just training clients and writing programs, like where do you find the time to research a hundred different goals?
[00:20:49] Mike Lee: Yeah.
[00:20:50] Stretch: It's interesting cuz you know, you talk about your own experience there, you know, in the past you've had back pain and you've had to rehab yourself and you've, and you've learnt, you know, probably the way to train and you understand, you know, how crippling back pain can be. Do you think your own experience there has really helped you to connect with the clients that you serve.
[00:21:11] Mike Lee: Absolutely. Because one of the things that, like, when someone's telling me their story of like how back pain's affecting their life, I'm like, I fully understand because for her, when she's like, I've had back pain for like 25, 29 years, I'm like I had back pain for nine months and I was an unbearable person to be around.
[00:21:31] I was like, I was so like, because I was quite young at the time, I was like, I was so angry. I was like, why is this happening to me? Like I moved well, like I, and I couldn't understand it. And so I spent so much time figuring out why it happened to me. And I think, you know, a huge amount of pain generally comes from a lack of strength in a certain area.
[00:21:55] Right. And so as a result, something breaks now when that something breaks, the, the, the worst side effect is that generally the person gets weaker and weaker and weaker. so the, the small amount of strength that they had supporting whatever structure went is now getting less and less and less. And so often, you know, I talk, I talk to people about like one of the first stages for me of finding out of fixing someone's back pain is figuring out a way that we can get them to deadlift pain free.
[00:22:28] And it might be a long roundabout way to get there, but I've met a lot of physios and I've been told a lot from clients who have been to physios to like, you can never deadlift again. Right? You can, you can't squat again. Right. And this was the experience that I had was I had private healthcare. I went to a surgeon that costs like 300 pounds for a 20 minute consult.
[00:22:52] And then, you know, it's being paid through my insurance, but. Ultimately he said, okay, so what hurts? And I was like deadlift squats, cleans, snatches, overhead squats, standing up too fast lunging. And he was literally just like, all right, so don't do any of those anymore. And I said, for how long? And he was like, well, for the foreseeable future, I was like, you know, this is my job.
[00:23:15] Like I teach people how to do these things. And I, I said to him, I was like, just humor me. Like, do you know what a deadlift is? And he was like, that's the thought this thing, right? I was like, no, no. I was like, you know, this is saying to me, like effectively, if I drop something on the floor, just leave it, that's what you're telling me to do. It's just never pick anything up off the floor ever again. And I said like, you know, with all due respect, like, I am sure that you are fantastic at opening people up and fusing and fixing and things like that. But I need someone to tell me who, how to get back to a health, not how to avoid those aspects of health in the first place.
[00:23:54] So I've always said to people it's like, you know, sometimes surgery is the only way, especially if it's like an impact thing that you've been in a car crash. Probably not gonna, you know, like dead bug your way out of this. Right. Like, so I relate to them because I'm like, I understand the emotional side of this and I understand that like, I am just not a very nice person to be around when I'm when I'm injured.
[00:24:18] And so I understand that even if yours isn't expressed with like anger, it could be just like, You're just a shadow of yourself, right. Especially back injuries. You physically can't do anything if it's crippling. Mm. So you can't walk for a long period of time. You can't stand up. Even sitting down hurts, just like, what do you do?
[00:24:36] And it ages you. That is the biggest thing that I've noticed is like, when you take someone out of back pain, they are like 10 years younger immediately. Right. And so, yeah, I think having had those injuries and I've had a number of injuries, you know, I tore my ACL. I've had fractured back. I've had bursitis in my shoulder and my my hip.
[00:24:57] So I understand, you know, it took me probably all of those injuries to understand really what a more sustainable training model looked like. But for, for me personally but what's interesting is I was, I was doing those things already for clients. It's like, you need to train more sustainably. But in my world and obviously like your world as well, you have people who are, who are actually uninjured training six days a week doing quite well.
[00:25:24] And I'm like, actually when I train five days a week, I start to break quite quickly. So I generally do four days a week and then sit in front of the TV on that bike, you know, for, for another two days at like the easiest place possible. Right. So I think there's, you know, going back to that, like hustle culture, right.
[00:25:40] Of, of fitness professionals, it's like get up at 4:00 AM, train at five. You're like, no, fuck man. That's awful. no part of me wants to do that. Right. And you know what you're telling me there is like, don't sleep for an extra two hours every day because someone on social media told you.
[00:25:59] Sorry about swearing. I dunno what you are. No, no, it's, it's all good mate. No stress at all. I think you're Australian you're Australian. This is like your second language . Yeah,
[00:26:07] Stretch: exactly. I love what you do, Mike, in a sense, I really resonate with the idea that you can show up with a lot of empathy and a lot of authority around the injury stuff, because it's an experience that you've been through and you really understand, you know, even if it was nine months that you went through and some of your clients have been going through back pain for years, it just allows you to understand where they're at and really meet them where they're at.
[00:26:28] So I can see that as obviously being a really powerful tool for you to engage these clients that have got injuries. I'm a little bit curious about the athletes side. What, what makes you wanna work with athletes and where did that come about?
[00:26:38] Mike Lee: Yeah, so it was interesting. It was actually when I first started at fitness first where.
[00:26:43] There was a guy that was training there, who he was built. Like he was, he, he is actually a good, he's a good friend of mine now. And he was incredibly athletic, like super good looking guy, half Spanish, half English, like really polite as well, you know, basically should have been in Hollywood, but instead was in a banking industry.
[00:27:04] But PTs would always talk to him and everything. And then one day he literally came up to me and he was like, I want to understand how you do the things that you do being so much smaller than everyone else. And I was like, I was the smallest PT in, in the the gym, cuz everyone else was a lot more, either power lifting or body building focused.
