3 Lessons Coach Jim Saret Taught Me About Fitness, Life and Digital Marketing

Who is Coach Jim Saret?

Coach Jim was catapulted to stardom when he was chosen as one of the coaches for The Biggest Loser: Pinoy Edition alongside Chinggay Andrada. During the Digital Influencers Marketing Summit 2013 where I first saw him in person, he told us that he coached for the Biggest Loser team where the “seniors” belonged to, while Chinggay coached for the younger ones. Despite the odds, Larry Martin, a former police officer and a member of his team, bagged the title as the first ever winner of the competition.

Why I listened to him?

Even from afar, you will see Coach Jim’s dedication to helping more people live a healthier lifestyle. Despite his fame, I did not see any hint of pride for himself or any ambition to become a showbiz personality. All I see is a man married to his passion and that passion is to help others live better lives. During his talk he said something like, “Hindi mababayaran ang experience na makita ang isang tao na makita ang sarili niya na nagbago ang pangangatawan.” (Seeing a person see the changes in his body is a priceless experience.) 

He was very real and authentic in person. He came without a presentation and only brought with him some photos and videos to show to us. In the middle of his talk, he funnily admitted that he can’t operate a Macbook and also fondly calls Ms. Janette Toral as “JT” whom he had formed a really good relationship with, as his digital marketer and personal friend.

Coach Jim may look very tall and well-built but he is very down-to-earth and humble.

1. The power of the right motivation.

Eat and exercise to become strong, not to lose weight. I was taken aback when he said this. When you look everywhere, many products and services are being advertised to help people lose weight and look better. But Coach Jim thought differently and I believe him. Why? The Biggest Loser: Pinoy Edition is the first ever franchise that allowed their finishers to go topless during the end of the competition. Other franchises cannot do that to their finishers because of the usual case of excess skin when someone loses weight. But Coach Jim’s program made his team look good while losing weight. And all these became possible because of the power of the right motivation.


He further explained that strength-training is the key. If you train your body to become strong, you are training yourself to enjoy sustainable exercise for a longer period of time and before you know it, you are not only losing weight, you are also feeling stronger and enjoying exercise itself, not growing tired of it.

I believe that this is also true in everything that we do in life, may it be in digital marketing or other fields of interest. We must aspire to “strengthen” ourselves in whatever we do and not focus on external motivations and rewards. Being strong allows us to do more. And the more we do, the better we become.

2. Everything is possible.

Coach Jim told us that he was able to design a fitness program that burns 600 calories in 4 minutes. Nobody believed in him, of course, for that seems impossible. But as you know how stories like this turn out, he was able to prove it in front of many people through a demonstration. In the end, he was able to redeem himself and everybody was happy.

At this day and age, we are given with so much knowledge and resources that we can use to improve things, including lives of other people. Coach Jim is an innovator in his own respect. I believe that we, in our own fields of interest, can be innovators too. And we must not be afraid to introduce new things despite the odds against us. If we know that our ideas will help others, we must share it and not let the odds bring us down.

3. It doesn’t have to be too tough.

If there’s anything Coach Jim taught me during his talk, it’s the fact that exercise doesn’t have to be tough. I can be fit and healthy without complaining about it. In fact, doing it the hard way is sometimes, the wrong way. If something is very difficult for us to do, we won’t be able to enjoy it and thus it won’t be sustainable for us to do in the long run. The key is enjoying what we do. If we don’t enjoy it at first, we can find ways to make it enjoyable.

In life, the things that we do don’t have to make us suffer. If we are suffering at work, we must find a way to make it easier and more enjoyable for us. If we are pushing ourselves too hard, there may be something wrong somewhere in the equation.

Thank you Coach Jim and to everyone who attended and supported us during the recently concluded Digital Influencers Marketing Summit 2013!

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ABOUT THE BLOGGER
Mark Delgado (@iammarkdelgado) is a Certified Blog and Social Media Entrepreneur (CBSME) who is passionate about consultative works, creative writing, events management, ideation, startupreneurship, strategic marketing and training. He founded Mediactiv8, a startup social media marketing company that advocates digital marketing education and entrepreneurship in the Philippines. To see more of his works, please check out www.facebook.com/Mediactiv8.

3 Lessons in Life, Social Media Marketing and Customer Service

This post summarizes my talk during the 2nd Digital Influencers Marketing Summit held at the SMX Convention Center last September 21, 2013.

