IAM857- Podcast Host Helps Coaches Create Online Income

AJ Mihrzad is the author of the best-selling books, “Master Your Inner Game” and “The Mind Body Solution: Train Your Brain for Permanent Weight Loss.” He studied Exercise Science and Nutrition due to his passion for health and earned a master's degree in Psychology due to his fascination with the mindset of weight loss. His cutting-edge approach to permanent weight loss insists that the key to a healthy body is a healthy brain. His clients are walking proof that this is true; there are hundreds of them!

AJ Mihrzad was recently inducted into the Personal Trainer Hall of Fame. His writing has also been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, The Huffington Post, Men’s Fitness, Thrive Global, and Bodybuilding.com. AJ is a keynote speaker at high-end entrepreneurial and personal development events. He is also the host of the popular podcast, the Online SuperCoach Podcast, available on iTunes. Along with inspiring the lives of the general public, he is dedicated to helping coaches create an ethical and profitable online income through his business mentorship program available at OnlineSuperCoach.com.

• CEO Hack: Book – Clarity by Jamie Smart
• CEO Nugget: It's okay to ask for help
• CEO Defined: Ability to create something and add value to the marketplace

Website: http://onlinesupercoach.com/

http://onlinesupercoach.com/bio

Facebook: facebook.com/AJFit
Instagram: instagram.com/ajmihrzad

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Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:30 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. And then I have AJ Mihrzad of online supercoach.com. AJ, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:39 – AJ Mihrzad:

Yes Gresham, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

00:42 – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on as well. And before we jump in I want to read a little bit more about AJ so you can hear about all these awesome things that he's doing. AJ is the author of the best-selling books, Master Your Inner Game and the Mind Body Solution, Train Your Brain for Permanent Weight Loss. He studied exercise science and nutrition due to his passion for health and earned a master's degree in psychology due to his fascination with the mindset of weight loss. His cutting-edge approach to permanent weight loss insists that the key to a healthy body is a healthy brain.

His clients are walking proof that this is true. There are hundreds of them. AJ Mihrzad was recently inducted into the Personal Training Hall of Fame, congratulations, and his writing has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, The Huffington Post, Men's Fitness, Thrive Global, and Bodybuilding.com. AJ is a keynote speaker at high-end entrepreneurial and personal development events. He is also the host of the popular podcast, the online Super Coach podcast available on iTunes, along with inspiring the lives of the general public. He is dedicated to helping coaches create an ethical and profitable online income through his business mentorship program available on his site. AJ, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:49 – AJ Mihrzad

Let's do it.

01:49 – Gresham Harkless:

Let's do it. And you're doing so many awesome things. I wanted to hear a little bit more about how everything got started. Could you take us through your CEO story and we'll let you get started with your business and your podcast and all the awesomeness you're doing?

01:59 – AJ Mihrzad:

Yeah, absolutely. You know, the things you mentioned, getting into the fitness hall of fame. I would have never thought that in a million years because I grew up very overweight. In fact, I was 60 pounds overweight and my heaviest and I always struggled with my weight loss. I had boy boobs, a big old belly, and chipmunk cheeks my entire life. And then in my early 20s, you know, I had crazy, like, you know, I need to rock bottom, change my life experience. And that led me to lose 60 pounds. I got in decent shape. And I was so fascinated by health and fitness. It gave me so much confidence and a new outlook on life.

I decided to become a personal trainer. That was actually my first business, just doing personal training, initially renting out space, and then building my own personal training business and training people, having trainers work under me. And that went well. I did it for about 10 years. And then around 2010, I came to realize I was getting burnt out, you know, getting about 5 a.m. Working till 9, 10 p.m. At night. When you're training clients, you make money with the clients.

So I couldn't really take time off. If I took a vacation or took a day off, I would lose money. You get trading hours for dollar pay. So then I started an online business and from there the online business really created a new passion within me and it led me to develop my current company which is an online super coach where I help coaches and personal trainers build their online businesses.

