Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Adam Schafer on Business “Secrets,” Scaling, Successes, and Stumbles

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

In this episode, Adam and I discuss the business and marketing side of the fitness industry in general, and more specifically, of his company, Mind Pump, including how they’ve continued to grow and what it takes to scale. Adam’s been on my podcast before, but in case you’re not familiar with him, he’s a host of Mind Pump, one of the biggest health and fitness podcasts around. He’s also a coach who’s worked with over 1,000 people, and taught other coaches how to be better leaders and sell their services. Adam’s built multiple successful businesses, so he knows a thing or two about how to build and scale one. In our chat, Adam and I talk about . . . Scarcity mindsets and fear of being judged by peers Why some people aren’t open and honest about business successes and struggles The Liver king marketing machine Social media strategy and the differences between various platforms (including Tiktok) The secret to finding meaningful work and not dreading your job The power of knowing when to say “no” to a business idea And more . . . So if you’re at all interested in entrepreneurship, business growth, or “how the sausage gets made” behind the scenes, you’re going to enjoy this podcast! Timestamps: 0:00 - Triumph Male & Female are 25% off this week only! Go to buylegion.com/triumph and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% on anything else you order or get double reward points! 6:26 - Why don’t people have honest business conversations? 18:44 - What do you think of popular people who state false information on social media? 47:42 - How did you find the best delivery for your audience? 1:15:42 - What is the next level for you? 1:24:58 - Do you believe that enthusiasm is the secret to success? 1:40:04 - Where can we find you? Mentioned on the show: Triumph Male & Female are 25% off this week only! Go to buylegion.com/triumph and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% on anything else you order or get double reward points! Mind Pump’s Free Resources: mindpumpfree.com

Well, hello, and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today to listen to an interview I did with my buddy, Adam Schaefer from MindPump. And we talk about, well, our favorite topic to talk about whenever we talk on podcasts or just on the phone, and that is business. Business and marketing, specifically in the fitness industry. And in this interview, Adam also talks about MindPump, his company that he and his partners and buddies have built, which encompasses more than just the top-rated podcast, but there is a multi-million dollar business behind that, in addition to just the advertising revenue. And in this episode, Adam talks about how they have continued to grow and what it really takes to scale a business like that. And in case you're not familiar with Adam and Mind Pump, well, he has been on my podcast a few times before. He has had me on Mind Pump, his podcast, a few times.

And Mind Pump is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, fitness podcast in the world at this point. I think it is. I think it's number one in the world in fitness. And Adam's also a coach who has worked with over 1000 people. He has taught other coaches how to be better leaders and how to better sell their services and satisfy their clients. And Adam has also built multiple successful businesses. And he is always fun to talk to. He always has interesting things to say. And so in this interview, Adam and I talk about various things. We talk about the scarcity mindset and fear of being judged by others, by peers. We talk about the liver king's marketing machine.

We talk social media strategy and some of the differences between the different platforms, including TikTok. We talk about finding meaningful work, finding a job or finding work that you won't dread, and more. Before we sink our teeth into it, many people think that if they just eat well, if they eat enough nutritious foods, they don't need a multivitamin. And while there is truth there, we don't need to take any supplements, but the right ones can help us achieve our fitness and our health goals faster. And in the case of a multivitamin, a high quality one can help you in a few ways. It can plug nutritional holes in your diet, which are actually fairly

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20% or get that 10% cash back. If you are an existing customer, try triumph risk free and see what you think. Adam, it's been a bit. It's actually, it's probably the shortest time frame, I think, in between our discussions, right? We just had one not that long ago. Were you on our show? It's been a bit since you've been on mine though. Yeah, no, it has been a while since you and I just chatted up, which I always enjoy because what ends up happening with all of our, I would say, podcasting friends or people we've met through the podcast is you typically connect with one of us and then that one guy kind of keeps the relationship going or they continue to stay.

You're probably the one that I think has different things that you connect with us individually on a level like that. So I always enjoy our conversations, even though I know I think you and Sal initially geeked out when you guys first met with your politics and your economics and everything you guys like to talk about. But as times evolved, I think you and I really enjoy the business conversation. I really like talking to you and your transparency. I think that's something that is your honesty and transparency with the business. It's rare. And I don't know if people know this or not, but you rarely get to meet people at your level or higher, even lower than where you're at,

that are just an open book about how they got there and what's working well for them and where they're struggling. And just, I really appreciate that. I feel like I'm the same way too. I'm very correct if someone asks me a question about the business. I think that's one of the reasons why we quickly bonded over this type of stuff, because you're echoing my sentiments. And as I've gotten more into business, I've wondered why it isn't more normal, why many people don't want to. I understand if you don't. Let's say you have something that gives you a big competitive advantage. I understand if you don't want to go on a podcast and tell all of your competitors eventually,

like, oh, here's one thing you're probably not doing that's making a huge difference. Okay, I understand that, right? But many people, even in private conversations, are very guarded about even numbers and what's working and what's not working. And it just seems like many people, they want you to think that things are often going better than they actually are or that nothing is going awry. And so early on, I had just thought like, I don't want to be like that just because I think it's weird.

I don't understand it. But anyways, I cut you off. No, you're saying exactly what I was going to say, which is, and I think to me, I think that, you know, to answer why I think that is, is I think it's common across all, you know, genres or types of businesses. But I think that in the fitness space, it's even crazier as far as, or like more dramatic how people can be with that. There's just a scarcity mindset. There's this idea that there's only so many people out there to help with their health and fitness journey. And there's so many of us that, and we all kind of have the same, you know, resources as far as science and education around it. So, uh, you know, if,

if Mike has a leg up on how to use Amazon better than me, or he's good at like, you know, heaven forbid, he share that with me. Cause then I, I might be able to poach some of his people and, and it hearkens all the way back to when I was a manager running gyms and I had a staff of 20 or so trainers that would be working for me. They had the same mindset. And I think they understandably even more so for them, right? You're in a local gym. It gets 2000 workouts a day. There's only so many members, all 20 of you trainers, all are trying to get your clientele from that same pool of people. And I was just not like that. I was this young, wasn't very knowledgeable.

I wasn't experienced, curious trainer who liked people, had a thirst for knowledge and learning. And I also felt so grateful anytime somebody would share any insight with me that I felt compelled to do it when I got anything. So I was really early, 20 years old, running a team of 20 trainers. And how I got there was even before I was in the management position, as I was learning, I would come home and I'd come back to the gym and I would teach my peers. And not in a way of telling them how to do things, but like, hey, I just read this cert or I just learned this. This will really help your clients. Or took some sales course and found out a more effective way of communicating. And then I'd be like, hey, next time you're doing your sales pre-sale, I just read this book and it helped me with this. Maybe try it. And I would give it. And honestly, a little bit of it was selfish too, because I quickly learned that the more that I repeated these things and shared these things, the more natural it came for myself. Right? So it solidified it as now learned knowledge for me.

When you first hear it for the first time, it's interesting, but it's not like something that you can regurgitate until you've practiced it a few times. And so I felt that- Even the act of translating something from somebody else's words into your own words, that's, I think, a first step toward long-term knowledge and ultimately understand that you can apply right i mean just because you can regurgitate words doesn't mean that you have a deep understanding and and even the word deep might seem a little bit uh exaggerated but um the point still stands though that you can highlight something in a book and even remember the words. But if somebody were to ask you to explain that concept, in other words, if you can't do that quickly, then there's

obviously a gap there, right? Yeah. I think the other thing is to the, or at least I know that if there was ever any hesitancy from me early on was the fear of getting it wrong or being judged to, which I think that's common. So you learn something, it's, oh, wow, it's interesting. It's new to you. You get it, but you don't fully maybe grasp it, or you don't have the ability to regurgitate it as well. And so you're afraid to say to your peers, this newfound knowledge, because, oh my God, what if I fuck it up? Or what if someone corrects me? Or I don't want to be... And so there's this fear. And so you kind of hang on to it or you don't express it and share it. So one, you don't get good at it. You don't figure it out for yourself very well because you're afraid to share it.

And I think that that is part of the problem. So there's a scarcity side to it. And then there's also the fear of being judged. And I run into this a lot when we're mentoring other trainers, or I'm speaking at some of these events where these trainers come up to me and they're new. They're like, oh my God, how do you... Don't you get nervous when you go out there? I said, originally when I was doing YouTube videos, my first critique of myself was the fear of my peers judging me and not me really thinking about the end consumer who I'm trying to help. I would do content and really what was going through my head was not like, oh, I really hope this gets to Susie and it helps her and she changes her life because of this information I'm giving.

It was, I hope I got that right. Did I pronounce that word correctly or was I explaining that study correctly or did I mix it? And it was really thinking about my peers. And I said, when I, when I learned to let go of a lot of that stuff is what really helped me kind of excel in, in presenting and helping other people. And I just think that it's, it's rare to find, and I know this has been, we're rambling on about how we like each other, but I mean, that's something that, that's something that I, that I saw in you instantly. And I'm drawn to people that are like this. And I think

that it's a lot of fun to meet somebody like that because, and it's already proven itself where one of us will, hey, have you tried this with your business? Or this is working really well for me. And then because of that, I go and research it or dig into it because I trust you. I know you're being honest about it. You're not fluffing your numbers to save your ego or whatever like that. I know it's genuine. And then I also know too, if I'm getting ready to go do something and I run it by you and you say, ah, yeah, it really didn't do shit for me. I'm like, okay, cool. I'm not going to waste too much time on something because I know Mike has already tested this out. So I really enjoy that. I appreciate that part of our relationship for sure. to consumers and and or or um the the end users of the information the people who i'm trying to help

and when i say consumer doesn't even notice in the beginning i mean i had a book so i guess i was selling something right but the information was and and all of the the content that i've produced and that i continue to produce is always with the, you could look at it in terms of avatars. There are really a handful of types of people who tend to follow me. And those are the people whose interests I'm trying to serve. And like you, I really don't care. And I don't say that in an arrogant way. And I know you don't mean it like that, but let's just say that I don't give any thought really to how my peers will judge my work. It just doesn't, it's just not important to me. What's much more important is how my readers and my listeners will judge my work. That matters because, um, I mean, the purpose is, is to help those people do better and reach their fitness goals faster.

