Barbell Shrugged - Barbell Shrugged  — How to Be Yourself Online w/ Amanda Bucci  —  312

Episode Date: April 25, 2018

Amanda Bucci is a 25 year old lifestyle entrepreneur whose mission is to ignite the fire in others to grow into their TRUE selves through her podcast, YouTube channel, instagram, and other social platforms. Amanda is founder and CEO of Bucci Radio Podcast (interview and solo episodes where Amanda and her guests provide fitness, personal, or professional value, stories, experiences, and education), along with the Fitness Online Coaching Academy (a certificate program for online fitness coaches) and the Influencer Academy (a high-level coaching program for aspiring online fitness coaches and influencers to learn how to package their program and personal brand, in order to create a sustainable and thriving business). In this episode, the crew covers everything from business on Instagram to blending tuna with orange juice. We explore various nutritional strategies, effective goal setting, how to keep training exciting, coaching online, and more. Enjoy! - Mike, Doug and Anders Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_bucci ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please support our partners! Thrive Market is a proud supporter of us here at Barbell Shrugged.  We very much appreciate all they do with us and we’d love for you to support them in return!  Thrive Market has a special offer for you. You get $60 of FREE Organic Groceries + Free Shipping and a 30 day trial, click the link below: https://thrivemarket.com/shrugged How it works:  Users will get $20 off their first 3 orders of $49 or more + free shipping.  No code is necessary because the discount will be applied at checkout. Many of you will be going to the store this week anyway, so why not give Thrive Market a try! Organifi is another great company with whom we’ve chosen to partner.  They offer a premium line of health supplements you can use to optimize your body.  Doug and Mike use their products everyday and highly recommend you give them a try. If you’d like a discount you can use the code “shrugged” to instantly get 20% off your order, click below to check out their supplements: https://organifishop.com Code: BBS20 for 20% off Strong Coffee! ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedp... TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged  

So it was me starting to kind of be a little bit more relatable in the fact that it's difficult for a lot of people to understand how to consistently do something with their fitness and nutrition where they eventually feel really good. It's really, really fucking tough. So I started talking a lot about body image and a lot about your body can do so many more things and it's not just about how you look but how you can perform in the gym. So I switched a little bit to focusing on gym performance, powerlifting, getting strong. I did that for a little while. And I still talk about that. I love talking about that. But moving forward, it became more of health and wellness rather than fitness and nutrition and training. We'll be right back. All right. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged.

I'm Anders Varner. We are here in Oak Park, CrossFit LA. Armageddon in LA today. It is. Rain. It sprinkled. It drizzled. It did drizzle.

I almost got damp. Look, we saw two people with umbrellas today. That's got to be a PR for Southern California, right? We did. And we said stop. Where did they find them? I don't know. It's a witch.

You can't do it. Burn them. Burn them. You can't just go to the store and get an umbrella. These two fun voices to my right, Mr. Doug Larson. Yeah, yeah. The Kenny Kane. What's going on?

Hanging out. Loving it. Our guest today, guys, total savage, right? Started out as a bikini competitor. Fitness has been the last five years of your life. Now we have this massive online platform, three businesses. Where do we start? I'm pretty excited to learn about this journey through the bikini competitor

and now becoming kind of like just the voice of fitness and how you're leading others through your struggles. I love hearing people's journeys, so I'm very excited to hear about it. Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you guys. So this will be fun. Be nice. I'm new here. That voice you hear, that is Amanda Bucci.

Yeah, yeah. For me, anyone that comes from the physique world, you're a bikini competitor, like if you're going to get on stage in a bikini, you've got to know something about nutrition and fat loss. So I'd love to get your thoughts and perspectives on that. Kenny? Knowing often that sometimes success breeds some pain and failure of other kinds that you don't see coming on these successful roads. Some of the things that you've encountered in overcoming the pains that you've experienced. Cool.

Yeah. Yeah, we can dive into all that. It's going to be awesome. So tell us where you came from. You started this journey in Rhode Island. Little old Rhode Island. Small state. Right.

So I grew up there. I was there for 21 years. I'm young. I'm only 24. So I've been in Los Angeles for three of the last years of my life. And I'm definitely a West Coast girl. I've definitely decided that I will be here. It is the weather.

It is the magic. It is the energy here. I love it. We find ourselves out here. Yeah. It's a pretty interesting place. We all come out here. I think we're like a little lost.

Oh, I was super lost. No one tells you when you grow up in New England. It's like you freeze and everyone's like, no, this has to be the way. Like, this makes us tough. Do you know that exists out there? You could go to University of San Diego. But there's seasons. Seasons, yeah.

Don't you miss the seasons? Yeah, you're cold, colder, cold again, somewhat warm, and then it goes back. Big cycle. What's the old Daniel Toss joke? He's like, yeah, I love seasons too. That's why I live somewhere where I skip the shitty ones. That is lovely Southern California. So tell us about this, how you got into this whole thing.

The Bikini Competitor, was that the beginning of it? Yeah, so the Bikini Competitor thing was pretty much the beginning of it, but I would really want to go back a little bit further to the time when I, you know, kind of found fitness. So we talked a little bit before the podcast, but I got into fitness and just a gym really because I was not good at sports. So I was, you know, the average sports person. I did soccer in middle school, but I developed exercise induced asthma around the eighth grade. And as much as I loved soccer and loved being on the team and I loved all of that, the asthma, you know, by the time I got to high school, we went to a really good high school that had a really amazing women's soccer team. Like, they were all state.

They were winning championships, all that fun stuff. And I'm over here like, I have asthma. I can't run two miles. And soccer is all running. It's just the whole entire thing is running. So we did a two-mile run. I don't know what you called it earlier. Cooper. It's a Cooper test. Oh, yeah. Okay, Cooper test. My dog's name is Cooper. it's just the whole entire thing is running so we did a two mile run i don't know what you called it earlier cooper it's a cooper test oh yeah cooper okay cooper test my dog's name is cooper that's easy to remember cooper test um definitely failed it i was the

last person to finish the two mile run and i skipped a lap so everybody already finished i still had a lap to go and i was like that's embarrassing i'm definitely not continuing so um i did not make the soccer team and that's when my mom got me a personal trainer at the gym so it was more of a um strength and conditioning based high school program so there was people kids in middle school kids in high school it was girls and guys and there was a couple of guys that were probably in college that were you know in college to be personal trainers sports coaches stuff like that and they created this program at my gym which was amazing looking back at it i'm like this was a cool program they taught us explosiveness footwork conditioning work and we did all of that like dynamic warm-ups and then we would do um squats and then we do we would

do power cleans and all this stuff as like a 14 15 year old kid that was all at your high school it was um at the gym that i went to in rhode island so it was a yeah it was a cool gym it was right down the road and that's where i learned how to do fitness really. And I loved it. I loved going there. I felt like I was progressing there because it was, you know, it was a community and they were really working with a group of five or six at a time. And then I tried lacrosse in high school, so I still tried sports. I wasn't, I was kind of progressing, but you know, I don't know, coordination just wasn't really my thing. Like I was not good at, you know, catching anything. And I love the team aspect and I think I love the exercise portion of it rather than the actual sport itself. And I loved groups of people and

