Latest / Man In Your Corner with Shaun Tucker / Ep. 60 | Overcoming Toxic Mentorship: A Founder Dad’s Journey to Mental Fitness and Presence
Transcript
- Shaun: Hello and welcome back to the Reset episode 60 with me Sean Tucker. Today may be one of the most vulnerable episodes I share. Because if I'm being fully, truthfully honest with you, something that may surprise you about me is I struggle so much when it comes to self-doubt. The greatest asset I have is leaning in and trusting myself in the process that I have. and at the same time. I have so much doubt, not in my capabilities, but in whether things will work out the way that I intend them to. whether I am good enough to achieve what it is that I really want. And I remember a time, this was when I was starting my personal training business in a commercial gym at Good Life here in Southeast Melbourne. I started out and I got my first client. that was amazing. Because if you're familiar with the way that personal training businesses work inside commercial gyms, usually they follow a rent-based model. Meaning, after 12 weeks of a build-up phase, you'll be paying anywhere between $200 and $320 a week just to be able to train your clients out of the gym. What they don't teach you in these commercial gyms is how to sell properly, is how to run let's say free sessions for your clients so that they can see the offer and you can exchange and articulate your offer and have them feel the value that you're giving them so that it makes it a no brainer that they'll continue to work with you. And if I remember back to those, that first few months of training, one of the biggest things I felt was anxiety when sitting down with my very first consultation. They had purchased a kickstart or three personal training sessions. I think it was for 50 bucks, which is an absolute steal. It's what the gym sells. The trainer doesn't make any money from that. And it's now on the trainer to give a call to that gym member and say, Hey, you're actually, ⁓ you're to have those three training sessions with me. And so These commercial gyms, what they do is they instruct you to kind of walk the client through, first of all, an initial goal setting session. So you sit down with them, understand what they want, and then you get them in to actually start experiencing the training. So you take them for probably a 20 to 25 minute session after you've sat down with them to get an understanding of their goals. Then you take them through that session. Then you book them in for the second session and given that you've done your job properly, they will show up to the second session and in that second session you treat it as a normal training session. So it's basically you're trying to wow them, you're trying to give them that X Factor, that experience of working with you without them having paid you, they've paid the gym. So you get to the end of that session, give them a really great session and then comes the third session. So you book them in for the third session and you want to save probably 30 minutes if not more of this session for the sales consult at the end. And I remember getting 15 minutes into the training session and walking this consult, this gym member up towards the chairs where they initially bought their gym membership with the sales consultant and going up and sitting down with them and I just remember feeling so on edge, so scared and so incredibly anxious because this moment was the moment that I had been working towards. It was the moment that would really say yes, this career is for me or no, or perhaps, look, this thing is part of this career. If you can't do it, then don't bother. And I just remember feeling so on edge. My whole body was trembling. And I looked at my prospect, the gym member in the eyes, and I said, can you see how it would be valuable to work with me ongoing? And he was an incredibly anxious person too. So it was an interesting mirror. And so this client, his name was Matt, said, yeah, I can see that. And came down. to giving the price and... Eventually he said, yeah, it's a little bit much, but I think what we can do is train once a fortnight, even though wasn't what I offered. And I said, yeah, all right, let's start there. And that was my very first client. It was my very first lead who became a client. And I'm so damn grateful that it was because If I'm being truthfully honest right now, I absolutely hate how sales make me so uncomfortable and sales consults and sales calls make me so uncomfortable because I know I'm bloody good at what I do. I know that I have skill sets and capabilities that most people don't. I know that I can help transform someone's life. and really when it comes down to it. I would actually give away everything that I have to that person who is really committed to changing their life. and if they said no, it's too expensive or I can't afford that or I need to talk to my partner because it's way outside of what I thought it was going to be. It really upsets me. It upsets me so much because I had someone in my life. Who took me in, in my most desperate moment. in the moment where... I thought I had to prove myself to earn the life that I have. to prove that. I felt like I wasn't enough and so I signed up to a mentor, a personal training mentor who actually completely me apart in the most. way. first, you know, I thought I needed this person in my life. I was working hard to prove myself. I changed my structure. I changed how I was operating. And what was really interesting is no matter what I changed, no matter what I did, the financial incomings were still the same. The only difference was I was taking people's money upfront as opposed to having them pay me weekly. They were buying packages from me instead of paying weekly for what they were working with me on. and I remember this one incident. where this mentor. He led a group of other personal trainers who were learning from him as well. And... All he did was shame me. All he did was say, hey buddy, I'm not your dad. Is your dad dead? And this guy made me. This guy actually disrespected my wife. The man I hired to help me so that I can really face up in my life, in my marriage, in my life so that I feel like I am worthy of the life and the wife that I have, I hired him for that. and he goes ahead and disrespects my wife. remember asking him, can I invite my wife to this dinner? We were going to dinner. Anyways, we go to dinner. It was literally at Grilled Burgers here in Melbourne and My wife comes along and says, hey, so you're the infamous this person. He goes, yeah, I am. That was it. Cold hearted, narcissistic, and did not care. did not care even just a little bit. And what I hate about this relationship that I had with this mentor is that I still so deeply yearn for his respect and for his. validation. I wanted it so badly that I kept on paying to be part of this program. This program wasn't cheap. This program was literally putting pain. in my marriage and it was making me work literally like a dog. I was starting at 5.30 in the morning with clients and I was coming home at 8.30, nine o'clock most days. was working on Saturday mornings and I was still earning the same amount of money I was before I hired this doofus. And my hope in this podcast is that you're not hearing someone crying for help, you're actually seeing yourself through my story. Maybe not a time that you've had a really shitty boss or a shitty mentor in your life, but maybe right now you have this person in your life. And I'm asking you... How do they make you feel really? how you making them feel so that you can make yourself feel better. How are they making you feel? And if they make you feel like a piece of shit, they make you feel like crap. Delete them, block them, get rid of them. because that energy is very consuming. And I promise once you let that go, you'll feel so much better for it. Not only that, you can probably start to actually receive what it is you want. So if you have found value in this podcast episode, just share it with one person. Thanks for tuning in and I look forward to seeing you in tomorrow's episode.