It's not to impress my peers. And some people, though, it's different. Some people, they are much more interested in impressing their peers than they are in even being understood by lay people, so to speak. And I've seen that particularly in academia or people who run in academic circles, they are often much more interested in trying to sound really smart and getting approval and acknowledgement from other people in academia than they are in helping, you know, Sally six pack lose 15 pounds of fat and gain some muscle. It's almost always what keeps the ceiling on those people is that they are so concerned about the way their peers are going to judge them, that they're communicating information that appeals mostly to them or nerds that want to be like them. And that's such a small percentage of the

population when you talk about the people that need all of our help. And I think this is one of the biggest flaws of new trainers and coaches that are wanting to scale and build a business is they look up to these very intelligent people in academia and they go, they want to emulate what they're doing. But what they don't realize is those people, and there's always anomalies, right? There is the academia guy or girl who's wildly famous and makes a lot of money, but you're talking about one guy or girl who's wildly famous and makes a lot of money, but you're talking about one in a million. Most of them get to a certain place where, yeah, they're appealing to all these other nerds, but that's not the population. And really, when you think about the largest amount of people that need our help the most,

it is not somebody who knows how to read a study or even knows the difference between different training modalities or what a protein carb or a fat, none of those things. This is also why I think we see sometimes the kid, and I know some trainers get frustrated with this when they see somebody who's not very intelligent, but has a ton of people following them and listening to their advice. But there's something for you to learn from that. Those people obviously don't give a shit about being smart or right so much that they put no energy and effort to it. And maybe they lead truly all with their heart and caring and trying to help other people that

they completely sacrifice the other. And I do think there's some balance with that and integrity and experience. I think that all comes together. But there is something to learn from those people that have got all that attention that people are listening to bad advice. And it's like, well, they're probably communicating their bad advice better than you're communicating the right advice. So instead of... I've talked to people.

I won't mention any names just because I don't want to criticize anybody individually, but I've tried to explain this to some people in the evidence-based fitness space, particularly around marketing and that why I have put a lot of importance and a lot of work into marketing and why it's, it's, it's actually, it's incumbent upon them to sell themselves to people. It's not incumbent upon people to realize how brilliant they are. And they just, some people, they just, they just won't, they don't want to face that answer. You know what I mean? A lot of times it's not, oh, I just can't come up with the question to ask to resolve this problem.

Usually it's, it's, I don't want to face the answer. I just, I don't like the answer. And that's one of those things where they just don't like the answer. Oh, and then they, and then they default to building everything around putting down the people that aren't. Exactly. They're just stupid and they're just gullible. It's like, bro, you are not winning this war at all.

First, you're not learning how to communicate to all the right people. And then your default is, okay, well, I'm going to put down the other people that are doing a terrible job, but at least they're trying or doing their best to communicate that information. So yeah, no, it's been a... It's the fable of sour grapes, right? It's the Aesop's fable. I think it's the fox or whatever that is reaching for the grapes. It wants the grapes so much and then it can't get the grapes. So now all of a sudden the grapes are shit. I didn't want the grapes anyway.

It's so true, dude. What are your thoughts, just to segue into some more business and just marketing related stuff. So, so what are your thoughts, though, and let's say these aren't, these aren't just people who are trying to find their feet in, let's just, let's say in the fitness industry or not, or just in business in general, people see an example of that. And I only saw him maybe a couple of months ago. And I think at that time on Instagram, he was probably at like 700 K. Now he's probably double that. So he's growing very quickly, clearly making money, getting a lot of attention. There is, there's a, that's a formula as well, right? Oh, it's a, it's a very valid formula to make money. It 100% is. And it's so funny you went here because we just talked about this. It was my thing to bring up, right? We all have points

to bring up and I wanted to have the exact same conversation. So this is great. And what I attribute this to is very basic human psychology. It's funny how we, we're all guilty of this, of wanting to be in a camp. We don't want the complexity of, hey, there could probably be some really good times to eat like a vegan. Hey, there's some good times to probably eat like a payload. Hey, there's some good times to eat like a carnivore sometimes. And there's lots of people where certain ones work better for at certain points in their life. Or maybe there's a little bit of each of those that makes sense. And when you put it all together, well, now you just kind of have nutritious omnivorous diet. But that is just too complex.

And that means that like, everybody's kind of right. When we don't want that, we want to identify with a certain group or a certain, you know, you know, identity around that. And it's, it's like identity politics. It's, it's no different in, in, in politics as it is. I feel like in like the fitness spaces and it is something that we saw and we wanted to try and disrupt. And I feel like that's a big part of our mission is to disrupt exactly that, is to break up these camps. And I don't want to just pick on the liver king

because he's just an example of many examples around fitness like this. I mean, you mentioned some of them. Carnivore, that's essentially the same. We're talking about the same thing there. Even paleo. I know that that maybe it's less popular now than it was a few years ago, but. And you start to, and I think they start drinking their own Kool-Aid because they get validity

from some people that it really did help. Like if that's, what's kind of interesting about internet world now, right? Like you, you can reach literally a million people that like the carnivore diet is going to be amazing for because of their certain, you know, genetics or conditions that they have or lifestyle or whatever. And so you just, you get this, you know, confirmation bias from this select group of people that look like almost everybody, because it's, you know, you got a million followers and thousands of them are cheering you on being like, yes, that changed my life. And this is, I can't, you know, these are, these things are bad and this is so good for you. And so you, you get, you, you collect all those people. And then you,

you, as a, as a consumer, who's looking to try new things, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. Oh my God, you fall on a page like that and look at all the people that are saying this changed my life. And this is so perfect. And this is And you're so smart. This is so great. And look how amazing you look. And you fall right into it. It's a very basic formula for gaining attention and then potentially selling them a product. And we knew the way that we were going to go was going to be much slower, a lot less money at first.

But I think that what we're doing, what you're doing, has got way more staying power. So one of the things that I'm hearing about, the way he actually, I found him, was people kept asking us. Yep, same.

They kept asking me. I was like, liver king? What is this? I'm like, who the hell is, I have no idea who this is, right? And then eventually I look, and then I'm like, okay, whatever. I'm not that interested. But then I start getting people saying that, oh my God, I hear that he might be getting sued for this because there's some people that, you know, took his advice and then they

ended up being in the hospital. And so that's where it starts to get my attention. Like, okay, like this person is now, you know, it's, it's, it's going to, and what ends up happening and what will eventually happen is when you're giving, you know, kind of bad advice for the most part, right. For, for a good portion of people, eventually you're going to get some, you know, some radical person that's going to take everything you say, uh, literally, and then start eating raw meat, like everywhere you go, because that's what he sees. And that's what he promotes and he, what he's showing. And then you're going to fuck somebody up and then that gets out. And then, you know, so it's a, it's a very fast.

And I think you, we've talked about this before you and I, uh, that now more than ever is how fast the rises and the falls are. So, you know, I, I think when I see someone like him, I think, well, okay, we'll check back with me in five or six years on where he's at, what he's doing. And if he's not just pivoted to the next fad or next shock and awe attention. Which might not be possible, actually, because there's always an element of luck in any success story. I do not believe that that is the driving factor, as some people would like to believe. And that's also something you might want to comment on.

I know you have thoughts to share on that, but there certainly is something to the right idea at the right time. And, and, and it can be hard to time that, right? So in, if we're talking again,

liver King, or there are a lot of these people, as you mentioned, there are people in the past who their star was ascendant. And now you don't even hear about them anymore. Right. And, and so oftentimes what what you'll find is that there was a an element of luck there was an interesting idea at the right time for whatever reason the conditions were ripe for a rapid rise right but unless the person is very good at i mean this, this is really, again, just marketing, but it'd be like

marketing and business. And unless they could break it down to you and into first principles and say, here's how you do it. Here are the key components that make something like this go. And if you want to find one for you, it might take some trial and error. Your first one might not go. But if you understand this process, you can iterate until you find something that sticks. If they can't explain it to you like that, chances are they're not going to be able to repeat it because they just got lucky. You know what I mean? Well, I mean, you said something that I think is probably the most important point about talking about business. And there was a great TED Talk.

I wish I remember the title of it, but you could probably search it and find it. And it was titled something around the five most important factors of success in business. And number one is timing. And they've got plenty of research to support that. And he's a classic example of that. to support that. And he's a classic example of that. I mean, what has been the agenda the last 10 years or less with the documentaries like What the Health and Arnold Schwarzenegger now- Game Changers. Yeah. Game Changers. The whole vegan, the cows are killing the fucking planet.

Yeah. The cow farts are making the weather bad. Right. So that has been this huge. And so you kind of have, when it comes to marketing, and you know this, you have like one or two options if this is going to be your wheelhouse. Either one, you can ride the current wave and you become the vegan person and you're going to ride the wave of all the people that are jumping on that. Or you can call yourself the forward thinker or think you're really smart. I'm going to counter that message and be the complete opposite of that. And there's lots of power in that also. And so

he's an example of what happens when the market swings one direction really hard. There's a lot of people that watch What the Health and then now change to vegans because of that. Then there was a good portion of people that went, shut the fuck up. That's ridiculous. And then you see someone who is the complete opposite and you're like, yeah, that's right. I'm going to eat raw meat. I'm going to eat nothing but raw meat. I mean, it is a proven recipe for success in business, but it's not the long game. And maybe your desire is just to make a lot of money really quick or get a lot of attention and fame, but that was never ours. I mean, we always knew that we had a greater kind of mission that we wanted to accomplish. And we knew that there was a big enough blue ocean there for us.

