Availible to watch 08/13/25
Kosta Telegadas, tactical strength and conditioning coach, joins the Samson Strength Coach Collective to share his journey from collegiate coaching to the tactical field. He discusses the realities of burnout, job instability, and how side projects can provide both financial and professional freedom. Kosta emphasizes the importance of networking, time management, and building relationships to succeed in the strength coaching world. He also shares his unique experiences coaching abroad, navigating cultural differences, and finding purpose beyond winning championships.
Key Takeaways
- Proactive action is essential for growth in strength coaching.
- The tactical sector offers better work-life balance and financial stability compared to collegiate coaching.
- Networking is vital for career advancement.
- Side projects can be a game changer for long-term financial security.
- Time management and efficiency allow coaches to balance multiple roles.
- Purpose in coaching extends beyond winning—impacting lives is the true reward.
- Coaching abroad offers cultural and financial benefits but comes with challenges.
Quote
“In athletics, it’s winning… In this side, it’s the difference between life and death. And I know that’s a heavy thought for some people… but it really is.” — Kosta Telegadas
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Kosta:
in athletics, it’s winning, let’s say football, SEC championships, right? In basketball, it’s March Madness. In hockey and the professionals, it’s the Stanley Cup. NFL, it’s the Super Bowl. NBA Finals, World Series, you name it. In this side, it’s the difference between life and death. And I know that’s a heavy thought for some people that have never thought about that before, but it really is.
Connor Agnew:
What’s going on, Samson Strength Coach Collective listeners? On today’s episode, have Costa Telegatus, who’s a tactical strength and conditioning coach and honestly a man of many talents. There’s a lot of things we’ll dive into today, so I’m excited to kind of speak about that. But can you just introduce us? Who are you ⁓ and what do you do? And what’s your career through strength and conditioning been?
Kosta:
Thank
Yeah, Connor, first off, thank you so much for having me here with the Samson Strength Collective. It’s truly an honor to be here. ⁓ First and foremost, I’ve always said I’m a dumb strength coach as a joke. We, you and I have talked about that on and off the air before, and I want to preface and really just expand on that. ⁓ We’re a lot of things, but we got to be strength coaches at our core, right? So that’s first and foremost. ⁓ Outside of that, I love business. I love jiu-jitsu, used to be a competitive powerlifter and Olympic weightlifter.
I’ve done that path, hit those numbers. I love writing. I’m trying to dive into more of the consulting journey as I get in and more experience in the field. And I love the tactical side of the field. So hopefully by the end of this episode, like we talked about off air, I can convince you to go over to the tactical side. on top of that too, my background starts in high school. It starts with a strength and conditioning coach who took a chance on me. I was a freshman basketball player on the freshman team, not even the JV team, right?
And literally I had a bad, bad back injury that year. I was the tallest and heaviest guy, but just could not use my body weight, could not use my height, didn’t have enough athleticism to really hang with the other kids on the court. So that year got in the weight room, all the back pain went away. Coach Rooney was our strength coach at our high school. And let me tell you, his impact on my life was astronomical. So it really starts there. I lifted for about two and a half years there and decided to go off to college. Didn’t know what I wanted to do. Went to Longwood University.
came in undeclared, declared as an exercise science major, wound up really liking a lot of the strength and conditioning stuff. Cause I saw, you know, the physical therapy route with the spider wall walks that you constantly see the older people do. Some of the personal training stuff, that’s more sales, but it’s not something I want to do full time. Like I want to coach. So was able to get into the coaching side, picked up my first internship at Longwood university. Did that for my last two years of college there in between the summers.
Before I went off to grad school and then in between my junior and senior year, I worked at two different universities I was with Liberty University and then VCU as well this summer before I went off to Miami for grad school Wiggled my way into a GA spot at the U and was able to work with Olympic sports down there quickly realized I saw a lot of hiring and firing especially at the power five level and I just saw a lot of kind of like you and I would call it injustices that happen at the collegiate setting someone does the right thing and they wind up getting fired
right, because someone’s ego couldn’t take the hit. I think that really shocked me. So I wound up meeting this guy, Tom Palumbo, who works on the POTIF contract. And he met me when I was a GA. Still stays in touch with me to this day, right? The guy’s been in Ohio State, Georgia. He’s been with the Pittsburgh Pirates. I call him dad in the field, But he was the one in that conference who convinced me to go tactical, right then and there. He told me all about it, told all the people he was working with.
how it’s more generalized than we get a little specific. And there’s other times where we’re hyper-specific and then we want to get them back to generalized if they’re injured as an example. ⁓ You get a much better purpose of serving the people during that time period as well. So fast forward, after hearing that, I’m like, well, I to get to the tactical side. So I work at a high school part-time after grad school. I’ll keep my name in the field. I know I don’t want to go the college route. So I wind up going to Exos in Detroit. So I’m going from Miami, Florida to Detroit, Michigan.
polar opposite places, right? Socio-economic wise, looks wise, feel wise. And I fell in love with working for Exos. It was a fantastic company. I think there was just not enough promotion potential for what I was looking to accomplish. And I wound up having actually a good break with them because I got promoted with them, was running one of the sports performance centers there as the head coach up in just north of Detroit. And I wound up ⁓ getting on a tactical contract down in
Norfolk Hampton Roads area, Virginia Beach. And I’m from Richmond, Virginia initially. So it’s like, I get to go back home. This is fantastic. And it was awesome, but it was during COVID. So we had all gotten fired from COVID. I’d gotten picked up literally a week later for this tactical contract. got started. From there, did a really good job and now I’m promoted overseas to Europe currently. And on the side, I write for Team Builder, potentially going to be doing some work with you guys here in the future.
I run my own side business where we do consulting, ⁓ educational content, and then some programming for side clients as well.
Connor Agnew:
Man, there’s so much to dive into here. You’re like a podcast dream or a podcast host’s dream, I would say. Makes it very easy. But the first one that I want to talk about, and it relates to the podcast episode that I released last week on a solo episode, which was ⁓ concerns about the field of collegiate strength and conditioning. And then also a ⁓ little bit of frustration with how coaches can complain a lot and then not necessarily take steps to improve their
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
Connor Agnew:
⁓ performance so I kind of a two-parter question the first part for me that I want to address right now is like you mentioned seeing injustices and you mentioned kind of understanding early on that collegiate training conditioning wasn’t for you and then you also mentioned in a talk that you know you were convinced that ⁓ The tactical side would be for you What were the things that you were concerned with includes training conditioning and then what were the things that really convinced you? Okay, I’ll go to the tactical side and that’ll be the best route for me
Kosta:
Thank
Yeah, wow. Way to set me up to try and convince you to go tactical here. This is fantastic. Mm-hmm. No, I love it, man. So I guess when I was at the power five level or even prior to that, like mid-major or low level D1, like Longwood and VCU and Liberty, ⁓ there’s a lot of interesting things where I saw a guy get fired literally for not telling the coach, I’m not going to train your athletes. They’re burned out. This is ridiculous. They’re going to hurt themselves. Or the coach who wanted to
Connor Agnew:
Like I said, the podcast is always selfish. I like to ask questions for myself.
Kosta:
max them before game day. No, we’re not going to do that. And some coaches, you go got hurt. 80 heard about it. Maybe it was the fifth complaint from this coach about this strength coach. And they just went away. And part of me was upset by that because you’re not doing the right thing. Or great example is before NIL before some other stuff, an athlete was hungry and they wanted to grab, God forbid, an extra protein shake or maybe like, you know, the coach about a team dinner or something and bye bye. See ya.
NCAA violation right there. That’s just, it’s ridiculous. Like, look, your athletes are hungry. They need more caloric intake to perform. This shouldn’t be something that we’re dinging someone up with because a group of lawyers wanted to call themselves the NCAA and regulate college sports, right? On top of that, you get minimal time. are, for lack of a better word, the head coach’s lap dog sometimes. anything goes wrong, you’re the first one to be fired. It’s not the medical staff.
It’s not the assistant coach, it’s not the position coaches, it’s not even the head coach. It’s the strength coach. Why? Because you’re in charge of performance outcomes with little to no say in what they do outside of your training. Like you and I talked about it, it’s I give you one hour every day to train and you give me 23 hours to completely mess it up. So that was the first thing. Second thing was the pay. I absolutely despised it. Some of the coaches in Miami who were just assistants were making 40K and this is pre-COVID.
In Miami, you could get away with a 75, 85k salary. That’s pretty good down there at that time to survive. Not to thrive, but to survive. And now, it’s still the same thing. It hasn’t changed. So at a certain point, inflation hits. And this can be going into economics later. I’m starting to become more more fascinated with that. But if inflation is at 7 % year over year, the past couple years, your 40k just turned into like 20 down there, essentially.
your salaries aren’t keeping pace with inflation, cost of living is going through the roof. How are you going to deal with it? Next, that was just a big turn off for me from the politics side, from the pay, the hours worked like you and I had talked about. You work 80 hours a week for 30K. My friends that have transitioned from the college coaching setting to the business world and they get laughed at. You’re working how much for how little? I could never.
It’s kind like the whole posh guy or super rich guy in New York and Wall Street looking down on the plebeians from his hedge fund, right? I could never be one of them. Oh, I didn’t go to Yale or Columbia. Oh, could never. But it’s a shock to them when they come in that, yeah, dude, you do the work, you get paid. So a great example in the tactical setting, typically, no matter where you’re working, what department, what unit, fire, police, military, whoever, you’ll get paid a decent to good salary, depending on who you’re with and where you’re with, et cetera. On top of that, you get access
pretty much to full autonomy over here, which is what Tom Palumbo was telling me about. No one really tells him what to do. He works with the guys. You find out what they need, what they want, and how you can implement it. And you’re gonna have a perfect trifecta right there. On top of that, you’ll have people that are more willing to come in and sit down with you. And they’re willing to talk to you. A lot of these programs are voluntary. They don’t have to use you. You can still coach them even if they’re not on your program. They may have a coach from another location they like or…
Maybe it’s at a private facility. You may not agree with everything, but you can coach them through it, give them modifications. There’s other things we can do and other ways to be effective. And then on top of that, I would just say the hours worked. I work 40 hours a week. It’s fantastic. And I go home, eight to five, man. See ya. It’s great. And like we said, because I’m in Europe right now, I get to travel all over Europe. But it’s a lot of fun, ⁓ There’s a lot of opportunities. And there’s a ton of stuff coming up overseas, especially for contracts like H2F, even though
They’re kind of going up and down constantly with hiring and maybe some pay disputes. But if you come overseas, there’s plenty of opportunity, plenty of travel. And honestly, we can maybe get into this later, but you’re tax free in most countries.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, we’re certainly going get into that later. can promise you that one. And so I want to touch back on the first part of that question just briefly too, because, ⁓ you know, for our listeners, ⁓ you know, for background context, we’ve had a couple of different conversations, right? Over the phone or on a different recording, whatever it may be. ⁓ And I think you’ve got a good perspective on strain and conditioning. I think you can provide good insights. So what are things that you think collegiate strength coaches right now can do to improve their situations? Because
Kosta:
yeah. yeah. yeah.
