I know since moving back to the States, I’ve been getting my arse kicked and, or not kicked enough, I guess maybe is the real point of view. And I’m getting a little bit out of shape compared to what I want to be. So I thought today would be a lot of fun to talk about a really cool entrepreneurial journey.

Someone doing a really cool fitness empire he’s building up. And then also another fellow digital nomad with child type of experience. So everyone, I want you to welcome Brian Keane of Brian Keane Fitness.

Hey Brian, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Brian Keane: A.J., an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on.

A.J. Lawrence: I want to get into like your own journey, but right now you’re in Galway, right? But you were just traveling. Where were you with your daughter?

Brian Keane: Well, I just got back. I was with my daughter in Spain in August, and then I was in Thailand for myself a couple of weeks and then I fly out to africa two weeks yesterday and I’m climbing the highest peak in Africa, Kilimanjaro. And then I’m home for a month and then we’ll see what happens in December.

A.J. Lawrence: Very cool. So let’s get into the fitness journey. Let’s get into the fitness entrepreneur and then kind of weave in this like location independence you’ve been building into this. Cause I just find this so much fun to kind of dive into it.

Brian Keane: Yeah, I’ve been very lucky with my journey over the last few years. So we got to kind of go back in the time machine to about 12 years ago when I started first. So I used to be an elementary school teacher. That was my “job, my profession, my career.”

And I did my undergraduate degree in Ireland in Marketing and Business and then I did my postgraduate in London in the UK to become a teacher. And I walked into my first teaching job. It was very easy for me to get a job. I was male. I was into sports. I literally had a handpick of jobs and I was about three or four minutes, maybe 10 into my first ever day of teaching elementary school, it was a third grade class, so I had 30 7-year old children in front of me and I thought, I don’t want to be a teacher.

This isn’t the career path for me and it was if somebody hit me with a lightning bolt, A.J., at the time. And the analogy I’ve used in books and on social media is it felt like I was years climbing a ladder only to realize it was up against the wrong wall. And I was 22 years of age, I thought, Okay. This is what I’ve done.

I’ve spent five years studying. I have a job. I need to keep this, sunk cost fallacy at its finest. I was like, I’ve spent all this time, energy and money getting qualified. I have to stay doing this. And I came home that Christmas and I hated my first job. I was like, it was so misaligned what I felt like I was supposed to be doing on this world and in this world.

And I came home that Christmas feeling really sorry for myself. And I had a conversation with my mother who was, and still is, my biggest fan to this day. And she asked me a question that I’ve pushed to thousands of people on podcasts over the years. And she said, what would you do for free? And I had never thought to ask that question.

It was never in my head. I always thought, okay, well, I come from a family of teachers. It’s a safe, secure job. It’s the obvious path for me. I’ll do that. It doesn’t matter if I love it or not. This is what I should be doing. And when she put that question to me, I thought, well, I would work in a gym for free.

I love physical exercise. I love fitness. I grew up playing sports, a program in which I designed and did really well, which we’ll get onto later I’m sure, playing Gaelic football, which is like a combination between basketball, rugby, and American football. That was my sport growing up. So I was always into gym, into strength and conditioning, into looking after myself physically and working in a gym was something I would do for free.

And then I asked the follow-up question, okay, well, how can I actually get paid for that? And I looked into personal training and then I went back to London that year. I got qualified over the next 18 months as a personal trainer, strength and conditioning coach, sports nutritionist, and got everything that I needed in terms of education and qualification and accreditation to work in that space.

And for two years, I worked as a primary school teacher during the day and I worked as a personal trainer in a gym at nighttime and at weekends. And then in 2014, I decided I’m going to move back to Galway, which is my home and where I grew up in the West of Ireland. And I said, I’ll give it six months and I’ll try and get this one-to-one personal training business off the ground.

And if it works, amazing. If it doesn’t, I can always go back to teaching. I had a plan B. And it did better than I ever imagined. Within three months, I had a waiting list and actually had to hire coaches and trainers underneath me to clear the waiting lists. And long story short, in 2015, my daughter Holly was born and I decided, okay, I’m going to move this online.

I need more independence of time. I want to be able to spend time with her. I want to be able to travel and bring her with me. And I moved everything online over that 2015, 2016 period, and have been online for the last eight years with courses, with books, with scale programs, with high ticket one-to-one offers, and we built the entire business off the back of a one-to-one personal training side hustle, working as a teacher during the day in London and then working as a personal trainer in the gym at night time.

And i’ve been very fortunate over the years and that’s kind of a long slash short-winded way of telling the last 12 years, but that’s how I got to where I am today.

A.J. Lawrence: I want to kind of dive in but I have to share a similar sort of, not an origin for me, but similar to you. After the dot.com crash, which was early 2000, actually right after nine.

So a year after that, I kind of bounced around some tech companies that we were proceeding to fall apart. 9/11 hit, and it was just like the whole space disappeared. Couldn’t get hired, I was freelance coding. I was doing 20 million part time jobs, started getting serious in a relationship, kid was on the way, about to get married, all that fun stuff.

I was like, I’m just going to become a teacher. You know, New York City had this program. You’ll teach, you’ll be in grad school at night, and the same thing, I had played sports. I had university football, ran track, all that. Plus I had a degree in chemistry, so it was like Science this and that, they went out of their way to make me an offer that was more than everybody was, you know, not that much.

