Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Bedros Keuilian on How to Turn Adversity Into Advantage

Episode Date: June 17, 2019

It’s one thing to talk about finding opportunities where others only see obstacles . . . . . . seeing the silver lining in difficult situations . . . . . . turning coal into diamonds . . . . . . but it’s something else entirely to actually behave this way when the chips are down and to then actually win against all odds. Bedros is someone who has done just that. Most people know him as the founder of the multimillion-dollar Fit Body Bootcamp franchise, which is an impressive achievement by itself, but his backstory makes his entrepreneurial wins even more remarkable. Bedros grew up in a country gripped by Soviet communism, came to America as a child and grew up in abject poverty, and eventually pulled himself up by his bootstraps and became a screaming success in business. And as you can imagine, Bedros learned quite a few lessons along the way about responsibility, leadership, and perseverance, which is what we talk about in this interview, as well as other aspects of entrepreneurship, including marketing, branding, sales, and business strategy. So, if you want to get some powerful and practical insights into how to deal with life’s many challenges head on and not only survive but thrive, you want to listen to this interview. 5:36 - How did you get to where you’re at today? 28:43 - What were the struggles you had to face to get to where you’re at today? 35:16 - What is your best advice for upcoming entrepreneurs? 41:46 - What resources and books do you recommend for leadership? 43:11 - What do you think is the next big thing in the fitness industry? What do you have planned for your future? 54:29 - Where can people find you and your work? 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/

Hello and guten Tag, mein Freund. Ich bin Mike und das ist der Muskel fürs Lieben podcast. Okay, that's enough German. I'm learning slowly but surely. Learning a new language is a pain in the ass, by the way. But that is not what today's podcast is about. Today's podcast is an interview that I did with Bedros Kulian, who is someone I met at a Mind Pump event that I was invited to last year over in California, in Lake Tahoe, California. And so Bedros was at that event and him and I were just thrown in a room together. We didn't know each other. I don't even know if we had said hello until we were in the room, in the chair, ready to record a podcast. And we had a good time. We enjoyed the discussion.

We had some very similar business war stories to tell each other and traded information. And now I have this interview to present to you. So why should you listen to it though? Well, it is one thing to talk about finding opportunities where others only see obstacles, to talk about seeing the silver lining in difficult situations, turning coal into diamonds and so on, but it is something else entirely to actually behave this way when the chips are down and to then actually win against all odds. And Bedros is someone who has done exactly that. Now, most people know him as the founder of the multi-million dollar Fit Body Boot Camp franchise, which is an impressive achievement by itself.

But his backstory makes his entrepreneurial wins even more remarkable because he grew up in a country gripped by Soviet communism. He came to America as a young child and then grew up in abject poverty. And he eventually pulled himself up by his bootstraps and became a screaming success in business. And as you can imagine, Mr. Bedros has learned quite a few lessons along the way about responsibility, leadership, and perseverance. And those are the things that we talk about in this interview, as well as some other aspects of business building of entrepreneurship including marketing branding sales and business strategy so if you'd like to get some powerful and practical insights on how to deal with life's many challenges head on and then not only survive

but thrive this interview is for you 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 fitness book for men, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. Now, this book has sold over 350,000 copies in the last several years and helped thousands and thousands of guys build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 3,100 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. that are keeping you from achieving the lean, muscular, strong, and healthy body that you truly desire, and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate male body, then you want to read Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, which you can find on all major online retailers like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can get the audiobook

100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audiobooks. I love them myself because they let me make the time that I spend doing stuff like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth, so much more valuable and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, then simply go to www.bitly.com slash free BLS. And that will take you to Audible. And then you just click the sign up today and save button, create your account and voila, you get to listen to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for free. All righty. That is enough shameless plugging for now, at least. Let's get to the show. Dejos, thanks for taking the time to come and talk to me, my friend.

Mike, I really appreciate the opportunity, man. It was great seeing you in Tahoe. And here we are again. Yeah, yeah. For people listening, we met, probably end up saying this in the intro anyway, but we met at a Mind Pump event that both of us were invited to. And we were just kind of thrown into a room together. We didn't even know each other.

But there was like, hey, Joseph and Mike, you guys are going and talking now. But we had a good talk. And we did. Yeah, I loved it. Honestly, here, I probably end up talking about some of the similar things we discussed. But anyways, I liked Bedros and we had a good talk. And so I wanted to get him on the show. And now he's on the show. So I don't usually start these interviews with like, oh, tell me your story, because that's what most people do. And often if it's health and fitness stuff, I like to kind of just get to the point, you know what I mean? Like, all right, what are we here to talk about? We're here to talk about stubborn fat loss. Let's just get to the point. But as this is kind of a different interview and your story is interesting, I think that's a decent place to start. What is your background and how did you get to where you are today? Because it's very different from where you came from and where you started, right? Yeah, I'll say. And you know what's funny? When you're growing up, you don't realize when your

story's different. You don't realize until people tell you like, hey, you know, you do have an amazing story. And I was like, holy crap, I guess I do. And what I mean by that is recently, well, recently, about six years ago, a friend of mine, one of my videographers, he goes, you know what you are? You're the immigrant edge. I'm like, huh, that's an interesting word. I go, well, tell me more. He goes, yeah, you're the immigrant edge. You always see optimism. Even when the economy crashed, because he's been working with me since 2005. He goes, in 2008, 2009, when the economy crashed, you were like, hey, let's keep rocking. Everything is great. Eating out of a dumpster. And the reason for that is because in 1980, I was six years old,

and my dad decides, because we're living in Armenia, and Armenia at the time was under communist rule, the Soviet Union rule. And my dad decides, you know what, we're going to escape the Soviet Union, and if I get caught, they're going to kill me. But I'm not going to get caught, and I'm going to take my family to the United States, and they're going to have freedom and opportunity, and get to participate in democracy. states and they're going to have freedom and opportunity and get to participate in democracy. And so, dude, so we made that great escape. And I was six years old and people always ask me, well, were you afraid? And I imagine my older brother who was 19 and my sister who was 22, they were afraid because they knew the risk of getting caught. They knew they were missing out on their friends. I was six years old. As long as I'm with my mom and dad and brother and sister, for all I thought, I was going on a vacation. So here's where things got weird.

