5 Rules for Being a Better Coach with Luka Hocevar

[00:00:00] Hello, my friend on today’s episode, I have back on the podcast again, Luka Hocevar, who’s such a bad ass for those of you don’t know, Luka Hocevar, Luka Hocevar, he is the owner and founder of vigor ground fitness performance in Seattle. He also has a gym in Slovenia where he’s from, uh, and he’s always a podcast favorite full of wisdom and passion for this industry.

And in it, we talk about how challenging it can be to develop yourself as a coach, how challenging it can be to develop. Other coaches in your business, if you’re a leader and, uh, Luka Hocevar shares five of his 20 rules for becoming a great coach to help you level up and your fellow coaches level up on your team.

And so I think you’re going to love this episode. It’s one where you have to have a pen and paper ready, because there’s a lot of great takeaways. So hope you enjoy this episode.

Welcome to the Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym owners [00:01:00] unleash the full potential of their business. I’m your host, Michael Kehler. Join me each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym. Get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry.

Let’s begin.

Hello, fitness, business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the Business for Unicorns podcast. And today I am so stoked. Back on the podcast again is Luka Hocevar. Welcome back, my friend. It’s great to be here. Always an honor. I love being on the show. We all, we always dabble into great things, my friend.

We always do. And we always, I always wish we have nine hours and we can just record like an epic Joe Rogan length podcast. So one day we’ll have to just indulge and do that. But for today, I’m really excited to have you back as always in this podcast. You’re always one of our listeners favorites. You’re one of my personal favorites.

Discuss this business inside and out, and you approach it with a lot of integrity and heart [00:02:00] and professionalism and passion. And that’s exactly what I want on this fucking podcast. So thank you for being here and taking the time to chat as always, my friend. Before we dive in, I want to do just a quick shout out.

Cause you have an event coming up that is, I’m so excited for, I don’t look forward to a lot of fitness summits, but I’m looking forward to yours and you’re doing the figure ground fitness and business summit 2024, it’s going to be October 10th. through the 12th in Washington, and you’ve done this before, so tell people what they can expect.

Yeah, this is actually going to be number eight over the course of 10 years that we’ve been at the beginning. It was called changing the game, but the last six have been the vigor summit, and it’s a mix. Essentially, when I started doing these, it was like, what would I want to go to knowing that? In, in fitness, you have coaching and then you have the business of coaching.

And events were very much so one or the other. You go and it’s all training or you go and it’s all business. And the reality is that most of us, and I, I put myself in that category. I love coaching. That’s what I got into the game. I, but I do love business too. I’m an entrepreneur. I have four [00:03:00] businesses. I probably do too much stuff.

And it was like. I didn’t want to go to an event where it was just like, yeah, I want to have the person speak about Some training stuff that’s like, hey, this is new. This is how we’re running this training A small group of personal training system. This is how we’re doing this and then there’s somebody that goes Hey, this is how we’re using social media to actually grow brick and mortar This is what makes sense This is what doesn’t when you come out and you have both the coaching business or coaching strategies that you can implement into your life That was the thing and so I actually started doing a hands on day.

So thursdays are hands on all at vigor And all the presenters there are doing actual showing stuff. Sometimes people are, Martin Rooney’s doing a group training session. Everybody’s going nuts. 200 people plus in a building. And so we’ll have all of Thursday is stuff that’s hands on that you can take.

And it’s like making you a better coach. Friday and Saturday is at the Hyatt’s beautiful hotel in the water and it’s all lecture presentations again. It’s a mix of, it’s a mix of things and I try to curate the speakers that personally I would want to learn from, but also I see [00:04:00] reaching out and getting folks that I don’t know as well, but I know that they’re doing great stuff and this year again, the reason why we.

We haven’t done it every year is because if I can’t do it, great, I won’t do it. And yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a ton. It’s basically like going this year, I’m going to open another business. That’s pretty much what it is. And, but it was time we got some really good sponsors that allow, cause, cause it’s a huge investment to, to push it and make it as a, as good as I believe it can be.

So I’m excited about that. I really hope to see you there. It’s, it’s a, it’s a good time of year to be in Washington. It’s an absolutely beautiful state. I’m so excited that you’re doing it again and I haven’t been able to attend one before. So it’s totally on my calendar already. Listeners. I hope you can make it.

Where can they go to find out more? Luka Hocevar. We don’t have actually a link up yet. I’ll have it for you. Yeah. If we have a time, this comes out, we’ll put it down below. And even if it comes out after this is released, we’ll put it in the podcast notes. So go check it out, my friends. And hopefully some of the discipline teams we’ll see you there.