I love being on a team, but you know, looking in retrospect, I guess I didn't really thrive in just the team aspect. I love sports, but individual sports. So moving on to what I've done in the future, I got into bikini competitions in the high, sorry, late high school, early college. I had a friend of mine that did one bikini competition and I was like, Whoa, that looks like everything that I need because I loved fitness. And as much as I loved training, I was doing spin classes with my mom, like three, four times a week. I had a personal trainer. I was, I loved it, but the nutrition side of things, not so I wasn't really on it. But the nutrition side of things, not so, I wasn't really on it. Like I thought that everything was about just eating better and

eating cleaner. And as much as it was that I didn't understand, you know, calories in calories out, anything about nutrition, like nothing. So to me, that was my ticket into the next level. Cause I had already been exercising and in the gym for a couple of years at that point. So I saw her do that. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have any money. I was in college. So I was like,

can you give me the meal plan that your coach gave you? So I literally took this girl's meal plan and it was, you know, the list of the regular bodybuilding meal plan. I think it was oatmeal and protein and peanut butter, a protein shake and peanut butter, a salad, a protein and some almonds.

And then at night I remember specifically it was leafy greens and tilapia. And I would like be gagging. I would literally be throwing up everything. I'm like, why is this my last meal? But I did it for five weeks, five weeks, the shortest time ever. But I remember specifically looking, you know, I looked great. Like it worked. It was my first time ever dieting. So the first time you ever diet and I was probably eating like, I don't know, 1200 calories a day for five weeks. So it wasn't too, too terrible, but you know, it definitely got me the results that I was looking for. And I did this really small OCB show in Massachusetts and I got second. I was like, there was like 30 people there, 30 girls, I guess. And I got the stage bug and I didn't do

another competition until a year later, but I, you know, I knew that I loved it, but I knew that I did not want to go back to that terrible meal plan. I was like, there has to be something else out there. So when I found macros and nutrition and IFYM, I learned about Lane Norton and he was the first person that I found on YouTube. And this other guy named Nick Cheadle, I don't know if you heard of him. Yeah. He, he has a, he had all these Facebook posts and like a really big newsletter. And I subscribed to it and I watched all these videos. And I was like, oh, my God, this is the most magical thing ever.

I knew it was like my ticket to success. Because I remember I was making these bowls of like cereal and candy. And I was like, look, it fits my macros. Like, great. And it was just hysterical. So I was like, you know, that person that made Pop-, it fits my macros. Like, great. And it was just hysterical. So I was like, you know, that person that made Pop-Tarts fit their macros. I remember tweeting, oh, my God, I can fit spaghetti in my macros and still make progress? This is the best thing ever.

Why did no one teach me about this before? It was just like one of those things that you learn for the first time. I was like, this is mind-blowing. So I went on to do a couple of other bikini competitions um in the next couple of years and I coached myself through two of them and I did really well just kind of learning macros and I just taught myself how to do it so I had three days a week where I was one of them was a low carb day one of them was a medium carb day one of them was a high carb day and then every single week I just lowered the carbs a little bit if you if you notice all three of us are like god that did that one did that one bodybuilding.com did it got it yeah you guys i think every single

person when like there was no resources so it's like well what do i do bodybuilding.com i'll just download one of these templates and see how it goes yeah next thing you know you're a good place to start yeah it's it's fantastic and next thing you know you're smashing tilapia six nights a week and what's funny about that is like because i'm older like for me it was muscle and fitness in It's fantastic. And next thing you know, you're smashing tilapia six nights a week. What's funny about that is, like, because I'm older, like, for me, it was muscle and fitness in the 80s. Oh, there you go. And the ingredients didn't change much. And the more you start to know, you're kind of like, oh, I was supposed to do that,

but, like, a little bit more flexible than the spreadsheet and every tiny little piece of it. Like, it was right. We just didn't know how to make it flexible. Well, I don't think you really know until you start doing something. You read something and you're like, that is Bible. I will do that and that's it. And it's funny, as you say the word tilapia,

I'm sure that a good chunk of our listenership is laughing along with us because everybody went through a tilapia phase. The frozen bag of tilapia. Oh, yeah. Gradual school, it's like 25 cents a play it's just cheap fish don't want to talk about it for me in college it was tuna fish like tuna fish was so cheap they used to like take tuna fish and blend it with orange juice and just fucking drink it i didn't have any money, and I just wanted protein. It's terrible.

It's not that bad, though. That's the crazy part about it is it tastes like orange juice. Just pour some sugar on it. Put some sugar on it. Chunky orange juice. It's just the pulp. Delicious. It's so delicious.

The pulp. It's very pulpy and fishy. Just hold your nose. It won't smell bad i've never heard the uh the orange juice tuna mixture yet yeah that's new to me i've never heard of that i would just take the write an article the super plain chicken breast and just like dunk it in mustard like yellow mustard was the only way yeah yeah yeah i remember looking back at old facebook posts i see them pop up on my memories every so often.

And then the food that I would eat. Like the things that you try. You're like, okay, the plainest broccoli, the plainest chicken, the plainest potato. You don't add anything because you're like, I don't know about sodium. Right. And then, you know, you just kind of learn along the way. But I think everyone starts somewhere with what they read. And then whatever their first exposure to what they read is they do

and then they think and then they embody it because they try it and they're like this might be working it's working for me quote unquote yeah i mean in the functional fitness space like there's a lot of i don't want to say negativity but just like people look at what bodybuilders do and they think it's kind of silly sometimes i'm like no are you you look at that guy how can you say what he's doing doesn't work? What are you talking about? He's fucking enormous. He's shredded. What he's doing is obviously working for him for his goals. There's probably

something you could learn there. Then you look at the people that are on the zone diet, which is for the functional fitness athlete. You look at them and you're like, I don't want that. I'll take that guy's diet even if he has to eat 13 chicken breasts a day drinking egg whites. I've eaten a lot of chicken and rice in my day i never drank the orange juice never drank i never drank them i don't know what it was i was just like egg whites oh that's a texture thing for me

you did it there you go did it just from straight from the carton yeah i think uh whatever rocky movie oh yeah rocky one inspired me. Stallone did it. Screw it. So inspired. I mean, literally, it was inspired. Like, 84, 85. You know, I had muscle and fitness. I'm like, okay, eggs.

This is what I have to do. It was terrible. It was terrible. The worst gas. The proteins were not organized then. You weren't worried about your gut health at that time, huh? There was no conversation on gut health. Oh, there was no gut health caring.