It just might take a lot longer to kind of get there. But we knew that what would happen is as more and more people listened to the message, more and more people would apply that and realize, wow, this really is the right balance or the way I should kind of view health and fitness. And I know that sounds a bit narcissistic, like I have the answer to how to view fitness for other people. But what I do have is 20 years experience of training regular people of all sorts of conditions and issues and food tolerances and goals. And what I have collected in all those years of training all those people is, holy shit, there's such an individual variance that there is no one great way to eat. There is no one great way to train. But there are some very solid principles. There's also another thing that I think the guys and I really liked about the content that you were presenting was you didn't care about how...

And we actually joke about this all the time about you. It's also why we love you. We say like, you know, Mike has to have the most boring workouts that he shows on Instagram. But we like it so much because it's the right shit. It's like, instead of you doing... That's actually one of the reasons why I continue to share training footages. I know it is. I know that as you totally do.

I know you don't think your workouts are fucking super cool. You know, I know that. I don't. I think that's your point. Your point is, look at all you have to do. You know, I don't have to do any crazy exercises that you've never seen

or have somebody punch me in the abs while I do fucking reverse crunches. You don't need to do this weird, abnormally crazy body crushing stuff to get an incredible, well-balanced, strong physique. You stick to some very fundamental principles and you be consistent with it. And then after a certain period of time, you slightly modify and manipulate it. So the body has some sort of novelty, but you kind of stay there. And by staying there, you'll do the least amount of work and get the most amount of results. And let me tell you- And not get hurt. I care about that.

Right. And this is what 99.9% of all my clients were seeking. They weren't like what we think is on Instagram floating around looking for information. They were just average people that had other parts of their life that is far more important than the time they spend in the gym. But they valued my experience and my profession that, okay, I recognize that I'm an engineer and I've got kids and I don't have time to read all the books and learn about training correctly and diet correctly. So I'm going to hire this guy, Adam. And so they're seeking that out for me. And they don't want to know the most creative exercise. They don't want to know, hey, could I spend seven days in here and do more work and get less? They don't want that. They're like, tell me what I need to know. They don't need new workouts every week.

Yes. Simply to feel like their training is more effective. Maybe because, for example, you could make them more sore with that if you gave them new movements every single week. And you also know that, okay, if we load some eccentric, that'll make him even more sore. And trainers, that's not to say all trainers, of course, maybe not even most trainers, but some trainers, they do, and maybe sometimes inadvertently fall into that trap because they notice that their clients some clients seem to respond better to that so then they're like well it really would

be better if we just stuck to this more boring kind of training that actually would produce better results in the long run but my clients seem to be more excited when I mix things up every week or every two weeks. And I give them, I'm going to correct you. It is not some, it is most. And I can say that because of my experience training trainers for so long and also being guilty myself. And I can tell you exactly why that is. It's because at that time I didn't have the words, the knowledge and experience to communicate what they needed to do effectively. It was much easier to wow them with creative new exercises. I knew that if they came in and I did an exercise or a routine that they had no fucking idea what

they were doing and it was hard and it was challenging and I was having to correct them and fix it and they were really, really sore from it. I knew that it would- A Joel Seidman special. Right? It would tell them like, wow, I would have never thought this or wow, I need this trainer to help me. Heaven forbid, I teach them a lunge, a squat, a deadlift, a basic shoulder press that they could then go do on their own. And then they don't need me anymore. So it was smart business as a young kid who didn't know how to communicate the right information yet. And it isn't some trainers, it's most all trainers,

especially in that first five years. Because in those first five years, you still are learning a lot of this through trial and error yourself or reading and learning and researching. And so I think that's a big part of it. And then what happens is at one point, five year, 10 year, I don't know where that happens for everybody or most people, but you have this dilemma of knowing what is best for your people, but then also knowing that it's going to be more challenging to get them to comply. And it would be much easier to just keep giving them the stuff that you know works to sell them and keep them coming. And so I do believe that every trainer at one point in their career struggles with that dilemma of, do I do what's best for my client or do I just keep doing what works to keep them coming back and paying for more? And so there's a bit of that that happens, I think, for everybody.

That happens, I think, for everybody. And to, I think, I don't know, to promote you if you're in that position of going the right way is that it may be, again, the slower process or you may fail or a couple of clients are like, no, I wanted the creative stuff or no, I wanted this. Like you might get a little bit of that at first, but eventually it will make you a far better and more effective coach and trainer. And that you really, truly changing people's lives and helping them over time, that will compound. And those are always the best clients who are referrals from somebody that you fundamentally

changed their life forever and gave them and taught them behaviors to go on and do it for themselves for the rest of their life. gave them and taught them behaviors to go on and do it for themselves for the rest of their life. And this is, you know, closing the full circle and kind of the conversation around building a business or scaling to millions of dollars in fitness. Like this is part of the secret sauce is knowing that is knowing what is best for the client, even though it may not be expedient, it may not be the best way for you to make money right now. It is what's best for them. And yeah, somebody else may beat you to a million dollars doing it another way by eating liver and looking jacked all the time, but that's okay. Check in on his business in 10 years and check on my business in

10 years. And check on blood work as well in 10 years. And not to pick on the poor guy, because I'm sure maybe he's a great guy, this and that, but it really is the formula for people in this space. And it's unfortunate that we focus so much energy on just trying to gain attention because we think that that's the best way to do it. I mean, it's like how many people were bugging me about TikTok for so long. We're finally investing in TikTok and building that out right now. But millions of dollars later and years later, am I going, okay, let's go build this? Because I didn't care about just attention that much. And that is such a terrible platform to communicate the message that we need to communicate. So it's not that I don't... These are people trying to market and sell me all the time on

why I need to do it. Right. Like, oh, there's this person who's got millions of this and they make this much money. It's like, that's not my goal. My goal isn't just to make millions of dollars and just to get millions of views. It's not my goal. My goal is to communicate a message that I don't think is out there or is not the predominant message in the space. And TikTok is a fucking terrible platform for me to do it. It's not that I don't think that we will use it or I don't see any importance in it. It's just that in the hierarchy

of things that I want to put my energy in for the business that is going to give us not only the best return, but also help the most people. I just didn't see it at that. And so we waited this long before we even put any time and effort in that direction. Yeah, I haven't, I haven't, um, done anything with it yet that one of the next hires I'm making is, is it's going to be somebody to work on my social media with me, because as you know, to do social media correctly, it, there's a lot of behind the scenes kind of, um, legwork that, that needs to be done. And it's, it's a more than a full-time job to properly manage. Like I produce a lot of content, written content, spoken content. I can do little videos and stuff. Sure. But to turn all of that

into an effective system that there's just a lot of time that goes into that. And I, it doesn't really make sense for, I think, for me to put my time into that right now. But to your point is, and I totally agree that that's why I'm not just playing around on TikTok because I don't care to just get followers for the sake of having followers. I don't care to just get attention for the sake of getting attention like you. I care to educate people and I care to bring people into my orbit and hopefully get them so sure if we can. And I'm sure we're looking at TikTok in the same way is that if we can get people engaged in the beginning of a conversation, I guess, if we can get them to watch a little video and get interested in what else we have to say, hopefully in something longer than a 60 second video, right. Then, and if we can do that at scale, then that's cool. Right. Because again, that,

that serves, uh, the, the, the deeper purpose of, of what we're doing. And, you know, so, so I, I totally understand where you're coming from. As a business operator, you know, this, like you only have so much time, you only have so much money. Isn't it funny when people come to you, you know, when they come to you and they have all of their ideas, you know, like, why don't you just do this and do this?

It's pretty, you should just change this and do this. And they just don't realize exactly what you're saying right here. No, totally. You know, it's great though. Luckily, so my wife works for the company and she fields a lot of these, these questions and people coming, trying to market to, or get us to market with them ahead of time. And you know, the Tik TOK thing recently, this,

one of these companies was trying to do that. And she said, well, let me just, let me just stop you right there. If you're, if she, he had his whole presentation, he goes, let me tell you, if you get in a meeting and your big aha is TikTok for Adam, he is going to light you up in that. And so I'm just going to help you out. If you really want to convince him or close him on, on working with, with you, don't lead with, Hey, huge opportunity in TikTok for you guys to do this. Like, it's just not a good way to lead because we've made that decision a long time ago that it's just every medium, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, podcasting, blog, Twitter, email, they all are valuable mediums. They all attract different types of clientele. They all work better for certain types of content. And they all have a different closing percentage and retention from all. And when I look at things like Twitter,

TikTok, Pinterest, the conversion on it is just so low in comparison to the longer form mediums. If someone reads your whole blog, that is far more powerful than you gaining 10,000 followers on TikTok. And that's a lot. It's a lot of followers, a lot of people. That's how powerful someone actually reading through an entire blog or somebody who-

Or somebody subscribing to your email list or to your SMS list. Yes, yes. Somebody, because think of it from a business perspective, that person, if they're exchanging their email, their email or their time, because they read a whole blog or listened to a whole hour and a half, they are literally virtually telling you, I really want to hear what you have to say. Somebody who hits a fucking heart button on a 60-second clip of potentially something that's just funny or compelling or like that.