You
Connor Agnew:
I spoke about it, you know, on the podcast last week where it is a frustrating time. But at the same time, I love my job and I don’t really want to leave it. So are there things I got to take steps I got to take to improve my situation? What are some things that you feel like those collegiate strength coaches could do?
Kosta:
you
Okay.
Yeah, there’s several and maybe I need to write this down to collect my thoughts here. But I’ll say this, the first and foremost, there’s a great scene from the movie Margin Call. Have you seen it? Okay, it’s about the 08 financial crisis and essentially the bank, I think it represents Lehman Brothers in this case. They can’t say it in the movie, but the big hedge fund manager flies in at three in the morning. They’re all sitting down. He’s with his risk team over here, his lawyers, his traders. Yes, yes.
Connor Agnew:
I have not, no.
You know what I have, yes, sorry to interrupt, I have, it was fantastic, yep.
Kosta:
And Jeremy Irons plays lead hedge fund manager and he’s talking to his head of ⁓ risk and head of the department. He says, Sam, what was the first thing I told you on how to be successful when you first got to this firm? And Sam’s like, I don’t know. He says, there are three things I told you. One, be first. Two, be smarter than other people. Three, cheat. He says, well, I certainly don’t cheat. And I’m sure we got a heck of a lot of smart people here. Isn’t it easier just to be fricking first?
Right. So as a strength coach, how do you apply that? Well, you can take that and be the first in your area to do something. Maybe at the high school setting, you go out and give lectures for $500, right, to the school. Athletic departments have two, three, $400 laying around. Maybe you can go educate their coaches on it. Maybe if it’s good enough, you put it on retainer. That’s you being first. You know, the Russians beat us to it long, long, long ago in the 50s, 60s, 70s, right, for strength and conditioning. So, but now we have the American economy behind ourselves.
So you can be first in your region, your department, your city, your state, maybe your region of the nation too. It’s insane what the opportunities are and what I’m seeing from other coaches, whether it’s on the tactical side or the private sector side. ⁓ Nextly, I would say if you don’t know who Alex Hormozi is, you should pick up the book on guarantees and offers. It’s fantastic. I’ll try and link it in for your viewers at the end of this, but he literally has a YouTube video talking about how to make your first.
bit of money online. And of course, as an interested entrepreneur myself, I click on the video and watch it. He goes through and he states, well, you know, I took my first hundred people, I texted all of them down the phone, down the whole contacts list. Hey, I’m doing this thing for strength coaches, hand does online personal training thing. I’m going to give you a very low value price. I’m taking the first, you know, 50 people and it’s 10 bucks a month and just let me know if you want it. Right. So now you have lead acquisition right there. Everyone’s got contacts in their phones, whether it’s from
Professional relationships, going out to a bar, talking to people, their social group that they hang out with outside of work, their family, their friends, their network, whatever it may be. That would be an action step you can take. So you talked about, coaches don’t want to take action steps. Well, that’s one step we can do. Get your first five clients on there that’s 50 bucks a month, right? It’s not a lot. It seems like a lot of work. Get their feedback, treat them like freaking royalty.
These people are your people. are your first clients. They should be there with you if you go to be a multi-million dollar business one day. Give them deals, give them half off. They bring someone new. Now it’s five bucks next month for them, right? And it’s something very small. Then eventually they reach out to them, Hey guys, I got to my price to 50 bucks a month. You know, maybe it’s two, three months later and it’s patients they have to have. lot of strength coaches were patient in the weight room. We’re not patient with ourselves. How many coaches, you know, go max out, you know, just cause I’m just.
I’m feeling good today, man, I think I got it, but I’m eight weeks out from when I should be. So same thing going there. Go ahead though. What were you saying? Yeah, a million, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So those are some actionable steps they can take. Two is dive into a network. You have to take ownership. These coaches and these schools, these departments, they don’t care about you. You’re the first to go and you’re the first one in the network and you’re the last to leave. Right? In the modern, in the olden days, we call that slavery.
Connor Agnew:
No, no, no, I was gonna say a million. I did it myself this morning.
Kosta:
or endangered servitude, right? I’m not saying we’re at that equivalent, but each year just seems like we’re an inch closer to it. So those are some options coaches can lean on and learn from as far as that. What was the second part of your question? Sorry.
Connor Agnew:
No, no, no, no, no, that’s fantastic. That’s exactly what I was looking for was just the actual steps because again, I do feel like there’s a lot more control that strength and conditioning coaches have than they kind of realize. And the first one I think really ties into your last sentence there, which is just that the departments don’t necessarily care about you, right? They will call it a family environment, but at the same time, if you understand that, you know, if you pass away, right, within two weeks, somebody’s gonna be filling your spot immediately, right? But then with your family, if you pass away,
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
They don’t.
Less. Less.
Connor Agnew:
I mean, are, Connor Agnew no longer exists within my family. That’s a big deal to my family, right? Versus the school. So ultimately you got to understand that perspective and understand that I think almost in like the four agreements, right? Nothing’s personal. You know, when arguments occur or when disagreements happen with the strength and conditioning, I don’t take it as personal. I kind of take that perspective as like, all right, you know what? I’m not as invested in this because I know that you’re not as invested into me as I would be with something I truly care about. So putting up that surface level understanding of it has certainly helped me.
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
Connor Agnew:
just to not take things so personally and not to get so upset with work every single day. But then the second piece is the side projects, which you certainly want to dive into what you do and building up your own business as well, because that is the essence of control for training, conditioning coaches right now. You can make more money. You can decide to continue to stay included in training, conditioning. And my goal is to be able to retire early by doing these side projects and by doing more work on the side.
Somebody else’s goal may be to scale out a business and build it to where that’s just the only thing they do and they don’t have to worry about a salary job You know, I think the control is within the strength coaches and so those I appreciate you giving us actionable steps You know, can you talk to us a little bit about your side projects? are the things that you do you mentioned? Consulting you met in training like how did you get into those things and then how have you kind of scaled? It’s worth something. They can be very productive for you
Kosta:
Yeah. So essentially the first piece, you know, let’s talk about consulting. I have a couple of small deals that I’ve had. You can provide deliverables to people, right? Like there’s a contract and you have certain deliverables you have to meet to get paid, right? It could be a number of things. I do it in tiers typically. So for this price for a monthly retainer, you’re going to get these five things. If you go to the next tier, you can have tier two, it’ll be 500, 600, a thousand more. And then you can add in two other things. And by the way, you get everything in tier one.
And you can build that out four, five, six, seven tiers. There are coaches who I know who do corporate wellness consulting has an example right now that literally underbidded themselves. And they said, hey, I’ll do it for three grand a month. And the company couldn’t take them because they did not take the offer seriously because they said it was too low and too good to be true. And once again, if you add three grand a month to a normal strength purchase salary, that’s going to change a lot of good stuff for their life for the better. Absolutely.
Connor Agnew:
It will change your life completely. Yeah.
Kosta:
Last month, I made a little over 2200 on the side. That’s a mixture of like personal training, some of the writing, the continuing ed work that I’m doing. And we’re going to dive into some of that. But like writing to hit up team builder simply faster. Any number of these companies that we’ve discussed outside of here. And I would be happy to, you know, provide context to this later if anyone wants to hop on a call with me. So we’re not you and I aren’t in breach of any contracts we have with people. Right. But it’s it’s one of those things where I literally reach out to Hugh at Tomlin at Team Builder during covid before I started at Langley said, hey,
I’ve done this little bit of writing for Simply Faster. I want to come write for you. Do you offer a blog?” He’s like, yeah, we do once a month. I have a guest spot. And I just kept pinging him, asking him for a blog spot on anything and everything. At that time, Tactical Strength and Conditioning was on the come up. So if you can identify a trend and then write about it, that will get you marketability. Because at the end of the day, they’re using it for clicks and calls to action that will sell their product, AKA team builder software in this case.
But for a lot of people, those are two things you can dive into. Third is online personal training, which we’ve discussed with the, know, Hormozi method if you want to do it. Then once you have enough clients up it to 150, 200, 300 a month, depending on who you’re working with, or give them three and six month deals where you give them discount because they’re buying in bulk, right? Like Costco. So it’s just an example of that. I would say also some of the projects you can do is get, become a good author, become a good speaker on a podcast. If you can talk, you can sell. If you can sell, you can make money.
can make money, can now invest and or provide for the lifestyle that you and your family, your partner, your spouse, your kids all want. So that’s the rationale behind it right now. So hopefully I would just say, get in touch with people. If you can go speak, like here’s a great practical example, right? Let’s say there’s a conference, right? NSCA, CSCA, maybe you do it at a corporate wellness conference, ACSM, whatever it is. You speak to a hundred people.
Okay, if you guys want to stay in touch with me, here’s a sign up sheet. If you’ve got questions, email them to me afterwards. And then actually when those people email you, get back to them. Take action. I just feel like you want to say something. Go ahead.
Connor Agnew:
No, no, no. Again, that’s another one of my complaints is people will always say, reach out to me or whatever it may be. Then they do not necessarily follow up or they do in a sloppy way where they are slow to get back or don’t really follow up on connections that they make. Again, it just drives more frustration.
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, can’t my for anyone listening. My biggest pet peeve is that if I text you, you text me back. I understand if stuff comes up, but there is a the richest person I know in my phone. Right. I email him. He’s probably worth close to 100 to 150 million. He gets back to me in less than 24 hours and he’s traveling from D.C. to Taiwan to Belgium back to California. Right. And this is a text and email. And I asked him, why do you get back to me so quick from not providing anything? He’s like,
kid I like you. you know, to me communication is a form of respect. If I respect you, I’ll get back to you as soon as I possibly can.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, a thousand percent. means that they value your time. They understand that you’re developing connections that actually matter. And you can get something out of those connections too. You know, I just appreciate you again, advocating for these side projects in this side business. you know, does, it will, we’ll tie it back into the tactical side here soon, because again, this is ⁓ a big part of it is the work life balance. But I can say personally, ⁓ being able to do these side projects has done two things for me. And the first one is just be able to take a vacation without worrying about it. Right.