[00:27:25] And I'd kind of come from a gymnastics background. And he's like, I don't understand how, like I'm so much bigger than you, but you can do these things. Right. It doesn't make sense to me. And he came from a rugby background and interestingly, his knowledge of actual nutrition and training was tragic, but he was just an unbelievably gifted athlete.
[00:27:43] And I really, I started to get more out of like him advancing and him unlocking like these crazy these crazy weights, even though you'd already had a relatively strong athletic career, just through the technique side of things. And I realized that, you know, most athletes, you don't have to motivate them to go to the gym.
[00:28:06] Like, arguably, if you are a competitive athlete and you are needing to be motivated to go to the gym, you probably never gonna make it. Mm-hmm right. And so what I started to see was like, well, how many of these people are training too much? Cuz they were wrapped up in that kind of like hustle culture of training.
[00:28:20] And how many of them are. Not hitting their potential because either their technique is flawed or they're actually training too many hours that they can't recover. It's like diminishing returns. Right. And so I started training these guys more within a CrossFit side. And
[00:28:38] I guess as those guys moved away from fitness first and went to like places like gym box or other CrossFit gyms, and they, you know, would just rock up to a competition. No one's ever heard of them. And then just crush it. People started to ask questions and like, be like, well, where, like, what do you do?
[00:28:57] What, like, do you train in a class? Because at the time remote training for CrossFit was still pretty small. And you might have it if you are, you know, at the CrossFit games, but. You didn't have it if you were just a regular, like athlete within a class. And what I noticed was that like, look, if a class situation doesn't fully benefit me, cuz I need certain amount of time to warm up or I need to spend more time building my leg strength, then it's gonna be the same for pretty much everyone if they wanna want to advance more on an athletic basis rather than, you know, social and community basis, which to me is the biggest, most powerful part of a CrossFit gym is, is the social aspect.
[00:29:42] Pull me back help and go. No, it's good, mate.
[00:29:44] I'm just not wondering when the athlete athlete thing started, but you're making a really good point there in a sense of you've nearly found you found a gap in the market because I can go to a class and I can want to be an athlete and compete, but you know, if the class is not set up around my individual needs and what I need to train, then it's not gonna help me get to that athletic sort of potential or where I want to get to.
[00:30:04] Stretch: And here you are presenting yourself as, Hey, I'm an online coach and I can help you get your performance there. It's allowing you to obviously take on those athletes. So you've always sort of had a passion for just performance really, or training athletes or the competition side of things, or what led you to go down training athletes?
[00:30:19] Mike Lee: Yeah, I guess trying to be one myself as well was the, was a huge driving factor. And realizing that, you know, in the early days of competing with CrossFit, It would've been very hard to beat me on a gymnastics based workout. Now it's no, it's probably not so much the case, but I was severely lacking in the leg strength area and, and really endurance.
[00:30:41] And I guess that was the opposite to 90% of people coming into CrossFit. Like I was the person who could almost hit 30 on broken muscle ups on the rings way before anyone else could do it. And that was like in my head, I was like, keep trying to keep trying to, you can get it. And it'll be like this massive thing.
[00:31:01] And I only get ever got to 28, which is really annoying. I know it's so close and I'm pretty sure this is how I got shoulder bur siders as well. Just keep trying, keep trying to do this. But yeah, I think being able to do those things like commanded a certain amount of like respect from people because it was like.
[00:31:20] I was just so much better at these kind of things. But what people didn't see is that this was three, four years of pure gymnastics training at university, like doing levers, doing human flags, doing all of the like Crosswork and stuff like that. It just builds you unbelievable shoulder strength that you're not gonna get from simply just keeping in class every, you know, twice, every week.
[00:31:44] So I think when people started to like, join me and be like, well, I wanna get better at this, this and this. And I'd be like, okay, well, this is pretty much gonna be body building esque stuff for gymnastics. Like you need to build this area up. And yeah, now I, I went down the weight lifting route after that and.
[00:32:03] I'll be honest if you've done gymnastics learning the snatch is a lot easier. I would say learning the cleaning jerk felt like this constant, like torment every session. Cause it was like you get under the bar and probably never stand it up. Was, was generally my first three years of cleaning jerks.
[00:32:19] So as I progress quickly with that as well, it's like, okay, well now you're good at weightlifting and you're good at gymnastics. And to be honest, that's the, that's the sexy stuff of CrossFit, right? The no one wants to see someone spends 60 minutes on erg even though that is arguably more important than, than everything put together.
[00:32:40] I think I built that base purely off, being able to command that kind of respect, which isn't necessarily the best way, but it was the way it happened at the time. And it allowed me to have a platform to then explain the knowledge side of things. And I think that is the reality of our world still is you've got people who are unbelievable athletes selling thousands of programs.
[00:33:05] Though they don't actually almost understand the program themselves. And you will have people who, you know, a lot, a lot of the CrossFit stuff is based off craft and natural resilience and you know, other things I've talked about more recently, extra, extra, extra venous help. Yep. But yeah, I mean I've always enjoyed training athletes because it's like, it's cool to see them celebrate those little wins, especially when they do something, they didn't believe that they could.
[00:33:31] That's that's cool. Or they get to a level that they didn't think was necessarily possible.
[00:33:36] Stretch: That's awesome, mate. It's like, you've really found an niche that you enjoy training, and I think you can really relate it to your own journey, your own experience, and yeah, it's, it's wicked to see that you've built a business around that.