I was like, I'll be healthy later. I'll eat my Pop-Tarts now. It's black on the inside. You know what I mean? When you're a super beginner and you're doing something like macros, that's one of the downfalls of macros is that people think they can do with Pop-Tarts and just super low-quality unhealthy foods. If you're siloing just wanting to be leaner, then it quote unquote

works. And it does work. But if you think about like holistically, all the different categories of health that you're trying to maximize by, by living a healthy lifestyle, by, by working out, by movement, by eating, et cetera, then having low quality foods as, as like the main source of your calories is, is just a bad, bad strategy. So like, have you, have you improved the quality of your food over time and still had those calories fit your macros? Yeah. It's so funny that like transition, I think when, again, you're first getting started and then you finally see the physical progress you never thought you'd be able to have. You're like, I can do this and still eat this way. Great. I don't care about

the health. I don't, you know, I'll have vegetables once or twice a day and like just to get them in and like micros are important and fiber is important too i always hit my fiber so i was like i'm good like i hit my fiber because i would track it very meticulously but you know the now the way that i eat now it's funny i'm plant based now so i don't eat meat i'm like pretty much vegan i'm pretty close except i'll have chocolate every once in a while but it was more of just one of those things where I wanted to start eating healthier because I knew when I was tracking things that I would always choose you know lower quality carb sources and then peanut butter over avocados and because it was it was like my taste buds were different like the palate that I had was just very like I want the sweetest tasting thing that will fit my macros that I can still make progress on. It wasn't really like, let me eat healthier. It was just, this is how I can make

progress. This is what I know. So now without tracking anything, I'm not tracking anything anymore. Three years later, I decided to stop and I never thought I would be able to, because it was a mindset shift that went from, this is the amount of calories that I need to maintain the way that I look, the amount of macros and looking a certain way was important to me. Number one, I did bikini competitions. Number two, I grew an Instagram following through a lot through the way that I looked. And then when, when the way that I looked changed, it was almost like, do, do I keep doing this? And we'll tell you can get into that too, but my business and what I do on social media now, it's not body focused. It's not based on the way that I look and what I do through there is not just here's me, here's

how I look. I hope you're inspired by it and like my photo. It's here's my philosophy on health and fitness and all of that stuff. And I hope you, you know, relate to it and understand it and adopt it yourself. So yes, I've definitely enhanced my eating habits. Um, just, you know, mostly plant-based eating, which to me is a lot of vegetables and lentils and carb sources and beans and tempeh and, you know, I'll have oatmeal and vegan protein and fruit and avocados a ton. And like, I have that stuff every single day. So I'm feel, I feel amazing now. Like I feel normal. I feel like homeostasis. I don't feel up and down energy. I don't feel crappy. I don't feel fatigued. Um, I just feel really normal and really healthy. Yeah. One of the things that we wanted to touch on with this show was, was training and eating to have fun and to feel good. Like everyone that competes in anything, whether it's where

this jujitsu and MMA or martial arts or, or CrossFit or bikini or what have you. You're so focused on hitting your external goals related to the sport that you don't care what happens to your health at some level. You're willing to sacrifice a little bit in order to perform, to hit your numbers, to win, etc. But then after a while, say your elbows start hurting, your shoulder starts hurting, or maybe you just feel kind of chronically fucked up all the time, and you stop competing, you're just like, God god i just want to train and have fun again like that's why people get into sports usually because they enjoy it and then for some people it like it takes over

and becomes like winning becomes the thing especially if you're trying to do it professionally and it is your life getting back to having fun and feeling good is what almost everyone that i know that's like in their late 30s now, like, they're finally coming around to the idea. My mind is in my late 30s. Yeah. Yeah. Some people start at different ages. But, like, for all of us, like, we're all in that category now where we just want to, like, feel good and have a good time and hang out with our friends.

That's, yeah. It's our place to hang out. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And i think there's something to say for that period of time when you are in the extreme like i don't think i don't think discouraging people from doing it and trying it and being a potentially really high level

crossfit athlete or powerlifter or bodybuilder is a bad thing to encourage yes there's a lot of things to be aware of that you'll have to go through and experience mentally and physically when you decide to do that. And it's fun. Like, it's fun to be in that extreme. And I remember after a certain period in a bodybuilding prep or a powerlifting prep, I was like, okay, this sucks, but it's my routine now. It's my normal now. It became normal, and it was just my lifestyle at that point. And it was fun to commit to something, keep the promises that you make to yourself because it builds normal. And it was just my lifestyle at that point. And it was fun to commit to something,

make, keep the promises that you make to yourself because it builds confidence. Like when you're sticking to something and dedicated to something, it builds a ton of confidence in yourself. And you get to say, I did this hard, you know, cardio, 30 minutes of cardio every single day. And I stuck to my macros today and I did good today. Like it was an accomplishment and you accomplish something every single day doing that. So I don't think it's necessarily bad, but there's a ton of variables that you don't necessarily know until you do it, especially, you know, depending on the sport that you're doing.

But afterwards, there's always that point of like, all right, this is a little burnout. I want to get back to fun. No matter what you do, if you're trying to be good at it or get on stage or do it in front of other people, there's some serious suffering that's going to happen. Yeah. And then on the other side of it, you kind of wake up and you go, I don't know if that was worth it. And then you get to make a decision. Like he's saying, do I really just want to do this because it's fun or do I want to do this because I want to do it in front of other people or prove myself through it? And I think so many of us kind of enter this fitness thing and I'm like, we get so good at it so fast.

And then it's like, I have to see how I am amongst others, really prove ourselves. And then we realize like, oh, wow, it's a big world out there. I'm really unhealthy all of a sudden. And maybe I can just do this thing that I love forever with my friends it doesn't have to be like at that level right and I think I was lucky enough interestingly enough I'm not the most competitive person like I was not the best at sports so it turned me into this oh it's okay if I don't win because I know I'm not gonna like that was that was my experience in high schools because I was like, I don't think I'm going to win at this sport thing. So I'm just going to continuously expect that.

I did pretty well in competitions. I won one overall and I did not do super well at nationals. But I was almost lucky enough to not have done super, super well at a national level to the point where I didn't feel like continuing was worth it. Because I was like, well, I have a lot of friends that did well and they got like second at nationals and you have to get first to get your pro cards they want to go back the next year and to me i was like i didn't you know i didn't get close so do i go back do i try really hard again does it really matter and to them the people that did really really well they're like i gotta keep going because like i'm super close and like this is a big goal and this is something that's really kind of cool. And I can say that I completed.

So I think I was lucky enough to not have gotten to that point. Yeah, if you can smell the barn, you're going to want to get to the barn. But if it's far enough away, don't pick up the scent. As you went through that. Hold on a second. What is this? I just nodded my head. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What scent is this? The cows. We was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. What smell of the barn and the barn animals? The cows. Cows and pigs. We used to say it on the track team. You're in Santa Monica. That's not going to – You can smell the barn. You're close to the finish.

