Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Overcoming the Overwhelm: How busy entrepreneurs can master health with fitness expert Luke Depron

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Overcoming the Overwhelm: How busy entrepreneurs can master health with fitness expert Luke Depron · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  Imagine waking up exhausted, already stressed out about the demands of the day, feeling sluggish and uncomfortable in your own body as you hustle for that next business milestone.
• 0:11
  How would you reclaim your vitality and ensure that the pace of your success doesn't come at the cost of your health?
• 0:19
  In this week's episode, we delve into the insights of Luc Dupran, the founder of the Fit Men Project, whose mission is to transform how high achievers approach their health and fitness.
• 0:31
  We'll explore the timeless struggle of balancing entrepreneurial success with personal well being by sharing how Luke's unique coaching approach addresses the root of these challenges.
• 0:44
  Luke's approach isn't about forcing a one size fits all fitness regimen, but it's about designing sustainable systems tailored to an entrepreneur's busy life.
• 0:55
  Tune in to gain insights into overcoming common fitness hurdles and setting yourself up for long term success in health and in business.
• 1:05
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:10
  Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Fulfillment podcast.
• 1:15
  I'm your host, Dave Goulis, and this week my guest is the founder of the Fit Men Project, Luke Dupron.
• 1:23
  Welcome, Luke.
• 1:24
  Hey, man, it's great to be here.
• 1:26
  I'm excited to have this conversation with you.
• 1:28
  Yeah, we appreciate you taking the time to be on the show for sure.
• 1:31
  If you could, for everyone.
• 1:32
  Luke, could you just tell us about your company and how it got started?
• 1:37
  Sure.
• 1:38
  So I've been in the fitness industry for probably over a decade now, and I've done everything from personal training to working in rehab and performance centers to what I do now, which is with the Fitment Project, an online
• 1:51
  coaching program.
• 1:52
  It's designed to support entrepreneurs, business owners, guys who often, I say, in the pursuit of wealth, kind of let the health slide and, and have come around to recognizing that, you know, as the lead domino, they need to
• 2:05
  show up in their physical health, their performance, their energy, and oftentimes a physique goal.
• 2:11
  And so I get to step in in a coaching capacity and help them to develop systems that feel actually easy to maintain so they can have the energy, have the physique, and what I would say is kind of
• 2:22
  have that, have it all.
• 2:24
  I know, I know most people, like, we don't get into being, being a business owner as an entrepreneur to feel tired, feel, you know, uncomfortable in our bodies.
• 2:33
  And it's really helping get the other side of that coin going for those guys.
• 2:38
  Okay, so now you, you've been in the fitness industry for, for quite a long time.
• 2:43
  Like what, what was the journey like?
• 2:45
  And how did you end up in this niche of, of coaching entrepreneurs?
• 2:49
  Yeah, it's a great question.
• 2:51
  So you know, when I, I was in school for business originally and I remember sitting in a, an accounting class thinking, man, I, I don't really like this.
• 3:00
  And I found myself, you know, thinking about what, what do I read about and what am I like engaging with in my free time.
• 3:06
  And it was things around nutrition, things around exercise.
• 3:09
  So I actually changed degrees, graduated with an exercise science in kinesiology, the study of movement.
• 3:16
  Again, did personal training, did rehab work.
• 3:19
  But the, the piece that I always enjoyed was really helping people kind of accomplish the lifestyle side of this because that's a huge piece of it.
• 3:29
  It's not just hey, do the workout, do the, do the, do the food.
• 3:32
  It's really the lifestyle component.
• 3:34
  And, and the shift into working with entrepreneurs started when I personally joined a mastermind and I kind of found my tribe of people to where these were guys who are doing other things.
• 3:48
  I kind of always felt like a outsider in the fitness industry.
• 3:51
  The idea of doing a bodybuilder competition seems so silly to me, not an interest.
• 3:56
  And I saw in the fitness industry people who were living to exercise, where for me it was always, I want to exercise and eat healthy, to live and go do things.