They're not- Probably when they're drunk and or high. Yeah. I mean, what that customer is telling you is nowhere near the same as what the customer who is telling you, hey, I gave you two hours of my attention, or here's my email, please email me more of your information. And that customer is... And I want that customer. That is a customer. I don't want to try and convince a million people on TikTok all this great information I have. Yes, I do see there is some value in that.

But I would way rather reach the people that are already seeking that type of information. And they want me to tell them that. They want to dedicate an hour and a half or two hours of time to listen or read the content that we have. It's such a better customer than somebody who just got duped into buying something in a 60-minute clip or 60-second clip. And honestly, last night I was talking to Katrina and she was like, how are you going to measure the success of TikTok? And I was telling her some of the things. And I said, not all of it is just... She's like, why are we spending time and investing in this at all right now? I said, well, there is

a small part for me now that is kind of protecting real estate for us. We've gotten to the size now where we're so big that other people can take my content and repurpose it on these platforms and are building followings. And there's not really shit you can do. I can't... platforms and are building followings. And there's not really shit you can do. Like I can't like the- You mean like literally taking snippets from your content? Yes. That was part of the motivation behind the TikTok was there was, I think there's a TikTok page out there that's pretty much all mind pump clips. I've got 10,000 followers and it was somebody else doing it. And so there's a part of me, part of the strategy or investment into TikTok right now is just to protect real estate there. It's like, hey, okay, I'm going to put a little

money over here because I know if we do spend some time and effort, I can do it better than some kid is doing it right now. And if I become the main mind pump TikTok, then I don't got to worry about it three, four or five years from now when everybody's trying to rip our content and make a big viral page out of it. And so part of that, and I was explaining to her, is just to protect our brand a little bit. It's like, hey, we now are at a size like that where people can take our content and mash it up and repurpose it and gain enough attention from it. They could actually create a little business off of it. And so by me making sure that we at least own some real estate in all those areas and have somewhat of a following there, I think is a nice way to hedge that, I guess.

And so that is also part of the strategy right now is because I definitely am not getting my dollar return in what I'm investing and putting in, like the amount of money we're spending on the team to put that together. It's like, it's not converting to that much money back into the business, at least not right now. Maybe months or years down the road when it has enough mass and volume to it. But right now, a part of the strategy is just to protect the real estate there. Because in social media, it's unfortunate, but you don't own a lot of your content you put out there. Once you... There's a lot of stuff that you click and you basically give up that right when you put it on Instagram or you put it on YouTube. You basically say that YouTube now has the rights

to this content and then other people can mash it up and do all this. It's what makes the platform so great. It's also one of the things that presents a challenge for a business like us that's finally getting some good traction and scaling that. I have to think defensively sometimes too, which is unique and different. It's different having that conversation right now than something I would have thought I was going to have, say, five years ago, that I would have to do that, or I should do that, I should say. Yeah. There's something to be said for the brand awareness that comes with it, especially with where you guys are at right now. And whereas in the beginning of a business, you should be thinking about direct marketing,

direct sales, forget about branding, forget about brand awareness. Now, if we're talking about branding in terms of having maybe products that look nice or have aesthetic presentation of your business, okay, fine. But if we're talking about brand awareness, that's really only a viable strategy when you have achieved a lot of success because you'll spend a lot of money on it for no immediate return. It's probably similar to SEO in that regard in that you can pour a ton of money into SEO. You know this firsthand and it could take six to eight months for you to see any results whatsoever. And so brand awareness can be similar in that regard. You have to be able to spend and spend and spend and spend and wait. That's such a great point. This was also one of the first hurdles that I had with one of our employees that I hired a few years back.

He was hardcore into the brand awareness and caring about the look of the brand so much. Everything that he had read and everything that he'd experienced, this was so important that we had this cool look and vibe around the business so much. It's like, dude, if nobody is buying our product or using it, or we're not changing any lives through it, I don't give a shit how cool we look. And it costs a lot of- Dude, look at Jocko Fuel. They just got a $30 million, and that was a minority investment. Go to their website. It looks terrible. It all looks terrible. But now you're going to say that Jocko's brand is shit. No, or his branding is shit. Absolutely not. Is his website shit? Yeah,

it's pretty shitty. But I don't know the valuation of that business, but I would not be surprised if it was a hundred million plus, and that's just on his supplements and his energy drinks. Yeah. Look, Apple, apple nike google none of them looked the way they look right now when they were exactly somebody's garage and they were building the next you know billion dollar company uh their logos look like shit they're and even even at that time as you know everything kind of looked like shit at one point right but but no but even by those days standards. Yeah. I mean, it's such a good point and conversation around somebody who's trying to help scale is looking at that. That area of focus is just most people aren't there yet. And

to be worrying and wasting time around that or money and resources is just a terrible idea. You are on, at the beginning, you're racing to figure out what it is that you have to offer and can give to people that will either fundamentally change or improve their lives, that they are willing to come back to you again and again for more information or more content or more of whatever you have. And that isn't that easy. And everybody thinks they know what it is. And a lot of times you're kind of throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks and then you do it again. That is more important figuring that out first before you care about the way your Instagram

looks or you care about the way your website looks like that stuff. Uh, you know, it's a, it's unfortunate, but it's where I think a lot of the, the sexy stuff online that sells you on what you need or invest in my, you know, you know, help you build a, you know, scale from zero to six or seven figures, you know, marketing guys like. Mastermind. Yeah. Mastermind groups, right? They want to, they want to pitch you on all the sales copy and all the, like a lot of the sexy stuff. And it's like, man, if you can't gain anybody's attention, if you can't add enough value to people's life that they're willing to give you

a free email or their free time, you know, for an extended period of time to listen to you, then you don't have a business yet. And it doesn't matter how good it looks or how much money you spend on SEO. You first got to figure that piece out. And when we were doing the YouTube channel, we weren't sure of it. We had an idea of what we wanted to communicate, but how we communicate it in what manner, that took a lot of practice. It took a lot of practice to refine. We knew we had a good message that would provide a lot of value, but even that needed to be

refined. Even that, we needed to figure out, well, how do people want to receive that message? How is it best for us to deliver that message? A lot of the time and effort and the success of the business today is predicated on all the hours that we put into refining that and practicing and trying. And like, okay, I think we're starting to figure out that this is what people are gaining the most value from. And that's where most of your energy should be focused when you're trying to build something. Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening trying to build something. Hey there. If you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome.

Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast or if you just like my podcast in general and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not-so-loved one even who might want to learn something new, word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. And how did that process actually look for you guys? Tell us a little bit about how the mind pump sausage has been made, so to speak. Just to give a little bit of context of why I'm asking that question is, you could go about that in a very deliberate and systematic fashion. For example, I know a team of

people who are very accomplished in conversion rate optimization, they've worked with very big companies made a lot of people a lot of money. And in their so called design of experiments phase, there's a lot of work that goes into coming up with really what we're talking about is it's customer hypotheses, right? We have a theory that this might resonate because of this, right? And so there's a lot of testing that is deliberately created and it's interlocking in many ways to produce key insights, key pieces of wisdom that will ultimately drive the big increases in conversions. And, um, that, that is one end of the spectrum, right? And then the other end of the spectrum is no pre-planning whatsoever, getting in there and doing it, and then paying attention to key channels of feedback and having good intuitions as well and paying attention to

the right things. So you start to see, oh, that's a green flag. We should try to go more in that direction. Oh, we're onto something here. How has that process been like for you guys because that's a good question and we are very much so the the latter right so we we or we're not systematic about the process although there are systems in place and there's things that i think we were consistent with that i think that were maybe non-negotiables maybe that we definitely uh were more the type of like let's just let's just put a lot of reps and then let's let's use the response that we get as a litmus test i mean that one of the type of like, let's just put a lot of reps and then let's use the response that we get as a litmus test. I mean, one of the very cool things, and you know this from being in business as long as you have, that I love about today versus building a business 20 years ago is the

fact that we have YouTube and you can capture emails and you can do all these things that give you all kinds of feedback. I mean, you know this, right? You could put out an email and literally change the subject line, change the length of it, change a couple final tweets. And all of a sudden, the open rate on thousands of email goes up by 5% or goes down by 6%. And instead of dwelling so much on the percentage of change, it's just that that's a feedback for you. That's like, oh, when I say it this way, more people want to read it. When I say it that way, less people. And the same thing goes for how we created the content around the podcast. We knew at the end of the day, we had good information that could truly help people. So it starts with that, right? And really the work in that is all the years before. It was the being a trainer for so long, training so many people,

the certifications, the education, the study reading. That's all that. So that is everything first, which is also so important when I talk to these people that are interested in masterminds. Listen, where you should be focusing too on right now before you're talking about conversion rates is getting that experience and that knowledge because you want to be able to give something valuable to these people. If you just started, it's really tough to have acquired all that. So that's first, right? And then it's like, okay, let's podcast. So let, and you know, initially the strategy or the thought process was let's get a shock and awe. So we would say off color things and have offcolor type of titles and just to get attention. And the thought process was, or the strategy was, okay, if we can just get people to click

on it because they're like, what the hell these guys are talking about? And then they click on it. And then we kind of wheel them in with the conversation. And then they find out, oh, man, these guys are kind of smart, actually. Or, wow, that's really interesting. I didn't know that. So the idea was shock and awe to get the attention. And I hate to say bait and switch because we weren't tricking you with the information we were providing, but it was like win you over with kind of our fun, humor, lightheartedness. But then as you find out

more about us, you go, oh wow, there's some depth to these guys. They really are smart when it comes to exercise and nutrition knowledge. I'm interested now. So that was kind of the approach at the very beginning. And it somewhat worked. I mean, it definitely got attention. The problem, the part that I think was the most challenging about it was what we didn't realize, and this didn't happen until way later, was we were, as many people as we were gaining attention by that approach, we were also losing probably the same amount of people because we were turning certain people off that weren't willing to

actually stay in tune and listen all the way to the good stuff. And I wouldn't have known that, we wouldn't have known that had we just not. Were you selecting for the wrong types of people? Do you think that was part of it? Yeah. Like think, think about somebody who would prefer they just that's TikTok is where they go for information. That's it. That's their preferred source of information versus somebody who might go to a long form

blog article or might even go for a book or minimally a book summary, right? Those are different types of people. Yeah. I think what we were doing, we were pigeonholing ourselves into a very specific clientele, very specific, which has some benefits, right? I mean, it's what gave us the initial few hundred or thousand people that were paying attention to us. You had to be just like us. You had to have a dark sense of humor. You had to be off color. You got a little edgy. I think I have to go back and listen. I might have been one of those first 500, if I would have known. And you probably would have because you have a very similar dark sense

of humor. So you would have probably appealed to that. But it's a very specific group of people. And again, when you go back to some of the fundamentals that I was saying before, it's like, is that truly all of my... Well, no, I trained a lot of people that were nothing like me, that didn't have a dark sense of humor like me or didn't think that type of stuff was funny or entertaining.

