Keep Fitness Simple - Ren Jones | Unshakable Habits Podcast

Meet Ren Jones
Transcript

Ren Jones is the fitness coach that fed-up moms come to after the gimmicks, restriction, and quick fixes don't work.

He is the owner of Fitness Jones Training, an online coaching business where he specializes in coaching overworked moms by giving them simple, short workouts and uncomplicated nutrition strategies.

In our interview, Ren discusses how seeing several family members suffer because of poor health inspired him to leave the sales/finance side of corporate America in 2014 and start a career in fitness.

Intro
The right habits puts you in control of your health, relationships, mindset, and more. But most people lack the tools to stick with those habits long enough to see results that is about to change. Welcome to the unshakable habits podcast with your host, habit change specialist and speaker Stephen Box. Join us each week as experts share their stories, experiences and insights and give you the tools to build unshakable habits so you can live life on your terms. It's time to take your habits from unsustainable to unshakable.

Stephen Box
Welcome to the unshakable habits podcast, I am your host, Stephen Box. And I'm joined today by Ren Jones from fitness Jones training grant. Thanks for joining me, man.

Ren Jones
And man, I'm so happy to be here. Steven, I appreciate you having me, man.

Stephen Box
Absolutely. My pleasure, man. Man, you got a great story of transformation. But before we jump into that, I do want to remind the audience about the unshakable framework, they were going to look at your story through, because that's what's going to help people take what you did and apply it to their life. So that was evident, they gotta have a vision, not a goal, goals are about outcomes. visions are about what you want your life to look like when you get there. For us to get there, you need some skills, and you're either going to have to develop those skills, or you might already have them and you might not be tapping into them. So we're gonna figure out which skills redhead to develop to make his transformation. And then finally, we're about to await actions rental to develop those skills, because those actions are the third part of the framework. Sound good ran. Oh, man, I love it. I love it. So I want to start your story off actually in the present day before we go to the past, okay, because because when people look at you, now, they're gonna see Rin Jones, the fit guy, they're gonna see, the guy who hosts a podcast are gonna see the guy who posts all this meaningful, insightful stuff on social media, they're gonna see the successful business owner, they're gonna see the guy who coaches other coaches, they're gonna see all these things that Ren does, and they're gonna be like, man, I can never be like Ren. Ren is like, the greatest thing ever. Right? And I didn't even talk about how you were once on Showtime at the Apollo. So, you know, people are going to be looking at this and going, man, how can I possibly be Rin. But the thing about the thing I love about your story, man, is when we start with your story, people are gonna see that you weren't always this successful, you may have success areas in your life. But there were a lot of struggles and a lot of hardships that you had to go through to get to this point. And I hope that gives people hope, because they can see that no matter where they are, that there's that opportunity for them to grow and get to the same place where you are now.

Ren Jones
Yeah, I love I love that. You know, like I said, first of all, I'm just happy to be here, man, and get the opportunity to talk to people, and you're absolutely 100% on the money, man. You know, a lot of things on social media look like they happen overnight. But for me, just just from that little area where I was trying to make it in the music business. You know, it'd be no Showtime at the Apollo today. Probably talking about, I don't know, 2022 years ago. Which is ironic, because I'm only 25 years old. But it was, but it was that job. 47. You know, it was that long ago, man. And it's easy to look like an overnight success on the internet. Because people are catching you at a at a snapshot in your life. Right? There's no context on the internet usually, like you get the person where they are now. You haven't been First of all, there was no internet when I was in my 20s let's just start there. There's no such thing. Not as not as we know it today. But yeah, man, I you know, I'm happy to start in the now Steven, you know, Coach clients, you know, I coach coaches. I coach coltness coaches also for fitness. Do a podcast. You know, I've written a few articles for a few different publications. I got an article out there for Ace right now article for the personal trainer Development Center. You know, I've been able to contribute to a few books. You know, I haven't written a book yet but you know, I've been able to contribute, you know, Doom through colleagues. Um, and, and I really love what I do man like, like, at this point in my life. I absolutely can't imagine doing anything else. But, you know, like you said the hard road to success, man. You know, I'm here for the ride today.

Stephen Box
So let's take, let's take it back to those humble beginnings. Yeah. So talk to talk to you about where were you at in life, when you really get this vision to move into health fitness and trying to change people's lives?

Ren Jones
Yeah, man, man, that's a great question. So that's probably why you're a podcast host cuz you ask great question. So, so I was in corporate America, man, you know, my background was in business. I graduated from school, with with business with business, GRI. I was working at an insurance company on international insurance company. And, and I would say, sort of a sales trainer, a sales manager, I was running a few offices, man. And, and I was just, for lack of a better term, just hating life. Right? Just, you know, working 1213 hours Not that I work less now, but 1213 hours for yourself and 1213 hours for somebody else, as I'm sure you know, box, I call him box, by the way, guys, so if you hear me say box, I'm referring to Steven because because we're homies, so as you know, about, you know, it's different when you're working for yourself, man, but I was hating it man, stressed out, you know, heartburn in the mornings, you know, queasy stomach in the evening, just total stress ball man. And I was trying to, I was trying to build like a business in under the business I was working in it was one of those deals where you could recruit people to your to your your sales team for insurance. And, you know, you get you get higher, you get ranked higher, higher, almost like multi level marketing, but it was legitimately an insurance organization where I could build my own office up. So I was working on that man at that at that point. And like I said, I was just totally stressed out, man, you know, I had dealt with a few situations with loss of family members. And I and I know, you probably want to circle back to that. But I got to the point where I was like, and he sort of here's what a vision came in. For me, I got to the point where I was like, if I'm working this hard for somebody else, and waiting for them to pay me what I believe I'm worth, why can't I just work the same amount for myself, earn more income, you know, if I'm going to be spending the hours, why not spend the hours on myself. So my vision was to sort of release myself from what I felt like, were like the shackles of corporate america influenced influence people in a positive way. But also with prioritizing whatever time I had left on the planet, like, so my overall vision was, I can do the same thing I'm doing for them for myself, and I can read my own rewards. And that allow me to direct my influence where I wanted to go to pot to impact people in a positive way. But using my methodology, doing it my way. So I guess I've sorted overall vision.