We came to the United States. That vacation that might end in a gulag. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So we get to the United States, and, dude, all of a sudden, we've got no money because when you're escaping, you can't make it look like you're leaving. So we kind of made it look like we're going on vacation to Italy. And we just left with two suitcases and left everything behind. In Italy, we went to the American consulate. From there, we said, hey, we're

political refugees. We're leaving the communism. And the US government accepted us in. And so 14 days from leaving the Soviet Union, we were in the United States. And we're broke. We're poor. We don't understand the culture. We don't speak the language, and my dad had one friend in California, which is why we ended up here in California, and the friend goes, look, I've got a two-bedroom apartment. You and your whole family can live in one of the bedrooms for 30 days. Then you got to go. You can get your paperwork done. You can apply for Section 8 housing. So I grew up on Section 8 housing, not knowing English, not knowing the culture. In Section 8 housing, one of the apartments we lived in, it was so filthy, Mike, that I got lice as a kid.

I was seven and a half years old at this point. A little embarrassing story, but it's worth kind of setting the stage. My mom and dad, we still couldn't afford lice treatment because every penny counted. And they were pumping gas and delivering newspapers at night. And so my mom had my dad siphon out gasoline from a parked car and she washed my hair with gasoline to kill the lice. Every night we would go to these grocery stores, but we would go behind the grocery store where they have the big dumpster and they would throw away food that had expired or maybe had a little mold on it so they couldn't sell it. And my dad would kind of

lift me up and put me into the dumpster. And I would fish out bags of bread and cheese and eggs and milk and vegetables. And that was our food for the first couple of years because every penny mattered because we needed to get out of Section 8 housing. And so I grew up with this immigrant edge mentality where if you don't have the resources, you get resourceful. Adversity is an advantage. In life, you must problem solve because no one's going to figure it out for you because that's how we grew up. As it later turns out, as I grew up and kind of got into fitness and working out because I was a fat kid throughout all the way to high school, people go, well, how did you get fit? What made you get into fitness? A girl. Her name was Nakaya. I wanted

to take her to the senior prom. So the summer before senior year, Mike, I asked, I call him a friend, but I don't think he looked at me as a friend. He was my science partner, my lab partner in science class. He happened to be on the high school football team and he was a center of the football team. He was built like a brick shithouse, just jacked. And I was like, Hey Dave, listen, I'm fat. I want to ask the guy to the prom next year. How do I get in shape? And dude, he took me to a school gym and it was intimidating as intimidating gets. These guys are grunting and squatting and benching and snot rocketing. And I'm like, I do not belong in here. Like this, this foreign kid does not

belong in here. And I had like boy boobs and talk about a muffin top. Like it was like reaching my knees throughout summer. I just kept working out, eating right. I lost 40 pounds, man. And I came back senior year. I never asked out Nakia to the prom. I just didn't have the confidence. But I built enough self-esteem and self-image where I started making friends for the first time ever. People took interest in me. And I realized more than the physical change, I love the mental and emotional change this gave me. And I knew that when I leave high school, I'm going to get certified as a personal trainer and start helping people. And that was kind of my journey. Now, throughout that journey, I, of course, worked at big box gyms, had so few clients that I was also a fry cook at Disneyland and a bouncer at a gay bar. I maintained two side

jobs just to make ends meet financially because I didn't know about entrepreneurship and marketing and selling and persuasion. I just thought, hey, I'm in great shape. I'm certified. I work in a gym. People are going to throw money at me. Fast forward through life and you realize in my late 20s, one of my personal training clients, his name is Jim Franco. He ended up mentoring me. When you're a personal trainer, majority of your clients are going to be well off. And he was an entrepreneur and he ended up mentoring me. And I ultimately ended up opening five personal training gyms in San Diego. And a couple of years later, I sold those and had a nice windfall of money and decided that I'm going to coach and consult in the fitness industry, teach other personal trainers what I did. And in 2008,

when the economy crashed and I knew that one-on-one personal training was on its deathbed, I knew that group training bootcamp model was going to be the next big thing. And so I said, if I can just take that outdoor bootcamp, bring it indoors and call it group personal training, it's going to take off. And by 2010, I had my first prototype location open in Costa Mesa, California. By 2012, I officially franchised. And today, 2019, we've been on the Inc. 5000 list, Entrepreneur's Fastest Growing Franchise, Entrepreneur 500 list twice, Inc. 5000 list four times, and over 800 locations worldwide now. And so, you know, when I say I'm the immigrant edge and the American dream, that's truly what I feel. I'm the Cinderella man. It makes me think of just the amount of households in the U.S., Russian households. It's not the same thing, but there's a similarity. It's a the time of the books, writing Russian households were like 1.7% of US households, but they comprised like, I don't know,

7% or 8% of millionaire households. And it just makes me think of that probably for a similar reason where it's a lot of these people, they fled Soviet Russia and they had nothing but a willingness to work. And they knew what the bottom really looked like. And they were just willing to do whatever it takes with enough intelligence and enough work ethic and enough integrity. A lot of these people were able to do very well for themselves. They also tended to be frugal, again, because they came from a place of nothing. And so they're very appreciative of the money they did make and they were smart with it. Your story reminds me of that a lot. As you say it, I realized, gosh, I'm exactly that. Yeah. That's cool. And, you know, something else that you said,

I think is, I just like to hear a little bit more on it because I, because I liked it. And that was when you don't have resources, you need to get resourceful. And I like that a lot. And, you know, get resourceful. And I like that a lot. And, you know, I think that an edge that you can lose as you do get more and more resources, you see that fairly often, whether it's in individuals who in the beginning are very scrappy, they're willing to do what it takes, work long hours, get outside of their comfort zone and do things that they normally wouldn't want to do, or maybe they would normally would never do, but they know they need to do it. So they do it. And then, you know, you fast forward and after they've had some success, they just don't seem to have that hunger anymore. And they seem to put more and more value on comfort and lose that resourcefulness, which by definition, right,

is being able to make use of what little you have, be able to take difficult circumstances or limited resources and make things happen with them, right? That's exactly it. And it's funny as I, I'm 44 years old now. And I noticed my wife's like, boy, you're really transcending in life. You've become this like knuckle dragging philosopher. And I go, tell me more, honey. She goes, well, cause I always use these weird analogies now, but one analogy I use often is, you know, in life we're supposed to deal with the bear and people go, what do you mean with the bear? I go, well, look, life is supposed to give you a series of adversities. If you want to be successful, if you want to be healthy, if you want a strong marriage, you want a strong marriage,