And they purely were hiring me because they knew that I knew what I was talking about or I could truly help them. And so we were breaking one of the rules or fundamentals that I was just talking about earlier. And so I think that was really the problem was like, okay, we have to recognize too that especially now the size we are that at all times back then it was probably 10 or 20 people. Now it's thousands or tens of thousands of people every day that are listening to us for the very first time. And I think it took us to get to a size relatively to where we're at now for me to really start to feel it and notice like, oh shit, we are probably losing a lot of people on the back end because we are gearing

ourselves so much into this shock and awe approach that even somebody who might've liked us and really enjoyed the information that was coming later, we lost them right away. And you and I were texting the other day and you were asking me and I actually didn't even get back to you because you were talking about the growth. Like you're like, dude, you guys are exploding. That's one of my next questions for you. So this is actually part of like when we, like we've had, there's been phases, right? Of like how we've like figured that out. So one of the first phases that helped this challenge out

was okay, we're going to split the show in half. Front half of the show is off color, wild, talk about whatever we want. And then we transition to fitness. So the theory was, okay, people that just want the fitness, they'll go to that. People that want the other stuff, we'll listen to that. And then the people that enjoy both will go through it. The next revision of that was, okay, some people were still complaining and they didn't realize, oh, there's a back half that's totally different. So then Sal began to intro the show where he'd

say, hey, for these few minutes, we talk about, and then we get into whatever. So then the next phase of that, which is most recently, and what I think is attributed to the biggest explosions was we started to start every single episode. We've never done this until just recently, last six months or less. Every single episode starts with a very specific fitness tip. And we opened the show now that where we never used to do that before. Every once in a while, fitness would enter the show at the beginning, but most often it was just current events and then it would get to fitness. And I think it made that big of a difference. And you know what really sold me on this? I don't know. Are you familiar with the All In podcast guys? Do you know who they are? I feel like I've heard of that. Oh, they're one of the top podcasts right now. Everybody on Wall Street listens to them and all the politicians listen to them. There are four, well, two of them. One of them's a billionaire, and then the other three are like 100 millionaires. They're filthy rich guys,

angel investing, stock, Wall Street guys. Did these guys have Trump on? No. Was that? No, they rarely ever have. Did they have somebody on and they recently got taken down or was that something else? No, no, no. This might have been something. Okay. These guys are-

Nevermind. And I'll explain why this matters. So I hadn't heard of them at this point. And they talk a lot about economics. You definitely would like this podcast, right? So they talk a lot about economics. They get into politics a little bit. Obviously, they talk about investing and stuff, all things that I'm very interested in. And they have a very mind pump-esque vibe. They're four best friends and

they all kind of like jab at each other and have a great conversation. They're all very different. You know, even politically, there's like a conservative, there's a liberal, there's like a libertarian, like, so, and they're friends. So it's great. And they're very intelligent, right? So someone tells me they have all these things that I'm going to like, listen to their show. So I'm like, cool. So I'm starting to listen to the show.

And I'm like 20, 30 minutes in, and they're teasing each other. And because I don't have a relationship with them, I haven't listened to the show long enough. I don't know whose voices are whose. I actually start to get annoyed. I'm like, fuck, I thought I was going to hear the show long enough. I don't know whose voices are whose. I actually started to get annoyed. I'm like, fuck, I thought I was going to hear some stuff about economics. I thought they were going to get political stuff. I thought they were going to get into investing.

And they hadn't. Now, because I really value the person who recommended it to me and trust their opinion on knowing me really well that I would like it, I stuck in. And eventually, they got to some more of the stuff that I liked. And then I got to another episode. It was like, oh, I love these guys. And now I'm hooked. And eventually they got to some more of the stuff that I liked. And then I got to another episode and it was like, oh, I love these guys. And now I'm hooked. I listened to every single episode. And I had this kind of like aha moment, like, fuck, how many times does this happen to Mind Pump where we literally change somebody's life? They are like, oh my God,

they're sold on us. They're selling their aunt on it. They are like, you got to listen to these Mind Pump guys. They blew my mind about fitness. I've lost all this weight. I'm in the best shape of my life. I feel so good. And they're selling us. And then they come over, this person who has no idea who we are, but trust their sister-in-law or cousin or aunt or whatever, and starts listening. And the first 20 minutes is Netflix shows.

Sal talking about lizard people and elite pedophiles. Yes, right? And you hear that for the first and then me jabbing one of them and talking shit and like, you know, dick jokes in there. And it's like the first 30 minutes is all that. And we don't touch on any of the one points

that this person sold us so hard on. And maybe when we were really small and had a few hundred people listening, it wasn't that impactful. But now when, you know, and I'm not exaggerating, we probably have at least a thousand to 10,000 new people every day that tune into us for the first time.

I really think making sure that, hey, listen, lead with our strength and why most people are really... There's a lot of people, of course, that like our personalities or identify with one of us or enjoy that banter. But the truth is, where we're professional, where we knew our business was going to be centered around was our fitness knowledge. And so that. And I even think that we continue to refine it and get better about, you know, how long it is and specifically what types of things we talk about and how do we, do we debate the conversation or is it just Sal ranting for two minutes? Like, so we're,

we're tweaking those things right now to get even better. But I think that is a big reason why we saw this huge uptake in the last, you know, six months or so. That combined with, I know that Doug had not turned on Spotify, the ability for somebody to go back and listen beyond 100 episodes. So on Spotify, it automatically only downloads... I'm going to make a note right now because... Yeah. So we didn't know this either. This just kind of happened. I can't remember how Doug found out. So Spotify will only put the last 100 episodes unless you unlink it and allow it to download everything. And since we have a very large following of people that actually binge every fucking episode, which I think is crazy, and go back when they find us after they like us, they go back and they start from the beginning and come all the way back. Does that make you feel a little bit awkward when people it's a weird i mean i get it you get it more than i do but even i get it sometimes and i'm flattered but i i don't

i don't do well with compliments in general i just don't i i just usually i'm kind of like thank you like you know what i mean but people like you and us didn't get in this to be popular and famous, especially you, right? You definitely are even more private than we are, but all of us are like that. None of us wanted the limelight. None of us did it because we wanted to become popular on social media or famous. And so because of that, I think people that want that and are seeking that, they love that and they eat that up. For me, and probably you too, it's like, wow, it is flattering, but it's not attention you're seeking. And so you kind of tend to shy away from it. Katrina used to make fun of me all the time that you're so awkward when people come up to you in public. That's so not you. You're like

the life of the party. People gravitate you when you're at events and things like that. You carry a room. And then some fan who knows you really well, listen to everyone he represents, goes, you get all weird. I'm like, well, it is weird for me. I didn't want that. I didn't do this to become a fitness influencer or famous in any matter. It was like, I saw an opportunity to build a business and provide something that I thought was tremendously valuable and a great life for me and my partners. And that's the real motivation behind this. So yeah, when people do that, and when I get that kind of attention, I'm better.

I mean, I think I'm getting better at how I handle it, but it's always been weird and different for me, for sure. But yeah, this is all very new stuff that is, I think also now become the hook for the YouTube channel, right? So they now clip that out and make a separate thumbnail and hook and keep it short to three to 10 minutes long. So that is what's bringing on a ton of new leads and subscribers on YouTube. It also gets repurposed and then chopped up even more for now TikTok and then Instagram Reels. So we're starting to get just now really good at figuring out what pieces of content work really well on each platform and then how to maximize our time and effort towards that sense. It would be ridiculous for the four of us to try and make specific content just for YouTube, specific content just for Instagram. And I mean, it's so difficult to do that.

And I know Gary Vee is someone who talks about this all the time. And so I've known that this was the place we need to be. I just didn't know for sure how to get there without all the practicing and the trying and the reiterating all the time. And that has been a big part, I think, of the success and the traffic and the revenue this last six months or so, maybe even a year, is the effort towards all those different platforms and really starting to figure out what works best on each one of those. And we're starting to see the residual effect of the growth and all those things because it's been interesting. It's been a very interesting ride, and we've had to reiterate so many times and still far from, I think, completely figuring it out.