Stephen Box
Yeah, you know, I was I recently joined clubhouse, and I was checking out your profile, because I straight stoled your profile, you should have just seen I mean, like details and everything. I told you, I was on Showtime at the Apollo the whole Miami affiliate, if you didn't, yeah. But the one thing the one thing that stood out to me when I was looking at your profile, was you talked about your family and how you know, you have people who get sick, who, you know, unfortunately passed on. And you say that one of your motivations for getting into the health field, in particular, was Did you want it to become the person that you wish that you could have been for your family when they needed you?

Ren Jones
Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, one of the things that I do as you as you know, Steve, and one of the things I do is I talk to coaches all the time, or around the world, and when I say coaches I mean fitness and wellness coaches, nutrition exercise, about their own business. And one of the things that we talk about again, you're very you're very knowledgeable about this is sort of that unique selling proposition. what it is that's different for us and, and the why behind the demographic that we work with as a coach. And one of the phrases that I often use with these coaches when I'm talking to them about helping them try to pinpoint who they want to work with, is sort of think about a time in your life when you need it. Something along your own journey, and then go back and try to become that thing that you would have needed. And for me, you know, getting into the details of what Stephens alluding to is, you know, I lost my older brother Rodney while I was working that corporate job that I talked about, actually, Steven, I was six months into that corporate job. When I got a call from home that my big brother Rodney had a had a heart attack. He had a massive heart attack. It was fatal, he died instantly. And that sort of set me on the path of recognizing what time is like because literally and I don't know if I've ever told this particular part of his story, Steven, but his here's his wife, my sister in law, Joanie, she went into the shower, to take a shower. While she was in the shower. My brother was downstairs. Yeah, it's sort of like a man cave downstairs in this house. And Joanie son called, she had been married before she had an adult son. So her son, Kenan called Ratan, he took the message, he went up to this shower, you know, the bathroom bill. He said, Hey, Johnny Keane is on the phone. And she said, Okay, tell him I'll call him back. And he was like, Okay, my brother went back down. Just Chow said, Hey, I want em down. She got into the shower, a wife and she got out of the shower, a widow. And man, you know, that affected me in a way, not only the fact that I lost my big brother, but that story, man, how instantaneous life is in terms of switching things totally. Like her entire life, changed dress, and mine changed drastically in in, in the time it takes to take a shower. So my mother who had been disabled many years before that, she had a stroke while I was in college. She was living with my brother and his wife at the time. When my brother died, of course, my sister in law was grief stricken. My older sister Robin lived in the same city with her husband. So my mother moved in with them. I know we had a conversation before we started saving, you're giving your mother great care right now, which is awesome. You're, you're an upstanding young man in every way. But so my mom moved in with my sister. Well, four years after my brother died, my sister drank, got in a car, hit a tree and died instantly. My sister's husband, who was a dialysis patient at the time, he had kidney failure, stopped going to his dial, it's just refuse it at a grief died 90 days to the day after my sister died. So I'm living in the city, you know, about 150 miles away from my hometown. I'm in an apartment, trying to run this business that I'm stressed out about, you know, my mother and her brother, my uncle are in the same city. My aunt was there from time to time. So my mother goes into extended care because she's very two children. At this point two adult children. Both my brother and sister died at age 50. I'm 47. Now by the way, I'm a dancer jig when I hit 50, man. So so so my mother goes to his extended care. And I'm going back and forth from the city I live in to the city where my mother is, you know, to visit her regularly. I'm failing at work. Because I'm super distrito I bury two siblings while I'm trying to build this business. Super demanding boss, toxic environment.

I ended up losing my, my apartment. I get evicted. I lost more than one vehicle had vehicles repossessed. And, and and now as I'm going back and forth, trying to see my mother borrowing cars, rental cars, whatever, whatever I can do. You know, sitting with my mom and I see as I see it, a commercial about national academy of Sports Medicine. I'm literally in the extended care facility with their Washington football on Sunday. My mother love football. She was a Pittsburgh fan. You know, I don't condone that. But that's, that's what she liked. So I'm sitting and watching. And it's like, this commercial is talking to me, man. It's like a sitcom. It's like, have you ever considered being a personal trainer? And I was like, Yeah, but you concern about the costs involved in certification. I was like to call says a concern for me. You know, you would you like to pay overtime, you know, equal payments. I'm like, Yeah, I would, you know, we'd call this 800 number, bro. I call the 800 number from my mother's hospital bed. And, and that sort of led me into that into that space. It was it was March. So I enrolled in like December. My mother died February 29 2014. March 17 2014. I took my test and pass exam. bra cried all the way home from the exam. And I've been in this business ever since and what I needed at that time to circle back the long way. Taking the wagon trail back around to your question is what I needed at the time was I needed somebody For my mom, particularly before she had that stroke, somebody, you know, charismatic, obviously incredibly good looking. That goes without saying somebody charismatic sort of easy going, that would have gotten my mother to move a little bit more than what she did. She wasn't an obese woman, but she smoked a medical professional, she was stressed all the time, could have gotten her to move a little bit more than she did not take away the foods that she enjoyed eating. And, and, and been able to dedicate herself to health a little bit. So my USP became, I helped moms over 30, you know, get in incredible shape without restricting foods and without spending hours in the gym. So I became, you know, as you alluded to in that clubhouse, while I became the thing that I would have needed at my lowest point, because my mother had that initial stroke, probably eight, seven or eight years before my brother died, but part of his stress was related to the stress of taking her taking care of her. And my brother was a softy man, he was a mama's firstborn son, like, statue or hip, you know, my sister with addictive personality, alcoholism, I felt like, you know, health intervention could have helped there to, you know, exercise nutrition. So, that that's sort of that's sort of the rough edge of me coming into this business, through losing family members through evictions at some point through, through, you know, having cars repossessed, I know what it's like to see my own tail lights on the car going down the street, as I run out of my front door. And, you know, it's not it. It's not, you know, it's it's a forgettable experience. It's something that you want to forget. But yeah, that's that's sort of how I came to this place, man. You know, again, great question. Thanks so much for asking that.

