COACH'D
Join us on COACH’D, a podcast where the some of the world's top athletes, coaches, and performance experts come together to share their stories, insights and secrets to what has made them successful in their own right.
Think of it as a "locker room" chat — unfiltered, raw, and real. We dive deep into all things athletic performance, wellness, science and culture.
COACH'D
BRAIN DUMP: QnA #1 - Biggest Business Lessons (So Far), Tips For Going Out On Your Own & Pros/ Cons Of Working For A Facility vs Solo
Each week I'll share some of my thoughts in a mini episode called "Brain Dump" with some of the things that's on my mind.
These are designed to be short, sharp and straight to the point (maybe with some ramblings).
Let me know what you think!
Here's the link to check out the mentorship: https://www.jorditaylor.com/princples-of-a-private-coach
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https://open.spotify.com/show/1YJMztpYSgnPusEXB3fWcc?si=FJsWITv7QdSCSgCt3lkElw
Join us on Coached, a podcast where some of the world's top athletes, coaches and performance experts come together to share their stories, insights and secrets to what has made them successful in their own right. Think of this as a locker room chat unfiltered, raw and real. We dive deep into all things athletic performance, wellness, science and sporting culture and sporting culture. Hear from those who have played, coached and built their way to the top with athletes from the field, coaches and medical in the performance setting, or owners, managers and brands in the front office, while also getting an insider's view on my own personal experiences in this high-performance world. If you're passionate about sports, curious about the minds of champion athletes or looking for information and inspiration on your own journey, coach is the place for you. Welcome back to another episode of Brain Dump. This is going to be the first Q&A edition, so thank you very much to everybody who sent through questions on Instagram story. Honestly, I am recording this around early afternoon and I put the story up mid-morning and I got a heap of questions come through, so thank you very much for providing those, which hopefully I can give some insights into some of those and then next time, when I do do a Q&A episode. Please feel free to throw those questions in when I throw them up and hopefully I can give you some semi-decent answers and you can take something away from it. Cool, now, before we get into the actual questions, I recorded my usual brain dump episode on Thursday, so yesterday, and I normally don't go back and listen to it. But I felt like this one didn't really hit home as much as I wanted it to, so I decided to not home as much as I wanted it to, so I decided to not do it myself and do what I do when I necessarily don't have something to say or feel like I have something to say, when maybe the creative juices aren't flowing as much, and just throw it out to someone else or look around and ask someone some questions and then hopefully get some good answers. So a nice little tip for those of us us, because I'm certainly in this boat, especially right now when sometimes the creative juices aren't flowing as much ask other people. They can do the hard yards for you sometimes, so always ways to work around things. That's just a nice little tip and a nice little way that I find to navigate that sometimes, when things aren't flowing as much, is just ask other people and then hopefully use those as your content.
Jordi Taylor:All right, so I'm going to answer three to four questions, depending on how I go time-wise. The first one here is the biggest business lessons that I've learned so far. Now, I think that's a fantastic question, so thank you to the very intelligent coach who asked that question. Okay, so the first things here for me is I might just go through a little bit of a checklist approach and then a bit of a round out of how that applies to some of the things that I've done and what I hope to do in the near future. So the first thing is you really have to nail what services you are going to offer. Now that could be a list of several, or it could be simply one or two of several, or it could be simply one or two. I would say, if this is the first time you're setting this up or you're more so new to the business space or setting your own things up, I would certainly go with less is more versus more is more, because more just essentially makes you be in multiple places at multiple times.
Jordi Taylor:Sometimes, when you've just got one or two key focuses, it is not sometimes. It is always far easier to hone your attention into one to two service offerings versus having all these different arms to your business. There's that classic the shiny object syndrome. We always want to think that sometimes the new thing or something new is actually what we should be doing, when really we should just focus on three key things. One can we do more of what we're doing? Sorry, I take that back. One can we do better of what we're doing? Two can we do more of the same thing? Three before we do new, so better, more and new. That should be the approach that we have when we're looking at our services.