• 4:05
  And when I kind of stumbled into the entrepreneurial networks, I recognized like, oh, here's guys who are also doing other things.
• 4:13
  They're working towards bigger goals to where exercise needs to be a support vehicle and it's not their obsession.
• 4:19
  And so that became kind of where I had a connection with working with entrepreneurs and business owners.
• 4:28
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• 5:19
  And so one, once you got to that point, right, like you had your training, you had your background, you had your experience and you find that this is kind of the lane that you want to pursue.
• 5:28
  Like, what was the process like getting the company set up and really, you know, just getting established in that lane because it seems so crowded just from, from someone looking right.
• 5:40
  Like on LinkedIn, you see a whole bunch, it seemed, seems like everyone's targeting entrepreneurs.
• 5:45
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, I know.
• 5:47
  And my LinkedIn inbox, I could, I could open it up and show the other side of the, that pitch fest.
• 5:54
  Yeah, and again, for me it was like I said, it was actually like getting into some groups and really just that, that network side, you know, I don't run a massively scaled company.
• 6:06
  I actually do coach and work with the, the guys that I, that I get to basically consult and work with.
• 6:12
  So obviously like referrals and relationships, huge deal for me.
• 6:16
  I, I'm, I'm, I'm excited to be in the relationship business, both in what I do, because that's a requirement, but also from like a business growth standpoint, like having conversations with somebody like yourself versus again, if I were
• 6:30
  to open up my LinkedIn box.
• 6:32
  And it's probably similar to yours where it's just a plethora of cold pitches that are irrelevant, that have no understanding of who I am or what I do.
• 6:44
  So for me it's just been a relationship game, I would say.
• 6:46
  And that's been the, the through line, whether I was back doing personal training, even when I worked, even in rehab studios where this is working for someone else's company.
• 6:57
  When you're doing health and wellness, like that's a relationship game.
• 6:59
  Like that's, that's how you support people.
• 7:01
  So for me it's, it's always been networking relationships.
• 7:05
  Okay.
• 7:06
  And so being that you're working with entrepreneurs and people that are busy and building businesses and like you said, like, fitness is not their obsession.
• 7:15
  They're typically, you know, their core focus is building their business.
• 7:18
  What do you find?
• 7:19
  Some are some of the most common challenges that is, that are preventing these entrepreneurs from having the, I guess, the optimal health that they want.
• 7:29
  Yeah, it's definitely time.
• 7:32
  The time constraints are real.
• 7:34
  Um, but there's also, I think, a mismatch in expectation of what's required.
• 7:39
  So I know you mentioned nutrition.
• 7:41
  Exercise is important to you.
• 7:43
  You've clearly figured it out and it's such a cliche like, oh, there's always time, but it's more of understanding.
• 7:49
  There's specific tactics that we can bring in and we can, we can just have a more time efficient approach and like to give You a very hard example on that is, can't tell you how many guys are.
• 7:59
  It's like, let's just get set up with a home gym.
• 8:01
  Let's get set up with an office workout situation and like, get rid of this idea that you're even going to go to the gym in the first place.
• 8:09
  And so oftentimes, it's catalyst to remove obstacles.
• 8:13
  Time and stress are probably the two big ones.
• 8:16
  And the stress of entrepreneurship, I think, for a lot of guys creates a mental crunch on time.
• 8:27
  It's like, you do have the time.
• 8:28
  It's just there's the overwhelm of all of the things that you have to do.
• 8:33
  It does take a little bit of a leap of faith.
• 8:35
  And I think you'd be a testament to this as somebody who, if, if you have, as you have an exercise in a nutrition practice, there's a buy.
• 8:42
  There's a buyback in time when you're feeling, well, we've all been on the other side of that when we've been sick and how unproductive we are.
• 8:49
  And so it does take a little bit of a leap of faith for guys, because you can't test drive it.