Stephen Box
Yeah. And that's, that's the thing, man is I love that you are so willing to be open and honest about that, because and you notice when you coach, other coaches, I know you see this so often, we are so afraid to tell people about our struggles, we're so afraid it's gonna make us seem incompetent, or that people are going to think they were not worthy of, you know, helping them or whatever the case may be. And I think it's so important that we get more people. And that's one of my motivations for starting this podcast. Yeah, I want to bring on people who are super successful in life who've done amazing things, and show that they're not walking around with caves and S's on their chest. Normal people who have been through real ish, real Israel,

Ren Jones
like, you know, I don't know, how many coaches are going to be listening versus, you know, just people that are just listening for the inspiration of what I know you bring to people. It's one of the reasons why you're one of the elite coaches that we have in this industry, you know, working with working with an organization like precision nutrition. But I want to tell you guys, it's like if you've never heard the phrase before, it's a true phrase that people buy based on emotion, and they justify it with logic. Well, in the case of coaching, people buy based on your humanity, and they justify it with your credentials, like my credentials, and I'm sure you can speak to this box, my credentials have never gotten someone to hire me to be a coach, my personhood has, and then they'll say, oh, and you also, you know, an certified nutrition coach, certified trainer. So if there are coaches out there listening, particularly in our industry, but in any personal business, in any idea, the lawyer or financial planner, like people need to understand your humanity in order to be able to resonate with you. And then when they when they're ready to quote unquote, hire you, then you've got credentials to backup why, you know that it supports the emotional connection that they're feeling for you, but man don't operate outside of your humanity possess that's the that's the equal that's the differentiator differentiator right box like that's no one else is what makes us worth hiring effectively.

Stephen Box
I mean, absolutely, man. I mean, when you think about, if I go to one person's website, and they're certified and something, and I go to somebody else's website, and they're not. Most people assume that I'm going to automatically go to the person who's certified route, if all else is equal, then yes, I would choose the certified individual over the non certified individual, right, the person who doesn't have the certification, if they tell me a story, and it sounds just like my story, right? I'm like, they understand what I'm going through, they can solve my problem. And the other person is just as like vague, trying to like help everybody out. They're not sharing any of their story. They're just talking about like, oh, fat loss and or whatever. I'm not going to hire that person regardless of what certification they have. Because I believe the other person has the solution to my problem. Absolutely. And that's what it comes down to. People need to know that you understand the problem, and you could solve it.

Ren Jones
Yes, yeah, you based on where you get. So you guys listen out there Box, just say he just, he just solved 95% of your marketing problems just then and ways to just rewind what you said and keep listening to it, print it out, put it on your mirror, like, you've got to resonate with the people that you're serving. And if they understand that there's more commonality with you, maybe even if there's more commonality than there are credentials, you're much more likely to get you're going to be sought after. Because people need to know your story, man, like it's there's just no way around it. That's a great point Box. I love that man. I

Stephen Box
think I might have stole that one from you too. If possible.

Ren Jones
Am I and I again, I'd be offended if you did not take it. Really? I don't want you I don't want you paying attention. Any other coaches out there just just me. Oh, self self centered, narcissistic coach, when everybody vanishes to me. I'm the center of the known universe. That's not true.

Stephen Box
I won't I won't tell you that I've been cheating on you with other coaches then. Oh, man. They're different fields though. Different field. All right. Okay.

Ren Jones
All right. Cuz I almost said a bad word almost said a swear word, man. I'll Don't make me do that. Try to be good.

Stephen Box
So going back to your story, man, you went to you saw this commercial, you called a number and you go and get certified. Yep. So now I know for me, my journey through the fitness industry over the last decade plus has been a wild ride like yeah, I'm not where I am today is not where I where I started my fate, fitness and nutrition. When I started fitness was the only thing I was doing. It was literally 100% of my approach. And now I can say the fitness and nutrition accounts for maybe like 10% of what I hope people do. It's such a small percentage, because I understand the bigger picture now. So kind of walk us through the skills that you had to develop along the way.

