Latest / Built by Margin with Laurie Chen / Unlock High-Performance in Business and Life with Fraser Bayley

Transcript

Unlock High-Performance in Business and Life with Fraser Bayley · Built by Margin with Laurie Chen

0:04
Welcome to Built by Margin, the podcast where strategy meets the spreadsheet. I'm your host, Laurie Chen, fractional CFO and tax strategist, here to help you make smarter financial decisions, build a profitable business, and keep more of what you earn. Let's dive into the numbers that actually move the needle. So welcome to Built by Margin. Today we have Fraser Bayley joining us. Fraser is a husband, father of two, and a performance strategist who works with high-achieving entrepreneurs, executives, musicians, and operators to transform their energy, physique, and longevity. Originally from New Zealand and now a U.S. citizen living in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, Frasier brings both global perspective and deep personal experience to his work. His mission is simple but profound. Show the world's top performers how to build bodies and brains that keep pace with their ambitions. Frasier, welcome to All right. It's an absolute pleasure, and I'm excited to just have a good conversation and bring some value to Absolutely. Tell us a little bit more about what you do and what inspired you to become an executive performance coach, nutritionist, and Yeah, so it's interesting, because I've got a very strange backstory. I'll try and sort of compress it down. I'm from New Zealand originally, and I've been living in the US for 13 years.
1:29
And I left school young. I had a lot of mental health issues, diagnosis with bipolar depression, severe social anxiety, ADHD, I mean, a whole range of stuff. And so I was heavily medicated for a long time and I didn't do well in school because of it. I just thought I was stupid and that, hey, why not go out and get a blue collar job and just start making some money? And so I was like the path of least resistance. Cause I was working as a part-time after school as a student in a butchery at a supermarket. So one of the big supermarket chains, one of the biggest butcheries in New Zealand. And I was like, you know what? I'll just see if they need an apprentice. And it was never a dream of mine. It was never an aspiration. I just thought to myself, what's going to be the easiest thing to do? And so I started that. And I did that for a number of years. And long story short, I got to a point where I just had that realization that this was miserable. This was awful. I needed to change something, or I would probably just take my own life. It was that bad. And so I ended up walking away, walking away from my whole life. I had drug issues, alcohol issues. A lot of the people that I was friends with when I was in my teens are either now in prison or dead. It's just one of those things where I was fortunate enough to just have a message from God in the universe to just say, you need to go down a different path. And so I went back to college to study nutrition and human structure and function. It's kind of like physiology. Because at the time, my psychotherapist that I was seeing, he just said, look, why don't you go try and work out? Because you've got all this anxiety, you've got all this pent up energy, and maybe working out will help you. And it's funny, because now we kind of understand how much working out and looking after yourself can help with your mood. 20 years ago, YouTube was not a big thing. There was no podcast like this. We could not have, I could not go on and listen to Laurie's podcast and learn about this stuff. So unless you knew someone or you had a book, you didn't know a lot of these things.
3:39
And so I didn't know that a lot of the foods I was consuming were really bad for me in terms of my mental health. I didn't know that not training or not working out was having such a negative effect. So when I went there and I did this, it really, it grew into a passion because I was like, okay, this is the first thing in my life. I feel like I have some governance over. I feel like I have some degree of control over this outcome. And that's what kind of inspired me. Hey, why don't you go back and learn? some of this health stuff and see if you can do something with this, something that you enjoy. And so I went back and I studied that and to make a longer story short, I passed and I started doing a bit of nutritional programming and training and stuff back in New Zealand. And my wife is from the US and we were actually in a couple of Facebook mastermind groups together for fitness stuff. And I connected with her online and it was just one of those things where it was, it was genuinely innocent at first. It was just, I just wanted to get around people that were ambitious, that were hungry to learn and grow and to do well. And long story, you know, it's like we, we got to the point where I thought to myself, we built this beautiful connection. And I just thought to myself, if I don't at least get on the plane and come over here and just meet her, it's going to be one of those stories where you'll be in your rocking chair one day, 80 years old, and you'll always wonder, what if? Always wonder, what if? And so I thought to myself, even with my anxiety, even with the issues that I'd had, I'd been working through them to some degree. I got on the plane and I left. And I've been back to visit family, but other than that, I've moved here now. And we have two kids together, and we've been married for 13 years. So it's one of those cool stories. But all this to say, that led me down this path of human optimization, trying to understand What is it about human mind and physiology that can either create such a good environment for life or such a negative one? And a lot of what I do isn't just to get abs, isn't just to make someone look good, it's to have someone feel good. Because most people don't realize that you can get in good shape physically but still be pretty unhealthy.