then life is going to give you problems in your marriage so that you can overcome those problems. And in the process of overcoming those problems, you're forced to communicate, to take on the other person's perspective, to walk a mile in their shoes and vice versa. And if you're willing to do all that and not just pull the ripcord and divorce, then you will have a stronger marriage. I call those events. I got a friend of mine, his name is Jason Redman, and he calls it life ambushes. He was stuck in a real life ambush and he's got a purple heart. He was shot in the face across the body in Iraq and he's a badass. He can still go to war right now if he wanted to. But he goes, look, the average American goes through about eight to 10 life

ambushes in their lifespan. And most people will sit on dissatisfaction and not fight the bear. You have to be willing to fight the bear. And when you fight the bear, it is your right of passage to the next level of happiness and success. Whether it's your marriage, whether it's your health, whether it's entrepreneurship, like people go, I want to be successful and have a hundred million dollar company. Well, if I handed you a hundred million dollar company right now, you wouldn't know what to do with it. But if I started you off at a $10 a year company, and then it turns into a $100,000 a year company, as you build, as you fight the challenges and adversities, and you run out of resources, and you're forced to become resourceful,

you begin to build those entrepreneurial muscles or the relationship muscles or the emotional strength muscles, etc. So to me, resourcefulness is everything is everything there's the bear its job is to show up in your life and give you adversity so that you can become resourceful and either problem solve or use what little resources you have to create an outcome or go find other people who have the resources to create the outcome most people unfortunately when they live in a great economy i found that great economies over a long period of time begin to create soft people. Going back to what you said, when things are good and you have an abundance of resources and the economy is what it is and it's going to turn and it's going to correct and it's going to dip. When we run out of those resources, we become so soft, we now become victims instead of becoming resourceful. And that's an unfortunate state to be in. But man, I'm blessed that because I'm a foreigner,

came to this country, didn't have much. I came out the chute, resourceful, problem solving, looking at adversity as an advantage. So when the economy crashed in 2008, I was just chomping at the bits because I looked at it as 11% unemployment rate. I got a bunch of people I can hire for very little money because everyone needs a job and no one's running Facebook ads, which means clicks are going to be a lot cheaper and gyms are empty, which means I'm going to have a better workout. And so I always look at the disadvantage that I'm facing as a, almost as a superpower. And what I like about that is those aren't just words. That's actually what happened.

That's actually what you did. You did take that situation. It's one thing to speak hypothetically about anything really, and especially things that are going to be difficult, right? Be like, this is what I would do. This is how I would look at it. You know, here's how I would feel. And, but it's another thing to actually go through it

and have the courage of your convictions. And I think one of the things that stands out to me is that point of problem solving. And really, I think the heart of that is creativity, right? Being a creative person, being able to come up with good ideas, ideas that work, ideas that produce things. And it sounds like that's something that you're good at. I am. And I think part of it is training. When you come to a country and there's no lice treatment available to you, you use gasoline to wash your kid's hair. And if you can take an IQ test and it's probably a decent proxy for general intelligence, it'll tell you a little bit about your problem solving abilities. But what it won't tell you

about is your creative intelligence, right? So for that, you could do one of those lateral thinking things like how many different uses can you think of for gasoline? Most people would not think of, oh, I could kill the lice. Okay, wash my hair in it and kill the lice. So you can only imagine how creative my mom must be then, right? Because she figured it out. I mean, that's creative.

I'll give it to her. Yeah, yeah. And you know what I always trip out at too is like, so yeah, resourcefulness is a learned experience. People aren't born being resourceful. If you were born and you're lacking things in life as a human, you are designed to survive. You know, we always hear about the mom who's driving down the road, gets into a car accident. The car rolls over. Her child's arm is stuck underneath the car. Where did she just muster up the strength, Mike, to lift up that edge of the car enough to pull that kid out? Or the guy who was hiking,

they made a movie on him. He was hiking, he was stuck between some rocks, his arm was, he pulls out a little pocket knife and he cuts his arm off. Like that's pretty freaking resourceful. And the things that he used as what do you call a tourniquet and how he used the rock as leverage to cut further to free himself. As humans, we are designed to survive and be resourceful. But when resources are constantly around us, we're not using those skills. And like any other muscle, it begins to atrophy. And then when the time comes to use it, we're like, I don't know what to do, boss. Very true. I think also our culture is not helping. For example, just how popular it is to consume media. You know, I've spoken about this a number of times and written about it where it's more along the lines of people asking like, hey, you know, I don't really have a passion. What should I do about that? And I always tell people start with a curiosity. Forget about passion.

That passion is something you have to work for. Start with just something maybe you're curious about, something that gets your attention that you might want to learn more about. I think similarly, being able to create ideas. I think of the book Thinker Toys. If you're not familiar with that book, you would like it. Pick up a copy. It has a lot of fun, creative exercises. I'll do exercises. It's kind of in my schedule as a regular thing just to kind of flex that creative muscle, so to speak, it's going to be hard if someone spends most of their time just consuming media. And these days it's probably bordering on for many people, most of their time period, most of their waking hours watching YouTube videos, or at least many, many of their waking hours between YouTube videos, social media, TV, Netflix, streaming, whatever. It's going to be very hard to be creative. At least I think so. I think that there's this passive mode that you can kind of fall into and it influences many aspects of your life and of your being or this active mode that you can be in. Do you agree or what are your thoughts? Oh, dude, as you were saying that, I was picturing something that I know everybody listening to this has experienced where you walk into a room, someone's watching TV, they don't

see or hear you walk into the room. They're watching TV with their mouth halfway open, their eyes aren't blinking, they're just locked on almost like a moth to a flame. And in that moment, like, I just imagine if you and I were in that room watching that person, you can tell there's nothing really happening. Like, if we put electrodes to their brain, there's not much happening up there. And social media screen sucking, effectively is what I call it, whether it's from YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, doesn't screen sucking. other people's creativity, you are killing your own. You're in that state of just numb and staring. To be creative, you must disconnect from other people's content and go deep into your head, where creativity is, and your soul, and go, all right, here's a whole bunch of scrap metal. What does it look like? And then you'll see an artist just look at it and maybe walk around the community and

get inspired by something and then come back and take that hunk of scrap metal and turn it into art. And it resembles a building down the street. It's like, wow, there's a person who used his creativity because he stopped consuming others' content so that he can tap into the creativity that he has. And unfortunately, so many people are just screen sucking, man, And they look like zombies in real life. It's sad. It's true. I think it kills your imagination to one degree or another. And I mean, I've experienced it myself. You've probably experienced it where, yeah, if there's too much consumption,