Ren Jones
Yeah, man, I love talking about skills, man. But I love talking about action, too. So I'm, I'm sort of I'm sort of excited for the last part too. Because as you as you know, you're trying to if you want if that's easier for it's, as you know, action is where it's at, man. So, so skills first. So because of the demographic that I started to work with, which was which is moms effectively. So spoiler alert, I'm not a mom. Second,

Stephen Box
second interview over I

Ren Jones
shut this thing down, and I'm out. I'm out. That's it. I'm done. Are you like when those angry stars and walk off the set? Oh, that's it. I'm done. So But second, I'm not even a parent. Right? So how do I relate to this demographic? Well, I'm the son that dealt with the some of choices that their mother made. Right. So so the first skill I had to develop was I had to learn the language of the demographic that I don't belong to. Like, I don't get to talk to moms a lot. So I had to start fighting and this is where social media becomes becomes helpful. And I guess this intertwines with the action a little bit because I knew I had to develop the skill of speaking a language that this demographic of people was was speaking. So as an actionable item. I went and got out, went out and got a few certifications. one that comes to mind immediately is girls going strong. Our friend Molly Galbraith wrote a phenomenal book about strong women lifting each other up. So I started following their page. I started I got into a group for coaches that they have. And I just listened man, you know, my action item in terms of developing the skill of the language of the people I was dealing with, was just listening, started reading things like oxygen magazine, whether it's good, bad or indifferent, you know, the jury's out on what publications are good for what I started surveying and sampling, the few clients that I had that were in that space, right, listening to them, having exit interviews, when I left my programs, just learning all I could soaking up the language of that population, because the developing that language was a skill that I needed. And I put my foot in my mouth a lot a few times along the way, you know, using language that I did not know was sort of just generally not complimentary. of the other group of people that I was working with. Calling women females, they and they would say a female what, because female doesn't describe the individual female denotes you know, the gender. more technically the sex The whatever it is, you know, learning learning things like not complimenting them on how they look, it's just never right to do that. If they've lost weight, because I don't know if they've lost weight because they're because there's an illness, I don't know, if they were choosing to lose weight. It denotes that somehow they were less valuable before they last me, like learning all the subtle nuances and the complexities of speaking effectively, and also empathetically to that to that group that I work with. And that was a skill development man, I had to really listen a lot more actual listening was was the thing for me. So one of the skills we've learned in language, another skill was learning the anatomy of physiology, the slight differences between, as you know, as Dr. Stacey Sims says, who's sort of an expert on menopausal athletes. Of course, that means women's specifically, you know, women are not just small men, like so I had, I had to develop the skill of understanding the differences in physiology and anatomy hormonally that women have and again that that took me to another certification. So I worked through Girls Gone strong pre and postnatal certification. And I'm working through their level one, you know, any women mission right now being being content that

are listening to audio books about the subject, specifically, of women's anatomy and physiology, the change of perimenopause to postmenopausal like so my action item there of developing the skill of understanding the differences, physically was a lot of reading, certification processes, you know, audio books, reading articles, consuming everything that I could in terms of that in terms of a demographic, and then I had to develop the skill of sales and marketing, right? Because Box you and I know what a big part of that is of our business that is, and it's not something you consider when you want to, quote unquote, help people, you know, whether it's fitness or nutrition, or mindset, which is most of what we do at this point, like, like you said, Yeah, there's a little fitness and a little nutrition, most of us behavior change mindset. So so I had to develop the skill of, of marketing, selling, branding, my business, right, otherwise, nobody can find you. And the action item, there was, again, a lot of reading more coursework, we both been through the online trainer Academy. That's, that's done through the personal trainer Development Center, teach us how to do business online, specifically. So you know, that overnight success, it boiled down to like, like boxer said, you know, maybe a decade worth of learning and maybe 10 years of overnight success. And every time somebody asked me, you know, you know, sort of what your vision, what my vision was, what my goals were, I would always say, I'm five years away, I'm five years away 10 years, 10 years later, you know, I'm telling people, I'm about five years away, right? I just, I just sort of built everything on the fact that it's not going to come quick or easy. So those are some of the skills and actions that I had to jump into. And that's another great question, man. I love that.

Stephen Box
So you said a couple things in there that really, I think, are worth pulling out and showing people in some different context to add on one thing, the first thing you say that really popped out, this is one my unshakable keys in our conversation is, you don't praise people for an outcome. Right. And, you know, this is something I've known for a while now, you know, having been someone who studied behavior change and understanding that we want to praise the behaviors, we want to praise the actions actually lead to an outcome. If they're positive behaviors, we don't want to praise an outcome because we might be reinforcing in a negative behavior. Absolutely. Actually, somebody somebody posted something on social media. The other day man on Facebook that I saw, they gave me even a new perspective to this, and I'm sure you can appreciate this is this was somebody who had a gastric bypass surgery, and they lost all this weight. And they said that when they were thinner, they kind of put some of the weight back on now. But when they were thinner, the worst thing to them actually, with all the people came up and told them how great they looked and how they've seen the most healthier and all this other stuff, because it made them feel like they didn't look great before. Absolutely,