If you're in the hunt, you can smell the barn. It's sort of the tap thing. If you're in the hunt, okay, cool. We're out hunting and now you're close to the barn. I can smell it. And you want to get stuck in because you're with the other people that you're hunting with. But if you can't smell the damn thing, that's like, you know what?

This forest looks kind of cool. And then you go wander into a stream. You know what I mean? Because the barn got far away. It makes sense. It does make sense. It makes sense. So what was the question?

What led you to say all that? I didn't get to the question. These two interrupted with their inability to understand high level thought that's all my bad sorry um the question the question was um as as you kind of go through this process did you like it sounds like you've you've got a really good awareness of you as a person. Because a lot of people can't identify that, oh, I'm not that competitive. Therefore, I can either stay in or walk away.

Like, not to be ageist, but sometimes, you know, I don't hear a lot of 24-year-olds necessarily saying that. So as you reflect on that, was there also a reflection of like, hey, this effort came with a toll yeah yeah absolutely i think what was it so i think it it came about slowly and this like when i mean slowly i mean there was a couple competitions that i did they were really fun um i did pretty well at them and then you know at the end of them you have to make a decision. Do I do a reverse diet and I continue the next time. And when I moved to Los Angeles for the first time, um, I moved from Rhode Island. So I was 21. I graduated college and I was in the middle of a prep. And when I moved here, I was four weeks out and I started my YouTube channel. So, you know, the YouTube channel started and I was documenting the prep. I did one show. That was a show that I won. It was August. I ended that prep and I had like 30,000 Instagram followers at that point. And I was like, I'm going to try to

stay kind of lean so I can like maybe get some photo shoots while I'm out here. I didn't know what I was doing. And I ended up entering the bodybuilding.com spokesmodel search. So I wanted to really closely reverse diet and keep that really, really tight. Cause was, number one, one of my first times doing it really specifically. So I was like, I really want to try this and see how it works for me. I had a couple of fitness coaching clients at the time. So I was like, let me experiment on myself and then do the really meticulous reverse diet thing. There was no thought in my head where I was like, do I want to do this? I feel like it's kind of unbalanced.

I honestly had no friends when I moved here. I didn't have a boyfriend. I didn't have anything else that I was doing. It's like Friday. Ain't got no job. Ain't got shit to do. I was like, I'm going to do this thing. Like I have all the time in the world to experiment. So I did. And I ended up, you know, getting accepted to the spokesmodel search. So that was around November of that year. And the spokesmodel search was in January. So I did another short little cut. That was the first time that I noticed that my metabolism was not, not very good because it was only three or four months after my last prep. And that was not enough time for my body and my hormones to recover from the diet. So I noticed that during that little eight week span of like, okay, you accepted

into the spokesmodel search and you're going to get on stage at the LA Fit Expo in January and do a bikini competition again. I was like, okay. And I worked with my coach a little bit and my body kind of stalled around week five. And I was like, oh my God, I'm dying. I was still like 115 pounds at that point, which is hysterical. I was like, I'm fine. Like it's fine. But you have this perception of yourself and what your best looks like. And you want to get back to that always after you see it for the first time. And you're like, whoa, I could do look like this. I need to keep going. So I did the spokesmodel search. Um, it was great. I got third, I got signed to bodybuilding.com. It was all fun and games. I think I had a two

month span at that point where I was like, okay, I'm going to do another little reverse diet, but I'm planning on doing a prep in March, and I'm going to do competitions in July and January. And that's when I was like really kicking my YouTube channel up. So I started this prep series called That Prep Life. And on YouTube, I was doing five, six videos a week. I did nothing else to do. I was- Ain't got no friends, ain't got no job. I think I had like three friends at that point. I'm going to like three friends at that point. I'm going to let everyone watch. And my YouTube channel went from 6,000 subscribers to 100,000 in like five, six months.

Boom. Bang. Blown up. Debt prep life. So there is. Was it DAT? Had a lot of friends. No, it was that with a T. I wasn't that cool.

Debt prep life. Debt prep life. Which is funny. People still comment and they say, I re-watch this series all the time because it was literally every single day and that was a time where things were really kicking up for me so i was like i'm going to continue this and that's like when you start feeling like you're really in it like if you're sharing it with social media you are committed like you commit to something online and you say i'm doing this thing people are expecting it from you and then you know

you're you're even more dedicated than if you dedicate to yourself. And it was that prep that for me was the worst. Not only was my metabolism shot, but I broke my wrist in the middle of the prep. And I remember I was driving to the gym that day and I was about, I wasn't vlogging in the car, but I, you know, I had my camera, I was going to go film at the gym and then I was going to have a high carb day and get my fro-yo because I had fro-yo on high carb days, you know, I had my camera, I was going to go film at the gym. And then I was going to have a high carb day and get my fro-yo cause I had fro-yo on high carb days, uh, you know, eight weeks out cause it was whatever. And I got in a car accident right on Lincoln in Venice, broke my wrist. Um, and then I continued to do my prep after it was, I had a cast for five weeks. I made videos about how to train with an injury and it was super inspiring and everybody loved it.

And, um, you know everybody loved it and um you know my metabolism was you know kind of slowly going down at that point and i was eating around 50 carbs a day on my low carb days which was three six you know six days a week five six days a week um for eight weeks straight and my body was just not working well anymore my metabolism was super down regulated i had to work 10 times harder to get the same results that I had gotten in the past. I was sharing all of that, all of it. Like I was crying, I was tired. I would do my morning cardio and go take a nap. And I would tell people all of these things, like I would share it all. And that was, I think what really shot everything

up because it allowed people to see the reality of it. And, and after that was when I had to make that decision, like, is this really worth it to continue? And it wasn't, it wasn't worth it to continue. So that was when I kind of started changing things a little bit. So I went to the Olympia in Vegas. I ate a fuck ton of food. Um, I did a couple of other trips. I went to barbell brigades company trip because i'm sponsored by them and we ate a ton i think i went to new york city for halloween i ate a ton like all these trips where i like consistently overindulged time and time and time and time again um and i gained a bunch of weight i felt terrible um people were commenting on my youtube channel

like you shouldn't be a fitness person anymore. You can't even keep your own shit together. All of these fun and exciting things. Super fun. Stress kicked in. Stress kicked in. All of the overloading your schedule. YouTube's the worst platform for that too. The anonymity on YouTube makes it where people will say shit that they won't say many other places because there's no repercussions. It's not like Facebook where it's like the real you yeah behind your account it's like it's like

a faceless nameless like nobody can find me i can just be like fuck you and get away with it without any repercussions oh fuck you is the minimal yeah terrible thing that was said there was we don't get the female side of the comments no it's probably brutal fuck you is the big one that like guys get i think i couldn't even imagine anything you guys get that like hits you in the soul and you're like oh my god you just hit on an insecurity no but i probably not but man luckily like i got called all that stuff at like 13 so it just didn't even matter by the time now you're like ah that's not original anymore yeah well for me as someone who was trying to really grow and build my reputation, like all of it stung really, really hard.