I mean, I've experienced, just to give a personal example. So in my normal routine, I don't spend much time, like I don't really watch TV, but on a vacation, I remember a couple of years ago, I was watching Battlestar Galactica. And so I was just kind of binge watching this show and I felt it. I mean, I felt just less alive as a person after what was, I don't know, maybe five or six days of spending several hours a day, just sitting there. My brain was, again don't know, maybe five or six days of spending several hours a day just sitting there. My brain was, again, there was not much activity going on. I'm just sitting there watching a show. And yeah, you get some emotional spikes out of it. But I mean, I'm sure you've experienced the same where then it takes a little bit of extra energy to get back into that active,

a little bit of extra energy to get back into that active, creative imagination mode. Yeah. And that's the mode to be in. When you're in that creative imagination mode, that's the mode that you're able to solve many of your life's problems, right? And do your best work and get the most work done for the time. And I mean, I think that life, really every aspect goes outside of work. I've experienced that in my relationship with my wife as well. I've experienced the passive more, just kind of been together for a long time. We go through the motions as well as the more active, like really working to create a better relationship and coming up with ideas. And so I've improved in that regard, I think quite a bit over time and learned how much of a difference that makes and that it doesn't just create itself.

Yeah, that's for sure. And, you know, Mike, one thing I've learned about you very quickly is you're a researcher. I love how you just like you can cite things. And I'm very much the opposite. So I'm so impressed by folks like you. But I've never done this research, but I imagine the research exists where the more screen sucking you do, the more depressed and anxious you get. It's no coincidence that depression and anxiety is higher than it's ever been. Well, ironically, if you're screen sucking, you're not creative.

If you're not creative, you lose the tools to solve the problems in your life. The problems in your life don't get solved. You get depressed and anxious. And so to me, I can connect those dots easily. It's common sense really. And yes, there is. I mean, every, every month or so there's a new study that makes headlines linking, whether it's Facebook or Instagram, those are the ones I've seen recently linking Facebook and Instagram use with depression, with anxiety, with self-esteem, you know, people comparing when you're constantly comparing yourself to others, how that can make you feel. And it's not even others. It's the fake

versions of others that they present on social media. You had mentioned this life ambushes, and that's an interesting concept. I mean, I agree with it fundamentally. I think that so that the idea is if we have these different sectors of our lives and it starts in close to us, obviously just taking care of ourselves, our bodies, our minds, whatever. And it expands out into a family and expands out into groups and bigger groups and bigger games and whatever. I think of it like the more you try to take on and the idea really is always more. And I guess that is just hardwired into us, and not necessarily more money, but just more life, more experience. How do I take what I have and make it better? Inevitably, you are going to

run into problems. Things are going to be more chaotic. How I think about it is if you have an army and you're expanding out and you're taking more territory, you got to expect things to go wrong. You got to expect there to be problems and the bigger the games, the maybe the more intractable those problems can appear. But at least my perspective on that has always been that without that though, I guess we wouldn't really have a game, right? If things were too easy, then we would just be bored. So we can't have it both ways. We can't just complain that things are too, yeah, it's boring. And then when it gets harder, but the stakes are higher and there's a lot more to win,

that is something at least I've reminded myself. I can't now complain that I have bigger problems because I also have a bigger game and that's what I wanted, right? That's exactly it. And to that point, since we're both in the health fitness kind of wellness space, if you're going to go to the gym and work out, there's a higher probability that you're going to tear a muscle, snap a tendon, drop a 45-pound plate on your foot than Bob down the street who's surfing the couch all day long. Now, there's a higher probability of him having a heart attack and a stroke and diabetes, etc.

So even the gym that's supposed to be healthy for me has the potential, and I'm a great example of it, has the potential of creating a life ambush. I was working out in 2010 in the gym, and I'm a great example of it has a potential of creating a life ambush. I was working out in 2010 in the gym and I'm like, Hey, look at me. I'm healthy. I'm doing great. Fantastic. And as I'm walking out of this particular gym, it was a gym I don't normally go to here in the community. The owner was like, dude, I want you to come work out at my gym. You're going to love it. There's like these two ropes hanging, right? And I'm like, so I asked him like, Hey, what's the purpose of these two ropes? And there's a bell hanging in between the two ropes way up there. They're like a cowbell. He goes, Oh, well, you're going to hand on each rope. You're going to shimmy yourself all the way up. And then you're going to hit the bell and then shimmy yourself all the way down. I'm like,

well, hell I could do that. And I'm like, I weigh 230 pounds and I had just gotten done training back. And so I was, I'd already exhausted a lot of my pole muscles and I struggled to get up there. And as I ring the bell, I'm like, oh man, my left arm is really tired. So I just kind of hang on my right arm just for a second to get my form a little break. And then pop goes my bicep falling down. Right now there's a life ambush. We ironically do it. How weird is this? Two days later, we were supposed to, the family and I were supposed to fly out to Lake Tahoe. Ironically, the next day I'm in surgery. We delay the flight by another day. Two days after the surgery, I'm in a cast and my biceps been reattached and we're flying to Lake Tahoe. And it was the worst

experience of my life being on an airplane and then going to Costco and having to buy stuff. Once we got to Lake Tahoe for the house that we have up there, etc. The point of this is, all I wanted to do was catch a good workout before I left. I had a life ambush. And so, yeah, you have to expect that if you want bigger and better things in life, if you want a stronger physique, you're going to push your body harder and there is a higher probability of something snapping. An ambush. Agreed. 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 fitness, Twitter at muscle for life and Facebook at MuscleForLifeFitness. You had mentioned the bears that you have to face in life. I'm curious, what were some of the bigger bears that you've had to face as you've kind of come up to where you are now? As I said, in 2012, we became a franchise. What I didn't share with you is in 2010, when we opened up our first location, we're like, Hey, this is awesome. So let's go ahead and just license this