[00:33:46] Cuz I think a lot of coaches go down the, okay, I'm gonna train weight loss clients because that's a huge market. But if you're not passionate about that and if that doesn't get you out of bed in the morning, then it's not a sustainable career. Like it's not something you're gonna enjoy.
[00:33:57] Mike Lee: And, and that that's never been really my side.
[00:33:59] Like I've done it with a few clients, but it's always like, you know, fundamentally it comes down to like get in the gym and eat a little bit less, you know, like there's an element of it where you need to feel a little bit hungry every day. And like, if you feel a little bit hungry every day, you're probably in that region where you're losing weight, you know?
[00:34:20] And so I've never really got super passionate about that. I think there's also the element of like, I've never had to lose weight myself. Like I was super, super skinny as a kid growing up. And therefore, like my thing has always been like, like even now in my brain, and I know it's not right, but it's like, you're still that small kid at school, still that small kid at school.
[00:34:43] so like, to me, I'm not passionate about making people physically smaller yeah. You know, like I'd have rather have been, you know, that a little bit on the chunkier side, but able to build some muscle quite quickly when I was younger, rather than be like a 55 kilo 17 year old.
[00:35:01] Stretch: I just switch it background to the business, like with your online business.
[00:35:05] Is, is there been some mistakes you feel that you've made along the way or some lessons that you've learned?
[00:35:10] Mike Lee: Fucking loads, loads of mistakes. Getting, getting to. Into one kind of training method is a huge one. And then not so much everyone needs it, but like as a kid, I used to train who after I'd done, like the aerobic capacity courses in the power, speed endurance stuff. We did ton of nasal beating work and his like a airway capacity was huge, but his ability to suffer was nothing just, it was like I'd wrapped me in bubble wrap and any workout that got intense, he just couldn't do any more.
[00:35:45] I just could not put himself in that dark place. And it was quite a big lesson for me where I was like, oh, wow. Like, I mean, I fully bought into this, but I missed a huge part of the picture where I'm like, actually a huge part of like CrossFit is you need to suffer his ability to recover from basically anything I gave him was amazing.
[00:36:05] However, when it push came to shove and you put him in like the dark place, he just got out of there. He's like, I need to go back to my light, safe, nasal breathing work, you know? Mm. And so there's, there's that, and, and, you know, not necessarily related to that specifically, but related to any kind of course, you go down you can buy into everyone that sells a course, right.
[00:36:28] Has their own bias, like it's their method. It's the thing that works. This is the be all and end all when realistically, I think when you go into these things, that is the dangers, you now just become a sheep of that group. Right? Whether like, for me, for a while, it was, it was like OPEX for a while. And then I started to pick apart their methods as well.
[00:36:51] And then you go down and you do like the Burg and the strength course or something like that. And you're like, And then you realize, actually, if you take 70% of what you've learned on these courses and use the other 30% to, to either develop your own way of thinking, like you, you learn, you learn way more about how they've come up with the course, as opposed to simply learning their methods.
[00:37:11] Right. And that's, you know, that's why it's principle driven, right? You know, fundamentally the 900 methods there are out there of putting on muscle all come down to, you know, progressive overload, eat more, make sure you recover. But I mean, it is almost that simple, right? If you have a calorie surplus and you're training relatively hard to the point where, you know, over eight to 10 weeks, like you are overloading your body more, you will have put a muscle, right?
[00:37:41] So whatever method got you to buy into that principle is I guess the method that worked for you, but then understanding that. Just because it worked for one person doesn't necessarily mean it worked for another. Right. I don't know if you ever did it like the whole Smoloff cycle?
[00:37:57] Stretch: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:37:58] Mike Lee: Russian Russian squat cycle and it's like, I put, I put 30 kilos on my back squat in about six weeks. I think it was when I was young. Like now if I did that, I'd be like, Mike's juicing. But when I was like, when I was 21 and I barely squatted it kind of made sense, but the biggest thing I came out with was really sore knees.
[00:38:22] I was like, I had 30 kilos on my squat and then I needed like five weeks off squatting because my knees hurt so much. However, I have people who have done those cycles and they're like, they could probably do them back to back, going to the next one, going to the next one. They can just handle that volume.
[00:38:36] So yeah, making sure that you, you. Work with the client in front of you very specifically, not just on their program themselves, but like, you know, almost taking into account their training history, their, their genetic with resilience to just anything. Mm. Is super important. So not making the mistake of just going, there's one amazing method that I've discovered that seems to work for almost everyone I come across because eventually you'll come across people it doesn't work for, and you don't get any better. You just, you just become a follower of that method.
[00:39:11] Stretch: Yeah. A sheep, as you say, mate, I get you.
[00:39:13] With, with, with your online training that you work, that you offer now, like what's, what's involved with that. Are you just writing a program?
[00:39:19] Are there consults nutrition? Like what, how are you helping your clients?
[00:39:23] Mike Lee: So my nutritional advice is. Relatively basic. I generally don't have to do nutrition work with a lot of my clients because they're performance athletes. The nutrition side is make sure we're eating enough first and foremost. And you know, I've had to almost like gently force feed more people that's, but I rarely have to cut things out too much.
[00:39:45] It's more specific things around sports nutrition, like supplementation, like hydration, electrolytes, carb consumption, stuff like that. And the only, the only problems I run into with nutrition is if people have had like a body building background where they're judged on their aesthetics and they've gone down that like, oh, I can't eat too many carbs.
[00:40:04] You're like, no, you need all the carbs, eat all the carbs. Here's a free pass for carbs. . And so that, that's the only part I have to really worry about with, with nutrition, to some extent On the, yeah, so I program basically either three times a week or unlimited coaching and unlimited coaching is usually five or six.