Yeah. That was the least of it. Like there was, there's all, there's crazy things I could pull up probably. Just read them and start calling them out right now. It's funny. John68437 said. I did a podcast once on how to deal with criticism. And I opened the show with three of my worst

comments. So if you want to go find some of them, you can check out that episode. I probably will. Yeah. But that was like kind of a turning point for me where I had to decide like, okay, I have to do something good with this. Because again, I have a responsibility to be a role model for girls who are watching me, who have already committed to saying, I like you.

I, you know, you got me into the gym. And if I start saying, here I am, I feel fat. I feel this, I feel that it would not be a good role model thing to do. So I decided to kind of take it and talk a little bit about body image, number one. Um, and then I did a power lifting meet. I loved it. Um, I thought it was super fun. I got pretty strong. I think my maxes were a 245 squat, a 260 dead, and like a 130 bench or something like that. She got you, Kenny. It's not that bad. She got you, Kenny. By two pounds. See, that was face-to-face though, but that was a nice internet comment right there. There it is. That was a nice troll comment. Yeah, we're going to take a little break here, but we're going to get back into, you talked about how kind of becoming a role model in this

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Welcome back to What About Shrugged. Doug Larson, Kenny Kane, I'm Anders Varner. Our guest, Amanda Bucci. How many Instagram followers are we up to now? Is this 600,000 plus the 22 million views you have on YouTube? 584. Something. That's pretty close.

By tomorrow. Well, as soon as this airs, we'll be there. Right. Right? Duh. Tons of new Barbell Sh shrugged followers i love that for sure um you've kind of taken a different or in this new path you've become a bit of a role model kind of from your struggles to today built this amazing following and how has the messaging

changed kind of from those early days to where we're at now and where do you want to go with this? That's a good question. You're, you should do a podcast or something. Right. In the beginning. Pull that right in front of your mouth. Okay.

A little better. There you go. Better. Crushed it. Cool. Okay. So, uh,

in the beginning. Or just scream louder. One of the two. One of the two. In the beginning. Um, when I first got started, obviously it was so focused on me. It was focused on myself and looking better. I was always pretty aware of the fact that you shouldn't always

focus on the way you look. I wasn't that arrogant or, you know, one of those things, but yeah, it was definitely focused on here's how to lose body fat. And that was like, you know, that was the main thing. That was the main driver. Cause that's what I was doing constantly. And everything was like, this is the most optimal way. This is the best way to do this. The best way to do that. Tracking macros is optimal doing diet breaks and all these, all these things. And then, you know, when I gained weight after I finished competing, I had to switch that because obviously I couldn't talk about here's the most optimal way to do fat loss anymore. Cause I kind of fell off the wagon over here. And I had to start talking about different things. So I think this began my journey of diversifying my audience. And, you know, when you start off,

I guess, if we talk about social media or business, you have some sort of niche that you're talking to a group of people that all like something specific. So it started obviously with bodybuilding, bikini competition, people that are like, I want to do that too. And I love watching someone get shredded and lose fat. It's super interesting and entertaining to let's talk about body image, something that a large part of the audience, you know, a large lot of America, the country, the world talk about and feel. They feel, especially females and men too, they feel insecure with the way that they look. They look at people on Instagram and online and they think that they're less than because they don't look like that and never think that they'll be able to it's so funny now going from being

super extreme to normal ish i had a period of time where i wasn't motivated to go to the gym and i was like for the first time i i get it. Because I used to be motivated every single day. Motivation was an issue. People would ask me questions all the time. And one of them was, how do you stay motivated? I was like, I just, I don't know. And now I get it because I've had periods of lack of motivation where I didn't want to consistently eat healthy or eat in a deficit or, you know, go to the gym and do my cardio. And I was like, I get it for the first time. So it was me starting to kind of be a little bit more relatable in the fact that it's difficult for a lot of people to understand how to consistently

do something with their fitness and nutrition where they eventually feel really good. It's really, really fucking tough. So I started talking a lot about body image and a lot about your body can do so many more things. And it's not just about how you look, but how you can perform in the gym. So I switched a little bit to focusing on gym performance, powerlifting, getting strong. I did, I did that for a little while and I still talk about that. I love talking about that, but moving forward, it became more of health and wellness rather than fitness and nutrition and training. And, you know, that's another, it wasn't necessarily just like,

let me get into this niche too. It was again, just me living my life and sharing. And this is what's going on with me right now. And I think that moving forward and, you know, looking in retrospect, just in general, it was awesome to talk about those things and then for people to see an evolution. I think that's a really cool journey for someone to see. And they say, okay, I watched this person do all of these extreme things.

And now she's preaching about health and wellness and having a lot of energy and eating healthy food and mental awareness and mental health and all of that stuff. It allows someone to see what could happen and what it's actually like for you to choose that extreme. So it's nice to see what could happen and what it's actually like for you to choose that extreme so it's nice to see the different options of what you could do because there's so many different people that i don't know what to pick like i don't know where to go and i don't know what kind of fitness to do and here's someone that's tried a couple of different things and you get to see someone physically do it like i think that's the coolest part about youtube and vlogging yeah i think it's so easy to get caught up in that really sexy side of it too the weight loss the fat loss and then all of a sudden people are

all crushed in we've got some microphone changes there we go but it's yeah it's gotta be like right in front of your mouth that way you're not less loud than we are gotcha cool um perfect yeah i think i think it's really sexy for people, especially on the social media channels where they're getting like the little blip. You get your picture. You get your perfectly posed. Sometimes I put my perfect pose up.

The butt pose? The butt pose. Stick it out. Arch back? Yep. Duck lips in the mirror? Can you do it? If I try.

Here we go. There it is. He's got to stick the hip out. Left glute crusher, dude. I don't know what you're doing. Kenny just threw up a little in his mouth with my left glute hose. There was a combination of actually no ability to extend your lumbar spine. It's hard.