6:03
I mean, case in point is a lot of bodybuilders. A lot of bodybuilders are like this. They're in good shape, but they're really unhealthy. And I would say a lot of people in general, they lose weight, but they do it in a way where they're really inflamed and they've got a ton of cravings and the energy is really poor. And it just makes life so difficult. And so my whole thing, is how can you take someone from the 1.0 version of themselves and look at their blood work and look at any other testing that we get done, like food sensitivity testing or hair mineral analysis, and then reverse engineer the foods and the meals and the supplements and the training that when put together, create this beautiful environment where their body just transforms really rapidly. And so, I've had the blessing now of working with a range of former special operators, SEALs, Army Rangers, Green Beret, guys that are almost like athletes. They're very disciplined and they are in many ways like athletes. That's why I talk about being business athletes so much, because there's an ethos that runs across those different genres. and done work with black belt Brazilian jujitsu teachers and all the way to different types of professionals and white collared people to blue collared entrepreneurs that are owners of eight and nine figure roofing companies. So it's a kind of walker, a diverse range of people, but they all have that aspiration of, I wanna look better and I want to feel much better and perform at the highest level. And can you show me how to do that? So yeah, it's kind of, it's been a really interesting journey. And a lot of what I do now is really geared around how do you help someone have a better brain, basically. And then the rest kind of falls into place when you start to optimize the internal health as That's great, thanks for sharing. I really especially liked what you said about the 80-year-old what if, because I actually just published a podcast episode about minimizing regret in the Riskworthy Framework, the book that I'm working on, Riskworthy. In there, I talk about minimizing regret and what would your 80-year-old self say? And how would that change your current risky move, right? So I love that you touched on that as part of your story. And yeah, so it's great. I'm glad you mentioned that. What is one belief or mindset about yourself that you had to change in order to become the coach that Yeah, I mean, I think One of the biggest things for myself and a lot of people in general is just the idea that you're even capable of change. A lot of people, when they get a mental health diagnosis, they just think that it's just genetic. It's just the way they are. If I got a formal diagnosis of bipolar depression, severe ADHD and anxiety. So a lot of people will now will kind of self-diagnose. They think they're ADHD, but in reality, most people aren't.
9:21
They have a lot of insulin resistance from their diet and their blood glucose is all over the place. So they get a lot of brain fog. and it makes them feel that way. I had formal diagnosis and it could have been really easy for me to say, you know, the psychiatrist is adamant that I'm just gonna be on these medications for the rest of my life and it's just something that I've got to manage. And I chose a different path and I've been off all those psych meds now for 12 years. And so I use that as an example to say that the biggest mindset shift I think for a lot of people is they have to recognize that A lot of the situations that they think are hardwired or genetic or something that they cannot change is just a lack of information. It's like a lack of knowledge. They don't know what they don't know. They don't even know often that there's certain foods or supplements they could be using that could help them with all this stuff. So very much a set of limiting beliefs where people have that fixed mindset around what's possible for them to change. I mean, the same thing is true for if someone has been overweight their whole life.
10:31
Very often they just think, my parents were like this, I've been raised like this, it's genetic, there's nothing I can do, it's just my personality. And as soon as you start saying things like that, it's just a self-fulfilling prophecy. I say to people, what you focus on expands. And so if you focus on all the reasons why you will be broke, why your business will suck, why your podcast won't get off the ground, why you'll never be able to lose the weight, that will be your story. That will actually happen because you just focused on that. And so I always think to myself, What is the reframe? Like when I'm facing this challenge, how can I change the way I'm seeing this to actually ask a better question to find a solution instead? And so I did that with all the different mental health issues that I had. So now a lot of people will come to me with different issues. I've had people come to me with cancer, with really bad autoimmune diseases, massive digestive issues like Crohn's disease, colitis. And we're very often told that there's nothing they can do. Most people would just say, oh, you're just going to go the conventional route. And because I've seen so many amazing transformations, including myself, I'm really of the belief that as long as you think about the solutions and you have that reframe, you can almost achieve anything. Now, obviously there's always constraints to stuff, but in general, that mindset, I feel like has really served me. And it's one of those things where, and you probably have to try to get around more people like that. You know, some people will say, well, how do I, if I'm not doing that, how do I start that? And very often it's who you're around. If you're in a group of people that are very sort of self-motivated, just like have a fixed mindset and they sort of see the negative in everything and are very pessimistic, you're going to be one of them too.
12:29
And so I found for me personally, what really kicked that off was I stopped going out at night. I stopped drinking and partying and all these goofy things.