But there's little things that I think that we've pieced together that are really helping. There's a concept, and I think it's in chemical manufacturing. I believe it's a German word, actually, Verbund, V-E-R-B-U-N-D. But basically the idea is when you're producing one chemical product. And then those byproducts that you're using to make into products, those usually produce byproducts and then figuring out how to take those chemical byproducts and turn them into viable products. So that's an iterative process that allows you to start with one primary product that you're producing. But by the end of this whole process, you're producing 20 different things. And that idea applies, I think, to many different aspects of business, particularly marketing, right? I mean, before the podcast, I sent over to you some personal information with the business

and all the different revenue streams that we have. What you're saying is exactly what led to each of those. It wasn't like we set out, like, for example, let's do like, let's talk about the, you know, HRT, you know, business that we have now that's going like, that wasn't like we didn't, we never set out and said, like, we're going to build a, you know, partnership with a HRT clinic and that's going to be a consistent revenue stream for us. Like we didn't, we never set out to that. But what happened through really

focusing on one major part of the business was, oh, wow, man, over the last three years, I've answered hundreds, maybe even thousands now of questions related to hormone therapy. Either somebody's already got it and their doctor sucks, or I've got a 25-year-old who just got tested and they're at 170 free testosterone. And I'm like, I'm not a doctor, I'm not qualified to do this. So it, it, then we, what we did was seek out who we thought were some of the best. We tried somebody and weren't very happy with them, found just salad, ended up finding somebody else, end up loving the doctors that we met with, then work out a deal with them where we say, Hey, we really, again, the goal behind this was to service our people, convincing them that

we would drive traffic to them in return if they would actually manage a forum for us. Okay, we're going to start a free forum, 100% dedicated to hormone therapy and all the questions around testosterone, estrogen, and everything you could think of and everything to, oh my God, what's the word for, not SARMs, but what's the other one that's popular right now? I cannot think. Peptides. Yeah, thank you. Peptides.

So all questions around peptides and all questions around hormones, both men, women. And then two times a month, they actually come on for an entire hour, ask live questions, and then they're in there managing that forum every single day, answering people's questions. And then we get a kickback on people that are going through their business and going through therapy. And it's now turned into a six-figure business for the company. And it wasn't like we set out to really do that. It was, again, focusing on our main mission, trying to service and help people. Oh, wow, look at this. We've now gotten so big that there's thousands of people that have questions and need help and support around this. Okay, let's seek out who are some of the best in

doing that. Oh, here's, let's build a relationship and a partnership. Okay, here's an opportunity for, and what's most important for me, or not most, but one of the more important things for me and the guys now is we're always looking at scalability, right? I think that's really the difference between a good idea and a bad idea in business, in my opinion, is at scalability, right? I think that's really the difference between a good idea and a bad idea in business, in my opinion, is the scalability of it. And that's not to say that you can't build a successful, nice little six-year business

for just you and your family and be totally fine on an idea that consumes most of your time for eight to 10 hours a day. But when we look at business ideas and strategies within the business or outside of the business, the first question that we always ask ourselves is like, okay, how much time is this going to require one of us to build this out or to manage it or to keep it going? And even if it's a million dollars...

Because you don't have the luxury that you had in the beginning. I totally understand. I mean, in some ways, I kind of miss that time when I couldn't my time wasn't clearly as quote-unquote valuable or at least there weren't very obviously valuable things i can spend my time doing to grow my businesses so i felt like i had the psychological kind of luxury of just playing with things because it sounded interesting but if you want to keep moving ahead, like you're saying, there is a point where you have to learn to start saying no to basically everything

and very, very deliberately say yes. And just to compliment you guys, I think that's something I've seen that you guys have done very well with. You've taken one thing like email marketing. I remember we talked about that years ago. You took that one thing and worked on it until it was really working. Okay, good. Then you move on to something else. Maybe you have a couple things going at any given time, but you don't have 15 going to where then you can't really execute on any of them.

Yep. Yep. No, you just said something too that I think I'm always trying to find little nuggets that we can give the people that are business-minded, that are listening to this, that was a hurdle, right? So two years ago, if you asked me like, what's the biggest challenge with the business? I think my consistent answer was the ability to say no. That was a real hard challenge for the four of us. And we used to all get to get everything. We made a decision together and we debated. And so learning to say no is really, really difficult when you get to a certain point and very, very important if you want to continue to scale. The other thing that is a huge hurdle, and I always tease Doug about this because I think out of the four of us, he's the most challenged in this area, is Doug is used to being a very

successful solo entrepreneur. He's had success by himself and he's very meticulous about things that he does, which has also served us very well with the show, of course. But what comes with that or the challenge or the hurdle with that is the ability to let go of what... You brought up the email thing. What I'm good at is I'm not great at any one thing. I'm really good at finding an area like email marketing or say anything, TikTok, whatever we're talking about, burying myself into it to learn enough about it or what we need to do, find the right person who is really good at it or pretty good at it that can start to take it. Whatever that means, money, time,

whatever. I put all this energy and effort into it. And then as soon as I get to a place where I have a good enough grasp and understanding of what's good, what's bad, what's par, okay, now let me find somebody who can do that. And then the hurdle and the hurdle that Doug has is you have to be okay with maybe this person will never do it as well as you. And that is really hard for solo entrepreneurs that have built their businesses and this is their baby. And it's probably the same, not the same, but similar feeling that a mother has sending their child off into the world. You spend all this time raising this kid, this being, they're 17, 18 now, it's time to set them on their own. You're like, oh my God, let somebody else take it and do it and not have my help. And that struggle, I think a lot of entrepreneurs... And then you see how they do it and you see all the things that you would fix. Yeah. They're fucking up and you want to go in and fix it. And so we're always talking about this. And it's also another thing that has attributed to the success of the business is the ability to

do exactly what you said, is to see an area that there's opportunity, that there's scalability there to go all hands on deck, get it going, build it up, figure it all out, be knowledgeable enough about it that you understand it. And then as quickly as possible, farm that task out, give it to somebody else, which means sometimes you've got to give up all the money that it's making, or maybe sometimes even more to be able to step away and then to prioritize something else. And that has been the nature of this beast that I've found is that once we got to a place where we were providing enough value and giving enough free content to people that we were attracting enough people, then it was really honing in on areas that we can refine, get systems in place, and then contract or hire out for them to do it and then move on to the next.

And yeah, some people can't do that. Some people have a really hard time. My buddy Craig, who was at one point almost in this business, is an example of that. He just wants to control everything and they've had success in the past by doing that. And so it's really hard to break somebody from that and to say, hey, listen, you have to accept that no one is ever going to probably do it because it's your baby. No one's ever going to treat it the same way you do or care about it as much as you do. And to stress over trying to fit it, all I need them to do is to keep it going in a way that is scaling or managing or getting better. And I can come in every once in a while

and say, Hey, you know, when you do this, that's great. When you don't, when you don't, you do this, that's not so great. Like, let's do more of this, less of that. And, you know, and coach up like, and then, and then move on to the next thing. So there's definitely an art and skill to being able to do that. And it is what I think keeps a lot of people from, you know, going beyond, you know, the kind of six figurefigure type of range. And I was notorious for this. For most of my life, I was really good at building a livelihood for me and probably a good business where I made six figures. But what I was terrible at was removing myself from certain things so I could go focus on other things. Everything required so much

of my attention. And I was so focused on getting good at that one business or that one thing that I would find myself a couple of years later and I'd be like, okay, cool. I'm making good money, but I'm also working six days a week, 10 hours a day. I'm burnt. I'm tired. I'm also starting to not like this as much as I liked it when I first started it. And it's like, if I really want to scale this, when, how, you know, and I did that with like multiple businesses before this one. And that's been a constant conversation. And I love that I have partners that understand that and grasp that now. So when we all, because we all get teased with great ideas all the time, when a guy, Justin will walk in one day, oh my God, we got to do this. There's huge opportunity here. And Sal come the next day, I'll come the next day. But we've all learned to say, okay,

let's map that out. What is that going to require for your time initially? And then how quickly and effectively can you remove yourself from it? And then also, can it continue to scale beyond where it's at without you being always attached to it. And if the question is, if you don't have a very hard, yes, we can do that. Yes, I could be out of that. Yes. If it's not that, then it's no. I'm always going to lean towards no if it's not a hard yes. Because you have hard yeses. Why take the chance on something that is a maybe? I don't know. You know what I mean? Well, then I suppose the potential upside better be so big that you're willing to accept the maybe if you're answering no to any of those questions, the opportunity is not big enough to warrant pursuing it. And that could be right now, maybe a year from now, right?

And that's where I wanted to wrap up is hear your thoughts on where you go, what do you see is gonna take you from where you're at to the next level and what is the next level for you? But if you are in a position where maybe you have now the right people, and that's something that I've made this mistake, particularly in marketing with Legion, I should have put a lot more importance on hiring the right people for Legion's marketing.

And that's not to knock the people who are working in legions marketing it's actually mostly just to knock myself for understaffing it for being too personally involved in it because uh because i'm good at it but i should have worked probably a couple of years ago to get a couple of other key positions in place. Like, you know, Legion, we're on track to do close to probably 35 million in sales this year. And I don't have a CMO. I don't even have a VP marketing. I don't have a director of marketing, dude. That's just like a hat that I wear maybe one day a week if you were to add up the time.

And that's just stupid. That's called bad business that's a mistake and and i could i could give my reason i love that though about you and i also love the honesty to admit that and share that because i i think it continues to highlight that you know of all the things that people should be thinking about and focused on it's you you focused on the right things for most of be thinking about and focused on, you focused on the right things for most of the time. Now, does that mean that you could have been better? Of course. On the same way too, we for sure have understaffed for us because we do so much video and audio content. We've grossly understaffed our editing side and videographers. We easily could have three to four more people on staff to support

all the things that we are doing and we could be doing had I had the people there. We've ran lean for so long and gotten by with still scaling all these departments, which is probably exactly what you were saying with you. You've justified it because you've continued to scale without going out and probably hiring someone for a quarter million dollars a year, a hundred and something dollars a year. Or more in the case of a good CMO. Those are some expensive people. Right. And actually editing and stuff is very expensive too. That's part of why. Obviously, if it was a $20 an hour position, I would have done it a long time ago. But hiring a full-time, talented, good editor is a six-figure position.