Jordi Taylor:So for me, when I first finished up, the couple of things that I sort of wanted to have to my business arm based on something that I'm going to speak about in a second being the constraints was speed training in person, online coaching for athletes and then some small amounts of consulting. They were essentially the three arms that I wanted to start off with. Now I will get to where that currently sits actually a little bit further down the line, but they were the three things that I kind of wanted to establish early on, and the reason to that is probably my second point and the most important point is they were the constraints or the options that I had based on the opportunities available to me at that particular time. Now, what are constraints? Constraints are, just like in our coaching, things that we have or things that we put in place to be able to, or are limiting us to perform something. So, for example, for me, right now, I'm very lucky to be using Virtus in Bondi, which is a fantastic facility, decked out top to bottom by Iron Edge as well, which is just a fantastic bonus.
Jordi Taylor:There's some constraints, however, though, for me for utilizing that space and, without going into too much detail, the constraints are based around timeframes. The constraints are based around timeframes, so there's certain times of the day that I can and can't use a facility, based on the needs of the members and the other coaches and the owners and things like that. So that's a constraint. Therefore, I can only offer in-person strength and conditioning, coaching, performance testing, whatever. I end up utilizing that space for majority at certain times. Therefore, that's going to limit what I can offer, how much I can earn potentially from that, because of the constraints of the time being a time constraint.
Jordi Taylor:So those are probably the key things to start off with is what are the services I want to offer? And then, what are the constraints of my business? Because people love to say, oh, just scale, scale, scale and grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. That's awesome, but there's only a certain amount of hours in a day. There's only a certain amount of ways that you can service your clients, athletes, whatever if you're in the performance space, in the facility, in the environment that you're at. So, for example, a coach may only be able to do one-on-one training. That's a constraint of their business. Another coach may be able to do small group training up to groups of four. That's a constraint of their business. A facility that has unlimited usage can have up to 20 people in a session, for example. That's another constraint. So we can't paint everyone with the same brush in these blanket sort of statements. We have to understand probably those two things service constraints.
Jordi Taylor:And then, probably the third biggest one for me and it's always been probably one of my key values is relationships. Relationships are absolutely everything. I have been very fortunate to have some really good people that have been in my corner for a very long period of time and I'm very grateful for that. But those relationships are essentially what will not only keep your business flowing but keep positive word of mouth, keep athlete retention, keep client retention, all those sorts of things. So I sort of split my relationships up into probably two to three categories, the first one being is my personal relationships with my very close friends who I would consider very good friends. That's my personal relationships. That's always going to be number one. Number two is I have my professional relationships Now, sometimes close friends and professional crossover. That can sometimes get a little bit tricky, but you've got your professional relationships. So that for me is play managers, other coaches that refer athletes to me, other facilities. That's my professional network there. And then the third one for me in relationships is probably my one that I'm really enjoying diving into a little bit, and that's brand relationships or partnership relationships. So I'm very, very fortunate and very lucky to have some really solid partnerships in place with very well-known companies like Volt, performance, iron Edge, lumen, and very excited to announce Breakaway as well. I'm good at some pretty exciting things up my sleeve with Breakaway and also a couple of other brand deals in the works. So those relationships form part of your brand identity and part of who you are and the services that you offer.
Jordi Taylor:And again now, probably looking at that umbrella around the things that I offer and the things that I've learned around the business side of things is I don't really enjoy the online coaching side of things a whole lot. It's a fantastic way to earn money where you don't have to be there at a certain time. I just don't really find the enjoyment out of it. So what I've done is I've capped myself at a certain amount of online positions. Once I lose someone or fire someone I've been firing people more than losing people I will then advertise and open up spots, but once those spots are full, based on the amount of effort, time and, I believe, what I can offer those athletes that I have, that's my limit for my online coaching. So that's my personal experience.