Yeah. Yes. Let’s dive in. So. Recently, here’s, I picked this topic [00:05:00] because recently you posted on your Instagram and y’all, if you haven’t followed Luke on Instagram, go follow Luke on Instagram. What are you doing with your life? Go follow this man. But you posted recently that you’ve been coaching for nearly 20 years and you put kind of 20 rules for being a great coach and they’re all brilliant.

I wish if we had that nine hour podcast, we talk about all 20, but I went in and I picked five that in my personal opinion are things we don’t talk about it enough when it comes to what it means to be a great coach. I think a lot of our listeners obviously are coaches, but also are in the business of developing coaches and creating teams of really great coaches.

And I think these are things that are valuable, whether you want to improve yourself to your listener or you’re working to improve the people on your team. I picked ones I think we don’t talk about enough. Let’s dive in, Luka Hocevar. The first one I picked. On your list of 20 rules for being a great coach, this first one of the five is to organize your own life before you try to organize someone else’s.

I love this one. I’ll say it again. Organize your own life before you try to organize someone else’s. Tell me [00:06:00] why this is so important to becoming a great coach. It’s the over used word of, um, integrity, but let, let me. Put it this way, when you work on your own stuff, I’m even going to give a painful example for my own life in this one, right, but when you work on your own life, you become a better coach, right?

Because you, you speak, and again, I don’t want this stuff to be in the ether or whatever, but you feel more confident and certain about things because you have done it. So there’s a lot of people, for instance, you read a book and you get like a checklist of things that work. Now, you’re not doing them, but you read the book.

So then you’re like, Michael, let’s go through these five steps that are going to really help you in whatever area. And there’s a lot of that happening, right? Where you have to implement things into your own life and then you’ll become better at helping others implement into theirs. For one reason is that you’ll actually have gone through the actionable steps and you’ll run into the issues.

And let me share a story of mine too. I tended to be a lot more judgmental as a coach when I looked 10 plus years ago. [00:07:00] And it was very much so like one of these, I can’t understand why you can’t get your fitness and nutrition in check. Don’t you want to be, you tell me that you really want to be fit and healthy, right?

So there’s a judgment there. And then in my own life, I went through, I was doing dumb things. I went through a divorce. I was not living in integrity. And one of the hardest times in my life. I ended up getting help, I ended up getting therapy, I joined a program called Wake Up Warrior that helped me out a lot in a very hard time in my life.

What I realized through that time was like, wow, in the area of fitness and nutrition. Yeah, I got it dialed in but in other areas I don’t and it’s like why was I doing the things that I was doing and it was so hard for me But it made me be a lot more empathetic and go hey to me that was Literally that principle is like I wasn’t organizing stuff in certain areas of my life, but I was judging and so for coaches It’s like the thing that you know, it’s a trigger for you, right?

It pops up for you and it might be for instance in business. You’re a good coach, but [00:08:00] You’re trying to stay away from sales and marketing systems overwhelm you. You’re just trips you out. So you don’t touch it. But then you’re judging a client that’s avoiding something challenging for them, right? That’s what that means.

And by the way, this is a forever rule, right? Because in our lives, we’re always running into things that are challenges for us. And we’re not organizing those things in our life, but we’re trying to tell others to organize them. I say that a device. Is a form of sedation, right? Because many times you’re avoiding your own stuff.

So you go around and tell everybody what they should be doing. Don’t be that person. I love that so much, Luka Hocevar. And I put that on there as number one from your list, because so often I see that attitude that you mentioned that you used to have. in coaches, just why people can’t get it and just really like talking nasty about their clients.

When the reality is they haven’t done this work, right? You haven’t done the work. And if what we’re meant to do as coaches is help people work on themselves, physically, [00:09:00] mentally, from nutrition perspective, then you got to be working on yourself. You got to know what it’s like to go through those struggles.

To feel it’s like what it’s like to be in their shoes to learn something new to be uncomfortable. And if you don’t know what it’s like, it’s really hard to be like an empathetic and strategic coach. What 100 percent that’s exactly. And the thing is, find another, if you have a, if training and nutrition, you own it and you’re comfortable there because you’ve got the deliberate practice and experience going to something else.

Cause that’s what it’s like for them to be in fitness nutrition. So that’s really important. I’ll say that I still experience this every day as a business coach. Right. There’s all kinds of times where I’m on calls with our Unicorn Society members, and I’ll be telling them to do something. I’ll be like, Oh, wait, do we do that at MFF?

Or I’ll be like, listen, I’ll raise my hand. And by the way, this is, maybe we can touch on that just quickly too. I sometimes really feel, uh, I would say anxiety around that because I’m always trying to make things the best possible, but taking [00:10:00] things from information. into integration and then transformation is very challenging, right?