• 8:54
  You can't.
• 8:54
  You can't test drive feeling good and having more energy.
• 8:57
  You got to actually, like, get there.
• 8:58
  But if you take a little bit of a faith, you recognize on the other side of doing this work, you come out with more energy, you come out with clearer focus, and you effectively are buying back that time.
• 9:09
  But it's.
• 9:09
  That's the, that's the obstacle.
• 9:11
  That's the huge one.
• 9:11
  Man.
• 9:12
  Yeah.
• 9:13
  Yeah.
• 9:14
  Ab.
• 9:14
  Absolutely.
• 9:14
  And you know, like you said, too, when you're, when you're healthy and you're eating right and you have a, a routine, right, you just makes every other part of your life so much better.
• 9:24
  Right?
• 9:25
  But.
• 9:25
  And, and really understanding there's going to be seasons in your life as there will be in your business, and just kind of recognizing the seasons that you're in.
• 9:36
  So I had a client at one point, it's like, yeah, 10 years of, like, work is coming down to the FDA approving something and getting these documents ready.
• 9:45
  And it's like, you're not working out that week.
• 9:47
  Like, it just didn't.
• 9:49
  It's like it's not going to happen.
• 9:50
  And that's okay because there's an intentionality that comes into that week.
• 9:53
  It's not, oh, gosh, I just missed it.
• 9:56
  It was, there's some.
• 9:57
  Or whatever the five days.
• 9:58
  It was.
• 10:00
  So I think recognizing that there can be seasons of life to this, particularly in your business growth, to where, like, yeah, there, there's going to be times where you're traveling and like, things are different and, and freeing yourself
• 10:14
  from this perfect, perfect routine is, is super helpful for, for a lot of guys because a lot of work with a lot of type A people, and when things start to fall apart and business wins out as it
• 10:29
  should, that's going to be your primary focus.
• 10:31
  Things kind of can go off the rails, and it just takes a little bit of, like, mindset adjustment to understand we can set some different standards for those weeks that still let us feel like we're being congruent with
• 10:40
  making progress towards the overall goal.
• 10:42
  But adjusting for those seasons is super important because they're going to come up.
• 10:47
  Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 10:49
  So with the people you work with, is it mainly like a certain age range or does it.
• 10:55
  Does it vary widely in terms of younger, older?
• 10:59
  You know, it's funny, I'm at that age now where not only do I think everyone looks my age, I think everyone is my age.
• 11:06
  I'm probably working in the 30 to 50 gap right now.
• 11:10
  That's just kind of tends to, I think, be who I attract.
• 11:13
  And I don't know if that's because I'm turning 40 this year.
• 11:16
  So a lot of those conversations are feel like with God, guys around my age.
• 11:21
  There's Also, in that 30 to 40 gap, you're really at a corner that is, I think, unique if you're an older person listening to this man.
• 11:30
  If you're 60 and 70, you can absolutely turn the clock back.
• 11:33
  So don't be dissuaded by what I'm about to say here.
• 11:36
  But if you're in that 30 coming into 40 gap, you have a really unique opportunity to, I think, make a big push in your health and fitness and set yourself, your future self up really nicely.
• 11:48
  That does get a little bit more difficult when you're in your 50s and 60s.
• 11:53
  So I'm getting a lot of.
• 11:53
  I work with a lot of guys in like, that 30 coming into their 40s and recognizing, like, it's not the final hoorah.
• 12:00
  I don't.
• 12:00
  Again, I don't want to dissuade anybody from what can be done in the future, but you're at a prime opportunity to.
• 12:06
  In your 30s, going into 40s to really set up a different future for yourself if you do things right.
• 12:13
  Okay.
• 12:14
  And with your coaching too, like you said, like the biggest obstacles, like where people, you know, the whole illusion of time and you know, you know, whatnot.
• 12:23
  But beyond that, when people buy in like what, what do you find?