Jordi Taylor:Online coaching. I'm not a huge fan, because I really value and pride myself on my relationship and connection with my athletes and it's really hard to do that online. I have tried to find ways to open those lines of communication up in different ways and I think I've done a pretty good job, but it's still for me isn't that gold standard? But it's still for me isn't that gold standard? But it's the next best thing. So that's something I'm proud of, but also I'm also proud that that's not what I want to put all my attention and eggs in that basket. So for me that's been a little bit of a thing. The brand partnerships has probably taken up a lot of that extra time now. So doing content for brands, whether that be written, whether it be blogs, long form content, short form content, all those sorts of things the speed training in person has been a big part of what I do. Same thing again, though I've decided that there's only a certain amount of good hours in the day, based on field availability, another constraint weather, all those sorts of things that I can get sessions in. So I've got an X amount of cap on sessions for that. Now, thank God, thank you for Virtus I am also doing the in-person training again at Virtus.
Jordi Taylor:And then the final bucket which is probably the one I didn't think would take off as much as it had, but I really, really enjoy it is the consulting side of things. So the consulting for me has actually been all over the place, whether it be purely performance-based working with some fantastic physios in professional clubs, coaches in professional clubs and semi-professional clubs, facility owners, private coaches, schools Look, there's a lot of stuff that goes into that and it's quite broad, and I've been really really enjoying the consulting side of things. The beautiful part about consulting as well is it fits in that middle part of the day where typically, outside of your professional athletes or university students you don't necessarily have a busy period, so it's been really good to fill up those middle parts of the day there. So for me I know that's a bit of a rant and railing, but that's kind of where I look at from some of the key things so far, from the business learnings. The other thing that I've really doubled down on is the things that I really enjoy, and quite often these are things that are unscalable.
Jordi Taylor:So everyone, as I mentioned before, loves to talk about scale and automating things and doing this and doing that. It's a load of fucking shit. The things that make you unique and make you different from everyone else is you do the things that other people aren't going to do, so you don't just have an automated email response. You take the time to reply to someone transitioning with AI and technology, the more personable you can be, the more it becomes about you, the person, and you what you give to your athletes, the feeling that you give them when you reach out to them, the feeling that you give them when you talk to them, the feeling that you get during the sessions. That's what's going to make you unique but also going to be the thing that's going to keep people around. So those sorts of things around. The unscalable to me is following up with messages personally, being really active on socials, replying to people, which I have done in the past, but I'm way, way, way better. Being super active in those areas. For me isn't necessarily scalable, but to me it's something that is going to continue to grow my business, my brand as well.
Jordi Taylor:And then I really enjoy the event side of things and connecting with people. So I finished up at the previous facility now almost four and a half, five months ago, and in that time I've done we've done some pretty cool things, like I did an event with Brendan Hoyer before we ducked off or before he ducked off to Wolverhampton, I should say so we ran a simplifying speed workshop, which was amazing. We sold that out. I went and done consulting on the Sunshine Coast and that was with athletes, coaches, and also worked with a skills academy there. I've done consulting now in adelaide uh, we did a trip to the uk for professional development. I've launched a mentorship, which is really exciting, and then also next week I'm going to melbourne, uh, to do a couple of days of consulting and also a presentation. So it's kind of like.
Jordi Taylor:These are the things that you wouldn't normally do if you had a nine to five which I'll get to in a minute is one of the questions that I got. So it's doing things that you really enjoy and I find that for me, routine is really, really important, to be able to maintain some sort of routine. However, on the flip side of that, after about three, four, five weeks I get a little bit bored and it becomes a little bit monotonous. So going away for a week to do some consulting for me really fills my cup up, but it also has a small break from the day-to-day norm. So when I come back I feel more refreshed and ready to go for another four to five weeks. Now I'm super aware that not everybody can do that, and that is I'm very much aware of that. So just trying to find ways. Maybe you could get away for a weekend or whatever it may look like, but for me that's been something I've been really, really, really enjoyed.