And you run into a lot of stuff and I’m like, I know that this is the way I want it to be done, but it’s not there yet. And then I feel like some type of way, but I’m working hard to get it there, but it’s not there yet. And so the thing is, but you have to be working on it because that will help you connect to people that are.

Going through their own challenges of implementation, no matter what it is, right? No matter what behavior it is. Is it a marketing skill or is it a food skill, right? Or is it a business skill? Whatever it may be. Yeah. 100%. I love that one. So number one on the list is organize your own life before you’re trying to organize someone else’s.

Number two is coaching is more important than programming. Coaching is more important than programming. Talk this one out for us. Ooh, I know there’s people probably right there pulling their hair out. Matt already. Yeah, Matt already. But the thing is, I’m such a programming geek that if anybody knows me You can say that.

Yeah, they know how I’m still like, I’m nerdy about this stuff on another level. But once you [00:11:00] really truly realize that, the coaching aspect of it is, we can have a program that’s pretty subpar. And we’re not going to dive into the 181Bs of it. If somebody were looking at it, they’d be like, ah, this program’s okay.

But if somebody coached their ass off on it, the client kept showing up. We kept shining a light on the great thing that they’re doing, encouraging them, helping them put a pull up, put gasoline on their spark, their anchor of why they’re there. The form was on point. They were safe. And we were doing progressive overload after a year, right.

And they kept coming, they’ll have better results than that. The best program in the world, but the coaching was not great. Yeah. And now what does that mean? Does that mean that you should not give a shit about programming? No, that, but that should, but what it does say is I think that. The coaching actual skill set of coaching is so important.

And it’s something that you should be a lifelong learner and you should constantly develop it. And there’s, if I’m not mistaken, look, the definition of what coaching is. [00:12:00] Communication, problem solving, and technical expertise. Those three buckets. And I will say, you can never get too good at communication.

Studied it for a long time. I still feel like I got a long ways to go. I think problem solving is concepts of thinking, but then you have to actually solve problems in the real world as much as possible to become good at that. You got to be a scientist actually running experiments. Yeah. Yes, exactly that.

You got to run experiments. And. Have hypotheses and figure it out through doing, and then you have the technical expertise, which is your, Hey, like external, internal coaching cues, understanding anatomy, biomechanics, kinesiology. Yes. You got to have that. But look, there’s three buckets. I see a lot of coaches focusing on one and really not putting enough value, time, energy, focus, and or money, right.

To, to educate themselves on the other two. And those, and if you get those three, right. You could take a okay program and get excellent results where you could have excellent program and without the coaching, you’re not going to get excellent results, [00:13:00] period. Yeah, listen, look at that. It’s so well said, and I’m so glad this was on your list.

Let me tell you why I picked it. I picked it for personal reasons to some extent, because it really resonates with me personally. A bunch of years ago, I was maybe in the worst shape of my life. I was living in San Francisco, and I was looking for a trainer. And I found this trainer at, it was, I was at a crunch or something.

I don’t remember what, it was some big box gym. I needed a trainer because I just knew I needed some accountability. And they introduced me to a bunch of trainers. The one I resonated with was someone who was maybe in her first few months of training. But I remember her name was Jessica. Hi Jessica, I don’t think you’ll listen to this.

But, and Jessica had just gone through a process where she herself had lost 300 pounds. But she was maybe like three or four months into being a trainer, but she had been through some shit with herself and her, her, her, um, her actress. And at the time, I still am the kind of classic gen pop, um, kind of client.

I’m not a trainer. I’m class. I don’t like exercise. I don’t like working out. It’s not fun for me. So I picked Jessica [00:14:00] and she was probably. Not creating great programs, but what she did is she got me to do exactly what you said. She showed up, she knew how important motivation was. She knew how important it was for me to just to show up and move.

She knew how important it was to highlight the things I was doing. She truly did the shit out of me. She made sure that I was doing things that like I enjoyed a little bit, right. But I, in hindsight, I know she was having me do some real basic shit. Um, but her coaching is a thing that won me over, got me back into shape.

And she was maybe three or four months into her experience as a coach. And it was because of her life experience that she, I really resonated with her and she got me to where I went and I needed to be. That’s awesome. And that’s such a great share because. You will see the arguments, for example, and I want to counter this, people that have been studying things like exercise science and kinesiology and are like, I’ve put in so much time here, and then we’ll get upset if a coach that’s three to four months, like, why do I have a full roster?

I’m not getting people, but they are. And then it’s like that, that, that judgment and anger, [00:15:00] like. They’re, that’s bullshit. I should have that versus going, Hey, what are they doing to have those clients? Because maybe that’s the magic that you got to add to your recipe. And that person hopefully would go like, man, I don’t feel like confident enough in the programming and this, that, the other, and search that out.