And the day before I was supposed to start, I got a job offer from just a step up from like a scam mill sales tech organization that was like double the amount. And I just remember being like, all right, do good or actually make money to take care, about to have a kid. So, you know, I got out of that crap.

Within eight months I was gone from that really bad tech company, but still it was so funny. I was like, all right, do good, make money.

Brian Keane: There was a dichotomy.

A.J. Lawrence: Yeah, I’ve been there. It was like, I want to do this. Oh wait, wait, all right. So you kind of built this and in 2016 you transition and what I think will be really cool because I think given that 78% of our listeners are American and I think of that 78%, there may be two who actually understand the sport that you have a good portion of your business with.

Can you explain how, you know, I know you have the fitness coaching, you have the community, you have your one-on-one coaching for executives, business leaders, et cetera, but let’s talk just briefly and then we’ll get back to how business people can incorporate fitness, but GAA, let’s talk.

I’ve seen this when I used to play rugby way back in the day. There were some people playing it and I was just like, , it just blew my mind. So, all right, what is GAA and what do you do?

Brian Keane: So Gaelic football, so GAA is two sports, primarily there’s Gaelic football and hurling.

They’re two kind of ones kind of like across and others closer to American football, except we have, similar to rugby, there’s no padding. There’s nothing really to protect you. It’s a very athletic sport.

So when I speak about the program, it’ll make more sense by giving context to how the sport is played. The analogy I gave, it’s probably actually closer if you mix rugby, basketball, and soccer altogether as a sport, they have a baby. That’s the sport.

It’s physical so you’re getting lots of hits. You need to be very physically strong like rugby, but you need to be as endurancely fit as soccer, and you need to have the hand-eye coordination of basketball. Because it merges all these sports together.

So there’s a lot of crossover in terms of skillset. But because of the demands of that sport, the way I got into that market, so I certified as a strength and conditioning coach and a performance nutritionist, sports nutritionist. So I had my qualifications, accreditations in that space. But what I didn’t know then that I know now that helped me was I in 2014 started competing in professional fitness model shows, bodybuilding shows. So think magazine cover. So I was on like magazine covers, things along those lines. That was the space I was in.

And so I left football for two years to compete in bodybuilding, to travel around the world as a professional fitness model. And when I came back and decided after Holly was born, I’m not going doing this anymore. I’m actually traveling too much and I can’t bring her with me because of the way it was set up. I left that and went back playing football at age 27 and I kept getting asked by GAA players, Gaelic footballers that were 22, 23, 24 years of age, Oh my God, how do you build abs or a chest or arms and shoulders like that and get fitter, stronger and faster for GAA?

Because those two worlds historically weren’t merged. And I played a very high level of Gaelic football growing up. In terms of it’s counties and how it works here that you play with your county. So the whole scope of where you play similar to like the NCAA colleges, et cetera, in the US, so it’s your counties you play for.

So I played at a high level and I competed at a very high level in professional fitness modeling. I went professional in that, which meant that those shows that you step on stage, if you won them or came top three, you earned money. So I finished 8th in the world in Vegas in 2015 so I had this kind of weird blend of a sport GAA audience, but also young men who wanted to look a certain way.

And when I was growing up, and I played 17, 18, 19 years of age with these high level teams, I regularly asked the strength and conditioning coaches, look, how do I get a six pack? Or how do I build my chest? Or how do I build my arms? I was a single guy, 18, 19, I wanted to go out to the club at weekend and look better and fill out a t-shirt.

And they would regularly be like, look, that doesn’t matter. Mirror muscles, nobody cares about that. You just need to be stronger. You need to be faster. If I asked the bodybuilders in the gym I was in, well, how do I get bigger? How do I put on muscle? How do I get a six pack? They would tell me how to eat, tell me how to train.

And I would regularly ask, well, will this affect my performance negatively for football? Will it slow me down? Will it impact me and increase my risk of injury? And they’re like, look, I have no idea. So I had a brainwave. In 2017, off the back of all the questions I was receiving, I said, I’m going to merge these two worlds together.

And I created what I call the GAA lean body program. So it’s a body composition, build muscle, lose body fat program, mixed in with strength and conditioning for GAA and for sport. And I launched that program, now it changed everything for me.

Like it literally went and launched as a six figure program overnight because of the demand that was there. And I had a decent reach on social media as well, which helped. And as soon as I launched it, that program just took off. And because there was so many players similar to me who felt frustrated that there was nobody out there speaking to how to get bigger, how to build muscle, how to get a six pack, how to get stronger, how to get fitter, how to get faster altogether.

I started creating content around that online and I started selling that program and it’s been a bedrock of our business ever since.

A.J. Lawrence: No, I like that as proceedingly ex-athlete. No, I still try and work out in a way that is functional, but it is really like there’s two very separate camps very often.

But even when I play old boys rugby, the discussion is really about one, not falling over dead, but then two is like, okay, how can you make sure you’re still keeping up your strength? How can you keep your endurance? You’re not talking about the build and the health. And now there’s all sorts of, you know, it’s like, okay, how can you bring in not just like physically looking sharp and being able to pull, since I have stolen phrases from my kids. I get to be the really cringe dad these days. It’s fun.

