Barbell Shrugged - Making Money As a Millennial In The Fitness Industry - Real Chalk Episode #100

Episode Date: November 5, 2019

In this episode, I go over a bunch of statistics about millennials and social media conversion rates. I talk about my opinion of owning a gym versus owning an online business. I also give my personal recommendations on what I would do if I could start all over again but in 2019. 

Ladies and gentlemen, we are back and we are on episode 100 on the Shrugged Collective. Can you guys believe it? I cannot get over, you know, just how fast the time goes by. It's insane. I've, you know, recently I've traveled to Sweden with these guys. You know, I've been to Lake Tahoe. I mean, that's, you know, not as nearly as cool as Sweden. But, you know, I've been all over the world.

I've been all over the country. I've done a lot of really cool things. And I don't know how much you guys know, but Anders Varner, who is the host of Barbell Shrugged on the Shrugged Collective, he was, you know, one of the guys that helped me like when I didn't have anything. And you know, I was homeless. And you know, I was trying to create the name for myself. And it was just it was such a crazy time. And now we get to work together. And this whole thing is just so cool. And I'm so happy to be part of it.

I'm so happy to have all of you guys on the show listening. And I'm getting emotional right now. And yeah, 100 episodes. Let's go. This episode is great. It's me in my living room talking for an hour about being a millennial and trying to make some money and trying to make a life out of this whole fitness thing. And it's the most I can fit in an hour. There's obviously more, and maybe we'll come back to it.

But it's a great episode for you guys. It's going to give you a lot of insight for any of you who are thinking about opening a gym, thinking about starting an online business. And it's great stuff. And there's a lot of stuff in there that a lot of people aren't going to tell you, and I don't give a fuck, so I'm just going to tell you all the things. Today's episode is going to be brought to you guys by Organifi, so you guys have heard us talk about Organifi, not just myself, but Anders, people on Barbell Shrugged, and it's a great supplement to add to your daily routine, especially if you don't get all your vegetables and fruits and all these different things in.

For me, you guys can follow me on my Instagram, and I'm eating shit tons of meat and dude wraps and the dude meals that I make and supplements. I love my first-form proteins and all these different things, and when it really comes down to it, I'm really not getting that much vegetables in. So I love having a vegetable supplement. The greens are great. A lot of green brands out there, they don't taste that great. Their greens actually does taste amazing. But if for any reason you don't like it, it's one of those things you mix with the reds and the reds taste amazing and it just overcomes that flavor. And it's awesome. I love adding the reds to everything. And I've said it on another podcast before, whereas if you have, you know, one of those protein powders in the, in the cabinet that you haven't had in a long time, you're just like, Oh, I hate that

protein powder, but you don't want to throw it away because it costs money. Uh, or someone gave it to you. You don't want to throw it away because you feel bad or whatever. You just throw a little reds in there and that baby tastes like reds. It doesn't matter no more. You, you got your protein, you're getting your reds in. It's awesome. But one thing, another thing that Organifi has that a lot of other companies don't have is they have the gold edition and that has a bunch of other great stuff in there. And I absolutely love mixing that one in like I do with the reds to like protein powders and with the greens. And sometimes it's just fun to mix all three of them together just, you know, just to get a nice little concoction going. There's nothing better than like, I'm going to take all

these fucking supplements and be a badass. You know what I mean? Like, one, it actually does help. We need these things and we're not eating enough of them. And two, placebo is a hell of a fucking drug. I'm telling you right now, like, there's so many supplements out there that don't work that under a placebo study are crushing for people because they believe it you know this is something that's you know in that's that's proven in studies so we don't need that but at the same time if you feel like taking all of them or taking more of them and this and that is going to make you amazing then on top of actually being awesome like you're going to make yourself actually another 90% awesome by a placebo effect.

I mean, it's fucking crazy. So that's why I like to just take all my pills in the morning, all the reds, all the greens, all the gold, all this shit. And I'm like, you know what? I leave the door and I'm like, I'm, I for sure am going to crush something. I don't know if it's going to be the door that I'm going to close behind me in my car. If it's going to be the bar that I touch at the gym, it could, you know, very well just be the next person's hand that I shake. I just absolutely massacre. So stoked on just taking subs in general. So if you guys want to check out Organifi, it's going to be Organifi.com slash shrugged and you guys get 20% off. So 20% off is a, is a, it's a good enough deal to check it out. You know what I mean? Like 10%, I don't know, maybe 15% still like on the fence.

Someone gives you 20% and you're like, I'm in. Fuck it. Let's try it. So it's Organifi, O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com slash shrug, which is S-H-R-U-G-G-E-D. And you guys get that discount code. So I hope you guys check them out. Hope you guys love this episode number 100. And I will see you on the other side.

If you love the episode, which I'm sure you will, be sure to tag myself, tag Barbell Shrugged, the Shrugged Collective, and let's get it popping. What's up, guys? It's Tuesday, and I am so excited to bring you this episode. I woke up this morning, which is, it's Monday right now, and I was like, man, what better thing to talk about right now than let's just talk about social media. Let's talk about how to make money for ourselves in the fitness industry. Let's just

talk about all the things that you really want to hear about when you come onto a podcast. I know you guys all listen to the Strug Collective and you know, you get really excited to listen to nerdy fitness things, to listen about our lives, hear about our lives, sorry, and just like really get engulfed in the whole fitness thing. But what if, you know, we could share a little bit more about how to help you guys make more money and how to help a lot of you guys are in the fitness space and you're looking, you know, for us for a little bit of guidance in terms of how you can make your life more profitable. And I think a lot of times people don't want to share those things because they don't want to give away their secrets, right?

And in reality, the secrets really don't matter. It's really the person and how you proceed yourself onto others and how you are as a person and people's faith in you and this and that. But before we get too nerded out real quick, I have a little intro that I wrote and I really want to get this going. I really think it's going to hit home for you guys. And then we're just going to wrap as we go. So since it is just me,

it might get a little awkward at moments, but hopefully it doesn't. I haven't been on by myself in a little while. So I wrote this little piece real quick. Almost everyone in the world right now has a smartphone, correct? I think I am. It's the most accessible,

most available platform to go to on the internet. I don't think you guys carry your computers around as much, so I think that's also a fair statement. And it's become another part of our body. Absolutely. As if something we can't live without, along with the smartphone trend, comes in social media. Can you imagine a world today without social media? I mean, honestly, if we think about it just for a quick minute, think about everything you've bought, everything you've purchased, everything you've thought about in the last month, couple days, couple weeks. It's all been social media driven. I mean, any car I've ever wanted, I saw on social media. Any, you know, pair of pants

now is like on social media. I can't even remember the last time I went to the mall and just walked around, like honestly. Different things for fitness, you know, programs, you know, my nutrition challenge, you know, my interval bodybuilding books, whatever. You saw it on Instagram. All right. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, all of it. Social media has become part of our lives that is hard to imagine a future without. Even the future, if you think about it,

it's crazy to imagine without social media. Am I right? I mean, you think about signs that you saw as you drove by on the highway with your parents when you were a kid and you're like, oh man, that looks really cool or whatever. People don't do that anymore. People don't look at that stuff anymore. God, I mean, you're probably looking at your phone at the time you're driving, which is embarrassing. So you don't see those signs, but you know, or maybe you're looking at your GPS in your car because it's got directions on it. You know, you're probably still looking at your phone, but realistically, hopefully looking in your car and you're looking, you're looking at the radio or your Spotify or whatever. It's crazy how little those signs

actually play a factor in our lives anymore. And even magazines and all of these things, like how often are you really looking into those things? It's becoming so, so small. I remember Gary Vee one time saying that, you know, a billboard was like less than a 1% return. Like it was less than one. It was like 0.67% or something ridiculous he said. So, I mean, that's just something to think about. So a future, uh, definitely has social media written all over it. With so much going on, social media allows us to stay updated with everyone's business. It's what gets us to listen to the news. It's what gets us talking. It's, you know, where we find posts about jobs. It's literally everything