But it’s not either or it’s, and it really is. And that is why certain industries that come into fitness do better. Whether it’s that I’m such a fan. I know you are too of, I would say. The restaurant industry, Danny Meyer, Will Guerrero. One of my favorite books in the last two years that I’ve read was Unreasonable Hospitality.

It’s phenomenal. And I literally would go to coaches and say, Listen, read these two books and then take what they’re saying and give yourself an example of what that would look like in fitness, in the training industry. And I’m like, just do it. And it will change your, it will change your business.

Especially if you’re a, if you’re a small gym owner, if you’re a personal trainer trying to build your kind of book of business. I’m serious. If you read that and went this [00:16:00] example, like what if I did this for a client and you just started doing that, it’ll blow people’s minds from an experience standpoint, and you’ll have a full roster and yet continue to get better on the technical expertise side of things.

Absolutely. But that’s going to be a game changer. And that’s why those folks do well in the fitness industry. Said my friend, I think that’s great. So number two on the list was coaching is more important than programming. Programming matters, but coaching is what keeps people coming back for more. This actually dovetails into number three.

So number three on my list here, what you touched on a little bit already, but we can dive in a little more is communication is a superpower. Practice it more. And I want to just underline and bold that second point that communication is super power. We already talked a little bit about that, but the important part is you don’t get better at communication by reading books about it.

You got to practice it more so you can just talk more about that. Like, how do you think coaches should be getting in and getting in the reps when it comes to improving their communication? So I do feel, I feel like that you have to have some type of framework to practice. [00:17:00] Now the framework you can get, by the way, like, I’m so infatuated with communication, because no matter how good at it I get, I’m like, ah, I suck.

I want to be, you know, the most elite world class, whatever. But I did, but by the way, shout out to you guys. The coaching conversations workshop that you did. I took that, I was sitting there all of, I think it was Saturday, Sunday, two and a two whole days getting in the reps. Yeah. And it was excellent. And by the way, that would be an example.

I’ll take a two or three different examples of when I said, you’re not going to get better at my books. Books are important first step. In some cases, you need a framework, you need a model, but that in and of itself, the knowledge isn’t going to help the performance. Absolutely. So you’re a hundred percent correct finding out a way.

And by the way, you can go through them. I wanted to give that example just to give a shout out to you guys. Cause I did a great job, but it was like, there was things in there that then I was like, Oh, okay. Seek to understand. Okay. Asking questions. Empathize with him. Okay. So now let me go and practice that with the next client.

I see. Right. Hey, I got a couple of questions for you [00:18:00] mentioned that you’re struggling with this, that the other could tell me a little bit more about that than they tell you. And it’s Oh, and then you repeat what they said. I completely understand where you’re coming from. Right now. I’m practicing the model that I learned.

It could be something that like, Okay. Me and you are having a conversation and you’re, there’s something that you’re doing that is impressing me from how you communicate. Hey, Michael, what do you do when you’re communicating? You do this thing. Can you tell me a little bit more about it? You’re like, Oh, I’m doing this cause I learned it here.

Or I wait for three to five seconds after you stop talking. To give space instead of, cause I had to do that. I had to practice that. Cause I always jump in other people’s words and I would like consciously go, okay, Michael, stop speaking. I’m hearing him one, two. Right. And it was like, wow, that’s awesome.

Right. That’s practice. So you, you take a model, a strategy, a tactic, right? I ideally you have some principles that you build everything on just like in coaching, right? Like in training and then you have to go practice the skills and I would have these four by six cards [00:19:00] and I would come in. And I wouldn’t write out all these things that I learned because it’s too much, but it might be, Hey, today I’m going to ask these three questions to people, these powerful questions, but I’m going to ask 10 people throughout the day.

Right. And I’d ask the question and I, my feedback would be that they would be like, Oh, it’s a great question. And then it would open up and say something. Wow. Like I, Never had anybody ask me that question. We have a good conversation. So that would be my feedback to continue to do that because I’m like, I’m getting good results and good feedback from asking the right questions or pausing.

Or again, giving them like the understanding, right? It’s like, Oh, I completely understand where you’re coming from. Or do motivational interviewing is another great resource. So whether it’s a book, it’s a course, it’s a person that you feel like they communicate very well. Learn the thing. But then it’s just like basketball.

I’m going to go on the court and I’m going to put up shots. I’m going to put up really good shots. I’m going to try to make it. You go into the gym or you go into the coffee shop and you see somebody and you just practice it. And [00:20:00] ideally you’d, I think it’s a really good thing to track. I did this for two years where I would just go today.