03:15 – Gresham Harkless:

Nice, I absolutely love that especially I'm sure you hear this a lot from your clients in this day and age and this time. It's not a kind of need to have, it's a have to have in this time where everybody's kind of doing things online as far as being able to train their clients and work with the clients virtually.

03:30 – AJ Mihrzad:

Absolutely, you know, in this climate with the, you know, people staying home, not traveling as much. It's super important to have an in-home component not just because of safety, but also because of leverage, you know? I have some friends who are in-home trainers and, you know, right now they're not working, But when they were working, they were having to travel to each client. So there's a commuting. So you are literally doing an hour of travel, training a client for an hour, then traveling somewhere else. And it's a very brutal day. And, you know, even in gyms where people are not going, they're fearful, If people are not coming in for their sessions, unfortunately, you're not getting paid.

04:05 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, absolutely. And you said a very, very powerful word, the word leverage. And I often say it's not the number of hours you have it's the way you leverage them, the way you use them the way you can manage them. So it sounds like you're able to kind of help empower the clients you work with to be able to kind of leverage that really well.

04:20 – AJ Mihrzad:

Absolutely, and I'm sure you could relate to this where sometimes people hear leverage or automation and they have a limiting belief that it's an inferior service or, you know, I'm belittling what I should be doing. I should be spending one-on-one time with a client all the time, breathing down their neck, making sure. But you realize if you use software, automation, and apps, they could have a far better experience. But a lot of things that you do manually can be automated and it saves you a lot of time and headaches.

04:46 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of times that translates to the client experience because you don't have to worry about those things that can be automated and allow you to show up and be better and provide better value and service.

04:56 – AJ Mihrzad:

And so I think I'll give you like the king of automation. I just came down this amazing road of reminders and emails and texts and it was like, wow, this is amazing how even before meeting you, I met your systems.

05:09 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, absolutely. And then that's why it gives us an opportunity to really have a really valuable conversation. I don't have to remind myself, hey, did I send X, Y, and Z because all of it went. So I definitely appreciate that. And so I know I touched on it a little bit, but I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper. Could you take us through your journey with your clients and tell us how you serve them and what exactly that experience looks like?

05:28 -AJ Mihrzad:

Yeah, Typically if a personal trainer or a coach, they're working time for money in person and they wanna take their in-person service and scale it online, it's a great transition. And the first thing that we focus on is really discovering their superpower. What is their amazing innate skill, their gift that attracts the clients to them so they could take their superpower and capitalize on it and build an online business all around it? So once you find what that superpower skill is, then it's really focusing on the 3 main systems to build the online business. It's called attract, sell, and serve.

Pretty much any business in person or online focuses on client attraction, lead generation, selling, converting those leads into paying clients, and then serving them, fulfilling the service, whether it's a product, a program, or coaching. And it's amazing because people who work in person, have different skill sets. And based on the different skill sets, they have different ways of fulfilling that skill set. You know, you have a life coach who wants to train their clients online to use different tools for that or a person who's a personal trainer helps people lose weight and that's really focused on the client's form and their nutrition.

These things require different software and apps on the back end and 1 thing we do great is really getting clear on what that person's superpower is and then teaming up the right technology that allows them to serve at the highest level.

06:49 – Gresham Harkless:

I absolutely love that just because I think whenever we're in our business as we're talking about automation and those things, often we forget the superpower is a thing that you can do better than anybody else. So you want to spend as much time doing that and then have everything complement what it is. So I love those 3 pillars because they're evident in every aspect of the business, but it sounds like everything flows from understanding your superpower and how exactly you can share that superpower with as many people as possible.