12:37
And when I started going to the gym in the morning, That crowd in the morning was more conducive with guys that were probably 10 to 20 years older than me, business owners, they were already parents, they already had a family. So they kind of settled down and they were more mature. And so as a byproduct, it's almost like I metabolized a lot of their thought process And I didn't realize I was doing it at the time. But now I look back and I'm like, that was like, so crazy to think that happened. And I feel like that's a big part of why So you mentioned that you work with executives, a lot of business executives, what are a typical person that comes Yeah, I mean, I would say in general, there's a couple of different ones. So one is either if they're a professional or an executive and they are out of shape. So they're out of shape, they're 20 to 60 pounds overweight, they have issues, maybe they're on some medications, they've got the typical stuff, it might be like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, they're insulin resistant. If it's a female, maybe they're going through some really intense menopausal, stuff, and it's really affecting their sleep and their mood and just their vitality. So there's that type. But then on the other hand, there's more of the high-performing one that is already in some degree of shape, but they're not where they want to be. They're in better shape than most people But that type of person, they tend to be like overachievers. It's kind of how they got to that position in the first place. And so they might be in kind of shape, they might be kind of doing some things okay, but they recognize that I've got to get a better strategy if I want to get to another level and sustain it and be healthy. And so at that level, they'll kind of come to me and they may not have obvious health issues, but they might have a lot of areas where they're not maximizing the ROI of what they're doing. So they're doing a lot of work and they might be doing a lot of ab work and a lot of cardio, and there'll be a lot of typical dieting stuff. but they're not really crossing the T's and dotting their I's with their blood work and their mitochondrial health and all these other things that are like the foundation layer of someone who has good energy. Because if you can learn and master your energy, you can honestly achieve almost anything. Because then at that point, you move more, you lose more weight because you move more, because you're more energetic, you don't crave so much stuff because you don't feel all run down. And so people just get in really good shape as a byproduct of that. So I would say those are the two main ones. And then it's sometimes people that have been a professional in something at some point, like a lot of the guys that were former SEALs and Rangers, They might just be a business owner now, but they've been through a lot in their life. You know, they might have TBIs, like traumatic brain injuries, or like a lot of concussions from blasting doors open. And so they're just kind of beat up. They have injuries and they just feel like the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz. And a lot of the time they just want to feel like how they did when they first started everything.
15:52
They wanna feel young again, they wanna feel more energetic. And that's also possible. I mean, now with a lot of the supplementation and the peptides and things that's available, you can really help someone's brain heal and you can really help someone with injuries and stuff like that way more than you ever could maybe 10 or 20 years ago. So those would be like the main ones.
16:13
And I do have some women. I mean, I've actually got a number of female students They're very ambitious and they sort of range in their 40s to 50s. I've got students in their 70s.
16:24
So it's kind of weird. It's like, I feel like I'm very good at relating to people. In many ways, I'm an empath, but people probably wouldn't know it. So I'm good at connecting with people. And because of that, I find that I don't just have a bunch of tattooed guys like me in my tribe. I have a kind of a diverse bunch. But to be honest, I kind of like that. I like having a diversity. You learn things from all these different people and you get to see experiences and solve problems with them that you normally would never get Absolutely. Energy management is one of the most critical things as you age, right? Because you got to make sure you get enough sleep. You want to get at least seven to nine hours of sleep. You want to get too much. You don't want to get too little. That's going to impact your longevity. Energy itself, you have to make sure that you're maximizing your efficiency at certain points during the day so that you're productive when it comes to work and then also building your relationships, building your family and community. So being able to Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I really, I mean, it's, it's one of those things where, especially, you know, if you have a high pressure job or you're building a business, um, or a podcast and you have kids and you have a spouse, I mean, all of these things require some degree of energetic exchange and.
17:58
What I notice with a lot of people is they will really push hard with their business. They have really good intentions. They want to be successful. They want to help people. They want to set their family up with financial freedom, but they just completely destroy their health in the process. And there's two things with that that I tell people. I'm like, look, the first thing is you're then modeling and showing your kids like that habit, those habits. And so if you don't want them to sort of suffer through the same things you've suffered through, you've got to break the cycle. And then the other thing is I tell people, you don't wanna work and get to the end of the day and be so exhausted that you have nothing left in your tank to read your kids a book or something. So my whole thing is like, how can you do fitness not with just as a means to an end. A lot of fitness people, especially younger guys, their whole life is health and fitness. They spend hours in the gym, they'll train for hours, they're just pedantic.
19:02
And obviously, they're going through their own probably body dysmorphia challenges and they have their own issues. But a lot of people, they don't have a ton of time to do a ton of meal prep. They don't want to do a lot of stuff. I don't particularly enjoy working out that much. I tell people all the time, I don't really enjoy that much, but I've learned to find the value in it because of what it creates. And it's the same thing for a lot of these things. If you can find the value in it for what it creates, and you can draw that string line to that, often you're able to kind of get yourself going. And I absolutely think. especially coming into fall and winter when we're doing this conversation, people's energy drops off a cliff. And part of the reason is they don't get outside much. They spend more time inside and they get even less steps. So they go from maybe 10,000 steps a day to 5,000. And when you're at 5,000 steps a day and you're inside all day, you will feel terrible. Like your energy will be so low. And then typically what happens is people go for more caffeine or they'll go for more Ritalin or Adderall. And then what happens with that is that kind of creates a stress response that then triggers a craving. So then they'll start to snack more because they're just eating mindlessly. And when they do that, it just creates this vortex. And so I tell people, if you want to maximize your energy, Like you said, sleep, light exposure, even light exposure outside is a big one. Step count, and so what I do every day, unless it's pouring down with rain or the weather conditions are just really bad, I'll go out at least two times a day, if not more. In the morning and in the afternoon at some point, I call it priming the pump, where basically in between meetings or in between discussions, and if it's sunny and it's warmer, I'll take my shirt off. I'll walk around, I'll subdivide my shirt off, getting the sun, recharging the system, I'll do a bit of a power walk for three or five minutes, and then I'll come back in and I'll start my next workflow. And I find that that alone has been such a powerful tool for energy management, because then what happens is you feel positive. It's that feeling of when you are high energy and you just feel charged up. Everything's kind of happening for you and you're in a good state and you're bubbly and you're positive. People want to be around people like that.