And so we've been able to get by without it for so long that we've understaffed that ourselves. So it's definitely answering your original question. This is what's going on right now. Never have we ever put this much effort back into the business. Meaning like, we've always ran very lean with the business. We've been very conservative how we've paid ourselves. We've invested in a lot of things long-term to protect ourselves. And for the first time, we're halting investments and spending money like that to protect us for our long-term futures and more like, okay, and spending money like that to protect us for our long-term futures and more like, okay,

let's see if we actually put that kind of resources and energy and money behind ourselves. We haven't done that. And we are doubling, tripling down to a point where I'm a little... Yesterday, the other day with the guys I was talking, I was just like, man, we got a lot of outgoing all of a sudden in the last couple of months. And the reality is they all won't pan out. I know that. Pinterest, TikTok, two new editors, $50,000 in lights. All those things are not going to pay themselves completely back. I know that. But all I want is one or two of them to really hit for us to help us scale to the next level

or accelerate the continued growth that we've already had a little bit to justify all the risk that we did at investing financially back in the business. So that's exactly where we're at right now is there's a lot of things that we've said that we've wanted to do to potentially help the business. We've ignored it because we didn't need it because we continue to scale without it. But we're like, okay, well, let's take a chance on ourselves a little bit. Let's gamble on some of the things that we think could pay us off in the long run, even if it is a long play. Obviously, TikTok is not going to pay me back tens of thousands of dollars in the first two months. But I mean, maybe in a year or two...

Some of these TikTok influencers, they produce a lot of sales. I'll say that. Well, you might surprise yourself. You're right. And I'm already... They're doing great already. They took it over two and a half weeks ago and it had 5,000 followers. I think we're approaching 15 or 20,000 somewhere already within a week and a half. So they've already done four or five that have gone pretty viral, quarter million plus views and stuff. So it's definitely getting attention, uh, right away right now, whether it's really paying the business back yet. I'm not too sure about that, but we are at a place now where brand awareness does start to help a little bit. Like it didn't matter three, four years ago where

it kind of does matter now, like now, or at least it wouldn't have been a good investment three, maybe three or four years ago. That's probably a better way to say it, right? It's not that it didn't matter. It's just it wouldn't be a smart way to allocate. I mean, it's costing us, we're spending I think $3,500 or $4,000 a month on a team to do that.

That's a lot of money for something that is probably not going to pay us back anytime soon. And even if it does, it's going to start a lot slower than that. And so the things that I'm listening for, for... So every Monday, I meet with our customer service team and they are fielding the emails. We get anywhere from 50 to 100 emails a day on people that are going through the programs or have basic questions around MindPump or whatever. And they've been trained to ask all inbounding questions like, oh, how did you hear about the podcast? Or how'd

you hear about mind pump? And what I'm looking for was the same thing that I was looking for when we started investing time and resources into YouTube, which is, you know, it's hard for me to measure if somebody, uh, listened to a YouTube episode or watch the YouTube exercise video, and then read a blog that Sal wrote, and then, you and then listened to the podcast and then bought. So it might look like that was because of the podcast, but it initially got... They came in on the YouTube channel. So it's hard for me to... Even with some of the most sophisticated software that we have to attribute that sale to the work that we put into YouTube. So the best way that I can do it is I've done this

enough and asked enough and got an idea of what a lot of inquiries from a platform is or is not, is I'm waiting to hear from the customer service team like, oh, there was another TikTok person. Oh, there's another person that found us on TikTok. And part of what promoted the effort that way was we were starting to get people that said they found us on TikTok. We didn't have TikTok because other people were reading. That that said they found us on TikTok. We didn't have TikTok because other people were repurposing. That's how you found out about it. Yes. That's how I found out. I was like, okay, if this other person is repurposing our shit, we've actually got a handful of leads at this time that came in and said they found us. Okay,

we ought to put a little bit of effort here. And like I said, at the bare minimum, protect our real estate there so somebody else doesn't go and build a MindPump business for themselves off of TikTok because we didn't do it. And so, yeah, a lot of that's happening right now. And we'll see where we're at in six months if it's really paying itself off or not. But there's a lot of things that we got our hands in right now that I'm so excited about, or that I see the future of Mind Pump, all those revenue streams that I sent over to you, the only one of them that I would say is close to maxed out at all would be the advertising on the podcast because there's only so many slots that we sell. And that's completely booked for the entire year. So

there's not a lot of room for growth on that side of the business. So that's like done. That was all that energy for this year was put in at the end of last year and it's set up for the entire year. Now, a lot of the energy and effort is into all those other revenue streams and where can I spend the least amount of time

to elicit the most return? And so that's kind of how I justify my day and my weeks is, okay, where can I do some subtle tweaks to help that out? And there's so many of them. It's so fun, man. I've never had so much fun in a business as this one. Eight years in, I would already be bored of anything else we're doing. But it's like there's so many little things inside of it. And it's very, very rewarding. So yeah, I don't think that's one of the secrets it's it's cliche, but if, if you can find something that genuinely enthuses you that, that you generally have fun with, it's like working out, you're not going to love every workout. We never do. Uh, we always

like having worked out. I think that there's a good analogy to business there that it makes it a lot easier i wouldn't say it's a prerequisite to a great success i i can think of people who probably fairly early on in their journey they weren't quite having much fun anymore but they were good at what they were doing and they made a lot of money and maybe they had to kill their soul a little bit to do it. Um, but if, if you want to, if you want to increase your chances, I think greatly for success and for not burning out and not just like hating life is finding something that does make you enthusiastic that you are having fun with. Would you agree with that? Oh, I, I mean, I know you said it's not's not necessary. And I would say, okay, yes, there's always exceptions to the rule. Exactly. It's the rule, but there are exceptions. Yeah. So I mean, I would agree that there are

exceptions to the rule, but if I was advising anyone, I would say that is the secret because in the guarantee at one point of you building what you've built, you were making a lot less than minimum wage, but you weren't counting because you didn't care. You didn't care that you- That was bigger, leaner, stronger. Dude, I wrote it for fun and I published it for 99 cents on Amazon. I thought maybe there's a chance somebody buys it. I thought it was like 50-50 between selling zero copies and not zero copies. That was it. That was my master plan. It's kind of a cool segue in a business conversation too. So because we have all these things, if you were to ask me of all those revenue

streams, where am I spending the most time or what am I most excited about? That to me is one of the most important questions because I stay up... Right now, the real estate is where I love to spend most of my time. And why I would want to focus the most time in the business is for that reason, not necessarily because it's going to have the most ROI right up front. It's because I literally, there's nights where I lay in bed at 10 o'clock and it's one in the morning and I've been reading articles all fucking night long. And I'm not going like watching my watch going like, okay, I'm putting my time in to learn about real estate. I'm so enthralled by the information that I'm collecting that to me, that is the secret to the real success. What will make

us successful on the real estate side of the house is my passion for reading all that information and not counting it as work and effort. And I think this is a mistake that so many people are so worried about hacking algorithms or should I spend my time here? It's like, dude, what are you passionate about? What do you love to do even when you don't have to work? And some people, I guess, the anomalies, like you were saying, have the ability to fucking just grind and put the work in and hate it while they're doing it, but still do it because they know it's necessary to get good at the craft and they're going to work 20 hours a day until they finally figured it all out. But the- Or until they cash out and they're, you know, I'm thinking of somebody that was kind of

the story. Like he didn't really, he did a good job building a business and it was good business, but it, it did not come from a place of, of passion or deep purpose. It was just an opportunity and he grinded and I think he cashed out for probably about $50 million. And now he's into like racing cars and flying planes and he does not that. That's it. Like he, he ate shit for 10

years and now he doesn't have to eat shit anymore. So he doesn't do it. And you don't want so much respect for somebody who has that vision to see that, to know they're not going to like it along the way, but knows the work that needs to be done to get into it. It absolutely can be done that way. It's probably a lot easier to find something that you're already extremely passionate about and read about and double and triple down and figure out, which is what I'm always trying to teach some kids that like, if I'm mentoring someone and they're asking all these questions about, but I'm like, stop looking at what I did and trying to emulate it and build that, figure out what the things you geek out on. What are the things that when no one is watching,

you pick up and you read or you watch or you learn about. And then from there, look at the opportunities. There's blue oceans in every space. So figure out where your opportunity is in the thing that you're already burying yourself in and not counting as work already and make that your work. And if you can do that, then you'll easily be able to go months and years without making a lot of money. And then eventually what go months and years without making a lot of money. And then eventually what will happen is you'll make a lot of money. And then when you're there, then there's no desire to cash out. There's no desire to sell out and leave because you're truly enjoying every aspect of it because you built something around something you were already

passionate about and you weren't counting the minutes or hours that you were putting effort into it. I think that is a necessary evil for most people, unless you have the foresight to be like that guy who knows that he's going to do it. I have a buddy who's like that. Juju Mufu, I think, is like that. You know who that is, right? Yeah, he does stunts and stuff. Yeah, he stayed the night. Years ago, before anyone knew who he was, we had him on the podcast really early,

and he stayed the night at my house. I got to meet him and hang out with him and really liked him. You would like him too. Really smart dude. He comes from a... Is it engineering, Doug? What was Juju before?

