Barbell Shrugged - Performance Nutrition, Supplements, and Fat Loss w/ Matt Musgrave, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #518

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

This week only: Buy One Get One Free using code "iwantabs" Buy EMOM Aesthetics: Glutes and Abs  Get EMOM Aesthetics: Arms and Abs FREE   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   The story of Barbell Shrugged Partnering with Walmart Uncovering the good is a sea of snake oil supplement industry  How to bring better living at a low cost to meet Walmart audience How does strength tailing fit into the Walmart business model How to leave an imprint on global health through fitness and nutrition   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa ———————————————— Please Support Our Sponsors   Fittogether - Fitness ONLY Social Media App   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

This week on Barbell Shrug, Matt Musgrave, Merchandising Director, Walmart Incorporated, for all things performance nutrition and fat loss. Do you know what that means, all those big words tied together? That means that my dude Matt Musgrave is in charge of all the supplements that go onto the shelves of Walmart around the world. Not only that, he's also in charge of all the supplements that get sold at Walmart.com. That is insane. That's like one of the coolest parts about being at Barbell Shrugged is that I get to meet all of the people that are so insanely important in the world of strength conditioning that nobody

even knows about. You don't even know that this guy's down in Bentonville, Arkansas, just front squatting 275 by five, listening to Barbell Shrug, trying to do the one-ton challenge, doing EMOM aesthetics, grinding it out in his garage, making things happen. And do you know how important of a job it is to control one of the largest distribution centers for performance nutrition, for supplements, all the pre-workouts, all the creatines, all the protein powders that exist in this world, they got to come through him. And it's really important to know that the guy that's bringing barbell shrugged to the shelves of Walmart, front squats, 275 pounds for five reps and i've seen them snatch 100 kilos you just need to know

this because anytime you walk at a walmart specifically to go buy walmart or barbell training programs fat loss cardio and muscle gain little little thing that was me right there go buy our program san diego los angeles palm Palm Springs, Orange County, and Vegas. The guy that's making the final decision, that's putting his name next to the products he's buying and putting in your hands is a real student of strength. He listens to Barbell Shrugged. He's personally responsible for making sure that you have quality nutrition products in your hands. That's really important because I was so impressed with where Walmart is going, the people that they have in charge of making really important decisions, all of it.

It's super important that the people that are making the decisions for millions and millions of people on a daily basis inside the stores of Walmart are living by the code of strength. Listen to Barbell Shrug, follow our programs. And I'm truly grateful to know Matt, to have met his family, to have dinner multiple times, shared barbells, everything that I consider to be important in life. And I hope you enjoy this episode. I had a blast recording it. We were inside the coolest Walmart you've ever seen in your life.

And they have a Walmart clinic there. There's actually personal trainers in there. Walmart's making a massive, massive impact in the health and wellness space. And there is nobody making a bigger impact in the way that millions and millions of people live better, save money, get the best products in their hands at the cheapest price than Matt Musgrave. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner. That's Doug Larson. Coach Travis Smash is in the house. And that is the director of merchandising for Walmart Global. All the Walmarts you've ever seen in your entire life, right? Performance nutrition, Matt Musgrave.

Welcome to the show, man. Hey, thanks, man. By far. I've never been so excited to go to a Walmart ever in my entire life. We're at the nicest Walmart I've ever walked into. You're here, man. We've been talking about this for eight months,

and this is the coolest partnership. I can't believe that we're actually making this thing happen. It was like sharing a barbell. Next thing you know, we're kind of kicking some ideas around, and now we're going to the shelves. It was wild. I want to get some context into your background, but first you want to explain just for everyone else that's watching

how we got here, what the backstory was with eight months ago? Yeah, I'd actually love for you to kind of tell us what's going on. Yeah, sure. Because you have the new initiative. I could talk forever. Let's hear what's going on at Walmartmart all right all right so uh we were i've been plugged in with a with a prop with a non-profit organization that works with veterans helping them acclimate after their term and time in the service is done and helps them go to a camp trains them to be personal trainers and helps plug