But all right, how do you bring that health into a functional capability? Plus the idea that you’re building for the long term? And there’s so much now studies kind of coming in that physical activity especially in certain, you know, with the high intensity, heavier weights, the compound movements actually have a strong mental and emotional impact.

The ability to clear think, the ability to regulate your emotions. It’s really fascinating if you start pulling them all together. So it kind of seems like you kind of hit upon this a little bit early and started pulling this both from different markets and for different markets.

So like, okay, I’ll take from here to give to there, take from there and kind of give over here and took it. So how has that changed? So you started this a while ago, ’16, you started moving it online. The tier kind of creating a structure, actually creating a more of a formal business, but also this a way to remove yourself into more of a lifestyle.

But how has that been changing since that point? You know, COVID must’ve been amazing for you.

Brian Keane: We crushed it in COVID. We were so lucky. Now I always joke that as long as the internet doesn’t fall out of the sky, we’re good. And COVID was a pandemic of people versus the internet falling out of the sky.

And what happened with COVID, I had to hire extra staff during COVID because I literally couldn’t keep up with what was coming in because we had all the infrastructure built. So all the people that had been in gyms, in classes with one to one coaches now were looking for online alternatives. And we had everything built, all the programs, our program, like at the time, the BKF online program, which is our general fitness group coaching and our GAA lean body program were all scaled.

I don’t touch those programs until people come into a group and then I just do a weekly Q and A, which takes about 20 minutes a week. The entire programs are scaled, meaning that depending on the level and what they put in, they get different programs, different nutrition, different supplement guides based on specific positions, based on their weight, based on their height, based on their goal, based on their level.

And there’s like hundreds of alternatives. It took us years to build this out. So when COVID hit, people were just coming in like gangbusters into these programs. And we were very, very lucky in that sense. Over the years, it’s evolved because I have a lot more freedom now, time wise and financial wise, because of things like several books that have done very, very well.

I have podcast that does very well when it comes to- we switched away from sponsors recently into self-sponsors, which was an amazing experiment because we’re now generating more revenue because we’re selling our own stuff and we’ve got automated courses that are evergreen that we don’t touch. They’re literally just set and forget us.

They’ve been created once and we sell them. And then on top of working with high level executives in the one-to-one program or corporate talks, I do a lot of corporate work. It’s evolved where the purpose now is more about mission and serving more people versus the financial game. We don’t really have to worry about money anymore.

That was a massive thing in the early days, probably for the first four or five years, and then it’s just not now. So that financial freedom is a beautiful place to be where you can do things that you want to do with people you want to do them with.

I have mentioned to you right before we went on air with my high level coaching, I have a one in one out. I have five clients at any one time and one has to leave for somebody else to come in because that’s how I like to work. And I work with people that I would work with for free. Going all the way back to what would I do for free, it’s how I make decisions still to this day.

And so it’s changed now more towards mission and service and trying to give back. I set up the business consultancy in January of this year, officially as a separate business, a separate entity, because obviously it’s very good in terms of financial driving, but it’s also giving back because I’ve had amazing mentors, amazing business coaches, and I’ve had people who weren’t amazing, who said yes when they should have said no, and worked with me when they knew they weren’t a good fit. So there’s an element of trying to give back now. So that’s changed over the last four or five years.

A.J. Lawrence: I want to get into sort of like the benefit and how to look at it from an initial point, but let’s talk because you have a bunch of moving parts here. You’ve grown them over consistently.

Besides just the general difficulty of running and growing a business straightforwardly, there’s a complexity level that’s pretty high. You have a few additional moving parts that adds complexity so therefore it takes a little more.

How do you go about resource allocating? Because it sounds like you have some things that are a little more straightforward, easier to run, but they need to be fed more often. You have sort of this higher symbolic thing that’s more just about improving your overall opportunity. It’s very aspirational for anyone who’s not in it.

And that’s that sort of the very high end one-to-one. And then you have the GAA, which is more about keeping you legit and keeping that sort of revenue straightforward focus. So how do you kind of balance your efforts across them and then the resources needed to keep them all fed and happy?

Brian Keane: Beautiful question and a great question. I split everything first and foremost into my drudgery and desire zone, which gives me feedback for everything else.

So everything I do splits into those two zones. So my drudgery zone are all the things that I hate doing that deplete me, that take away my energy. When I make a list of this on a quarterly basis and I come back to it regularly, I try and automate, eliminate, and delegate everything in my drudgery zone.

So anything that sucks my energy or depletes me, I will try and automate it. So in the case of the two scale programs, that’s all automated until the group coaching starts. So I don’t touch that until I have a launch for a program. And then we go into a launch model. What are social media marketing strategy?

I eliminate things that I shouldn’t be doing because we all as entrepreneurs are doing things each day, myself included. That’s why I do it every quarter. Then I’m like, I don’t need to be doing that. That’s actually, especially particularly now with AI, where there’s so many things. I used to type up my own show notes for the podcast and I used to do my own blogs.

Whereas now I get my AI to do all of that through video transcription. So it’s eliminated for the most part. Or it’s delegated. So I have my staff, my assistant, my videographer, my tech guy that a lot of it gets delegated. So stuff I will always ask if a new job task comes in, does this have to be me? And if the answer is no, I will automatically see if I can delegate it to someone on my team.

Instantly, that keeps my energy levels a lot higher because I spend 80-90% of my day in my desire zone. It’s things I love doing, I would do for free, that nourish me and give me energy. Creating podcasts or speaking on podcasts, writing books, creating content, having conversations with my high level clients.

