Why you need to 'trust your gut' in life
Training teaches you to believe you know best for you
The difficult transition from Prof to Coach
This week I spent a few days in a small town on the outskirts of Indianapolis, Indiana hanging out, training, talking coaching philosophies, getting guidance and encouragement, and picking the brain of my business coach and mentor
.
A few weeks after I realized I needed to find a different career path, a tenured university professor I would not become, I reached out to Zach to help guide my transition into a new life.
Through a friend I met in the campus free speech battles I stumbled onto this weird corner of Twitter colloquially known as ‘money twitter.’ This was a place where people used their accounts to grow online service business, mainly in sales, marketing, design but also a lot in personal finance, health, and life/relationship coaching.
There were lots of fitness trainers too.
One thing that’s true in any market, there are lots of people who think it’s easy and flood in to take advantage and the ‘money twitter’ space has a special hypnosis over people who want to shake up their lives.
You see accounts posting about making big money while doing little work and freeing up their lives for more leisure, travel, adventure, and personal development. They make it look easy and part of the allure is the promise that you can become one of the few ‘online entrepreneurs’ to escape the rat race. I was intrigued.
I was a professor, an academic historian, someone who reads a lot, writes books, and lectures to students. I became a prof because I love knowledge and teaching but also because it was the least like a ‘job’ type of job I could get. Teaching 6-8 hours a week was my only calendar obligation, otherwise I was free to use my time as I saw fit. Playing golf in the afternoons, going on long trail runs, putting on my snowshoes to adventure in the winter were things I would do on a whim if the weather was nice on the days I wasn’t on campus teaching.
I had a lot of freedom.
I knew I needed a lifestyle like that, but how could I achieve it coming from an academic background?
Enter Zach. I saw him in this money twitter world and gravitated towards his circle.
Here was a guy who built a successful online coaching and fitness business. But first he built his own gym from scratch. He had real world success. He made it on a crazy risk (something like less than 800 bucks in his account when he opened his gym in 2016). He didn’t come from money. In fact he was a coal miner from West Virginia who worked 12 hour shifts. Then he decided to give up a comfortable life and risk it all moving to Indianapolis.
Oh, and did I mention he’s also a world record holder in powerlifting. He’s an ELITE athlete. But he didn’t project an ego online. Instead he talked about family, finding inner peace, not being ruled by possessions, and doing hard things physically as a way to enter into a deep knowing of oneself spiritually. My kind of guy!
Leaning into the Counterintuitive
I reached out to Zach for a few initial guidance calls and he encouraged me into the online space. He saw potential in me. But most importantly, we just clicked. Our first phone call was awesome, like two old friends catching up. But instead of following my gut and hiring him straight up as a biz coach, I went down a more ‘familiar path.’
The conventional wisdom told me to do a lot of things when I decided to jump into the online business world.
Get a website.
Hire a lawyer.
Draft your corporation.
Brand yourself professionally.
Start structured email campaigns.
Become a ‘professional.’
Being a greenhorns, a total newbie, I reflexively followed the crowd. I hired a person who promised to systematize an email based online business that I’d use my social media posts to direct people towards. It was a good lesson in doing things like everyone else not working out well for me.
After doing what I was ‘supposed to do’ and not enjoying the process but also not seeing any real results I decided to trust my instinct. I hired Zach for a full year to coach me in business. We certainly hit a lot of the foundations needed, branding concepts, product design, coaching offers, and all of that. But on a deeper level, I needed someone who could help me craft a one of a kind lifestyle and online persona.
Zach is a one of a kind. A world champion athlete. A millionaire entrepreneur. A devoted husband, son, and father. He’s a brilliant fitness trainer and biz coach. He also coaches mens groups and helps people connect to their best selves through enduring hard challenges. Grew up in a less than stable home. Coal Miner after high school. Not a priveleged dude. Worked hard for EVERYTHING.
I knew he was the one to help me because I’m also a one of a kind. A professor. A trail runner. An expert on sport. An author. A teacher. A husband, father, and son. A freedom fighter. A firebrand. A rebel with a righteous cause. I have a set of experiences and expert knowledge no one else possesses. I couldn’t throw that away. But I also knew I couldn’t just build a business like anyone else. I needed a custom fit. I leaned into the counterintuitive for business.