07:13 – AJ Mihrzad

Absolutely, absolutely. And that was one of the great things I learned. I joined this mastermind in 2013. It's called a 25k group. Why was it called that? Because we all have to pay $25,000 to get in there. And it was a lot of heavy hitters, obviously, investing that much to be in that group of masterminds. And there are a lot of people that are earning millions of dollars, but some were even $10 million businesses, $100 million businesses, they're a few billionaires in the group. And we always looked up to the billionaires, like, how does this one person accumulate this much wealth in one lifetime, and one thing that became very apparent is that people are earning hundreds of millions and billions, they were doing very, very little.

In fact, they would be called lazy by the general public because of how little they worked, but they made really big decisions and they were able to really lead teams of people to execute on their behalf. And it was fascinating and it taught me the power of really capitalizing on your superpower that the wealthier a person is, the more they capitalize on the superpower. They do very little, but they make very big decisions. And they have other people pretty much delegating and outsourcing all the things that make them tired.

08:16 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, that's extremely powerful. It reminds me of this quote I always heard is that, if you want something done efficiently and effectively, give it to a lazy person because they'll figure out the effective and efficient way because they're not gonna waste time and energy as far as doing that. And it's great to hear, yeah, that those billionaires are being able to do that to kind of hone in on what those aspects are and be able to do that. So speaking of superpowers, I like to ask something called your secret sauce. So this is your unique selling proposition, your differentiator. What do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

08:45 – AJ Mihrzad:

Yeah, so, thankfully, I've done a lot of work in this area and I became clear in my secret sauce and that's really inspiring people into action. So I remember being a chubby kid and then becoming a personal trainer. I was very relatable to my overweight clients because I had the same problems they did in the same insecurities, but I had a way of really inspiring them to take action. And when I had my personal training business, I literally had hundreds of before and after transformations.

I was really good at getting people to follow the diet work out and stay consistent. And then when I started doing business coaching, I had the same effect where I was able to inspire people to do videos and sell on the phone, be able to actually film the videos to create the membership portal. You know, so it was really interesting that inspiring people into action, you can pretty much take that skill set into any industry and you'll be able to help a lot more people.

09:34 – Gresham Harkless:

I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:45 – AJ Mihrzad:

Yeah, this is a really unique hack and many people do not know about it, but it's really like an entire philosophy on life. So years ago, I read this great book. It's called Clarity and the author's name is Jamie Smart. And it really teaches you how the mind works and how we create our reality from the inside out. I'm not talking really in a spiritual way, although you could make it mean a spiritual thing, but more along the lines of our thoughts are nothing more than a description of our feelings, right? So our feelings are essentially our thoughts in the moment.

So sometimes if we just observe ourselves thinking, we feel something, it's just our thinking at that moment. So what that means is my entire life shifted when I was able to really see reality through a different lens. Again, I'm paraphrasing a lot of what is found in this book, but it may be far more productive or more present. And it allowed me to have much less bandwidth thinking about non-cess in the past or the future. And I was a lot more in the now. And being in the now, it improved a lot of aspects of my life, my well-being, my energy, and my productivity. And the book is Clarity by Jamie Smart.

10:54 – Gresham Harkless:

Exactly. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:07 – AJ Mihrzad:

Great. The first thing that came to mind was that it's okay to ask for help. And I remember starting out, especially with my online business, it's very frustrating because there's a lot of complicated things you're learning how to do. There's an extreme level of failure. There's so much negative mind chatter because online you're putting out videos, you're launching products, you're doing a lot of things and it fails miserably. For anyone who started an online business or continues to grow an online business, there's a lot of failure and a lot of mind games, and one thing I've learned is You know, I try to do everything on my own as watching YouTube videos and reading books and buying courses and going to seminars I was learning learning learning only falling into analysis paralysis.

And then I realized like, you know, let me ask for help. Let me reach out to people. Of course, not just pick their brain for free. You know, a lot of times I would like to add value to someone's life. And as I add value, then ask for help. Or they say, Hey, thank you for helping me with this. Now, how can I help you? Well, great. I'm having this big problem. And being very vulnerable. I think sometimes men especially, are scared to ask for help. We feel less like a man asking another man for help, but the more asked for help, asking you shall receive doors start to open up.