I love my one-to-one clients because they’re self-driven. Like most of my one-to-one’s are like executives and high level people. They’re very self-driven, not necessarily great with fitness and nutrition, but they’re very driven. And when you’re able to align their course or their path correctly, they’re great clients.

So I love speaking with them during check-ins that’s most of my day. And then outside of that, it’s just literally every quarter and every year going, well, what’s the priority? So we don’t have everything running all year round. So the one-to-one because there’s only five spaces means that I don’t even mention that or talk about that unless somebody is about to finish up and then a space becomes available.

And now we have a waiting list for it anyway. So we just tap into the waiting list so we don’t even have to put that anywhere online. The BKF online and GAA lean body program, which are the two group scaled program. One is general weight loss and body composition, the other is the athlete program that I mentioned.

They run two, three times a year. And then when I’m launching them, I promote them online. I promote them on social, on the podcast, in the newsletter, et cetera. So we have a launch based strategy for that. The evergreen courses get mentioned sporadically on different podcasts, different social media.

Somebody will put up a testimony and I’ll share it on stories. Brings in more top of funnel leads for those evergreen courses. They don’t take any of my time. Map them out for two months, shoot them for three days, set them up on the website as an automated course, set the price and then set and forget it.

And then that runs automatically and the same with the book royalties. It’s a mail check money or modern day version of that, where you write the book once and then you get royalties after that. I try and do a lot of my business in a similar model so that I can I have a lot of highly leveraged things that are generating good revenue sources versus things that take my time and would potentially drain me.

A.J. Lawrence: So you have multiple client bases. You have the initial entry point, you try and feed them with additional points depending upon which direction, and then you just keep going. So as you look, do you have sort of like, all right, because you talk about a few times a year, you have this course, that course, this membership, et cetera, come out, you have the evergreen, do you look ahead of time and say, you know, is this part of an annual or quarterly planning? How do you look to sort of figure out, or is it just like, all right, we’re going to do this the same time. Every March we do this, every July we do this. What’s that kind of how to figure out which program and where?

Brian Keane: Normally I do it in December. Another really good question, A.J. I do it in December. So I know for January, even for next year, cause it’d be similar, the scale programs will run in January, May, October, potentially one in November. So straight away, we know those scale programs won during those times.

The one-to-one is one in one out. So that’s running all through the year. So there’s always five clients that I’m working with at any one time. And as soon as one drops out, one comes in, there’s a waiting list and people come in. And the same with the consultancy business, which is separate. I work with five mentees at any one time, and then one has to leave for somebody else to come in.

And that straight away is generating a lot of revenue and you can kind of set your clock to it, meaning that there’s a, we ran off a launch model for a lot of years and I actually changed this after COVID. Was because the BKF online or the GAA, those scale programs were launches, which meant that we might be making 5 or 6K one month and then 40 or 50K another month.

And then it would be like turning on a tap. It’d be low one month because we were doing no launch, there was just a couple of courses being sold or book royalties. And then we do a launch and it’d be 40, 50K. We wanted to even that out. So that’s when I brought the one-to-one back because that keeps everything even.

There’s a steady revenue stream coming in every month. And then we have these injections of cash and capital coming in. And then we just use that to create organic based content on social or podcasts mixed in with paid traffic from social to bring people in. And we amplify and magnify that when it’s a launch period for a program.

A.J. Lawrence: Okay. Quick aside, what are you finding, just to geek out on the marketing side, what’s working for you on paid social? Cause it’s getting crazy out there.

Brian Keane: At the minute. Instagram ads are the ones that are performing the best for us. We do a lot of other ones as well. TikTok, we do a bit on YouTube, a bit with Google AdWords.

I did a lot with podcast sponsorships, which I found refined for brand, but not great for actual sales. As of now in October 2024, we’re getting a very good return on Instagram ads. We actually have two strategies that I’ll run you through both.

One is doing a direct sales ad through Instagram ads so we’re boosting out a specific video. So we’re creating a content and we’re putting the call to action in the description, and then we’re getting people to sign up to the program directly from the content. That cost per click is higher so we run that, but we also have a alternative strategy that we do. That’s sending people to follow the page.

And then we’re doing a direct reach out when they follow and then selling it and building up the dialogue and conversation and nurturing the potential clients from there, which means we get a lot more reach for less money and it’s more hand to hand. But we’re getting good quality conversions from that. So we’re doing a combination of both at the minute.

A.J. Lawrence: Yeah. I always like that. Like you put out good content, get people to follow you and then kind of think because of the retargeting, it’s always worthwhile to have a straight offer. But the retargeting is always going to be longer term and usually better client after the conversion, a higher long term time value on that.

All right, very cool. Let’s talk about in general, you can frame it through the one-on-one or through the group. But I know this and I’ve multiple businesses. I used to laugh in my 20s, it would be like be head down in something, get out of shape, and then like run twice around the block and maybe do a couple push ups and I would drop 10 pounds and get a six pack again.

Thirties, it was kind of like, okay, about a month back in the gym and all right, I would get back. Now the six packs were a little less frequent, but still get there. Forties, okay, I got to do some work. Fifties, it just feels like it’s impossible here.

