Interview with Mike Vacanti
Mike Vacanti is a writer, online fitness coach and Ben & Jerry’s addict. Part head in the clouds, part on the grind – Mike believes taking control of your diet and training regimen will change you. Both physically and mentally. Dreams will become reality. And fitness will enhance every single aspect of your life.
Note from Matt: This interview was recorded from a phone call and then transcribed by me. Some parts of the interview may be edited slightly for an easier read.
Matt: Alright, let’s start this interview off with the most important question. What is the best Ben & Jerry’s flavor?
Mike: You know, there’s not an easy answer to that. I’m going to get super nerdy right off the bat here to answer this. My training days right now are high carb and low fat and my rest days are the opposite of that. So, the ice cream flavors aren’t great for either of these. The best tasting flavor overall is clearly Strawberry Cheesecake followed by Cheescake Brownie and Cinnamon Buns. Right now I’m pretty much limited to froyo, so Cherry Garcia and Half-Baked are my #1 and #2. Our freezer is stocked all the time so I’m set over here.
Matt: Boom! You’ve got this down to a science (laughing). Now that we got that out of the way tell us about how you first got involved in health and fitness. What drew you to this industry?
Mike: Yeah, that’s a great question! I first developed a personal interest in health and fitness while training for hockey in high school. In college I started to dig a little deeper into strength and conditioning and even took a few nutrition classes. After a little while I became interested in body composition for standard vanity reasons. I wanted to look good, have more muscle, and lean out. In college I had chosen to be an accounting major because that’s what everyone did. Get a major where you can make some good, safe money and get a job, you know? Something your parents and friends can be proud of blah blah blah. When I graduated I took an offer from a big accounting firm and absolutely hated it. Every day at work was brutal and I stuck it out for two years before quitting. At this point I didn’t really know that I would be doing something in fitness or what I was going to do at all. I just knew that this wasn’t it.
Matt: Was this when you went to Cabo San Lucas to play online poker? I think I read that on your site.
Mike: So that my original plan (laughing). It was around the time that the drug cartels were getting a lot of press and the whole idea terrified my mom. I had just quit my job and having played poker in college I figured I’d go out of the country to start playing since it wasn’t legal in the US anymore. I wanted to travel, get out of the Midwest, and I figured that this was as good a plan as any. I was going to go to Cabo because I loved Mexico, but for my mother I ended up going to Vancouver. I researched it a bit and it seemed like a pretty cool spot. So, I moved in with a guy I met on Craigslist (ended up being a great friend), started playing online poker, and then soon after I had the idea for my website. I was really into fitness and I stumbled across the blog of a mutual friend of ours, JC Deen. I had never seen anything like it. This guy wrote about fitness and made money training people online. I wanted to figure out how he did it and if I could do the same thing. It just seemed awesome. That’s where the wheels started turning. I was lifting five days a week, tracking macros, and it was pretty much the #1 priority in my life. Maybe I could turn this into something I do to make money. So, at the end of 2012 moved back from Vancouver to Chicago with the intent to start a blog. From there I just started to write about things that interested me and ended up with around 6 or 7 articles. In April of 2013 I had a standard WordPress blog and decided it was time to push it live. I tagged a few friends on Facebook, emailed my family, and told them that this is what I was doing. They were all confused as to how I was going to make money off of it (laughing).
Matt: What was your approach to growing this blog into a business?
Mike: I didn’t really have a plan in place. I knew that I knew a lot from training friends and family on the side for years. I had been helping out people for free for a long time so I knew that I had knowledge in the area, but there wasn’t any plan of what to do with it all. About a month after starting the blog John Romaniello, who many of your readers probably know, posted on his Facebook that he wanted an intern. Someone young, who lived in New York (I didn’t), and who was willing to work hard in an unpaid standard intern position. I wanted it. I wanted it so bad. I was in a month-to-month lease at the time and could easily leave for the right opportunity. I replied to the post and then emailed him as well as hitting him up in like 5 different places in about a 30 minute time span. Probably super obnoxious in hindsight (laughing). Later that day at 1:30pm I got an email from his assistant who said that John was willing to interview me. He assumed I in New York so he told me to meet him Starbucks on the Lower West Side at 8am the next morning. Alright, done. I’ll be there. I instantly jumped on Kayak to booked a one-way flight, threw some stuff in a bag, and was ready to go. So that, I would say, made up for the absence in a concrete plan. Being able to be flexible enough to jump at an opportunity like that. There was an instinctual, gut-feeling that this was what I had to be doing and it all worked out.
Matt: When you were working with John what did he focus on with you that helped accelerate your path?
Mike: That’s a good question. In the very beginning I don’t know if that was even the case. It was right around the time of his book lunch and John was under a ton of pressure. In the beginning, which is probably true in most mentor relationships, it was just give give give on my part. I worked my ass off to deliver high quality work and just did whatever John needed. At the time it was mostly grunt work like spending three days in Fedex mailing out international copies of Engineering The Apha one-by-one. It takes around 8 minutes to fill out a custom order (laughing). I just did whatever needed to be done. While I was doing all of this I was just so pumped. Every minute of everyday. This told me that I was on the right path. From there John helped me out a lot with utilizing my strengths which involved helping put together meal plans for some of his clients, editing blog posts, reviewing and cleaning up stuff on the website because I had a little bit of WordPress knowledge. Just seeing how he ran his business, interacted with clients, and managed his time was eye-opening to me. He showed me what could be done through focused hard work.
Matt: Was it around that time when you started to get into online training?