21:26
And then you wonder why all these good things are happening. Well, they're happening because you are being the type of person that people want to be around. And so I just focus on that constantly.
21:37
And I tell you, Laurie, it's been like, and the cool thing is that when you focus on that, the byproduct is the body that you want. It's the weight loss that you want. It's a natural byproduct Yeah, I in the past, I'll say 15 months have focused a lot on my own, you know, weight loss, nutrition training. And, you know, I met my weight loss goals, I go to the gym every day, you know, I, I've hit my strength training goals, I'm actually maxing out my weights right now, I'm actually going up to 20 to 25 pound dumbbells now. And I started from eight pound dumbbells about a year and a half ago, less than a year and a half ago. So it's been quite a transformation, but it requires a lot of commitment. It's easier said than done. But I've made a commitment to do that for my own health, my own longevity. and that has made all the difference in terms of energy, giving myself my energy back, and also making me feel more confident about who I am and what my body image is, right? One of my favorite books is the 80-20 principle, and I believe it applies to all areas of life. So what are the three smallest daily behaviors that you believe give 80% of results for your Yeah, I mean, this is this is a good question. And the first thing I'll say is what we've just been talking about a lot is your your step count and movement. I mean, most people don't realize how much that low intensity, low stress step count play such a big role in multiple things.
23:26
I've seen people lose 20 pounds in a month or two, and all they did was get a standing desk and a walking pad. They didn't change anything else. I can maintain between 6% and 8% body fat without even counting calories at this point. just because of my step count. So I would say that one of the biggest levers to pull, and it's not just about fat loss. So the fat loss is the byproduct, but what it's more so about is optimizing your energy, and that in turn helps manage cravings. And when your cravings go down because of it, you don't get as many digestive issues. Like you'll find that your digestion also improves. A lot of people that struggle, they typically have pretty funny digestive systems. It's one of those topics where people don't really talk about it, but most people have digestive issues. A lot of people will get bloating, gas discomfort, and they'll just, you know, when you feel bloated, you just don't really want to do anything. You don't want to move. And it makes you kind of irritable. And so if we can move, Not only are we getting the fat loss, but we're addressing the digestion, we're reducing the cravings, and that's improving your energy. So that right away is a massive lever to pull. I would say if you're gonna turbocharge that, like I mentioned, aim to get outside in the light for five to 20 minutes in the morning and in the late afternoon every day. And even if you have to do a call while you're out there, if you get on a, listen to a podcast, go for the walk and listen to some of a podcast while you're out there in the light. So that's the first thing. I'd say the second one, as cliche as this one sounds, this is also another one that's really overlooked, is proper hydration. Now, I'm not just talking about just drinking tap water, I'm talking about, I would say, good quality spring water, or if you use a Berkey filtration system, or some type of filtration system, which is, I think it's either good to get spring water, use some type of filtration system.
25:20
And if you either one that you choose, add some extra minerals to your water. So some type of trace mineral. So I'll use things like concentrate minerals or element. So LMNT is another one. There's a few out there, but basically we don't just drink water from for the hydration purpose, that's obviously important. Like that helps with like flushing digestion, it's gonna help with skin quality, all kinds of stuff. But we drink the water to get the trace minerals, because that's often what drives a lot of nerve and cellular function. So if you are, for example, it's a common thing in powerlifting, that if someone's cutting their diet to make weight for a powerlifting competition, and they're cutting out all their sodium and a lot of their electrolytes, they can get really bad muscle cramping because they've cut so many electrolytes out of their diet to try and make weight. Now, what does that tell you? That tells you that minerals have a direct effect in like nerve function and like all kinds of stuff in your body that you probably don't even realize. And so people that get headaches and migraines, people that get a lot of cravings, even it affects your energy again.
26:36
I tell people, imagine if you had a brand new Rolls Royce, and you put all the high octane fuel in it, and you got it detailed, and it's got the nice wheels on it, but you don't have any water and oil in the engine. I mean, even if it's full of gas, it's not gonna get very far if there's no water in the engine, it's gonna overheat. And so in many ways, our brain, we are like that. If we don't have adequate hydration, we'll literally overheat, and that's when you get cravings, that's when you get migraines and headaches. So I tell people, aim for about half an ounce of spring water per pound of body weight, give or take. And even if you wanna get more detailed, when you're training, there's an equation called the Galpin equation. And that's like a, it's a formula that you plug and it gives you the amount of fluid intake that you should take based on your duration of your training with your intensity and your body weight. Now, I don't necessarily suggest people, the average person needs to do that. but definitely thinking about the half ounce per pound of body weight is a place to at least start. And I would say, do it all through the day. Don't just do a whole bunch at like the end of the day. You know, some people might go all day, they realize how dehydrated they are. They're like, I haven't hit my hydration target.