right now. I mean, you know everything about every one of your friends because you're on social media. You know everything about your family because you're on social media. I mean, it's insane. If you've ever thought about opening a business or starting a business or anything that doesn't have to do with social media, you're already at a massive disadvantage. I'm just trying to get this out to you guys right now. We are a nomadic lifestyle of people that without fail, we are going to go to our phones. It almost seems like every millennial right now over the age of 25 has read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, or the new rich, expanded, and updated Tim Ferriss version of Dreams of Ditching

the 9-5 Lifestyle. These are all a bunch of books that basically tell you how you can work a little and earn a lot or work a little and get a lot done. This is really the new millennial way. How could I get all of this stuff done as fast and efficiently as possible and spend as much time as possible on my own kind of doing things that I want to do? And I mean, the hard part right now is that a lot of people,

they really want everything right now. And that's like the true, I'll call that the younger end of the millennials right now. It's like, I want everything right now. And that's like the true, like, I'll call that the younger end of the millennials right now. It's like, I want everything right now. You know, I mean, I see people who talk to me all the time. I can't say I see them. They write me all the time. They're like, hey, man, like, how could I get to where you're at right now? And I ask them how old they are, and they're 23. I mean, even my own manager in my gym right now, Summer, I hired a manager for the gym and she's like, oh, I want to get to this point. I want to do this. I want to

do that. And I'm like, you can and you will. It's just going to take a little bit of time. I mean, I'm 33, you're 23. I mean, if there was a way to skip all that, man, I wish I knew it when I was your age. That'd be awesome. But really what it comes down to is going above and beyond all of the time. I can't tell you how many people that I've met, people have come into my life, they've moved to the gym to work there, they've flown from all over the country to meet me or this or that, and really what it comes down to is you have this original idea of I'm going to do anything to get to where I want to be, and then maybe you get there and you slack off a little bit.

Or maybe you get there and it's not as bright and beautiful and amazing as you thought, so you slack off a little bit or whatever. What it really comes down to is always going above and beyond what you're asked to do. If you go above and beyond what you're asked to do, whether you want to do it or not, it is always going to end up amazing for you. Like not just good or even great. It's always going to be amazing. Someone is always going to notice it. Even if you're the guy at McDonald's and you're making fucking way more stuff, taking on more tasks than anybody else, you're eventually going to get, you know, promoted to a point where, you know, someone's going to be like, even this job is like, it's, it's not good enough for you. You know, like someone's going to get promoted to a point where someone's going to be like, even this job is like,

it's not good enough for you. Someone's going to notice these things. It's a reason why I hired Summer, the person I'm talking about right now, for my gym is she always went above and beyond all the time. And she's always going to have opportunities ahead of her if she keeps that going, if she doesn't get comfortable and she just keeps that going. And that's really the biggest secret behind my life is I think that when I worked in other gyms that weren't mine, I always did more. And I never expected anything out of it. It's just kind of the person that I was.

And I always wanted to be respected by everybody. I never really cared about what my boss thought. It was more of like, well, I want to be the best coach in the gym. I want to be the person everybody comes to for. I want to be the person that everybody comes to for personal training, or they have a question about something, you know, all these other coaches are great, but it's always cool to be the coolest guy in the room. I mean, why would you not want to be the guy that everybody goes to for all the questions for, you know, all of the workouts for, you know, anything. They're just like, you're the first person to go to. So when they have a job, or they have an opportunity, or someone comes to you and says, hey, do you want your own gym? Or hey,

do you want to do this podcast with me? Or hey, you know, whatever, all the things that have happened to me in my life, it's because I went above and beyond. And, you know, there was a lot of times where, you know, I didn't want to help people off your class, or I didn't want to do this, or I didn't want to do that. But because you always do it, it always puts you ahead of everybody else. And I think that's the starting platform for you to skip years and years of grinding. You're just going to have to grind super hard instead of pretty hard for a couple of years. And it's going to just fast forward you to just a whole new level. Like summer to be 23 and be managing a gym right now. That's like one of the best gyms in the world. One of the most respected gyms in the world. I mean, that's an

amazing accomplishment. And you've already skipped my life by like four or five years. Like when I opened that gym, I think I was 27. She's 23. So I mean, you've already skipped, you know, a giant piece. And that's just because you had that super, super grind mentality. And now what it really comes down to is, hey, you know, I'm listening to this right now and I'm a coach and I want to become a manager or I'm a manager and I want to own my own gym and all of these things. So now what I really want to get into is should you even do that? Right now we are dealing with a huge community of people right now in the CrossFit space specifically. I mean, I own a CrossFit gym. It'd be weird if I didn't talk about CrossFit. So, I mean, really you have, you know, including the people that are in my gym coaching right now

and, you know, the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people around the globe that are doing the open and they really want to adapt this competitive lifestyle for fitness which i think is great you know you want to adapt it you want to live that lifestyle you want to put everything you have into it but what i can tell you right now and i mean it hurts my feelings a little bit to tell you this but it's so so true and people need to understand this is when i was competing, when Rich Froning was competing, I mean, Rich Froning is still competing. When a lot of people who are still competing today who are OGs, those are the people that are making money. And a lot of the new people coming up,

they're not making any money. They're not really setting big waves in the community. And there's a couple reasons for that. So whenever you're the first to do something, you always are going to be, you're going to have a leg up on everything. I was one of the first people to start online programming for gyms and for individuals and, you know, to have the app and all the things. And, you know, no matter what, because I was one of the first people to do it, I'll always probably be successful in that field. There's a lot of people coming up now and they're doing well and they're doing okay, but it's harder to get that traction going. It's almost like coming into Instagram right now late in the game and trying to get 100,000 followers.

It's hard to do. You know what I mean? So when you're a new athlete and you're trying to come into the space, you want to make a name for yourself so you can open a gym and you can do this and you can do that. It's going to be very, very hard to do. You're gonna have to come on the scene and just be like, yo, Matt Frazier, move the fuck over because I'm about to win this shit. And then all of a sudden, wow, you know, you have this thing going. However, that doesn't happen very often. And it's actually such a low percentage that I would think that even 1% is a large number to put on it.

So, I mean, you have less people going to the CrossFit Games every year than you have getting drafted to the NFL. If you think about it. Like, realistically. I mean, that's how hard it is to get to the Games. And then that's how hard it's going to be to win the Games. You know, I mean, that much harder to get that percentage to say like, hey, it's going to be this percentage of chance of this happening to you. However, in my opinion, you could become very famous on social media. And I don't even need you to be very famous. I brought this up a couple times on my Instagram, where I've interviewed people who have 10,000 followers. That is not an incredibly

difficult number to achieve. They have 10,000 followers and they're making, you know, 30, $40,000 a month on Instagram. I know people who have less than a hundred thousand followers who are making a million dollars, well over a million dollars a year on Instagram. What happens is a lot of people look at these huge numbers and they get, you know, what is that word? Like they feel like, you know, they don't deserve anything because this person has a million followers or whatever. And in reality, you know, I have another company that kind of manages Instagram, you know, superstars and manages their products and what they sell and stuff like that. And I can tell you right now, the ones within the millions of followers,

they're usually not doing that well. It's usually a girl. She's really attractive. She has like 95% creepos, you know, following her stuff. You know, it's very, very common. Or even a guy who's a very good looking guy. They got a bunch of girls that are looking at their stuff, you know, whatever. There's not a lot of dedicated people that are just willing to listen to everything that you're saying, read every caption you're writing, and then really like dive into the lifestyle that you're providing to the world and like ready to purchase things. A lot of times too, people will have an Instagram that gives away so much that when it comes time to buying something, it's like, why? There's a lot of people that are,

you know, they give out a workout every single day on their Instagram. You could follow them every single day and, you know, have your workout covered. But then when they sell a program, it's like, well, why would I do that when I could just follow your gram? That's why someone like me, like what I like to do is I like to show all of my programs. I like one day to be a bodybuilding workout, another day to be a high be a bodybuilding workout, another day to be a high intensity interval bodybuilding workout, another day to be the sweat workout that I do in my gym or the CrossFit workout or a daily D workout, which is just dumbbells only for people who, you know, that's what they need to see. That's what they need to hear. You know, like they're at