Kosta:
Huge.
Connor Agnew:
When we did the honeymoon for my wife and I, it was covered. It was something where it wasn’t like, we have to put this on the credit card or worry about these things, which is huge. Because I try to stay as debt-free as possible, except for the $100,000 in student loans I took on a long time ago, which was a younger kid’s decision. Ultimately, it gives me that comfort. then too, this is something that happened just this past week. We got a camp check from all the…
Kosta:
You
Mm-hmm.
Connor Agnew:
kids camps and stuff that we do here. And for the first time in my life, I would say, I would say for the first time in maybe the past couple of years, I’ve been able to do this, right? I get an extra check in and it goes right into my savings account or it goes right into my IRA. It goes right into things that are gonna directly help me invest in the future instead of just, okay, great. I got X amount of money from this camp check and now I can actually afford to go out for…
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
Connor Agnew:
dinner one time this week if I really want, right? It is allowed a base level of comfort, but then now as you do it more and more and as more income areas become prevalent, ultimately you can do more things and you can save more and you can develop more of a base for your future. So I can’t advocate for it enough.
Kosta:
Yeah, and too many strength coaches are on the verge of financial bankruptcy and they don’t even realize it. got coaches I know that are 200 to 250k in debt and they’re getting paid 40k a year, sold with their parents at age 33, 34, 35. And part of me is I understand that like in this generation, we’re facing some economic downturn, right? Nothing fazes us. saw it with financial crash, 9-11 prior to that. know, our generation has seen a lot, so we’re toughened up by it.
Connor Agnew:
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Kosta:
But the issue is that doesn’t change the fact of your financial future. And this debt is not going anywhere. There are certain countries that do student debt very well, like Australia, and there certain ones that don’t like the United States. And you cannot default on your student loans in the United States. You will have to pay it back at some point, and it will affect your credit score.
Connor Agnew:
I can’t believe the amount of videos I’ve seen recently with the federal portion of student loans. They’ve gone back into collecting interest and then within the next year, if you’re on the save plan, you have to start making payments again. I can’t believe the amount of videos I’ve seen where people are like, well, those are in God’s hands now. I don’t have to worry about those. That is not how it works. Very hard. Pray as much as you can every single day because I’ve got news for you.
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
You better start praying to that Trinity Father Son and the Holy Spirit my friend
Connor Agnew:
your credit score is going to tank and then you’re going to have to literally declare bankruptcy. And that’s seven years of your life. You’re never going to get back. So exactly. Yeah. I, but I truly, you know, and again, I can’t advocate for this stuff enough because I remember when I first sat down.
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
If not more, yeah.
Connor Agnew:
and I calculate all my student loans because the process where I got a great scholarship to go to Temple for academic stuff because they were begging anybody to come down to school there, right? And it used to be a commuter school and they would have a lot of people basically just go on the weekends, go home. So they were begging for people from outside, out of state to come down and stay at the school. I got, I mean, I was good at the ACT, nothing else, but basically I got a scholarship to go there. So my student loans after that were probably 30,000 total.
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
Connor Agnew:
for the entire undergrad and I had to take extra classes because I failed a couple too, right? yeah. Also bad financial decision. But then I knew that I wanted to go to Tennessee for sports psych and I did not look into any GA opportunities. And so at the end of it, that was another $100,000 in student loans. So I was at $120,000. I also maxed out a credit card because it was the first credit card that was ever given to me, right? And I was like, well, I’ve now got.
Kosta:
Nice.
Classic.
Connor Agnew:
$2,500, right? That’s just mine and I’ll never have to pay this back and that’s not true either. ⁓ So, you know, I remember tallying up all my debt when I got my first full-time job and then looking at all my assets, which was like, you know, a hot pocket and five bucks. And I was like, this is not good. Like, this is a terrible situation. And so sitting down and realizing that made me really focused on, okay, how do we flip these things around?
And the moment you actually get to a positive net worth is probably the most exciting time in your life, right? Because now I can actually pay off all my debts. I may carry some because I’m not going to break down my IRA just to do it, but ⁓ it’s life changing and it makes you feel a lot lighter. There’s a lot lighter load on your shoulders. So I just, again, believe so much in doing this extra work. It can be taxing, it can be tiring, but ultimately at the end of the day, makes your life a lot easier.
Kosta:
Mm.
Absolutely. Building on that too, because I feel like this podcast is going on for a while and I love it. ⁓ But the biggest thing for me is like, my high-yield savings account, we’re closing in on a six-figure high-yield savings account right now. That doesn’t include investments and other things. ⁓ I think in my case, I was very fortunate. didn’t pay for any of my undergrad. Grad school only came out with 30K in student debt. I was left and paid it all off responsibly within five years afterwards, six years afterwards.
Connor Agnew:
Incredible. Yep.
Kosta:
But it is, it takes financial discipline. Like, hey, maybe we can’t go to the club tonight. Maybe we can’t go out to that nice dinner. Maybe you shouldn’t be dating right now. Right. For all my single people out there. Right. And I’m telling you, like, it’s an expensive game. You know, my girlfriend currently lives in London. I go back and forth between where I’m at currently in London. And I’ve been over 45 times, but you know, that’s a, that’s a flight. That’s train rides to get into the city. That’s, Hey, if we want to do something nice, like I take her to this nice restaurant by tower bridge. We want to do that. Cool. That’s probably $200.
Connor Agnew:
Hmm.
Kosta:
Right? You know, it adds up over time. So dating can also be a financial game too. And coaches focus on your money first, build yourself up, get your career right. Then start branching out to family, start branching out to investments, start branching out to everything else that you want to build on.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, absolutely. I remember in college, when I got that credit card, I remember what I spent it on. You talk about going to the club. We went to the club and I remember I was like, I’ve got two grand, which is obviously do not. I had a credit line for two grand. And I remember I was like, I’ll buy the bottles for the table tonight. And I put it down on the credit card and I was like, I’m the man. And then I woke up the next day and I was like, that was super fun. And then I went to go look at my credit card statement and I basically used all my credit in one go. And I was like, that’s probably the dumbest decision I’ve ever made. And then I had to figure out quickly that
Kosta:
There you go. Yeah.
Connor Agnew:
You can’t do those things and you have to make sacrifices. There’s have to be things that are uncomfortable, but the more sacrifices you make, one, the more normal it becomes and you can kind of ⁓ get your out of control spending under control. But then two, ⁓ the lot more comfortable it is to live your life and just know I’ve got two dogs, right? And you know, once a year, one of them has to go to the emergency vet and it’s a two grand bill. I can cover that. That’s not a big deal at the end of the day because I’ve got that security blanket that really makes a difference.
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and you great example, my car broke down out here and I had to take it to the shop twice this month just because it was big overhaul for one thing. And then there’s a little thing that broke down. It’s an it’s an old Saab 0395 turbo. You know, it’s an old car. They don’t make it more. So the part’s going to be a little more expensive to get it. The man, she is a maniac when you get a run in grade. It’s fantastic. But the whole purpose of that is, hey, man, that was almost two grand in car taxes this month that I did not see coming. But it was literally like a scratch on me. It wasn’t this. Oh, God, I got two grand of debt I got to put on here.
And it’s because of the side stuff I do. It’s because of the job I hold currently. And it’s because of responsible financial decisions I’ve made in the past. So if you can just culminate that up, you look up in five, 10, 15 years, you’re like, man, like, OK, I have some momentum now.
Connor Agnew:
Yep, absolutely. And it really snowballs like not to steal the Dave Ramsey method, but it does truly snowball at end of the day. ⁓ And I can promise I can sit here as a recovering credit card addict. have zero credit card debt right now. So I can say that it has appreciated. Anytime I’ve got, I think I spent, I use my credit card for a dollar 20 purchase and I immediately paid it off as as it processed the other day. So I’ve got a little trauma based around that stuff, but.
Kosta:
It does. It does.
Star man. Yeah, yeah.
⁓
It’s not a bad thing to have, man. It’s not bad thing to have.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, right. I’d rather be on my side now than I was earlier. But I did promise that we were going to loop this back into tactical. And this is a topic that we’ve kind of talked about a little bit with this side project work is the reason you feel so comfortable doing the side project work is because of the hours that you work in the tactical side. Because for collegiate coaches, it can be difficult to in season work 80 hours per week. And then, I’ve also got to write workouts for my clients coming up and worry about these other things. ⁓
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
Hehe.
Connor Agnew:
I’ve been able to find a way to kind of sneak it in in between times where I don’t really have much going on. So it’s been comfortable for me, it’s worked for me, but can you just talk a little bit about your freedom from a time perspective working in the tactical side?
Kosta:
Yeah, yeah. Once again, if you’re on any sort of contract with state, local, federal government, whatever it may be, even with your own unit, you have assigned hours. They typically don’t want to pay overtime, so you’re going to work 40 hours a week, and that’s it. That is it, right? How do you break that up? 6 3, 8 to 5, whatever it may be, right? It’s in your control and your power.
On top of that, there’s also lot of autonomy, which is both good and bad for some people. If you’re someone who needs to be told what to do, this probably isn’t the place for you, right? If you’re someone who cannot solve problems and get people to like you at the same time, this is probably not the place for you, right? However, if you’re good at building relationships and you’re good at meeting people halfway and cultivating a culture and bringing them in to you, you’re gonna be very successful. You’re gonna have that time and then work like you’re still in the college setting.
Work as if you need to work 80 hours a week to make ends meet. We’re used to doing that, so put your head down. Shoot, even work 60. You’ll be a lot happier, I promise. Let’s say your tactical job contract pays you 60k a year. Not great, but better than college for the most part. So you get that in a 40-hour work week. Let’s say you talk to other companies like Team Builder, Vauld, Bridge, ⁓ Train Heroic, Simply Faster.
maybe play, maybe you’ll be an ambassador, maybe you go help out with sales, maybe help them run their blog. That’s something you could do on the side for 1500, two grand a month. I you’re helping Samson out with their stuff right now and it’s gone great for you from what it sounds like. Yeah, and those are opportunities also that can be done on a tactical side after work. If you really just stop watching Netflix, meal prep to get that out of the way, because look, cooking takes up time, let’s be honest here. It’s not as much as people think, but it does take up a decent amount of time.