Ren Jones
absolutely. 100% man and that's and that's, that's a cautionary tale of, again, why you don't praise the outcome. You just, you don't know. And I understand it, right. I get it. It's instinctive human nature is something that we are We feel like it's being very pleasant to the person that we're interact interacting with. And that's just lack of training. Like we don't, we don't develop a skill for this. THROUGH THROUGH THROUGH effort and through learning. We just sort of do what we know to do based on what we've seen other people do. So, Hey, man, you look great man. Oh, have you lost some weight? Now, you look awesome. And it oftentimes immediately does make you feel like, like, there was something wrong with you before, it's hard to take that compliment. You know, in terms of what you said, about praising the outcome versus praising the habit, you know, what that looks like, sort of in real time is a way to go, you lost, you lost 10 pounds last month, way to go. Versus great job you got, you got all your workouts and that you intended to do last month, and you were so good about checking in for your nutrition. Let's keep that going. You know, in terms of, you know, kids, it's the difference between saying, You're so smart, versus you're a hard worker, you know, because saying you're a hard worker allows the child to continue to work hard, you know, at every level, because it's going to get more difficult. Same as smart sets this sort of ceiling, that if they get into a situation where they can't Excel, they feel like it's fundamentally an identity issue. I'm just not smart enough versus on not working hard enough. So you know, box boxes, a master of sort of behavior change, you got to be because he works with precision nutrition, they're all about that. But it is important to lean into the behaviors and reinforce those things much more than the outcome. And that's what I did in the context of my own life, man. You know, I went from the point of getting, you know, a view running down the street behind my car, not a nice 98 Acura Integra silver, had a little rear spoiler, you know, running behind that car down the street, to having savings that will sustain me for years. And it wasn't the outcome of having the savings. It was the behavior of every time I get paid. 10% goes towards a credit card bill 10% goes into savings for me. 10% goes to donate for tithing. I'm a preacher's kid, Sue me. But 10% goes to my church. Oh, like those behaviors leads you to places where you're where you're benefiting? I think I think James clear and Jonathan Goodman would love another James clear reference. I think James clear said that. good habits make time your ally. And bad habits make time your bully. So that's that's a great point that you may box.

Stephen Box
Yeah. Yeah. You talked about the the James clear quote, the other one that I love is that your you don't fail to the level of your your habits you fail to the or you rise to the Razzle or whatever. Yeah, the idea is when you have good systems in place, you're successful. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I learned that lesson actually, early in my career. I remember reading the book, The E myth. Yeah, I read that book, too. Yeah. And that's what got me hooked on the idea of systems. And when you understand me, and really all habits are is systems. That's all they are. That's all they are. It's just behaviors and systems. That's it. So something you pointed out in there that I think people miss sometimes, right? Especially in the moment, because let's be real, when you are in that stressed out job like you were when you were working a corporate job, when you're trying to build this business, you get so focused on the outcome of what success looks like, especially when that success is not internal, when it's not your values that you put out there is the exploitation being put on you by others, you can get so focused on that outcome. And this applies to weight loss, job promotions, anything. We are so focused on out on the outcome itself. You do not realize all the negative things that are happening to you. Right in when you finally do realize the negative things. Our first instinct is not to reflect on them and grow but it's there to try to get away from them as fast as humanly possible. Oh, yeah. And you mentioned like you know, watching this you know, car not Did you remember the car at all? 1998 silver Acura Integra coupe. No, I don't remember. Yeah, you you remember watching this car go down the street. And what that did for you, was it taught you to say you know what, I never want to be in a situation again. So I'm going to put some money back each month so you develop a good habit. Yeah, cuz you had that hardship. Had you never had the experience of washing your cargo down, you might still be loose with your money.

Ren Jones
Absolutely, absolutely. Man, that's, that's, that might be the best point of the whole, whole episode like, so,

Stephen Box
we turn this into a financial seminar right right.

Ren Jones
Now I'm Tony Robbins. So, you know, for for the folks listening out there, what Box is saying effectively is, you know, stuffs gonna happen, right? It's just going to like, nobody gets an easy ride here like I don't care. You know, even even people that are born into wealth are going to have a problem. money's not going to be the problem. But you're going to have some problems no matter what, you have a couple of options like like he just like Steve just said, you can run away from it. Right? Try to get away from it. People, people exercise away from it. People drink away from it, people smoke away from it, people shoot needles away from it. Or you can, as we say, in precision nutrition masks, you can rest with the discomfort, right? You can learn from it, and make a new set of choices. But there's always an education in the middle of that situation, that you can choose to increase your intellect, or you can choose not to. and choosing not to has always been super beneficial for me, in the long road. It's awful. Like, it doesn't feel awesome. But man, you can't run it, there's, there's nothing that I've experienced that you can run away from forever. You know, it's just, you just can't man, he's so. So you just jumped down in it. Get in that discomfort. And you decide that you're going to make some new choices, and you just stack some habits up just that build a process and follow the follow the process out of the hole. That's a great point Box. That that needed to be said.

Stephen Box
I appreciate that man. Yeah, the ramp. One thing that has come up over and over in multiple interviews that I've done is that in order to create unshakable habits in your life, you need a support system, whether that's a spouse, a best friend, professional coach, mentor, whatever the case may be. Everybody needs support. I know, especially as men, we think we can do it all by ourselves. Absolutely. You know, you can't guess. No, no, no one has successfully done it on a

Ren Jones
even Batman heading is sidekick, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Batman was highly dependent on Alfred, by the way, in addition to Robin, people don't talk about that much. But after he got him out a lot of stuff,

Stephen Box
I really I really think is alphorn as the sidekick,

Ren Jones
right? Robin, just a tagalong Alpha really is a guy you need to you need a guy in the chair, as they say,

Stephen Box
yeah, so come talk to us a little bit about because I know you do this, you know, as a coach for both people in the fitness and health area, as well as for business coaches. Hmm. So talk to us a little bit about your experience on the other side of that what, what kind of challenges do you see that people have when they don't have a support system? So they're just coming to you? They're just starting to get that support? What what are they missing out on before they get that?

