Your Motivation Problem Might Really Be A Belief Problem

You can know exactly what to do and still feel stuck. That’s the part nobody wants to admit, because it sounds like a discipline problem, but it’s usually something deeper: belief. I’m Chris Kakouras, and I’m pulling back the curtain on a packed season of life, what’s changing in my coaching business, and the mindset shift that ties it all together.

First, I share a real capacity update. In-person coaching has grown from a small experiment into a schedule-eating monster, so I’m bringing another coach into the in-person side to keep the experience high-touch without burning the whole operation down. I also talk about a specialized certification I’m working through right now, centered on lab analysis, blood work, hormones, digestion, and gut health. If you care about sustainable fat loss, performance, and energy, you’ll hear why data and root-cause thinking matter more than guessing your way through supplements.

Then I tell you how an opportunity with Everfit turned into a live webinar with 650 coaches, and how the Q&A unexpectedly shifted from app questions into business mentorship questions: niche, first clients, retention, pricing, and systems. That moment forced a decision I’ve been sitting on for almost two years. We close with two powerful stories that expose how belief shapes endurance and outcomes, and I announce what’s coming next with a new mentorship program for coaches who want a sustainable business and lifestyle.

Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review if the message hits. What’s one goal you’d chase harder if you truly believed you could win?

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Transcript

Welcome And What We Stand For

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, Chris DeCorps, a lifestyle fitness coach and mentor. This podcast is about unmasking your greatest potential, finding your purpose, and crafting a life worth living. Health and fitness has been the gateway drug to all of my success. My continuous drive to keep learning and surround myself with other high achievers forces me to level up, which has developed my mind to something I never thought was possible. This podcast is here to share what I've learned and continue to learn with all of you. This is your time to take back control of your health, mindset, and personal environment. Strap in as we are recharged and always if you find value in the show. Please subscribe and share as we can all get better together. Let's go.