them in with in jobs to use fitness to help, um, help them acclimate the overall goal of reducing veteran suicide. So I'd, I had been plugged in with them through a supplier that I do business with at Walmart, started hearing about that. And I was like, I want to talk a little bit more about fit ops and a little bit less about supplements and started going down that path. Anyways, they have a, they host camps and one of the camps was here in Northwest Arkansas. Sure enough, one time I was going and they were like, Hey, do you know, uh, Anders and Doug are going to be there. And I was like, what, what? I've been listening to those guys for like eight years. Uh, and so it got to lift weights with you guys. Um, and,

and during the course of that, one of my goals with Walmart is, you know, in charge of merchandising over pre-workouts, post-workouts, protein powders, protein shakes, and different functional beverages as well as ready-to-eat snacks and things like that. But that is such a small component of what healthy lifestyle means. And so my overall vision is building trust and bettering lives, trying to figure out how to make it easier for people to live better. And that incorporates programs. That incorporates nutrition. That incorporates incorporates programs. That incorporates nutrition. That incorporates stress management. That incorporates sleep, recovery.

There's so many more things besides just supplements. And so you guys being pros with programming and having tons of amazing content and a great follower and just a good handle on how to do that thought of a, you know, let's try to figure something out. It's actually really funny because you came up to me at Olympia when we were working um doing a one-time challenge out there and you were like what's up dude i was like great to meet you hey uh that guy over there is probably the one you want to talk to because i don't know why walmart would want to talk to me with a podcast i don't get it here we are it's like a year later now after mr olympia since it's probably not

happening this year by the way you're watching you're watching the show for eight years, so presumably you have a good training background as well. You've been in CrossFit for a long time, weightlifting for a long time. I remember we did the one-ton challenge at FitOps back in February, and you fucking smashed. You did really, really well. I was really impressed. He's a good lifter, a really good lifter.

Oh, are you? What are your numbers? That's a great question. I haven't lifted in a little while. He's been doing EMOM aesthetics now. Yeah. That's right. He looks it, too. He's looking great question. I haven't lifted in a little while. He's been doing EMOM aesthetics now. Yeah. That's right. He looks it, too.

He's looking jacked. I'm trying to. 225 is my snatch. You snatched 220 that day. I snatched 220 that day. Didn't quite hit 225. Jerk is always a kicker for me. Just clean.

That's all I ask. I like to clean. I think 285, not a lot. That's good. Back squat, 345 is the highest I've hit back squat. So not a huge weight. And then deadlift. I've never really quite mastered the deadlift,

so I've only ever deadlifted 345. We'll work on this. We'll work on this later. We've got a whole week. All this stuff. But I've been working. So my whole journey, and this is actually part of why I'm so passionate about. I never thought I'd be with Walmart doing stuff with fitness and wellness.

I didn't have any training experience growing up. I played baseball just for fun. My dad was always like, I didn't have any training experience growing up. Like I, I played, I played baseball just for fun. Like my dad was always like, as soon as it's not fun, and he did an amazing job. He was like, as soon as it's not fun, don't do it. I don't want you to get burned out. I want sports and activity to be fun for you and enjoyable. And it was like, it was a blast, but I never went to a gym. I was intimidated by weights, like all the way through college. My wife and I got married after college and somebody at my office was like, Hey, I started this thing called CrossFit. And I was like, peace.

Don't want to do it. Anyways. He kept talking to me, kept talking to me, kept talking to me. I ended up showing up there. And that was the first time I ever lifted. Uh, and that was, that was all it was it love at first sight or did it take you a couple of times? So my wife is a competitive, she's really good at track. She runs 300 meter hurdles hurdles, 4x4. She just had that switch where you can just suffer. And so my motivation happened because she kicked my butt forever.

And I was like, I just want to be a little bit – I want to beat her in a workout. Yeah. So that was what it was. Did you beat her? Have you beat her? I have now. Okay. Took a while.

It took probably two years before I could beat her. Awesome. Hurdles amaze me. I get such short legs and terrible terrible hips i'm just like i couldn't get i'd have to like like two leg jump over or something oh man of all the things that you could of all the departments you could work in though how does how do you even get into walmart to be i mean you really are one of the most important people kind of in the strength conditioning field to be, I mean, you really are one of the most important people kind of in the strength and conditioning field to be able to direct traffic to quality supplements and products. How do you even decide that that's the angle and where do you start to even break into this? Yeah. I was working for suppliers to Walmart. So I was at Chobani, Greek yogurt company before this.