[00:40:23] Right. And the three times a week is often when it a accompanies something else. So whether it accompanies like someone who's predominantly a runner or a swimmer or whatever, and they're, they're looking to build strength and conditioning into their program. Or they're a class person who wants to do class twice a week, but then work with me on, on other things three times a week.
[00:40:43] And the five or six times a week is like, really, I, I need you to just hand over the rains. I need to stop doing random classes or random things because I'm like, it takes a lot. It takes a lot for those kind of people to, to fully buy in sometimes. They're used to being quite volume, junky people. And sometimes the five or six days that I'm training them is actually a reduction in what they were doing before, because they were on twice a day, six days a week.
[00:41:11] But I, I usually relay it back to you. Like you came to me for a reason, like, I'm, you're asking me my opinion on what you're doing right now and where we can improve. And me taking things away from you. Your training is not because I don't like you training it's because I want you to meet the, the progress that you want.
[00:41:33] Right. I want you to meet your, your expectations and your goals of yourself. So it will either be like monthly catch ups, but I've adopted a slightly different approach to a lot of online client coaches. I let my clients talk to me on WhatsApp. Because to me, if I can't get back to them, you know, within, you know, 24 hours on WhatsApp, I've taken on too much.
[00:41:57] Right. So whilst they have access to me and it's a lot, if I'm on my computer and a WhatsApp thing pops up and goes, Hey man, does this look okay based before I do the next five sets? And I literally watch a seven second video and go, yeah. And that's the feedback they needed for that week. You know, that's like, I'm doing a disservice.
[00:42:21] If I said, wait till Sunday, I'll watch a video then. Hmm, correct. You know? And I, and I don't, that works for me. It doesn't necessarily work for everyone. Some people get overwhelmed by the amount of messages they receive. I try to, when I'm writing the programs, I try to put in the intent so that they get educated on it.
[00:42:40] And so they don't actually need to ask me as many questions. And I often say like a lot of my remote clients probably know as much as a lot of PTs. Well, a lot of them are coaches already, but a lot of them know as much as other PTs. And it's interesting that came from a PT questioning. One of my clients when she was at gym box and he was saying, you should do this instead.
[00:43:04] And she was like, you have no idea of my goals or intentions and then effectively schooled him on while she, why, why she was effectively doing. Half rep deadlifts. Yeah. Like basically she was just pulling to the knee. Yeah. Instead. And I was like, cause you're working on a first pull. Yeah. Working on the full, full rep.
[00:43:24] Right. So that was kind of like a proud moment for me where I was like, yes. yes you go.
[00:43:30] Stretch: I don't know about you might, but I, I found that when, when I took more clients online, I actually found that they, they got better results. And I think that it empowered them to take more responsibility for their own training and they did wanna learn more.
[00:43:44] Okay. I've gotta teach myself now. And they're watching their videos. They're understanding how to read the program. You know, they're seeing their progress. They're challenging themselves with their own weights. Like it just took away so much of the them putting responsibility on me as a PT and then putting the responsibility on themselves.
[00:44:01] What, what have you found.
[00:44:02] Mike Lee: I think you have two different types, right? You have people who need a good amount of hand holding at the beginning. And if you do hold their hand, it's like, well, you've guided them into like this level where they understand more. But if you chose to be like, like I said before, it's like, I'll answer your stuff on Sunday.
[00:44:19] They go for weeks where they've got all of these questions that building up and it's like, it used to, like, I always say to people, look, if you don't ask questions, how am I gonna know? Like that? You don't understand it, whether you don't understand the intent. I said, I understand that a lot of people might see it as like challenging.
[00:44:38] But to me, I'm like, if I go to a seminar, I'm a guy that asks all the questions, cuz it helps me understand. So if I have a coach, I ask all the questions because it helps me understand. Right. It's nothing to do with challenging because in the, I always see it as I. Why would I payable money? And then just question everything that they do, right.
[00:44:59] I could just not pay them money and question everything they do in silence, you know, so I do encourage my clients to ask me questions as to why. And because a lot of my clients are coaches already. I'm like, this is just gonna better help you understand how you might use this with your clients.
[00:45:15] Yeah. And I know a lot of people see that as like more of a mentorship. I'm like, I probably learned more of my, the coaches that I'd had in history from doing the program and asking the questions than I did off doing an entire programming seminar, you know? Because your real life situations versus on paper and, and, and kind of advertised, right?
[00:45:41] Stretch: I agree with you a hundred percent mate, the coaches or the, the mentorships as, as you might put 'em or whatever you wanna call it, that I've had have helped me more. And I've learned way more from that experience than from any textbook podcast certification or course. And I think it's, you know, it's over that long period of time, isn't it, you're working with a coach and you've got that ability to ask those questions and see how they do it.
[00:46:01] So, yeah, definitely resonate with what you're saying there. And it sounds like now, obviously you're stepping into coaching more coaches with all these courses and stuff like that. How did, how did that come? How did that come about?
[00:46:12] Mike Lee: So I'd done a couple of seminars in the past that were more client centric and a few coaches would turn up to that.
[00:46:18] And actually the clients that would sign off the back of those were often the coaches. It wasn't really the members. They were kind of loyal to their gyms and they wanted to just do classes, but just get a bit technique wise. And then I started doing actually, it's probably only recently where I've done seminars purely for coaches.
[00:46:39] And even those, you still get a couple of clients turn up, but I think it's easy to forget that when you've been in the industry for 11 years, you've got these new faces popping up in the industry that like three or four years into their career. And they're big, like whether they're big on social media coaching or whether they're like big athletes, whatever, they still have things to learn.