Life Update And Capacity Reality

In-Person Coaching Grows Past Limits

New Certification For Lab Analysis

Everfit Invitation And Webinar Prep

Live Webinar Results And Business Q&A

Motivation Versus Belief Systems

SPEAKER_00 0:44

What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, Chris Corus. Hope you guys are having a blessed Monday. And so today I have some pretty exciting news. So you gotta you hang on to the end of the episode, and I am going to tell you what that is, and I'm gonna kind of lead up into it. So, those of you that listen to the podcast and uh are are regulars, uh this is why I'm saying it here first. So, because you are loyal and you listen to the the episodes, um, I'm gonna I'm gonna drop the news here first. I got a lot of things going on in my life right now. Uh, it's funny because we as humans always get super overloaded. And, you know, I did an episode on capacity, and we always seem like we'll tell each other ourselves these things like, oh, I just can't take one more thing, or I'm gonna break if if I get one more thing put on top of me. Like I just can't do anymore. I don't have time, whatever it may be. And I find myself saying the same thing, and then I load two more stacks on me of just tasks to do. And uh, and and we figure it out, right? We we figure it out. We are resilient creatures, and um, I'm not to say that's that's always the case, but um, you know, in in this situation, in this current season of my life, this is what it's gonna, what I'm doing. So there's a few things. I'll I'll kind of give you guys a little update on what's been going on. Obviously, the the coaching has been going great. Uh, we have been doing some in-person sessions, which I don't, I don't even promote that at all. Um, it's not something I really wanted to do to begin with. I enjoy it, but uh from a time uh capacity, it it's limiting to do something like that versus like having online clients. And so I decided to take on, you know, just three to start. And this has been, I mean, this has been going on for a while now, but I took on three and then it went to five, and then it ended up going up to eight. And I was like, okay, Chris, what did you do to yourself? Uh, which is great in the sense of like it's good that I'm able to get clients, but um, you know, the the the coolest thing about working with the people in person is the fact that like I I love my clients. I I love them to death, and especially the ones in person. Uh, I get to work with my type of people, the people that I love working with, uh, the type of clients that I want to coach and train. And uh ultimately I get to actually learn from them because everybody I work with is a business owner or they exited out of a business. So they're a little more in control of their schedule, which ends up working out for me as well. And so I've hit a capacity there. So now we are going to bring on uh one of my other coaches, Coach T, to the in-person field, and we're gonna start giving him some in-person clients. So we may start promoting this um potentially, but has been doing good without it. And so I don't want to overload the in-person as it is a little bit higher ticket, but again, you're getting way more when it comes to that kind of style. So that's the first thing. Uh, the second one is that I am in the process of getting a certification, a very specialized certification. Um, I told myself I was never gonna go back to school, but guess what? Um, technically it's not school. I'm not going too a physical complex. I'm just educating myself even further, even deeper when it comes to lab analysis, understanding blood work, hormones, uh, the digestive track, how gut health is super important and affects the rest of the body. So uh getting a little bit away from that Western medicine of just medication and getting to the root cause. So um that hopefully I will I have been doing that for the last couple months. It's it's very in-depth, and um, I'm hoping to be done in about two months. So that will be officially put out there in in social media and everywhere else. That uh, you know, part of the things that I'll be able to do is actually uh send people to get labs drawn, and I can put in their scripts of what they need to get checked uh based on their symptoms that they may tell me, or just generally. Uh, so this will be really, really great for our coaching business because I find it insanely um valuable to know what's going on inside the body versus outside, and we can really solve some very detailed and complex problems uh versus on, you know, a lot of coaches, they're just like, well, just take this vitamin or this vitamin and try this peptide, and they're they're just guessing. Like, how can you really take a metric if you're not looking at some specific labs? So, again, um, in the process of studying and and doing that, which also takes time along with the running the business side of things. And uh, and lastly, last week I got a really incredible opportunity. So, with coaches, uh, many coaches have apps. Now, we don't develop our own apps. Uh, most of us don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in a team to manage it and grow it and do all that stuff. So there's different platforms out there that we essentially white label, which means the platform is built, but we brand it and we customize it. And so all the coding and the back-end stuff is already done, but we we branded and built out our own programs within the platform. So it makes it a lot more affordable and the layout is already kind of there. And so I've been with a company called Everfit, who is one of the top uh coaching apps. So there's really like two that are out there that are kind of like the biggest ones. And so this one is one of the top ones that, you know, thousands of coaches are using, and they reached out to me and uh they wanted to interview me to see if I would be interested in potentially doing something uh new that they haven't really done before. So I end up getting on a call with them and they're like, you know, we're we're doing something new. Uh, we want to see if you're a good fit for it. We think you are, because obviously they can see my profile and see what I've been doing inside of our platform and our app, or how I built inside of their app more specifically. And they they were asking me questions about my business, you know, how I got started, and then how we use it, how do we deliver stuff? And they were like, okay, so um we're gonna go back to the team, we're gonna talk about it, see if you're a good fit. Cool. They messaged me back in like two days and um get on another call. And they said, like, Chris, uh, we