• 12:27
  Is it more like they just need someone to hold them accountable or is it like more of like the, the information, right, because there's so much misinformation or conflicting information you see about health and fitness these days.
• 12:39
  Like what, what do you find is like the, like the, the more prevalent conversations you're having with clients.
• 12:45
  It's a little bit of both.
• 12:46
  There's definitely the accountability is huge.
• 12:48
  There's no question, right?
• 12:49
  Like and, and for sure even like a really successful guy in business, I think that's a, sometimes feels like a hard conversation to have.
• 12:58
  But like clearly you don't have mastery in this area and you need some support.
• 13:01
  The support is huge, right?
• 13:03
  Like weekly check in sheets, coaching calls, the ability to like literally just reach out via text to somebody, I think is super supportive to those guys.
• 13:11
  But it's also the information and like the tactical approach and realizing like we can, we can create a more efficient path to make this happen.
• 13:21
  A lot of times with business owners and entrepreneurs it's like speed wins in business and they want to approach their nutrition and their exercise as a marketing launch with this short, intense effort.
• 13:35
  When the reality is it's like we have to think of this as a business plan that's going to like last the years.
• 13:40
  And so it's really helping guys set up long term visions and a longer term approach and then getting on the science side, just helping them understand and creating optimal paths.
• 13:54
  So specifically if we're going to talk say fat loss, which with a lot of the people that I work with, physique goals are, are a part of it.
• 14:01
  There's optimal rates and simply going and doing more isn't always better.
• 14:07
  So I always share this.
• 14:08
  Like I have an intake form that's rather in depth and I ask like how many days can you realistically dedicate 45 minutes of exercise towards?
• 14:15
  And I would say 90% of guys I work with put six to seven days and it's like, well why have we not created any consistency in this?
• 14:26
  If you have the ability to work out six or seven days.
• 14:29
  And what it is, is again this mismatched expectation versus reality.
• 14:35
  If you had the opportunity to work out seven days from an effective standpoint, I wouldn't want you to.
• 14:40
  And so this is where bringing guys back, scaling things down, creating guaranteed minimum standards, which is effectively what the whole coaching process looks like.
• 14:49
  We can create optimal change for that effort and then we only layer in volume as Needed.
• 14:55
  Whereas I think most guys get in trouble with.
• 14:58
  They try to just throw all of the volume at the problem at one time, all of the levers they try to pull.
• 15:04
  And that's where things start to get overwhelming for guys.
• 15:06
  That's where the business, you know, a fire comes up and everything falls off the rails.
• 15:11
  And really helping guys avoid those cliffs is a huge piece of what I do now.
• 15:16
  Do you think too, that's because, like, you're dealing with entrepreneurs and so many times, right.
• 15:21
  Like you said, type A personality and like the way to, you know, attack a problem is with massive action.
• 15:27
  So, you know, maybe they throw too much at it too quick.
• 15:31
  And then like you said, it's not sustainable.
• 15:34
  Yep.
• 15:34
  And 100.
• 15:35
  You nailed it.
• 15:36
  And I, and I love, and again, I love and appreciate that.
• 15:38
  It's part of why I enjoy working with, with people like that because that's much easier to deal with than somebody who's maybe say, demotivated and we can.
• 15:47
  I'm really trying to pull them through the process, which, you know, I've had those clients.
• 15:52
  I've had clients with, you know, severe mental health and like, depression.
• 15:55
  Right.
• 15:55
  Because food and exercise is of course LinkedIn.
• 15:58
  But yeah, if you can get them to step back and recognize again, there are sustainable and optimal rates of change.
• 16:06
  Unlike your business where, you know, if you want to expedite certain pieces, like you want to pour more ad dollars on a campaign, like, you're going to probably speed some things up.
• 16:18
  Your physiology doesn't work that way.
• 16:20
  And this is where I think guys really screw themselves.
• 16:25
  Both.
• 16:26
  And it really comes down to psychologically, two ways they are.
