Ramit Sethi: Hey guys, Ramit Sethi here, just want to tell you about a quick interview I just wrapped up with John Romaniello. This is an interview for Ramit's Brain Trust. John is a very, very well-known fitness professional. He wrote a New York Times bestselling book, the foreword is written by Arnold Schwarzenegger, you may have heard of him.
Couple things that we talked about in this interview. Number one, we talked about the psychology of health. This isn't just about fitness, in fact, investing in my own fitness has been one of the best investments I've made in the last few years, and we talk about how that bleeds into other parts of life. We talk about why, for example, I ignored fitness for a long time, and why a lot of people do, even though they know it's what they should be doing. We also talk about gender differences. We talk about how he came to be known as a world famous trainer, when there is basically unlimited supply of trainers. In a totally competitive marketplace like personal trainers or entertainment, how do you stand out, what are the specific steps he took to get well-known, and then very, very well-known, so that Schwarzenegger wrote the foreword to his book, and he has a thriving online business.
We're going to cover that in this interview, stay tuned, and check out the clip.
John Romaniello: Hi, my name is John Romaniello. I am a fitness professional and New York Times bestselling author, and I help people look great naked.
Ramit Sethi: So, all right, so we got to know each other, and it turns out that we have a lot of friends in common . . .
John Romaniello: Yes.
Ramit Sethi: . . . author friends, online friends. I wonder if you can take us back, just the early part of your career . . .
John Romaniello: Sure.
Ramit Sethi: . . . and just kind of give us the lay of the land.
John Romaniello: So this whole journey for me, I was a chubby kid growing up. I played like sports in high school, because I was a big nerd, and my guidance counselor said that I should have a, like a transcript that didn't just say nerd, nerd, nerd, nerd, like I should have, like, sports. So I, like, wrestled and played football, and I turned out to be pretty decent, but I was never like in really great shape. And I couldn't pinpoint the exact, like, turning point, the Joseph Campbell Call to Adventure. I just decided one day that I, the person I was inside wasn't really like reflected, I didn't feel like the physical manifestation of my true character, and I was, like, I think I can change this. So being a bookish sort of guy, I just started reading everything I could, and then jumped in the gym, and it turned out that it was actually not that difficult to not be a fat ass, I could just lose weight very quickly.
Ramit Sethi: Okay.
John Romaniello: So, this is when I was around 19 years old. At the time, I was studying Psychology, Biology, English at the, in college, and I was sort of on track to do, I, probably, to be a professional student and go to grad school and then, eventually, write a dissertation and get a doctorate or whatever. But this moment, for me, when I was around 20 years old, was huge. I lost a bunch of weight, I lost like 30 pounds, and it changed every part of my life.
Ramit Sethi: Okay.
John Romaniello: So my main thesis has always been, that taking control of your physicality, bending your body to your will, is not the path to self-development, but is a path, because I believe that the lessons that you learn during any transformation, whether it's a physical transformation, or emotional, or transforming your business, those lessons are portable . . .
Ramit Sethi: Yes.
John Romaniello: . . . and you can use them in other areas. And I think that the hero's journey of having gone through that physical transformation allowed me to, sort of, take risks down the road and feel more confident, because once you've achieved this sort of thing that, for the first 20 years of my life I had assumed was impossible, like I just, in my head, I believed, in much the same way that I believed that this is a bone in my arm, this is my humerus, I believed with that same truth, that I would never have a six pack, for example.
Ramit Sethi: What I want to talk about is, like, copy is a very esoteric skill . . .
John Romaniello: Itâ™s true.
Ramit Sethi: . . . it's not easy to be a great copywriter. You can be a great trainer, you can even be great at understanding, like, what's keeping my clients from coming in the gym and working hard and stuff.
John Romaniello: Right.
Ramit Sethi: But how do you turn that into being able to express it? And the reason I ask is that a lot of people watching this in RBT, they're great craftsman, they're great at what they do, but when it comes to writing it down for people, it's challenging for them.
John Romaniello: Sure.
Ramit Sethi: How did you get to be a good copywriter?
John Romaniello: I think that I am probably good at one type of copy, or maybe two. I think I can write pretty good, like, fire sale, urgency copy . . .
Ramit Sethi: Yes.
John Romaniello: . . . like, to get people to take action? But, like, more or less that, like, I write very, like, very long form sales copy. Like, you get my emails, they're sometimes 4,000 words long because I'm a storyteller. I like to tell stories, and if you figure out a way to do that, then people will read, because they're reading the story, and the copy, they know they're being sold to . . .
Ramit Sethi: Yes.
John Romaniello: . . . you're not like, you know, you're never going to hide the fact that you're selling a product, but just being a storyteller, like, just tell an interesting story. And, I think that one of the best ways people can become better storytellers is to speak to a camera.
Ramit Sethi: Okay.
John Romaniello: Tell a story out loud and speak to a camera, and then watch it, and it's very painful to watch yourself.
Ramit Sethi: Oh, it's so hard, but it's so important.
John Romaniello: It's so painful. It's so important.
Ramit Sethi: The way you connect to people, it's not to give them more information, and this took me many years to realize. Like you can give people the best workout regimen, and it will just go in one year and out the other.
John Romaniello: Yes.
Ramit Sethi: The way you connect is much more emotionally, and I want to get back to this psychology of your clients. So many of us, all of us, I think, we have things in our life that we should be doing but we're not. Like, the number one thing is working, or just getting more fit, eating right, having better relationships, money, obviously.
John Romaniello: Yes.
Ramit Sethi: You talk to these clients, day in and day out.
John Romaniello: Yes.
Ramit Sethi: Sometimes, they come to the gym, you know, I talk to my trainer, he's telling me stuff like, at the first sign of rain, he starts getting text messages saying . . .
John Romaniello: Oh, yes.
Ramit Sethi: . . . Oh, I'm not going to make it today. What are some of the insights you've learned, good and bad, about human behavior in the gym?
John Romaniello: I think that if people have multiple types of accountability, they'll show up. So, with a trainer, you know, the last thing you ever want to do is be a dick to your client, right, because they're the lifeblood of your business. And also, most trainers are pretty empathetic, compassionate people, you want to help people, but I learned, like when I started being, like, a dick about my cancellation policy, people stopped canceling. And if you let them off the hook, if you don't create financial accountability, âœLook, listen, if you want to be a little bitch and not come to the gym because it's raining and you have to walk three blocks, that's fine, but it's still going to cost you $250. Like, not because I really care about the money, but because I know that if I say it you're going to come in.