home all day with kids or they only have limited equipment in the garage. They want to see that kind of workout, you know? So I like to show all of those things i like to also include the nutrition stuff and you're not getting i mean you're getting a lot of free content but you're not getting free programs or anything like that that takes me you know fucking 30 flights of 10 hours a piece and all this downtime like months and months and months of my life to put that together that's the only reason i don't give those things away for free it takes a lot of time for me to get a program out. And then there's a lot of other stuff that people don't realize. I mean, you got to get copyrights

on stuff and trademarks on stuff and make sure that no one's stealing your stuff. I mean, people steal my stuff all the time. I can't even tell you how many people have taken my stuff, reworded it, said they invented it. I mean, it's insane. I mean, I had someone buy a whole bunch of my eBooks. They reformatted them, changed the color and then turn it into Spanish and tried to sell it in Mexico. And someone sent it to me and I gave the person an actual video back. And I was like, hey, dude, on your Instagram says where your gym is and it says everything about you. And I will literally fly there in the next couple of days and beat the shit out of you if you don't take all this down and get rid of it or whatever and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I mean,

it was an actual message in a video and the guy freaked out or whatever. But, you know, regardless, these are things that are kind of, you know, going on around us. And these are the things that, you know, we need to be aware of. So when you're on this, when you're on the social media space and you're trying to build something for yourself, what I think is very, very important is being yourself one, creating something that is unique to you, but isn't necessarily reinventing the wheel. There's nothing worse than watching these people on Instagram and they're doing movements that are just so ridiculous because they're trying to be unique that, you know, it's just dumb. Like you look dumb in my opinion. Yes, it's great to switch things up. Yes, it's good to try new things and blah, blah, blah.

But like, you know, everything's been done. You know what people buy? Like people buy you. Like if you're really cool and everybody likes listening to the way you speak and everybody likes, you know, the way that you do the exercise, maybe the way that you dress while you're in the gym, maybe, you know, there's so many little things, like maybe you do little tips, maybe you do something that makes you unique, you don't have to reinvent anything. There's so many things out there right now that are all doing incredibly well, and they're all kind of the same thing. Clothing brands, workout programs, food, like food items. I mean, there's a lot of things that have like the same ingredients,

but it's a little bit of different marketing. They, you know, it's the same materials in the clothes, but it's a little bit different marketing. You know what I mean? It's kind of all like that. So a lot of people get discouraged. That was the word I was looking for earlier. And they don't need to be. You can do exactly what you like to do and put that out there and do it in such a way that gets people excited. and you're going to fucking win because you are going above and beyond what the next person is trying to do. So like being above and beyond is always going to win. So whether you're working for yourself or somebody else, look on Instagram, look what everybody's doing and go above and beyond that in some sort of way. Create a way to really get

people to see your stuff. So what you should be looking at is, you know, how could I create a challenge? How could I create, you know, a funny video where you get people to tag each other in it in some capacity? So like, you know, I created this workout called buddy building and it's like, hey, me and another guy, we picked two body parts. So for instance, the first post I ever made was chest and back. I picked three chest movements. He picked three back movements. We decided we were going to do a hundred reps. We decided we were not going to do any rest between stations. We shot through the gym. It took us like an hour to get this thing done actually, because we picked pretty heavy weights and it was an amazing workout. And we were done and we said, you know, tag your buddy

and blah, blah, blah. And it crushed. I got like 700 comments on this thing. And I'm not used to getting that many comments on a photo. So you guys could do things like that to build a little bit of hype. And then obviously, as you start to build hype, it's always good to meet up with other people who have similar followings. Don't hit up the dude who has 200,000 followers when you have 2000. Hit up the other dude who's got four or five or six or seven. Eventually, this starts to just kind of roll. And again, you can't expect all this shit to happen overnight. So, you know, if you're 23, please don't be looking at, you know, people who are 30 that

have a couple hundred thousand followers and, you know, they have this or that. It's an unrealistic expectation. You don't need to do that to yourself and get all bummed out for no reason. So that's another way to just kind of get it going and get it moving. So when you open a gym, for instance, let's start talking about, let's start comparing social media to opening a gym. When you open a gym, you have now single-handedly kind of ruined, no, not ruined, but like you've paused a lot of stuff in your life. You know, if you're going to be grinding, if you want it to grind on social media to create something, it's kind of on pause. The gym requires a lot of work. The amount of money that you're

going to have to put up front is going to be substantial and it's going to take you a couple years to even get that back. The salary that you're going to be making for yourself is going to be substantial and it's going to take you a couple years to even get that back. The salary that you're going to be making for yourself is going to be very small so you can pay that back. And you have a lot more responsibility. So with that responsibility comes a lot more stress, a lot less sleep, a lot less working on other things that you really wanted to get done that you're going to find out, you know, it's going to take you years now, maybe instead of months or something like that. So I think the gym, it's for a very particular person. It's somebody who absolutely needs to own something. They need that satisfaction of owning something. They need it. And then they want to build off of that, but they're willing to let, you know, a good three, four, five years

go on pause. Like, honestly, like if you want other shit to go well, like for me, like everything started going well after I'd owned the gym for about four years. That was when things started to get good for me because I had a bunch of employees, you know, starting to run the gym without me. And I'm at almost six years now. And it's the first time I feel like I can leave and not be super stressed out. So, I mean, and now my online businesses that I have, I've, I think I have six online business businesses, and then I have one gym, actual brick and mortar. So I've about seven different companies. Um, I know you're probably like seven, what are, what are all they? I'm not gonna get into all of them right now, but, um, those different companies now, all of those together, almost, I mean, like basically what I make in a month in the gym now, I can make pretty much most of the time I'm making that almost daily.

Like on average, if I had to average the month out. Not always, but, you know, sometimes. So you have, you know, that giant, giant, giant difference. And I'm wondering now is like, well, if I started this path before I opened the gym, I wonder if I would still be here. Or I wonder if because of the gym, all of these things happened. So now let's go back to the part where I talk about people that are the OGs in the community and then the people who are trying to come up. So a lot of the OGs in the community,

Rich Froning, Jason Kalipa, other people who have, you know, I mean, whoever, CJ Martin, he owns Invictus, Ben Bergeron, he owns Comp Train, all those different big gyms that you hear about and you, you know, you're like, oh, those guys are doing great. Again, it's so hard to get to that point right now that it's easier, in my opinion, to get to a good starting point on social media. And where Greg Glassman kind of wants CrossFit to go at the moment and what he's doing with it at the moment, I think that even if you were to get to this point now, like where the OGs are at, like who own gyms, who have online programming, they're, you know, putting information out to the world. For you to get to that point,

even if you got there, by the time it took you, the amount of time it took you to get there, I don't think that the sport would be anywhere near where it was at as it was when it was building up for us, who are the OGs now. And I don't think it would be as lucrative for you. And I'm being a thousand percent serious here. So what I'm telling you right now is if you're an athlete and you're a younger person and you're like, I'm going to do this and this and this, I'm going to fucking murder myself so that I can own a gym and this and that and blah, blah, blah. I can guarantee you right now. I mean, I can't guarantee, but it's a very high percentage that it's not going to be

nearly as lucrative as if you just built yourself up on social media right now. And I'm going to tell you a bunch of reasons why right now. I went online. I got a bunch of different stats. And there's 10 stats in particular that are very, very interesting to me. And I wanted to go over each one, one by one. And I wanted to go over the, you know, little reasons why each one is important. So going into this, I want to highlight before I start going with each stat.