And because I'd been in CrossFit gyms and building out my home garage, having some buddies over to lift, like there was just people in the Walmart community that I knew when this job opened up the previous job that I had, which was the buyer over performance, nutrition, weight management. Um, he was like, Hey, I don't know that you're really that qualified, but I know you care an awful lot about this. Would you consider applying for this? So my original goal was not to do that role. But when I heard about that, and the funny thing was three weeks before I had that meeting at Onyx Coffee in downtown Bentonville, I was sitting there and I told my wife, I was like, I don't really want to move to one of these cities with a headquarter job with some

of these other companies that I was doing. I don't really know what I'm going to do. I wish I could touch like supplements within Walmart. And three weeks later, I'm sitting in a coffee shop having a conversation about it. Yeah. On top of that though, you've seen every single pitch from every single supplement company that's ever existed. Like their goal is to get in here to be able to have the reach that you guys have. How do you actually choose who makes it, who gets caught? What is that process? Good question. It's an Um, it's an interesting, it's an interesting industry because Walmart in this category isn't really, hasn't have a great

reputation with a lot of customers for having quality stuff. And so a lot of these brands have traditionally been really hesitant to want to talk with me. I'm actually the one reaching out saying, Hey, would you like to have a conversation? Like Like, no expectations. I just want to see if our strategies could align. We could give you the ability to give your brand more access to more people than what you have today in the channels that you can do, whether it's e-com, whether it's in certain retailers, whether it's in specialty, naturally, wholesale, all those types of things. So it's actually been a little bit reverse of probably what most merchants experience,

where normally they're like, there's a floodgate of people wanting to come and this time like when i first started was more going out and saying i know that brand's credible has a big following i know that brand does a really good job on social media and trying to go and build relationships with them to start building building trust and starting so like a very conscious push toward higher quality stuff i mean we're in the walmart health area right now which is a brand new thing i imagine that that's a part of like trying to push a high quality health and information, uh, advice, et cetera, for, I'm assuming it's Walmart. I'm assuming a, an affordable price point for, um, everyone hopefully eventually worldwide. Yeah. That's the goal. Yeah. And I think, I think the, you know, Walmart's whole model, save money and live better.

There's not a lot of flash in what we do, but hopefully we bring a lot of efficiency and a lot of scale. And then also in like healthcare with Walmart health, a lot of transparency to pricing of what stuff is really worth and, and how you can pay cash for things that you never thought you'd be able to pay cash for. I know to me being from a rural part of North Carolina, like hearing all this makes me super excited just because it affects my family. Like I come from a family, there's only two of us, and there's a big family. Only two of us have gone to college.

So the rest of us grew up there, got jobs there, and lived there. And, you know, Walmart is, man, it's pretty much like the center of the community where I'm from. And so, like, to think that some of my family will be able to go there and potentially get introduced to health and wellness is exciting because it's not right now. Like cancers, it's in western North Carolina where I'm from, the cancer rate is higher than anywhere else.

And pretty much all of the least, the last I checked, was one of the highest cancer rates in all of Americaica not to mention obesity is just like runs rampant so it it it warms my heart to think that that you know walmart who is like you know pretty much runs all rural communities are doing something to make it a little bit healthier yeah and we're in here right now which is like the the wellness clinic walmart clinic what is this big push that you guys are making in the health care industry is this kind of like are we in the beta test right now that's getting kind of spread around the country yeah this is this is a beta test i think they've got eight ish sites and and looking to see what's what's productive what's sustainable

what costs the right amount what's's the right locations, what types of geographical areas, demographics, those types of things to plug into next. But, but this is, this is definitely one of the strategies. Um, obviously that's not the organization that I reside in. So I'm not really privy to a lot of that stuff, but I've been out and visited a lot of these sites. And to your point, Travis, like the feedback when you, when you even just go to the airport and that you see the Walmart badge and, and they're just like, thank you. Yeah. Thank you for being here. Like this, when it's, when it's six o'clock and my kid spikes a fever and I can't take him to the doctor's office, I can go to the Walmart health clinic and be in and out within 30 minutes with an antibiotic for the, for this

thing and get it before you even get in or, or just treatment or care, like so many different things, audiologists, like eye exams. And then you're connected right to the optical or you're connected up to the aisle. So the connected side of this is pretty powerful. So there's the medical side of it, but there's also the wellness side of it. We've got our boy Randy over there. He's hooking people up with programs, fitness programs. And you're doing consultations and things like that, working with people.