model. And so between 2010 and 2000 and late 2011, we licensed 182 Fit Body Bootcamp locations across the United States. And dude, I was like, this is awesome. We're selling each license for $15,000 and then $400 a month licensing fee. And they can use the Fit Body Bootcamp brand and we give them marketing systems, et cetera. And then the great state of California reached out to us and said, Hey, guess what? You owe us $2,500 per location because you've been operating as a franchise, but you're a licensing model. And we said, no, no, no, we're not a franchise. I said, yeah, you are because you've been given everybody a seven mile protected territory. We said, oh, you don't understand Mr. California. We're doing that because well, CrossFit doesn't do that. And you see two CrossFits across the street from each

other, duking it out, even though they're the same brand. And we just want to give all of our licensees protection so that they're not advers of a serial, but they work together. They go, yeah, whatever. You're a franchise and we're finding you. Right? Dude. So if that's not a bear, and by the way, if $2,500 times 182 locations might as well have been $2.5 million times 182 locations. Cause I didn't have that kind of money, dude. Holy crap. Now back then, I didn't know the bear, et cetera. Truth be told, I'm going to be very honest with you here. The only reason I chose to fight through that, and so we went to the state of California. I literally groveled. And I was like, my attorney's like, dude, you're going to

have to find a way to pay that money, get a loan, sell some equity in the business. I'm like, no, no, no. They're human. They'll understand. So I finally got a mediation with the state. And I'm sitting across from these retired judges who are going to decide for the state of California. I'm like, look. I explained the whole CrossFit thing and how I wanted to do things differently. I just didn't know any better. I'm a personal trainer and all I wanted to do is serve people. Ironically, I bring up my whole immigrant edge story. One of the ladies got really teary-eyed for me and I knew like, okay, I think I'm onto something here. They go, look, all right, we're not going to fine you, but you're not allowed to sell a single location until you become a franchise. And so it was that process. So it took 11 months to become a franchise.

And at the end of 2012, we became a franchise reluctantly, not knowing how. So the bear presented itself by way of the state of California. There's some irony there. The bears are, that's on their flag, right? Yeah. And maybe some irony there. The bear is on their flag. Yeah. And maybe that's where I got the idea from. Yeah. The bear presents itself as the state of California. And of course, the only reason I didn't quit, because I thought about quitting, because I didn't have that kind of money. I'm like, look, 182 people have signed a lease somewhere across this country with a forefront. Yeah. Because that's, well, that's a half million dollars cash, right? Yeah. And like these 182 people are counting on me to support them.

Like if I just go, hey, well, I quit, I'm going bankrupt, who's going to support them? So I was like, all right, dude, just just man up and do this and figure it out. And so thank God I did, because now we have 800 franchise locations, and we're one of the fastest growing franchises and blah, blah, blah. So there's an example of the bear there. And then there was an example of the bear in my life when I tore my bicep. Now, today, ironically, I'm in better shape than I was in my 30s when I tore my bicep because I do more mobility. I train smarter.

I do flexibility stuff. I do myofascial release. So all these bears in my life that first came to me as adversity, when I went through it, through the pain and chose to confront the bear, fight the bear, overcome the bear and move past the bear, I've gained knowledge, wisdom, health, money, influence, impact, et cetera. That's great. I mean, I can relate to that a little bit. I didn't tear any muscles fortunately, but I had some biceps tendonitis that I had to work through. I've had some SI joint issues I've had to work through. And my solution was similar to yours where now I do my stretching slash mobility is it's like 10 or 15 minutes of

yoga stretches. So I was doing yoga and I had to work with a physical therapist to fix the bicep tendonitis issue. But in that process, I learned that, oh, I have some imbalances in my hips. My external rotation on my right side was not very good and it was good on my left side. And then it was flipped where the internal rotation on my left side was not very good, but on my right, it was good. So my hips were kind of out of whack a bit. And that probably contributed to an injury, an SI joint injury that I sustained deadlifting. It wasn't a serious injury, but may have ended up stretching a ligament. Like there's definitely something that is permanently not as good as it was before. It doesn't necessarily get in the way of my training per se, but in working through it, I've, I learned these things about my body where I was

like, shit, I wish I would have known this some time ago. I might've been able to prevent that injury, prevent the, uh, biceps tendonitis. And so now though, what I, what I have from it is I have a little routine I do every day of yoga poses that specifically address these issues in my body and noticed improvements in my training. Squatting is now more comfortable than it's ever been. I don't get any knee pains anymore. Deadlifting is more comfortable. Pressing is more comfortable. I don't get the tightness that I would get in the past on my right side. So my story is not as exciting as yours, but I can relate. I can relate. You want to hear something funny about my story? I wish mine was more like yours, right? It's like, Oh, warning. I better do something about it.

You know, like when something goes pop and you kind of hear it and collapse. And I was wearing a t-shirt. My friend Josh was working out with me. So he was like, Oh dude, I think you tore your bicep. And so I roll up my sleeve and I pull it up and there's literally no bicep. And I go, no, no, no, I didn't tear it. My bicep just collapsed. He goes, what the hell is a bicep collapse? I'm like, I don't know. No, my mind was trying to turn it into something else. Like, Oh, it just collapsed and it's going to somehow blow up or something. And then of course, as he pulled my shirt up higher to my shoulder and you could just see it balled up in my front delt. I was like, son of a gun. Yeah, that sucked.