27:52
And then they just power chug a whole gallon. That's not, that's equally not very smart. So you wanna basically disperse it through the day between your meals. I try not to drink too much fluids while I'm eating, because if you drink a lot of fluids while you're eating, it can dilute down your stomach acid and have an effect on the way your body breaks down food. And so you might get a bit of bloating or issues, and it's not even that you're having a food sensitivity, it's that you're drinking too much fluids while you ate. So I typically tell people, drink between your meals. And also front load probably 75% of your hydration in the first part of the day up to say 2 p.m. And then after 2 p.m. kind of taper it down a little bit. And then that way you're not waking up all night to go to the bathroom. Because that's equally not ideal if you have to wake up a bunch to go to the bathroom. The last thing that I would say is optimizing sleep. Now, most people would probably think I was gonna talk about something diet related or like some type of supplement. I'm telling you now, if your sleep's terrible, everything is horrendous. And I know this firsthand because my daughter, Zia, she's seven now, and our son, Xander, he's like four months old. He's not too bad, but Zia, for the first two years, she would wake up, five to 15 times per night, some nights 15 times, like every day for years. So it was like, even just saying it, it sounds ridiculous. And I remember a lot of my optimization stuff came out of that period of my life. Because I was like, I have to figure this out. I'm slow. We're so chronically sleep deprived. I have to figure out how to function better even when I'm dealing with all this. And so just dialing in your sleep. And so part of it is like, The timing of your dinner meal, even the timing of your dinner meal has an effect. Alcohol has an effect. The types of foods you're consuming through the day, like if they're very inflammatory or they're kicking off like a food sensitivity, that has an effect. Turning the temperature down in your house at nighttime, you know, dropping the temperature down to like 65 to 66 degrees. Using a lot of, you know, like red light and Himalayan salt lamps and things like that at nighttime, rather than a lot of LEDs and blue light. So light exposure, again, is a big part of it. So we have lots of Himalayan salt lamps and candlelit diffusers and stuff like that in our house. So at nighttime, we just turn those on. And it kind of creates like a nice mood too. And so we'll turn that on, we turn off all the artificial light.
30:35
And then the other thing that we'll do is we will, I have a system and I'll quickly share, cause this is probably useful. Like I go through the different senses. So you have like your visual cortex, your auditory, all the different senses in your system.
30:50
And so your auditory or your visual cortex, that'll be light. So that's where you turn the lights down. You'd use dimmers, you use blue light blocking systems, stuff like that. Then with your auditory, we put on some like nice calming music on Spotify. or we'll put it on our YouTube TV, and I'll turn the brightness on the TV way down, and it's just like a relaxing 4K soundscape. And so we'll play these relaxing, calming musics in the background, because most people, they don't realize, if they're watching Netflix, and they're watching horror movies, and thrillers, and The Walking Dead, and all these things, it's so much stress on your nervous system, that's gonna affect your sleep a ton.
31:32
And look, I used to be the guy that loved watching stuff on Netflix until I really started to be like, okay, this...
31:40
And then when I would do it, I was like, wow, I did not sleep good.
31:44
And it happened enough where I was like, okay, I'm done. So I say this because If you can address all the different systems, so your sight, your hearing, your sense of touch, like the temperature on your skin, all of these things kind of help downregulate your nervous system. And I almost think of your nervous system like a transmission of a vehicle. So at the end of the day, you're in fifth gear, you're rolling, you're cranking. your goal is to downshift to fourth gear, to third gear, to all the way down to first gear and then park. Most people, they go from fifth gear into bed and then they lay there and they wonder why they're wired because they're still in fifth gear. And so you have to go like through a downshift process and equally in the morning, you go through an upshift process. And I'm telling you, when you get your sleep optimized and you hydrate properly and you move in the light, it will give you so much energy. You will feel like a different person. And then obviously the diet and stuff is important too. But I would say those are the biggest things. And it's funny because all of those things are basically free.
32:49
And it's the stuff that most of us don't do. I've gone through, I've tried so many supplements and I'm an experimenter. I've tried a lot of things in my journey. And Nothing works as well as those things that I just suggested. And they're all free. And the hard part for a lot of people is just doing it.
33:08
You just got to like integrate, stack it into your routine, habits, stack it into your life in a way where you just find a way to get it done. And there's a lot of ways you can figure that out. But yeah, I Well, that's why people need to hire a coach like you, because like I said, it's easier said than done. Exactly. I personally have enough self-discipline to push myself to go to the gym, to reach X and Y goal But the regular person is going to need a coach to keep them accountable and that's where you come in and you have all this knowledge and experience and you know how to motivate and inspire your clients to do better and to actually do the things that they should be doing. All the tips that you just went over I think is a great synopsis of two of the life changing books for me in the health and fitness space.