12:14 – Gresham Harkless:

And so Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So AJ, what does being a CEO mean to you?

12:23 – AJ Mihrzad:

It's a very powerful question. And I think about my past. I came to this beautiful country of America when I was a year old. I was a very poor immigrant. My family struggled financially. We're on welfare and food stamps. We literally came here with nothing. And I grew up very, very poor. And this is a land of opportunity. We're in a war-torn country. There was not a lot of opportunity, but not a lot of freedom. So coming here was the greatest gift my parents gave me so I could live in this country and actually make something for myself, educate myself, learn about marketing and entrepreneurship, and really become a valuable human being.

So being a CEO for me is the ability to create something from nothing, something of value, and at the same time, add value to a society where I have the freedom to start a business and create value because if I'm profitable, that means I'm making something that is valued, that people are putting money in my bank account, right? I'm adding value to the marketplace. And in turn, by doing that, I'm hiring people by having employees, I'm adding value to their lives, allowing them to feed and provide for their families. So being a CEO is a very noble cause. And that's why there's not a lot of them.

There's, you know, people that have to really step through their fears and take a stand and be a leader and say, consistent, you know, being in business for more than 5 years is not an easy thing. Any business owner will tell you, but it's the ability to create value in a beautiful place of freedom. And it contributes back by hiring people and creating amazing products and programs. And at the same time, just contributing back to the world in a really powerful way.

13:51 – Gresham Harkless:

AJ, I truly appreciate that. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic so to speak just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get out of you. Subscribe to your podcast here about all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:04 – AJ Mihrzad:

Yes. I just really wanted to touch upon the early point of me that it's OK to ask for help. And again, right now, I ask for help very easily. And I think about the areas of my life, whether it's my health, my wealth, my relationships, my happiness. If I'm depressed, I'm going to reach out to a friend and say, hey, I'm really depressed. You know, can we have a conversation sometimes just by talking about your problems verbally, discussing with another person? It feels so much better. You know, financially, you know, times are tough. Yeah, the economy is rough. I mean, the entire world is upside down. And if you're struggling, do not struggle alone. Don't worry alone. Ask someone for help.

And you know, you're a very generous person. I'm a generous person. We're very giving. Oftentimes, if someone is struggling, and they DM us, they email us, They want to hop on a call. Hey, we're more than happy to give you some advice or point you in the right direction. And people are very giving. People are far more giving than others expect. So, you know, not being stuck. You know, times are tough if it's in your marriage, if it's in your business, or if you're feeling depressed out of your mind, talk to someone, ask for help. You know, like if you want to heal, communicate how you feel.

15:07 – Gresham Harkless:

I absolutely love that. And AJ, for people who want to follow up with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

15:12 – AJ Mihrzad:

Yes. So my main website is online super coach.com. And on there, I have my live events and I have my webinars, my books, and also I have a podcast, the online super coach podcast for people that want to build a high profit, low-stress online business. And again, if you want to reach out to me, hit me up on Instagram. It's Instagram for slash AJ Mihrzad, AJ M-I-H-R-Z-A-D. Once you start typing those letters, I'll pop up, and feel free to DM me. And if you want a course on building your online business, I also created a free course that shows the fundamentals of getting your first $10,000 per month online, send me a DM and say, listen to this podcast and I'll give it to you for free.

15:53 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I appreciate your generosity, AJ. We will have the links and information shown us as well too so that everybody can follow up with us. But definitely, like you said, I mean, I think sometimes when you're in frustrating times, as a lot of us might be, sometimes you feel like you don't have anywhere to turn, but it's so important to be able to ask for help, to be able to understand that you're not by yourself. Even the people that you might see as successful often have gone through dark periods that have led them to where they are now. So the best thing you can do is to ask. So I appreciate you for reminding us of that as well too, my friend, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:22 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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