Ren Jones
Yeah. So the first big problem with not having support is the immediate sense of isolation. Right? And, and when I say isolation, I mean, you will believe that you're the only person struggling with fill in the blank. And that's really very isolating because you you turn it inward, you say, and you'll start to you'll start to use language in your own mind. Like, why can't I get clients? Or why can't I build a business? Or why can't I get in shape? Or why can't I stop consuming so much sugar? Why can't I stop this? So in the absence of support, that's like, Man, that's, that's text in your own brain. You got to get around other people that are that have dealt with the same situations that you've had to know that it's not a youth thing. It's just a, it's just a bat to skills, right, Steven? Like it's just a skills thing. You know, you do not yet have the skill that you need to get to where you're going. But the shocking thing is, there are people all over the world that that are very, that are at various levels of the same problem that you've dealt with some that are yet to experience some of the things that you've had happen that you can mentor mentoring feels great when you're working through your own problems. And obviously some that are in front of you that have solved most of what you're about to go through. Having support helps you to not feel so isolated. The second Peanut support does is it allows you to sort of take a step back, and sort of have the out of body experience and be a little bit more accurate, and how you're seeing your own situation. Because we can tell ourselves, we're doing everything, I'm doing everything right, and I'm on top of it, and it's just not working. That's usually not the case. And I and again, I know Stephen can speak to this being being a precision nutrition certified coach, it's usually not the case that you're doing everything that you think you're doing, like, you know, and I'll throw out this this scenario, Steven a, tell me, if you've had this experience, you get a new person, right? And they say, I don't think I eat that bad. And I'm doing I, you know, I'm doing everything right. And I just don't know why I can't, whatever the goal is, and you tell me, if you had this habit, Stephen, you start to get a journal in, or you starting to work with them over a month, that their response to, to, to obligations is sporadic, right, they don't get back to you in terms of checking in, you start to see a list of the things that they're eating, and it's, you know, three iced coffees from natural 12 for a total of 1500. You know, liquid calories, you know, didn't eat all day had no vegetables, you know, binge on, you know, Twizzlers, and pop. Hey, this is a wine.

Unknown Speaker
Heavy.

Stephen Box
Yeah, your your internet broke up just a little bit. But I Oh, and I cut the gist of what you're saying. Basically, they're when they come to you their impression is that is not huge things, right? It's not as big as it is. So it's, you know, what, hey, you know, I'm looking over your food journal, and I see a couple things, we can definitely discuss it like, Well, you know, I understand what my losing weight because I'm not eating that much. You know, I just had a couple of coffees and 600 calories appears on

Ren Jones
the 1200 calorie coffees before I ate out of the vending machine at work. You know, you know, before I had a, you know, 1500 calorie McDonald's extra, like, so having support, having support allows somebody outside you to sort of get a an accurate context of what's going on. This works in business, it works in relationships, it works in everything, like having some trusted support around you, that can take a look for you. You know, you go you go mentally blind to things right, like how we say you go nose vine, like gas, or stinky trash in your apartment. You know, after a while you don't even smell it. Somebody else comes in and Oh, god, what did you kill in here? What something's dying in here apart, Eli? Oh, man, I can't smell it. A lot of times when you're in the skin, these change processes when you have that vision, like Steven sounds about when you're when you got to develop those skills, when you taking those actions. You can't see where your vision is lacking sometimes, or where your skills need help, or where you're inactive sometimes. So having people around you support so that keeps you on task, man, that's, that's a that's a really important. That's a really important question, Stephen to ask yourself. And it's, it's, it's brilliant that you brought that up in the context of developing those those shakable habits, man,

Stephen Box
I'm gonna, I'm gonna add something to your answer, though, do it. And I know, and I know, you just didn't think about bringing this up. But I know you're gonna agree with it. Having a coach or a mentor, especially someone you hire, who doesn't have a personal connection to you, because trust me, anyone who's ever tried to lose weight and had a spouse, and your spouse is trying to support you, but sometimes their support is saying you don't need that. Right? It is not received well, right? Absolutely. you need you need an unbiased third party to give you that bad news. Absolutely. But here's the thing. Not only do you need somebody to tell you when you need to course correct. But you need somebody who doesn't have a personal interest, somebody who you can take what they tell you at face value to rile you what you are doing? well. Absolutely. Because we don't believe ourselves when we say we're doing something well. And we don't believe people who are close to us because we think they're just saying because they love us.

Ren Jones
That's exactly right. So true. And we we met man, that's probably the biggest part of the change process is being able to isolate what you may think is a small victory. But victories don't come in quantities. They just they just come to victories, you may think is a small victory, your inability to isolate and gravitate towards those wins as you're going along the route to success. It's a big part of A big part of why people sort of quit, you know, yeah, it's easy to see what you haven't done. Humans are hardwired to do that evolutionary response like, it would have paid off well, for us to come out of the cave and, and marvel at the fire we made for 20 minutes, you know, you'd likely get killed by warring tribe or eaten by a predator. So we're always looking for what's wrong. That's evolutionary, it makes sense. Now that we are in what we could call a civilized society, right? And the jury's still out on that, but that we're in a civilized society that doesn't serve you will, because you'll be so hyper critical of yourself. You'll talk yourself out of a process that you're actually winning as you're going through it. You'll talk yourself out of it by just isolating everything is not right yet. So yeah, you're right, Steven, I absolutely do agree with that. And I'd absolutely forgot to bring it up. Hiring a coach is okay for everybody. Not only is it okay, I highly advise it for everybody. Both Steven and I have had a multitude of coaches as coaches to help coaches through coaching in some cases, you know, you that's, that's a big thing. Like, if you don't have the support around you, the brilliance of this time of life, is that there are all levels, all levels and tiers of coaches that will fit into whatever type of budgetary constraints you have. And I mean that run it ranging from no costs to you know, 10s of 1000s of dollars, obviously. But yeah, great point, man

Stephen Box
report. And Ren is actually one of my coaches, I mean, it's almost impossible to get on a schedule anymore, which

Ren Jones
is so ironic, because when I'm in precision nutrition group, asking questions about how things operate pro coach and the, you know, some of the software that we use in our nutrition coaching, guess what, guys, Steven ends up being one of my coaches. So it's just, it's just what great coaches can open the door to get great coaching is what great coaches do across the board. There's nothing odd about that, or weird about it. The best coaches you'll ever meet in your life, are being coached constantly, by probably a team of other coaches. And that's absolutely normal.