So let’s, we can frame it on me. We can frame it, you know, just in looking at the ups and downs of sort of the entrepreneurial life which you know. A lot, I understand fully is just the commitment to doing it. But like, let’s talk about how you work with the clients, either through the groups or one-on-one. What’s sort of the progression of getting someone ready to even take advantage of this?

Brian Keane: So we’ll use you an example, A.J., cause you’re probably a decent avatar in terms of what I work with on a one-to-one basis, kind of that 50 plus entrepreneur doing a lot of moving plates, a lot of moving things.

What I normally do, and I’ll ask you this question, is you’re firstly looking at your current baseline. So if I said to you, A.J., right, what does your current workout regimen look like? And I won’t ask about nutrition because that’s a very new, like, we could spend an hour talking about somebody’s nutrition.

But if we keep it on the training side for now, what’s your current training regimen look like in terms of the consistency or the split, how many days, what you’re doing, et cetera. And I can get and give you a gauge from there.

A.J. Lawrence: So for me, it is generally four to five days a week of some pretty active I try and Norwegian 4×4 a couple of times a week, kettlebells, and I try and go to the gym for deadlifts and legs.

So basically, it’s like usually a 20 to 30 minute, every minute on the minute, 30 seconds of swings, alternating with pushups for 20 to 30 minutes. And then if I’m in the gym, it’s a warmup and then usually some form of leg press cause I hurt my back a year and a half ago from bad squatting form, which I knew back when I played American football. My coach would always yell at me from bad form.

Things you don’t learn when you’re a kid. So squats to deadlifts, maybe some shoulders. I think for me is really, it’s the stuff around it. I do sometimes lock in. So it takes a lot of work to focus on getting like 10,000 steps or getting additional aerobic and then sloppy eating patterns because I’m usually cooking for my family, not for myself.

Brian Keane: It sounds from what you said, like the training, you’re doing a very good level in terms of the intensity, the mix, the strength, et cetera. There’s probably nothing there that would need an overall revamp.

Interestingly, something that comes up a lot with men in their fifties, both men and women, but men particularly because it’s what I work with mostly in that one-to-one, is it’s a hormonal balance as well, which is largely going to be down to stress management, nutrition, sleep, et cetera.

So obviously optimizing testosterone is a big, big thing. Actually, when you hit your thirties, but it becomes really pronounced every decade from then on.

A.J. Lawrence: It’s funny that you brought up, because I just did get a test and while I’m still in my range, I went three and a half years ago when the last time I had it, I was sort of mid range for my age.

I’m now at the low end of acceptable, but like little by a thread. And it’s like, okay, yes, I know my sleep has gotten impacted and the food here is not as- I love America, I’m American, but still. So yeah, that is something. Do you talk with some of your clients around TRT or other things?

Brian Keane: If they’re using TRT already, we obviously keep them using it. What I normally try and do is optimize everything naturally first. And if they didn’t decide to go down the TRT route, then I can help them with that. That’s again, well within my wheelhouse.

But I normally try and do it without it first if they’re not using it at the minute. Because there’s a lot of things where we try and optimize first, not things people like to hear because sleep is really difficult as an entrepreneur. Switching your brain off with the family, prioritizing the time, but sleep is your regulator for hormonal balance, cortisol in particular.

And what happens with a lot of men is when cortisol is too high, if you think of testosterone on the opposite side, that cortisol is literally just tapping in and digging into that testosterone. So it’s lowering it every time. So if you’re not sleeping well and that stress hormone is really high, it makes it really difficult.

It’s kind of like running a marathon with a 20 kilo vest on. Like a marathon is hard anyway but doing it with a 20 kilo vest just makes a hard thing harder. Like trying to get your body fat, your lean muscle tissue up when your cortisol is really high and your testosterone is getting lower, just makes a hard thing harder.

So we look at that. Alcohol is another area that we look at in terms of minimizing it. I tend to say to people, and I drink alcohol as well, but within a certain range. Irish, like there’s no way you can’t like, you know, nationality hazards. Like you’d literally be kicked out. I lose my passport and they kick away my citizenship if I give up alcohol. I’m joking. That doesn’t happen. For anyone, it was like, Oh my God. I didn’t realize that was a thing.

But so alcohol is something you have to kind of keep an eye on because of the impact on estrogen, which again, similar to cortisol, impacts testosterone in a negative way. And then just the food, a weird low hanging fruit, which is a terrible example because I’m using that as a metaphor, is most men in their fifties, their dietary fat is too low.

And what happens is when they’re trying to lose weight, and this makes a lot of sense from a nutritional standpoint. A gram of carbohydrate and a gram of protein have about four kilocalories per gram. A gram of fat has about nine kilocalories per gram.

So when a man or a male is trying to lose body fat or build muscle, they’re thinking, Okay, I need to cut back on the calories a little bit. I need to cut back on the fat. When in reality, it’s that healthy fat that helps your body produce that testosterone.

So increasing fat, decreasing carbohydrates in some cases and then keeping protein moderate is a nice nutritional approach for a lot of men trying to balance hormones. And then looking at sleep, looking at stress management, and then putting it all together as kind of a recipe for hormonal balance and body composition change in your fifties.

A.J. Lawrence: So do you sort of suggest, I mean, this gets into all the craziness of the diets. I used to have my whale back with the last company. I sold the agency, we had commercial arm of the Keto Institute. So everything they licensed out to Unilever and all that, you know, the stupid bars and blah, blah, blah, when that was a hot thing.

