PREMIUM - How To Rewire Your Brain To Learn Anything As Fast As Possible.

Jonathan Goodman (0:00)

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, the same processes that help you learn to squat or perform better in a single rep in a squat are actually very similar to what make you write better, concentrate better, or even focus in on building up a business better. The system is as simple as try and fail and fail better. And it really comes down to not repeating bad habits.

I would yell to myself in my head, I can't knock down, I get up again, nothing's going to break me down. And then I would take two deep breaths. And I would go right leg, left leg, under the bar, right leg, under the bar, get my elbows in place, get the bar on my shoulders, drop down into the squat.

If you know how to do a chest press, you can pick up a weight and you can press it with one arm on a ball with one foot up in the air. And you'll learn that movement within two minutes.

SPEAKER_2 (0:47)

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain, and hormone optimization.

So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you just want to shed a few pounds, get ready for non-run-of-the-mill, cutting-edge content from bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Ben Greenfield (1:31)

Hey, folks, Ben Greenfield here, and I first met today's podcast guests when I was speaking at an event in Toronto, and I was struck pretty immediately by his passion for things like the business of fitness, obviously something I'm kinda into, but also the art of learning, which is more of what we're gonna be focusing on today. My guest name is Jonathan Goodman, and Jonathan does a lot of stuff, wears quite a few hats, but one of the things that he does is he's the creator of the Personal Trainer Development Center, where he teaches personal trainers how to be better personal trainers, as the name would imply, and also something called Viralnomics, which if we have a chance to talk about today, we'll delve into. Jon's been featured in Men's Health, schwarzenegger.com, Muscle and Fitness, and Forbes Magazine, and he's also written some books, and I will link to his books over in the show notes, and you can access the show notes for today's podcast at bengreenfieldfitness.com/goodman. Goodman, G-O-O-D-M-A-N. That's Jonathan's last name.

Anyways, he's written books like Ignite the Fire, The Secrets to Building a Successful Personal Training Career, The Personal Trainer Pocketbook, A Handy Reference for All Your Daily Questions, and the online personal trainer Blueprint, Have More Freedom, Make More Money, Help More People. So for you personal trainers out there, those are probably some titles that you might want to check out. A few things about John. He was a personal trainer for nine years, and at 23 years old, based off what he's told me, he was making as much as he could make conventionally as a trainer, in addition to earning a salary, hiring and training other trainers, and making commissions from referring his clients. And he wrote a book, and he started this personal trainer development center. But then things got dark, and he wasn't prepared for the entrepreneurial journey, and he became what he describes as an asshole to everybody I knew.

And John says he became selfish, he ran away to Hawaii for six months, he ended up shutting down five companies, and he finally took back control, and he decided to build up things on his own agenda. Jonathan, I'm sure you appreciate me just summing up your most important part of your life story in about 30 seconds.

But the reason I did that is because I wanna delve into some of these other cool things that you told me that you like, and that is particularly how to learn, how to use your tricks and techniques to trigger certain activities like writing a book or setting a PR on a squat. So that's the kind of stuff I think is gonna be kind of fun to delve into today. What do you think?

Jonathan Goodman (4:17)

I love it. Well, first of all, I thank you for the introduction. That's about as good as I've ever heard it. I might ask you for the transcript of that so I can use that later.

The coolest part about, I think, some of the stuff that we're gonna talk about today, I mean, we'll speak about it more specifically to fitness, I believe, but the carryover to different industries is what fascinates me the most. And I'm actually not particularly interested in any single industry all that much. To me, fitness is kind of inherently boring. Social media is inherently boring. Psychology is inherently boring. But when you look at the interaction between them, you start getting some fascinating interplays.