Connor Agnew:
Absolutely.
Kosta:
and you actually limit your activities. You can make a good living and you can budget your time appropriately. I see a lot of coaches, whether it’s on tactical or outside tactical in the athletic setting or even in private sector, they’re just sitting around doing nothing all day. You should try and fill eight hours work if you don’t have eight hours work. Right. And I’m not saying look busy for the sake of being busy, but there’s something you could do. You could write a blog, you could hop on a podcast, you could close your office door and go call five different coaches and see what’s going on around the globe.
Those are things in tactical that you have the time to do because you get your time back and you’re paid a little more And now that you’re paid a little more you’re going to do a better job For those people in the tactical community, which you should be doing regardless in my opinion, right? But also you get that time back you can make it happen turn into a dollar sign or at least a bigger network for yourself and That that would be my advice to those coaches on why tactical is better just solely from the time and the money perspective that you get back
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, you know, and I think you bring up a really good piece that too is the efficiency piece. ⁓ You know, ultimately, ⁓ when I do these podcasts, I mean, right now, to be 100 % transparent, it’s 1237 PM on a Thursday and I’m recording this podcast, right? During the middle of a workday, right? But when my head coach, you know, wants to know what I’m doing, if I’m in the office shut with a ring light on me, right? I tell them it’s continue education because it is at the end of the day, right? I get to speak with other coaches and I get to learn more from them. So
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
Connor Agnew:
I do think that’s another actual step when we talk about collegiate coaches improving their position ⁓ is stop caring so much about what people think you’re doing during the day. Because if I wasn’t doing this, I’d be doing a crossword if I’m being a hard-to-sus. I’d much rather get caught talking to other strength coaches than being on the crossword. So I think that efficiency piece is key. How have you honed your efficiency as you’ve gone across your career for your personal projects and then also for your actual contracted job?
Kosta:
Yeah.
Yes, from actual contract job, I schedule everything out from eight to five, making sure I’m given all the attention to the tactical athletes that I should be given attention to. They take priority over everything. First and foremost, I work about two to three hours after work. If I don’t go to jujitsu and I go home into my apartment or they say flat here in Europe sometimes, you know, so you go into your flat and you hang out and you get on your whiteboard and you go and talk and talk through it with yourself. Okay, this hour I want to be doing this.
We’re going to work on these continuing education slots for human kinetics and scene builder. Copy, check. Okay. Next hour, I want to be doing some programming because these two clients are having this issue right here. Cool. Done. And then the last hour, I want to either be making a phone call and connecting with someone new, or I’ll circle back with someone that I’ve been working with previously. Or maybe I’m in talks with somebody and I’m following up on it saying, Hey, where are we at with this? Where are we at with this business deal? What can I do to push this forward today? If anything. And if you do that, there are days where you’re going to miss.
Maybe someone doesn’t pick up the phone. Maybe you’re overthinking stuff with the client. You got to take a step back. Maybe you go out and just walk 10 K steps and come back because maybe your brain’s a little fried. Right. That’s how you can make it efficient. But that’s my best advice to coaches. Buy your time back. Live with purpose on this side of the field. We’re going to get into that part as well and what the purpose means on this side of the field because I think that needs to come first before the money and buying your time back. But yeah, that’s my advice to them right now.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, I think the scheduling piece is so valuable. I think in a conversation previously we had, I recommended the book Deep Work to you by Cal Newport. But that book was honestly transformational for me and how I schedule out my day. Basically, I do the exact same thing. I schedule out specific blocks for what I want to do. But then on top of that, I also schedule out ⁓ areas for deep work.
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Connor Agnew:
Right. So the deep work is where you can get focused for two, three, four hours at a time, whenever it may be. And you can focus on just that one task. A lot of times for me, it’s ⁓ either a continuing education where I’m building on reading a book, textbook, whatever it may be, or building out a mobility packet system for athletes or something. But I found so much more efficiency in actually scheduling those things out and understanding, okay, this is my time to actually knock this out. ⁓ And you also become a lot more realistic with deadlines that you give yourself to, because I see a lot of strength coaches
Kosta:
Hmm.
Connor Agnew:
say, okay, well, can get that done for you by tomorrow, right? And then if you have everything scheduled out and you look at it, you’re like, I’m not getting this shit done by tomorrow. No, there’s no chance. Yeah. So I highly, I’m a high, impressed and I love the ⁓ efficient piece of scheduling everything out. It truly makes a difference on a daily basis.
Kosta:
No, not at all, not at all. No way.
Yeah, absolutely. It’s just write it down on a whiteboard or your calendar on Outlook or any email that server that you use That’s where you need to start and then just build from there and be honest with people about timelines I actually would give coaches this recommendation say hey I can get it to you by this date But make it one plus day out you have it to him the day before now. It looks like you know, you’re ⁓ under promise or sorry was it under promising over delivering? Yeah
Connor Agnew:
Yep, exactly.
Kosta:
Yeah, and that’s a tactic you can use. I’m not saying be snaky with it, right? Because people can tell. But if it’s a big project, you know, I can probably get that done here. I’m going push it two days out just in case and deliver it 48 hours or 24 hours earlier. Now that person says, ⁓ I like Costa. I like Connor. We should do that more. Hey, I know this guy. He has this thing going on. You should go speak at his thing over here. And I’ll be like, sweet, let’s talk. Boom, connection call. We schedule it in. We work on the side stuff. Another opportunity comes up.
and then you just get more known and more known and more known every time.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, the worst case scenario, something pops up, you actually have another day to finish it, which is huge.
Kosta:
Mm-hmm. or just
be honest and don’t lie, saying, I had an emergency come up. If my girlfriend went to the hospital or I’m stuck in London, as an example, or I’m stuck in any country out here in Europe and my flight got canceled, I’ll just text and say, hey, don’t have my laptop right now. I’m stuck on this. I’m going to need 48 more hours. Just wanted to give you ample heads up. Mm-hmm. That’s amazing.
Connor Agnew:
Yep. There you go. Ample. I like that word. That’s a good one. I’m going steal that from
you. I certainly do want to touch on the purpose piece, but there’s one more question that I’ve got for you. ⁓ And it’s something that’s become evident to me just in our conversations that we’ve had together. You have a great network and you are a great networker. What are your kind of tips and your recommendations to those who are trying to develop their network and just get better at networking in general?
Kosta:
Hmm?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
you
⁓ Man, that’s a great question. I’ll tell you how I built mine. One was for purpose and two was to get seen and three was for opportunities. I would love to sit here and say it’s just all for the good of the field. Yes, that’s one motivation, absolutely. But at the end of the day, we’re all in it to help each other out and build each other up, which leads to more opportunity, more money, more connections in many fields, not just strength and conditioning. I would politely network with people at conferences. NSCA, my first one I ever went to.
I remember I went up to Ron McKeefer down in Tampa and I shook his hand and I remember I said, Hey man, I read your book, CEO strength coach, da da da da da. We got to going back and forth talking about God and a bunch of other things. Cause for those who don’t know, he’s very religious as well. And we wound up just connecting. He’s like, Hey man, here’s my number. Give me a call sometime. Right. But I also met Tom Palumbo. I met the Boston Red Sox strength coaches. I met the New York Yankee strength coaches. met everybody.
You know that had a bigger job and I followed up with them constantly that gave me a base of people to work with just one conference It’s like 300 bucks I think I barely skipped out of the money or my dad helped me pay for it at that time when I was you know a grad student down in Miami and I just followed up with them then fast forward, know, I went to Detroit I suffered a really bad heartbreak and you know in traditional young men fashion. I’m gonna show her you know that kind of stuff, right and I called everyone under the Sun if you were the CEO of a law firm all the way to
another coach at Michigan State or Michigan or any of these other places, high schools with the Detroit Tigers, Detroit Lions. You if you were just a business owner, I was getting in touch with you. And then you’d be surprised on where that leads because maybe they have a client that can refer to you. So that’s one. I would also say doing podcasts. That’s how you have to do it. When I did Justin Lima’s podcast for Strength Coach Network, and I we’ve just recently connected you to what you’re going to give an amazing episode on there. I can just feel it already. But it’s one of those things where I have
I remember I did it, I went out there, I was a little nervous about it. And then suddenly I had 120 followers on Instagram over the next month because it was just a piece of the podcast. And I was saying something that was relatable and you’re communicating yourself orally to somebody. You’re showing that you can speak and take a question and expand on it and dive into deeper parts of that question and provide answers in context. Maybe people couldn’t see otherwise. And then on top of that, if those people that listened to you and followed you, half of them reached out to me.
They DMed me or found me an email, which I gave it out. And then I got back to them like we talked about earlier. And it just keeps going and going and going. I’ve also helped coaches directly and indirectly get jobs in the tactical side with O2X with a plenty of other people. If someone is a good person or that you know them personally and they’re a good coach, throw them a bone. It’s going to come back for you later. Later, whether it’s karma, whether it’s God you believe in, Allah, whatever, it’s going to come back to you.
That’s how you build a successful network right there. And just don’t disappoint people. not to, you you’re going to ruffle some feathers here and there. I’m sure some older strength coaches on the college side don’t like what I’m saying right now. You know, it’s we talked about the crabs in a bucket analogy off offline previously. And it’s the whole idea of, hey, there’s this bucket of giant bucket of crabs and one crab starts to climb out and he’s about to escape. All the other crabs come up and pull him back down. And unfortunately, I don’t listen to college strength coaches anymore because of that mentality. They don’t know how to help themselves.
This is not a knock on saying there’s not good coaches there. There’s a ton of amazing coaches there. However, it is one of those things where if you want to build a network, you can’t buy it played by the rules that collegiate strength conditioning is kind of like indirectly holding you to.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, I’m guilty of that myself, I would say sometimes too, because I think about one of my best friends. He’s the director at Florida State Olympic training conditioning right now. He’s amazing. I remember when I first started posting on TikTok, there was no other division one collegiate training coaching coaches consistently posting. And so he’s one of my friends. He saw my content. And so he started posting too. And I would be watching his TikToks. I’d be going through, scrolling through, looking at views, looking at comments and everything and just be like, I can’t believe this guy’s trying to steal my thunder, whatever it is, right? Like I own TikTok.