Oh, you're pretty good. Oh, dang, Kenny. Kenny, where'd you learn that one? I got lumbar control control you don't even have an instagram account yeah it's okay but you have to go you have to pose i got glutes i don't i don't need to see anymore i know you can twerk there i know i can't by far the best dancer in the house i don't know maybe we'll do that yeah he's got it cool oh but it's it's really easy for people to get hung up in kenny's butt pose yes on the internet i mean knowing that i i would i would double tap

that for sure uh but there's a reality to the struggle and i think that people are really drawn anderson kenny don't go in the barn don't't go there. I think people are really drawn to the transparency of the struggle. And coming out of that is not an easy thing. And people are always drawn to like, I have to go compete or I have to be on stage. And then as soon as that's done and the comedown happens and it's like, where do I go from here? And it's really, really hard to build yourself back up and actually figure out where you want to go because you build your whole life around this one single moment i'm gonna go stand on stage or i'm gonna go create or compete at regionals whatever it is and then all of a sudden that ends and you realize no one gave a shit yeah and you don't know who you are on the other side

of that because you've been training for the last three years, whatever it is to get to that point. And now what do I do? Anything I do from here won't be as cool as that last moment. And now, now where do I go? And then everyone, everyone's always asking like, so when's the next competition? And I'm like,

never do I have to do another one? Really? Is that what you want? So yeah, you have to be very self-aware of what you want and what your goals are. And I think a lot of people don't really know. They start and they try something and they like it and then it can potentially go to an extreme. And you don't really know until you try something.

So I think it's kind of just like stepping into the fear of the unknown and saying, I am going to stand proud in this decision. And that decision might not be the most interesting one, the most sexy one. You know, talking about balance and health and wellness. And I don't have a strength goal right now. I don't have a body fat goal right now. And I don't have, you know, an agility goal right now. I have a couple of little things in my head. Like I want to be able to get, you know, put some weight on a bar and feel decently strong.

I want to be able to run decently fast. I want to be able to look good and feel comfortable my body but that's not like specific like i want to lose 20 pounds or i want to hit a 300 pound squad or whatever i almost wanted to do that and then i was like do i really is that really the path i want to go or is that really just something i think would be cool for social media what what do you do when people come to you talking about goals though Because all of that stuff is like when people come to anyone with a goal, it's like, well, now we're just living inside this little box. And what happens outside that? And when your goal or whatever it is, is longevity.

Like, I'd like to do this every day forever. Yeah. Well, where do we start? That's a really hard question. That's a really hard answer to find because you have to go on like a journey instead of here's the play-by-play book to lose 10% body fat and go stand on stage. Or, you know, here's how we clean 300 pounds or whatever it is. Like you just get to this point and then outside that box, it's so scary. So goal setting is really challenging.

What do you even talk to people about when you are talking to athletes or talking to people that are on the journey themselves? Do you even talk about goal setting anymore? Yeah. I i mean i think it's one of those things where if you want to be setting a goal and you're in the season of your life where you have really have a goal i'm not going to start shutting you down and say oh no no don't have a goal because like that way fuck you up like don't you know you don't you don't want to say that to somebody you want to make sure that they still feel excited about their goal because i think i think you should have a goal like once or twice a year i think that if you don't have any goals ever you start getting into funk you

start not really caring about your training you're not passionate about it like for me over the last year I've gotten in a funk a couple of times and what got me out of it was setting a small goal so in you know for the new year's eve and I know it's super cliche but I was like it works for me like it's January 1st that's what's gonna work me right now. And that was the season of my life that I was in. So I was like, I'm going to do more cardio, try to intuitively eat in a little bit of a deficit and maybe lose one or two pounds. But my goal is to get my passion for exercise and training and feeling excited to go to the gym back. And I lost two pounds. I was like, I'm going to lose like four or five or whatever. I lost two and I got my excitement for training back and I felt really

good. And that was enough for me. And that was a goal. It's still a goal. So I still think that if you do have a goal, make it specific and measurable, make it end, think about what's going to happen after. So if you are going to do a competition, okay, what's going to happen after? Let me make you aware of all these things. Go watch this prep series that I did and see what happened to me after. But you know, you want to make sure that you're at least aware of what the after effect is after your goal. Because even if you're doing a strength-based thing, like, okay, you have to now do like a deload phase. And what are you going to do next? Are you going to do another competition? Are you going to kind of just maintain? Are you going to focus on technique or

whatever you want to do? What's going to happen after kind of just maintain or you're going to focus on technique or whatever you want to do what's going to happen after but let's you know really focus on this goal and you have to i think you should have a goal even if you're later in your 30s or 40s or 50s or whatever twice a year like do something that's kind of cool even if it's just for eight weeks your goal doesn't necessarily have to be pr your power clean by 20 pounds like it could be work out with my two best friends three days a week. Killer goal. Killer goal. Savage goal.

Every week getting after it. Right? Hanging with the bros. Yeah, it's not like the sexiest goal. Like I'm going to lose 20 pounds, but it's still something. And I think you should still pat yourself on the back for setting it and doing it. I like things that give you very continuous feedback if your goal is to work out three days a week with your with your two best friends you know the whole time if you're doing a good job or you're not doing

a good job you don't have to wait till the eight weeks or the 12 weeks are up to see did i do well or did i not do well this is actually one of the benefits of macros in my opinion because every single meal you know yes or no did i do a good job on this meal or did i do a good job on this day as opposed to something that's more quality food based like like the paleo diet or whatever else you're doing where they're like just eat just eat really high quality food every day you're kind of like i think i did a good job but maybe not such a good job that that thing wasn't good sparkling water and i don't know if that's good yeah every day you're kind of confused especially if you're're not super knowledgeable of nutrition,

which is why you're following some generic diet plan in the first place in a lot of cases. Having the feedback from quantifying your macros every single day, every single meal, that's the thing that really educates people. And I think that's why macros is doing so well right now because the feedback loop is so tight. It's all day, every day.

It's interesting. I feel like we're at a point now in using interesting language because you're talking about your journey along what would be very fixed points there's destination landmarks and then you get to this kind of experiential phase that's a little bit softer by glance and what's interesting to me is that like there's there's two sort of binary, you know, there's a binary conversation going on in the health, wellness, fitness industry. One is like, let's get explicit about goals and make those hard signposts that we, that everybody's

on the same page. And then there's a concurrent conversation going, Hey, this, this needs to be a journey. This has to be a process, if there's some longevity in it for you. And it's interesting, because, you know, from my experience, you know, being a gym owner, we have so many different, you know, with a couple hundred people wanting a bunch of different things, that gets very complicated really quickly. So, you know, when you're talking when you're talking about like that, that thing that is central to most people, whether it's a fixed goal or this journey thing is a sense of growth. I think that's central to most human beings. And at least here, like,

that's one of the things that we're really process are trying to process at higher and higher levels. Like, look, what's central. Like some people want to come in, crush it for six months, see the, the, the fat go away, the muscle mass come up and see their numbers go up that are very measurable. And other people are like, I just want to be able to play with my kids because as I'm listening to this conversation, like I'm just looking back at the last eight years of my life. And the last, the last hard thing that I had on my physical checklist was Kokoro, which is a thing that Mark Devine runs out of seal fits, like a three-day burpee push-up, pull-up run. It's like a mini Navy SEAL boot camp.