I talked to eight people using this concept, right? And at the end of the week, I’d be like, man, I had 50, 60, 70 reps. of the thing I wanted to practice. And after a while, I was just doing it. Like, it was all, it started being automatic. It started being part of what I do. And just like you look at a sport, and I go back to the sport skills all the time because basketball is my kind of like, for a long time.

And you go, oh, my left hand is, is, is weak. Like, I can’t ball handle, so everybody drives me to the right. I gotta get better at the left handed ball handling. And you start dribbling with your left, at lunch, while you’re drinking a drink. And then you go on the court, and you start, I’m gonna go left every time.

Then I’m gonna give myself a defender, right? Because now it’s gonna be harder. I’m gonna try to steal the ball. You’d practice it and you just increase the intensity of the practice. That’s exactly what you do with communication. It’s the same. The foundation of building skill sets is very similar, [00:21:00] right?

Whether it’s shooting a basketball or it’s practicing how to get better at listening, practicing how to get better at asking questions, practicing better at having empathy and understanding and what you say when somebody shares something with you. So get your reps. And ideally, if you want to get better at it, I’m going to track your reps, track your performance of communication.

Yeah. I love the way you outlined it, Luka Hocevar. It’s like you’re creating a program for yourself, right? You’re writing a program for improving your communication skills. It’s program design for communication skills. Exactly. This is my strategy. I’m going to track my reps. I’m going to learn lessons and make adjustments.

I think it’s so smart. And I also love that when you’re in those coaching conversations, one of the keys that you’re heading in the right direction and you’re really challenging people in a positive way is when they have to do that pause that you mentioned of, Oh. No one’s ever asked me that before.

Good question. You know that you’re doing some good shit, but you make people pause and think differently. And the only thing I would, I’ll plus once everything you said was for those of you who are managers out there who manage people, you can work this [00:22:00] practice into your management. This your best practice can happen in role plays during your one on one meetings.

This can happen in team meetings with the whole team breaking apart and getting in some practice and role plays and MFF we used to have folks come in. The whole team come in and we’d give them three to five, three by five index cards. We would ask them to write down what’s a conversation you had this week.

That was really challenging. Or what’s a question you got from a client that was really challenging. And then we’d have them pass out those cards and role play those actual conversations to get better and better at communications to your managers out there. Structure this into the way you do business.

Make time for this practice if, if you’re in a position to do so. That’s such a great insight because I think too in fitness, we tend to gravitate toward you have an in staff and it’s, let’s talk about training. Absolutely. Sure. How can you coach better on the floor cues, this, that, the other, but why not?

This very important skill set. If you’re not spending any time on it, you probably should. And for anybody that’s a training geek, try to PR on your communication, bring the PR bell because you got the best communication. [00:23:00] Exactly. To your point that you’ve made so many times just in this conversation, you need both.

We’re not going to never talk about the programming, the technical stuff. We also have to also talk about the people skills. I love that. All right, here we go. We’re doing great. That was number three on the list. We’ve got two more. Number four on my list. Is this again, this is rules for being a great coach is to be structured.

And creative to be both structured in your coaching and creative. What makes that combination of structure and discipline and creativity so important to being a great coach? I read I’m going to give this analogy that I read that was so good when it comes to developing cars. I’ll get there in a second.

I think that. Structure allows us to be more effective and efficient and the industry, like our industry is certainly one of those things that you have to get structured or you’re going to lose your mind, especially when you get busy at the beginning. I remember when I didn’t have a lot of clients, I’d spend sometimes an hour creating a program for a person, right?[00:24:00]

Okay, but once you have 50 clients, that’s impossible. So, you have to create structure. You have to create models that help you do things faster. Same thing with structure of organization of time. When do I send back emails? Am I just sending them whenever they come in? You can do that for a while, but that’s going to be a problem.

So, you need the structure in every single aspect of your coaching and your business, because it will create the, put it this way, your energy will be better, you’ll have better energy for clients, you won’t lose your mind, right? Because you have to conserve, or should I say manage your energy. Yep. And be effective and efficient, especially as things grow.

But you can’t lose the creativity because the creativity is the thing that helps us innovate. It’s the thing that helps us push boundaries. It helps us experiment and test something better. So we need that. And I’ve always felt that it’s good to have time, even though it seems like weird. Time blocked out for those have time blocked out to be creative, right?

Um, and for that’s for instance for me, like I have time blocked out every week to [00:25:00] study content What am I gonna create? I have ideas I’m just like sometimes I’m going through the internet and looking at articles videos. I have my notes from the week of coaching people Hey people struggle with this exercise like How can I do a video that’s three coaching skills, but make it entertaining and educational, right?