[00:47:06] And they still what's interesting me is, and it's always humbling that like, the things that I am talking about, they're like, Oh, my God. That was amazing. Whereas like maybe if I've spoken to you about it, you were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. But to them, it's, it's, it's blown their mind. Right. And what I've been doing recently and, and what I'm coaching, the next seminar that I'm coaching is weightlifting for coaches and almost every weightlifting seminar is geared towards getting you to get better at weightlift.
[00:47:40] Right. So I was like, that is effectively get making people better athletes, but it doesn't make them better coaches. Right. So when those coaches go away from those seminars, they don't actually have a better sense of how to teach weightlifting. And I was like, there is fundamentally. A huge lack of coaching around weightlifting from both from a functional fitness perspective.
[00:48:06] So barbell cycling, coaching general population, people into weightlifting mm-hmm , but there's also a huge lack of understandings. Like, why are we doing this complex? Why would we pull off the floor with straps? Why would we do deficit stuff? Why would we do this? They just, there's almost like this, just do this cuz it works, but why does it work?
[00:48:28] Right? And when the coaches understand why it works, they can go and invent their own way of teaching it. Mm-hmm right. So if I teach someone why a deficit snatch pull works, they might go, well, if that works, maybe I could do a deficit split squat for this person because it's effectively the same principle.
[00:48:48] Right. So again, that is making better coaches. Right. Which everyone benefits from at the end of, at the end of the day, because, you know, going back to what I said at the very beginning, the reason I always still describe myself as a personal trainer is people shy away from that because the perception is that it's a simple job and that it, they need something more fancy, right.
[00:49:11] Movement, guru, whatever it is, you know, and specialist, and like I've played with those things as well, but I'm like, well, at the end of the day, I'm still a personal trainer and why don't we elevate the profession as opposed to like, leave it in the dust and go find something else that sounds a bit nicer.
[00:49:29] Yeah. Right. Yeah. So it's just like it, I often find that like, I mean, it is a bit of a story, but like I went to see my cousin and my cousin's dad is a. Heart surgeon. And he had a shoulder issue and I hadn't seen him in years. And I was like, let me take a look at your shoulder. And we just did some very small, like effectively self myofascial release to give him a little bit more range and then some stabilizing stuff and strengthening stuff.
[00:50:00] I think it took about 15 minutes. He was like, oh, my shoulder hasn't felt like that in years. And he was like, I'll probably tell my surgeon in four weeks that I don't need the surgery. I was like, you're gonna have surgery. I was like, when did you ever do any strengthening or movement work on this? Anyway, this is a very, very Chinese thing, but like he messages either my dad or, or my cousin afterwards.
[00:50:22] And he goes, I just thought he was like, kind of dumb, but worked out a lot. and I was like, I just, I just fixed a heart surgeon's shoulder who was just about to go get it, like opened up for almost no reason. He was just like, he's basically been in this position his entire life. So no wonder his shoulders suck.
[00:50:40] Yeah. And then he goes and plays golf and tennis. Right. So yeah, it's, I don't really take offense to anymore cause I'm like, you know, it's always better to be underestimated. Like if you, if you elevate yourself to this position where you're like, I am a expert of all things movement and you only really have like, space to fall, right?
[00:51:01] So I was like, I'm personal trainer still on my learning journey. I'm educating other people so they can move further on their learning journey. And I still work with clients to get them fitter and out of pain.
[00:51:10] Stretch: Mate. That's awesome. How do you manage your time?
[00:51:13] Like, it sounds like you've got a lot going on, mate. You've got a lot with clients. You're working on coaching, you're designing courses. What can you tell us about time management for yourself?
[00:51:21] Mike Lee: I, I actually have more time. Then you probably think, but it's set up that way deliberately. Because the priority is me like enjoying life to some extent.
[00:51:34] And it's like enjoying the little things. Like if I wanna go for a coffee after this podcast, which I'm not gonna do, so I'm not on coffee, but if I wanna go through a tea at the local cafe and just see how, where the world go by for 20 minutes, I can do that. And it's like, I think I started this thing in London, which kind of didn't go really well.
[00:51:56] I had a few people doing it. And I called them like, NNC, like no networking coffee. It's like, I just sit and chat. I don't want this to be a networking thing. And I found that like in London, everything was a networking and it's like, let's chat. It's like, so you get like 10 minutes in. And they're like, so what do you wanna talk about?
[00:52:14] I was like, literally nothing. I there's just catch up how you being, man. And there's, there's a lost art in that, right? And like, if, even if you wanna talk it from a business perspective, right. Is it's this people become aware that someone always wants something from you, right. Whether it's the personal training industry, whether it's the banking industry or whatever it is, like people don't go and have coffees just to catch up.
[00:52:42] Right. And when you start having those coffees to not catch up, you know, the first few times you're like, I feel like I could have maybe done something like business wise around that conversation, then you start coming away from them. You're like, wasn't it nice to just not, not talk about work for a second.
[00:53:00] Right. And it's like getting out of that hustle culture. And. Whilst I do appreciate like the graph it takes to build businesses and stuff. People build relationships with people based on the relationship that they have with them. And it's like, if I've had a conversation with someone for their past year about, and I know everything about them, their kids, everything.
[00:53:24] And then they come to me and they're like, mate, I'm gonna need help my back. They've made a very active decision in that moment. They're like, this is someone I fully trust. Right. I didn't go and search. Who's the cheapest personal trainer in the area. It's like, based on everything that's going on. I know you relate to me.