Jordi Taylor:And then probably the final thing, just on the business side, is when I talk about routine and structuring my day is I really try to at least leave one day a week for a creator day or a maker day. Now, this concept was taken from Alex Hormozy. If you haven't heard of him, get onto him, he is a genius. Besides the point, he had a really good podcast one day, um, talking around how we have maker or creator days and I may get the terminology wrong, but essentially days that we are doing big project things. You know, for example, that might be you're building out a course, um, you know, editing your website, doing some long-form content, things that require a long, uh long duration of non-interruption. If you were to throw a meeting in there in the middle of that, that ruins the flow and it really disrupts your maker time.
Jordi Taylor:And sometimes, when you're a maker and some people sort of ebb and flow between being more of a maker and maybe more of an operator, that can really destroy a maker's day and they become really unproductive. And that's those weeks where you look back, or those months where you look back and you feel like you haven't done anything. So I try to have days in the week that are dedicated to either operationals being meetings, consulting, all that sort of stuff, and then days that are relatively empty, that are more dedicated to doing those bigger projects. The only kicker to that is when you don't have ultra flexibility, but some flexibility is. Like I mentioned at the start of this podcast, there's days you don't feel creative. So what I've found is you can become really unproductive in those days, even though you have the best intentions. So having a backup plan is really important on those days as well. So something else to work on that if your big picture stuff just isn't flowing, you can at least fall back into some operational side of things. It's been a really good way of thinking about it and I think when in the podcast Alex was referring to, there is people that prefer to have blank calendars and people that prefer to have packed calendars, and I'm kind of in the middle. I like to have certain things because I feel like when I'm having meetings and stuff I'm very productive.
Jordi Taylor:But again, as I mentioned, when you look back at the end of the day, end of the week, end of the month, you haven't fucking done anything. You've done a lot of meetings, you've done a lot of talking but you haven't done a lot of action, and especially when you are running your own business is probably number one, most important, okay. So thank you again for the very great man that asked that question. Okay, this has gone a little bit longer than I thought, so I'm going to try to speed these ones up a little bit and apologies if I am ranting and thank you if you are still listening.
Jordi Taylor:The second question was what have been some of the big tips for going out on your own Really good question, and I would not be able to give a blanket answer, so I'm purely going to give my own advice from my vantage point, my own point of view. So for me, I had actually, prior to moving to Sydney, I had my own business, so I was lucky enough that I had done it before. So that really really helped because I had a lot of lessons that I learned along the way there and it basically was a bit of a switch to that sort of mentality again moving forward. So if you've done it before, that really helps. If you haven't done it before, one of the best things you can do is reach out to people that have done it, ask them questions specific to you, because, again, you either ask them specific to you or what they have done. That way, there's no hyperboles, it's not made up, it's exactly what you believe that would be really good for you or what they've done for them. That's my first piece of advice.
Jordi Taylor:Number two would be to have a bit of a plan Now. For myself, I did not have a plan. The whole finishing up was quite sudden and quite quick. So if you are thinking about it and you've got the luxury date, no matter what, you submit something. If you don't have a due date, um well, this is definitely me. Anyway, I probably would never submit it. So you've got to give yourself a due date, a hard due date, a hard date. Okay, by this point in time, I've got as much of my ducks, uh, lined up in a row, I'm pulling the trigger and I'm going for it. That would be, uh. The second thing.
Jordi Taylor:The third thing, and I alluded to it in the start, is having really strong networks and relationships, and I don't really need to go back through that again. But for me, there was a couple of people in the early phases in particular, so Luke Gordon at Metastrength, being able to go out and do a couple of days a week consulting there, helping run that business. That helped initially a lot, with some consistency and also some financial return. Second to that, obviously I have a very supporting partner. Having someone like that in your corner that says you know, go for it, do it really really really helps both emotionally for support, but also at times when you need that financial support potentially also really really helps as well. So those people that are in those three networks I mentioned there before your personal, professional and if you're in that partnership space as well, the three Ps of relationships if you can lean on those people at certain times is really good. Again, provided you're always a good person.