Kosta:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Connor Agnew:
And then at the
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
Connor Agnew:
end of the day, was like, whoa, we can both eat. Like everybody here can get something out of this, right? And we can both be able to be successful out of this and get more connections. And he’s not stealing directly from my client base. It’s nothing like that. And so I like your crabs and a bucket analogy because we can all actually work together and help each other out with these things too. And my personal experience just, and again, that’s why I say you’re a great networker you know what to do.
as you’ve already connected me with a million people that I want to get in touch with, whether it’s podcast guests or other potential opportunities, which are fantastic for me. And I greatly appreciate it. But for our listeners to understand this, with how much you’ve done for me already, anytime that there’s an opportunity for me to give back to anybody in my network, the first person I’m going to think of is you because of how much you’ve done for me. So immediately, just by being a great guy, all of a sudden I’m thinking, okay, well, this came back. So I really got to reach out to Kosta to see if he’d be interested in this.
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Connor Agnew:
It is, like you said, it’s karmic, is whatever you want to believe in, but there’s good things happen to good people who connect.
Kosta:
Yeah, and just building off that too, there was a, in the normal business world, if you go to a sales conference, or a medical conference, a business conference, a tech conference, AI conference, people are there to meet and network, right? How many times now, now that you and I are, know, I’m in my early thirties right now, but it’s one of those things where as a younger shrink, which I would go to the presentations at the NSCA NatCon, now I just sit at the bar and just talk to whoever wants to talk to me.
Connor Agnew:
Exactly.
Kosta:
Right? And
that’s not a, that’s not a, any disrespectful presenting. I’m sure they have great ideas, but I’ve also heard it 10 times over the past 10 years. So what, where is my value going to be? Is it going to be sitting at the bar and talking with the guys who are, you know, making decisions for companies like team builder, or is it going to be better spent sitting through a lecture on how to squat?
Connor Agnew:
No, it’s certainly going to be networking with the people who are going to help you develop your own network better.
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and to any young coaches who want to come up to me at a conference whenever I’m backstage, I just come sit at the bar. I like tequila for the record.
Connor Agnew:
Well, that’s also a good networking tip right there too. The easiest
way to start a conversation is to buy somebody to drink. Cause even if you buy me a $3 Coors Light, I’m to be a lot more excited to talk to you than if you’d just come up.
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
absolutely. If
you just sit down and just want to talk, man, I’ll slide you a shot of tequila and let’s start whatever you want to know. I don’t gatekeep anything. I really try to just throw it out there. If you’re like, hey, coach, I don’t know how much this should be charged. I’m like, OK, well, walk me through who the client is, what you’re doing, and I’ll throw my advice to you and my two cents to you.
Connor Agnew:
Mm-hmm.
Yep, a hundred percent. Because it only helps each other, right? At the end of the day, it doesn’t mean we steal from each other. You can only help each other. The one final piece with this too that I’m curious about is how have you eliminated kind of the fear of rejection? Because I think a lot of us experienced that it was something that I struggled with when I first started out. I was worried that as an intern, you know, this head strength coach wouldn’t really want to talk to me, but obviously that’s not the case. It took me a little bit to realize that.
Kosta:
Mm-hmm.
Connor Agnew:
How have you kind of subsided that fear and stopped it from preventing you from networking and meeting more coaches?
Kosta:
And this is an honest and raw answer here. I would love to tell people I just stopped caring. That’s not the truth at all. Right. You and I both know everyone’s scared of getting blackballed by all these coaches. It’s kind of the term you hear thrown around. And I realize it’s never that powerful. There’s not one strength coach who’s going to follow you everywhere and just try to mess up your life every single time. There are plenty of coaches that I do not like and they know who they are and they know who I am. And that’s fine. Right.
Connor Agnew:
Mm-hmm.
Kosta:
I don’t want their network. I don’t like them. Okay, cool. And if they have an attitude to me on the phone or get mad that I reach out and try to pick their brain, they’re probably not a good person to talk to. If you can’t have a light, like our first conversation, Connor, right? Let’s assume Andy never introduced us. You think we still would have had a great conversation? Exactly. So my point is, I don’t know if I can swear on this podcast, just don’t be a dick. Yeah, okay.
Connor Agnew:
I would certainly say so.
That’s acceptable.
Kosta:
And that is my first thing to young strength coaches. And if you want to copy someone, great. Imitation is a form of flattery. There’s a guy on Instagram called OBfit. And he makes reaction content to people copying his style of reacting to these videos or, I’m going to do this guy’s macro breakdown. He’s also a dietician. And he’s like, I love it. It makes me look better. I like the fact they’re stealing my content. Because then they come see me and they realize, oh, I’m the original one who did it.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. to fear of failure and fear of rejection, to anyone, you got to get over that, man. This world is changing. Social media and AI are both changing the way markets are being done. I you’ve talked about having deals done with yourself, but someone paid you money to advertise something. Get over it. We are entering a new era. The old advice isn’t working anymore. So you got to adapt.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, I agree. It’s a very different time we live in and with the access that you have to other people, if you’re not actively networking, if you’re not actively trying to reach out to coaches and you’re scared of getting rejected, you’re going to be behind.
Kosta:
Extremely. And like I said, I messaged every Power 5 coach and the one, I had five people get back to me of all 300 coaches I reached out to. Right? Those five people I still rock with today. And you know, like there have been kids that have reached out to me, I say kids relatively speaking, because they’re just on their GA ship looking for their first job. I try to help them out, throw them a bone. You don’t know where that guy’s going to end up. The coaches that were mean to me when I was an intern, they didn’t know I’d be where I’m at now.
And you best believe if I see their resume, I’m probably not going to help them out because of how they acted to me and treated me when I was an intern. Your actions come full circle.
Connor Agnew:
No, no joke. And when I have, I think about my interns who’ve done a great job and anytime they thank me for anything that I’ve done, I always say, I don’t need you to thank me. I just need you to hire me at some point. Okay. Because seriously, I can be on top of the world. could be, you my goal is to be the number one most known basketball training conditioning coach. Well, I got news for you. I can still get fired. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day. So at some point, as long as you liked me enough, can you still just hire me? That’s all I care about.
Kosta:
But yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, if Tommy Moffat from LSU can be fired, so can you.
Connor Agnew:
A thousand percent. Yeah, that’s a great, great, great point. Absolutely. And if John Calipari can be hated at Kentucky, so he had to move to Arkansas, it’s going to be a tough time, right? ⁓ Okay. So again, I do want to drive it back to purpose because I do feel like this is a ⁓ large piece of what we talk about on this podcast, a large theme of it. From a tactical perspective,
Kosta:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
⁓ yeah. Yeah. Yeah. no.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Connor Agnew:
What is the purpose behind what you do? Why have you been able to find a better purpose on the tactical side? What are the things that drive you to be able to go to work every day? What makes you motivated to go to work every day?
Kosta:
⁓ Well, I can answer all of that and I’ll say in athletics, it’s winning, let’s say football, SEC championships, right? In basketball, it’s March Madness. In hockey and the professionals, it’s the Stanley Cup. NFL, it’s the Super Bowl. NBA Finals, World Series, you name it. In this side, it’s the difference between life and death. And I know that’s a heavy thought for some people that have never thought about that before, but it really is. There are individuals that I’ve worked with, whether it’s at this current location or even when I was with Exos or with other places.
that have seen some of the most horrible things. I had a guy, he was a former helicopter pilot that I knew from back in the day. This dude has flown a 13 hour mission in Somalia while getting AK-47 round shot at him, rescuing people on the floor. And that gets you to realize, hey man, I’m still getting paid, my heart’s beaten, I’m not in that situation. And I’m not brave enough for that situation, but the best case that I can do is help this guy make sure his body is capable of withstanding.
A helicopter crash in this case, ⁓ if he has to fight back and run for cover and shoot at the enemy, cool, we’re handling that. If he is having some sort of pain in his hips or joints that’s going to make him a limiting factor for his team or his unit, that is something we can help with. In fire and police, same thing. It’s for mental health. ⁓ The biggest cause of death is either suicide or COPD for them. You have a chance to help out in both those scenarios.
know suicide you’re not a you’re not a therapist, but you can talk through someone’s problems I guarantee you’ve had friends that have messed up or maybe something bad happened to them Maybe a spouse or a friend or parent died and you can walk with them I told you this story last time we were chatting but I had a guy I was working with one time He’s just not he’s the happiest chappy no matter what he gives me full effort every time he comes in the weight room and this today He’s just dragging and I’m so yo, hey holler at me like let’s talk
He winds up saying, hey, man, I’m going through a divorce and I can’t stand it anymore. I’m like, cool, get off the assault bike. We’re going to take a lap. Just you and me. Just walk around the building. No one has to hear it. Hear it. So you can indirectly influence him by letting him have that off his chest. So his unit doesn’t think he’s a limb back in the unit or a limiting factor, we would say. Another thing is if someone has a nasty back injury and can’t pick up their kid, right, they don’t care about squatting 400 pounds. It would be great if they could. Right.
But if you can get someone to where they can pick up their kid or throw the football again with them, you just gave that father his chance to be a dad back. Right? I how many times did your parents play with you growing up in the yard? My dad would throw the lacrosse ball with me, play basketball with me, throw the football. We went to the commanders or Redskins games for those who remember what the Redskins were like in DC.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, a thousand percent. And it was the best memories of my childhood.
Kosta:
Amen. And that’s only one side. The other side is financial, right? For firefighters and police, it’s going to be insurance costs, right? Getting that down, right? So guys are not missing their time in the field, right? And that means we have fresher people going out to do the mission, right? You’ll quickly realize it’s not about you anymore. You are one part of a cog in a machine that every cog needs to run efficiently for the mission to be successful.
You’re not going to go out there and be with Delta Force, kick down a door and shoot some guys that are part of the Taliban. No. You’re going to be the guy who gets them strong enough after they’ve been out in the field for 13 months. And they come back and they can get stronger again so they can go out and last another 12, 13 months. Or we’re dealing with any injuries they’ve suffered, a bad shoulder. Because if these guys go down and they get medically hurt, as an example, police, fire, military, whoever, that costs a lot of money.
and lot of time to retrain them up in whatever craft. On top of that, you can give someone the chance to improve their scores and have a longer career. I’ve had individuals come to me with back pain, neck pain, torn ligaments, whatever else. They maybe got two years left in them. We just got them back to a point where they can go for another 10. You just have to determine what that purpose is for you and what means the most to the individual. Not necessarily the unit or the department you work with, but the individual as well.
So when we talk about purpose, you need to understand what it means to these people. It’s not just about winning championships, it’s about saving lives, and it’s about making sure we can execute a mission and all come home safely.