I'm a strong believer in going all in on social media right now versus owning a brick and mortar business. Not because I think it would have been better for me. I'm just saying, I think that it would be better for you right now at this particular time. So stat number one, and all of these are coming from, it's wordstream.com. They did a whole study and they put these 10 stats up and you're, you know, you're welcome to go check them out. So stat number one is 89% of millennials trust recommendations and from friends and family more than claims by a brand. So almost 90% of people are going to buy something just by referral. So if I put something out, AKA the carb cycle challenge or the earn your carbs challenge or high intensity interval

bodybuilding book or kettlebell book, anything that I've made over the last couple of years, as soon as someone sees that it's okay and they like it and whatever, I have a 90% chance of somebody buying it. So somebody tags it, they buy it. My overhead is zero. My overhead in my gym right now is $11,000 a month. I didn't buy $200,000 in equipment. I bought an ebook that costs a couple hundred dollars to convert. I mean, the amount of profit margin that you're making on something like that is insane. And you have a 90% chance. So now when you're in a community and you have people telling their friends to join your gym, you probably have a pretty good rate also. But there's so many other gyms in the area. There's so many different things to think

about. You know, you're only selling, you know, one particular thing to somebody. Let's just say they're a 24-hour fitness person and you're a CrossFitter and you want that 24-hour fitness person to come to your gym because you love it. They might not ever do it, but if you're on social media, everybody who's following you and everybody who's in your little wormhole, they might not ever do it. But if you're on social media, everybody who's following you and everybody who's in your little wormhole, they're probably into similar things. So when they recommend it, you have a higher chance of a turnover. Between testimonials from friends, influencers, and celebrities, the highest conversions in my experience have come from testimonials, which is also being reiterated in this last staff that I

just talked about. So even higher turnover than having a celebrity shout you out, than having someone else shout you out, than anything else out there, a testimonial is the way to go. So you go to my page, you'll go to jimryan.com, you'll see my challenges, and you'll see the testimonials from all my people. The testimonials are really what pushes things over the edge because they're real and people want to relate to something that is fucking real. If you say, you know, I can do this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're like, yeah, sure. Go fuck yourself. And you go to the next ad or you, you know, you go, you keep swiping or whatever. But sometimes you see something that feels real. You see the before and after photo,

you read the caption, you know, it's in that person's DM. It can't be fake. You know what I mean? It's not like a quoted testimonial that you're like, oh, well that could, anybody could have said that. It makes things fucking real, man. It really makes a big difference. And you're making a difference by creating those testimonials and people know that and people can feel that and it makes you genuine. And it's why things like YouTube are fucking out of control because you can't lie on YouTube. I can make a bunch of photos, a bunch of videos on Instagram and not talk and act badass, but you want to follow me around on YouTube. You want to see my personality. That's a big reason why there's a lot of people that are big on Instagram or big on something else. And they won't do YouTube because they don't want you to see that they fucking suck as a human being.

They're on YouTube. They're not on YouTube because they can't do all the things that they're actually talking about. They can't portray themselves in such a way that's being portrayed on their Instagram. I mean a lot of these people, they don't even go on podcasts. I've hit up so many people. I'm like, please be on my podcast. I want to talk about this and that and blah, blah, blah. They can't because they fucking can't talk because they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. And they're just the face of a product. And it's really disappointing. But I think I just ranted a little bit. I'm sorry. That was stat number one. So to reiterate on that,

89% of millennials trust recommendations from friends and family. Stat number two, nearly half, 44% of millennials are willing to promote products or services through social media in exchange for rewards. So whether you want to spend money or not, you want to promote a product or not, you have a 50-50 chance of someone doing that for you in exchange for something for free or cash. So a lot of people on Instagram want to make a living on Instagram. So you reach out to them, tell them, you know, promote my product. I'll give you something for free.

I'll give you $100. I'll give you this. I'll give you that. They do it. And you're instantly starting to get traction right away as long as you choose the right person and it's the right product. So again, recommendations from friends, nearly half are willing to help you promote.

You have an incredible platform. Imagine having a product and then wanting to be on a billboard on the side of the road that we talked about earlier. That's gonna cost you tens of thousands of dollars and maybe not get the return. So now you're on social media and you have this kind of return. I've talked about this before. It's like going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars and maybe not get the return. So now you're on social media and you have this kind of return. I've talked about this before.

It's like going to a casino. The fucking – the machines are free and you're not pulling the handle, right? You're in a casino. Motherfucker, if you keep pulling on all these handles, you're going to win something. And you're like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm just going to go home. Like legitimately, it's that crazy, right?

Nearly half these people are willing to do it for free or a little bit of money and you have 90% willing to go off recommendations. That's insane. All right. Again, these are coming from wordstream.com. Stat number three, 84% of millennials report that user-generated content on company websites influences them more on what they buy than anything else. So report-generated content, that's basically testimonials, right? So 85% of people that are buying stuff, they see that somebody else uses it, whether they're marketing it or not, and it's an 85% turnover. That's fucking insane. I don't even want to elaborate on that because it's very similar to number one and two.

Stat number four, more than 90% of millennials own a smartphone. Damn. So now let's say that you're going to market something that is on the radio in your car. What are the chances? It's just something that's going to be on a TV commercial, what are your chances? Something that's even on Netflix, what are your chances? But 90% of people on a smartphone and like a quarter of the world is on social media, I mean, come on, your chances are getting gnarlier and gnarlier and gnarlier. Now let's say you own a gym. How many people in your area can actually come to your gym for the price that you want them to pay?

Now we have 90% of people in the world that have a smartphone and you have an item that's $10, right? How many people do you need to make a million dollars, right? I think it's 100,000. It's not hard to do. These numbers aren't very hard to do, I fucking swear to God. You just have to go about it the right way. You have to take your time, and you have to just nudge yourself in there over the years, all right?

Reach out to the right people. We're talking about these little things step by step. Hang in there with me. Stat number five. 77% of millennials participate in loyalty reward programs. So that doesn't necessarily mean, hey, Ryan, what the fuck does that mean? Like, we're not talking about Marriott Hotels and fucking Delta Airlines and shit here. No.

But what I mean by loyalty programs here is yes, those things, but also now you have an email, right? You have somebody's email once they buy something. You have someone's email once you give something away for free. Let's talk about that real quick. When you're on your Instagram, when you're on the social media world, when you're on something internet-based, you try to get as many people as you can to sign up for an email service where they either get something for free. They get a free blog post. They get a free seven-day trial of something. They get a free discount code to something. Whatever it is, it's not that I fall for them.

It's like I sign up for them all the time because I want to get something for free or I'm actually genuinely interested in something. And then you get their email and it's up to you now to not be a fucking piece of spam, right? I want to say piece of shit, but your piece of spam is even better to say. They're both kind of the same thing. You got to give out good stuff. Don't just email people and be like, hey, what's up? It's another day of just getting an email and there's literally fucking nothing in this thing hey dude guess what new book is out 20 off hey dude so happy to have you on board for everything you just want to say thank you and i'm giving this away for free blah blah blah things that really get people excited about reading your your emails and make them short, right? The shorter, the better.

The more precise, the better. The better the message right away on the first fucking few sentences, the better. And that, in my opinion, is a good loyalty program. So you get people on, you keep giving them stuff, keep giving them stuff, keep giving them stuff, and it does create loyalty. I know being part of the First Form family for supplements,

they do handwritten letters to everybody. Handwritten. Andy Frisella, he hires people. He's an entire department that all they do is handwrite letters and say thank you for ordering from us. And it feels very, very personal. And it really makes you want to order something from them again. And that's where that loyalty comes in.

It's crazy. I even heard Andy Frisella talk at a mastermind meeting in San Diego at some point and he was amazing to listen to and hearing him say that really resonated with me. I was like, wow, handwritten letters, huh? And then when I got a sponsorship with them later on, they give me handwritten letters all the time even though they know that I know

what they're doing and everything but it's like, man, it's just so cool. It's such a great thing to add. All right, moving on. Stat number six, 61% of millennials are worried about the state of the world and feel personally responsible to make a difference. So if you're creating a product, let's say a product now instead of a fitness regimen, you know, 61% of these people really want to make a difference. So, I mean, you have natural-based products, plant-based products. People are talking about vegan.

People are talking about this, talking about that. Like if you have something that is in favor of saving the fucking world, you have an extra 60% chance of doing well, in my opinion. Let's just say even the container that you put the protein in is not plastic, it's something else. That's like biodegradable. Or you have all these different things right now. That is kind of cool. A lot of people are going in that little bit of a hippie route.