So I give myself space for that. And so going to the analogy of, and I can’t remember which car producer this was, but it was like, look, you have a car line that’s effective and efficient and structured that creates whatever the, the Tesla let’s call it a Tesla, right? Sure. And it’s robots and it’s, but then the company has.

An innovation side, and you’ll see this in cars when they go, Hey, this is a concept car. You see it all the time. It doesn’t mean that they’ll create that car, but it’s a department that pushes the boundaries, right? They’re like, Hey, listen, here’s this much money. Here’s this much resources and time. Go create some crazy shit, flying car with whatever.

And they create it. Yeah, exactly. Let’s push it. And by the way, [00:26:00] there’s no wrong. It’s just be as creative as you can with what you got here. And then that concept comes out. And then certain things in that concept are like, Ooh, you know what? We could start implementing that in this car that we already have, but we’re going to add one or two things.

Right. And then they bring one or two things and then they improve. What they’re already making, but that’s still a construction car that goes with the robots and is effective and efficient. Like that analogy for me was really good because it was like, I’m going to spend time, energy and some money and block out this time to be creative.

Yeah. Right. And read books and I’m a big doodler. So like I come in and like whiteboard and I draw shit and that’s just let my, my mind be free. But the majority of the time I want to be structured so I can deliver a great product and have a standard that everybody’s like, wow, this is really good. And then we iterate again and maybe 90, 97 percent of that concept card doesn’t come into play, but 3 percent goes back into the main thing and we just keep doing that [00:27:00] for forever.

This is such a critical lesson, Luka Hocevar. It’s a critical lesson for coaches to be great coaches, for sure. And this is a really an entrepreneurial lesson, right? About as you scale, you need more and more structure and systems to be able to effectively get the impact you had by hustling in year one. And over time, you also can’t let go of that, that squishy, creative, blue sky thinking.

Like, you really need that to keep moving forward and innovating. And I think you said it really well. I’ll add a context here, which is I took a course a while ago from this place called the Neuro Leadership Institute in New York, and they do all this neurobiology stuff and leadership stuff, which is my favorite.

And one of the things that they said, which is entrepreneurs and leaders don’t do enough of, they don’t do enough daydreaming. They don’t do enough. Set aside enough time to let their minds wander and all of their research of actually putting people in CT scans and things Shows that we are best at generating new ideas and creative ideas and innovative ideas When our [00:28:00] minds are not thinking linearly, it’s when our minds are allowed to wander and just daydream, right?

That’s when we have our best ideas That’s when we have real breakthroughs and innovation and I love the idea that you set aside actual time to prioritize That creative daydreaming thinking, uh, cause if not, we won’t do it naturally as entrepreneurs. We’re so stuck in what’s the next problem we got to solve and staying in that linear thinking.

And that’s not where ideas get generated. Our brains actually can’t generate new thinking when we’re in that linear mode. And so I love this one so much for that reason and more. And one last tactic on this point is this, going back to the practice, right? The practice of being creative. Oh man, I’m blanking on where, I read this in a book 10 years ago.

And still in my Google calendar, you’ll see this. I don’t do it as often anymore. I did it every day. So the first thing, one of the first things in the morning pop, I would say create 10 ideas. I’m really blanking on it. I promise you as I keep going, it’s going to come to me where I read this. Yeah. But it wasn’t just ideas for me.

It [00:29:00] was ideas for myself and others. And the thing is, some of them would just be, like, 8 out of 10 would be, like, stuff I probably will never do or never did. Yeah, just ridiculous. But you need those to stretch yourself in that direction. Yes, exactly. But it would be like, Text Eric Kress and be like, Hey man, that, that course that you did, I think you got to turn this into a certification and write this whole thing out.

Jay, hey, I be texting people ideas, but every single day I do 10 ideas and those basically, I was now practicing to have all these ideas, right? And over time, guess what happens? Like your brain becomes good at generating ideas because you’ve practiced it and it doesn’t take a lot of time. Like I would in 10 minutes.

I’m knocking out 10 ideas, and it’d be stuff in like business, it’d be stuff in my life, it’d be stuff in like, Oh, we could, man, I want to do this crazy charity event, call it E Squared, like elite effort. And I’d write that stuff out, and funny thing about it is that some of these ideas actually got wheels and became a reality.

I’m sure. I think. And people can do, add that practice 5 10 minutes a [00:30:00] day, it’s gonna add up and it’s, honestly, you’ll be blown away because at the end of 30 days you’ll be like, Jesus. Yeah, I’m in a shower and I’m getting way more ideas. I’m training exactly popping it out of my head. Exactly. People wonder why they get all the best ideas in the shower or on the toilet or falling asleep.

