Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Adam Schafer on Masterminds, Esports, Gambling, and More

Episode Date: May 31, 2019

In this podcast, I talk with my friend and fellow podcaster, Adam Schafer, who’s the co-host of the popular podcast Mind Pump. Unlike most of my interviews, this isn’t a focused discussion so much... as a fireside chat about things on our minds, and in particular, on the current trend of business mastermind groups that have been popping up left and right over the last few years like mushrooms and roadkill. In case you’re not familiar, the pitch for these groups goes like this: pay us $1,000 to $10,000 or more per month and we’ll give you the inside baseball on how to achieve some highly coveted goal or status like becoming an Internet millionaire to superstar “influencer.” Not only that, you’ll also get exclusive access to our VIP Inner Circle of beautiful people who will deign to shake your hand and pretend to give a shit about you a few times per year at our annual “retreats” that you’ll be invited to attend on your own dime. Just think of how impressed your 500 followers on Instagram will be when they see you fist bumping with people as rich and amazing as me and my friends and how jealous they’ll be when you tell them about all the 7-figure businesses opportunities being tossed around--opportunities for you to give and risk everything for a chance at absolutely nothing. So if you’re ready to progress on your personal path of manifesting higher vibrations for a better tomorrow . . . blah blah blah infinite income loop opportunities . . . will that be cash or credit? Well, I guess I’ve kind of tipped my and Adam’s hand regarding what we think about most masterminds out there, but in this interview, you’ll learn why. Before we go there, however, we do a bit of meandering on esports and gambling as Adam is interested in and I’m more or less ignorant of both. For instance, I was surprised to learn that in 2018, esports had more viewers in the United States than every traditional sport except the NFL, and major esport events are held in huge stadiums and attract over 100,000 fans to come and watch. Anyway, I hope you find this discussion interesting. 9:03 - What type of gambling do you like? 8:59 - What does line mean in sports betting? 12:26 - Do you think video game gambling will bring more attention to the gaming industry? 13:07 - Do you think video game gambling will bring more attention to the gaming industry? 14:37 - Do you think video game gambling is culturally good? 1:20:37 - What are the differences between you and your brother? 1:23:47 - What do you splurge on? Do you collect anything? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, friend. Welcome to another episode of the Muscle for Life podcast. I am Mike Matthews. And this time around, I interview my buddy and fellow podcaster Adam Schaefer, who is the co-host of the popular podcast Mind Pump, which I guess they're expanding beyond just a podcast. So it's really becoming like a media company. They have also a very popular YouTube channel over at Mind Pump. But anyway, unlike most of my interviews, this is not a tightly focused discussion on one thing so much as a fireside chat about a few things on our minds. And in particular, on the current trend of business mastermind groups that have been popping up left and right over the last few years, like Mushrooms and Roadkill. And in case you're not familiar, the pitch for these groups usually goes like this. So you have someone who appears to be successful.
Starting point is 00:01:00 According to their Instagram, they are successful. They drive expensive cars and have expensive things. And the pitch is pay me or us, if it's a group, a thousand to $10,000 or more per month. And yes, some of these masterminds are that expensive. I've been pitched on ones that are that expensive. And we're going to give you the inside baseball on how to achieve some highly coveted goal or status like becoming an internet millionaire or a superstar influencer. vip inner circle of beautiful people who will deign to shake your hand and pretend to give a shit about you a few times per year at our annual retreats that you're going to be invited to attend on your own dime of course you'll have to pay your way but just think of how impressed your 500 followers on Instagram are going to be when they see you fist bumping with people as rich and amazing as me and my friends. You tell them about all of the seven figure business opportunities being tossed around, you know, opportunities for you to give and risk everything for a chance at absolutely nothing. So here's the bottom line.
Starting point is 00:02:35 If you are ready to progress on your personal path of manifesting higher vibrations for a better tomorrow, blah, blah, blah, infinite income loop opportunities. So will that be cash or credit? All right. All right. So I've kind of tipped my and Adam's hand regarding what we think about most of the masterminds out there. But in this interview, you are going to learn why and also what we think you should do instead of wasting your time with these masterminds. Before we go there, however, we do a bit of meandering on esports and gambling as Adam is interested in, and I'm more or less ignorant of both of those things. For example, I was surprised to learn that in 2018, esports had more viewers in the United States than every traditional sport except the NFL, and major esport events are held in huge stadiums and attract over 100,000
Starting point is 00:03:34 people to come and watch other people sit and play video games. Anyway, I hope you find this discussion interesting. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my 100% natural Legion protein bar. Now, unlike many protein bars, mine are not chalky, crumbly, hard to get down lumps made with low quality and undesirable forms of protein like milk protein, calcium caseinate, and soy protein, and chock full of artificial sweeteners, flavors, dyes, and other chemical junk. Instead, my protein bars contain 20 grams of high quality protein from a blend of whey isolate,
Starting point is 00:04:33 whey hydrolysate, whey concentrate, and pea protein isolate are naturally sweetened and flavored and do not sit on shelves for months on end. And so every bite is savory, moist, and pleasantly chewable. My goal was to create an all natural protein bar that tastes like high protein candy. And many of my customers say that I have done just that. So if you want a clean, all natural, low calorie and low sugar protein bar that has 20 grams of five-star protein that tastes as good as it looks, and that is easy on your stomach, then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and try my protein bars today. And just to show how much I appreciate all of my podcast peoples, use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. I also have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love
Starting point is 00:05:47 my stuff or you get your money back, period. No having to return the products, fill out forms, or jump through any other hoops. So you really can't lose here. Head over to www.legionathletics.com. Now place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. All righty, that is enough shameless plugging for now at least. Let's get to the show. Adam, welcome, welcome. What's up, man? Oh, you know, just another day in the dungeon grinding away grind what are the what's the video grinding grinding mobs grinding mobs for xp you know
Starting point is 00:06:32 is that what it is i can't that's the video game uh the video game speak dude that's oh man we just had um a good friend of ours mark mastroff in and, and he's signed, I think, six teams or whatever now, NSRG or some shit. I think his name is the Bay Area. He has like five or six teams here. Multi, multi-billion dollar industry and watching that just continue to rise. And they're about to open up the floodgates with the gambling. So you're about to see. What's going to happen with the gambling?
Starting point is 00:07:04 I heard, i don't play video games i don't follow the industry at all i just heard something about esports gambling bro so okay this wasn't even a planned topic for you and i but you just you just sparked something that's been on my mind like crazy lately it's we everybody knows that gaming has been popular and it's growing and it's crazy yada yada yeah that's that's all true it's it's one of the fastest growing industries ever and we're seeing it explode and it's now and it's crazy, yada, yada, yada. That's all true. It's one of the fastest growing industries ever and we're seeing it explode and it's now reached into the billions of dollars.
Starting point is 00:07:30 And it's now generating, I mean, they said the other day that it was generating more than like the NBA, the NFL and like one other organization all combined, like the amount of money that's being spent and pretty crazy, right? These kids are filling up stadiums and you have stadiums, football stadiums full of kids watching other kids play video games.
Starting point is 00:07:49 It's just... I've seen that. Yeah. I've seen that. Was it for the game Fortnite? I don't know. But I saw that for one of these big games. That's one of them.
Starting point is 00:07:58 Yeah, there's Overwatch, Fortnite, and then there's a couple other ones that are world famous for these type of arena events. League of Legends. Yeah. I've seen that. Yeah, that's another one. So what I find really fascinating about this, and kind of talking about what we talked about before it got on air, that's kind of crazy and where this is going to take us.
Starting point is 00:08:25 that Las Vegas, right? Probably one of the cities that generates the most amount of cash flow going in and out of it, right? And how much gambling is an addiction for people and all this issue and what that could potentially lead to. Okay. So you are about to see in the next year or two, I think it's when I think in the next year is when it'll pass or who knows what the laws, how long it'll take. But in the next three to five years, let's say you are going to see the most addictive thing we've ever seen are going to see the most addictive thing we've ever seen for children combined with the most addictive thing that we've ever seen for adults merge, which is sports betting and gaming. And so I'm wondering, what the fuck is that going to do?
Starting point is 00:08:59 Now, I'm a gambler. I love to gamble. And I've got quite a few friends. And I think probably lucky for me, I've seen people lose their entire... What type of gamble? What do you like? I love sports betting. I love to gamble. And I've got quite a few friends. And I think probably lucky for me, I've seen people lose their entire... What type of gamble? What do you like? I love sports betting. I love sports betting, especially sports betting on the Warriors. I typically stick with Warriors and NFL. And the reason why I like it, and maybe it's the old man in me, is I played my whole life. I love the game. And I'm a student of the game too. So I really, really watch a lot of basketball and football and really understand, especially basketball,
Starting point is 00:09:30 the game. And I think the thing that sports betting gives me is if I, like me, I watch every single warrior game, I know the team really well. I know the teams that we play really well. And so I can look at a line and, you know, sometimes the line is a really good line. It's I'm like, I could go either way. And so I stay away from it. But then sometimes I'm like, oh, hell no. Like last night. And I'm a gambling, I'm completely ignorant. So a line is like what the bookies are offering basically. Yeah, exactly. So last night we, the Warriors played the Rockets and we've lost to them three games, three, the only three games we played in this year, they've had our number, right?
Starting point is 00:10:05 And here we are going into the fourth game we're playing them. It's the last game before playoffs. We also are missing Kevin Durant, who's arguably one of our best players. And so the line is giving the Warriors four points. The Warriors never get points. They're getting four points. In other words, Vegas believes that the Rockets are going to win by four or more. Yeah. And I love that bet. And I love it for- It's like a handicap.
Starting point is 00:10:28 Yeah. And so I jumped all over and I won. And so I think that, so betting for me has turned into that as an adult. I can easily walk away from stuff. I don't bet crazy money. It's just, it's fun for me to watch the game and when I appreciate it. So- It probably makes the games more fun to watch too, right? Incredible. And I, you feel like you have more skin in the game.
Starting point is 00:10:48 Totally. And I, at the, every season, the beginning of the year, I track all my winnings and losing. And you know, I'm,
Starting point is 00:10:53 I'm having probably the best season of my life in gambling, but I look at it like, okay, I'm going to put X amount of dollars to the side. If I lose that through the course of the year, I lose it. It's, it's all for fun and games.