I don't think the word hippie is a good word anymore. I just think it's someone who gives a fuck. How about that? Someone who gives a fuck about the earth instead of a hippie. I think it's, I think it's a good thing to be called that. But now you have a 60% chance of doing better in that. You know what I mean? Like, let's say your workouts are more holistic and it's more for people who just want to do body weight and yoga and stuff like that. Those things are exploding. I can tell you right now, the dude that owns Romwod, I remember a couple years ago, he was making a million dollars a month on the app.

Zero partners. 100,000 people spending $10 a month or something like that. And I remember just being like, holy shit. I can only imagine where he's at now. It's got to be in the multiple millions of dollars a month now. And he's the only person. And he's, you know, making money off of zero equipment, zero really overhead really.

And yeah, just another quick example there. So stat number seven, 84%. Are you getting the hang of right now that everything is like 60 to 90%? I mean, these are big stats. Number, oh, sorry, number seven. 84% of millennials don't trust traditional advertising. 84% of people that are millennials right now,

which is our target demographic, they don't even trust these like regular traditional advertising methods. They only trust social media. That's insane. Because now you have an 85% chance of selling some shit. That's not on a billboard. That's not on a TV commercial.

That's not on Netflix. That's not here. It's not there. It's not in a place where it's going to cost you a lot of money to invest to get a return. 84%. These numbers are fucking staggering. The reason that they're staggering and the reason that you feel like, holy shit, I should be doing something right now,

the biggest thing between you and these fucking return numbers is doing the goddamn thing. I can't tell you how much right now. You just need to fucking do it. Do you guys remember teams? Travis Kennedy, Navy SEAL, went to my gym a couple episodes back. I mean, it's probably a bunch back now. But we talked on my show about what he really wanted to get into.

I think we talked a little bit on the show. We talked a lot afterwards. And he's really into shooting. He's really into a lot of these things that he learned when he was in the teams, aka the Navy SEALs. And he's taken a lot of that. He's taken a lot of my advice. And he started promoting himself on Instagram. He started making YouTubes. He started making eBooks, and he's doing incredibly well because he said, he's like, man, you know what?

I wasn't sure, and then you told me, and I just fucking started doing it, and it's working. He doesn't have a huge amount of followers, and he was already starting to make some cash. If you just start to do it and you are that person that people like to follow on some level, even if you only have 3,000 followers, 2,000 followers, it's going to grow. Someone's going to tag them in something. You're going to start to do little things that get people hyped and you're going to start to build a little bit of a following. You're going to start to build a little bit of trust and people are going to want to buy stuff, but you can't keep thinking about it. You have to just do it. Even my online programming for the gym, I wasn't sure if I was good enough

and I didn't want to put it up there. You know, I wasn't sure if it was going to be worth X amount of dollars. I wasn't sure if I was the person that should be saying this because I didn't win the CrossFit games because I didn't do this because I didn't do that. But I put a lot of work in. I believed in the product and I put it up and it did incredibly well with zero advertising, only referrals. I didn't even want to talk about it because I was kind of embarrassed by it in the beginning because I was like, I just don't know if I'm that person who should be putting this out. And it really bothers me now to even look back and even think that way. I probably could have done so much better faster had I just really believed in myself

and just really pushed it really hard. And in hindsight, who gives a fuck if somebody thinks that, you know, you're this or you're that or whatever. You know what? I think more people are jealous than they actually give a fuck about what you're doing. Like you think that, you know,

oh, you know, I'm not that person or I don't want to look weird or whatever. Most likely, someone's actually going to be looking at your stuff and being like, you know, I don't, I, I'm not that person or I don't want to look weird or whatever. Most likely someone's actually going to be looking at your stuff and being like, you know what? Like fuck, he's putting himself out there. Like, I wish I could do that. You know, I get that probably more than anything else. A lot of people are like, you know what? I could never do what you do. I could never go out there and say this or say that, or, or blah, blah, blah, blah. Or even people who look really good with the shirt off and take my shirt off and talk about this and talk about that. And it's like, you know what? blah, or even people who look really good with the shirt off and take my shirt off and talk about this

and talk about that. And it's like, you know what? I'm telling you, people are really gonna respect it, to be honest. If you're trying to sell something that is obviously snake oil, then obviously you're gonna lose respect and you, you know, Godspeed,

you really shouldn't be in the game and you're probably gonna go down. But, you know, more than the insecurities that you have about talking about something and trying to build a business online, a lot of times people really respect it. And they think what you're doing is dope. So, I mean, honestly, just fucking do it. It doesn't really matter. If you fucking fail, it didn't cost you anything. You just went to the casino, you pulled a couple handles, and you never found the one. No big deal. All right. Moving on. Number eight. Millennials

account for more than seven in 10 Snapchat users. So I don't have a lot to talk about on Snapchat, but what I can say is that these demographics also move over to Instagram and Facebook because I'm about to get to that right now. So let's blend number eight and number nine together. I'm just going over the 10 that are on this particular website that I liked. So with number nine, we have 90% of millennials can be found on Facebook, right? So now we have a humongous demographic that not only has a smartphone and not only is looking for referrals and not only is looking for people that they like to relate to and testimonials, but they're also on all of these networks that we're all on all the time. And I guarantee you're

on them because you're on a podcast right now. And a podcast is considered another form of social media, in my opinion. So if you're on this, you probably swiped up on a link on my Instagram or on Shrugged Collective's Instagram, or maybe you just follow, you know, on the website. But even that links to all these different social media things. So now we have just a massive, another humongous stat that is going towards making money in our pockets. And I have a little something that I wrote about this real quick too. The game changer for Facebook marketing is that the platform has a vast amount of personal data

for each user. And I can attest to this for sure with all of my ads. It knows about our educational backgrounds, past, current occupations, critical life events, including engagements, new jobs, divorces, whatever, geographical locations, net worth, and just literally everything. It's been in the news recently for fucking taking over votes for presidency and just craziness, right? So if you are not on Facebook and Facebook is connected to Instagram, you are already doing yourself a 90% disservice. All right. If you're only on Snapchat, if you're only on TikTok, you're only on Twitter, you are really doing yourself a disservice. You really want to be, especially if you want to create a business for yourself. So you need to be on Facebook. You need to be on Instagram.

And I think, you know, I mean, you guys all know who Gary Vee is, but he always talks about putting out 100 pieces of content a day, I think that's a little bit much, sometimes I get annoyed by that stuff, and it bothers me, but you should be definitely putting out at least like 10, probably 10 pieces of content a day, in my opinion, on a level that's like doable, That guy's got like a whole massive team or whatever, but should be putting out at least one good post a day. Should be putting out a couple of stories every day. And I really think the stories is what really pulls people in. You know, that's like the stuff you can't really fake. It's, um, you can't really edit it. It's, it's a story and it's live

and it's, it's, it's real. And I think, you know, that's the, that's what people really relate to. Sorry. And then in your posts, you have to be the same person that's in that video. You can't say things that don't really translate to the video, the way that you are in that video, the way that you proceed yourself, the way that you show yourself in all these other social media networks and all these other things. And you can't necessarily put things on there that don't really go with your brand. So like a lot of people, they're like, man, every time I try to do something on Instagram, like I post, you know, this or that, it doesn't do that well. But then I post this and it does incredibly well. Well,

your audience is really kind of confused. Like, I mean, you have a lot of friends on there at first, right? You have a couple hundred followers or whatever. They're all mostly your friends. They're not really interested in you building yourself as a fitness entrepreneur at first, right? Once you start building that trust and showing how much you love it and how important it is to you, but you're not doing it in a cheesy way, they're going to start to like it. They're going to start to respect it. They're probably going to be like, you know what? I'm proud of him for putting himself out there. Like I talked about earlier, that is really, really important is finding what your best content is and just hammering it. So what you're going to