Connor Agnew:
When did that really click for you? Because I’m sure going into tactical, you can imagine that this is a higher purpose, but when did it really click for you that this is your purpose and this is exactly why you want to do this?
Kosta:
Thank
I was sitting at frustrated with where things were going. Right. I didn’t care if we won another championship. I said, it’s just a championship, man. I’m just trying to reach. can’t influence the with our three point shooter. Number two guard is going to make this bucket or not. That wins the game. Right. But I had a lot of friends that were either in the military or military adjacent, and they got more purpose out of it. Right. They were ⁓ happier when they come to see you.
And when I started on the tactical side, I wound up feeling like, I’m a part of something bigger than me. In sports, you can get that a little bit. Take a guy who, I told you this last time, who can barely walk, has sciatica going on the left side of his neck, and he’s a type eight killer when he looks at you. You’d be scared of this guy, typically, if you saw him on the street. Says, you, make me a program. Thank you, sir. And come back in, you make a program, and now he’s squatting heavier than he did as a Division I football player at 38 years old, with perfect form.
and he’s performing every duty related task or mission set significantly better than he was when he was 28, 29, maybe even back to 26, right? Because he has the capability with that. He knows how to pace himself. He has doing the proper percentages or RPE of training max. And he’s not overtraining. He’s not under training. He’s developing, right? And you’re, also realize that, you know, you’re only one component, man. That’s it. You’re the physical component. have medical components. We have, um,
What else? The other ones, psychological components as well. All of it plays a role. You know, if a firefighter watches someone fall off a building and commit suicide, and this is a dark topic. So if there’s people listening, maybe you don’t like dark stuff, this might be a good time to tune out. But I’ve had guys, they saw someone jump off a building. They’re the first responders. They go see it. There’s teeth scattered all over the floor from this dude’s mouth hitting the ground first because he went head first. Right. They got to clean that up.
And if you’re on the SOCOM side of the field with special operations, you may have to identify someone, right? By certain nasty things they have to do to that individual’s body to make sure, hey, we got the right kill, right? That’s a psychological side. Medical, this guy may be too scared to go to medical because, you know, it might, they may say, hey man, you can’t go on your mission yet with this issue, but he feels like his reputation is going to be impacted if he doesn’t go out on this mission or this ⁓ night shift with these people. And now people aren’t going to trust him.
So they come to us on the physical side and say, well, we’re going to work around these. We’re going to loop medical in slowly without them knowing maybe, or maybe tell them, hey, we’ll talk to them when it’s the right time. But it comes back to that trust factor with them as well. So that’s a very broad explanation to why I found it was the purpose. But you see deeper stories that can bring people to tears generally. And you see the pain that these people either save people from or experience with them.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, it’s one of the first things that I kind of bring up when I go into exercise science classes and do a kind of career day, right? Where they ask about being a strength and conditioning coach. And one of the first things I tell them is like, at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter. You know, like it really doesn’t. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but at the end of the day, like nobody lives or dies by.
Kosta:
Thank you for saying that. Thank you so much for saying that. And we’ll get into that in a sec too.
Connor Agnew:
App State basketball, there’s a lot of people who you can help inspire. There’s positive things that can come from it, but at the end of the day, it’s not a life or death situation, so it truly doesn’t matter. I’ll treat it like it matters, and I’ll treat it like it’s life or death, but at the end of the day, that’s just not the case. So again, to be able to find a higher purpose where that is the case, I can imagine that’s gotta be extremely fulfilling.
Kosta:
He he he he he he he
Extremely. And it helps when you’re loved when you walk in a building. You know, I talked to this about Justin Lima, but for those new coaches coming in to get to that point where you are a known quantity or a known individual and a respected individual, best advice I got on my first tactical job was from a guy who was literally my exact same age. I was 26. He was 26. He’s very new to the individuals we’re working with. And so am I. says, constant. I’ve been working with, you know, in and around this stuff since I was X amount of years old. My best advice to you starting off on day one,
Shut up. And it sounds too crude to be true, right? But he’s like, great example, your first 30 days, it’s a 30, 60, 90 day plan, essentially for your audience. First 30 days, shut up, nobody knows you, why are you here? We’ve been doing this, being a firefighter, police, military, whoever, without strength coaches for so long, why are you important? Nobody cares. Earn your keep just like the young guys on the totem pole, right? 60 days in, if.
There’s a question that’s asked and you would like to go off and raise your hand and answer it. You can’t if nobody else is doing it and you know the answer 100 % true. Right? Those are just examples, And markers to hit. 90 days in, you can finally have an opinion once people know who you are and that you’ve kind of proven yourself a little bit. That’s one layer of trust. You’ve got to keep building up those layers up, up, up and up over your one, two, three years there. Right? And it’s a very sentimental thing because
When you speak, your words carry weight. Sometimes people judge you based on the dumb things you say, especially in that first 30, 60, 90 days, in the business world especially. If you go into Jamie Dimon’s office for JP Morgan Chase and say some dumb things and it’s your first 30 days, you’re probably not gonna be there very long in the banking industry, right? Same thing here. ⁓ So just take that under advisement.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, no, it’s a fantastic plan and it makes a lot of sense, right? Because again, it’s not about showing up somewhere and proving that you know everything. It’s about proving that you can be a valued asset to the team.
Kosta:
Heh.
Yeah, it’s an asset, right? And there’s so much we can get into on it. yeah, let’s go off to your next question too before I go down the long, ramble rabbit hole.
Connor Agnew:
No,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Kosta:
Yeah.
Good
Yeah,
it starts over. When my individuals leave and go off somewhere else, you’re back to day one on the job, 30, 60, 90 again. It doesn’t stop. So you constantly have to keep proving yourself. And if your words carry weight, they do, and people listen to you. And reputation spreads pretty quick in all sectors of this field. Fire departments will talk to other fire departments locally or other stations that report to that department in the region.
Connor Agnew:
Mm-hmm.
Kosta:
They’ll say, hey, yeah, Kosta, love him. No, screw that guy. We don’t like him. And that compounded over time can either really help you or really hurt you.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, absolutely. There’s multiple times where I’ve heard of reputation for somebody to potentially hire and it scares me. Or if it’s somebody from somebody I trust who says, this person you need to hire, then I’m going to hire that person. It makes a difference. You know, one piece that I’m curious about is with this higher level of purpose, with this higher level of stakes, how do you manage the stress of being a strength and conditioning coach in those areas?
Kosta:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
just know that you can make a difference. Like we talked about earlier, the difference doesn’t have to be massive. think a lot of the time, especially younger me that was with XOs, I was attached to methods before I was attached to principles. So I was really attached to a front squat or back squat, but not really. We can still use a million other ways to solve for X. On this side of the field as an example, if a guy comes in for a consult with me, I sit down with him. Maybe he
had a bad strength in high school or maybe he was a division one athlete, which is a decent amount of the individuals I work with currently. I asked them, have you ever had a strength before? And if so, what was your experience? That is literally a question on the sheet that I asked him on an intake form. So in that case, they say, you know, I really didn’t like this guy. He forced me to back squat when my hip was off or my back was off that day. And I wound up getting more hurt. I don’t want to back squat. I won’t do it. It’s like, cool. We don’t have to. I got a pitch shark. I got a sled.
I got front squat. got dumbbells. got rear foot elevators over here, front foot elevated. Can I get you to do some kind of lower body with me? Yeah, sure. I can try the leg press machine. Great. We’re going to start there. It’s not the best thing for them if we objectively look at the exercises. But if they do it consistently more than a back squat, yeah, it’s a way better option because it’s getting them in more. We can progressively overload it in that case. ⁓ Yeah, but it’s just understanding the individuals you work with at the end of the day.
Connor Agnew (1:01:29)
Yeah, absolutely. And then being able to be a part of that team helps kind of raise the satisfaction piece too.
Kosta (1:01:32)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. And it’s not what you want. You know, it’s what the athlete wants at the end of the day. And it’s what they need to. So just have multiple ways to solve for X. Some athletes, my athletes love the EMOMs that we do, right? With like different exercises for their conditioning. Other guys like to just go run 10K. So how are you going to build their aerobic base? And what are the downfalls of that? And then can you educate them on that? And you can be useful. There’s also time, like I said, when guys may not want to come on your program.
That’s okay. If they have a program they like and it’s by a reputable coach or it’s someone else on your contract that they’ve worked with at another site before or at another facility or maybe a private sector. Awesome. How can I help you run that? How can I help that coach execute that vision with you? Do we have different equipment than them? Cool. Here’s some substitutes we could put in. Do we have, ⁓ you know, he didn’t have eyes on you here today, but I do. You know, your knee’s not tracking appropriately on that lunge. Let’s try and fix that up a little bit.
Your knees bother me cool. We’re gonna do weighted glute bridges then something along those lines
Connor Agnew (1:02:32)
Yeah, I think one of the best ways to mess up a good relationship is by trying to change too much. ⁓ It makes me think of we had a player last year who had the same strength coach for four years and loved him to death. ⁓ And over the summer prior to coming in to training with us, I said, hey, here’s our summer programming. It’s on team builder, ⁓ basically follow it here. And then he just said, can I continue to do the programming that my previous strike coach had me do?
Kosta (1:02:39)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Connor Agnew (1:03:01)
And you know, I would say it’s probably 70 % similar, even if it was 30 % similar or 20 % similar, who cares? Because at the end of the day, he’s still training and still doing something. And then he’s also given me an opportunity to say, hey man, my ego is not so big that you have to do my workouts no matter what. And we had a great relationship and we incorporated and threw in some stuff that I knew he would really like. And it made a difference because I didn’t try to change too much or I didn’t try to be the guy for one year versus the four years he had with another strength coach.
Kosta (1:03:15)
Mm-hmm.
you
Yeah, and I struggled with that my earlier my career because the people that raised me in the field or at least half of them, I shouldn’t say all of them, they wanted me to be that authoritarian coach. That doesn’t work on this side of the field. It doesn’t. You have to be a giver. You have to be there for purpose and you have to be there for them. It’s not about your ego being fulfilled. I would love all my guys to be back squatting, double their body weight. It would be fantastic.
But is that the same realistic expectation for someone who’s 26, 27 as opposed to a guy who’s 45? There’s very different parameters. Maybe a longer warmup period is needed. Maybe that guy has issues and this guy doesn’t, or vice versa. So it just depends at the end of the day.