[00:53:41] I know you suffer with anxiety. Sometimes I know you stress. Sometimes I know this person knows what I'm going through. Right. And so I think there's a, like I said, there's a lost art in these no, no networking coffees. But other than that, Sunday is pretty much my programming day. Because what I found was like, when I was trying to split it over, like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you clients don't always fill in their programming until like the end of the week.
[00:54:07] So I'm like trying to go down this, advancing their program and I haven't got any results. And then I'm like bugging them while they're at work. And I'm like, right, you guys have until Sunday to get your programming done on Sunday morning, I am starting your programming like for the next week. If you haven't got it done, it is going to be the same thing next week, because there's no point in me advancing it.
[00:54:27] If you haven't done it. right. So that gives them the knowledge that like, well, if they were busy on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, they can catch it up on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and I'll still get their program to them. Right. So, so I generally allocate Sunday for my go through programming day and then Wednesday.
[00:54:48] I will generally message people and go based on the videos you've sent me before you get into the next session, fix this, this and this. So Wednesday, I'll kind of go through the videos, but not go through much of the programming. And that's what my remote training side takes up. I can make it take up every single day of my week, but I generally cap myself at 40 remote clients.
[00:55:10] I have 30, 30 right now, but I cap myself at 40 because I'm like, I can keep going and still deliver the service, but it takes away from my life. And if I keep going with building that business and stick to my two days a week, I now don't deliver the service that I should be delivering. Right. Cause I'm not allocated enough time to it.
[00:55:33] I go down to March on, usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays to both train from a social perspective. And do the work with PFCA usually that's some form of media creating some kind of content or like designing courses. And that's always good cuz there's like, we're all working towards collective goal.
[00:55:52] There's a good bit of banter in the room as well. But there's still very much a work atmosphere going on. I know sometimes you get into a room with like six other people. You don't get anything done. So you're just talking all the time. But it's, it's, it's definitely not, not like that. And then more recently it's just been like blocking out an hour a day just to create content and it's like, I have so many videos that I've filmed from the gym.
[00:56:15] Sometimes it's just a case of like doing a voice overlay from those videos. Like at the start, it would take me hours and hours and hours. Cause I'm like, I need to film this. I need to film this. And I'm like, I've got so many videos of me doing a squat and I've got so many videos of me doing a snatch.
[00:56:29] Right. I can overlay these things. And I've been building that through TikTok, Instagram wheels and Facebook reel personally. Like I find TikTok so frustrating because it's like, as you can probably tell I'm more of a storyteller and TikTok needs the entire point to your story in the first two and a half seconds.
[00:56:49] Yeah. It's like, otherwise it's gone. Yeah. So that's been a challenge for me. But the Facebook reels has kind of popped off. I've been doing that for like 20, 24 days and it got my first a hundred K video this morning, which was cool. And it was interesting, cuz it, it was the one about how I don't always enjoy my training.
[00:57:11] I don't always in like, I don't enjoy aerobic training. I just don't, I don't get this runners high thing. Like it doesn't like I get the endorphins, but runners high. No, that's not me. So I make my aerobic work as easy as possible. And I do it because ultimately I understand the benefits to 50 year old, 60 year old, 70 year old Mike.
[00:57:33] Right. And so that was relatable to a lot of people. Cause I was like, not all personal trainers, just train six days a week and like love their training and are just like that cheerleader style coach, some are and there's room for that. You know, I don't think any of these, like. I always say, like, I would never get a job at like barryies or one rebel because I'm like, they'd be like, dude, you cheer up.
[00:57:55] I'm like, no, this is me this today. It's like, it's like, yeah, I just, you need to inject me some with some adrenaline or something to, to get me to that level and I can turn it on now and then, but I certainly wouldn't be able to do it five hours a day. Yeah.
[00:58:09] Stretch: Especially with that coffee mate.
[00:58:10] Mike Lee: yeah, no, no coffee.
[00:58:13] Stretch: So how, how, how are you finding your energy, your mood, your ability to recover all these things now in comparison to the days that you were, obviously
[00:58:21] Mike Lee: it might be my ability to recover is so much better. My ability to recover is, is so much better actually as well because I do a lot more body building style training at the moment to supplement my Olympic weightlift.
[00:58:32] And. Even things like back squats, they've not been in my program for a good year and I have safety bar, squats, leg extensions, hack squats, things like that instead because they just put less pressure on my joints and allow me to recover better. And ultimately, historically my knees or my hips would go before my leg gains actually arrived.
[00:58:55] Mm-hmm . And so it's like, it was almost gospel that you need to be squatting two to three times a week, relatively heavy to make back squat gains within Olympic weight lifting. And I was like, well, my knees go first before the gains actually arrive. So finding a way to stress the muscle without necessarily putting it under too much joint strain was, was pretty key.
[00:59:16] So yeah, my energy feels pretty good at the moment, especially considering I. I don't drink too much coffee. Though I am feeling one, I've got this internal feeling right
[00:59:26] Stretch: we've talked about it too much.
[00:59:27] Mike Lee: Maybe, maybe I'll go have like a decaf just to scratch the itch.
[00:59:32] But no, like I, I sleep pretty well. I actually wake up with the sun because I don't actually have any curtains. Cuz I bought a gym instead built a gym in my garage and just didn't really furnish the house properly. So I wake up probably a bit early at the moment, but I don't really mind it.
[00:59:48] Stretch: Is there any, is there any tools, apps, tips, or tricks that you've found helpful in the day to day running of your business that you'd like to share?