• 16:29
  There's a loss of congruency and a loss of self trust when we try to do too much and we can't execute.
• 16:34
  You become the man that lied to yourself.
• 16:37
  And then on top of it, the juice just isn't worth the squeeze.
• 16:41
  So when you go super hard on your, on the physical, the result.
• 16:47
  Let's specifically talk about, say, fat loss, where the guy's like, I'm gonna work out.
• 16:52
  I had somebody the other day asked me, so, like, what if I just went like really hard like twice a day?
• 16:56
  Like, do you think that would get me there faster?
• 16:58
  And I'm like, yeah, a little bit, but not enough that you would be encouraged to continue versus if we took an optimal route where, hey, let's train four to five times a week, let's eat some foods that we
• 17:11
  maybe enjoy, you're gonna get 90% of that change.
• 17:15
  But the difference is, and I ask this question constantly to clients, is anything we're doing feeling emotionally heavy?
• 17:22
  And if they answer yes, we have to pull back because this has to be a long term fix.
• 17:27
  And getting guys out of that crazy, intense short term thinking is it's definitely a battle, particularly with again, that business owner and entrepreneurial crowd.
• 17:37
  But it's a huge piece of the success.
• 17:40
  I promise you.
• 17:41
  Show me a guy who's constantly starting over in his health journey and I'll show you a guy who's taken really extreme measures every time.
• 17:48
  Yeah.
• 17:49
  And like you said too right lifestyle.
• 17:51
  And you want it to just, you know, you don't want it to feel like a burden every time you're, you're doing this.
• 17:56
  It should be something that's enjoy, enjoyable and sustainable.
• 17:59
  Yeah.
• 18:00
  It should support, it should support all of the things that you actually care about, which hopefully is going to be your relationships, your business.
• 18:07
  And it should actually be an asset to those things, not something that you're trying to hold on to at the end of it.
• 18:14
  When you go through again like with this, when we go through like a coaching process and we exit out the other end, the goal is really for this to feel like background noise to you.
• 18:25
  Something that you don't actually have to think a lot about.
• 18:28
  As the quote fitness guy.
• 18:30
  It's like myself, I put very little thought into this because I'm running on habits, I'm running on systems and that's ultimately what we're helping develop because who cares if you got, you know, fit for three months?
• 18:42
  It's like, let's get fit for life.
• 18:43
  Right.
• 18:44
  And that comes from making the process actually feel easier, not harder.
• 18:49
  Okay.
• 18:50
  And you know, obviously you covered the training component.
• 18:54
  The, the other big component, you know, to, to creating the, the physique you want is nutrition.
• 19:01
  And like, with what you've said about working with entrepreneurs and time and stress, I, I can only imagine there's a whole lot of maybe emotional eating habits and, and other things that, that you know, your clients are dealing
• 19:13
  with.
• 19:13
  So, so what's your approach to help people that maybe aren't accustomed to, you know, a healthy diet?
• 19:19
  Really getting that, that piece back on track.
• 19:21
  Yeah, great question.
• 19:22
  And you know, there's a few different again, obstacles in this arena that, that will, you know, trick people up again, of course, time feeling like they have to cook all of their meals.
• 19:31
  The big one is actually stress and event lifestyle, networking, traveling for business.
• 19:38
  Just got off a coaching call with a client.
• 19:40
  He said not to San Francisco, then he's heading to New York.
• 19:43
  And, like, these are opportunities where things can kind of go off the rails.
• 19:47
  So again, I mentioned this idea of guaranteed minimum standards, and we kind of extrapolate that to the nutrition side.
• 19:55
  We do want to have an auditing phase and understand, like, hey, what are we eating?
• 19:59
  And so for most people, we need to bring in and upregulate the auditing.
• 20:02
  We have to have an understanding of what we're eating.
• 20:04
  There's different tools that we can use for different people.
• 20:07
  If you're a type A, love numbers, tracking calories and macros could be a really supportive educational process for you that you might even enjoy for other people.