would we'd love to have you a part of this new series that we're doing, and we're gonna actually be um using you as a coach to talk about your how you're delivering nutrition plans to your clients using our platform. And I'm like, okay, yeah, we can we can definitely do that. And I was like, let's tell me what you need for me and and let's do it. So uh they're like, okay. So they send me all the details and they basically laid it out as it was going to be a little bit of an interview style in the beginning, and then we were gonna basically talk about, or I was going to present how to handle the nutrition when you're working with clients, not necessarily teaching them how to uh, you know, build calories and macros and all that kind of stuff, but deliverables. Like how are you coaching your clients through our platform? And so I put a PowerPoint presentation together, and um, in about you know, two, two and a half weeks later, you know, we go live. And uh, you know, he told me ahead of time too. He's like, you know, we're gonna have a good bit of, I mean, all of them are pretty much coaches that are gonna come and they're gonna be on. There'll be a live chat because it is gonna be live, and um, we're just gonna roll with it. And I was like, cool, that's awesome. So before we started the live call, I asked him, I said, how many people signed up for the the webinar? And uh he says 650, 650 coaches uh signed up to be a part of of the webinar, right? And I was like, whoa, all right, let's um let's do this. And so it went in incredibly well in a sense that um, you know, they were asking me a lot of well, the interview was a lot about like how I started my business, how did I find out who I want to work with, um, how did I, you know, develop my systems, you know, all the things of just kind of like the startup to give a little bit of rapport who I am and what I do. And then I went into my presentation, and then the last uh 15 minutes or so was more QA, which was um, this is where things kind of got really interesting, you know, throughout the whole thing. I mean, and and I do my best to engage with people while we're going through the whole, you know, interview and presentation. Um, when the QA hit, it was just questions like banging out, like one after another after another. Like people are just like throwing them in the chats, and it's hard to keep up with. And so um the the questions ended up turning a little bit in a different direction of away from the questions of along the lines of the app. And it gave it got very heavily into questions about business. Um, how did you find your niche? How do you get your first couple clients? You know, how are you retaining them? Do you, you know, your price points like you know, again, business questions. And um they're just like, and you know, I'm just banging them out, you know, just kind of answering their questions. And the guy that's interviewing me, he's like, Well, Chris, he goes, I'm sorry, like we're out of time. We're gonna have to cut this, you know, short. It seems like it went really, really well. I'm actually really impressed with how everybody was engaging. And so now you see like thank you just rolling through the comments. And uh he goes, I think uh maybe we need to talk to see if we can bring you back on. Seems like everybody really enjoys you. And now we got everybody that's like putting like coaching, question mark, mentorship, question mark, like handfuls of people asking if I do this. And uh I was like, Well, listen, guys, I was like, I know we gotta go. This is my Instagram handle, shoot me a message, and uh I'll get back to you as fast as I can. And with that, um, that's where it ended. And when I got off that call, my phone was like blowing up in my DMs uh from just other coaches, you know, following me, just saying, hey, the webinar was amazing. Then others were like, I was the one asking about mentorship. Do you offer that? And uh it made me it made me feel good. I'm gonna be honest with you guys. I I kind of got a little bit of a high off of that, but I also reeled myself back into reality and I was like, check your ego, Chris. Um, this was good, you know, it was a blessing. And um, you know, take it, take it for what it is. So it had me, had me really like thinking about potentially like opening up this like mentorship program. So I was like, I'm gonna give it some time and and I'm gonna think about it. And we ended up, I ended up having a follow-up call with the company Everfit with the app. And they again just Chris, you did amazing. Um, I think it's also because you're partly like uh comfortable on camera. You answered questions, people were engaging, that's the biggest thing. And we definitely want to continue trying to do some things with you. We're thinking potentially, if you're open to it, doing um more specific training videos of like step by step how you are utilizing our platform and coaching your clients. And so we had that conversation, which was um which is awesome. And I was like, yeah, dude, I'm I love it, you know? And and again, I didn't get paid for this. This was just something like I I thoroughly like enjoy talking about business. And if you guys listen to my quite uh my podcast too, it's kind of part of like a lot of the interviews I do. Like, I'm just I enjoy that back end system, which just sounds crazy. I know some people think that's like I hate that, I hate systems, I hate automations, I hate setting up the back end. So, anyways, that is that is where we're at right now with that. So it's interesting, like this is kind of where I want to talk to you guys a little bit about you know, motivation, okay, because I I feel like a lot of people may be like, Chris, you're so motivated to do so many things, like you jump into different things and try whatever, whatever. And I I I heard this the other day, which I thought it was really funny, is that they said um successful people are losers. And I was like, dude, that is why would you say that? That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. But then this person goes on to say that uh, you know, successful people are willing to try and try again and fail and fail again and probably fail more than your average person because they're not willing to give up, right? So you're technically like you're you're losing, right? Over and over. But we're resilient. We keep trying and pivoting and trying again, and eventually, you know, whatever the thing that you're trying to achieve, you find yourself achieving it and creating success within it. But it takes time, you know, it's rare for someone to pick up something immediately and just take off with it. It