Yeah. Collapse, tear. Those are kind of synonymous, I think. Yeah. I was just trying to make it less scary in my head, I think. Yeah. Yeah. No, I understand. gears because something that I think would be worth hearing your take on for people listening

is I have quite a few people who listen to the podcast and follow me in my work who are up and coming entrepreneurs or it may in some cases establish entrepreneurs or people who want to become entrepreneurs or who are just starting out. And so I often get asked advice for people who are just starting out. What is some of your best advice that you share with people who maybe have an idea and haven't gotten started yet, or maybe they have gotten started, but they haven't reached that critical mass yet? Sure. Yeah. So I'll give you a little list here because I've also had the good fortune to coach and consult anybody from Navy SEALs. And that's how Jason and I met. He came out of the SEAL program and he wanted to be an

entrepreneur. And now he's got a New York Times bestselling book. And we helped him achieve that to NFL Super Bowl winning athletes like Steve Weatherford as a coaching client, as an entrepreneur now. And having coached entrepreneurs of all walks of life, a handful of things that we start off with is what is the one problem you're going to solve better than anybody else so that you can get paid for it? Because most people want to start off with multiple SKUs, multiple ideas. Complexity is the

enemy of execution and the human brain is designed to complicate things. And when I started Fit Body Bootcamp, because I had already owned a fitness business before, I was like, hey, no juice bar, no kids club, no showers, none of that stuff. We're going to do one thing and we're going to do it better than anybody else. 30 minute fat loss workouts for women that are non-intimidating, deliver amazing results, or you get your money back. Like that's it. That's it. Until this day, that's what we do. So most people try and do too many things, solve too many problems. Do one thing, do better than anybody else. Number one.

Number two, understand and have tremendous respect for direct response marketing. Direct response marketing is for every dollar I spend, I should get a dollar and one cent or more back. It is accountable marketing. And just for people listening, that's irrespective of the mediums. It could be online. It could be offline. But there's that point.

It's not just branding. You're not just putting a message out there and seeing what happens. No, you can track the ROI of that ad specifically or of that marketing action specifically. Bingo. That's exactly right. And when you're watching, let's say an infomercial on TV, you'll hear a 1-800 number. And then you watch that same infomercial on another channel and it's a different 800 number because they want to see is cnn producing better than fox and if so we're going to have more more of these commercials there if they're running ads on instagram they're going to send to one website and if they're running ads on facebook it'll be to another website because they want to track the return on investment on every single thing when coca-cola or adidas put

up billboards bus benches, they don't know what exactly moved the needle, but they also have an obscene amount of money now to build their brand. Entrepreneurs starting out, do one thing better than anybody else. And number two is obviously respect and understand direct response marketing and only deploy that until you're massively profitable. Number three is embrace leadership because you should be working on the business, not in the business. And if I can tell anybody any one thing should be working on the business, not in the business. And if I can tell anybody any one thing, pull out of your business faster than you think you should. Because when you're working on the business and you're leading a team of people who are traffic buyers, instead of learning to buy traffic on Facebook, hire traffic buyers.

Hold them accountable. Teach them how to do it. Set KPIs, key performance indicators, teach them how to do it, set KPIs, key performance indicators, and then let them do it because you're better off leading a team and trying to do it all yourself. And that leads to burnout. And then the fourth and final thing is most people overestimate what they can achieve in one year and they underestimate what they can achieve in five years of focused work. And so give yourself time because in this whole social media world we live in, everybody wants to hit that little dropdown that says I'm an entrepreneur because somehow being an entrepreneur is like being a rockstar. Now they have eight followers

and they're starting to say, you know, put goofy shit up there, like find your passion. What the hell does that mean? How about this? Solve a problem. The more sophisticated problem you solve through direct response marketing and more complex that problem, the more you'll get paid. That's it. And so spend less time screen sucking and more time spending five years of focused work and you'll create millions and those millions will create impact. I like that. Something I would add, it probably would fall under the direct response, but it is the importance of becoming a good salesperson yourself. This is my opinion.

If you disagree, you can let me know. But if you're trying to build a business, you had better know how to sell your thing. You can look at it as the solution, sure. But when it comes down to what is it, though, what is the thing we're selling? And you'd better know how to sell it. And that translates, of course, over into the whole field of marketing, because that's what marketing is. It's selling on a broader scale.

But at bottom, marketing is its persuasion. It is selling. And the reason why I just want to call that out is because I have given this type of advice to quite a few people over the years now, including people who I actually know personally and have been able to see, do they do anything with it? know personally and have been able to see, do they do anything with it? And many people seem to just be turned off by selling or trying to sell anybody on anything and don't really want to learn how to do it and don't really want to do it. And they think they can just pay someone else to do that. The most successful people, almost one for one that I've known, and I've met a lot over, not just throughout my relatively short career of whatever

six years now in the fitness space, but my dad is a successful entrepreneur. And so I've met a lot of very successful people through him and people whose net worth stretch into the hundreds of millions of dollars were fantastic salespeople themselves. I'm thinking of one guy, he has a hundred plus million dollar a year company. He's still, he's the CEO of it. He still spends a lot of time talking with customers, trying to understand how to make his services better, how to better sell them, keep his finger on the pulse in the marketplace and what people are responding to because the buttons you can push to sell something now won't necessarily work a couple of years from now, especially when all your competitors catch on to them and you're all now saying the same thing. Learn how to be a good salesperson. And I think that also will help with the leadership point, which I totally agree with is because I've had people ask me about that. Like, well, how do I make enough money to be able to hire people to delegate things? And in the beginning, in my opinion, it falls on you. It falls on you have to be able to generate enough money through your direct efforts selling, whether it's one-on-one or whether it's on you. It falls on you have to be able to generate enough money through your

direct efforts selling, whether it's one-on-one or whether it's via copy, advertising, marketing, whatever. That's how you are going to be able to generate the income to build the team in the beginning. You have to be the best. What are your thoughts? A hundred percent on that, man. And no one's going to be more evangelical about your product or service than you are. And if you can't sell your product, you won't be able to sell your vision to get the right employees on board who are going to help you move the needle. Yeah, I agree with that. Absolutely. Out of curiosity, do you have any resources that you recommend on these points? Maybe some books that you often recommend or even give as gifts?

Where leadership is concerned, Jocko Willink's Extreme Ownership, Simon Sinek's Leaders Eat Last, and not to be self-serving, but I truly mean this, my book, Man Up, which is the six entrepreneur leadership skills that every high-achieving entrepreneur must have. And it's because I lack those skills. And so I had to build those skills in me. And so when I talk about it in my book, it's from the trenches experience. And then of course, books like Grant Cardone's Seller Be Sold, where selling is concerned. You know what, one thing we didn't mention is anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur, because I think you'll agree with me on this, Mike, is entrepreneurship really is the ultimate self-discovery and personal development program

out there. Because you learn how much shit you can take and how much risk you're willing to put yourself up against, et cetera. But man, reading books like Psycho-Cybernetics and Untethered Soul, Outwitting the Devil, really doing work on personal development, self-development so that you have emotional resilience, mental toughness, and grit. Those are the things that are maybe intangible. I don't know. Can you put an ROI on that? I don't know.

