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Relentless Podcast

Tony Federico 2: How to Eat the Elephant and Make Your Idea a Reality

It’s time for episode 18 of the Relentless: Real People, Real Results, Real World podcast!

In this episode I welcome back Tony Federico, personal trainer and fitness manager, Paleo Grilling author, Paleo Magazine Radio podcast host, Paleo Fitness Magazine editor, avid blogger and Instagramer.

Part one of our discussion can be found here, and this time around Tony and I dig into topics on the business and entrepreneurial side of the coin.

LISTEN UP!

SHOWNOTES: 

  • How to maximize your personal productivity.
  • Being the director of a fitness center and managing his own clients along with employees, customers, and facility demands.
  • Constructing an experimental multi-media e-book presenting recipes in a fresh manner.
  • Tracking everything with Google Calendar.
  • Dividing a day between “maker” and “manager” activities and crediting the 4-Hour Workweek and 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. “I do want security, I do want a steady paycheck, I do want a base, a foundation – that really comprises my managerial functions and my salary job – but I also want to have something that’s moving my life in a new direction creatively. That keeps the manager stuff fresh. The two feed each other.”
  • “It might sound like that guy is interested in being busy for busy’s sake, but that’s not the case. It’s enriching to have these activities because it keeps me growing.”
  • Acknowledging an early phase as a bad employee and improving by asking the question: “What happens if I really apply myself?”
  • Embracing responsibility and looking for new opportunities within his fitness profession.
  • Learning how to manage: “First and foremost I had to learn how to be a good employee.”
  • Balancing two forces – employees feeding information up with big bosses feeding information down – as well as having customers on either side.
  • Simple rule for success: “At least do one thing each day that’s moving the ball forward rather than get caught up in patching holes.”
  • Step-by-step to manager: First improve as an employee, second embrace new opportunities to get your feet wet, third when you become a manager understand that you’re starting from scratch.
  • The importance of remembering what it’s like to be an employee: “You have to keep your empathy muscles strong…as long as you can remember that you’re always dealing with people and it’s really just about relationships…you have to have compassion.”
  • Defining empathy: “A willingness to step into someone else’s shoes and to understand their reasons even if they’re not my reasons.”
  • Dealing with tough employee situations and respecting the individual to generate positive results.
  • Being a strong leader by empowering others.
  • Introducing Powerful Personal Trainer, a co-production, idea, and product to help other personal trainers.
  • “I learned 90% of what I use each and every day on the job.” [not in college or in a certification program]
  • Providing people a condensed version of our collective experience. “It’s a much more personal project than almost anything else that I’ve done because my day-to-day life is training.”
  • Idea phase vs. production phase: “It’s easy to have ideas…everybody has world-changing, million-dollar ideas…the hard thing is to take that idea and turn it into a physical reality.”
  • Match your idea to your preferred lifestyle.
  • “Your idea is a vehicle, and it’s going to take you somewhere. If you see it through do you like where it’s taking you?”
  • Expanding on the process of creating Paleo Grilling – writing, promotion, review copies, radio, tv, podcast, and blog appearances. The writing process doesn’t end when you put your pen down.
  • Breaking down your overwhelming list of 20-30 things into simply this: what is your single next step? “Do a manageable bite at a time and trust that enough bites will eventually eat the elephant.”
  • Key components of a podcast: sound (mic), recording program (I use Evaer to record Skype conversations), editing program (I use Audacity), and publishing platform (I use Libsyn).
  • Key components of a book: concept, outline, draft, rewrites and edits (sometimes keeping space constraints in mind), refinement, (possibly) photographer, layout, and (possibly) printing.
  • Two broad options for a book idea: “Is it your personal passion or is it looking for an audience to speak to their needs? It’s a your needs or their needs proposition.”
  • Why books are often a team effort.
  • Why published books don’t usually make you rich: “By the time it actually gets done, the author is just one small piece in the overall picture.”
  • The hidden benefits of having a book: credibility, pay negotiation, speaking engagements, etc. “It’s a powerful thing to put on your resume.”

RELENTLESS ACTION:
“There’s something that you can do today that you can take advantage of to learn and to grow from. I challenge you to do that thing today. That’s what it’s all about. It’s getting enough of those under your belt. You’re going to look back 10 years from now and you’re going to say ‘Wow, I’ve accomplished a lot just by doing a little each and every time the opportunity presents itself.’

FOLLOW TONY FEDERICO:

DO ME A FAVOR, WILL YA?
If you like what you hear on these episodes, please subscribe to, rate, and/or review the podcast on iTunes.  Thanks for your support!

Relentless Podcast

The Fine Line Between Grind and Rest Your Mind

It’s time for Episode 13 of the Relentless: Real People, Real Results, Real World podcast:

LISTEN UP!

State of Relentless: 

Relentless Main Event: 

  • The dark side of being an entrepreneur – when caring, taking on more responsibility, and persisting after your vision overwhelm you.
  • Employing three strategies – internal adaptation, external adaptation, and systems – to lessen your burden.
  • Fighting the urge to run and finding a way through the pain.