Starting point is 00:11:03 And obviously I want to win. And so I don't, I have really good habits around it. I think a lot of the habits have came because I've had lots of friends that I've seen get addicted to it and go down the really bad path. And so back to the gaming thing, we see the addiction of games with kids, right? I mean, it's just insane that kids now can sit and play video games from sunup to sundown every single day. And they're incredibly engaging games and it's hard to get them to peel away from it. So we know that how addicting it is for children. And then if you know how addicting gambling is for adults, and I've just never seen something like this combined, and we're about to see that,
Starting point is 00:11:40 you're going to be able to lay sports like sports bets on kids that play video games and the generation coming up like i wouldn't know if you know speedy mike from indiana who's playing you know whoever from china you know who are the top two fortnight players are merging and playing each other tonight but there will come out a line and there'll be a like a betting line on them and you're going to be able to bet on who wins and whatever. And of course, just like anything else, there'll be prop bets, like, you know, who gets killed first and who, how many minutes do they serve? And they'll find everything and anything to gamble on, which is just going to feed into these addictive properties that this game already has. And it's going to be interesting to see the repercussions that we get from that.
Starting point is 00:12:26 I'm very fascinated to watch that. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Do you think the gambling is just going to bring more money and more attention to it
Starting point is 00:13:12 in general? Yeah, no, of course. And again, these are probably stupid questions, but I don't follow. I played a bit of poker back in the day, so I don't follow sports, but I have no idea even how popular it is. It's probably hugely popular. I just have no idea. Oh my God. It's like one of the most popular things. So it's, it's, it's, it's actually a decent question. I get a lot because a lot of people aren't into gambling. They don't know, but like, so I, I remember the first time I,
Starting point is 00:13:34 that I became aware that, okay, this could become a problem even with myself. And it was just because I was hanging out with another guy that was gambling a lot. I had a lot of loose cash at the time. And I found myself on a Tuesday night gambling on two teams that I don't even watch. Gamblers that have a real issue, they'll gamble on anything and everything. Like right now, the way I gamble, I gamble on a team that I watch. I know lots about them and I'm watching the game. And so it's entertaining for me. When it becomes an addiction, it's your gambling on anything and everything that you can get your hands on. The horses are racing in 15 minutes. You're on that. There's fucking a coin
Starting point is 00:14:08 flip going on. You're betting on that. And so, yeah, it's going to be really fascinating to see what that pulls into it. So I'm actually, and this is part of why I've been talking to Mark Mastroff and Andy Miller, who are guys that are connected to this. They've got millions of dollars invested into it because I'm trying to find areas where I can invest on the industry because I believe the industry is, as much as it's already grown and how huge it is, it's going to go ape shit when you actually start to pair it with gambling. Do you think that's a good thing though? Do you think it's culturally, it's good? No. So I got to be honest. I mean, if there's a part of you that feels guilty for betting on that, right.
Starting point is 00:14:47 Or for me investing in it. Cause I'm in, it's like me. Why, why, why invest in it? Well, because I know it's going to go, you know, because I, I know, I know that it's going to go that direction because people do. I mean, but you can make money in, in many other ways. You don't have to support shit that you don't believe in. You're like, this is fucking bad, but money is money. That's true. No, that's fair. And I think that, you know, but fuck what you could say that about supplement. You know, I was joking. I was joking.
Starting point is 00:15:14 Yeah. I was, that's a great, that's a great question. It's a, it's an internal battle that I deal with all the time, man. It really is. It's like what business isn't like that, right? What is the ones that are the most successful? it's because they're people have an obsessive personality over them and they just keep coming back and buying more and buying more. I mean, we've turned into this consumer culture that didn't even exist 40 years ago. So. Yeah, that's true. There's not much money in virtue. That's for sure. Yeah. No, there's a better way to say it. Right. And so I guess that's, you're right. And I don't disagree with you and it's something that i think i i wrestle with like
Starting point is 00:15:49 man it's like it'd be like for example i remember when that the i don't know if you remember when that that stupid tool and i know it's still growing where people could eat whatever they want it's a tube that goes straight to their stomach it's it's basically like and they try to say it as like a medical thing that they can help people out it got fda approved to i didn't hear about oh it's a stomach pump basically and it's and they they literally do a surgery where they they put a tube into your stomach and then you get a pump and then right after you eat you can purge through the pump yeah you don't know about this oh no yes clown world never never fail right fda approved man they this is they yes this it blew my mind so you see something like that and you know there's i'm not gonna lie there's the urge to invest behind these because i fucking know people's
Starting point is 00:16:41 behavior i know i know there's a million people that see that and go like, what? You mean to tell me that I can go out drinking and have fucking donuts and cake and just all I got to do is pump it out my stomach? And because it's FDA approved and there's people standing behind it and saying it's okay, that it's not the same as me sticking my finger in my fucking throat and just throwing it up afterwards. Like, really? Wow. I struggle with that all the time. I mean, I got to think you do the same thing too, right? How many times have you seen a potential investment opportunity or something you know is going to explode? And then you're like, oh, fuck, man, it'd be smart to put money on that. But do I really want to support that, right?
Starting point is 00:17:19 Yeah. I mean, I would say speaking to supplements, because you brought that up, that was, of course, one of the reasons when I first was even considering supplements, I was not, I didn't think I was going to do it because, uh, I figured that you basically just have to be a bullshit artist to make any money in supplements. And that's true to a point. So how I've done it is, um, I mean, you know, the story, I just, I just spend a lot of my products. So I have a high budget for any of these products. And I would work with people like Curtis Frank, who's the co-founder of examine.com and Menno Henselman's and Eric Helms and James Krieger and Brad Dieter, all the guys that are over on my scientific advisory board, which actually is an advisory board. It's not just
Starting point is 00:18:01 a marketing ploy. The formulations, Curtis is really the driver on formulations because he knows more about supplementation than anyone I'll probably ever meet for the rest of my life. And all the other guys are a sounding board. And so we really strive to make products that one are actually worth buying. That's the first criterion, right? That it will do something. It's not completely worthless. And then two, that are clinically dosed. So meaning you have ingredients that have been proven to provide benefits in good scientific research, where you could say the actual weight of the evidence is that this thing does this, not that there was this one isolated in vitro rat study that suggested maybe this does something sometimes, you know what I
Starting point is 00:18:45 mean? And then putting enough of those ingredients into the products. And what that came down to is from a business perspective, Legion is horribly flawed in that its cost of goods is literally about double what it should be. So somebody who doesn't know the industry, and I've spoken to savvy business people who are like, what the fuck is this cogs? What are you doing? This should be half. How are you supposed to grow and make millions of dollars? What are you doing? spending money on things that didn't pan out, but running the company well, running the marketing well, running it efficiently, really leveraging our advantages, which come in many ways from all the work that I do outside of Legion, writing books, recording podcasts, writing articles, all that stuff. It can reach maybe, let's say two thirds of the average profitability of the industry. So it can reach a level of profitability where a business person would say, yeah, that's pretty good.
Starting point is 00:19:45 It will never be great. It will never have a 30% net. Never. It just never will. The only way to do that would be to gut my products. And so I could have done that, though. That's what most people do in the supplement space. They don't actually care to make good products.
Starting point is 00:19:58 They just care to have good margins. And then they just lie. It's not that complicated. For what it's worth, I can say that at least I have the courage of my convictions and I've made decisions that have directly lost me millions of dollars. Like I would be several million dollars, literally several million dollars richer cash that I could have done anything with if I would have done it that way. I would still do it the same way though, because integrity does mean something to me. And maybe I'm just not as money motivated as some people. And I also maybe,
Starting point is 00:20:31 and this is going to sound like me bragging, but I've actually thought about this. Like, why do I feel this way about it? Not that I think it's bad, but just out of actual curiosity. And so I'd say it's probably that I'm not all that money motivated and i'm not afraid of hard work I'm, not looking for a shortcut. I'm not trying to get rich quick And so if it means that I have to work harder to create more good stuff that people like i'll just do that And so that's really what i've done So the supplement business is doing well and I make a fair amount of money from it But I make more money from my books than I do from Legion. And those books represent a lot of fucking work. And so I've, I've more gone about it that way where I'm like, okay, so I have Legion and then I'm good. I'm going to create books. Okay,
Starting point is 00:21:16 good. I'm going to have a coaching service that has several hundred active clients and is going to do, you know, seven figures in revenue this year. year. What else can I do to compensate for the fact that I didn't just completely sell out on the supplements when I could have just done that? And then probably, honestly, I mean, the books are a pillar of all of my stuff and it would be stupid to stop doing them. But as far as the finances go, it wouldn't be as necessary. So that's my long-winded answer to the supplement point. That's actually a great segue into the original question that you asked me about masterminds. Yeah, that's a good point where that's like, sure. Fucking easy money masterminds. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess it's been
Starting point is 00:21:54 anybody who, I guess that really knows me, like I'm, I'm so where my emotions on my sleep type of guy. And when I do posts like that, there's always something that stirred me up. You know, it's like, okay, I got to I got to fire up my ass right now. I'm going to say something because this is just starting to annoy me. And I had this kid reach out to me. He was telling me that he had hired this guy for coaching. And I know both guys. I know where their business is at just based off...
Starting point is 00:22:20 And just to be clear, this is business coaching, right? Not like training. Yes, this is business coaching, right? Not like training. Yes, this is business coaching. Yeah, this is and what I've seen and what's going on right now in our space is nothing new. This has been around forever. And anybody that's been in marketing like you for a really long time understands that one of the best ways, one of the fastest ways that you can make money and a lot of money is to teach others or sell others on the idea that you can make money and a lot of money is to teach others or sell others on the idea that you can help them make lots of money. I mean, that's like pyramid scheme MLM 101. And we are seeing that surge right now with these mastermind groups. What I'm careful about saying, and I do want to
Starting point is 00:23:02 make this point when I'm talking about these, is that's not to take away from somebody that has reached a point in their career where they are a fucking black belt and a ninja at business. And they shouldn't charge tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars for their business coaching services because they're that fucking badass that you're going to learn everything you need to know to scale a business to a $50 to $100 million company. So I believe there's outliers like that out there. But what we're seeing is all these people that are learning to gain traction on social media. And so you have this illusion that they're really successful because they've got 100,000 followers or whatever on whatever platform and they take pictures of their cool car and they do all this. They rented a Lamborghini for the day.
Starting point is 00:23:53 Yeah, right. You know, they do all the things to look the part. So and we as a bunch of silly monkeys, we see that and we just assume that they're wealthy and successful and rich and they do a business. And then the next thing is to sell business coaching or sell out these mastermind groups where you charge people a few hundred to a few thousand to I've seen tens of thousands of dollars to join these groups that are going to help you build your business. And those are recurring expenses, right? Those are annual. I've been pitched on it. God, there was one that I was pitched on. It was like 100K a year to hang out with a bunch of fucking slimy con men. Yeah. Okay.
Starting point is 00:24:33 Sounds good. Totally. And I've been the same thing. I've been pitched things from as low as $1,000 a month type of reoccurring to as big as $150,000 a year, reoccurring to be a part of these massive mastermind or coaching groups. And when you really unpack these people's businesses, 90% of their fucking revenue they're making is off of this. It's not like they have a $100 million business and they're saying, hey, you know what? Of course not, because if they did, one, they wouldn't care to do the business match. Mine too. They probably wouldn't have the time.
Starting point is 00:25:08 Right, right. And this is what people don't see. It's like, dude, if these guys and girls have enough time to teach you how to build a seven figure business, they're probably not operating one themselves,
Starting point is 00:25:19 you know, cause I'll tell you what it takes on my end to do something like that. And it's fucking overwhelming as shit. And I have no business spending time talking to groups of people to teach them how to do what I'm still learning how to do and continue to do. It's like if they were legitimately doing that kind of money, then you know what that takes as a business. And you also know what you're constantly focused on. a business. And you also know what you're constantly focused on. Like when you get to a point where you've scaled a business to seven or eight figures, half of the monster is always looking three years ahead. Like, because that money doesn't just always keep coming. It's like,
Starting point is 00:25:53 what am I going to do next six months to make sure these revenue streams keep coming in? Like nobody builds a business like that, where it's like, Hey, I'm making $10 million a year and I don't have to do anything like travel around and hold these mastermind groups and teach people how to do the same thing. And it's like, dude, these people are getting suckered into this. And it's just, it reminds me of MLM. It reminds me of the, you know, Monavie and the Anway and the, all these MLM groups where there's always like an outlier who's been successful, whatever dollar amount they got to. And then really where they make most of their money is convincing all of you to listen to them and buy into the product themselves. And that's what we're seeing with these mastermind groups. And it's really annoying to me, especially when they're people that I know. The person that I'm sharing this story about that lit me up was both of these people, we held a thing two years ago and it was, we called it a train the trainer and it was free. We, we basically capped it at, I think 50 trainers.
Starting point is 00:26:55 That's about what we thought we could comfortably fit in the studio and said, Hey, anywhere you're at in the world, you can come to this. It's free. We can only fit about 50 people. So if you want to come, get a call, sign up, do your thing. And we're going to host an all day training event to help you guys be better trainers and better businessmen and women. And it filled up and then we did it and we had a great turnout. And what I saw was there's some people that had taken that and they had networked with all these people that were at our thing. And some of them have taken a page out of some of these other, you know, quote unquote, influencers, the Lewis Howes, the Amanda Bucci's, these type of people that are making a lot of money off of these influencer type of academies and shit. Is that what they're teaching people how to get Instagram followers? Instagram followers? Yeah, yeah. No, it's definitely... I know Bucci, she has a... That's literally what her... I believe it's her main revenue source is her Influencer Academy.
Starting point is 00:27:50 So it teaches you how to be an influencer on Instagram. And I'm so fascinated by how many people are making a ton of money teaching people to do this. And so you're starting to see all these lemmings. Everybody's doing the same thing. It's like, get enough people following you on social media, get your imagery right, get your posting right, get enough attention there, and then pivot into finding the few whales that are willing to pay you to try and learn to do the same thing. And it's a fascinating thing to stand by and watch, but it's really pathetic and it's really unfortunate.
Starting point is 00:28:26 And I can't stomach myself to do it. And I was actually talking to this CEO lady the other day that I ran into that's a friend of a friend and she was asking business stuff. And I'm very transparent about if someone asked me, what do you guys make? What are you guys doing? How do you monetize? And all that stuff. And I was sharing these things with her and she goes, you know what you need to do?
Starting point is 00:28:44 And she starts telling me, you know, the money is in you teaching others how to do what you've done. I'm just like, nah, I just don't feel good about that. I don't want, I know there's a ton of money. I get DMs every single day of people asking that. And in fact, what brought this up was this kid was about to start spending a thousand dollars a month on somebody teaching him a mastermind. And he was reaching out to me to see if I would do something similar to that in that price range. And I was just very blunt with him. I said, man, dude, I literally love you. I think you're a great kid. I think you've got a lot of great things going for you. But what you're asking for me to do,
Starting point is 00:29:19 one, I don't think that you're ready for what I would give you for monthly coaching. Where my mind is at is totally different from where you're at. And the stuff that you need to learn, you could go pick up from a book from Barnes & Noble for $9, you know what I'm saying, and read it. Or just put in the work. That's a point I just want to interject is that I get asked a, not, not if I'm going to do a mastermind cause I've never spoken about doing it. I never would do it. Uh, but just, just asking for business advice, people sometimes asking to have calls and stuff. And so I have like a standard list of books that I recommend to people. I'm like, honestly, this, if you just read these
Starting point is 00:29:58 four or five books, just start here and really absorb this information and apply it halfway intelligently. You don't even have to be a genius about it. Just do a good enough job. You will be on your way. You don't need to pay me. I don't even know what I would charge if I was going to be doing consulting because I don't.
Starting point is 00:30:17 Yeah, it's just there's so many other things that I could be doing. It wouldn't make any sense to me to do it at all, period. But you wouldn't need to pay me that money. Just read these books. Let me know if you have any questions. It to do it at all, period. But you wouldn't need to pay me that money. Just read these books. Let me know if you have any questions. It's really, think of it like training. It's not that complicated. It's energy balance.
Starting point is 00:30:31 It's macronutrient balance. It's mechanical tension. It's overload. It's frequency. It's volume. That's it. Put those things together, mix them up, and you can have a fantastic physique. In business, there are five or six other little, here are the levers, here are the buttons, just push and pull them in the right clique and they all feed each other marketing stuff and poach each other's people and make
Starting point is 00:31:08 a ton of money. And then they all come together and they market to their people to come to these massive events. It costs thousands of dollars and they fill up freaking huge events. And I couldn't sleep at night because here's what I know. I know, statistically speaking, the likelihood that you're going to succeed as an entrepreneur. I already know what that is. I already know that if I'm sitting in a room with 100 this hoopla energy, music blaring. I come out talking a big game, fucking roll up in my Lamborghini and tell you guys, you want this life? You want this life? You can get this life. And knowing in the back of my head, like, who am I kidding?
Starting point is 00:31:55 You know, most everybody who's listening to me right now is not going to see that. That's just a fact. They're not going to be that successful. They're not going to ever reach the success rate. And entrepreneurship is like 20%. Those that make it into the millions of dollars is like less than 10%. And those that can actually manage that and keep that going for more than three or five years is reduced by another like 50%. Yeah, I think it's lower than that.
Starting point is 00:32:18 Doug, if you pull up, I'm going to guess... If you want to Google it and check it, I'm going to guess that businesses that reach a million dollars in sales and just in revenue, it's probably at most 1% would be my guess. And businesses that reach 10 million in annual in revenue, it's probably one, one hundredth of a percent or that that's my guess. No, I think you're, you're close. I know that I I've seen this before and I know I'm throwing just random numbers. I know it's less than that.
Starting point is 00:32:43 I know that I've seen this before and I know I'm throwing just random numbers. I know it's less than that. That's what I'm saying is like you're in this arena of a thousand people and you and your 10 buddies that are all rich, you know, have come together and combined forces to sucker all these people into listen to your motivational bullshit and you get up on stage and you start talking up a big game about how they can do it too. Like how the fuck do you sleep at night, dude? Like how do you sleep at night, dude? How do you sleep at night knowing damn well that there's the thousands of people that are out there that are
Starting point is 00:33:09 listening to you that are pumping your tires? Literally 1% of them will ever even come close to doing what you've done. If that, to me, I can't do it. I guess it depends what you're selling. Ironically, I know Grant. I wouldn't say he's a friend of mine. My brother knows him better. And as far as I know, he's actually a pretty good dude. He's not lying about the money he makes in real estate. That's where he makes, and he's open about that.
Starting point is 00:33:35 That's where he makes absurd. That's what really funds his lifestyle. But I don't know what he's selling outside of that. I don't fully follow him. Like, what's the pitch or the whole 10X thing is it just because he has he has some books and he does these events so i don't know what to be honest and i've heard nothing but good things about these guys so i don't this isn't me like talking shit about them as people right like i just i think that i've had multiple people that are connected to andy bursella and they've said positive things about him. I mean, I think he lies about revenue a hundred percent.
Starting point is 00:34:06 So do I. I remember a couple of years ago when he said it was a hundred million a year. And so he has a couple million dollars in cars. You're so cool, dude. And then there was a video I saw of, it was like a transformation video where he was super fat and he was going to get in better shape. And it showed his house and his house was nothing. It was maybe a five or six or $700,000 house. And at that point, no, no, no, no, no, no. Pause. Stop. There's no way that a dude who is supposedly, whose companies are supposedly making a hundred million dollars a year and who is loves to show off money is living in a five, six, $700,000 house.
Starting point is 00:34:44 Impossible. Don't care what anybody says. No. No. No. That's a good facts for me. Yeah. No. I 100% think it's a facade.
Starting point is 00:34:53 They took a page right out of the Shreds model. What they did was they got a lot of influence. I think he came in with capital. This is me totally speculating right now. For the audience that's listening right now, most of my information is hearsay. And from what I observe, it's just as a business-minded person and being in the fitness health space. We're going to pay them $1,000 a month, plus we're going to pay them commission on all of their sales, and we're going to scoop them all up. And they did. They got a bunch of people from ass-showing bikini girls to fitness guys that are buffed and ripped and showing cool exercises. And they swooped up a ton
Starting point is 00:35:44 of them and i i'm sure they all got paid commission maybe so and i'm sure they have a sliding scale i think he's a smart sales and marketing rah-rah guy so i think that they probably had a sliding scale that if you sold x amount you get bonuses and no being the sales guy that i am and running sales teams for a very long time and structuring that it's exactly how i would do it if i didn't fucking if i have a moral compass and i didn't care and I had some capital in my pocket, if I had a hundred grand or whatever like that in my pocket, I'd go after the top 50 to a hundred influencers in the health and fitness space, pay them a few bucks, but really motivate them
Starting point is 00:36:16 through incentive. Because I know if I motivate them through incentive, anything extra or harder they work, I'm going to get more money myself and bonus them and override them and then compete them against each other then i hold these big events which you see them do where i get them all together and i bring up the top 10 in sales and give them a rolex watch and fucking spray champagne all over them and be like we're changing lives you guys fuck yeah you know i'm saying and i would do that i would totally be this guy if i didn't you know if i if i was like that and i was just chasing a dollar and so that's what i see i see a company that did a very good job at that they came in early in the instagram space as far as supplements
Starting point is 00:36:56 i thought that they did it just like uh shreds did but a little bit more taste i think he had his business a little bit tighter than shreds i think shreds had you know a guy from fucking jersey shore behind it you know i'm saying that's what yeah yeah they just turned it completely loose yeah i mean that's what i read i ran into what's his face i can't think of his name right now from jersey shore and he was just coked out of his mind in a fucking mess coming out of las vegas one time and i'm like this is the guy who fucking helped build shreds like it's that that's why it's not existing today. So I mean, to give Andy credit, I'm sure he's a pretty savvy business guy and smart enough to probably not let a bunch of idiot kids running his business. And he did a good job of taking advantage of all these influencers and
Starting point is 00:37:38 bringing them in and spiffing them and motivating them to sell more from. But that's really that whole model. That's all. I mean, I don't, at least that's my perspective. Do you agree or do you see something different than I do? Yeah. I mean, again, I don't pay that much attention to first form and what he's doing, but from what I've seen, yeah, I've seen the events and like you're saying, I mean, I've seen, obviously the formulations are weak one for one. I know how much those products cost. Let's put it that way. Then you have great margins, right? So now you have the ability to pay. And they're expensive. Products are expensive. Yeah. So you could sell high, you create awesome margins. So you can spiff your people out
Starting point is 00:38:15 that are hustling for you. So that's the part where if you did a good job, which I'm assuming that he did this, the people that are hustling, the people that are really responsible for making that company grow to whatever it is right now are those people, the people that are hustling the heart, the people that are really responsible for making that company grow to whatever it is right now are those people, the people that are hustling on Instagram as hard as they can to sell these supplements. And they're happy because they're probably making decent money. You know, they're probably getting commissioned out and bonuses and overrides. If you're the, you know, and just like any other sale, the 80, 20, right? 80% of the people are making 20% of the money. 20% of the people are making 80% of the money. So there's probably the top tier people that are actually probably crushing it and they're fucking live and die by the brand because he's paid them well. And to me, it's not rocket science to build that
Starting point is 00:38:54 formula. And to do that, I just, it wouldn't be fulfilling for me. It wouldn't be fulfilling. I wouldn't feel like it's a incredible business that I build. I wouldn't feel like I'm helping. I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be proud I'm helping. I wouldn't be proud of it, honestly. Yeah, I wouldn't be proud. Because to me, what does that represent? It represents a hustle grind. It represents you are smart enough to build a simple machine, and you're willing to work hard enough to do that. To me, that's not impressive.
Starting point is 00:39:23 That's not even admirable. And it's not something that I would be proud of personally. Right, right. I think if I were to do something like that, it would be literally to get to a point, sell and get away from it because I don't want anything to do with it. It's like, let me prove that there's a bunch of lemmings out there that I could easily build this up. I could do this. I could scale it to be a $10 million company and try and sell it off for more than that and then walk away from it and say, it's your headache to deal with. I don't want... Because you know... Yeah. I know a guy who's just in the final phase of doing that, where he built up a business he
Starting point is 00:39:53 doesn't really believe in. There's cognitive dissonance. He has to live with it every day and that he has a moral compass and he's been flouting it to build this business. And so, yeah, he just wants to sell it and be done with it for the, there's the money, but then there's also just the, it'll give him some peace of mind to talk about sleeping at night where he can, that was in the past. Now he can, you know, maybe do it a bit differently in his next venture, do something that he believes a bit more in. That's, I'm a walking story of that. I, I, I did the cannabis industry and I did it for the money, 100%. I was an anti-cannabis guy leading up into that.
Starting point is 00:40:30 And I just could not refuse the amount of money that was put in front of me. And I'm 28 years old in my life and very money motivated at this point in my life because I came from nothing. And my whole life, I was driven by wanting to have success and reaching this financial goal that I had set for myself. And I found that. I found that in medical marijuana. And the thing that I found, though, that was the best thing that ever happened to me was I reached that point. And I was there for a couple of years. And I tell people that, man, the first year, no doubt, fucking awesome. First year of making the money that I'd always wanted to make in my life. Uh, the stories that came from that, the shit that I bought and spent and did. And like, yeah, great, great time
Starting point is 00:41:14 for one year. And then after that year, like I was empty. I just, I was in the worst shape of my life. My personal relationships with my girlfriend at the time, with my friends at the time was terrible. I was unfulfilled, absolutely unfulfilled, had the deepest pockets I've ever had in my life. And up until that point, there's nobody that could have told me that story and got me to tour from what I was already doing. I was on a mission to make a certain amount of money. No fucking person that's older and wiser was going to come in and say, son, that's not what it's about. You're going to get there. You're not going to be happy. Fuck you. You don't know what it's like to be as broke as I was. I need to get there. And I did. And when it got there, it was. It was absolutely, that was unbelievably unfulfilling.
Starting point is 00:41:56 And I had realized at that moment that three years before that, when I was making a 10th of the money, I was a happier person. And that was really what made me come back into fitness was, hey, there was something that drew me to fitness forever. And there's a reason why when I left it, I felt unfulfilled and I missed it. And I came back. And what was great when I came back to the beginning of us building Mind Pump was I didn't need money. I didn't need it at that time. And I was in a position that I could not take an income from it. And we could slowly build it. And really, the conversations were never really around, how are we going to make money? They were around like, how do we want to present ourselves? How do
Starting point is 00:42:33 we want to build this thing? What do we want to give? And so the focus was completely different. And it's amazing. And of course, the business has been scaling and growing since we started it. But I'm just as happy today as I was when we were broke at the very beginning of it. It's like it's the mission, the idea of what we're doing. It just continues to be fulfilling and enjoying. I love every day that we come in here. I've never had something that I've worked on before where I just can't wait to get to work and put our minds together and figure out what we're going to do or what we're going to talk about. It's a lesson that I needed. I absolutely had to go through that to feel it because I don't know if anybody, just like I'm sure there's somebody listening right now to your podcast,
Starting point is 00:43:14 who is a kid who probably came from nothing and is broke and he's got a hustler mentality like I did and is on a mission to not be like his parents and not have wants things. And I think there's a lot of good with that. I think that you can use a lot of that energy to drive you. But what ends up happening when you get there is you come to realize that it's not all that what it was cracked up to be, you know? Yeah. And if you don't have something else, you had something to fall back on. So it was on the whole, a very positive experience for you because it was a lesson that you were able to learn. So you're like, okay, well, that didn't quite go as planned.
Starting point is 00:43:49 So what can I learn from this? Maybe I should do something that is actually fulfilling to me and something that I actually believe in and I'm actually drawn toward. And then we'll figure out how to make money. But it's going to be, I wouldn't call it an afterthought, but it's not the primary objective. It's more like, how can I make money doing something that I really believe in? Many people though, and I know this just from talking with a lot of people in person via the internet, where they will experience what you've experienced, but then they don't know where to go from there. They don't have something where, I mean, I've spoken with people that, you know, it's a common trope in these conversations is, I don't know what, I'm just
Starting point is 00:44:30 not passionate about anything. Right. And sometimes these are people who have made a lot of money. Sometimes there are people that have not made a lot of money, but making money, I think you have to be kind of a, there has to be something wrong with you. A bit of a sociopath. I don't know. There's something, if that's your true passion is just making money, you're probably not a very good person and you're probably going to cause a lot more harm in the world than help. There's a lot of people I think that probably identify with who I was. Well, let's say it this way. If that's where you're at, while you're being that person, I just don't think there's that much good in the world that's going to come out.
Starting point is 00:45:04 No, 100%. My passion is I just want more money. I want more money. I mean, some of the worst people I've known in my life are those people. You're incredibly insecure at that point in your life. That's where I was at. Someone asked me a question about this last Q&A we did about what was the most life-changing or biggest life lesson that I ever got. And for me, it was when I short-sold my house. And when I short-sold my house,
Starting point is 00:45:30 I did it at the time because my buddy who was into real estate and actually had done my loan had told me that it would be a really smart strategy based off of where the market was going. And yeah, my credit's going to take a ding, but I'll be fine, yada, yada, yada. Well, the whole point of me sharing that story was what had happened to me was I come to this realization that I am not my house. I'm not my credit score. I'm not what other people think I am. And to that point, I was. I took so much pride in being successful and having an 850 credit score and being this person who bought his house by 21 years old. I cared so much about that, that when I had to walk away from it and it got all fucking flipped upside down, it just like,
Starting point is 00:46:12 it threw me in this depression until I snapped out of it and realized I am not that person. This is not who I am. This is not my identity. And so it was one of the greatest things to be stripped of all that was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. But I think a lot of people that just go on blindly forever doing that. I even told Katrina that if I would have had a kid at that time in my life, I would have allowed that the impacts of my insecurities to have trickled down to my newborn child that's coming because I know me at 25 and 26. And when that stuff mattered so much to me that my insecurities would have bled into my child that would have a child and and I would spend tons of money on him and he would have all this expensive shit.
Starting point is 00:46:48 And it would be my insecurities because I would be in my head. I already know how I'd be thinking. It would be like, I didn't have these things and my parents couldn't provide this stuff and I'm going to give it all to you. And this is what we see and you don't realize it. But then that has its cause and effect years later because of how you raised that kid. And I think a lot of these people that are super money, money hungry, they have whatever reasons that drove them that way. And probably many of them can relate to how I grew up because I get it. And what happens is they never grow out of it. They never grow beyond it. And they allow these
Starting point is 00:47:21 things that these tangible things, monetary things to try and fill this hole. And it's an empty hole. You just keep pouring, you know, cars and money and strip clubs and toys, and you just keep pouring it into this. And if you've got a lot of money, you just keep doing more and more of it. And if you run out of buying things and you just, you push harder for more money and you never really realize what the root cause of this feeling is. And the root cause is that I'm insecure. I'm still insecure about who I am. And I feel the need to have to have these things to fill that. And so the people that I see like that, so I have empathy. I have empathy because I go, okay, I can connect and relate to that because I was like that at one point when i was younger in my life and they're still living it it's unfortunately some of them are 40 50 60 year
Starting point is 00:48:09 old men that like we were talking about earlier in the podcast that they are still in that place where like i have a hard time like even showing the things that like i i posted my camaro the other day because i've gotten so many fucking ds from people that found out that I had a 68 SS. And I just don't like doing that. I don't like putting that stuff out there because I feel like anybody that's confident in who they are and the success they have, I don't need affirmation from other people anymore to tell me how successful or how badass I am. anymore to tell me how successful or how badass I am, where 10, 15 years ago, I did. I seek that. And so when I see these people like who we're talking about doing these things, that's what I see. I see insecure boys in grown-ass man's bodies that still need that affirmation. They still need to be told that they're great, that they're awesome, that they're badass, they're so successful. It's like, nah. And I tell people this this all the time and I actually use you as a great analogy because I think you're a really good example of somebody who the average person would
Starting point is 00:49:12 have no idea just how fucking successful you are, but that's because you come from a place of confidence, but you're not insecure about it and you don't need affirmation. You don't need guys like me telling you how successful and how great you are. You fucking know it. And so you don't need to post about it. You don't need to talk about it. You don't bring it up. But what I have found in my life is, and I've been around tons of millionaires now, the ones that are the most successful are those ones, are the ones that you would have no fucking clue. The ones that are having to present it and show it are the ones that are pretending. They're not the ones that really get there. Because you know what? Most people that have had a lot of money, which I know you can relate to this, when you reach a certain point of success,
Starting point is 00:49:52 you actually want less and less people to know about it. Because more and more people try and take advantage of you. More and more people expect things from you. More and more people want things from you. So most people that have reached a point of real, real success and made a lot of money, they don't want motherfuckers to know. Keep my shit on the hush. I don't want people to know I got this money because it just gives me more of a headache, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:50:15 And if you're not seeking that approval or the admiration or the acknowledgement, then what are you getting from trying to, even if it's subtly, inform people that you're successful? There's nothing positive that comes out of it. It makes me think of a guy a couple years ago who emailed and just saying he read my book. He read Big Leaner Stronger. He really liked it. I'm just curious if I'd have some time to get on the phone with him. He'd just like to learn a bit more about the businesses and how it's going. Right. And I get these emails here and
Starting point is 00:50:49 there, but his bio looked kind of fancy. And I was like, Oh, I wonder who this guy is. So I Google him and it turns out he is the CEO of take two interactive, the video game company that had red dead redemption, rockstar games. They own rockstar Games. So he's the CEO of that. And he owns a significant portion of it because he has a private equity company with like $13 billion in assets. And so I was like, yeah, yeah, let's talk. And I've gotten to know him. I've had him on my podcast. He wrote a fitness book. He's really into fitness. Just one of the most down-to-earth dudes. I've been to New York a couple times, met up with him, had lunch and stuff.
Starting point is 00:51:34 Very, very similar in that if you were to just be hanging out with him here, just to show up at a party, you might get a sense that this guy, he's had an amazing career as a, as a business person. I think he has a degree from Harvard. He has a degree from Yale. So if you spoke to him, you would get a sense of this, this guy, this guy's smart, but never talks about himself. You would just never know that he's as successful as he is. And he's much more interested in other people and just interested in the world than he is interested in trying to be interesting. And I think that's one of the key things, right? It's the difference between, it's one of those, the famous two people in the world framework, right? There are two people. There are people who are interesting and there are people who are interested. You have the people
Starting point is 00:52:17 that you've been describing that are just stuck in that. I have to be interesting. I have to get attention versus people who are interested in things and interested in people and interested in topics or in events. And you can quickly tell when you spend five minutes with somebody, you can quickly tell, is this person interesting or interested? And for whatever reason, it's probably cultural. We have a lot more people in the world, at least here in the West, who are interesting and who that's the only thing they're interested in is being interesting. And there's just something repugnant about that. And it's pathological. And it's a dead end. And basically, I think of it as the analogy of you're just gathering speed. It's a dead end. And the more you get into it, the faster you're going when you finally hit the wall at the end. I use the phrase that you have people that have the juice and then you have people that have the sauce. And if you have the juice, anybody can be fast and juice and be quick, but the sauce is the recipe. And you got to have the full recipe to be this interesting person that goes on forever and
Starting point is 00:53:24 not just pretending to be interesting. The crazy part, though, and what I wonder about is we are in this social media Instagram world now that, man, it just perpetuates this so much that you've got to have this image. You've got to have this look on social media in order to be successful. And it's driving everybody in the opposite wrong direction. And what I wonder is, will it catch up? Are we going to see in five years, all these people that were so focused on an image and gathering likes and comments on their social media platforms that really weren't business savvy people that really didn't have anything of value. They were providing people that didn't really have something sustainable. Are we going to see the rug get pulled out from underneath them?
Starting point is 00:54:16 Or do we live in a world now that because you have this ability to connect? For example, I'll look at a kid like Devin Fizik, who was tied to the Shreds company. And I followed Shreds. Oh, yeah. There was that coaching scandal where he was ripping people off. Right. So he was part of a terrible company like Shreds. He got caught up in the coaching scandal of hiring some 20-year-old girl to pretend to be him and answer all his clients' questions. And he made a few million dollars. And that was back when the kid had, I want to say, 800,000 to a million followers. And he recovered. He recovered from that and is now at like 2 million something followers and probably right back to doing what he's doing,
Starting point is 00:55:00 but probably tightened up his game and is maybe handling his clients more or what, I don't know what he's done system wise. But I mean, I wonder if, because you have this ability to reach so many people so fast, like you were saying, is the rug going to get pulled out from underneath them or are they just going to find another million suckers? Because we're, we've got billions of people on this earth. And so, you know, shit, I, I built a business off of 1 million people. I fucking did some shady shit. I did bad. It blew up in my face. That's okay.
Starting point is 00:55:27 I can turn right around. And for example, you see the other kid who was part of Shreds, Joey Swole, who has started another supplement line called Rise Supps, and they're following the same formula. And so I wonder if we're going to see it collapse or there's just that many people that are that many suckers that allow people like this to do bullshit like that, get caught up, blow it up, and then still turn right back around and do it again. And there's nothing you can do to really stop it. Yeah, I just pulled up Devin's Instagram. Yeah, he's at 1.7 million now. And he's a walking tattoo. He looks like he belongs in prison. Spending all your guys' money on face tattoos and Lamborghinis. But to your point, I mean, you look at it, this is just another dimension of celebrity, right? So celebrities generally have a shelf life, of course. Look at it in terms of actors and actresses. So you have your time in the light and then eventually you just kind of become irrelevant.
Starting point is 00:56:29 People don't care anymore. I guess it's a little bit different in social media that it's a little bit more under your control because in Hollywood, it's up to the gatekeepers. They really decide whether you get cast and whether they're going to give you that role or not. And, and I know that even among top tier celebrities, there is an anxiety among many of them of, is this it? Am I done? Was this last movie my last? Because I don't get to decide. It doesn't matter what I've done or how good of an actor or actress I am. There's a small group of people that run this game. And if at some point they're like, nah, we're done with him. Here's the next guy. Then I'm irrelevant. And sure. These people can still make money, but in social media, of course, you don't necessarily have that. So it's just,
Starting point is 00:57:14 what's the next ridiculous thing that I'm going to do that's going to get me enough attention. So, yeah, I mean, who knows this might, this phenomenon is new. Social media really hasn't been a thing. But what we're probably 10 years into it really pervading as pervasive as it, because you go back to MySpace and that was not like what we have now, not even close. So yeah, it might just be a thing that's with us until it's more, I think, more to the larger point, which is we are in the late stage of this civilization and history says it's going to, it's all just going to come crashing down. And there's, um, I just mentioned this in the last podcast I recorded actually. But if you, uh, if you look up on YouTube, will Durant fall of Rome,
Starting point is 00:58:00 it's like 11 minute excerpt from an audio book of his where he walks through, here's what was going on socially, politically, economically, culturally in Rome before it collapsed. I mean, you'd think he's just describing our current situation, add some technology into the mix, and that's it. Arnold Toynbee is a famous historian who also, I think he had like 20 something points of, here are indicators of the late stages of a civilization. And we check most of those boxes. So-
Starting point is 00:58:34 Well, there's a lot of people that believe, and I don't know if, I mean, I could get on board with this theory of that. We've been here before. This is a cycle that man does. And then we completely destroy ourselves. We get to a point... Oh, historically, there's no question. You don't even have to inform yourself. You just have to read a couple books and you're like, oh, yeah, well, that's obvious. And if you mean literally like Atlantean, who knows? Maybe.
Starting point is 00:59:00 That's what I'm saying. I'm saying that there's people that even believe it to that point. And I don't know how much I disagree when I start, when you start to look at what we've seen. And when you think of like the longterm effects of all this, like I can't imagine with where we're going with the tech, like how could Elon Musk had a great interview with Joe Rogan. And there was something that he said in there that just is, I've not been able to rest at night over it. And there was something that he said in there that just is, I've not been able to rest at night over it. And it really opened my eyes to what I think AI is going to really look like and be like. And he makes a statement on there with his phone. He goes, you know, everybody is all worried that AI is going to, you know, it could kill man. And like, what happens when it's smarter than us? And then it kills us. And like, it's like, no, it's not than us and then it kills us and like it's like no it's not like that what it's going to look like he's like we already have examples right today and he goes and he picks
Starting point is 00:59:48 up his phone and he's and he's like we've already got it right here and the only difference between today and probably five or ten years from now is this thing i'm holding in my hand will just be gone but the capabilities of all that will just now be either embedded in you or connected to you to where when you want to search a topic. I find this very fascinating. We are at a time now in our know it was this. Oh, that we're going back and forth where today you could grab your phone and you could Google the answer within seconds and you could have the right answer. And so what happens when that just speeds up? Like, what does that look like? And that's what he's explaining. Like what AI is going to look like is a question gets asked or something you're not sure of. And it'll be as quick as you thinking it or saying it really quick to have the answer. And the tech is going to be, it's going to be super expensive,
Starting point is 01:00:50 which means that there's now going to be an even larger intelligence gap, so to speak. You know what I mean? So if you have that chip in your brain that allows you to immediately know any piece of information, period, imagine the advantage you're going to have over people who don't. Right. So it is, it's going to have over people who don't right so it is it's going to cause this major gap that they've been trying to control forever of like trying to equalize everybody it's like no what's going to happen is there which can't happen it's just it's in it's embedded into nature the majority of intelligence the majority of capability and the majority of will and drive and ambition is possessed in the minority of people.
Starting point is 01:01:26 And that's just the way that our DNA, it's just wired into us. So you can blame nature from that. So it's, yeah, the never ending quest for the truly egalitarian society, I think, is it's just never going to happen because it's fundamentally at odds with our biology. I agree with you. The question will be, though, what happens when these people have this capability? And either one, you'll have to accept that, oh, I'll just never be that smart because I can't afford to be that way. Or I choose not to be because I don't want to be plugged in. I want to be unplugged.
Starting point is 01:02:03 I want to be... Think about work, though. Okay, so you're trying to be plugged in. I want to be unplugged. I want to be... Think about work, though. Okay, so you're trying to get a job. How are you going to outperform somebody who's like the dude with the Neuralink brain chip? Right. No, it's... So this is not that far away from us right now. That's why I find this conversation fascinating and it keeps me up at night thinking about it.
Starting point is 01:02:23 I don't know where I'm going to stand. fascinating and it keeps me up at night thinking about it. I don't know where I'm going to stand. I mean, I think we're lucky and blessed that we've established ourselves in business and we're at a point in our lives where I guess if the world really went that really bad direction that we'd be able to hole up somewhere and take care of our family or whatever, figure things out. But man, I tell you what, if you're somebody who's growing up, that's like my son, that's just being born into this whole thing, it's really interesting to think what it's going to be like 10 15 years from now with ai and the capabilities and if that's where we're going to go and i don't see i mean i can't disagree with him like people we continue to prove that we want faster and faster like i just got a new car the
Starting point is 01:02:58 other day and it's pretty cool how the thing syncs up and becomes my Apple iPhone now. And I'm driving, oh, text message from Sal DiStefano. And then it just automatically reads it to me. And then I speak into the car and then it texts them back. It's like, dude, we are not far away from just getting rid of the hardware. I mean, that's the only difference right now is that we have the hardware. And real soon here, we'll get to a point where it'll just be embedded in you you and then you'll just be able to speak or you'll have these tools that hover around and follow you and you won't need to use your hands anymore and then they'll you can see the evolution already of the uh the ai too i remember when it first came out i was like oh this siri thing sucks it never listened can never understand me you know but now the thing is so fucking smart
Starting point is 01:03:42 it's predictive sal sent me a text message because he was on his way to pick me up to go somewhere he goes hey shoot me your address and my fucking iphone answered him my iphone brought up my whole address and all i had to do was hit send and it was my whole address zip code everything i was like whoa i didn't even i didn't it wasn't even predictive i didn't even start typing he asked the. It gave me the answer. Oh, whoa, dude. We're real close, dude. We're real close. We are close to irrelevance. That's really what we're talking about. Oh my God, dude. I mean, just it's worth mentioning. I liked Cal Newport's book, Deep Work. I'm trying to get him on the show right now. Have you had him on the show? No, I've tried. He just is super busy. And I mean, I know from reading, he talks about how he
Starting point is 01:04:29 runs his life and his schedule and stuff in Deep Work. So I understand that he has his priorities. And my show also is probably, I mean, I don't know, I get a half a million plays on a good month. So you guys are much larger than I am. You know, I understand no, no hard feelings, but I've tried. Yeah, I'm trying. He was just on my buddy, Jordan Harbinger show and I thought it was a great episode, but yeah, no, it's crazy, man. It's crazy to think where we're going. I also see another thing I see that I think is crazy is, and we get this question a lot because we have a, like you probably to have a large trainer following or aspiring to be trainer following. And there's this new model of going straight into online coaching. And I don't know how much I agree with it. I've done both.
Starting point is 01:05:14 So I've had the privilege of training clients one-on-one in person for many years. And I've started online coaching back when I was competing. I did it on the side. And when I was going through the online thing, I don't know how I would have done it well without all of the years experience and all the different body types, personalities, psychological issues that I had already dealt with to be able to communicate over text. I think it's already difficult training clients, like training client one-on-one and looking at movement patterns and being able to say like, oh, you probably have a really tight piriformis or, Oh, this is probably bothering you because I could see the way you move and then teaching them and actually putting
Starting point is 01:05:53 hands on them and like, and then also getting them to execute and follow through. And then learning that, you know, the psychological piece to all of this even matters more than all of this shit that I continue to talk about with programming and exercise and nutrition and shit. So I needed all of that experience to be able to communicate really well to these people that are DMing or texting me or emailing me. They need help with these things. And so we're starting to get these trainers that they're completely skipping the training people in person model and going straight to the online coaching. And I'm really curious to what that's going to look like too. It's, I don't know how good of a trainer I could have been or how well I could have helped somebody without all those years of experience first. So it's, that's interesting to me to see the way that's evolving and changing
Starting point is 01:06:39 right now too. And it's turning into the people that are coaching the most clients, the people that are impacting the most people are the people that have the most influence on Instagram and they've got the most followers. And in reality, that rarely ever aligns with the best true coaches, right? Like some of the best coaches and trainers. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of one-on-one time. I mean, just speaking to that point, I have a coaching service.
Starting point is 01:07:02 I don't coach people myself and I don't pretend to. I have somebody who runs the whole service. I work with him and we have coaches. And so I know exactly what you're talking about. We've intentionally, I mean, it's a very high touch, personal one-on-one service. And there are daily check-ins and weekly check-ins and we get great results with people, but it's a lot of work. You can't have a hundred clients per person. You have to have fewer people, but it's a lot of work. You can't have 100 clients per person.
Starting point is 01:07:26 You have to have fewer people and provide a really good service. But yeah, it's easier just to throw people cookie cutter shit and then have a team of people who don't really care pretending to be you. So I'm assuming that's kind of the model, right? So if you had a million followers, you'd pretend like they're all getting trained by you. Is that the... Well, you see what happened to that Brittany Dawn girl. Did you hear all that shit? She made the Today. Oh, shit. That was a big
Starting point is 01:07:50 following. So this influencer, right? I'm in air quotes. Brittany Dawn, who was... She was on the Today show a couple of weeks ago, and she had this massive following out because she pissed off a bunch of angry mothers. What did she do well she's she gained a huge following from her instagram you know she posts pictures of her her butt and in her bikini and in her range rover and all these cool things to get all this attention you know and she's artsy and so she had a half a million i think followers is what she had someone like that 500 800 yeah i just i just pulled her up it It's 536 right now. social media following more than really understanding business, no one stops to think, what if you actually do build this thing to be a monster? Can you handle that? Can you handle 500 people trying to buy coaching from you in one day? You ever thought about that?
Starting point is 01:08:55 A lot of these idiots don't even think about that. They're working so hard to get attention and they're hustling so much to add clients that no one stops to think like, oh, what does this look like if I actually scale it to 500 people? Is it scalable to that? And can I manage that? And what would that process look like getting there? And it was like an overnight thing for her. I mean, because of the ability to go viral these days. And if you do a sexy enough pick, it could instantly get 100,000 views. And her shit kind of grew so quick that she was literally just emailing everybody if she was even responding so she was getting people buying shit and she wasn't even able to respond to all of them and the ones that she was responding she was literally sending the
Starting point is 01:09:35 exact same thing to everybody and you do that to a couple thousand people and sooner or later two of them are friends you know and she got found out and just a massive backlash. And then it already spent all the money. You know, she'd already been spending everybody's money. She couldn't even refund everybody. She offered like 20 bucks back or 40 bucks back on their program to try and save her ass. And I'm like, yeah, but this is what we're seeing this everywhere. I mean, it's, it's actually really popular or really common to see these people that I, that are, they're coaching and I'm like, okay, I did it. And part of why I don't do it today is it's not that scalable. I started it was one of the guys, one, I get asked about it all the time. Well, I guess there are two primary reasons. One was that. And two, there was a guy working with me.
Starting point is 01:10:31 He still works with me. Now he works over on the Legion side of things and he wanted to do it. And I was telling him, I was like, okay, this has to be a business though. And he's a smart dude. And he understood that it's going to require, I mean, he saw firsthand, like you see what's going on here with Legion and the systems that you need to have for hiring and the systems that you need to have for quality control and blah, blah, blah. Like we're going to need all that for the coaching. It can't just be something that we, we can't be like that. We can't just put a signup form up online, start taking money and be like, Oh, we'll just figure it out as we go. And there's been now it's a, it's a few hundred people, a few hundred active clients. And that might sound like, oh yeah, cool to take care of three, whatever hundred people and to deliver a really good service
Starting point is 01:11:13 is it takes a lot of time. So the guy who effectively runs that business, he doesn't coach people. He did in the beginning, he coached a lot of people, but now he is just running the business. And we have other people who, in one beginning, he coached a lot of people, but now he is just running the business. And we have other people who, in one case, one guy, one of our best, one of our most popular coaches, he has a certain number of clients. Then he also spends a lot of his time managing the other coaches as well. And then there's a full-time salesperson and it's just a business. I'd imagine too, it's probably
Starting point is 01:11:43 not the most profitable side of your house of everything that you got running over there. As far as profits go, it's not bad. It's pretty good if you're looking at it just in terms of net, but in terms of, well, I'm talking about percentage wise, in terms of absolute profits, no, it's negligible. Sure, I can always use more money and there's things I can do with money, but I don't count. That income is rather insignificant for me personally. Yeah. It's something that's on my radar and we've talked about it before, but the only way that I would do it, because I've already done it myself and I know that once I get personally to about 20 to 30 people, it's a lot. And I'm not organized, so I know if I was
Starting point is 01:12:21 better organized, I could maybe scale that to 30 to 50 people. It's just not a scalable single business by itself if you don't have other revenue streams coming in. And there's much bigger fish for us to fry before I address that. I am getting to a point, though, where I do see the opportunity and I do have the connections and relationships with other trainers that I could say, okay, and this is what I'm thinking about doing right now is, okay, I've got like the Danny's, the Mike's and these really high level trainers that I personally know. And they've been training for a long time, super smart guys. They totally know the brand and know everything about mind, but listen to every single episode. And I'm like, okay, these guys are perfect that I could put them in a position and say, okay, here's the deal. You're going to run this coaching program. We're going to be the top of the funnel. So I'll drive everybody to you.
Starting point is 01:13:07 You'll make X amount of money for it. We'll make a small piece of that for driving everybody to you. And this is going to be this little thing that you build. So that will be something that we do, but it's not. I'm seeing the opposite right now. And people that are in our space are going that direction first. First, they're just trying to get lots of attention on social, on Instagram. And then they're pivoting that into a coaching business with no rhyme or reason or idea
Starting point is 01:13:31 of what that looks like if you scale it. What happens if you're Instagram? Also, why? They're not doing it with the primary purpose of helping people. They're doing it with the primary purpose of just making money. And the fact that it does help some people here and there makes them feel a little bit better about themselves, which is, uh, it is what it is, but how, at least how I went about it was the other way around was okay. The, I don't have any doing this does, is, does, does actually doesn't make sense for me financially to put time into that when I could put my time into other things that would make a lot more money, but a lot of people want it. So it'd be a great service that I know a lot of my followers would like. And two, if we do it right, we can help a lot of people, but really do a good job with everybody and make sure to really do our best to make sure
Starting point is 01:14:15 that everybody's happy. Everybody gets the results that they want. And if we can't do that, we just give them their money back. And that rarely happens. It's usually due to life circumstances. People have to, things change and you know, they either can't start or they have to drop out. And, but that approach, it does not scale as easily as just not caring. And yeah, it's not as profitable, but again, that comes back to all the stuff we were talking about earlier in that profits, they're not, they don't, they're not very fulfilling. Money is just not very fulfilling. It's just not. Once you get past that threshold, I think we all have, I mean, I know the studies that show $80,000 a year or whatever. That doesn't work for everybody under
Starting point is 01:14:56 all circumstances. You can't tell me that someone living in the middle of Alabama, 20-year-old dude making $80,000 a year single. I'm sure he'll feel good about his position and his situation. He's not going to have any pressing financial problems, but you take a married couple bootstrapping a startup living in Manhattan and you try to make them live on $80,000. It doesn't work. Right. I think it's all relative to where you're at. It is. It is. But I would say for most people, no matter what you're doing, where you are, I mean, it's probably in what, a couple hundred thousand dollars a year is probably the ceiling to where you no longer have any money problems and money, the satisfaction that you get from money,
Starting point is 01:15:38 that's where diminishing returns really kicks in. Oh yeah. I think wherever you're at, and we live in one of the most expensive places in the country to live. And so for here, once you reach beyond that, about that $200,000 a year mark, the difference between 200, 300, 400, half a million isn't much of a difference anymore. In terms of quality of life. Yeah. It's just, you either, you have more money, maybe you buy more trinkets and knickknacks or you buy experiences or you're smarter and you invest and you try to set yourself up for a better future. I think that's 100% true. In my personal experience, that's what it's been like, which is what I told you I had to learn that lesson. You could have told me that I could have listened to your podcast 10 years ago and I still would have let it go.
Starting point is 01:16:24 It would have fallen on deaf ears. I would have been like, it doesn't matter. I got for my entire life. And sometimes when we're chasing a dollar amount, you're just thinking about something right now because you're thinking about the thing. I want a house. I want a car. I want these things. And so you're so driven by that. Then you obtain all those things. And then you have to actually look at yourself in the mirror and go like, oh, do I enjoy doing all this stuff that I'm doing every single day? And you're like, fuck, maybe not. Well, all that happens now you have a new wishlist and now you're yeah and now you're and now you're dissatisfied completely dissatisfied the things that you have because you need to have the
Starting point is 01:17:09 next thing you need to have the next car you got to have the you have the daily driver then now you got to have the lamborghini and if you're gonna have the lamborghini then you got to have the bling and if then you're gonna have that then you want to oh now it's traveling commercial is it's so peasant i want to try i want to i want to be it's traveling commercial is it's so peasant. I want to try, I want to, I want to be able to fly. Probably just, it just never ends. Right now. I've always, I don't know if you share with the podcast or not. I know you share with us. I know that you, you came from money and yet you're. I would, let me, I'll qualify that. So my dad started, I grew up up until let's say it wasn't
Starting point is 01:17:43 a parent to me, honestly, until I was like 16. Okay. So in the beginning- Your parents didn't foil you growing up or anything? No, no, no. In the beginning, my parents had no money at all. I mean, my dad was a hard worker. He made money.
Starting point is 01:17:54 But when we talk about, quote unquote, having money, he did not have money in the beginning. He worked his way up. He was a sales guy and he worked his way up eventually to having a sales company and selling it. But there was a sales guy and he worked his way up eventually to having a sales company and selling it. But that was a, there was a journey there. So I was raised well, and we always had food and it wasn't, I was not in poverty at all, but there was not money in the sense of like, Ooh, they have money that I'd say phase began when I was probably 15 or 16. It's when my parents built a house. So we were living in Florida and we lived in a normal, we actually were just 16. It's when my parents built a house. So we were living in Florida and we
Starting point is 01:18:25 lived in a normal, we actually were just renting. It was a bigger-ish house, but a normal neighborhood, nothing special, just a nice place to live, normal neighborhood. Normal track home, two, 3,000 square feet. I'm trying to remember. Yeah, it wasn't, it wouldn't have been much bigger than 3,000 square feet. It was a little bit bigger than the average house, but it was rented. And my dad was also funny, I guess along the way he had started to make a bit more money, but he still drove the same. It was like an old blue Nissan car. He didn't care. My mom was the one who forced him finally to just get something that looks a little bit nicer because he didn't care. He'd be like, why? Why do I need a nicer car? I drive to work. I drive home. My Nissan works great, right? So we went from that, which I don't know if they would have bought the house would have been probably a couple hundred thousand, few hundred thousand dollars, maybe.
Starting point is 01:19:12 I don't know. And then they built, I mean, at the time, so they, this was back when I was 16, it was probably with the land three or $4 million home. And so that's when I was like, oh, I guess my dad has been more money than I realized. Because he just wasn't, he's not an extravagant guy. He's still not an extravagant guy beyond, I guess, maybe the house looks a bit extravagant. And for him, maybe that was fulfilling to be able to do because he grew up in a family with, I think, shit, he was one of 10 or nine. And his dad was a hard worker and always think, shit. He was one of 10 or nine.
Starting point is 01:19:47 And his dad was a hard worker and always provided. But, you know, they had to watch their money. So, yeah, that's when it became apparent. But I wasn't spoiled or I wasn't raged like a little shitty rich kid. My brother, however, was because he's six and a half years younger than I am. And he's a good dude. He works with me now and he's on the right path. But there's a marked difference between the two of us.
Starting point is 01:20:08 So anyways, you were going to make a point, but I just want to explain. I was just curious actually to you because of your success. And if you were somebody who didn't come from being like the rich kid and you didn't come from being the poor kid trying to make a ton of money, like where does the drive and desire to be successful and to grow a business and to scale and to keep making more and doing well like where does that stem from then or when you started like what the fuck i mean what made what motivates a guy like you who technically could fall back on mommy and daddy if you had to back you know when you're 20 years old like what separates you from your brother i mean there's a good example you said you guys have market differences here. Well, what are they and what was it that made you so driven? Let's see. I'm looking back.
Starting point is 01:20:51 I would say there was a financial element of it, but it wasn't so much about like, I want to have things for the sake of having things. It was being married, having a kid on the way and wanting to be able to provide a good life for, for my family. Not that you needed a huge amount of money to do that, but you need to do well for, I think. And so there was that there was also, it was exciting to just build something. I mean, you know, you're living it just as I am. It's cool to, I thought it was just exciting to envision something and build it and make it real. And the fact that money came with it as well is nice, but it was more just kind of fun to do the work and see it all materialize.
Starting point is 01:21:34 That was fulfilling. And it was, I'd say for me, work in general is, it's a flow producing activity for me. It gets me into that flow state where you, your attention is fully absorbed and you're fully focused on what you're doing and you forget about your worries and you forget about time and yourself and you are really just in the moment. And that's an enjoyable feeling. And so I've always been drawn to work simply for that reason alone. So in some ways, I could probably enjoy just about any type of work so long as I could. I mean, there are some, I'd say some conditions that would need to be met for I may not feel drawn to it, but once I get into it, I can enjoy it. So I was probably drawn to work just for the sake of like, it's more enjoyable than what, what the fuck else am I going to do? You know what I mean? Okay. So let's say I just going to be a rich kid. I know these people, right? I have friends or, you know, maybe I've lost kind of touch with some, with most of them by now, but not because
Starting point is 01:22:43 there was a falling out per se. So if I was just going to be a rich kid, what do I do then? What do I do? I travel. I wouldn't get married because that's stupid, right? If you're going to be a rich kid, you're just a degenerate. I would just travel and I would just have sex and do drugs and buy things. And you're wise enough to know that's fleeting. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:23:02 I would rather die and just see what happens in there. Like what happens next? Do we come back? Do we, am I going to hell? I don't know. That seems more interesting to me than going in. I'm not joking.
Starting point is 01:23:15 Then going and being a degenerate. Oh, because I know exactly where that goes. I've seen it firsthand. I get it. You know what? It leads to internal hell, right? And you die anyway in the end if you take it there.
Starting point is 01:23:28 So let's just skip the foreplay. Let's get straight to the execution and let's just see what happens. Now, what is the point though of, you know, and this is where I try and have balance with this. I think that I still spoil myself or I still do things. I shouldn't say spoil. I still enjoy getting certain things or spending money on certain things. Do you have things that you justify that, hey, I work really hard. I do these things and I'm into X, Y, and Z. Like I'm a sneaker head. I'm a watch guy. I'm a car guy. These things I'm into, I don't find the
Starting point is 01:24:00 need to flaunt them to others and show them what I've done. But personally, like, I mean, getting into the Rover or getting into the Camaro is like one of my favorite things to do on a Saturday. And I, you know, I don't share it on Instagram. Nobody knows I go do it, but I'll go take a ride with all the windows down and music plan. And I love it. I enjoy that. Like, do you have things that cost money that were expensive to buy or that you buy for yourself, that you indulge, that you are okay with? Or do you live this like, I don't care about these things at all. And so I'm not gonna spend any money on any of this shit. At this point, I'm fairly, I guess, monastic would be the word. I like collecting things. I don't spend very much money, uh, currently because I'm doing other things with my money, but I do like collecting things.
Starting point is 01:24:49 So I've bought things that I just think are cool. Uh, like I bought a Flintlock pistol from like the late 1700s made by some master Italian pistol maker, just because I want to just think it's cool. And two, I like that period of history. And, you know, it's just something that's appealing to me. Let's see, I bought a typewriter that was owned by a guy named Mickey Spillane, who was a writer back, I think, turn of the century ish, maybe a little bit later than that. And he had sold like 100 million novels in his lifetime. And I thought that's kind of cool, just kind of symbolic because I guess I consider myself first and foremost a writer. Oh, I bought a standard
Starting point is 01:25:30 oil stock certificate signed by John Rockefeller. Oh, that's cool. Just because I read Titan and I was like, this guy was, there were serious things wrong with this guy, but in some ways he was admirable. He was just one of these larger than life figures of history who stand out and you, you can't help, but admire a lot of what he did despite how ruthless and merciless he was. And let's see, what else do I have? Some first edition books, like a first edition of Atlas Shrugged. I want to get a signed one, but I've seen a few go up. I just didn't want to spend. I think they ended up selling for multiple thousands of dollars. So I have an unsigned. So it's stuff like that. It's not that much money. Some of the items were expensive individually, but when you look at it over time,
Starting point is 01:26:17 it's not much. I drive a nice car. I do like driving a nice car. I don't know how much I really care about it though. I've thought many times, this is kind of a waste of money. Like I don't need a, an S class Mercedes. It's nice to drive around, but I could probably get like an E class for half the price and not care or anything else. Right. So I guess car's not really my thing. I mean, I thought maybe I could get into watches. So I've, I watches that are not crazy, but fairly expensive. And after getting a few, I just wasn't interested. I just wasn't even really interested in wearing them. So I was like, well, I guess, I guess that's not for me. And so my wife is very much, she's very into fashion. And to her credit, I'd say, I mean, I can't say that there's got to
Starting point is 01:27:05 be a part of her that I don't know if it's just a female thing because most women are into fashion to some degree, especially if they have some money to spend on getting nice things. My mom was a perfect example of that. So previously before my dad started making more money, she would wear just normal clothes, whatever, right? She would maybe go to Target and get like 22 pairs of shoes or, well, actually, no, I'm skipping. So she just normal clothes, right? Then my dad starts making money and then she just starts buying more of that stuff. So it'd be like, go to Target and get 22 pairs of shoes instead of getting maybe three or four pairs of very expensive shoes. I mean, I'm exaggerating, but you get the point. And then my wife at the time, I mean, I've been with her since I was 17.
Starting point is 01:27:45 So we start dating. She's into high-end fashion, right? And so as we're dating and my dad does better and better, he ends up selling his company, a company that he had made a lot of money with that. So then my mom going into it initially was like, I'll never get into high-end fashion. And I understand Sarah's into it. That's just not me. And then once she got a taste of it though, Sarah got her hooked on this. This stuff is nicer. This Chanel bag is actually nicer than the Michael Kors bag. And you like the Michael,
Starting point is 01:28:17 the part of you that likes this Michael Kors bag is going to really like this Chanel bag. And so then my mom, yeah, then Sarah fully corrupted my mom. I don't know. I think my mom had a phase where she was buying a lot of stuff. I don't think she, I think she is kind of over that now, but my wife is still into it. And we have a simple agreement. She has a budget that she can spend every month. I don't care what she buys with that money. She could spend it all on one ridiculous thing, or she could buy several ridiculous things. I don't care at all as long as she sticks to the budget. But she's into it and she's been into it for as long as I've known her, but she's not. And I'm biased because it's my wife and I love her, but she really, I do not think it's because she wants to try to make other women jealous or wants to necessarily show off that she can afford some more expensive things. She genuinely likes it. Like she would,
Starting point is 01:29:11 I mean, she's been just raising our kids now for years, but once Romy, our daughter's going to be in school, Sarah will probably, she may come work with us in the office, but she'll probably, if she weren't to do that, she would want to work in the fashion industry. She just loves it. And I wish I had something like that. Like I tell her, I'm like, I think it's cool that you're into it. I'm not into it. I don't understand it. I don't like the space. It's similar to fitness and that's very narcissistic and just weird. But I understand there's an aesthetic there. There is an art to a lot of this stuff. And I don't have anything like that. I was into golf a bit when I was in Florida and I could see enjoying that. It can be very expensive. I didn't make it very expensive.
Starting point is 01:29:53 So, you know, I understand being into like, oh, I'm into shoes or I'm into cars because I see it with my wife. I just don't currently have anything that really is that interesting to me other than buying some collectible things here and there that, uh, I like board games. There you go. Uh, but they're not that they're expensive. I just like, I grew up, uh, I never got really into video games, but I like games in general and I like the social element of board games. So I own quite a few board games. Hey, did you ever get a chance to play railroad when I sent it to you for Christmas? You remember last year or the year before last year, actually, it was two years ago when we first met.
Starting point is 01:30:30 Yeah. Yeah. The, the ticket to ride expansion. So I have tickets to ride. I've played it. We, I didn't play the one that you sent me simply because it's hard to get like the people together and then get them all to agree on a game, but I've played ticket to ride. And I thought it was, it was a thoughtful gift. It was, uh, that's what. I tell you what, that's one of the things that I think we talked about the first time that we met that I was actually just having this conversation again with Katrina that I need help. I've never been in a position right now where I have built so many relationships with so many people that I actually like and that I think are very valuable relationships for many reasons. And I take a lot of pride on making sure that I do thoughtful things and letting... I mean, I come from a place
Starting point is 01:31:12 of that quote, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And I really believe in that. And I try and lead with that with people always. But man, it's been a challenge because it's one thing to be helping and help build and scale the thing we're currently doing, but then also to manage all those relationships and make sure that I'm making those connections and showing people that I do value and care about their relationship. It's definitely been something that I remember I talked on your podcast the very first time that we did a podcast about this, for the first time in my life, I've, I feel over, I pride myself on being really good at that. And for the first time,
Starting point is 01:31:50 I feel overwhelmed of, oh my God, like, who do I prioritize? No, I understand. I mean, I've run into that myself. The good news, I think is, at least I've experienced this, that most of the people who maybe would be on that list understand because they live the same life. You know what I mean? And whenever there is some sort of, hey, how's it going? They understand and it's appreciated. So when I hear, I have friends, you know, exactly the same thing out in California. People I've known in a couple of cases since I was 16, 17, and they're busy. And we talk now and then, and that's totally cool. And it's understandable that I'm not upset that I didn't get happy birthday wish because I get it. I get it too.
Starting point is 01:32:41 It's challenging though. And it's important. It's important to me. I get it. I get it too. It's challenging though. And it's important. It's important to me.
Starting point is 01:32:48 I always feel like I've had a lot of success by leading that way. Much of the things that have come my way in business have been because of networking with so many people. I definitely also come from the camp of Henry Ford of surrounding myself with other men and women that are far more talented and smarter than I am. Because of that, I've been able to have a lot of success. And so we're now in a place where I find that more challenging than I've ever felt in my life. But the one thing that I think you're right is the relationships that probably matter the most, the ones that I care about the most, and the ones that I like are also the ones that are most forgiving about the loss of contact for a little while. We've already forged a relationship. We like each other.
Starting point is 01:33:28 We both respect that we're both building something big and it takes a lot of energy and effort. So because I didn't hear, like you said, I haven't heard from you for my birthday or whatever, that I'm not sweating somebody, you know? Yeah, exactly. All right, man. Well, I think I have to pee really bad. So do I.
Starting point is 01:33:40 Yeah. So I think this is a great place to wrap it wrap it up do you want to finish with just anything new and exciting anything cool you want to let everybody know about i mean obviously everybody can find you and all your in sal and justin and doug over at mind pump media yeah yeah i'm pretty sure most of you're sure we have a lot of crossover between our audience probably know where to go fine you know what to do yeah you know just give him, give him your fucking money so he can buy more water. Stupid dude. But I do,
Starting point is 01:34:08 we are doing something this year. We're probably going to get out more this year than we did the previous year. We're trying to do some, so maybe I can bug your audience to bug you more to do this is I'd like to do like a, you know, mind pump tour and friends where like we go to different States and cities. And like,
Starting point is 01:34:23 for example, if we were in your neck of the woods, uh, yeah, I'm in dude. I'm in. So, uh, we'll plan something like that. You just got to give me, give me a heads up though. So I can announce, like, I want to let people know this is, you know, well in advance because, um, I'm sure quite a few people would come. That'd be fun. No, I will. In fact, you'll, you'll be hearing from Taylor soon because Taylor is one who's organizing it with Rachel, but I'll try and get something lined up to where we can come in your backyard. So it'll be more convenient and then, you know, have you drop in and surprise and say hi to everybody. Yeah. That'd be fun. Cool. Always good time with you, bro.
Starting point is 01:34:55 Yeah. Same. Thanks for taking the time. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss
Starting point is 01:35:36 out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. Lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my 100% natural Legion protein bar. Now, unlike many protein bars, mine are not chalky, crumbly, hard-to-get-down lumps made with low-quality and undesirable forms of protein
Starting point is 01:36:30 like milk protein, calcium caseinate, and soy protein, and chock full of artificial sweeteners, flavors, dyes, and other chemical junk. Instead, my protein bars contain 20 grams of high quality protein from a blend of whey isolate, whey hydrolysate, whey concentrate, and pea protein isolate, are naturally sweetened and flavored, and do not sit on shelves for months on end. And so every bite is savory, on shelves for months on end and so every bite is savory moist and pleasantly chewable my goal was to create an all-natural protein bar that tastes like high protein candy and many of my customers say that i have done just that so if you want a clean all natural, low calorie and low sugar protein bar that has 20 grams of five-star protein that tastes as good as it looks and that is easy on your stomach,
Starting point is 01:37:35 then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and try my protein bars today. And just to show how much I appreciate all of my podcast peoples, use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. I also have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. No having to return the products, fill out forms, or jump through any other hoops, so you really can't lose here. Head over to www.legionathletics.com. Now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.