How are you going to track conversions on that? But I can tell you it's a needle in the road for sure. So those are all the books that I would recommend off the top of my head. That's great. I like it. What are your thoughts on the next big thing in the fitness space? What do you have your sights on for the future? Oh, dude, I'm so glad you asked. And it's funny because I wanted to have a sidebar conversation

with you about this if we didn't talk about it here on your show. Synchronicity. Yeah, right. So I wanted to get your opinion. So just give me your honest opinion on this, good or bad, because I value your insight. But Fit Body Bootcamp, we're 30-minute workouts, right? And we're like, hey, would you one thing, and we do better than anybody else. And sure, all of our locations have private Facebook groups. And so every Fit Body Boot Camp location has those clients in a Fit Body Boot Camp Facebook group where they put out content all day and nutrition tips and mindset tips, et cetera. So they build their own little communities.

Yeah. But look, bottom line is we really only influence them 30 minutes a day, three to five days a week. What do we do with the other 23 and a half hours of our clients' lives to influence them towards their goals of fitness, fat loss, health, positive mindset, and nutrition? Truthfully, we don't. We justify to ourselves with a Facebook group, blah, blah, blah. But come on, dude, we really don't. And so I went to this International Franchise Expo recently, probably about a year ago. And who takes the stage? The chief technology officer of Domino's Pizza. Now, Mike, if you had asked me right before that event, does Domino's Pizza have a chief technology officer? I'd be like, no, dude, we're not Uber, right?

You're like, the technology of making pizza and putting it in boxes? What are you talking about? Dude, this guy takes the stage, Mike. And he's like, yeah, so're not a goober, right? You're like the technology of making pizza and putting it in boxes? What are you talking about? Dude, this guy takes the stage, Mike. And he's like, yeah, so we have 15 ways of ordering pizza. He texts us an emoji. And if we have your credit card number and your last order on file, we'll be like, hey, is this Mike? Okay, extra pepperoni, double cheese, whatever. It's on its way, Mike.

We'll bill your credit card. You can tweet them an emoji, a pizza emoji. And they'll text you. Yeah, it's crazy. And get this. That's so smart. That is so smart. Oh my God, bro. It gets better. If you're eating, let's say, uh, the store-bought pizza or pizza hut, and just take a picture of any pizza on the planet, even a picture of a pizza,

text it to them and they will send you a coupon for 15 to 25% off, depending on what random percentage they're giving off that day. So it's very, so all of a sudden, well, you're like, oh my God, today it's a 25% off coupon. I can't use it tomorrow. F it. We're eating pizza tonight. So I realized, wait a minute, this guy has 15 ways to make America fat. And all I've got is one way, one 30 minute workout a day. Like this is unacceptable. So I literally, when we came back to the headquarters from this franchise expo because you know domino's pizza is a franchise i'm like all right guys we need 15 ways to keep our clients fit when they're not in there we are going to own their other 23 and a

half hours of their day we immediately tackled the supplement line which now we launched a supplement line called trulene we sell it through our 800 locations worldwide we've got all the clients on auto ship for that product we build it into their plans. The whole idea has become that we're with them, in them, on them 24 hours a day. Sounds kind of creepy, but I like it. I like the idea. We all get a good laugh every time I say that. I'm like, Fit Body, we want to be in you 24 hours a day. had a good laugh every time I say that. I'm like, Fit Body Bootcamp, we want to be in you 24 hours a day. And so with those supplements, obviously we're in them now. With Fit Body Bootcamp at the location, yeah, we're with you, but now we're with you, or at least we're going to be with you here

in the next 24 months with ARTIE. And ARTIE is going to be our advanced results through intelligence. ARTIE stands for advanced results through intelligence. And it's really think about an online personal trainer, but on your app, your phone already knows if you're at Mastro's steakhouse. So shouldn't already just ping you and go, Hey, Mike, I see that you're at Mastro's. Let me pull up the menu. Here's what you should get based on your goals. By the way, don't eat the pretzel bread. And instead of wine or a cocktail, just go for one shot of tequila and that's it. Draw the line. And then when you leave, Artie should be pinging you and going, hey, so how was it? Did you fall off the wagon or not?

And when you're in Whole Foods shopping, your phone knows where you're at. And if we know, why aren't we pulling up your meal plan and your grocery list and saying, look, you're in Whole Foods. We know what Whole Foods are in. We know what products are in what aisles. Here's the aisles you want to go to. Here's the aisles you want to avoid.. Here's the aisles you want to avoid. Oh, by the way, if you're shopping and you're hungry right now, be forewarned.

You're likely to make bad decisions. And oh, by the way, in the morning, Artie's going to go, hey, guess what, Mike? You were in bed for seven hours, but you only got four and a half hours of good sleep. You were tossing and turning, mumbling to yourself, whatever, because we can track your sleep. And so we're really creating this artificial intelligence, this trainer in your pocket with you 24-7, 365. And the idea is that if I was your personal trainer and all your personal trainer, wouldn't I be with you 24-7, 365 and saying, hey, Mike, let's not eat that. Let's eat this. Hey, Mike, it's time to go to sleep. Hey, Mike, I was up all night standing by your bed.

It truly sounds very creepy. But after seven and a half hours, I realized you only got about four hours of sleep. And so before warned, you might create more sugar and starches, et cetera. So this is where we're headed to now. We're using technology in the next 24 months to create an app and connect it to artificial intelligence to know where you're at, what you're doing. an app and connected to artificial intelligence to know where you're at, what you're doing. And instead of being reactive, where a client comes into Fit Body Bootcamp and goes, oh, this weekend was a mess. I went out with the girls. I had cheese and wine and just went nuts. I need to burn this off. What do I do? Now we're proactive. Hey, we see that you're in Temecula.