[00:59:56] Mike Lee: Just trying to think. I mean, the, the best one is like for me, would be like, find, find a payment system and stick with it. And it sounds like a crazy thing, but like even now I have people paying me across like three different payment systems, which is a bit of a nightmare. If I'm honest, like I would probably just use square if I was starting again.
[01:00:15] And then just get everyone to go through that. So that would be one thing. The other thing from a business perspective is if you don't have every single way for them to take, to take payment, you're gonna miss out on someone. It's just that extra barrier, right? So it's like, my go cardless clients really only work in the UK properly everywhere else it has a bit of a barrier. I can take payments from other countries, but it's just a bit inconvenient. So almost everyone has a, an Amex, a visa or a MasterCard of some kind. So as long as you can take payment via those, like you're golden, early, early days, it was bank transfer. Right. And, and you'll have done it as well.
[01:00:58] You send people, your bank details and it's just like, you send them a link and they can check you on a card without thinking it's no problem. Cuz card payments are so fast. Whereas bank transfer means they've gotta go into their online banking and depending on their security, they might need like that little card or key or like code from their app.
[01:01:18] And it's just one of those things where. Maybe it failed to pay sometimes. And then they're like, oh, I can't really with this. This is too much effort. Right? Like humans want things now and they want things seamlessly. And it's amazing how a technical issue completely detract from the fact that you might be the best coach for them.
[01:01:36] So yeah, a bus, like that's a, a business thing that I would definitely say to people is like, whether it's, you know, PayPal, whether it's, you know, credit cards, just make sure you've always got a way to take payment from that, from that client , don't I make it harder than it needs to be?
[01:01:54] Stretch: Yeah, exactly.
[01:01:55] What, what what app do you use to coach your clients with?
[01:01:57] Mike Lee: So I use true coach. I have played with switching to other ones, but right now it's the logistical nightmare of switching over that many people to a new thing whilst I get used to it as well. Yeah. I did play around with coach RX from OPEX, but it had some cool features, but ultimately it was pretty much the same. And again, it wouldn't be worth me flipping everyone over. From what I understand like fitter, WOD board, stuff like that, train heroic are much better if you have like a group training or a template training style.
[01:02:33] Stretch: Dude, I think we could talk on and on and on. There's so many things I could chat about, but you've given, you've given, given us a great insight to, you know, how you run your business and you know, what's going on for you. What are future? What are future plans?
[01:02:45] Mike Lee: Well, what are future plans? Grow the education side of PSA even more like I do wanna do that and I am actually enjoying doing that stuff.
[01:02:53] I quite like to be able to help both lower ticket and higher ticket income brackets. So I'm kind of thinking of a way that I would do that without really losing quality of service. So this thing in my mind is that I could create a PDF, no problem, check a bunch of exercises on it for it, sell it for like 19 bucks.
[01:03:10] And it would sell, but it doesn't deliver like my knowledge and it doesn't make a client a stick to it. So I think in the long term, what I'm trying to do is actually create more like a group whether it's Facebook group, whatever it is like recently with the Facebook reels thing going well, I picked up like a thousand new followers from zero in the past 20 days, which has been awesome and they're quite actively engaging.
[01:03:38] So it's like, okay, maybe, maybe try to like nine pound a month to these thousand people of this group. And we do something a little bit more. Like we have zoom calls, we have like seminars, webinars, that kind of thing that they can watch bit more like content focused rather than here's PDF go buy it. Because that to me would be like actively engaging with people.
[01:04:00] And it's like, generally everyone wants human connection of some kind whether it's through their training, whether it's through their coaching, whether it's through like just their friendships and stuff. And people are way more likely to adhere to it. If they can put a name to the face, like if I've never met 90% of these people, whether it's remotely or whatever.
[01:04:18] And they've never actually asked me questions or anything, they're very unlikely to stick to it. And I kind of always used myself as like, I mean, I've got about three courses in the moment that I have bought in the past two years that I haven't even started. Yeah. And it's like, because no one is holding me accountable to doing it.
[01:04:37] There's no deadline. There's no, like I bought it in a moment of like, oh, there's money in my account. I'll buy that because that's interesting. And then I haven't even opened them. Yeah.
[01:04:48] Stretch: We've all been there.
[01:04:48] Mike Lee: Why, why haven't I done that? So yeah, it's and if you think about people who are trying to get into fitness and like trying to even just take that first step of like joining a gym or whatever, it might be for a lot of them, there's way more barriers than I can even perceive.
[01:05:05] Right. There's how you feel about yourself walking into a gym. There might be the monetary aspect. There might be elements where they've failed before all of these things that I don't really know about, but could potentially create videos on to, to help people. So that is the current kind of goal with this stuff.
[01:05:26] Stretch: Yeah. Thinking outside the box, mate, you, you seem to be quite good at that finding like this, you know, void in the market or this space in the market for something.
[01:05:33] Mike Lee: Yeah. So, yeah, I'm, I'm trying I'm trying and I feel more motivated to do it more recently, but yeah, yeah,
[01:05:40] yeah.
[01:05:41] Stretch: Like before we finish up, there's sort of three questions I like to ask at the at the end of the podcast. Question number one is if you could gift a, a personal trainer a resource, it could be a book, it could be a YouTube video, it could be a Ted talk, whatever that might help them build more of a sustainable business.
[01:05:56] Is there anything you'd recommend?
[01:05:57] Mike Lee: I mean, I'd always, I always recommend this to pretty much anyone in any business is effectively, you know, Simon Sinek start with why. And then the follow up book, which is, I think find your way. Because I, I remember reading start your why and I was like, cool, how do I do this?