34:06
In the past year, I've read Outlive by Peter Attia, and I've read Good Energy by Casey Means.
34:15
I think it's just distilled everything that you said. You just distilled that into the I was even going to say a side note with Casey Means. One of the things that they're known for is their brand Levels, which is like a blood glucose tracking system. And that's one area where a lot of people, their energy's up and down and up and down. And they often think they have ADHD. They have insulin resistance, like pre-diabetes. And with that person, their brand levels can essentially tell you how insulin resistant you are with a continual glucose monitor that you wear. And so I tell people all the time, if you think you're ADHD and you're taking Ritalin and Adderall, you're probably not. You're probably really insulin resistant, pre-diabetic. And there's things you can run in your blood work to even determine if that's the case. And so it's not a matter of guessing. You can actually figure these things out objectively through the data. And then when you know that, you can use the books like Outlive to Absolutely, yeah, those are great tips. Now let's talk a little bit about your business and how you think about entrepreneurship. So revenue model, pricing and packaging, those are things that we think about when you're running a consulting business. How is revenue split across your packages, like one-on-one coaching versus retainers, cohorts, digital products? What is your ideal target for the Yeah, I mean, I would say in general, one of the things that I've noticed with sort of being in the health space is that, and it's like walking people through a progression is a good idea. So early on, you sort of want some type of like entry level system, right? So like people may not necessarily know who you are, Well, maybe they just don't have a lot of self-belief themselves. I would say the main thing is they just don't have the self-belief yet themselves. They're like, okay, this guy gets people in shape, he's in shape, but maybe I'm not going to be able to do what he wants me to do. And so at the front end, having some type of signature offer, signature course, like a four-week or an eight-week signature process. So I have my Anomaly Project six-week signature course. So at the front end, someone can get into that. And that has a lot of the nutritional principles, the supplementation stuff, training at home, at a gym, while you're traveling. A lot of it was geared around busy high performers that travel or have a lot on their plate and they need streamlined processes.
37:00
And so the anomaly project is the signature course at the front end. And even before that, I have some lead magnets, like a blood work blueprint. So if someone wants to learn the six biomarkers that most doctors won't run that have a really big effect on your health, there's a free download for it. And so someone gets that, that walks them into like a 30 email sequence. I've done 30 emails and every email has like value and tactics. Because I just wanted to like give people so much value and connection that either they'd use it all and they just totally transform or they get to a certain point where they're like, man, I just want to get on board because this guy's just giving me so much stuff. After the signature six week process, that's where you step into like a recurring model. So like a monthly recurring setup where you have a$97 a month retainer, where there's no contracts with that. So basically, I explained it a bit like, you've started to get the momentum, now let's rinse and repeat the process a few times. And as you rinse and repeat the process, you're probably gonna hit roadblocks, you're gonna have to adjust things. And so stay in the group, because then you can get access to the Q&As, I do the weekly Q&As. I have a Telegram channel where I do morning mindset audios in the channel every morning. So people will get up and one of the first things they do is literally just listen to me talking about the psychology of transformation for a few minutes. And I've had many people say that that alone was probably the biggest thing for them. And so we keep them in that $97 a month hub and we sort of nurture that mastermind. And I post things in there and I share bits of value and add tips and all types of stuff. And then beyond that is my business athlete council. That's my $500 a month high level sort of, it's essentially the next step in the stepping stone. You know, people kind of get to a point where they want more, they want high level tactics, they want to be around people that are pushing even more hard. And so at that level, that's again, sort of a whole other run up where I talk more advanced stuff. And I pretty much pull out the stops at that level and I'm pushing hard and to show people what it looks like. And so they'll often come along on that journey with me. And that's a brand new level that I've been rolling out just recently, but I've done it before and I wanted to bring it back again because I did it. And then a lot happened over a couple of years. We walked away from it. And then I realized it was a really good like setup that I had. So I'm coming back to it. And then beyond that, that's where you have the higher level one-on-one stuff. And between the higher level concierge one-on-one stuff, I'll even do private days. So I've had people come out from all the different states, like Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Texas, I mean, all places, will come out for a private day with me where I walk them through these pillars and processes that I've battle tested. So we'll take them through, we'll flesh out a full training cycle for them. We'll go through some meal creation stuff. We'll do some real-time immersion stuff. And people really enjoy that stuff. I feel like, in many ways, people are longing for that level of contact, especially because the internet keeps everyone kind of dislocated. So I don't do a lot of that anymore, just because with my young son and how busy I am, it's not as... It's just not something I want to do a lot of, but I do the one-on-one stuff.