need to do is let's say you're in the fitness industry, but you're not really sure if you want to post workouts or you want to post nutrition or you want to post your daily life stuff. Because sometimes just daily lifestyle stuff just crushes. They're always in the gym or they're always out working out or traveling and working out or something like that. There's a lot of these different little genres that work in there, but it's like the outfits they're wearing all the time could be murdering. It's these bodyweight workouts. It could be the stuff they're doing inside the gym that's different. It could be the stuff that they're eating while they're out. It could be one very structured eating routine. It could be a mixture of all of it. And for me personally, what really helped me a lot in the beginning was talking about my gym, which I thought was interesting. You know, there's so many people on social media and I looked a certain way with my

shirt off to everybody, you know, I'm pretty known for my abs and stuff like that. And like everybody, I always thought everybody wanted to see that and they did, but they wanted to hear about the gym. They wanted to hear about the business stuff. And then eventually they just wanted to see workouts. And then eventually they just wanted to see nutrition. And I felt these little things happen kind of as they happened. I mean, they kind of shifted from one thing to the next thing to the next thing to the next thing for me, but it was all fitness-related stuff. But what I wanted to say was what I really wanted to post

was all the fun stuff I was doing. You know, it was like my first time in Norway, and I was hiking, and I really wanted to post all those photos and I did and it did terrible. And then I went somewhere else and I was like traveling around and doing some more hikes or whatever. And they did like, okay, you know, like people didn't care as much about it. And when you, there's like one particular time of day where you're going to get the most amount of views, you're gonna get the most amount of traction. And if you're only going to post once a day, you want that post to really be about like what you want your business to be, what you want everything that you're

working towards to go towards. So like, do I want to post a hiking photo? Now I kind of can, because a lot of people follow my life as a whole and they really respect all of it now. They're starting to realize who I am on a large scale. It's not just workouts. It's not just the gym. It's not just this. It's not just that. I like to say that fitness is my life. All of it is my life. It's a huge deal to me. There's a lot of people that just being in the gym and getting jacked is what they care about and that's all they care about and that's fine and they're going to have all those people that want to follow them and to be honest the lifestyle that i live and what i'm preaching is probably on a smaller scale of people who really care a lot of people are they're specialists so that's why you have like a crossfit gym that doesn't do very well with a yoga gym inside because they'd rather just go to

the yoga gym it's the same for people who are following people on Instagram. They don't really care necessarily about my traveling. They'd rather just see somebody who travels specifically and see all the cool shit that they do and then come to someone else's page and look at just fitness stuff and then go to someone else's page and just look at clothes and then just look at food and all these different options that they have. You always want to like, even when you go to buy a car, like what's the best car for somebody who rides bikes and does and serves and stuff and wants to hold all these things in their car? Or what's the best car for the track? Because I want to go really, really fast, right? Like everybody wants the best of everything. So it really is nice to have that true, like, best mentality of what you want to put out there because it's going

to get you the best results. So a lot of people like to want to put out there because it's going to get you the best results. So a lot of people like to just throw everything out there and just throw up on their fucking Instagram and kind of see, you know, if that's helping them and it usually doesn't and then they wonder why and it's like because you threw up on your Instagram. For now, to build your shit, I think you need to stay in one specific genre. It's going to make a huge difference. It's going to help you build. It's going to help you stay on track. I think when someone has a throw up effect on their Instagram, it kind of shows the ADD about you. Like you're like, I'm not sure if I want to do this. I'm not sure if I want to do that. I like this, but I like that. And it's like, you're,

you're so all over the place. I mean, a lot of us are when we're young, right? Like I want to own a gym. I want to be an athlete. I want to be a doctor. I want to, you know, travel the world for a year. I want to do this. I want to do that. I don't know what I want to do. Your mom calls you, Ryan, what are you doing? Like, I don't fucking know. You know, I'm so freaked out. I'm just going to cry. You know, I don't know what I want to do. I'm gonna go get a job at fucking In-N-Out. You know what I mean? So that didn't happen, but that could be like, you know, it could be close. So I never worked at In-N-Out. Anyway, you know, it's like, that's what you're, you're giving that, that effect to people who are looking at your page, honestly. And I try to tell people the

same thing is like, your page is almost like a business interview. Cause a lot of times you might get tagged or, you know, you do one of these things to get a lot of hype on your page and then people go to it and they're like, oh, this is really cool. And then they decide if they want to follow you or not by looking at your page and they're like, oh, well, he posts kind of a lot of weird stuff. He was in an ice cream store and then he was talking about how to be shredded and then he was doing something weird and then all of a sudden he did this challenge. So he's not worth me following, right?

Happens all the time. So once you decide that you're going to start building a business on your page, I think you go through and just delete all that dumb shit. If you want to have all that other stuff up there that means a lot to you, that's like family stuff and your nieces and nephews and your favorite ice cream cone or whatever, just make another page for it or put it on, you know, some other platform or something like that. Because if you want to make a business out of social media, the social media has to be the business. So last stat that we have here is stat number 10, and it's millennials are 44% more likely to trust experts who happen to be strangers than advertisements. And 250% more likely to be influenced by blogs or social network sites. So this goes back to like, you know, referrals and all that too.

But 50% more likely to be in the hands of strangers and people who are calling themselves experts. So not even real experts, right? So if you truly believe in something and you're putting it out there and it seems pretty legit, even though you're not a legit expert in the field, you have about a 50% chance of doing really well. And I think there's a good part to this and there's a bad part to this. So there a bad part to this so there's there's people out there who are incredibly smart they are absolutely the person who should be crushing

on social media but they're not because they don't have the personality they fucking got all A's in college they're fucking writing papers that are you know in pub med they're all peer reviewed journals they got their doctorate I mean it's fucking crazy how smart they are but they can't talk to people they can't't relate to people. They don't, you know, look like what they're talking about, like practice what you preach. They're fat and they're talking about how to get shredded. You know, there's like all these different parts that are, that are moving here that are either making or breaking their business opportunities. So for you, you know, you just have to have a pretty good handle on what you're talking about and be able to get it across in such a way that you absolutely believe in it.

It absolutely is the truth. And, you know, these outcomes are going to happen. And you have a 50% chance of making it rain. You know what I mean? I mean, it's just crazy. Social media right now is just, it's so, so intense. And it's really taking, I have a feeling that we're going to have a lot more people really just coming out of high school. They're just going to skip college and go straight into social media, to be honest. I can't tell you how many people

I've had come to my gym, specifically women who basically are 17, 18 years old, and they're already making $4,000, $5,000, $6,000 a month off of social media. And that's what they'd be making coming out of school and becoming a nurse. And they would have had to go to school for a long time. And then after they're a nurse, they get pretty much, like I talked about earlier, they get capped out at a certain amount of hours, a certain amount of salary. Maybe they have to go back to school to get their master's, to get to a next level. They're always on set hours. It just changes the game completely.

So now you have stuff like that happening, and it's very, very apparent, and it's happening around us all the time. But what's really, really important here, and I really want you guys to take home with this whole message completely is, you know, a lot of people are coming to me all the time, writing me messages, visiting me in my gym. They see me when I'm traveling. They have all these questions, and they really want to make a living on social media.

And I really want to help you guys out here, and I really want to express what the main points are here. So number one, if you want to open a gym, you want to open a brick and mortar facility, please understand that, one, you are going to have massive overhead. Two, if you're in the CrossFit realm right now, and you think that by having that, it's going to give you all these other opportunities, it may. However, I feel like a lot of the big opportunities that were to be had are already over, my friend. And I think that we're coming onto a new step of social media soon. I don't know what it is. Nobody does. But you know, like every like, pretty much like every five years, something new comes in.

And as long as you're at the forefront of whatever that is, it's going to fucking destroy owning a gym. Whatever it is, right? I mean, owning a successful Instagram account now destroys owning a gym. It destroys owning a chain of gyms, depending on how you're doing it. So that's my opinion on that. If you choose to open a gym, just realize it's going to put you a couple years behind on some other goals that you have in the future. Another thing is just like really, really going after what it is that you want to do, just putting your head down and just hammering it down.

