Have I ever told you the Don Pardo story?
What? You don’t have instant recall of all my Monday blog posts (there have been over 200, BTW) the same way a Swiftie has every set list of the ERAs Tour memorized?
I am both surprised and offended.
For the 93% of you who are either too young or not nerdy enough to know, Don Pardo is a legendary voice-over artist who was most known as the voice of Saturday Night Live for 38 seasons. So as unlikely as it is that you would know his name or his face, there’s actually a pretty good chance you would recognize his over-the-top voice.
I started in advertising (for those of you new here, I had a career in advertising prior to my current iteration as meathead influencer) as a creative assistant. This is a glorified title they generously gave me because they couldn't fit “dork who sits at a desk in the hallway and does our expense reports” on a business card.
Yup, I had aspirations of writing Super Bowl ads, but I was primarily taking phone messages and making copies while my big wig bosses took three-hour lunches filled with martinis and cocaine in a scene straight out of The Wolf Of Wall Street.
(OK, that’s not true. Not the photocopy stuff. The drugs and alcohol.)
Eventually, a copywriter on my floor who was considerably cooler than me took mercy on me and gave me what was sure to be my big break: a chance to write a local radio commercial for Marie Callender's frozen dinners.
Even though I’d never heard of Marie Callender — apparently, it’s a fast-casual chain of restaurants and bakeries that seem sort of like the California version of Cracker Barrel — I wasn’t going to let that stop me.
So I went to work trying to sell frozen pot pies through a snarky piece of dialogue between a would-be customer and an enthusiastic announcer.
When it came time to do the voice casting, we got the customer role sorted right away, but I was really struggling to find the right announcer.
They shuttled in actor after actor after actor — all of them absolute done-in-one-take pros — but I just wasn’t hearing it the way it was in my head.
“Dan, what is it you are hearing in your head?” asked the growingly impatient casting director.
“Well, I’m hearing Don Pardo,” I sheepishly said. “But I’m not going to ask these guys to do Don Pardo.”
I knew very little about, well, anything in those early advertising days, but I sure-as-shit knew you didn’t do line readings for talent and you didn’t ask them to do impressions.
The casting director nodded at me with all the patience she could muster.
“Well, why don’t we just call in Don Pardo,” she said as she placed her hands on the table, stood up, and returned to her office to call his agent.
See, I had no idea that an absolute nobody like me could even request someone as well-known as Don Pardo, let alone actually get him.
But that’s exactly what happened. Don Pardo came in, was as wonderful and perfect for the role as I had hoped, and we wrapped up his recording in about 12 minutes of studio time.
Sometimes the expertise you seek is actually more within your reach than you might believe.
This proved true in getting Don Pardo to do my first radio commercial, and it has continued to prove true into my fitness career.
Coaches that I idolized and could barely believe were real people when I first got into fitness ultimately became friends that I’d have dinner with not so many years later.
Business mentors whose content I’d consumed with wide-open eyes eventually became involved with helping us generate and run our business.
This is not meant to be a primer on how to meet your heroes (I just wrote five paragraphs on it but it was boring as shit so I deleted it. You’re welcome). But it’s not as hard as you might think.
Read their stuff. Buy their stuff. Implement their stuff. Repeat for as long as possible. Be complementary and then ask insightful questions that prove you’ve done steps one through three.
You may not get to jam with BB King using this method (somewhat because he’s massively famous but mostly because he’s dead), but you can certainly get a few minutes of the world’s foremost BB King scholar’s time.
I have gym owners reach out to me all the time (and by “all the time” I mean twice per year after I’ve been on a podcast), and I’m more than happy to talk shop with them and provide any help I can. I do the same thing. I reach out to other gym owners who are ahead of us and are where we’d like to be and ask them how they got there.
And I’ve never told anyone “no” — and no one has ever rejected me either. I find that people are actually happy to connect or are flattered that you asked.
And if you are rich or impatient, you can almost always pay someone for their time. Which sounds callous, but honestly, can provide an incredible return on investment if you talk to the right people.
OK, I think that’s a pretty good blog post but, as you know, I’m contractually obligated to bring these things around to fitness, and I am nothing if not a man who fulfills the terms of his contract.
Just as I am encouraging you to take quick and direct steps towards meeting your heroes and finding your mentors with an investment of time, money, or both, I just as equally encourage you to find mentors in your fitness journey.
Finding a coach who provides a detailed program, keeps you accountable, and makes sure you're working to your true capabilities can shortcut your journey by years.
And the help is out there. It is worth asking for or investing in.
One note about the money: it’s psychologically difficult for many people to financially invest in training because it is an ongoing process, and research shows that people are more likely to spend large sums of money in a lump sum than they are for something that is ongoing — as the latter feels like you are just pouring endless funds into a hole larger than the one made by Selena Gomez in Justin Bieber’s heart.
And while no one loves subscription services these days, I implore you to think of the annual budget you invest in a personal trainer, group fitness class, or pilates membership as an investment in your success and well-being. The return is absolutely greater than the spend.
Access is out there. Whether it’s business mentorship, guitar lessons, or fitness coaching. Don’t be afraid to go out and seek it.
Who knows — you might just end up working with the voice of a generation.