Mike: I had my first online client about a week after putting up my site which I got through doing the most spammy thing you can think of. I would go to Twitter and follow anyone who followed Tony Horton. I would follow around 600 at a time and then 50 would end up following me back. I would hit the 2000 cap and then unfollow a bunch of people to do it all over again. I was a spam bot on Twitter for the first week. Somehow a girl contacted me and asked about the only thing I offered at the time which was program design for like $30 bucks. I spent days writing that program because I was so stoked. I didn’t really pan out because there wasn’t anything in place with the program to help her succeed like weekly updates or communication. I just kicked her out of the nest and let her fly, which usually doesn’t work in my experience. A year later she came around and was willing to give me another shot because my online training was a lot better. Now she’s in the fifth month of the program and has lost a lot of bodyfat which is amazing. I’m happy that I got to actually help her at the end of the day. Sorry, that kind of veered off course (laughing).
Matt: Not a problem at all! I like hearing the stories about where people started.
One of the reasons I wanted to reach out to you is because you’re a relatively young online coach. A lot of trainers and coaches who use StrengthPortal are utilizing technology for the first time to leverage their expertise and still figuring this space out. What do you focus on with your clients to deliver a really professional and personal experience while training online?
Mike: Customization is something that I’ve found is extremely valuable for your clients. Obviously this makes it tough because it’s time-intensive and limits your reach, but I really do think that it’s the best way to help people. So what that looks like is that someone will stumble across one of my articles on Google and end up poking around my site. They see the testimonials from my clients and fill out my contact form to see if I can help them. The problems from each of these new clients are vastly different. I might have a woman who wants to lose 50 lbs of bodyfat and has been in the gym, but never touched a weight before. That is a completely different client that another woman who has been training for five years, trained in a physique show, and wants to lose five lbs. They have completely different needs so differnt training programs and coaching styles are required. From my experience, Woman A will probably require more communication, especially early on. She will need more help with form check on the lifts to make sure she understands how to do the moves. She’s probably going to need more communication with what type of foods will help her hit her macros for the day. I’ll have to decide if assigning her training and non-training day macros is the best way to help or if we should just shoot for a calorie range with a protein goal for each day. So, client customization is probably the most helpful thing I’ve found to help each client succeed. This can get lost in online training really easily because you lack the face-to-face interaction of getting to spend an hour with someone in the gym.
Matt: Are you doing any group coaching with your online training?
Mike: I did do group coaching in the past through Fitocracy, but right now through my own site I only offer one-on-one coaching. I actually like group coaching because it can be a fun atmosphere for the clients. The clients appreciate the encouraging environment, so I’m not against it at all. Right now it’s more a time issue because there’s only so much I can work on.
Matt: What does your communication look like for your one-on-one online clients? What do you do to build a strong relationship and keep them on track?
Mike: The relationship is mostly email based. When my clients apply they have to fill out a very detailed assessment questionnaire so I have a clear idea of how best to help them. From there I usually write them a personalized program within a week or week and a half. When they get started the clients do a required weekly update. I look at the numbers and ask them how things are going. I have around 4-5 similar questions designed to give me information I need to know if the coaching is working. We look for problem areas and I ask them what I can do to help. I then address these topics in a personal followup email that will be sent out every week. On top of that they have access to my email so I get daily questions regarding whatever pops up in their life. They may have a macro related question or might have fallen off the wagon this past weekend. They need reassurance and a little bit of timely feedback to get back on track. Sometimes it requires positive reinforcement and others it requires a stern response. I don’t want them to fast for three days to try to make up for their mistakes. Get back on the plan starting today and you’ll be good to go. Building the relationship via email has actually been easier than I thought it would be. I find that certain issues that are much more personal in nature can be easier to type up than say to someone face-to-face. Maybe you were dumped by your girlfriend or fired from your job. Maybe there’s an eating disorder in play and you’re really struggling with the plans I put together. My clients have an easier time communicating these issues with me through our emails.
Matt: What have you found to be the most challenging part of training clients online? Time management? Building up an interest?
Mike: Building up an interest actually came a little bit easier for me. I think I got lucky with some good articles that moved up the google ranks quickly. Honestly, I think the toughest part is getting pretty good adherence across the board. Some people just need more than you can give them. For example, I told you earlier that I was training Gary Vaynerchuk. He has a need to do something everyday to keep his mind at ease, even though training only 3-4 days a week would be optimal for his goals. It’s tough to manage the amount of communication and customization that some clients require through an online platform.
I think that way that I things set up is good because it works. I’m afraid to change them because there’s a cost of changing with the time to learn the new system. Having something like StrengthPortal that’s technologically more efficient and allows me to spend more time with each client would be huge. I would say that inefficiencies in the current system are an ongoing challenge for me.
Matt: You just did an awesome redesign of your blog, you’re balancing in-person and online training, and working with Gary Vaynerchuk. What are your goals from here? What’s coming up next?
Mike: Man, I had a conversation about this last night with a super smart dude who works at Gary Vaynerchuk’s agency. I want to help as many people as possible. If we want to get all existential for a moment, I feel as if that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. So, I’m trying to figure out a way to do that. It’s kind of the reason I haven’t put out a product yet like most fitness professionals do. I just don’t know if selling an ebook or eproduct is the route I want to go. I know that I can help a lot of people through coaching, so a potential next step might be to bring someone on and expand my coaching team. A coaching system like Precision Nutrition, at a much smaller scale, to allow me to reach more people with my coaching systems and philosophies. For the immediate future it’s just getting back on the blog. Getting articles and videos out there. Giving good free content that will help people because that’s what I really like doing. I love getting super caffeinated and jack up and banging out a 3000 word blog post. So I’m going to write more, keep whipping Gary into shape, and think about ways to grow my coaching program to reach more people.
Matt: Boom! Great interview from Mike who is on a very similar mission to our team at StrengthPortal. If you’d like to follow Mike and his work check out the links below: