💪S.S. 61 What's your golden throne?

1. Two lessons for fitness pros from an urban legend – Jonathan Goodman

The version I heard from a friend goes like this:

For as long as anyone could remember, a friendly man wearing an orange vest collected fees in a parking lot between two office buildings.

Everyone who worked in those buildings knew him and liked him. They gave him gifts at Christmas.

Then one day he wasn’t there. Nor was he there the next day. The office workers figured he was sick. But they didn’t know how to find out, and they wondered why nobody showed up to take his place.

If you’ve heard the story, you know the plot twist:

The man in the orange vest was running a con. There was no fee to park in the lot. People just assumed there was because he showed up every day to take their money, and because everyone willingly gave it to him.

I like the story so much I wrote about it twice.

Unfortunately, it’s not true. People do run parking scams, but they always get caught after a day or two. No one gets away with it for 20 years, like the man in the story.

Now, even though it’s an urban legend, I think it offers two important lessons for fitness pros:

1. It’s really, really hard to fool people in the exact same way over a long time. People aren’t stupid. They catch on.

2. On the other hand, it is possible to fake it long enough to make it. Like I wrote here, you can’t always wait for permission. Sometimes the best strategy is to walk in the door, carry yourself like you belong there, build relationships, and eventually become what you at first pretended to be.

That said, it’s a lot easier to pull it off when you’re pretending to be a parking lot attendant. As opposed to, say, a heart surgeon.

2. Why this dietitian is against diets – Reshaunda Thornton

Reshaunda is a Registered Dietitian and author of Play to Win the Food Fight, available as an ebook on Amazon.

“Only eight more days and I’m done with this diet!”

You probably can’t remember the number of times you’ve heard something like this—from your clients, your friends, or even your fellow fitness pros. Maybe you’ve said it yourself.

So what happens on day nine? What happens when you free yourself from a diet plan you hate so much you count the days until it ends?

Food can either be our adversary or our partner. It’s a mirror image of how we see ourselves.

When we make food our adversary, and label things as “good” or “bad,” we’re using food to define us. We’re “good” if we choose an apple, but “bad” if we follow it with a doughnut.

But you can have a different relationship with food. You can make it your partner. What you eat can be an act of self-care.

Instead of using food as a reward (eating “bad” foods because you’ve been “good”) or a punishment (forcing yourself to eat “good” foods because you’ve been “bad”), you can see it as a way to honor yourself.

That’s why I’m a dietitian against diets. When we see nutrition as our partner, our lifeline, we can live in harmony with what we eat, rather than treating food as the enemy in a never-ending war.

3. What’s your golden throne?

Here’s what podcast cohosts Jonathan Goodman, Carolina Belmares, and Ren Jones talked about this week on the Online Trainer Show:

In Episode 17, The Best Apps and Software to Manage Your Online Training Business, the team shares their favorite apps and software.

Carolina, for example, uses different software platforms for different types of clients—Trainerize for 12-week challenges, and ProCoach for long-term coaching, when there’s more emphasis on habit change.

Ren recommends Canva, “the poor man’s Photoshop,” for easy graphic design. He also says Facebook is an underrated platform to connect and communicate with current and future clients.

And then Jon goes long, recommending eight apps and programs for everything from travel, security, time management, and organizing receipts.

In Episode 18, How to Price Online Training for Max Profit and Max Clients, Jon explains why he trusted the guy with the fanciest chair to be his barber:

As someone new to the neighborhood, he had no systematic way to figure out who’s the best at cutting hair. Then one day he looked in a store window and saw a guy who used a golden throne as a barber chair.

“You can’t be a bad barber and be bought-in that much,” he says. “I don’t know whether he’s the best in the neighborhood, but I know for sure he’s not bad.”

The lesson?

Imagine how your clients feel when they’re trying to choose a personal trainer. When they look at your website, how will they know for sure you’re “not bad”? Is it your credentials? Testimonials? The fact you’re confident enough to charge a premium price?

Put another way, what’s your golden throne?

You’ll find every episode here:

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