Relentless Actions: 

  • Mind: Removing social media phone notifications and batching it like your email.
  • Body: Taking advantage of the beautiful Fall season while it’s here via hikes and outdoor activity.
  • Business: Seeing the opportunity in the holiday season, which is a common ground for many.

Relentless Ask:
Help our youth out. Make a tax-deductible donation to the at-risk youth benefited by Steve’s Club.

If you like what you hear on these episodes, rate, review, and/or subscribe on iTunes.  Thanks for your support!

Relentless Podcast

Tony Federico: Reversing Rock Bottom, Appropriate Exercise Dosing, and #FatButter

It’s time for episode eleven of the Relentless: Real People, Real Results, Real World podcast!

In this episode I welcome in Tony Federico, personal trainer and fitness manager, Paleo Grilling author, Paleo Magazine Radio podcast host, Paleo Fitness Magazine editor, avid blogger and Instagramer.

LISTEN UP!

SHOWNOTES: 

  • Reminiscing about my appearance on Tony’s Paleo Magazine Radio podcast and his frequent mentions on the Relentless Roger and The Caveman Doctor podcast.
  • New York Times best sellers, successful business owners, etc. – “Nobody is really that different from you…Podcasting has demystified a lot of people and put everyone on a single platform. We’re all human beings and it’s what you choose to do that really makes a difference.”
  • Professionally helpful resource: The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.
  • Relaxation oriented resource: Jon Ronson short stories.
  • Growing up as a chubby and nonathletic kid: “I had this underlying sense of not really being in control of myself.”
  • Experiencing rock bottom: “In retrospect that was a great and necessary thing because it emptied me out…I had to face refilling myself from scratch…It was an opportunity to say ok, starting today what am I going to do that’s going to start building up the person that I want to be.”
  • Asking the important question “What else is there?”
  • Exploring Eastern literature and religions: “They planted seeds of hope and responsibility…I began to take actual responsibility for the state that my life was in.”
  • Focusing on single positive actions: eating a salad, going for a run, not smoking a cigarette, having a productive conversation, etc.
  • The unseen journey: “What people see today is the end result of a full 10+ years of really deliberate personal transformation.”
  • Referencing Deepak Chopra as a resource contributing to his turn-around for blending science and mysticism.
  • Adopting a long-term view: “Eating a salad with low-fat ranch dressing from a supermarket might not sound great, but it’s certainly better than the Hot Pocket I was eating before. A lot of people get caught up in perfectionism, and that may have been one of the things that threw me off. I really began to appreciate progressive approaches towards improving health.”
  • Boiling down Paleo to this: “Why don’t we eat better quality food?”
  • Avoiding militant approaches: “There are some people who take a real alarmist approach to nutrition, and I’m just not going to do that…The stakes aren’t that high to feel guilty if we had a slice of pizza…on the whole emphasizing good tasting, nutrient dense, fresh, whole, real foods is going to be a more enjoyable way to eat.”
  • …while also holding yourself to a standard: “I do think some discipline is helpful. For example, everything you eat doesn’t have to be a 5-star level intoxicating food experience.”
  • Maturing as a trainer and differentiating between those who are willing to change and those who are not ready.
  • Understanding the amount of exercise he needs to do to maintain his personal fitness standards.
  • Tony’s weekly workouts:
    • 3-4 30-minute (at most) strength mixes of “push, pull, squat, lunge, plyometric jump…yes, bicep curls and triceps pushdowns.”
    • 2 30-minute functional core classes per week (teaches and participates)
    • 3 runs – 30-50 second sprints with 1+ minute of rest, 1.5-2 mile tempo run, and a relaxing run
    • 10,000+ steps per day
  • Workout baseline for the listener:
    • 10,000+ steps per day
    • 1-2 days/week – intense (90% effort) conditioning performed safely (ex: rowing, running, biking, etc.)
    • 2-3 days/week – primal movement patterns (pushing, pulling, squatting, pressing, lunging, twisting) broken into circuits – 3 supersets of 8-12 repetitions per exercise
  • Being aware of your overall workout quantity: “Like medicine exercise has an appropriate dose. It’s a law of diminishing returns. Up to a certain point you have improvements in health outcomes, whether that’s longevity, disease, mortality risk. If you keep exercising, you hit a plateau. If you keep exercising, it actually goes in the opposite direction and now you have an increased risk of mortality.”
  • The risk of using exercise as a form of entertainment. “If you are deriving your daily charge of socialization and fulfillment from kicking your ass in the gym…that can be a slippery slope.”
  • Teasing our upcoming podcast and audio/workbook product for the personal training community – Powerful Personal Trainer.
  • Looking eerily similar to his Dad when they’re both fit: “Genes definitely matter. Don’t get so hung up on the specifics of programming. Bust your ass really hard one day, moderately hard a couple days, and move around a lot every day.”
  • Current vice: #fatbutter.
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T-Fed and I at a PaleoFX 2014 farm dinner (photo by Basil Gravanis)

FOLLOW TONY FEDERICO:

DO ME A FAVOR, WILL YA?
If you like what you hear on these episodes, please subscribe to, rate, and/or review the podcast on iTunes.  Thanks for your support!