[01:06:12] yeah. And then obviously the, the kind of next book was actually quite good as well. Because I think it always comes down to like why you're doing it and. It's okay to do it from a sense of like financial gain, because at the end of the day, I think people always try and figure out a way. That's like, well, actually I just want money to pay my bills and freedom, but I feel like I need to come up with something bigger than that.
[01:06:34] When really like most of the time that money facilitates the why, right. It's like earning, you know, 10 K a month means that I can go and be wherever I want. But it also means that I could like maybe pay for medical bills for a family member or whatever it is. There's usually a reason why sometimes it's sometimes it's, you know a bit more materialistic, but sometimes it's not.
[01:06:55] So start with why is one mindset? wanna say Carol Dweck is, I think is the author And that was one that really helped me as a coach get out of my own almost limiting beliefs. But then that obviously translate to clients. And then when you can have a talk about that, it's like when you know why a client believes that they can't necessarily lift a certain weight or in a certain time, it's like digging a little bit deeper into why almost all of the books I'd recommend are very lifestyle focused.
[01:07:27] Because if you understand that you can relate to someone so much better than the world's best technical coach with no like EQ. Yeah. And I mean, I, I imagine, like I said, this on someone's post the other day about how these super high knowledge technical coaches really better serve. Coaching coaches as clients because they understand the, the, the, the language and they can fill in the gaps.
[01:08:00] Whereas sometimes, you know, when someone's talking about creating, talk in external rotation about your hip and your client's like, cool, I just wanna run faster. like sometimes they don't like that code. They don't, they don't match. Even though if this person could better explain, they'd be perfect. And so this person is better to explain to this person who has the social IQ to, to, to then relay that message.
[01:08:25] And I think mindset is actually quite a good. Book for understanding people's limiting beliefs. So I had like a spider, I mean, it's not a spider in relation to your spiders. yeah. Tiny was probably, probably it probably wasn't even half the size of an ant an but it was a spider. And it was science crawl over the WEBC Calan so I was like, Nope.
[01:08:43] Stretch: you didn't scream, mate. So it's okay.
[01:08:45] Mike Lee: exactly. So yeah, that's, that's kind of what I'd recommend.
[01:08:48] Stretch: Yeah. Great resources, mate. I like our Simon Seniks find your why. And I think it's a, it's definitely an important part of, you know, building a successful business is understanding your, why it's your motivation?
[01:08:58] What gets you outta bed in the morning? Like, you know, helps helps you stay on track with what you're trying to achieve.
[01:09:03] Mike Lee: I think the other way to, to phrase it is actually like, it's it's your purpose. Mm, right. And actually you can go down. Oh, I can't remember the name of the book now.
[01:09:13] Backbone. I think it was, is much more in relation to guys and there's like a man without purpose is effectively lost. Like you can keep going and doing the things that you're good at. If you don't really understand why you're doing them, you never really get that sense of fulfillment. And that, that book has some great points and it has some like, not so great points, but I think fundamentally when people don't have a purpose or in that sense of why it's very, very difficult to keep going with whatever it is you're doing.
[01:09:43] Stretch: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:09:43] And easy to get distracted.
[01:09:45] Question number two is what advice would you give to a younger version of yourself?
[01:09:50] Mike Lee: Probably listen to the people that have been there and done that a bit more often. Not all of them, cuz some of them were just nuts, but. I probably would've, I don't know it is hard, but the back injury made me go down a certain route, right.
[01:10:05] With my own training and my, my knowledge base and stuff like that. So like, I don't regret those things happening, but it was a pretty big inconvenience in my life that could have avoided. Right. Everything in moderation ultimately leads to like better progress. Right. You, but there's also times where it's okay to put all of your effort into those things. So, you know, whilst I talk about how those 40, 45 hours a week like burnt me out, they did also allow me to buy my house in London, which then was a huge part of financial relief for me.
[01:10:41] Cause I wasn't then paying rent all the time. So it was in that sense. It's like, if you are. Burning out and there isn't actually any reason for it. What are you doing? Right? Because if the goal is like, I need to hustle all of these hours to reach this goal, and then I'm gonna dial back that's okay.
[01:11:03] Because you can kind of bounce back and recover it. And human beings are pretty good at that. It's like that stress adaptation it's like, but too much stress breaks you. And it either breaks you physically, it breaks you mentally. It breaks you emotionally. And you have to understand at some point, like, is everything I'm doing worth going through.
[01:11:20] And if the answer is yes, then you can keep going. But if you ever kind of get that point, it's like, what am I doing? But the answer is probably no. Right? So I would say, you know, a little bit of more moderation across my own, like training would've saved me for mid injury. And a lot of, a bit of moderation across my work.
[01:11:42] Probably would've saved a few. Social relationships like actual relationships, stuff like that as well. So yeah, that's, that would be my advice is moderation. Isn't you not hustling? It's you understanding where your efforts are best placed? Yeah.
[01:11:58] Stretch: Where to hustle and where not to hustle mate and making sure it's worthwhile.
[01:12:01] The last question for you, mate. If you could have dinner with anyone, be them dead alive, who would it be and why?
[01:12:06] Mike Lee: So I, I grew up racing, so it'd actually be Michael Schumacher. So yeah, that would be, that would be my big hero of mine growing up.
[01:12:14] Stretch: Yeah, definitely wicked man. Mike, I really appreciate your time.
[01:12:17] It's been awesome to hear, you know, more about your story, the journey you've been on and you know where you're heading and what you're doing. So thanks for carving the time out.
[01:12:25] Mike Lee: No worries, mate. No worries. It's a good chat.
[01:12:27]