It's 50 hours, so half of Navy SEAL. That's intense. It's very intense. And that was the last chip that was on my shoulder physically like i haven't had anything since then that a holds a candle to like the extremity of that or that compels me like that did and then once that sense of completion was done something else came in three children and now like it is very cliche but like the big thing recently in a lot recently, meaning the last seven and a half years has been, I want to be a functional father.

Like that's compelling to me. And that shift from something that was hard and like very goal-driven my whole life with like strong landmarks has now evolved into something very different. And I still try to hold space for people to like crush specific things, but also know like, look, if you're going to want to do this thing for a minute, it's going to have to take the perspective of process and some appreciation for it. Yeah. I think it's just the perspective of knowing that, like knowing that number one, you have some sort of goal, whether it's a soft goal, like you say, or it's a hard and fast goal. And then knowing, you know, this is still

going to be a long-term thing for you ideally. So even after you hit your hard and fast goal, you're still going to want to continue after because you love it because it's great because it's something human should, every human should do. And I think just educating people on being just aware of that at the end of the day, growth, progression, and longevity, sustainability, whether that growth is really fast for a season or the growth is becoming a functional father. That's going to take forever, but you are right now.

You're still a functional father right now and you probably still have some sort of little small landmarks that you want to hit to go, but it's still progression and it's still sustainability. Damn. Dope. Isn't that good, Andrew? Rushes, right? Total total savage nothing to say killed it i have no words his hair just fell off right instantly um over and it was gone

on top of all this you have three pretty killer businesses we've got a podcast that launched well not launched but a year ago yeah there you go a year and a month the fitness online coaching academy yes pretty interesting stuff tell us about that yeah so that was something that it was it was one of those things where i'm always trying to take the temperature of my audience right like it's a big audience i talk about a lot of different things and when i started talking about what i was doing with my business everybody wanted to know um along with that as i grew as an online coach, I was just asking my coach a ton of questions. I did a lot of self-learning.

I graduated with my nursing degree. I knew about anatomy, physiology, the body. I knew about all that stuff. I had a good foundation of fitness. Along with that, I've been doing fitness for six, seven years at this point. It was a lot of things that I already knew. And then I did a lot of self-learning to nail down the details along with doing my own competition preps, being really meticulous about that, learning every single thing. If I didn't know something, I would figure it out. Along with that,

I'd be asking my coach, Will, like, hey, why did you make this change? Like, what's, do you have any articles that you can share with me about why this is something that you did with me? I remember the first time we did a diet break together, which is a 7 to 10 to 14 day period where you go back to maintenance calories. And then after that, your hormones, you know, your body feels like, OK, I'm not going to die. And then your fat burning hormones continue to work a little bit better after that. And I was like super interested. I was like, why did you do this? You have the nearest study. And it was just so interesting to me. So when people started asking me about my business and fitness coaching and

building a business that way and building on social media, I was like, you know, I know that I don't have my own certification from Nazim or one of the bigger companies, the personal training certifications. But I know that so many people have them and they still don't know what they're doing online. Although it's similar, obviously, like it's quite similar with what you're doing. Like it's the same concepts. There's, there's certain things that you do in just in terms of interacting with someone through email or through phone call or Skype or whatever. Um, that, and then other things that you do specifically to adjust their nutrition, address their training programs online. And there wasn't a whole lot out there. There's a couple of different programs that are

similar, but there wasn't a whole lot out there saying, here's everything you need to know about fitness and nutrition and everything you have to do in order to take this information and apply it to a client. So here's how to take what you learn about nutrition and then come up with the program for someone, adjust their macros, continue to do that depending on if they're a mom or an overweight man or someone who, all these things about hormones and periods for females and carb cycling and training programs and adjusting everything. everything and my coach william was like so excited about it when i brought the idea to him i was like hey do you want to do this with me i think this would be a really cool thing little did we know there's so much that goes into it um we got a good bit of backlash just because here i am an instagram fit chick making a thing certification i'm 23 24 years old who am i you know to create this thing and i was like there's haters you know the person who owns the donut shop doesn't be have

to be the best donut chef they just have to know how to build something and solve someone's problem and then bring in the right people so we brought in a couple of different people that were able to create really really amazing content along along with my coach Will who's been doing this for like 10 11 years and then we got a um a training expert a nutritionist a psychologist and all these people that brought in all these different really awesome elements that go into it. And, you know, there's this other side of the story where is it accredited right now? No. Is it an actual certification? No, you don't get letters next to your name and you can't take it to a gym and say, I have this thing. Hire me as your personal trainer. It's for you to go start your own business. So again, we're a startup and

it's something that we have on the horizon just to make our clients feel like, yes, this is something that's legitimately recognized by the government. We've learned that it is a really nice thing to have, but at the end of the day, if people are getting results and they're doing really well with their clients and their clients are getting results, that's the goal. That's what people want. They want to know how to actually adjust someone's body so it works and I think when someone's first getting started it's definitely a beginner program they've maybe done it for themselves like me like I did it for myself and they don't know how to do it for someone else that has a different body type or that has a different starting point and they don't know

how to take a look back at their nutritional and training history to really determine where they're at so it was just one of those things that I was like, this is people need this. Let's, let's fricking make it. And we launched in September of 2017. So a couple months ago, five, six months ago, and then we launched again in January and people have been loving it and it's going really well. So yeah, we have lots of fun stuff on the horizon with that. So that's awesome yeah yeah turning into an online coach has like as a personal trainer you your schedule's booked and you're like how the hell am i gonna scale this thing give like 70 of your income to the gym yeah and then you

realize you get online you're like oh it'll be easier a lot a lot more people not even close yeah not even close yeah it's it's hard yeah it's not totally different skills let me just do this thing and the other side of the coin was i saw all these prep coaches that just decided to be prep coaches and then they would destroy people's bodies like all these girls were messaging me and emailing me and dming me saying i had this coach and they did this and i feel terrible and then i had to you know go they they ditched me and all these like crazy things and i was like people need to you know not take advantage of other people just because you can go online and technically do whatever the

heck you want um you technically can like you can technically say hi i i have this body i did this thing for myself hire me um a lot of people do that after they do their first competition and they look really shredded and obviously people determine that person knows what they're doing. Although a lot of people pass down the competition prep that they had. And then they just give it to a lifestyle client. And that's like the only thing that they know. Like that first prep that I did with the meal plan, five weeks, tilapia at the end of the night, gagging. I got the results from that. And I could have just thrown that to somebody else and say, here, here's what take it this works that's the next product yeah yeah so so it was one of those

things where I and him just kind of wanted to create something that was really practical for people to say I know how what I have to know and then I know how to actually do it for somebody else I think you're pretty locked into the personal brand that you have built here, especially through your platform. And now that is its own product as well. The Influencer Academy. Yeah. Yeah. What's going on with this? So that was another thing that, again, I saw kind of a need for it. It's not necessarily just how to build your social media and get sponsored by companies. And I think that's what a lot of people think the word influencer is. And I thought it kind of sounded catchy. I know it could be something that people think is just how to become a fitness influencer,

which it's not really, it's how to build influence, which is a whole separate thing. Building influence isn't necessarily just becoming an influencer. It's, it's showing up in a way that people change the way they think or act because of how you're thinking and acting and presenting yourself online. So a lot of people don't know how to present themselves online at all. Like it's, it's one of those things that came really naturally to me. I started off Instagram just because I wanted to share everything. I was just like, I'm a sharer. I like to talk about my life. I, you know, take good pictures. I, you know, was looking at other people and determining how to,

you know, build on Instagram. And obviously I've been able to do it for myself. And when I first started it, I had a little imposter syndrome too. I was like, can I do this for somebody else? Because I did a lot of things right. And like, I was doing the, the trends that were really trendy. I was competing. I was obviously using my body a good bit, not as much as a lot of other females were especially, but I try to, or Kenny with the butt pose. Butt pose. That lumbar control. That's amazing.