• 20:16
  We use things like photo food journaling, where we were literally just taking a picture of what we're eating.
• 20:22
  And then it's starting to try to create stability.
• 20:25
  And if we can bring stability around things like calories, if we can bring stability around things like alcohol, even if we can bring stability around meal count portions of different macronutrients like protein, carbohydrates, fat, once we have that
• 20:39
  stability, then it gets really easy to start making some adjustments, you know, and there's basic little things like, hey, let's try to, like, add in protein for most guys.
• 20:49
  But just creating stability and auditing is kind of phase one that has to happen.
• 20:55
  Okay, and what would you say, too?
• 20:58
  Because, you know, there's so much different information about nutrition specifically and conflict.
• 21:04
  Like, for people that don't know where to start, what.
• 21:06
  What would you.
• 21:07
  What advice would you give them in terms of, you know, getting the nutrition back on track?
• 21:11
  Sure.
• 21:13
  Again, if we're talking specifically with fat loss, which I just.
• 21:17
  I mentioned this because it's.
• 21:18
  It's often a goal.
• 21:19
  I think it's very important for people to understand that all diets are going to work the same for fat loss.
• 21:26
  If you are in.
• 21:27
  If you are losing weight, you are in a calorie deficit, period.
• 21:31
  Once you recognize that, it kind of clears up a lot of the marketing confusion around different diets.
• 21:37
  You know, going and eating carnivore doesn't cause you to lose weight because it's doing something special.
• 21:43
  You literally have just cut out, you know, a ton of other macronutrients and you have a.
• 21:47
  A calorie drop.
• 21:48
  If you go vegan and you lost weight, you are in a calorie deficit.
• 21:53
  That alone, for a lot of people, is going to clear up a ton of the confusion from there.
• 21:59
  Just steering ourselves back to eating whole foods is literally going to take you so far.
• 22:07
  So far.
• 22:08
  Right.
• 22:08
  Like, you can chalk this up.
• 22:09
  If you want to call it Paleo, if you want to call it ancestral eating or whole, however you want to chalk it up, something that your Grandma would recognize 150 years ago.
• 22:18
  If you land in that realm of not eating processed foods the majority of the time, you're going to knock out a massive amount of your issues.
• 22:30
  No one is over consuming on asparagus, chicken breast, steak, shrimp.
• 22:38
  We're over consuming processed foods in this nation.
• 22:42
  So that's probably your first starting point.
• 22:44
  That's very easy to just wrap your mind around.
• 22:46
  Okay, excellent advice.
• 22:49
  All right.
• 22:49
  And Luke, if people want to find out more about your services, what you do, how they can get in touch with you, and if I don't know how you do it, do you have any, like, intros or kind
• 23:00
  of like free, free consultations you offer?
• 23:03
  Yeah, I'm always, I'm always happy to hop on a call.
• 23:05
  And so for anybody who's listening to this, you can head to fitment.com I'm on LinkedIn as well.
• 23:11
  I'm always happy to have a conversation around, you know, where people are at in their, in their journeys and really give you kind of a tangible look at, like, what it's going to take to, to get where you
• 23:20
  want go.
• 23:21
  And obviously, if you need support bringing in those systems, we could have a conversation of, of working together, but I'm pretty, pretty accessible to, to have that first initial conversation and see if things are a fit.
• 23:32
  Okay.
• 23:33
  And we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 23:35
  Awesome.
• 23:35
  All right, well, Luke, thank you so much for taking the time to be here.
• 23:38
  Really appreciate everything you laid out for us and.
• 23:42
  Yeah, appreciate that.
• 23:44
  Awesome.
• 23:44
  Well, hopefully for those listening, it can clear up a little of the nonsense that exists in this industry because there's a lot and hopefully it'll push people into some, some right directions.
• 23:55
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 23:56
  All right, and that's all the time we have for now.
• 23:58
  We will see you next time.