And it WORKED.
The idea of compromised and creative training
I’ve developed a deep saying over the past few months of coaching my athletes and 1-1 coaching clients. “The Truth is in the Training”
It’s a simple phrase that means we can’t avoid the outcomes of our actions.
But it’s a deep phrase that says how we do the little things in life is how we do the big things too. When it came to me selecting a coach in business, I needed to see a connection between how we value physical training and the practical ways we bring our creativity into the process.
Seeing Zach find business success in an uncommon way was related directly to the way he trained himself to become a world class athlete. That’s what I saw.
Using his own experience to become creative in training. He seemed to share the exact same philosophies about how to train the body that helped me find consistency and a love of trail running. Specifically, there are times in training when you must abandon what’s optimal for what’s compromised.
I love the idea of compromised training. Knowing you are ‘underprepared’ in a sense and then finding out how to rise to the occasion while in action. It’s why I do all my training fasted (there are health reasons too, but it’s most to see what my body can accomplish while in a deficit). Zach used this idea to prepare for competitions and it helped him win powerlifitng and strongman competitions others ‘should have won.’
In business, as in training and competing, we do not have optimal conditions. We must learn to operate from a compromised position and use our creativity to find solutions. Zach did that in training, and competing, and he emboided it in business too.
It might seem weird to choose a business coach based on a training philosophy, but again ‘The truth is in the training,’ and following what’s conventional doesn’t always lead to the right results.
For me to feel comfortable with a coach, I need to know we see the world from a similar frame. We can’t have the same experiences, but we must share the same values and perspectives. Training was the thing that taught me what to value in myself, why shouldn’t I also use it to determine who could give me the most value in business?
Funny story, I hired another biz ‘expert’ last year who didn’t aling with my counterintituive gaze. It was a safe pick, something anybody else in business would choose. A way to get more leads and close more clients. I lasted 1 month and then stopped engaging with that coach. I got fooled again. The ‘normal’ way isn’t for me.
Lean into your INTUITION
When I say ‘lean into the coutnerintuitive’ what I really mean is listen to your OWN intuition. Lean into the vibes, your gut feel, that snap judgement.
Too often individuals mistake the convention of society with the intuitive position. But that’s how we end up objects towards someone else’s defintion of the ‘good life’ we ought to be leading.
I want you to become strong enough to TRUST YOUR OWN GUT. To believe in your internal compass as the proper aim for your life.
This is why I tell you to aim your fitness directly from your heart on out. It becomes a way to trust yourself through experience and evidence. When you exercise in a way that’s passionate, artistic, creative, imaginative, joyful, and adventurous you begin to build an objective record of yourself acting in that fashion.
The truth is in the training. It’s in your strava, you lifting log, your lowered heart rate, your stronger lifts, you shrinking waistline. You can’t lie about the goals you’re achieving and why. You become a believer in yourself by knowing yourself.
With that knowledge comes a greater confidence that your internal compass IS the correct path. You don’t get bothered when other people scoff at your ideas, goals, or the way you’re going about achieving things and living life on your terms. Their opinions melt away into oblivious. You lean harder into yourself.
2025 is the YEAR to stop waiting for permission and instead it’s time to grab life and direct it’s course yourself. If you feel the pull inside to ask for help, guidance, or support, you need to honor that call. It’s the one that helped me connect with the person who’s helped me build my dream life. It’s the one that my clients have answered this year and led them to incredible breakthroughs in mind, body, and spirit. Whether 1-1 or as part of the Tribal Training Team, so many of my guys have crushed PR’s and seen massive personal growth, it’s honestly left me a bit speechless.
If you have that gut feeling that I can help you achieve what you haven’t been able to on your own, it’s your duty to yourself to explore that instinct. Others might question ‘why?’ but it’s not their decision or life.
Send me a message using the button below and let’s work together to make your 2025 the year of realizing your potential and aiming directly at your dreams.