Today, I’d like to share with you three most important lessons that I have acquired in my life as a social media marketing and customer service professional. I started blogging back in 2010 and then I became a CBSME student. After graduation, I was hired by a local ad agency as a Digital Marketing Manager before I was absorbed by Globe Telecom as a Senior Community Manager. Now that I decided to do things on my own, I founded a startup called Mediactiv8, an agency that envisions to promote digital marketing education and entrepreneurship in the Philippines.

The Age of Listening

For many years, marketers and customer service professionals are just great talkers. We have successfully mastered the art of talking to consumers through billboards, emails, in-store ads, magazines, phones, radio, television and others. But with the advent of social media, the game has changed. The challenge for us now is knowing how to listen more.

The Age of Listening: Social Media Marketing

Stop marketing. Start listening. It will be very difficult to succeed in social media marketing if you don’t know your consumers well. You have to know the answers to simple questions such as “What time are they active online?” and “What types of content do they usually like, comment on and share?” For you to know your consumers well, you have to learn how to “listen”.

Facebook Insights, Google Analytics and others are some of the tools which can help you understand your consumers better.

The Age of Listening: Customer Service

Master a listening tool. Did you know that social media management tools are also called “listening tools”? In Globe, we were able to “listen” to what our subscribers say about us because of these tools. If someone tweets that there is no Globe signal in their place, our tools will be able to detect the tweet and then we’ll proactively engage the subscriber.

Sprout Social and Lithium are examples of listening tools.


Best of Both Worlds

There are two worlds: the offline and the online. Because of the clear distinction between the two, they are often made mutually exclusive and separated. But to think about it, there really are no purely offline campaigns as much as there really are no purely online campaigns.

Let me convince you. What has the capacity to become popular online, also has the capacity to become popular offline. On the other hand, what can be a talk-of-the-town online, may also be a talk-of-the-town offline. There is a common ground between the two worlds and the best social media marketers and customer service professionals are those who will be able to find it.

Best of Both Worlds: Social Media Marketing 

Marry the two worlds. One of the measures of a truly successful social media marketing campaign is if it was really able to create a buzz in the offline world. On the other hand, an offline campaign may also be called successful if people talked about it in the online world. This is what marrying the two worlds is about. The challenge for social media marketers is to create a synergy between the two worlds and to maximize the conversations that will be produced from them.

Best of Both Worlds: Customer Service

Humanize the experience. This means stopping from hiding from brand logos whenever engaging with consumers and also means going out of your way to create a relationship with them even outside social media.

We had been doing this in Globe. We use our own profile photos in our official Globe Twitter accounts that we use in engaging our subscribers. In creating genuine relationships with our subscribers, we also organize contests for them and then ask the Twitter team to hand the prizes to the winners personally.

It Takes A Village

There is an African Proverb that goes like “It takes a village to build a community.” Same goes for social media marketing and customer service. A social media marketing or a customer service campaign will not be successful without the people who will support it.

It Takes A Village: Social Media Marketing

Build a community. Build a campaign. As much as you are thinking about your blog, think about your readers. As much as you are thinking about your brand, think about your consumers. As much as you are thinking about strategy, think about culture. Did you know that culture eats strategy for lunch? Without community and culture, it will be hard to make anything successful in social media. Good thing there are Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, Twitter and forum sites that allow us to establish our communities.

One very good example of this is the Top 10 Emerging Influentials of 2013. Without a community of bloggers who will vouch for these blogs, not a single one of them be able to make it to this writing project.

It Takes A Village: Customer Service

Create a culture of helping one another. In Globe, we created a community of subscribers through a forum site where they can get help from fellow subscribers about their concerns. Starting a culture that allows people to help one another creates a community that is sustainable and not dependent on the very few customer service representatives that a company employs. If you help the people help themselves, you will be rewarded.

Be the good influencer.

We have all the resources that we need at our disposal. The challenge for us is to become digital influencers of the good kind. There are people who would rather talk about people and problems. On the other hand, there are people who would rather talk about idea and solutions. I hope you make the good choice.

Let’s keep in touch through www.facebook.com/Mediactiv8.

3 Lessons in Life, Social Media Marketing and Customer Service from Mark Delgado, CBSME

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ABOUT THE BLOGGER
Mark Delgado (@iammarkdelgado) is a Certified Blog and Social Media Entrepreneur (CBSME) who is passionate about consultative works, creative writing, events management, ideation, startupreneurship, strategic marketing and training. He founded Mediactiv8, a startup social media marketing company that advocates digital marketing education and entrepreneurship in the Philippines. To see more of his works, please check out www.facebook.com/Mediactiv8.