40:40
And the one-on-one stuff is like the deep dive where someone goes and get their blood work run, they get their hair mineral analysis done, food sensitivity testing. So they get all the data. And then we take that data, I run it through this AI model that I built, and it basically fleshes out a structure and a system that I then fine tune myself. And my whole goal is to just like help them with the tactics, help them like fit integrated into their life. Cause I would say one of the things, I mean, you probably know this to be true as like, you can give someone a good plan, but it's as good as their ability to implement it. And so very often if someone doesn't have the skill sets yet, or they're pretty unorganized, or they spread really thin, or they just don't have a lot of knowledge in a certain area, that will be the rate limiting factor. And so my whole goal is to basically maintain enough touch points with them back and forth where I'm able to help them troubleshoot things every day initially early on. So they get a lot of rapid change very quickly at the front end. And that kind of builds that confidence and belief. And then at that point, what I often find is once I've taken people through like a 16 week block, very often they'll either upgrade to like a long-term retainer one-on-one, or I will even just tell them, hey, go into the main business athlete council group. You'll be doing well in that group setting. That's probably all you need.
42:08
And I think like that model, I like it because you can take someone who comes in and you can essentially walk them through rungs and ladders of progression. And so you're like, even if you have a smaller audience, you can make a lot of money that way because you're You're upselling people multiple, multiple times, but you're also taking someone from completely untrained, totally out of shape, and you get to see this beautiful transformation in its entirety. It's not like you're just having a little snapshot and you have a little play with them for six weeks, and then they go off and do something else. You get to see them when they're at their rock bottom, 100 pounds overweight, and see them go through this massive transformation and totally change their life. And I mean, that is just, that's unbelievable to witness that. So that's kind of a model that I work with. And then obviously you've got, in any business like this, you've got sort of affiliate commissions with different supplement companies and different products that you might use that you can stack into your process. So it's one of those things where it's interesting. I do think there's a lot of potential in this space, but you definitely have to have a good knowledge base and you have to care about people in a way that, do you know what I mean? You have to really care about people and not just try and sort of sell them smoke and mirrors. I mean, there's obviously a lot in the health space. I mean, I'm not even gonna name people, but there's people you've probably seen and they're just total con artists. You know, they just have a good, they have a pretty looking Instagram account and that's it.
43:41
It doesn't go any further than that. But that's, that's one of the things is I always tell people, even if you've been burned a little bit before, um, you just got to keep trying. You got to keep trying. You know, I always think to myself, I'm When you think about planning for your business, are you doing the tracking yourself? Are you tracking like KPIs of your business, forecasting your revenue growth, or do you work Yeah, so we have a team and fortunate that my wife is kind of involved, like she's good, she's systems oriented and she handles a lot of the backend administration stuff. And we have an assistant who kind of like shadows her as well. And we have a team that helps with like taxing and just like, money strategy and how to play a better game. And that kind of ties into a lot of what you do. Honestly, I feel like one of the things I wish that I knew earlier was just how to use money smarter. When you first start your business, you don't really know what you're doing. And a lot of the time, if you've come from being employed, the tax money would just be pulled out before you got your paycheck. You never had to really worry about anything. And that was it. And now when you're a business owner, it can get really messy very quickly. And so I just feel like having a team, the things you do and having a team of people that can help you with the way you're structuring things and organizing things is so important.
45:20
And for me, that's definitely not my wheelhouse.
45:24
I'll be the first to tell you. I can talk about health stuff when it comes to a lot of those things. They'll be saying things to me and I'm just like, eyes are glazed over. I'm like, what? So I'm thankful my wife is there. She's like the translator for me. You know Yeah, that's great. No, I mean, you're, you do what you do and what you're passionate and good at, you know, so you're running the operations, you're, you're advising your clients, you're helping them to grow. And so someone else like myself should be focusing on the numbers and Yeah, because one of the things that I'll say is like, you know, you talk about KPIs. If you don't track your KPIs, then you have no idea what's working. And so you might be doing stuff that keeps you really busy, but it's not having a proper return. And then there might be things right under your nose that you could be doing that you just didn't think were a thing that are like big levers to pull. And I've definitely found that as we've grown, that's become more and more important. It's become so important to know, especially because when you have the family, you do have a finite amount of focus and bandwidth and energy. And if you don't say, OK, these are my key KPIs. I must focus on this first and push out all this other stuff. And anything that needs to be done, can you find ways to outsource those things?
46:51
Can you find a way to delegate them to someone else? Because the other thing a lot of business people that I'll even sometimes interact with, they're doing too many things. They're trying to do all the things, and so they're really busy, and they're spread really thin, and they're super stressed, but they're not leveraging their time very well.
47:08
And so that's why they're like, I don't have time to work out. I don't have time to eat healthy. But they don't have it because they need to restructure everything. So very often, a part of what I do is suggesting business coaching to people. And therapy, therapy and business coaching, because Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right.