It’s that’s the only moment you gave yourself that day to let your brain do that. You need to give yourself permission. So I love that one. Awesome. So that was number four, which is be structured and creative. Last one, number five. We’re gonna bring it home with this one, which is reflection is the way forward.

Reflection is the way forward. So what makes reflection so important to being a great coach? I think it’s the thing that people skip, right? Because we’re, we live in a go go type of society. So you have, I always feel like there’s these four steps and growing. It’s if you learn, you apply. You reflect and then to me, it’s like you course correct or you adjust and then you repeat forever.

Yeah, exactly. But when I even, again, myself too, like I, I [00:31:00] don’t want to ever be holier than thou. And I ran into these same problems and got people that pointed them out to me. But what I see, especially now, because I would say generation coming up in industry is more bombarded by. Everything that’s really quick, right?

Social media, everything is a glimpse. Things are so short. To get understanding of things, guess what you gotta do? You gotta dive deeper, right? The one minute video is gonna be very difficult to give you depth on a topic, but it’s way reading a long article or a long book or taking a multi day course or even multi month internship or whatever it may be.

It’s becoming less popular per se. So we don’t have the time to reflect, right? But the reflection is where we win. The reflection is where we learn it. Even our first point, the way that we learned that is like we reflect. Hey, wait, wait, why have the, in the last 30 days I’ve lost three clients and nobody’s wanted to share with me and I, why they left this, these repetitive, you have to reflect on it.

Hey, I’ve been adding these, I [00:32:00] really love athleticism and I just started adding a whole bunch of plows and jumps and stuff. But man, we have two calf sprains this week. Was that too much, too fast? And everybody was over 50. Maybe I shouldn’t, right. So that allows you to learn from the stuff that you’re implementing.

But again, Alan Cosgrove actually taught me this. When I did his mentorship, probably like 15 years ago now, 16 years ago, and was like, Hey, after training sessions at the end of the day, reflect on your training sessions. And I would have a journal and I’d write in and go, Oh, Hey, I really, we had a huge success with switching the trap bar deadlift firm.

And people were able to push and feel safer than the regular bar barbell deadlift off the floor. Warmups are going a little bit too long. Our sessions are running to like hour and 10 minutes. Like where can I become more effective? But keep the meat and potatoes and I’d have like notes and notes of reflecting on the day now the busier I got it became harder to spend as much time, but I still did of course and I still do small group The small group personal training I created a course and all that stuff and I’ve been [00:33:00] doing it for 14 years And I still coach and I love coaching it because it get at the end of the sessions I’ll go through like this checklist and like how did that go?

I put this new thing in if I had another 10 people And like those new people, could I still run this session? Because then I feel it’s like effective as far as the programming. How can I progress it for the person that has been here for years? I don’t want to make them take a step back. So I’d go through this checklist and it would, it continues to help me to improve my programming, improve my coaching that I spent enough time coaching everybody.

Hey, there was 18 people in class, this strength session today. That reflection is really what helps you grow because you could get a lot of information coming in. Yep. And you keep going, but you never reflect and you never stop to see never actually process it. Yeah, exactly. And again, it’s, you got it. If it’s important, it’s like Dan John says, right?

If it’s important, do it every day. It’s not important. Don’t do it. But reflection is something that you should have every day. And the stoics at the end of the day would reflect on the day as a coach. I think you can [00:34:00] reflect on your wins. You can reflect on what went good. You can reflect on what went bad.

Maybe it’s just one thing. But the end of the year, right? That’s 365 things that you reflected on, and then the next time you make them a little bit better. And that, that makes a massive difference of compounding over time. Yeah. It’s really gold, Luka Hocevar. I think for all the people on this podcast, listening, people who see this podcast are people who are lifelong learners.

You are, they’re listening to this podcast because they want to keep growing and learning. And I find that having like a, uh, a reflective practice in your life is one of the key ways that a lot of lifelong learners are missing the boat. They’re missing out on all this learning that they can do from their experience.

And there’s a mountain of research that backs up everything you just said about self reflection and reflective practices being key to learning. It’s especially true for adult learners. As adults, the number one way that we learn and make learning sticky and applicable is by reflecting on our own experience.

So I just want to give this one two [00:35:00] giant thumbs up that listeners, you got to take all the notes that Luka Hocevar just gave you and make a reflective practice for yourself. And again, for you managers, make a reflective practice for your team. Take time in team meetings and say, okay, let’s reflect on this last week.

What worked? What didn’t work? What new clients are we taking good care of? Who’s falling through the cracks? What do we like about what we’re doing? What do we not like about what we’re doing? All of that reflection helps at an individual level with learning, and it helps with collective learning as a team.