Jordi Taylor:Number one don't be afraid to ask people for a little bit of help as well. That was something I certainly wasn't afraid to do and I was very fortunate when I did finish up the amount of people that reached out asking could they do anything to help, was there anything that they could do? Reach out to people? The amount of job offers I got was phenomenal, but for me personally that wasn't the route that I wanted to go down in another job. I really did want to explore going back out and working for myself and having a crack from that standpoint. So for everyone that did help, I thank you very greatly for that, because it does make a huge difference in those early days as well.
Jordi Taylor:And then probably the other key one here and I've got a few written down but I would find, once you pull the trigger, you've got your plan A, don't be afraid and probably do have a plan B and then have a plan C lined up as well, things hopefully go the right way, but sometimes we know things don't. So as long as we've got a plan B, we've got something to fall back on. As to the plan C, obviously we want it to be as close to plan A as possible, but that would be something that I would really really really recommend is having an A, b and C backup plan as well, a couple of quick, simple ones that are just common sense but often common sense doesn't mean it's common knowledge is make sure you've got somewhere or an idea of somewhere that you want to operate out of Now. Again, for me I kind of fluked it a little bit along the way this podcast that I'm recording right now is in my, or our, I should say office sunroom conditioning room. We've got a bike in here now. We've got everything in this sunroom office space, so I'm very lucky to have this at home. Also, there's a field just around the corner that I utilize and now, obviously, some multiple spaces as well.
Jordi Taylor:That took a little bit of time to come about. Good things take time, but if you can have that stuff already pre-planned, you know, with a due date, like I mentioned there before, with a bit of foresight, that'll be really helpful, knowing that, okay, come Monday I have a place to operate out of or have a place to go to work at, and then, off the back of that, just making sure you tick all your boxes operational wise. So making sure you've got updated insurances first, aid, cpr all that side of stuff is really, really important and then, once you've got all your actual operation stuff, you can then start to potentially look at your branding side of things. What do you need to do? Do you need to have a business name? Do you need to register the name? Do you need to have a website, professional email, all that sort of stuff? To be honest, that could probably be a podcast in itself, which I would be more than happy to do.
Jordi Taylor:The final thing on the tips for going out on your own would be the beautiful thing about when you do go out on your own if that's something you're thinking about, or even if when you move on from job to job is that the skillset that you build goes with you. So you yourself are like an investment fund. All the skills, all the upskill you do, all the education that you undertake, all the PD that you do, that's a skill set that goes into you. You're the investment fund that just gets greater and greater and greater returns. So that skill set that you develop whilst you're in a whether you want to call it a safer job or a nine to five job or whatever you want to call that that's something that gets to go with you. So when you are in that position, make sure you take the time to develop yourself, continue to upskill, continue to build relationships, because ultimately they will come with you. They don't stay where you're at and that's something that probably not intentionally, I don't think, but that is just something that has really happened for me and it's something that I'm very grateful for is that skillset being able to go out and do these things on my own has been relatively easy, in some regard relatively hard in other areas that I wasn't exposed to, but still nonetheless, that skill set is something that comes along with you. So don't be afraid to double down and really build that skill set up skill up whilst you're in your current role and then transfer that across.
Jordi Taylor:Now I am already at 20 or so minutes and I've got a couple more questions here, so I will probably skip through some of them here and just answer maybe a couple of key points here. So another really good question that was sent through was like what's the difference between, or what's the pros and cons of working in a private facility or commercial facility as a part of a team versus working for yourself? And I really think it is either, or the grass isn't greener on the other side per se. I think both have some really strong advantages and both have some disadvantages. Strong advantages and both have some disadvantages. It really just depends on where you're at in your career and what you want to focus on and like.