it's just a it's a skill that most people have to develop, just like a sport, you know, taking a uh, you know, a quiz or a test at school, like, you know, you'll have your few people that can just like walk in and ace a test, and then others have to put some time in. So, but more than not, people have to put time in, you know, to get better and better. And so when it comes to the motivational aspect, I don't like to, I don't like to tell people like, oh, it's just it's discipline, right? You just gotta be disciplined. Yeah, I guess that's that could be partially it, but I think it goes a little bit deeper into a belief system, right? Like, what do you truly believe about yourself? And when we're talking about, you know, motivation, and many people come to me, and this is probably why they come to me, is like, Chris, I lost, I don't have motivation, I've lost it. Um, I need I need accountability, I need you to get me remotivated. And, you know, this is where we start to ask the questions, right? It's like, what's what's going on here? And so I think it's more importantly to ask these questions for your goal. So let's let's kind of push out the concept of motivation. So if this is you, I want you to to listen up to this. If you're the person that's like, hey, I lost motivation, Chris. Um hear me when I say this. Ask yourself first, like, do you know what to do to reach your goals? Right? Is that is that the gap from you reaching your goals? Do you not know what to do? You know, we can let's just keep it simple. Let's talk about weight loss, right? Like, you don't know, do you not know how to uh lose weight? So do you not know how to like eat in calorie deficit? Uh, do you not know how to work out? Um, I would say most of the time, probably not. Uh you probably have YouTube, Chat GPT. I mean, you could probably find a workout. You could probably find some sort of generic diet that puts you in a calorie deficit or something like that. So, you know, let's just say most commonly, that's probably not the issue. Um, ask yourself, okay, on that goal, like what's what's the benefit? You know, what is the benefit of me achieving X goal, the dropping the 20 pounds? You know, it could be you just want to feel better, you want to have more energy, you don't want to be so stressed, you want to look better in your clothes, more confident, uh, whatever the benefit is. But sometimes that benefit isn't good enough to keep you going when times get hard. Right? A lot of times it's just more so like there there needs to be something that's like a stronger anchor. But at the end of the day, we all know the benefit of getting into a healthier weight, having more energy, all that. Now, what I do believe is what is causing your loss or lack of motivation is potentially a underlying belief system. All right. So, what do I mean by that? Um, this really goes along your your prior beliefs and experience. Maybe you've tried this before and you're like, I working out is hard. You know, working out is tough. I don't like it. Um, dieting, I don't want to eat the same thing every day. I've done that before. I hate feeling hungry. I feel like I'm starving all the time, and then I just binge on food that I'm not supposed to, and my weight never like goes the direction I want it to. So in your mind, you're already setting up a belief system that it's just it's just not possible because it's just too hard, it's not doable, you've never reached those kinds of results in the past, or it doesn't stick. Again, you're starting to envision and create a reality, and we perceive reality any way that we want. It's a it's it could be a very deceptive reality, depending on our prior experiences and and our beliefs. And so there's uh there's an interesting study that I was listening to the other day, and it was talking about um wild rats. Okay, so check this is pretty crazy. So this is uh a Harvard study back in the the 50s, and so and I'm gonna kind of paraphrase this whole thing, but basically the scientists wanted to find out how long a rat could swim without giving up and drowning, right? So he just basically plopped this little rat into a tub of water and it would tread water and he wanted to watch. And it you know, the first time he did it, um, it ended up the rat swam for about 15 minutes before started drowning, and then it would basically pick it up out of the water. I did it again, and then he decided to like take this um rat and see if he could increase the time that it would swim. So he put it in with another water with other rats in it, and basically kept doing it and you know, see how much longer it would last. And every time it was about to drown, it would basically yank it out of the water and uh, you know, kind of almost condition it in that sense. So finally, you know, I and again, I don't know exactly how many times or how long this did it, but it wasn't long enough to really like condition the physical aspect of the rat. Uh he ended up, you know, doing that multiple times of saving it when it was about to drown, and then he the last one he did, he put the rat in to see how long it would last alone. And remember, the first time he put it in, it did 15 minutes. What do you guys think? How long do you think that rat lasted when he actually tested it the last time? Let me just give it a second here. Just think, you know, just guess, you know, twice as long, three times as long, you know, 60 minutes, whatever, right? No, it was 60 hours. This rat stayed swimming 60 hours from 15 minutes. Insane. And what they discovered was, you know, outside of the physical, you know, exhaustion and you know, that there wasn't enough time to actually do like a you know physical training to make the body any like the endurance a lot longer. It was purely fact the fact that the rat was knowing that he was going to be saved. It was like the the hope of salvation that he knows that somebody is coming to save him and just not to give up yet. And it lasted 60 seconds. And just that alone, just believing, made him last that much longer. Imagine you guys thinking of goals that that you have and you really believe, believe in yourself that you can accomplish it. How much longer would you go? How much longer would you work towards it? How much harder would you push in the gym? Knowing, knowing and believing that you're gonna reach your goals. I bet you would do it a lot harder than you're doing it right now. Because if you don't see the results, we we want to give up easy. And so I was listening to um another podcast, matter of fact, earlier this week, and this this guy he was talking to this person that was interviewing him, and he says, I got a