So there's a personal touch to it where you can go in and not just see a doctor. And if you're sick, get hopefully to normal. You can go talk to someone. More like being at a gym where you're going from normal to hopefully beyond normal to as best as you can be. That's right. Yeah, that's my passion behind it too is the wellness side. Like let's change the prevention curve altogether with some of these things and give access to people who have traditionally –

I mean I feel like that was me before I was introduced to CrossFit. And that on-ramp is not the same for a lot of people. Do you have a strategy to take it from like a clinic more like it looks now to like to more prevention and just getting healthy? Is that a goal? Or like how do you guys plan on implementing this? Yeah, that's a great, that's a right now. The first, the first focus was definitely more on the health side. And again, like this is, this is a totally different team

than me. So this is, so they, they had, they focused on that first. Cause I think that's the, that's the way that they were going to be able to make it sustainable and pay for itself as, as quickly as they could. Um, But for me on the merchandise side, like especially now that we have recently with a restructure, we're buying for the website as well as for the stores, trying to connect all those service elements when I think about downloadable programs or when I think about nutrition advice,

when I think about, hey, over in the store, all the weightlifting stuff is all separate from the supplements, but on the site, it just can be a click. A click away. It can be right away. So how do we take that virtual environment and start pulling together wellness packages, bundles, education, content? You say the word education, and I instantly think if somebody walks over to that aisle, how do they know the difference between Performix and some other brand? How do they know what's quality? How do they know the difference between you know performix and some other brand how do they know

what's quality how do they how do they decide and that's a really steep learning curve for so many people when they turn it around and there's a bunch of stuff nobody nobody really knows what a good protein looks like i don't even know i just go for the lowest number of ingredients how is there like a rollout plan or some sort of strategy for getting content into stores and educating people so they actually know what they're getting into? Well, Randy's crushing that for the fit-up side here on this site, right? Like imagine building trust with somebody who looks part is sharp, is offering you way more value than what they're asking for you. Telling your stories, helping you see the path forward, and then able to go and navigate that shelf for you. Like that right there is a huge, I mean, it would just be amazing.

Obviously, that's a very slow approach. The plan as far as I'm concerned on the merchandising side from site and store is try to partner with brands who are interested in investing in that kind of stuff and saying, let's elevate our expectations. Let's elevate the content. Let's, let's elevate the content. Let's invest in the marketing. Hey, cause, cause right now, like we've got all these tactics, but there's only so much that Walmart could do in the sports nutrition space. You need credible voices, people who have credibility, who know what they're doing that can come and say,

Hey, Walmart's got real things. Let me help you navigate this for you. Whether it's on brands, on supplements, or whether it's helping to figure out how do we get like one of the things that I've we we've talked about is building out on the grocery side the ability to get a custom meal plan then it auto populates to your grocery cart checks out and then and then you can come and pick it up or we've got grocery delivery it's literally delivered to your house hits whatever your goals are whether whether you're shooting for macros whether you're shooting for for keto, whether you're shooting for low-carb or high-performance or whatever those types of things are. You guys are talking about slowly integrating health into the lives of everybody. That's right.

I mean, that's crazy. I didn't even know we were coming down here for something that crazy. That's amazing. That's the goal. Is this your brainchild or like who thought to do this? No, I think – That's why he's on the microphone. I'm serious.

We found it. You're the guy. I have a ton of passion for that. But this is, within Walmart, there's a ton of people who are passionate about this. And they come from not just merchandising. We've got people in whole health and wellness organization. We've got people who are just from e-commerce. We've got people in accounts payable.

I get people coming and talking to me all the time about what we can be doing with all these fresh ideas. I'm just like a collection spot, trying to collect these things and figure out, okay, what's the next hurdle that we can go jump over? All right, take on all these things and just try to keep the guardrails on so we can start moving forward.