Stephen Box
And it's not abnormal. As a matter of fact, the highest performers usually had the most coaches

Ren Jones
at 100%. One of them said, we got to normalize that man. Yeah, normally, coaches

Stephen Box
have coaches. We gotta we got to normalize this I idea that none of us are perfect, and that we all have room to grow. Absolutely. Well, I've got I have two coaches that I work with, in the speaking world, who are both World Champions of public speaking, right? And guess what happens every time that they get ready to do a presentation? they consult with each other. Right? Why? Because they know they need coaching to. Absolutely, and these are guys that are world champions, they're guys, we're in a speaking Hall of Fame in a steel ask for help with the thing that their Hall of Famers for. Right. Right. So you know, that's, I mean, if you if you've reached that level of success, and you're still asking for help, why would anybody else think that they've reached a point and then no longer need to ask for help? What an offset? Yeah. So I just want to kind of back it up real quick to your story. And then I'm going to give you a chance to final word this. All right. When you look back at your story, and you see all the things that and I'm bringing this up, because you mentioned how it's difficult for us to sometimes see those successes, right? If you look back at your lowest point when you saw that commercial at that point, and I don't mean to Robeson on you, that's all right. You got a job you hate. Right? you're stressed out? You can cars repoed, you've lost your apartment. Yeah, you're having to drive back and forth. You've lost family members. Your mom is sitting here in the hospital and you feel helpless to be able to do anything by her situation. Right? It would have been the easiest thing in the world at that point for you to say, I'm a complete loser. I don't deserve to even be around. I'm absolutely useless to everybody. Absolutely. Instead, you took that initiative to say, You know what? I'm going to go out and have a positive impact in the world. I'm not going to let me beat this down. Absolutely. And it's one of those things, man, honestly, the first step is you have to become aware of what's going on around you. And you have to get that vision for what life could look like. Man, we want to get that vision for what life can look like. You start taking action towards that vision when Rins signed up as a nasm, certified trainer, it wasn't just about, oh, I'm going to be a certified trainer. It was about the impact. So every day, I'm sure there were times you struggle, it's not an easy course to take. Absolutely. And when you were struggling, you weren't sitting around thinking about how you won't get paid $75 or $100, an hour as a personal trainer, whatever, not at all, you were thinking about the lives you're going to impact and the actions you were able to take, you could always link back to what did you want a future you to look like. And that just goes into really what our whole conversation is being, don't focus on the outcome, focus on becoming a person that you want to be. One, that's what it comes down to. So I'm now gonna let you talk that because I know that if anybody can talk, what I just say is,

Ren Jones
so here's, here's my sort of my philosophy for life, over all our work with the understanding that that life is finite, it's not infinite, right? I consider us all to be dust on a coffee table. And at some point, the universe is going to look down and say, we need to clean that. And the giant hand of the university is going to wipe us away. And that's going to be it. And I don't mean that in a morbid sense. I mean, that in a sense of awareness. You know, I saw a video with Gary Vaynerchuk. If you're not familiar with him, some people love them. Some people hate them. It's not important. But he's very well known on social media, in terms of business, and, and, and sort of, for lack of a better term motivation. And a lady rolled up on him. She said, Gary, I love what you do. You know, I see you're on your way somewhere else. Can you give me free words, that'll motivate me, he looked at he said, you're gonna die. And for me, that was conviction. Now, I heard that many, many years after my situation. And I had that understanding many years before I heard it from him. But that's effectively the truth, man, like, I did not fight billions of my brothers and sisters, to fertilize that one egg to get here to the planet, to then decide that I was going to be averaged. That makes no sense. If that's, that's just bad math, right? That's, you know, how do we get here and then decide out of out of winning the ultimate race to get to existence, that we are going to be average now. Now, we can't do things. Now. I'm incapable. Now I don't have the skill set. That's nonsense. So one of the reasons that I got one of the things that pushed me into taking that next action, and Steve is absolutely right. The only action I had afforded to me at that time was calling that 800 number. I was like, Okay, this is something that I can do. One of the things that pushed me in that direction was number one, I felt like it was disrespectful to the people that poured into me to get to that point, and then decided that I was going to quit, right? And it didn't make sense. You know, my brother wasn't going to introduce me to exercise. Originally, my sister was going to introduce me to comic books. I'm a comic book junkie, I started drawing comic books. And that got me sort of interested in the form associated with that being muscular, drove me to fitness a little bit more. And God knows my mother poured every good thing into me that she had, you know, working long hours as a registered nurse, sending me to college, you know, being a human being my support system. And at that point, I felt it was disrespectful for me to cave. After those people who are no longer here poured into me, I became the extent of my mother's legacy, my older brother and older sister didn't have any children. From my mother's line of family, I am the last descendant I am the extension of her legacy. So number one was, was the fact that, you know, I wanted to be purpose number two was the fact that I wanted to fulfill the legacy of the people that poured into me. And third, it always felt good to help. Helping was therapeutic for me. As I was working through grief and grief counseling. I found out that when I was able to help people, instantly improve my mood, like it, it was good therapy for me. So sort of the trifecta, the trinity of those three things, was why I decided to rest into the discomfort and take action and not run from it not abuse myself in the many ways that people abused themselves. So if you're out there and you're going through difficult situations, recognize the fact that you have a choice. Every time something happens to you, you're immediately presented with a choice. And if you make a series of choices that are more in line with what your intention is, your vision is. those choices will compound interest over time. The only thing that does not compound interest is a zero deposit. So I just simply found a way to find a penny or a nickel, or a dime, put it into the bank that is my life and allow it to compound and over after 10 years of compounding, the interest has grown me to the point where I am today. So that's sort of my, you know, my two cents on the total subjects even thanks so much for making space for me to, for me to share a final thought here or two.