Do you kind of say looking at a keto, paleo, or low carb, there’s so many variations nowadays. Is that something, or are you just more like, Hey, track what you’re doing and kind of keep it balanced.

Brian Keane: I don’t have a one size fits all. I think diets and nutritional protocols are square pegs into square holes, meaning that certain protocols will work really well for some people and they won’t work well with others.

And your starting point matters. If I have a guy come to me that’s 52 and eating 80% processed food, McDonald’s a couple of times a week, I’m not going to put them on keto because all he needs to do is reduce and minimize some of the processed food, add in more nutrient dense foods, and he’s going to get a positive response within the space of a week.

If I have somebody and I’ve done, because I do a lot of ultramarathons, what I do now is more ultramarathons, endurance races. They’re the kind of the wheelhouse that I’m in in terms of what I do personally in terms of training. I do keto personally when I’m going into a big race, like a 100 mile ultramarathon or a multi-day ultramarathon because it’s really useful to be fat adapted and being able to tap into dietary fat so that you’re not hitting a wall during these long runs.

It’s also really useful when I’m writing a book. And I’ll drop into ketosis when I’m writing a book, because I find my brain is really clear when I’m in ketosis. So it’s a tool in a toolkit, but ketogenic diets for men looking to lose weight and build muscle is like trying to hang a picture on the wall with a sledgehammer.

It’s the tool will do the job, but it’s a bit of an extreme tool for the job. So you might be better with an alternative approach.

A.J. Lawrence: All right. So I would assume someone, and I’m going to make some assumptions and correct me along. So someone comes in, you’re setting baselines, blood work, weight, goal, diet, structure, where do you sort of guide that first step for people?

I mean, obviously it’s always customized but where’s that first general step for most people?

Brian Keane: Nutrition is normally the bedrock and the foundation. It’s always the first thing I look at because training is normally relatively straightforward when you know what someone’s lifestyle looks like. Like if you say A.J., you go, Brian, I’ve got 20 minutes a day, four days a week.

I can design you a program that has 20 minutes a day, four days a week. If you’re like, I can go to the gym for an hour, three days a week or six days a week. I’m like, yeah, okay. I can design that. It’s quite easy to design a training program.

Nutrition, because food never goes anywhere, it’s always there. And there’s a behavioral psychology around food. There’s imprinting and patterns and recognition from certain physical environments, smells, et cetera, that’s working against you in a lot of cases. So that emotional eating is very, even if you don’t have a poor relationship with food, emotional eating is a very common thing for a lot of people.

It’s not necessarily bad, but it is and can be a barrier to progress for some. So I tend to focus on that first and foremost. It also depends on the personality of the individual. If I have a person come to me who’s very type A, who is an all or nothing, just tell me what to do. I’m going to make all the changes at once with them because I’m like that.

I’m like, you can literally revamp my whole life. And if I believe in trusting you and the goal is big enough to me, I’m like, cool, tell me what to do. And I will do exactly what you’ve told me. If you’re somebody that has tried several coaches, programs, plans, groups, and you’ve been unsuccessful and you’ve now wrapped part of your identity as somebody who can’t stick to a plan or a program, I’m going to do baby steps and make small changes week on week that in 8 weeks, 12 weeks, you won’t recognize how you’re eating and living, but you didn’t notice it because the changes were so small.

And that really matters when it comes to somebody’s individual personality type and where their starting point is. Because if you try the wrong approach, a type A person is going to sack you after two weeks. They’re going to be like, you only made one change this week. Good luck, I’m getting a new coach.

And the other person won’t sack you on week two, but they’ll have fallen off track and you’ll spend the next five, six weeks just trying to get them back on track. So it depends on the person.

A.J. Lawrence: Yeah, it’s so funny. I had a business coach, a really good one who used to always say, it’s all about incremental progress, directionally correct. But yeah, there’s some of us, we come to something and it’s like, okay, I need to know more because I know I can do X, Y, and Z. So what else besides X, Y, and Z?

Or I know if I give everyone the whole A to Z directory book, they kind of just sit there and blink. Thank you. Uh, uh, uh, uh, what do I do now? You know? It’s like, okay.

All right. So getting that balance right. Let’s kind of talk like what’s the general, cause look, good health is a lifetime, but usually reworking of bad habits or lack of attention towards health takes more time as I’ve gotten older.

So usually what do you see is if someone is relatively dedicated, let’s not talk the full A list, but let’s not talk the sloth approach. Generally, as you’re looking at this more 40, 45, cause there’s a big difference between 40 and 45 and then again, each five year, but let’s just go to that 45 plus sort of business person, entrepreneur, busy, mindful, multiple commitments, family, life, all that. What’s the general transition to kind of start seeing good health?

Brian Keane: In the context of what they can expect in a timeline do you mean, or do you mean something else?

A.J. Lawrence: Working through the different thing, if they’re in the middle of the road, they’re more of a Goldilocks approach. Do not hit me every day. Hit me, hit me. That lovely.

Like I’ve had coaches that was amazing back when I played sports. The more they yelled, the more I loved it. And then there are other ones who are like nice. And I’d be like. And then there were other ones that worked. It just depends, but like, okay, let’s say someone neither too hard nor too soft in working, what’s kind of that expectation and then the effort level from them to achieve at least a good health?