Jordi Taylor:For me, probably just some of the big positives on working in a team environment for me was I really enjoyed having colleagues and not just colleagues some really good friends, people that I like to call close friends you get to work with and see every day, so a lot of the time it actually doesn't feel like work. You're going in and seeing your mates and you're doing something that you love, so it's a win-win. The other thing that I really like about being in that group setting and sometimes it's easy to do when you're on your own is not having that accountability to yourself. But in a group setting you have that team accountability, you know. So, whether that be deadlines for projects, um, standards that you uphold, all that sort of stuff, there's team accountability and that then probably falls back on you as an individual. When you're doing it on your own as a private coach, you have to really display a lot of discipline and self-discipline, and that can sometimes be a little bit overwhelming, but at the end of the day, that's the path that you choose.
Jordi Taylor:I think the other thing is, when you're tying yourself to a really good brand or a good facility, it's the opportunities that come with that. So the exposures, the opportunities of meeting people, meeting other facilities, meeting other whatever it may be that you wouldn't get out on your own and that's something that I would be very proud of is some of the opportunities that I was lucky enough to be handed or worked for I shouldn't say Sometimes handed, sometimes worked for Maybe a combination of the two. They are things that you don't often get out on your own unless you've already built up a reputation and aim for yourself. So it can be a great way to build your own reputation simultaneously while building the company's reputation up. Build your own reputation simultaneously while building the company's reputation up. And I have nothing but thanks for Lockie for helping me out with a lot of those relationships, both personally and professionally, that he helped me with along the way, which is something that I obviously now can use to my advantage.
Jordi Taylor:As such, being out of my own, probably the one thing that I really enjoy about the working on your own is you create your own vision, you create your own strategy and you create everything that you want to do In a team setting or in a private facility. Sometimes you play a small role in that, sometimes you play a larger on that, depending on, I guess, the department that you fall under, but for me, I really like having that control to be able to push in the direction that I believe is right, and that's something that I'm really looking forward to with some of the things that I'm doing. The other thing as well is I really enjoy the ultimate flexibility that comes to working with yourself. Like I mentioned before, the things around a couple of weeks on to one week off, and when I say off, traveling to do consulting work or whatever that may look like, that you can't do, or be very hard to do, I should say, in a private facility. So that's something that I personally really, really enjoy and that then has allowed me to open up to different opportunities, just through thinking a little bit differently, and that's something that I referred back to in one of the very early podcasts as well, Probably. The other one is when I mentioned at the very start around what are the services that you want to offer when you work for yourself. There is no restrictions on what you can do, so you know you could do online coaching, you could do in-person coaching, you could do whatever. It is based on the constraints, so there's a whole lot of stuff you can do. It's almost, though. What are the key things that you should be doing, what are the things that you're good at and what are the things that you enjoy.
Jordi Taylor:Now, again, I've ranted and raved a lot, so thank you very much for listening. There is a couple more questions I didn't get to, so I may do a part two to this or I may just do one of these once a month. I honestly don't know. I don't know what I will do here, but let me know if you enjoyed it. I appreciate everybody that's listening. Thank you so much.
Jordi Taylor:We're starting to see a really big increase in not only subscribers but the likes, reviews and ratings. So if you haven't had a chance yet or you haven't even been thought to do it, if you could jump on and give me five stars ideally If you're not going to give me five stars, then don't bother, just joking. Give whatever you actually want, I don't really mind. All feedback is good. Feedback On Spotify or Apple.
Jordi Taylor:I really really appreciate it If there is anything in here that really resonates with you. Like I said, one thing I'm really proud of at the moment is how responsive and active I have been consistently on social media. So if there's something that sparked an interest, sparked a thought or an idea and you got a question off the back of it, just flick me through a question and I'm happy to answer that. Apart from that. Enjoy the weekend, enjoy the next week. I have got Mike Tyson beating Jake Paul in round four. I don't know how true that's going to be, but that's what my gut tells me. If you're enjoying the fight, see how we go. Apart from that, I'll talk to you soon.