Stephen Box
Yeah, absolutely, man. And you know, one thing I do want to just kind of highlight out of what you just said, because I know this is a question that comes up quite often with people is, we talk about discomfort, and we talk about struggle. And I think they'd sometimes it can get a little bit confusing, because at the same time, we tell people don't do the overly hard, we want to keep things simple. I know that you sign off pretty much every social media post. Wait, let's keep it simple. It pretty much everyone Yep. And people might get confused, because they might say, Okay, well, what does it look like to keep it simple, and to not over stress myself, but also still be able to push myself and know what discomfort is? So how does someone know when that discomfort is for growth? And how do they know when that discomfort is bad?

Ren Jones
Yeah, that makes sense, man. So you know, when the discomfort is for growth, versus it being bad when when there's a logical next choice that you can make that pushes you forward. Like, if you're doing a lot of things, and you're not seeing any results you're writing, where you make a little bit too, in full choice is all you need. because fundamentally, when people, when people don't, when they don't gravitate towards come a consistency, they will reach for complexity, like, if you're in a rush, you're much more likely to try to complicate things, for the purposes of moving faster. The The issue is, when you move faster, it makes things almost immediately more complex, slow down, take the next choice, gravitate towards that, and make the best next choice that you can make, instead of trying to do everything at once man. Change has a tendency to favor evolution, not revolution. So when we try to revolution our lives in big ways, usually, it's not successful, usually we fall off that proverbial wagon, just look at the next choice. And as Wilson said, lay that brick that one brick as perfectly as you can. Don't think about the wall. Just think about that one brick. You know, it's a lot simpler. If you do one thing at a time, the time is gonna pass anyway. You don't want to get into a process where you're short, cutting your way to a long term error, right? Speed compromises everything. I just don't, I don't like speed. I just like to do what the what's the next thing in front of you do it the best way that you can. And that'll help you understand whether you're adding unnecessary stress to your situation. Versus taking the very next step out. That makes sense the way I explained it.

Stephen Box
Yeah, I can. I think we gave him maybe some eight and just kind of say, if you are getting stressed by your actions, they're probably the wrong actions. Probably the wrong actions. It just feels uncomfortable. Keep going. Can you on the right path?

Ren Jones
I agree with that. Yeah, yeah, that I agree with that wholeheartedly. This stuff, man.

Stephen Box
So that's just the short version of what you just did. What I rambled into it. Yeah, very good. But it was in there. It all came from you. So somewhere in there somewhere. So rad, man, appreciate you coming onto the show today, man dropping nuggets left and right people will probably have like pages and pages of material and notes that they've written down hopefully. If they need more help if they need to get ahold of Rin Jones How do they do that?

Ren Jones
Man, you can find me all over the social media. Internet interwebs fitness Jones training. So on Instagram, it's just at fitness, Jones training on Facebook, fitness, Jones training you know, those are my those are the best two outlets. If you feel like you just need to go to my website is fitness Jones training calm. I don't use my website a whole lot but but it's there if you want to go take a look. But social media is probably the best place to find me. And if you want to email me, you can email me at Rin Jones at Fitness Jones training calm. So I've tried to keep pretty simple man. You know, that's, as I say, Oh, my tagline is on social media right?

Stephen Box
Yeah. Exactly right.

Ren Jones
Yeah, let's No No need is switching. Let's keep the let's keep the contact simple too. But I love to hear from you guys. Steven can tell you man, I'm I'm always up for some questions or some discussion or whatever you got going on. Don't Don't hesitate to reach out to me. I'll find the time to interact with the humans around me. I feel like I'm on purpose to do that. So I try to make sure I take every attempt to take advantage of the opportunity to interact with the with with all the humans out there. Steven, thanks so much for having me, man. It's awesome.

Stephen Box
I definitely definitely appreciate you coming on today. And I will just tell y'all, if you if you want follow Ren on social media, you will get a good dose of wisdom mixed in with some comedy and lots and lots of pictures of reinjured can t

Ren Jones
definitely Academy definitely gonna have some copy. We're sure how many makes the world go round man.

Stephen Box
It really does matter really does. Rand appreciate you again for coming on to the show today. I do want to remind everyone that you can subscribe to the unshakeable habits podcast by going to our YouTube channel unshakable habits calm slash YouTube, or you can find us anywhere that has your favorite podcast. This is Stephen Box reminding you that you are not meant to be average. You are meant to be unshakable.

Unknown Speaker
Thanks for listening to the unshakable habits podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others post about it on social media or leave a rating and review. Do you catch all the latest please subscribe at unshakable habits comm slash YouTube or on your favorite podcast app. You can learn more about unshakable habits at unshakable habits.com Until next week, be unshakable. Bye friends.