Like if you went to school, you know it's going to take you four years to get your degree, right? It just is. Just be cognizant of that. Like when you start going into this social media thing, you can't just do it for a couple weeks, couple months and be like, you know, be cognizant of that. Like, when you start going into this social media thing, you can't just do it for a couple weeks, couple months, and be like, you know what, I'm fucking over it. You know, it's like, no, like, keep putting it out there. Even Gary Vee talks about, like, for 10 years, he was talking about all the stuff he's talking about now. And now he's reposting all that 10-year-old stuff, and it's getting a lot of traction. It took him a really long time. If you guys watch Netflix, like the Eddie Murphy delirious thing, which is like from the 80s, 70s, I think it's 80s. It's like now one of the biggest

comedian episodes right now on Netflix from the 80s. You know what I mean? Like, it just takes a while sometimes for shit to kind of take off. But what you can't do is copy other people. Don't copy them like, you know, word for word, you know, movement by movement. Go look at someone else's thing and repost it or something like that. Be your own self and do it in your own way. Like your mannerisms, everything you do, like the way you move your hands in a video,

the way that you look in the video, what you're wearing in the video, the background in the video, all that stuff makes a difference. Like I know that I'm cooler being in California than I would be if I was back home in New Jersey. I mean the gym looks different. The vibes are different. We have the beach. We have palm trees.

I mean there's little things that just grab people's attention. It gets them really, really excited. There's a big reason why a lot of people live in California. There's a big reason why all the Hollywood stars are here, all the big social media stars are here. It's like you have all these people who wish they live in California. If you asked everybody in the world, not everybody in the world, if you asked everybody in the country right now,

if you could live in any state, where would it be? I bet you have a huge majority of people that wish they were in California. So when you look at social media as a whole, see someone from California, I don't know what the stats are on that, but I'm going to say it's high up there for people who want to follow somebody in California, especially because they're in some sort of outdoor gym, and there's some sun on their skin while they're working out, and it's fucking snowing where they are. It's a huge thing. Another thing is after you start to build a little bit of traction is after you start to build a little bit of traction, after you start to build a little bit of trust,

after you start to get a little bit of a groove of what you really want to do, just immediately start making products. Start making e-books. Start making a subscription sort of thing because it's referral-based, guys. We just talked about this. It's a 90% referral based business. Even if your little $10 product is, is good for this one person and he tells five other people and then those five people tell five people, this one person from buying something

for $10 just made you 200 bucks, you know, and that's just $10. Or maybe it's, you know, you have a hundred dollar product now and I have a hundred dollar products and you know, those go out to hundreds of people or thousands of people or tens of, even tens of people. It just depends. The next thing is once you get to a point where everything is starting to roll, because a lot of people think they need 200,000 followers, they need this, they need that. You don't fucking need it. I promise you on everything in this world. I have all these other businesses that I haven't talked about. And a lot of the information from that is coming out in this podcast. And what I can tell you right now is if you don't have the followers, you can pay to play so you can start paying for ads. So like, let's say you have 10,000 followers. I don't really suggest

really getting into ads unless you have like at least 10,000 followers. Cause you can at least do, you need to do swipe ups and such, which you need at least 10,000 to have swipe ups. So swipe ups being like in your story, like, Hey, I'm selling this swipe up. You can check it out. You have to have 10,000 for that. So once you have 10,000 and you can get into the marketing world, what you could do is, you know, the amount of money that you're spending hits a certain amount of people. So if you have a million followers and you put, you know, $20,000 a month in your budget or $10,000 a month in your budget, or let's just say a thousand or whatever, any number, it's going to give you an X amount of number that people get to see on top of that.

And if you're smaller, you put more money in, it gives you X amount of people on top of that. I have some friends that, you know, they've created different programs and I've had them on the show. Actually, I'm not going to say who this is particularly, but he made $6 million last year. And I want to say right now he has, well, at the time he probably had about 200,000 followers on Instagram. $6 million last year, had about 200,000 followers on Instagram, but6 million last year, had about 200,000 followers on Instagram, but spends about $30,000 a month in ads. Right? So $30,000 a month in ads.

You might think like, holy fuck. But I mean, if you're getting that kind of return, it doesn't really matter. You know what I mean? So yeah, that's paying to play. So if you don't have a huge following, it's not a big deal. You just have to pay a little bit more to get the same type of returns. So totally, totally doable. Another thing is when it comes to a lot of people want subscriptions, you know, they like so obsessed with subscriptions.

It's like subscriptions are great. But right now, if I'm asking you right now, hey, I'm literally talking to you right now, specifically you listening. Do you like subscriptions or do you like one-time payments? Personally, if I was asking that to myself, I fucking hate subscriptions. I don't care if it's $3 a month, fucking a dollar. I don't care what it is. It bothers me that it hits my account every month. I love buying a one-time product, but that's just me.

So let's just say 50% of you are like, you know what? I'd love this subscription at a low price and blah, blah, blah, blah, and all these different reasons. Then, you know, then subscriptions are great for you. But I bet half of you were like, you know what? I'm with Ryan. I really don't like that whole fucking subscription thing. I like the one-time fee done and I'm out the door.

That's why it's important to have subscriptions and to have products, right? I'm a huge fan of having both. I think that you should have a subscription, and I also think that you should have a one-time fee product. It makes a big difference. Sometimes the one-time fee product can be almost like an example of a subscription product, and after they buy that one-time product, they might be more inclined to buy the subscription product now because they liked the one-time so much, aka a fitness program that you have 30 days on a book and then you have daily on an app. That's one way to go about it. Another way, another thing that's really important for you guys is to start building that email list. Give something away for free.

You know, for me, I give away seven day programs. So they're like seven days worth of like some of the 30 day books that I have. And you could sign up for like my newsletter or just sign up to get a seven day program. And then I email it to you. So that helps me quite a bit to, you know, get some emails so that when I do have a new deal or when I do throw a new challenge, I just reach out to them. And it's really, there's nothing weird about it. It's not scammy or anything like that. It's just that, hey, these people are already following you. How do you let them know you have a new product? Because when you post something on Instagram, it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone's going to see it. I almost want to post the same thing three times a day just to make sure that all my people see that I have something going on. But a

lot of times I'll have a challenge. I'll throw something. I'll talk about it all week. And then a couple of days later after it's closed, they're like, oh man, I didn't see it. You know, like I wasn't on social media this week. And that's why it's nice to have the email. A lot of people check their emails. So having that email is very, very important. So the first thing you need to be doing, start figuring out what you're going to do. Start building that email list. Get to that 10,000 followers. Start paying to pay a little bit. Start paying to play a little bit. And start really putting yourself out there. I think it's super, super doable. And I think that it's super, super admirable as well. I think I look up to people who, you know, they believe in themselves and they talk in such a way that, you know, really makes them stand out. I follow people

all the time on social media that don't have a lot of followers and, you know, I just respect them for what they do. Or I follow someone who has a lot of followers because I like the way they do something and I want to adapt to some of those techniques or I want to adapt some of those styles or, you styles or anything like that. There's so many different people right now that are making money on social media and they're making way more than people who own brick and mortar businesses and they're able to work from anywhere. They have way less stress. I can tell you right now that owning my gym is by far the most stressful thing that I have. One, because it requires a lot of time to build the

vibe. I mean, I put the years in, so the vibe is there, it's set. But to continue the vibe, you really need to be there or hire someone in place who has that same type of vibe as you do to kind of hold it down. And then also things happen. You have to fire coaches, you have to talk about stuff that's's like very inconvenient, you know, um, things happen to, to members in the gym. Like people get, you know, they have relationship problems or money problems and it really is like time consuming. It's, but having physical people in your life is very rewarding. So I can tell you right now, there's really no amount of money that's really going to subsidize that. So I mean, I do think for me, having both is great. But what I wanted the majority of this podcast to be about is like, what's going to be best for you. And I think a

lot of people think that owning a gym, they really want to own the gym, because they think that's going to open up all these other opportunities. And I think it can right now in terms of personal training and in terms of having your own style of a gym. But I don't think, I really don't think that you opening a CrossFit gym right now is going to be a good idea. I just don't. In terms of if you see this big lucrative plan in front of you, like I'm going to open the CrossFit gym, I'm going to start this online program,

I'm going to start all these different things out of it. The sport is going down. The amount of people in CrossFit gyms is going down, mainly because, not because the training philosophy is bad. It's great, actually. It's just that a lot of people thought they could make a quick buck, so a shit ton of them opened right away, and then they realized it was way too much work, so they closed.

