This week’s episode is a little different. Kevin shares some personal reflections, a bit of unexpected news, and what’s been on his mind lately.
This week’s episode is a little different. Kevin shares some personal reflections, a bit of unexpected news, and what’s been on his mind lately.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hello listeners, I hope everyone is doing well this week. This episode I have some big news for everyone. The news is that, after this episode, there will only be four more where I will be the ‘Get Fit Guy’. I would like to take this episode to state my reasons for this decision and then I hope that I can leave everyone with four really good episodes to listen to before I sign off.
I don’t have a hierarchy of reasons here. I am not listing these in order of importance; it is just in the order in which I am writing them out.
The first reason is probably what I will call ‘morality’ and ‘value capture’. Everyone that has been listening has heard me yapping on about philosophy often enough, so it shouldn’t be a surprise it has influenced my thought process. I am going to go plant my flag now and say I am a utilitarian. That is: the greatest happiness for the greatest number is the measure of right and wrong. I am a pretty objective person and I can say that for sure, the episodes I record now are simply not as good as the ones I did at the beginning. That’s not because I am not trying or that I am not interested in sharing things. It is quite simply what many people with an online presence experience and is called ‘creator burn out’. Fitness is a pretty small subject area, actually. When you consider that when we talk about fitness and training, there is usually an element of nutrition and even psychology, the subject area shrinks significantly when we remove those. This network of shows has a nutrition show and a psychology show. Whilst no one has ever directly said I can’t possibly talk about those things, it's implied. If the Nutrition Diva show started making episodes about squatting, I would probably think she needed to stay in her lane. So, it's no different for me. I don't think I should be making recommendations about things I don't know a huge amount about. I have mentioned this in the show before. I simply can’t come up with brand new things to say about getting fit every week. The subject area is too limited. That’s why some hosts of other shows end up going off the rails and down rabbit holes talking about crystals and sunning your sphincter. It’s the need to come up with something new week in and week out. I am not the kind of person who is going to suddenly leave my own belief system to create content for likes and listens. When I was able to see that this was resulting in episodes that to me were not saying anything new, then I had to take the utilitarian view. Simply, the audience will benefit more from a fresh perspective than from me repeating the same stuff over and over.
This brings me to value capture. I have spoken about this on the show before. It’s based on the work of an American philosopher at the University of Utah, C.Thi. Nguyen (see show notes for the spelling). Value Capture is where the sophisticated value system of a person or a culture is captured by an external entity. This external value capture replaces a quality driven set of values with a quantitative data set instead. This is because an algorithm cant judge success on happiness or connection an audience feels to a host. An algorithm can only deal in data like download figures, completion rates and so on. I would argue that one person listening to 50% of an episode and having a life changing outcome (for the better) is more meaningful than 10,000 people listening to 100% of an episode and then an hour later they can’t even remember what the episode was about. But reporting systems from podcast platforms can’t provide that data. So we end up as a slave to the figures. We end up selling out on our values to make content that boosts downloads. This allows a network to ask for more from advertisers and drive revenue. It’s how the system works. I consider value capture to be immoral, so again, I don’t feel like I can continue because I am unable to grow the show in a way that a business would want. Can I have a loyal following? Yes. Can I have a super huge one? Probably not, I’m too much of a black and white thinking curmudgeon!
There are other factors too, I would say the above are the main reasons, but I can’t say I don’t have others. In the interest of being honest, I also have a crisis of identity. I spent my entire adult working life as a coach. Apparently quite a good one. As I have mentioned on the show, I have worked in the best martial arts and strength gyms in the world. From a gym in one of Hong Kong’s more exclusive addresses to the Royal Abu Dhabi Equestrian Club, to Iceland, The Ritz Carlton in Seoul and many other really cool experiences. I travelled to 18 countries and taught over 250 seminars to over 5000 people. I authored a certification course for coaches that is still on sale today. Then the pandemic came along and it all came to a sudden halt. In an attempt to avoid being stuck without a job for two years again, I am at university. Something I never saw happening in my life and certainly not at 40 years of age. So I feel stuck, one foot is in the past with fitness and the other in the future with my studies. I miss my ‘old life’ so much you can’t even imagine. I probably have some kind of PTSD. Everything I had and knew and identified as is all gone. Sometimes doing research in fitness and talking about it makes me really sad because I end up missing it a lot. I find that hard to cope with. It’s a loss. A big empty hole.
I’m also pretty busy. For me, coming to university, I am here to do as well as I can so I can move to an even better university next if I want and to a good job. I define a good job as one in which I can make a meaningful, ethical change in the world. I’m not at uni to see how many jello shots I can swallow in 60 seconds. So, I am often dealing with multiple essays of some significant length and writing another 1500-2000 word script for the podcast is really tough.
Finally, people can be pretty mean. I have had a bunch of emails in the last 2.5 years that were rude or mean or inappropriate. I don’t think I am the only person that deals with that in their work. But thats a fallacious argument. Whether or not other people experience this doesn’t mean anyone should have to. The fact it happens isn’t justification at all. I have mentioned this also on the show in the past and been sent an email calling me weak. Which is just wild to me. Why are people like this? So, I can’t say that isn’t also a pretty big part of this. One set of emails 4 or 5 weeks ago actually was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. And you know, I would never ‘name and shame’ anyone on this show, it’s not who I am. But I also know that my detractors keep tuning in. So, if you are listening to this and it was you who kept telling me I was ‘up in my head’ and the rest of the things you have sent to me across multiple emails over the last year, then I want you to know that you are partly responsible for this. You can’t go through life sending off harsh and totally unjustified emails just because you own a keyboard. Be more kind to people in future.
So, there we have it. There may be a new Get Fit Guy, I don’t know. Thats not my department. If any listeners want to follow what I am going to be doing next, then before the last show, I will share my instagram and email and I hope to see as many of you there as possible. I’m sorry that this week I didn’t really get into anything fitness related and it was all just an explanation of my decision to step down as the host of this show. I promise you all that next week and for the rest of the month, I will share as much as I can and answer as many questions as I can.
So, if you have a question you have been dying to ask me for the past 2.5 years, email it in, I am going to make one of my last shows an AMA (ask me anything). I hope everyone has a great week and if you do want to send me an email, then please do so on getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com.
Get-Fit Guy is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips Morgan Christianson, Holly Hutchings, the director of podcasts Brennan Goetchuss and Davina Tomlin. I’m your host, Kevin Don. If you have a question for me, leave me a voicemail at 510-353-3104 or send me an email at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com. For more information about the show, visit quickanddirtytips.com, or check out the shownotes in your podcast app