47:31
Let's talk risk worthy. I like to ask this to all my guests, because, you know, I'm writing a book about risk and making big decisions, taking big risks amidst the certainty. What is one big risk that you've taken in your business? And was it Yeah. I would say. The biggest risk that we took was when I first came over to the US, my wife had a gym that she was running with her mother. So they had it together. And initially it was doing pretty good, but then there was like this big influx of big corporate gyms that opened up around that area that they were in. And she's like this sort of boutique personal training studio. And I mean, it got very challenging to compete with those larger places.
48:22
And so we got to a point where when I came over, basically the option that I felt that we had was to close that chapter and to just go completely online. And this is not... This is like 10 years ago. And so I would say a lot has changed in the health space in the last few years. It's way more common now to have online coaches and online coaching.
48:45
That's way more common than last, like since COVID. But I would say 10 years ago, it was still in its infancy. Like a lot of people were not really doing a lot of online coaching in the way they're doing it now.
48:56
So I would say the biggest thing for us was taking that sort of physical model and transferring it to online. And I tell you, it is challenging, but it was absolutely worth it for us. I mean, it definitely helped us tremendously because now all of a sudden your audience is global. We've had clients in Canada and Europe and New Zealand and all around America. I have some of my best students that live all around the States, you know? And so like, I would have never had the opportunity to like meet them or help them at all if we were just bound by a physical location. So part of it, I would say is like trying to ask yourself whatever industry you're in, is there an online component that you can bolt onto like, if your business is physical, is there an online component you can bolt onto your business in some way? And if you can kind of bolt it on somehow as like an upsell or an additional service, I mean, it really, it gives you the potential for like recurring revenue streams or like an upsell or a downsell that before you wouldn't have even had. So I do think that like, that's probably for us that one of the biggest things that, you know, initially back then it was a lot more risky because it wasn't as common. Now a lot of people would do it, so you wouldn't even think of it as much of a risk. But yeah, I would say it's definitely transferring from physical brick Yeah, that's a good point. I'm glad you brought that up. All right, so we have a few questions just to get to know you. What's It's funny, I just fast at this point. I know that's kind of boring, right? I would say, it's funny, like one of the things I do make for my, in the morning I'll get up and I'll make my wife and daughter a little breakfast thing. And my wife really loves this chia pudding. So basically you get chia seeds, you soak them in milk overnight, and it kind of turns into sort of this, It's almost like a smoothie bowl type thing. So chia pudding with berries with a bit of protein powder in it and a few chopped dates on top. And I'll just kind of pick at that. I would say if I was a breakfast person, that would be something I would eat. I'd probably like that. But again, I like to fast in the morning because I just feel light.
51:17
Yeah, I'm either fasting or eating I'm even struggling to think about any at this point. I don't even, I mean, really the only thing that I would ever pay attention to at this point now is my step count. And even then, at this point now, I really don't pay attention to it that much. Cause I know that I'm heading Yeah. But I mean, just, just with like my walking on my treadmill while Yep, so what I do is I have my computer, I have one of the electric desks that raises up and down, and I just walk under it, just one mile an hour. And that's what I mean when I'm talking about your step count with your walking. That's how you get a high step count. So I would say that's probably the only thing. I'm known for being the guy that uses data to build stuff. So like your blood work and all these different things, even like smart devices, like Oura rings and Whoop watches. I'll tell you, there's a paradox there. I use all that stuff early on, but then I actually get to a point where you grow past it and you just use intuition. I think there's a lot to say about your intuition and learning your own biofeedback and understanding what your body's trying to speak to you without numbers. Early on, data's good. You get to a point where you almost grow past it, but I would say the step count is probably the main thing. I would say the step count for most Great point. Yeah, that's one thing that I need to implement into my Yeah, and I mean, especially, like I said, if you use a standing and a walking pad, and even if you don't use it all day, but you get, say, 12 to 15,000 steps, you'll notice change. You'll notice your body starts to lean out more, and you'll notice that your energy's better.
53:26
It is absolutely the biggest lever I pull. I mean, it really I would just say, honestly, I just hang out on social media. So if someone was to search my name, Fraser Bayley, on Facebook or at Fraser Bayley on Instagram, those are the two main channels. I typically like people to come through that way because they get to learn what I'm about and they get to connect with me. Some people will say, I'll go to my website or go to my email. And that's okay, but I like people to come to my social media because I can see like, what is this guy doing? What's he about? What's his message like? What's he posting? And that's when you start to build those connections with people. So I would just say through Instagram, Facebook, reach out and yeah, just follow the content. And if you want to reach out through there, you can drop me a message on one of those channels.
54:21
Great. Well, we're going to link everything into the show notes so that people can connect with you on Instagram and Facebook. Frazier, thank you so much for being here and sharing your expertise. I learned a lot and also was reminded of the things that I should be doing that I would have been doing, but you've given us so much solid insight into scaling smarter and being fitter. So thank you everyone for tuning in to another episode of Built by Margin. Don't forget to subscribe and share. Until next time.
54:54
Thanks for tuning in to Built by Margin. If you're ready to turn insights into income, subscribe and join me each week as we break down the numbers behind smart business growth. I'm