Brian Keane: Yeah. I would say an exercise protocol of strength training in some capacity, three to five times a week. So we did three, four or five times a week, depending on the capacity that you can have. Nutrition, I like an 80-20 approach. So that 80% of your food is nutrient dense, very in alignment with whatever goal you have, and then 20% is free. So if you want to have a few drinks, a couple of beers, some chocolates, some crisps, some cake, whatever it is, or potato chips, you can have that and factor that in.

You use supplements that supplement what you’re missing in your nutrition. So that if you are, in the case of, if you’re male and your zinc levels are low, which is a precursor for testosterone, you add in a zinc supplement.

You might add in a vitamin D supplement if you’re in a country like Ireland or the UK or Scotland, where your kids are that, where the boys are that you’re going to have your vitamin D in the winter so that you’re again, optimizing hormonal production because you’re not getting it from the sun. So that trifecta of training, nutrition and supplementation, not even taking sleep into consideration are the things that will lead to a general increase in health over time.

And then sleep, again, is very, very individual to the person. And I always explain to people like seven to nine hours, eight hours is what we all hear. And I’ve had experts, I had Nick Littlehales on my podcast, who was Cristiano Ronaldo’s sleep coach. And he speaks about like the myths around sleep, the studies around sleep. I’ve had Tom Coleman on as well who was Conor McGregor’s, the UFC fighter’s, sleep coach. So people that are very high level athletes.

What we can take it as entrepreneurs, cause we’re high performers just in a different field. We challenged it into work as opposed to the high end performance as an athlete and trying to get that eight hours is a decent gauge. It’s the same as 10,000 steps, like 10,000 steps just a random number. It’s a 1992 Olympic marketing platform is where that number came from, to try and get people moving for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.

And it kind of just took on a new lease license or new lease of life in the last 5, 6, 10 years. But again, it’s a decent number to hit. And your sleep is the same trying to get 8 hours of sleep. Now I get my clients and I’ve spoken about this in books to focus on quality of sleep versus quantity. I’d rather you have 6 hours of uninterrupted high quality sleep than 9 hours of broken sleep. We are waking up regularly during the night for whatever reason.

So that are some of the best practices that most people can apply in some shape or form that don’t challenge you to give up everything in life, food, family, nights out, commitment, holidays, work. You can integrate that into most entrepreneurial lifestyles with some fine tuning here or there.

A.J. Lawrence: No, definitely. I find myself, if I’m not careful of my sleep, it drops quickly towards that six hour mark. And then if I work, I can get it to seven and then it takes work. It’s like getting to eight, just, you know, as a pop. But when you’re talking this 80-20% rule on food, this is sort of like, Hey, be healthy and have a cheat day? Or is it just sort of scattered through or does it depend on the person?

Brian Keane: It depends on the person. It also depends on the food relationship with the person. Like if somebody is coming to me and they’ve got poor food relationship and they’re using language like cheat day, I’m straight away trying to rewire that relationship with food in terms of reframing it and calling it a free meal, food meal that’s off plan. Explain to them that depends on the starting point. And when it comes to nutrition, then I always say it’s in alignment with whatever the goal is.

So most diets, you can’t go too wrong given the advice, regardless of what school you’re in, whether it’s vegan, carnivore keto, intermittent fasting. You’ve got a strong tribal pull to a dietary group, but there’s nothing wrong with that. We’re tribal creatures. And if that’s your thing, that’s your thing.

Reducing back your processed food and increasing your whole food, your real food, is good nutritional advice across the board. And when it comes to an 80-20 approach, I normally get people to, once they know what their diet is, like if they’re on a keto diet, intermittent fasting plan, paleolithic diet, vegan, carnivore, it really doesn’t matter. It’s square pegs into square holes. Different dietary protocols work for different people based on underlying issues, based on motivation levels, based on personal preference, etc.

If you’re a foodie, you’re going to hate fasting for half a day. Like you’re going to want to eat. Or you’re not going to go on a carnivore diet if you’re someone that loves to cook because there’s only so many ways you can make steak and chicken. So it depends on personal preference too. And that 20% then is very much down to what do you want to have? How do you fit in that balance?

So I think again with nutrition, splitting it up into black and white in a topic that’s really and just having a little bit of critical thinking now I’m aware, as an entrepreneur running a business, you want to outsource your thinking. That’s literally why I have a job.

It’s why I have a business because people want to outsource their nutrition, outsource their fitness, outsource the training. I’m the same. I’m learning Spanish at the minute. I don’t want to have to go and figure out what’s the best place to learn Spanish. I just hired a teacher that I got recommended by a friend and I’m like, okay, you tell me where to learn and what videos to watch and what podcasts to listen to. Like I’m outsourcing that and people do the same with me with nutrition and fitness and that’s okay too.

So you might not want to have that critical thinking. You might not be a big as a food geek as I am, or I love looking into the nutritional science and I’ll spend hours looking at new research around something because that’s what gets me off in terms of gets my kicks. I love that.

But that’s my wheelhouse. If you’re not into that, you might want to coach. And that might not be me. There’s great coaches out there. Great nutritionists. It’s about finding who’s going to be a good fit for you. That will just tell you, look, do this, this, and this. Eat this, this, and this. And that’s the thing that that person needs.