And so, I think this is just gold for anyone out there who considers themselves a lifelong learner. Yeah, your point right there as far as like, how can you learn faster is when you do a group share. And again, somebody, for example, and you look at my team or you guys team where I’m not here always early in the mornings to, to observe everything, like you can’t, you just can’t learn from, you can’t see and learn from everything.

Cause again, we got so many different responsibilities, but if somebody has to reflect and go, what I noticed is, and then fill in the [00:36:00] blank and everybody else is, I think that’s happening with me too. Boom. Now we all have an opportunity to make something better. Right? So the more shares that you get. It’s like reflection gets multiplied.

Um, and I, I think there’s like, and if we’re all seeking to improve and there’s this joint kind of, I would say collective of, hey, let’s improve. We can learn compound investment that we’re all making piggy bank, right? And this is true for our clients, too. If you can encourage your clients to reflect on their experience in the gym and out of the gym, you’re going to help them learn faster, right?

And this is just, we can do a whole podcast on this, but I think this is such a critical skill to To, to have as a coach for yourself, for your clients. And then for those of you who are working on teams at a team level, this kind of reflection is just so critical. Yeah. Anything else? So let me just repeat back the five that we covered today.

And I’ll just do all last one last question, which will be like any others you want, you want, you wanted to talk about, but the five we talked about just as a recap are again, five rules for being a great coach [00:37:00] is one organize your own life before you try to organize someone else’s to coaching is more important than programming.

Both matter. Three, communication is a superpower, practice it more. Number four is be structured and creative. And number five here, maybe my favorite, is reflection is the way forward. It’s a learning practice that’s going to benefit you all. Anything you would add to those things that we didn’t talk about yet, Luka Hocevar?

Uh, this is the thing that I want to add, and I’ve thought about this. Well, actually I speak on it a lot now because I think there people are, think a couple of different ways about content. Like sometimes the true coaches are like, if you’re creating, I consider myself an absolutely obsessive true coach, right?

I still coach 20, 25 hours a week. I love it. And, but I create a lot of content and this idea that I feel like wherever you are, In a space. If you’re starting off document, what you do. And if you’re a first year as a coach, this will help you [00:38:00] develop your writing skills, your speaking skills, but what it will also do make you reflect and clarify.

Your beliefs around training or again, or beliefs around coaching and sharing them. Now you could do it through Twitter through if you prefer to write more, if you want to, if you want to go longer for me to go blogs, you could do shorter video, longer video. I really encourage it to block time out. Cause some of the things we talked about, you’ll practice that skill by creating content and being useful to the person that consumes it.

I think it makes you a better coach, right? If you do it for the right reasons, it makes you a better coach. It’s sharing, it’s creating. relational equity and sharing useful value online or whoever the audience the eyeballs that you get and again it helps you to because you when you do this stuff and you put it out in the world every person goes like should i write that do what would i really you actually stop and you think about and you’re like i can’t write this much i have to make it more concise i have to make it in three to five points so it actually makes [00:39:00] you better and it makes you think and it makes you reflect and again it can also help you position yourself because If I can create content where people are like, I really like that guy’s stuff.

Oh, wow. He’s in my local area. I can go train with him. But at the same time, not, I think there’s, I always said that there’s, there’s coaches that put things on the internet and then there’s internet coaches, like two different things. So. Taking the time, just taking the time and again, not making that your job, but having points of time throughout the week where like, Hey, this day I create this content.

This day I write some stuff out. And the lesson that I shared earlier, when I said that Alan Cosgrove taught me about reflecting, I started the way that I started writing articles was taking those reflections and organizing them into content. And that helped me, uh, become a better coach, become a better writer, helped me be seen more.

And I think there’s quite a bit of merits to that. Yeah, that’s a great takeaway to end on, Luka Hocevar, and I think it’s really actionable, and I love that idea of using content as a way to [00:40:00] reflect on what you stand for, what your principles are, what your approach is, the kind of reputation you want to build for yourself and your brand.

I think that reflection and content creation go hand in hand, so thank you for that, and thank you for today! It’s such a great conversation. Again, I know we could, again, listeners, there’s 20 rules. We only went through five of them. So go follow Luke on Instagram, see what the other 15 are. And then, and then we’ll include a link down below to your Vigor Ground Fitness and Business Summit 2024, which is again, October 10th through the 12th.

I hope to be there. I hope to see you all there. And I just want to say one more time, Luka Hocevar, thank you for the great conversation. Thank you for coming to this podcast, sharing your passion and your experience. It’s always appreciated. Thank you, my brother. Appreciate it. Always a great time. Always a great time.

Mhm.