So the hype of wanting to be part of a CrossFit gym and being in a CrossFit gym is still there. There's a lot of people who still love it, and as long as you're programming correctly, it's still out there and doing well, like my gym. But a lot of the people who thought that it was going to be this great lucrative thing, they tapped out. So I just think that let's just say right now, you still want to own a gym. You're still all in on it and you're like, well, maybe it won't be across the gym. What I think is really, really good idea is to work for a big company that charges a lot of money for personal training. And you eventually kind of branch off and start your own thing, but kind of take those clients with you that you built up. Like, let's just say like at Equinox or something like that.

You're not allowed to take clients with you. That is definitely absolutely against the law. But I have, you know, some friends, you know, they were trainers at Equinox and they went and opened their own facility. And then from that facility, they do a lot of filming and stuff inside the facility. And a lot of the people that they were training in Equinox or whatever, they found them, and they started gravitating towards their place. And it was like $160 a session at Equinox, and now they're charging $100 at their own space. They have this small space.

It's super pimp. And then now you have a guy that, you know, one of my friends, his name is Alex, he was having five to six people a day at $100 an hour. And then he couldn't take on any more people, so he hired more trainers. And then he was taking $20 a session from all of them. And he had about three trainers that were booked full time. So now he's making about $1,000 a day. And then he does filming and stuff inside the space. And the space is small. It's maybe 1,200, 1,500 square feet. But he has all the dopest equipment and it's decorated really cool. And when he goes on video, it looks good and he can promote online programs and such from there. And I think that is the way to go because your overhead is super low. I think it's great because it's less stressful. You only have personal training. You don't have to worry about classes.

You don't have to worry about opening the gym on time. You don't have to worry about, you know, really employees and such. It's just, you know, if they don't show up for their client, they don't show up for their client. They don't get paid. It's nothing really on you. You know, that's them. So if I could do it all over again at this point and I was starting at this point, that's what I would do. I would probably open a small personal training space, make it pimp, you know, borrow some money to make it look cool. Start, you know, your online platform, get a really nice camera, get a fucking nice camera. Stop with the iPhone. Think about the people that you like looking on social media. They have a nice camera. What's a nice camera? Honestly, any of the A7 series, Sony A7,

the A7Rs, the 2s, the 3s, there's a new 4 just came out. Those are great cameras. It does come down to the lens as well. If you want that really dope blur in the background, a 1.8, an f-stop 1.8 is going to give you that dope blur in the background. And then having someone, you know, just know how to hit all the right angles. It just takes a little bit of practice. It's really nothing. A couple days, maybe a couple hours, a couple minutes, depending on the person. If you've watched a lot of social media, it's very easy for you to hit the angles that you want personally and then show them what they what you're looking for. And then and yeah, that's like that's the that's the fucking that's the way to do it. Honestly, like getting online content out there, having small overhead, having less stress, and just

creating quality products for people to follow and information for them. I mean, a lot of people are not reading books anymore, guys. They're not reading books. They're looking at social media for information and guidance. So if you have a cool channel that they like to go on and maybe laugh and learn something and you look good, then they're going to want to follow. They're going to want to listen. They're going to want that to be their source of information for what they do when they go to the gym. And when you have hundreds of millions of people or billions of people that have the ability to buy your stuff,

it makes it a lot easier for you to make the same amount of money that you would start with when your gym started getting on its feet and getting going with way less overhead. If you buy some small space, start some personal training that kind of, you know, that feeds the space, let's say it's just your personal training just pays for the space, it pays for the bills, electricity, and all that, and then your online program is making a little bit, but you have a good start. Let's say you just took a loan out and just that loan was to pay yourself for the next year, enough money to live. And then by the time the year was over, I guarantee you'd be, you know, where you want to be. Whereas if you open a

gym, you need to take out fucking half a million bucks, hire a bunch of trainers, do all this, do all these different things. And it's a way gnarlier commitment, way more stressful. Let's just say everything bombs out. It's a way less bill and commitment, way more stressful. Let's just say everything bombs out. It's a way less bill and pill to swallow at the same time. So I don't want to go on too long. I really wanted this podcast to be about 45 minutes to like an hour at top. So people would see, I like the short type of podcasts when we talk about stuff like this. And we're at an hour and eight minutes right now. So I'm going to get out of here. If you guys have any other questions, though, make sure you guys hit me up on social media, Ryan Fish, R-Y-A-N-F-I-S-C-H. And I can answer some quick questions.

I can do phone calls, but you guys got to book those out, to be honest. And then, honestly, you guys are welcome to come to the gym anytime. And if I'm there, I will give you a couple words or whatever. I've had people take me out to coffee and, you know, we go chat about different things. Another thing is if you ever wanted to just fly me out, help you open a space, obviously I would charge something, but we could talk about, you know, how the whole thing goes and, you know, the demographics of your area and how much to charge, or if you're going to do a personal training space or whatever, I definitely have good insight on all that stuff. And I wouldn't want any of you guys to do it the incorrect way. Because it does mean a lot to me

for people to succeed in the space. Because I remember what it took for me to do really well. And it was, oh my God, it was fucking incredibly stressful scenario. But I just gave you all the things that I think I would be doing at this time. And then a lot of the reasons why it's good to go into social media, those 10 points that I talked talked about and just all the other stuff in general so i hope you guys loved this show please uh repost it tag me if you did and once again of all the podcasts you guys get to listen to you listen to mine and that makes me super happy because there's so many out there and if you guys ever want to look at what i'm what i have what i going on, go to jimryan.com. That's G-Y-M-R-Y-A-N.com.

I have all of my nutrition challenges right now that are killing it. The Earn Your Carbs Challenge is my newest one. You guys can't sign up for that now because it's closed. But you can buy my original Carb Cycle Challenge, which was a $100 product because it was part of a challenge. Now it's only $80. And it's not a challenge. You don't have to turn in your photos or anything.

And you guys can buy that now. So it only 80 and it's not a challenge. You don't have to turn in your photos or anything. And you guys can buy that now. So it's cheaper and it's not a challenge anymore. You guys can go and get that. A lot of people asked me about that when I was running challenges for it. So now it's available just by itself. And then I have my High Intensity Interval Bodybuilding books and the kettlebell books, the dumbbell books.

And I have that new product with Mr. Richard Diaz, one of the best running coaches in the world, called the Dark Horse Training. And it kind of shows you where your heart rate needs to be at during a lot of these crossfit workouts so you guys can get better at your capacity work and it really does work really well we're doing a huge study right now with a bunch of really great athletes who've all been to the games and they're all posting stuff currently about it so it's doing really really well. And then attached to that is a running video. That was kind of the reason we made it was because we made a YouTube video that just went absolutely viral. So we made a little bit more detailed version of that. So if you've ever had any issues with running or you want to, you know, perfect your running

and you wanted the information to come from one of the best running coaches in the world, that product is on my page as well. And I absolutely love that video. It's, it's fucking awesome. It just tells you so much about running. That's just amazing. A lot of people, you know, they just go and run. They don't never listen about like how to run or what's going to be the healthiest for your body and such. And he goes over all that, which I think is great. So yeah, if you are a listener of Real Chalk, which is what you're listening to right now, capital letters, Real Chalk, will get you 20 to 25% off,

if I can't remember correctly. Almost every single product in the store, besides the nutrition and the Dark Horse programs, but everything else. And yeah, guys, again, thank you. And I will see you guys next week. If you guys have recommendations on some other shows you'd like me to talk about,

go ahead and shoot those over to me on social media as well. I'd always love to talk about some new stuff. Being on solo is great. It's hard at times, but it can be good as well. So again, hope you guys loved it. See you next week.