We see that you're in so-and-so winery. Let's make a good decision. And then we already continues to follow up with you. Literally like a friend was like a personal trainer was texting you. And so that's the whole idea there. And we're going about 30 million in on this technology. So fingers crossed that it works. Wow. If you can pull that off, that would be huge. It would be hugely helpful. It would also add a very unique element to just your value prop. And I was going to ask like, that also sounds very expensive. I know because I have an app that's just for planning and tracking workouts. It has cost me a lot more money than I thought it was going. It was going to cost me going into it. It's been a bigger pain in the ass than I anticipated, but that was partially on me. I don't know. I feel like I

did do a pretty good job doing my due diligence, but regardless, no, I mean, I think the idea, if you can execute on that, and obviously, I'm sure you're going about it intelligently, and you're going to build it out in stages and, you know, get people, get users as early as you can to get those people who are the early adopter types of people who understand that it's not perfect yet, but they like to be involved in that process. And then some people, they go, no, no, no, you let me know when it's polished, when it's done, and I'll start using it. But you really want those early adopters who are going to jump in and who know that there are going to be bugs, know they're going to be

problems, but they like that. They feel like they can contribute to the process. But it sounds like though you're estimating, if that's your budget, at least you're estimating the effort. If you would have said, oh yeah, it's a million bucks, I would have been like, I don't know about that. And the reason I say 30 million is because the phases are we're now replacing off-the-shelf club location management system with our own front desk management system because we're going to use facial recognition at every location. So when you walk in, you don't have to check in with a code or a card anymore. We recognize your face. We know you're there. If you're delinquent on your payments, the front desk person is going to be able to make that collection. And now we know

that if you miss three or four workouts, we can start the follow-up process. And again, it's all about being proactive instead of, because dude, we've also had it. And think about this, as a gym owner, Mrs. Jones always shows up late to her workout. So she just doesn't swipe in or check in. So we think that she hasn't been here for a week. We start doing follow-up and she goes, no, I've been there a week. I just haven't had a chance to swipe in. Statistics and tracking is inaccurate. We look like a dumbass doing a follow-up.

And so I realized technology will remove human error by facial recognition. So the club management platform is being rolled out real soon here. Phase one. Phase two is then connecting the app to the club management platform is being rolled out real soon here, phase one. Phase two is then connecting the app to the club management system so that already the app can speak to the club management platform and go, hey, Mrs. Jones, I see you didn't go work out today. Might as well work out tomorrow. And then phase three is connecting already the app to artificial intelligence because what I want to happen is I want alreadyie to be listening in when you're sleeping, as long as your phone is next to you. And if you take your phone at 2 in the morning and walk downstairs to the fridge,

Artie has heard enough refrigerators worldwide open up where he knows the sound of the refrigerator opening. And he's asking, hey, Mike, it's 2.15 in the morning. You're going to the fridge. Are you not going to emotionally eat it? Like that's what I really see, man. That's what I would do as a personal trainer. Like if I was sitting next to you in your room and you get up and then people start feeling weird like uh am i leaving my phone on the on the side table while i go downstairs i don't want already giving me shit exactly right so before i know it now you're trying to hide stuff from

arty but yeah that's the goal it's in three stages and we're estimating three million over and a half years that's exciting and I was thinking that it was going to be something technology related. And I think it sounds brilliant. There's also content to consider. I know that it's a very crowded space. However, when you have people who trust you, they trust your brand. So then they're inherently going to be more interested in the content that would be produced by your company than all the other types of content that they could consume. And that could also be integrated into the app where then you have people going into the app every day to see what new articles have been posted, what new podcasts,

what new videos and so forth. That's something I'm going to be doing with my app. We're overhauling the UI UX right now. We're going to release that this summer. Should be good to go this summer. And currently it's free download with a $5 one-time upgrade if you like it. But in the scheme of things, it doesn't produce much revenue and that's not really the point. And so I'm just going to make it a hundred percent free. So it's going to be just as good as the paid and they do these little micro transactions where you have to pay like nine times to actually use the full app. And so you don't realize, you know what I mean? You don't realize like, wait a minute, I just spent $30 to actually use everything this app has, or they want to charge you every month. So instead mine's going

to be just as good as I'd say it's best competitors, but it's just going to be free period. And I'm going to continue putting money into developing it. It's going to stay free in the app. I'm going to have an in-app store where people can buy workout programs to load into it. They can just create the programs themselves or they can save themselves some time. And if they want to do my stuff, for example, I want to reach out to other people like you out there who have say, Hey, if you want to have stuff in the store, it'd be like a royalty. Anytime there's a download, you get a royalty. It helps promote your brand, promote your stuff. And then also have a knowledge section in the app where all of my articles and podcasts and also some of the stuff that I have some people who work with me who write not under

my name, under their own name, but where then people can go. Ideally, I'd have a lot of people going into what is really kind of a workout app, but to read articles. Then, of course, you can have some functionality like, oh, you can save, you can highlight, kind of swipe some stuff from pocket or Instapaper, read articles, watch videos, listen to podcasts. Ideally. I mean, I'd be pretty awesome if you had somebody opening your app every other day and spending time in there and getting value out of it and enjoying it and wanting to see what's next. You know, how cool is that? And then I can't

wait for you to launch that out. The UI UX will be this summer and then I'm going to release that, get that done. And then we're going to start this next phase, which is adding the store and the, what I'm just calling the knowledge section. Love it. Thanks. Well, I mean, those are really the main things that I wanted to talk about. Why don't we just wrap up on with where people can find you and your work. And if you have anything new and exciting outside of what you've already discussed that you want to like another book project or anything, let's hear it. Yeah. So where people can find me is just fascinated with Instagram right now and how it's such a different platform than any other social media platform.

I know it's wild. How it celebratizes people very quickly and how the interaction is so intimate. So find me on Instagram at bedroscolin.com. Dude, I'm hell bent on making my book a New York Times bestseller. And we hit the Wall Street Journal list three weeks ago. It's only been out six months. And so the book is Man Up and you can find it at manup.com or any bookstore or Amazon. And of course, anything I could do to serve your tribe, just reach out to me and let me know you're a friend of Mike's and I'm there to help. Thanks, brother. I really appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time. This was great. Thank you for the opportunity, Mike.

Hey there, it is 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 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 muscle for life.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. And 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 fitness book for men, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. Now, this book has sold over 350,000 copies in the last several years and helped thousands and

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