He was in a... Yeah, like a biological engineer. Like really smart dude, really, really smart dude and very calculated and methodical. And so when you see him on social media, you think of him as this goofy kind of dork. I think I've seen him doing like flips with a horse's head mask or something. Yeah. Just silly and off the wall.

And he doesn't talk very much. So you wouldn't think that he's very intelligent, very methodical. I mean, before he quit his job, he lived very, very minimalist, saved enough money. So he knew he had capital to go put. And then when he started to generate revenue, didn't spend any of it. He lives in the middle of America, out in the middle of nowhere. And he's been so frugal, but he's always had this plan. And I know one day we're all going to see this where he's just going to disappear. He's going to have millions of followers on Instagram, making all kinds of money like that. And I believe, and I haven't talked to him in a while, but I believe that he's got a number in

his head, or maybe he's told himself at one point when I'm tired of doing this, I'm going to bounce. But he's been very methodical about this process. And you would never guess it based off of the type of content he's putting out. And so there are some people that I think have that gene that I don't. I need to find something that I'm kind of a geek about already that I love reading. And then I'm pretty good about, okay, let's figure out... This is why I left marijuana. I left the marijuana business. I was making a ton of money, but I hated it. I didn't like the people I worked with. I wasn't really into the weed thing. I know I have that persona on the show as the weed guy, but I wasn't that hardcore into it. I was anti it for most of my life. And so,

I mean, I had to leave it. I had to leave it because I didn't enjoy showing up to work every single day, even though I was making really good money. And so I share a lot of writing advice. But the first bit of advice, and I'd be curious to hear if you if you agree for podcasting is don't do it unless you enjoy it. That's my first bit of advice. Just do not if you're trying to come at it from a purely a commercial standpoint, it is not a good way to make money. Yeah. I've made a lot of money writing books. The vast majority of people who write books do not make a lot of money. Right. So I'm an exception in that regard. And that's not to say other people, other people do do it all the time, but it's not a good business, so to speak. Right. It's it. And, and, and also it just takes way too much work to do well. If you don't actually like it, that's something that you can grind your way to basic competence, but not much further than that.

And if you're going to build a business or build a brand around writing or it could be spoken content, any form form of content it takes more than just basic competence right there needs to be a little bit of a um a flair to it to to get people to listen to you versus somebody else and that's not because your information is better necessarily but you had mentioned this number of times people only have so much time to read stuff or to listen to stuff and when they choose to read my stuff or listen to your stuff or read your stuff listen to my stuff they are choosing us instead of everything else that they could read or listen to or do with that time right and so let's let's not kid ourselves about how important that decision is i I mean, time is our most precious resource.

And let's not kid ourselves at what it takes to convince people to give us their time. 100%. And this is why I don't write anything that we have because I'm terrible at it. And I recognize that I'm terrible at it. But I also understand that it's a necessary evil. It's another example of I have enough knowledge

and awareness around what kind of content we need to write, what needs to be put out there that I know what's good, what's bad. But I was quick to farm that out because I recognize that it's not a strength of mine. And so I'm not going to waste time trying to be good at that, even though I know there's tremendous value in blogs and white papers and all that. We have Sal or we have other people on the staff to do that. It's also how I recommend to somebody who was asking me a question like, well, Adam, I'm one person right now. I want to build this type of business. What platform should I start on? Should I start on YouTube? Should I start on Instagram? Should I start on Twitter? Should I start a podcast? Which one do you like doing the

most? I can sell you on why every one of them is good or bad or challenging or easy, right? So they all have their upside and downside to each of them. The real question is, which one do you gravitate to the most that you like? Like, do you like making short little videos or do you like posting pictures and writing short captions? Or do you actually like writing 5,000 word documents that really suck somebody in? Or do you like talking a lot?

You've been a talker your whole life. People have been telling you you're a motor mouth forever. I mean, that's why we gravitated podcasting. Both Sal and I have been told that our whole lives. Like, would you shut up? All you do is talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. So of course, a medium where we have the opportunity to talk, talk, talk, talk is going to work well for us and not feel like just hard work every single day and more so of practicing and refining and getting better. That doesn't mean we... By the way, just because we

like to talk doesn't mean we were good at podcasting. We're fucking terrible at podcasting when we first started. But I enjoyed the process of sucking and getting better at it because I like to do it. Just like to your point with writing, you better like writing if you're going to start to move in that direction because you're probably not going to be in the 1% who sells millions of copies of something right out the gate. So you better enjoy the process of sucking at it for a long period of time. And then the process of getting a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better to where finally maybe one day you become somebody who sells millions of dollars worth of books online. So you better fucking like doing that or you're already setting yourself up for potential

failure. And let's also just acknowledge that content marketing is very powerful and it's something that we do very well with and it drives our businesses, obviously, but it's not the only way to build a business. And I think the prerequisite to being a good content marketer of any kind, whether it's writing, speaking, doing stuff on video, whatever, which I guess would be speaking as well, but is having something to say and wanting to communicate things. And if somebody doesn't feel like they have much to say and doesn't have the desire to communicate things, I think they're much to say and doesn't have the desire to communicate things, I think they're going to struggle at any type of content marketing.

But that doesn't mean they can't be successful. If that were me, for example, what I would do is I would look then to a paid acquisition to advertising. I know people who I know one guy, he just sold a business. He was doing it for two years in addition to running a digital agency that does millions of dollars a year. And he just did this thing on the side for fun and he sold it for, it wasn't a huge amount of money. I want to say it was 18 million with an extra, with an earn out of like four to six, which is really just kind of a side payday

for him. And he was just selling trinkets on Facebook and no content marketing whatsoever, just Facebook advertising selling. I don't even remember what they were. And the customer lifetime value was trash. It's not a good business. I was actually surprised that he got the multiple that he got, but he was like, well, whatever that is. Yes. So two years and they're giving me, you know, nine X, my, my EBITDA on, on what he knew is kind of just a crappy business that he just did for fun. Uh, just to like, cause, cause he, he also runs, um, an advertising agency. So he was just using it to like test things and whatever. Um, and that's, that's a way to, to build a business and make a lot of money that has nothing to do with content marketing.

So I also do tell people that to, to, to understand that they don't have to do it the way that we are doing it or that other content marketers are doing it. There are other very viable ways of, of building businesses that don't require writing anything or saying anything. You can pay people to write your copy and you know what I mean, but you don't have to be the communicator if you don't want to. Oh no, there's a, there's a ton of different ways to skin a cow. There's a saying that I think Doug says all the time. It's a say it well. So I'll say, have something good to say,

say it well, say it often. It's like sales and marketing one-on-one right there. And the first step to that is have something to say. You need to have something to say. You need to be able to communicate well. And what's great is, and that really encapsulates the business, right? We knew we had something to say. And you wanted to say it. That's right.

And we knew that we would have to practice a lot to be able to say it well and to say it often. And so that to me is like the learning curve and the trajectory of the business was, okay, we knew we had that, but we knew there was going to be a lot of practice and a lot of failure to get to a place of where we could say it well. And then once we learned to say it well, now we're constantly saying it often. I mean, that's why we never run out of content. We're repeating the same shit over and over. We're just saying it better and better each time well uh i've i've kept you for for a while we could keep on going forever that's why i was like i'll i don't want to i don't want to monopolize your day over here from doug and and sal because i got that yeah doug you see doug's

floating around over here i'm like he's uh kind of giving me the signal. We got to do some green screen stuff with Sal right now. So yeah, I suspected, but this was fun as always. And I love seeing your guys' continued success. And it'd be fun to offline to stay in touch a little bit more, just to share business ideas. And I'll mention that when we're done recording here. But why don't we just wrap up quickly with, I mean, I'm sure a lot of most people listening, my podcast is, I think, I don't

even know, maybe a 10th of the size of yours or something. So they probably know about all of you guys, but why don't we just tell them where they can find the Mind Pump crew and your work and if there's anything in particular that you want to tell them about? Yeah, you know, if you are hearing me for the very first time, which like you said, is probably rare when it comes to both of our businesses. I think we've talked,

crossed over so many times that most people, but if you haven't, and, you know, call me on our stuff, you know, go consume all of our free stuff. Don't buy anything from me. Don't buy anything from me. Go consume all of our free content on YouTube. Go to mindpumpfree.com. Go read all the free white papers that we put out there. Go do that. I mean, that's to me, that's really why we do all this. The business stuff

just happens. So I'm at a place now where I'd prefer that if someone heard us for the first time is to go consume all the free content that we've put out there. So do that. Continue to support Legion. We got lots of love for you. I do believe that one day we'll both get to a place where we build something together. I think that'll happen. So if I say it enough times, I'll manifest it. So that's what I'm doing. So I'm excited. And we're always excited to see the success that you're having too, bro. You deserve it. Thanks, brother. And yeah, I think that there's a lot of fun stuff we could get into. I just have to, I have to say no to a lot of things right now. So in the future, I can say yes to things that I can, I can gain back that luxury of doing things strictly because I want to do them and

hoping they succeed. But you know, I'm working, I'm working on being the hot girl to dance for you. So it's, I'm almost pretty soon here. You can't say no. You're like, I'd be happy to say no. So one last little marketing tip there for people is that, that is just right in line with what you just said is give your best stuff away for free and don't withhold your best things and make your free stuff. Your, your, your most mediocre, make your free stuff your most mediocre.

Give your best stuff away for free because, of course, that creates the best impression. And people can't help but wonder how good the paid stuff is if the free is this good. So good. So true. And such a great way to wrap that up. Thanks again, man. Look forward to the next one. Yep.

Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just

what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.