Connor Agnew (1:04:08)
You can’t be authoritarian, you’ve got to be a chill guy. You just got to be a guy, that’s all it is, just be chill. ⁓ I also appreciate asking about purpose because I found out a new term I’d be absolutely terrified to be called, which is limbfac. If anybody ever calls me limbfac, yeah, I’m just going to drop dead, I think right there. That’s ⁓ one of the worst. Yeah, my God, what? Yeah, that’d be horrifying. ⁓
Kosta (1:04:11)
You just gotta be a chill guy, man. I’m just a chill guy. You just be a chill guy. Best meme ever. Best meme ever.
⁓ Limiting factor limiting factor. Yeah Yeah, bro, you’re such a limfack it’s a great insult
Connor Agnew (1:04:38)
Okay, so another piece I want to ask about this in a perspective that you have that’s really interesting is you are not based in the United States. You are abroad. How has that experience been for you leaving the United States, going out and experiencing other countries, being able to see what straightening and conditioning looks like in other areas, and what are the benefits to working outside of the United States?
Kosta (1:04:44)
Correct.
man, okay, let’s, I’m gonna probably have ask you back each section of that question, cause this is gonna be, this is gonna be a long winded one for your audience. Working outside of the United States makes you realize the United States is in fact the best country in the world. And if you’ve never, and I’m not saying you gotta go on holiday or vacation outside of the U.S., but that helps. But if you live somewhere, it’s very different. You know, some of these locations seem amazing and you would love to live there until you realize that you’re taxed 40, 50%.
Connor Agnew (1:05:02)
Great.
Kosta (1:05:26)
right? Which is a real thing. Or until you realize that like the people in my region, I told you this last time we had a conversation about this. The average person in my region makes about in us dollars equivalent about 1200 to $1,600 a month. And your viewers, I’m not saying I’m not saying per paycheck that is per month and they are taxed 25, 35, 40%. There are certain write offs you can do and other things, but that is predominantly the truth, right? And that’s a form of socialism, right?
I know everyone feels differently about economics, maybe the current administration. I’m not here to get into that. I’m just literally telling you what is and what isn’t. ⁓ You realize that America does struggle with some stuff, right? Our biggest ones being quality of food, healthcare, and we work ourselves to death, essentially, and rise of tide and cost of living. However, on that fourth one with cost of living, the rest of the world’s feeling it and their GDP hasn’t gone up. The US has. At the end of the day,
You need to understand that you are blessed if you are an American living in the United States, you have an opportunity at the end of the day. I know it’s tough. Maybe we don’t go live in New York City and maybe we don’t go live in San Francisco or Austin, Texas or Miami. Right. Maybe we go live and take that job in Norman. Was it Norman? Was that Oklahoma? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oklahoma. And we get a nice condo there. Like my apartment in Detroit was $800 a month. It was a good one giant, bed, one bath for 900 square feet.
Connor Agnew (1:06:41)
Yes, Uncle Helmley, correct.
Kosta (1:06:52)
It was not in Royal Oak, Michigan. It was not in downtown Detroit, but it was right in between. And I was just north of Eight Mile, right? So, and which is a real place, by the way, it’s a real place for those millennials. I’m out there outdating myself with the Eight Mile reference right there, but that is a perspective there. ⁓ That doesn’t change in Europe, right? Your rent is still roughly the same relative to the amount you make. However, they can’t get out of it. And yes, you make it free healthcare, but.
Connor Agnew (1:07:01)
That’s a fact, yep.
Kosta (1:07:17)
don’t get sick during the month of August because in countries like France, Italy, and Spain, the whole country takes off for three to four weeks of August. So if you need surgery, you better not die during August. The other thing is the quality of care is not as good. Great example, I was doing jujitsu and I got a wart from one of the individuals we’re training with right now. And it’s just right here on my wrist. We just had to get it burned off. It’s fine. But they don’t use numbing cream here. So you feel everything.
Right? Yeah, gross, but that’s a real thing. ⁓ Sometimes stuff is not maintained or kept. It’s not really a thing here. Right? So if you want to get your AC fixed, that might take six months because we don’t work that hard here. We don’t get paid enough for that. Right? And culturally, that’s different. We’re in the States. If I hire someone, they’re coming out tomorrow at the latest.
Connor Agnew (1:07:48)
Gross. ⁓
Kosta (1:08:12)
Right. I’m paying them for their services appropriately here. That’s not a thing. It’s we’ll get to it when we get to it. Maybe it took me a year and half to get my dishwasher replaced. Yes, yes, yes, yes. These are very first world inconveniences. Then it goes to certain laws may be different, man. Right. Some countries don’t have the same freedom of speech laws that we’ve talked about before. ⁓ You can go like we talked about last time. You can go to New York City, stand in the middle of Times Square.
Connor Agnew (1:08:23)
That’s horrible. Yeah.
Kosta (1:08:41)
and wants you not to be political here, but wear a Jesus is gay t-shirt. I’m saying this as a believer, right? But you can do that. And America’s like, yeah, it’s your freedom of speech, man. Cool. I may not like it, but I’m going to predominantly not engage with you. Go to Dubai and try to do that with Mohammed. You are ending up in Emirati jail so quickly. So those are certain things that maybe sometimes as Americans we take for granted. And I think we’re seeing that democracy is messy, but progress can be made. However,
Connor Agnew (1:08:57)
Not happening at all.
Kosta (1:09:10)
Here in Europe, it’s it’s all show and nothing gets done and some might argue that for America But you know with I’ve seen the rate at which our federal government moves before with certain things or even state governments or city governments But other countries governments take three times as long and can you imagine that you know that it’s it’s Sometimes you have an appointment somewhere and they’re just randomly. We don’t want to work today. We close That’s happened to me ten plus times and it is the most interesting
Connor Agnew (1:09:36)
I saw the
meme you posted yesterday about you try to go to an government office and it’s shut down for no reason.
Kosta (1:09:39)
Yes. Yes.
Yeah. No, exactly. And it’s in that. That is a cultural problem with certain parts of Europe, Italy, Spain, France, everywhere. So, you know, there are things that, you know, we take for granted. Ease, efficiency, et cetera. Now, the Europeans got us beat on food, holiday spots and paid time off. But, you know, the second they realize, hey, there’s no more free ride coming from America anymore. Those tariffs that are going on. Right.
you see real quick that they start panicking. And that’s not to get political. It is interesting. The economics are not the same out here. So you have the benefits to the American economy. If you look ⁓ at when they announced the tariffs on the EU, as an example, you see Ursula, whatever her name is, president, treasury president of the EU come out. She’s like, we will not stand for this. We will fight back. And three days later, she comes out in the press conference literally having the face of as white as a ghost.
you know what they did? They ran the numbers and they realized they can’t survive without America. So that’s a very interesting take on stuff, but it’s different to feel bad for people until you come over here and see, they really don’t care. They don’t work hard. They don’t do things at the pace we do. And there’s pros and cons to that, right? We work ourselves to death and have crappy food and die early of cancer, right? So there is a balance to things. When it comes to strength and conditioning, that was the next portion of our combo, right? Correct. Okay. I think Europe is far behind us. UK’s is
Connor Agnew (1:11:01)
Yes.
Kosta (1:11:05)
is not terribly far behind us. fact, they’re probably on par with us. The Aussies and Kiwis are ahead because they’ve integrated sports science technology into everything that they’ve done and their culture buys into it. Kind of like in the US when bodybuilding was a big thing for like American football players, but the Soviets for the Olympics were doing real periodization work and are the first ones to really map it out and do it. Culturally, the Soviets bought into it.
before they defected came to America and made us buy into it, right? ⁓ The Kiwis and the Aussies are, and I say Kiwi for those who don’t know, it’s New Zealand. ⁓ They’re light years ahead because they’ve integrated it in fully with their entire teams while keeping lifting simple. They don’t let the data deliver them from programming responsibility, essentially. ⁓ They don’t try to overcomplicate it. They don’t try to be more than they are. Like, okay, what are the key data points I need? One and two.
great, we’re gonna ignore the rest, those two use that data over here and we’re good. Whereas in America, we get a force plate and these coaches are trying to present all these data points to these head coaches who don’t care and you really only needed your counter movement jump as an example. So ⁓ I think when it comes to financing opportunities, there was someone who forwarded me an opportunity the other day to go work with, I think it was a rugby or they call it quote unquote football club here, it’s soccer to Americans.
But they were making essentially like 40k a year in London and I was like absolutely not, you know That’s like going to New York City and making you know, 50k. You’re not lasting, right? ⁓ So opportunities economically are not the same. It really sucks everywhere ⁓ However in the States, that’s your chance to make the most money So what was the other part of your question to?
Connor Agnew (1:12:46)
⁓ I think we mentioned general quality of life, ⁓ know, then strength and conditioning piece, and then I kind of want to lead into taxes too.
Kosta (1:12:49)
Mm.
Ah, yes. So this is once again, consult with your accountant. Do not take me as point blank value. There are certain things that I can do and I’m going to talk with off air. I’m only going to speak from the American side on this. OK, if you live outside of the United States for more than 330 days or 330 days or more a year, you qualify to put down a form called Form 2555 from the IRS, right?
That lets you essentially not pay federal, state, or local taxes to the United States. Now you have to live outside of the US to do so. I don’t know what your tax structure looks like when you come to Europe. As an example, you might have to pay European taxes, you might not. It just depends on how it’s all working out for your company, the deal they have with the government, who you’re working for, et cetera. However, you fall under the foreign earned income exclusion, which essentially for the year of 2025, you’re allowed to write off, I think it’s close to 130K tax free.
All you have to do is pay FICO, which for those of your viewers who don’t know what FICO is, you pay Social Security and Medicare on your paycheck, quarterly, month later at the end of the year. So anything you make, you keep about 90 % of it or more, right? ⁓ Even on a string coach making, let’s say, 50K year in college. If they didn’t have to pay all those taxes, wouldn’t that help them out a lot? Exactly. So, you know, it is something that changed my financial situation. My net worth has gone up.
Connor Agnew (1:14:09)
A thousand percent.
Kosta (1:14:18)
well over 100K in less than two and a half, three years. ⁓ And I’m not saying that to brag, I’m saying to encourage more people to come overseas. ⁓ Try to make somewhere between, if you’re working for a US backed organization, you know, 70 to 120K, and you can write all that off. And still, if your country allows it to an extent, or you have an LLC back in the States, you may not have to pay taxes to the local host country government. ⁓ And so there are benefits to that. This doesn’t mean it’s for every job. Read your contract thoroughly.
but it is a big game changer. And I’ve openly said the day this job ends, man, or the day I can’t be overseas as a strength coach making tax free anymore, I’m done being a strength coach. I’m out. I can’t do it anymore. I’ll have my private clients on the side and move into something else.