A.J. Lawrence: One more question about this, just because I’m fascinated. We’re going to kind of pull this together definitely. If I can’t do it in here into the show notes. But what would you say, cause you’ve talked about getting directionally towards the eight hours, directionally towards this 80-20 nutrient dense to sort of whatever, you’ve talked about sort of the increase in physical activity, weight bearing stuff, what would be sort of the metrics you would suggest? So length of sleep, tracking quality of sleep, is it the amount of workouts or is it the type of workouts? And then the food, would those be your sort of four key things to sort of try and improve?

Brian Keane: Yeah. And I think the best feedback is I always tell my clients and I love, like I have a WHOOP but I have a Garmin and like, I’m fan of oura rings and all the things that track the data. I’m a massive fan of these tech fitness technologies that can support people, but your body’s always going to be your best indicator of how you’re feeling.

So if you’re feeling energized, if you’re feeling like moving, if you’re feeling like your brain’s not falling asleep at 3 PM, if you feel like it’s time to go to bed at 10 or 11 PM and you’re sleeping and falling asleep and staying asleep, that’s feedback.

So the devices will support that. They’re like supplements. Supplements will support what you’re missing in your nutrition. Fitness devices can help you if you’re not in tune with your body yourself, because you’ve learned to disconnect from it, which happens with a lot of us in the Western world. And that’s okay.

You use that to kind of analyze, well, what’s my sleep quality like with my oura ring or my WHOOP? What’s my nutrition like with MyFitnessPal in terms of the nutrition that I’m tracking? What’s my training intensity like in terms of my heart rate variability with my Garmin, for example. And you can use that to support you.

But ultimately, you want to get to a place where there’s a little bit of intuition that, okay, I woke up today, I feel like a million dollars. I’m going to go smash a 40-minute high intensity kettlebell workout. Or you roll out of bed another day because you had a super stressful day. Maybe you had a fight with your partner before bed, you roll out of bed and go, actually, I’m just going to go for a walk this morning because I am shot. I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus and you become more intuitive with it over time.

A.J. Lawrence: All right, cool. I like that. What are you hoping to do with your entrepreneur? Obviously there are empires to build for you. There are more fitness magazines, but maybe move you to the business magazines. What is going to be success as an entrepreneur for you?

Brian Keane: It’s an interesting question because it ties it back to what I mentioned earlier. There’s a quote and I think it’s by, I think his name is William Clement, about not forgetting the flowers at your feet when you’re reaching for the moon. And when I’m growing a business and growing my brand and growing everything that can help and serve people, I want to make sure it doesn’t come at the cost of either my relationships to the people closest to me or my own personal health and wellness. And I regularly course-correct on things if it’s negatively impacting either of those areas of life over an extended period of time, not over the short term.

I think there’s an argument for micro-imbalance for macrobalance in certain areas with your training, with your lifestyle, with your relationships. But overall, if I’m losing that, it actually takes away from what I’m looking to do in the world in terms of helping and serving people.

Paradoxically, I also live my entire business life off the mantra of trying to make the world a little bit better because I was here. And one of the ways I do that is through books and podcasts and social media. It’s a way for me to get that message out. There are things I’ve struggled with trying to help people, trying to serve in a meaningful way. So business for me over the next 50 years is creating a business I never want to retire from.

I had Robin Sharma on my podcast who wrote The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, The 5 AM Club amongst several other books. Great author, and he had a line that the secret to wealth creation is longevity. Just stay in the game. Stay in the game and you’ll compound your wealth positively over time.

Charlie Munger said the same. Warren Buffett says the same. And I’m day to day, month to month, year to year focused on creating a business I never want to retire from. And that’s my strategy for winning. And as long as I’m jumping out of bed every single morning, because I’m spending 80-90% of my time in my desire zone doing something I would love to do, would do for free with people I love working with. I think that’s the recipe for that.

A.J. Lawrence: Cool. Well, I cannot wait to see more what’s going to happen with your journey. This has been very, very cool. What’s the best way for people to learn about you?Briankeanefitness.com? Where should they go?

Brian Keane: Amazing. Thank you so much, A.J. I love this and I love the work you’re doing. Like I am literally your avatar when it comes to the podcast too. So getting so much from this and from the content so thank you for putting it out there for people.

For anyone that wants to follow more on me, briankeanefitness.com is the website. The Brian Keane Podcast is the flagship show, so those who want to listen to some of the world’s leaders when it comes to health, wellness, fitness, The Brian Keane Podcast. And then I’m on all the social media channels but Instagram is probably the one we spend the most time on, hence the ad strategy I spoke about earlier.

So brian_keane_fitness, but I’m on everything. So it’s very much a case of the way you like to consume. If you like podcasts, check that out, check out the website and maybe the Instagram, if that’s something that’s going to be more beneficial for short form.

A.J. Lawrence: We’ll have all your URLs on the show notes, in the email when this episode comes out, and of course in our socials.

Brian, thank you so much for coming on. This was a lot of fun. Thank you very much.

Brian Keane: A.J., the pleasure was all mine. Thank you so much again.

A.J. Lawrence: All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening today. Please, as always, if you haven’t subscribed, go to the website, subscribe to the newsletter. That way, when we have cool guests like Brian come on, you’ll be the first to know.

All right, everyone. Have a wonderful day. Talk to you soon. Bye bye.