That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you all. We don't all have it that easy, Kenny. Some people have to order it. Right. I'm starting mine. It's called the Lumbar Academy.

How to control. You should sign up. It's for glute influencers. 297. 297. Yeah. 297. You could be a glute influencer.. It's for glute influencers. 297. 297. Yeah. 297. You could be a glute influencer.

I'm a big glute influencer. Yes. No, but it's a high intensity program because it was one of those things that I was like, there's so many things to learn. Not only do you have to learn how to present yourself online. So I always kind of say, if your social media account doesn't reflect what your best friend thinks you are, you're not doing it well enough. So if someone thinks that you're like the most fucking amazing person in the whole world and your Instagram is kind of just like, does that vibe come off your page? Probably not.

You got to kind of enhance what you're doing. So for me, if someone looks at my page, they're like, this is Amanda. I get it. I get who you are. And that's what a strong personal brand looks like and that's what a strong brand looks like and there was all these things that i did we're berating ourselves in our heads right now well you got a strong brand elsewhere so when someone's just trying to grow on instagram and you're not doing anything else like you don't have a really awesome you know voice or podcast

following or youtube following you have to work with what you have on Instagram. So, you know, a lot of people are popular elsewhere. Like people who have millions of followers, like Gary Vee or someone like that. Like he's obviously doing a lot of other things and he didn't just grow on Instagram. He's on Instagram influencer. He's Gary Vee. He's got other companies. So, um, one of the things that a lot of people constantly started asking him was like, how did you grow your Instagram? How did you build this business? How did you grow a platform? And I realized how many people didn't understand that it was, it's not that complicated to build an online platform, but there's all these variables that go into it. Like you have to

know who you are. You have to know who you're talking to. You have to know what kind of content to create. You have to know how to create it. You have to essentially put you're talking to. You have to know what kind of content to create. You have to know how to create it. You have to essentially put on 20 different hats. You have to be a video producer, a video editor, a photographer, a writer. There's so many variables that go into it. And it was one of those things that I was like, I want to create this hard and fast program that gets people results, gets people doing what they love full time. Because I think that's what makes the world a happier place at the end of the day i'm sure you guys agree y'all just did the whole like preach you know get it so this is one client that i have and she's like my big testimony

client and she was an assistant manager in a cubicle box and she hated it she was making twenty eight thousand dollars a year which i don't know how it's legal that they can pay people that little and she's just because you live here it's not very hard yeah i guess that's true yeah so she was um she's in florida so i got you she had about 600 instagram followers when we started and she has like 17 000 now she has a full plate of clients she's full time doing what she loves she's making a six-figure income she's one of my coaches for the influencer academy program and she's just like absolutely crushing it her boyfriend sorry her husband is also now starting his own business online just because he's seen what she's been able to do and

he's got inspired so you know it's just been one of those things where i am able to now help people create that for themselves and give them all the tools that they need to say you can do this it is so possible for you um and i love people who are online teaching other people that they can be empowered in their own right rather than just like look at me look at me that's what i love about what i'm doing now rather than what i was doing before and i think i had to do what i'm doing now rather than what I was doing before. And I think I had to do what I was doing before. But it's less like me, me, me, selfish, selfish, selfish. Competitions is what I look like.

This is how I look like me. This is whatever. It's here's how to do it for yourself. Here's how to be empowered in your own right and understand that you have everything you need. You just have to hone in on your gifts. Look, you're a savage. You're crushing it. You said it in the beginning. Yeah, I just said it. I just like, this chick, you're a savage. You're crushing it. You said it in the beginning.

Yeah, I just said it. I just like, man, this chick was kind of a savage. Hour later, here we go. She proved it.

It's been an hour already? We can keep going. Yeah. Where can people find you? At Amanda Bucci, on the gram. On the gram. AmandaBucci.com

or Bucci Radio Podcast is my podcast. We talk about entrepreneur stuff a lot on there, so that's what you're interested in. Be there. That's where weRadioPodcast is my podcast. We talk about entrepreneur stuff a lot on there. So that's what you're interested in. Be there. That's where we go.

I love it. The Kenny Kane. At the Kenny Kane. At the Kenny Kane. And pretty soon at Oak Park LA. Ooh. Yeah. I like that.

That's new. If you need someone to help you grow your Oak Park LA Instagram, let me know. We're just starting. He's a bi-weekly check-in on Instagram. Is that about right twice a week maybe every other I try

maybe that's like it's like abacus math maybe yeah yeah the abacus

yeah to answer your question I'm Matt Abuchi start with how do you where do we press the button to get Instagram up on your phone? That would be step one for him. Oh, it's a little purple app?

Yeah, just download it. Is it purple? I like colors. There you go. I like colors. I'm good with colors. If people are in Santa Monica, should they stop by Oak Park? Absolutely.

Come by. Hang out. Try and do a class. Come hang out with us. Kick it with the King Kane. Good people here. Maybe we'll be here. You guys are here often.

I'd love to be here. We love having you guys. I'll come back us. Kick it with the King Kane. Good people here. Maybe we'll be here. You guys are here often. I'd love to be here. We love having you guys. I'll come back. It'll be fun. You can follow me on Instagram also, Douglas E. Larson on Instagram. Also, DougLarsonFitness.com. We're going to have some live events on there. Probably eventually some courses that I'm going to develop,

digital information products, T-shirts, and all that. Anders? At Anders Varner. Come and hang out at Shrugged.thelowbackfix.com. Tons of resources, morning routines, movement, rehabilitation,

if you're living in pain. Come and hang out with us. We can help you. It's shrugged.thelowbackfix.com. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes. Check us out on YouTube. Give us a five-star review.

Say something nice. Don't be a jerk. At Barbell Shrugged. Everywhere else. See you guys next week. Thanks, Amanda. Boom. Good stuff. Killed it. Thanks for making it all the way to the end of the show.

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