Connor Agnew (1:15:00)
you’ll become a financial advisor for strength coaches.
Kosta (1:15:02)
Yeah, you know, I
would not want to be a financial professor for strength coaches, maybe for wealthy bankers, but not strength coaches.
Connor Agnew (1:15:09)
We’ve got a CPA coming on soon as a guest, just to hopefully help some of them figure it out. ⁓
Kosta (1:15:11)
Mm-hmm. Well,
and I’ll tell coaches too, you can go to countries like, you know, I think we talked about Dubai last time, but I want to dive into that a little bit, man. Like it’s a different world out there. There was zero homeless. ⁓ The food was absolutely incredible. Essentially what’s happening is they’re running out of ⁓ oil, specifically in the UAE. So the sheikh wound up saying, well, we need to encourage Western tourism. So they removed Sharia law for residents, essentially our green card holders, essentially that are working in the States.
Connor Agnew (1:15:20)
Yeah.
Kosta (1:15:41)
⁓ Equivocally and they’re removing it on tourism. So like look man, you can go and you can drink at a bar, right? You know, you can do all these things but you can’t you know ⁓ You can’t insult Islam. You can go to church. They have churches in Dubai when I went it was a synagogue there, right? But they don’t have but you just cannot insult Islam. That’s their biggest thing. However, the people were really nice
None of the people were degenerates walking around. When I was in Spain, see so many people just fumbling drunk or asleep on a sidewalk while they’re drunk in Barcelona after a big night out. There’s none of that there. You can’t do that. You call the Uber, you go home, as an example. You have to be civilized. You can’t raise your voice and be angry with someone and swear at them. You can end up in jail for that. So there’s some freedom of speech restrictions. And there is an element of a security state there. But it was the safest, cleanest, and most financially well-bought out place I have ever visited in the entire globe.
It’s a place that’s almost the size of New York City from a metropolis standpoint, but 10 times cleaner and 10 times easier. I could walk around the worst part at night and felt very safe.
Connor Agnew (1:16:48)
Sounds pretty nice.
Kosta (1:16:49)
Yeah, and I highly recommend coaches who have a big following. If you’re making 100K, 200K in the States, move out there. My God. You’re going to save so much money. You can register your business there. It’ll probably cost you five to eight grand to move over there. for what you’re making every year, it’s a better investment for you. It’s like those coaches with those big Instagram problems. I don’t know why you’re staying in the States. I have zero idea why. Leave. Make your money. Save your money and come back.
Like everyone in the UK that I’ve talked to that made their money, they made it in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, or New York or San Francisco. And they came back to London. And I’m not saying that to discourage it, but this is an economic reality for shrinkages that they can take care of.
Connor Agnew (1:17:25)
Hmm.
Well, no, those are straight numbers like you’re saying. You know, it’s the truth behind it. You know, but what are the challenges of being abroad?
Kosta (1:17:34)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Loneliness is the first one. If you’ve come over here and you don’t know anyone, that’s OK. Right. If you’re on an American group like with me, like cool, like awesome. ⁓ Every opportunity to go on a trip, you say yes to. Great example. ⁓ I’m getting a group of people together, coaches that I know in this region. We’re going to Monaco this week or sorry on Labor Day weekend. We’re going to stay in the French Riviera, hang out in Monaco. If we see some some guys out there that we think we want to do business with, we’ll pass them a business card, stay in touch, and that’s about it.
⁓ I would also get involved in combat sports. Combat sports are huge. I needed that after I got done lifting. There’s a ton of jiu-jitsu out here. There’s boxing, Muay Thai, Judo, whatever floats your boat. Try to get involved in something that’s going to keep you active. For us, it’s lifting, but you need something outside of lifting because it’s your day job too. Then keep yourself busy. If you’re not traveling, should be at a social event. You should be doing those networking calls, building out your schedule like we had talked about earlier.
Those are some real challenges you can run into. would also say like, hey man, you’re gonna sacrifice stuff. You’re gonna sacrifice your relationship with friends. You’re gonna miss weddings. I’ve missed two already because I just can’t come back to the States with enough leave to do it. You’re gonna, you know, really just get homesick sometimes. I went back to the States a while back, but you know, I could use another trip to wash off the European socialism off of me, you know, as an example. I also will say that
If there’s language barriers, you’re gonna struggle and you can learn. You don’t have to be perfect, but you need to try. Trying will also get you business opportunities out here for people that can’t speak English. ⁓ those are the big challenges people can lean on initially. I would say as you get deeper into living here, like your first year, you’re gonna have stuff come up that you didn’t even realize was a thing. Like great example, ⁓ my car got towed because I had messed something up with my insurance that I didn’t know was there. And it cost me like a thousand bucks.
them American and they will target Americans specifically for that. So those are things you will run into, but this is why you get the tax free money to deal with some of those issues that come up. ⁓ You will be judged for being American. That’s another thing. ⁓ I have been literally spit at. I have been disregarded. know, people can be rude to Americans for whatever reason, right? Maybe we are allowed to be obnoxious. Maybe we do like to boast too much, but a lot of countries like to hate on America because it’s easy to hate on America.
Right? And yet any of them would come here in a heartbeat if you threw the right number in front of them. So there can be some challenges, lot of hypocrisy and low minutes overall. Those would be the big things of moving overseas.
Connor Agnew (1:20:16)
But you would say at the end of the day they’re all navigable or navigatable. don’t know which one’s the word.
Kosta (1:20:20)
Yeah, it’s extremely
navigable. ⁓ Yes. So I would definitely recommend coaches go down that rabbit hole, especially if you’re single. My God, go overseas and if you’re I got an offer when I was 28, 28 years old. I really I looked at my hometown, same five bars I’d be going to on the weekends. I love Richmond. It’s my it’s my home and my heart’s there, but it’s not forever. You got to leave at some point and fly away and create your own path and.
I had the opportunity to do that and I highly recommend any other coach who is younger or even with a family if it’s paying enough, dude, do it. You become more cultured, you’re better off, you realize what you take for granted about the states and then maybe some flaws that maybe were told about Europe that aren’t necessarily true, like the free healthcare argument. It’s not really free, you know? So, ⁓ but there’s a lot of interesting stuff that goes into there. So yeah.
Connor Agnew (1:21:12)
No, I love it. And I love your perspective on everything. You know, I think this whole episode has been very enlightening for a lot of listeners about the other opportunities that you can have. You know, I have one final question for you. OK, I can tell you’re a movie guy. You’ve thrown out a couple of movie quotes. What is your favorite movie of all time?
Kosta (1:21:18)
Mm-hmm.
course.
Favorite movie? Oh You’re killing me, dude. Okay. No, you did not you did not you did not Like if I was stuck on an island only had one movie to watch this would be the movie. Is that what you’re saying? Pretty much. Okay, I Love the Bourne supremacy the second Bourne movie. It was so it was a was a mat. It was a masterpiece of acting Great storyline great character development. I love the departed. I think the departed is a good one, too
Connor Agnew (1:21:31)
I didn’t prepare you for this question either, so it’s tough.
Yeah, yep.
Great, great.
⁓ fantastic,
yep, yep.
Kosta (1:21:55)
It just star
star cast and I’ll even go as far to say, ⁓ know, the new F1 movie, you know, ⁓ man, 11 out of 10, 11 out of 10. I did, my girlfriend and I went out in London for date night to watch it and she’s like, I don’t know how I feel about this. And by the end of it, we’re like getting our heartstrings tugged on at the end. like, I want this, you know, come on, man, push it to the finish line. Let’s go. You know, like you’re rooting for these guys.
Connor Agnew (1:22:02)
so good. It was incredible. ⁓ did you watch it in theaters or no?
Yeah! ⁓
Well, I felt like I was driving the car, you know, you’re in the theater
and they do such a good job of like, you’re in it. So I thought it was fantastic.
Kosta (1:22:24)
Well,
Jerry Bruckenheimer also, I think, helped make Top Gun too. So they use the same camera angles and everything.
Connor Agnew (1:22:30)
Okay, so that’s you asked me what my movie is my favorite movie of all times Top Gun. Yep.
Kosta (1:22:33)
So was going to say Top Gun 2, I
think there’s a lot of guys who would hate on me for that right now. So understandable. ⁓ But that’s about it, man. Dude, this episode has been so much fun to be a part of, and I hope we get to do it again sometime.
Connor Agnew (1:22:39)
understandable, understandable stuff.
Yeah, absolutely. Seriously, we love to bring on some repeat guests who provide a lot of great value and you certainly do. So I would love to do it again, but I appreciate you greatly. I know the listeners do as well. So thank you so much for coming on.
Kosta (1:22:52)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, if they want to get in touch with me, feel free to. No, no, no, no, no, you’re good. good. No, no, no, no, no, you’re good. know. I know we had talked about that previously, so just want to make sure we didn’t forget it. For those wanting to reach me on Instagram, it’s ⁓ at coach underscore telegottas. All one word. I’ll link that in the comments for you to just copy and paste in there. And then.
Connor Agnew (1:23:01)
Yes, my goodness, sorry. Look at me being the terrible host. You’ve connected me to everybody ever and I just was the worst host ever and almost ended it without giving you your shout outs.
Yes.
Kosta (1:23:24)
I, for the email, was coachcostatelegatis, all one word, at gmail.com. So coachcostatelegatis.gmail.com. ⁓ Give me 24 hours, because I am six hours ahead of the Eastern time zone right now, nine ahead of Pacific, but I will get back to you. You have my word on that.
Connor Agnew (1:23:41)
It’s awesome. And it’s the cost of guarantee. So it’s going to be true. How about that? I almost proved the karma piece wrong. I was like, any opportunity I’ll get to help out cost will be great. And then I had the easiest opportunity at the end of this list. And I said, screw that.
Kosta (1:23:43)
Always, always, man.
No, you’re good.
I know we’re re-recording this because the signal was bad last time. So I’m just glad it’s getting out there and coaches can hear it and maybe make some good decisions for themselves. And final question for you, Connor, did I convince you to go tactical or not?
Connor Agnew (1:24:05)
⁓ answer offline. That’s what I’ll give you. But I appreciate you, man. Thank you so much.
Kosta (1:24:06)
Mm-hmm, fair enough, fair enough. All right.
Sorry, man. Thank you, Connor. Appreciate it.