I got a riddle for you guys, and um, this is fun. This is a fun one. So this is the riddle, and I'm gonna give you guys a second to think about it too before I give you the answer. Uh, there's a father and son that are driving down the road. Okay, they're driving down the road, dark, straight path, no cars around, um, and they're driving. Next thing you know, a deer jumps out, and they have a tragic wreck. The father dies instantly. The son's in critical condition, and they get him rushed to an emergency room to get operated on. In barges the surgeon and looks at the son and says, I cannot perform surgery on him. That's my son. How is that to be true? How is that to be true? I'm gonna say it one more time. Paraphrase. Father, son in the car, tragic car accident. Father dies instantly. The son is in critical condition ends up in the surgery room, embarges the surgeon, and says, I cannot operate on this boy that is my son. How can that be? Now, as you're thinking, I'm gonna talk. I'm gonna be honest, I didn't get this. I started thinking all kinds of things. I was like, eh, stepdad, or you know, you want to get religious? Are you saying God? You know, like what what is it? Um, and here's the thing 83% of people get this wrong. 83% get this wrong. And I'm gonna tell you what the answer is right now the surgeon is the mother. The surgeon is the mother. Now, when I say that, you're probably like, oh my god, yeah, that's of course it is, right? Um, because I never said the surgeon was male or female, but we as a society already have predetermined and pre-frame that surgeons are males. And statistically, 80% of surgeons are males, 20% are females. That's a fact. And so, again, this is not a sexist thing, but if if we have already predetermined in our mind that the surgeon is male, we can't even see or fathom that is something else. We've already predetermined it. And so this is the power of belief in your mind. If you can't really truly believe and see what you're trying to obtain, you will never obtain it. You have to, if you want to say manifest it, manifest it. But if you're trying to achieve something that you can't even see being a reality, this is a problem. This is what's going to hold you back, and you're going to sabotage yourself over and over again because we like being right. We like being right, and you will be. So I challenge you to open up your mind. I challenge you to see yourself already at the goal line, at the finish line, already at your goal weight, already looking and feeling better. If health is, you know, your goal for yourself. Envision it, believe in it, feel it, close your eyes and imagine it. Your body can feel it. The mind is so, so powerful. And so I just think this is it was just mind-blowing for me. And so I'm gonna finish out with this because all of this is gonna wrap up into what I started with, and I told you I was gonna start something new. Or I was gonna have an announcement for y'all. So, after the Everfit webinar that I have done, so many people have asked me to mentor them, to coach them, to help them with their business. And I have done this in the past. I have helped people, I don't talk about it. Um, it wasn't something I ever wanted to do uh other than purely because I wanted to help people. Like, and these individuals I helped were, you know, close friends of mine, um, and they have successful businesses now. And so at that time when I was doing it, I was like, man, maybe I do want to do this. And I even created a whole curriculum, a whole course, and did nothing with it. It's still, it's still kind of in the draft files right now, as we speak. And after the webinar, after so many people reached out to me, I made the decision that I'm going to open up a mentorship program with myself. And for coaches that want to grow a business, a sustainable business, I want to keep the reality of the lifestyle that you want. I think chasing an income and chasing a number can very be very disheartening. Um, we all want to make money 100%, but you can make a lot of money. But if you keep upgrading your life, you'll always live paycheck to paycheck. So I think explaining that to them early on, because I I hit that wall myself. And I've seen a lot of my mentors that are doing multiple millions of dollars do it to themselves as well. And, you know, some of us catch it early and some of us catch this later. But at the end of the day, you cannot just be chasing money, although we need it to live. So without going into detail, like that whole con that's a whole nother conversation. I've decided to um start up a mentorship with my with myself and helping me uh helping people develop a system and a legitimate business that they can run and make a amazing living off of. So this will probably be softly announced in the next like two weeks as we're finishing up uh uh you know, building out the back end curriculum. There's gonna be videos, coaching calls with myself, group chats with other coaches, and um, and we're also working alongside of Everfit with this. So this will be a cool little collab deal uh alongside of them. So more webinars, probably start putting stuff on YouTube. And uh yeah, I'm I'm really, really pumped about this. I've been wanting to do this for almost two years, and I think uh timing is everything, and sometimes it's not my timing, it's God's timing, and I feel like He's you know putting this in front of me right now and says, hey, if if you want this opportunity, uh, it's here for you now. Uh and so I wanna I wanna take my shot and and do my thing. And uh I I already feel in my heart that this is this is gonna be great. I'm super pumped for this. So again, wanted to share the news for those that are listening, and I encourage you guys to, you know, believe in yourself. And this is something back two years ago I couldn't envision myself doing. It's something I wanted to do. I just I don't know, I just couldn't physically see it uh or feel it. And um, and now I I definitely see it. I have a lot more experience. I've been through the ups and the downs, and I know that I can I can help a lot of coaches out there. So that's it. That's what we got. That's uh I hope this episode inspired you a little bit in your journeys, whatever your goal is. And remember, you know, motivation is a great word, it's tossed around a lot, and you we're very motivated when things go the way that we want it to. Uh, we're very motivated when things are in front of us and we can see it, but we gotta believe it's there first. We gotta believe it is there first. So love you guys. Hope you're having a great start of the week. And uh let's stay motivated and stay in your beliefs. Peace.