Where in the chain does that messaging come from? Because to get to Barbell Shrug, to being on the shelves and programming, there has to be somebody at the top that's saying, we're redoing all this. I mean, we've all seen people of Walmart, and it creates this bad stigma of the people that are showing up. And in all honesty, it's just not their fault. They just don't have the education.

Everybody wants to be healthy. Nobody wants to feel like crap. So where do they draw the line and say, Hey, no more. Now we're, we're really focusing on health and wellness. I think in the, I think it's just becoming more and more clear that there's a need in the market for this. And you know, anything starts with a business idea in terms of what's, what's the dollar value that you can assign to it. And then all of a sudden you start realizing like, oh, this is way bigger than a dollar opportunity. Yeah.

Like this is way bigger than that. And I think, honestly, we've got really amazing leadership within Walmart. Yeah. Even up to Doug, the CEO of the whole company, they care about this stuff. Like this isn't just an accidental grassroots thing. Like they're making, and this even is the Walton family, they're making statements about we can do better in terms of health we can do better in terms of wellness and it is a huge organization so turning the titanic takes a long time but

turning the titanic yeah so you might hit a little iceberg here and there just don't hit that big one yeah well i also think over the last like 10 or 20 years just strength conditioning fitness wellness all those things have just pushed so much more into the mainstream than than they used to be like bodybuilding kind of started with arnold and he pushed that into the mainstream and then crossfit came around now it's like that much more into the mainstream like you're working at walmart and you're doing crossfit and so you're passionate about it but like that probably goes across the board for like for so many people that are already working here all the way up to the executive level like they actually train and lift weights like 30 years ago you wouldn't go to

the ceo of a one of the biggest companies in the world be like you front squat today he'd be like what are you talking about no of course i didn't front squat today but but now you might do that for some some some select percentage of of any level uh of the organization so uh there's that we see that obesity and whatever else is getting worse and worse and worse in America. Health is on the decline. But actually, for the for wealthy people and for people that that have the means to to take the time to take care of their bodies, I think it's on the rise. And so it's kind of going two different directions. Like some people are getting healthier and healthier and healthier and other people are getting worse and worse and worse. And

now, because it's so mainstream, people are like, OK okay let's let's infuse this into you know businesses that you may not expect to have health infused into this is what they name and you said it the other day when you start talking about it and you start tearing up that like cross has done a great job he did cry he saw me on crossfit brought you know health and wellness but it's to a select group of people like you still have to be able to afford $120 per person, $150 a person every month. But that's still a huge part of the population that goes unserved. And this is that next step. Yes, CrossFit made health and wellness a little bit more out there for the public.

But this is talking about bridging the complete gap.'s taking those people bringing it with the masses and now everybody is starts to understand fitness and that's that it reminds me of like right now in the fitness and what i agree with you like there's it's a huge trend and it's mainly accessible to people who are wealthy who can afford it yeah and there's a lot of brands with a lot of amazing technologies that are targeted towards that group because it makes a lot of money. And not that that's bad. Like I really don't want to, I mean, I work for Walmart. My job is to literally deliver a profit and loss statement for the company.

So I understand running, running that business. But my goal is to partner with brands who want to say, Hey, let's shift that curve. Let's take those technologies. Let's distill them down. Let's make them easily accessible and start delivering them to literally hundreds of times more people than have access to them today yeah when you look at the culture inside walmart though i mean i feel like we're coming out of this maybe i hope we're coming out of it we got on an airplane today so

we're coming out of it a little bit but we just went through this like global pandemic scary everyone's sick and it turns out that these like comorbidities turn into this problem that when we start layering sickness on sickness and then wham we get hit with this big thing and it shuts the entire economy down are we really at a place right now where companies like walmart have to dig in and say we have to move forward this way whether it's the most profitable way or is, you know, I feel like we are in a place right now where all eyes are on us and that it's our responsibility to be moving the conversation to more people that don't have access to it. Is there a real conversation in meetings and things that you're having where there's a real personal responsibility where people looking in at themselves and saying it's on us now we have to

be better about what we're doing absolutely yeah i think i think we're all realizing that going back to normal whatever that means is not going back to pre yeah pandemic like normal will forever be different people's work work life balance and work locations and travel, like it's, it's going to be different for a long time. We don't know what that means, but, but there's a lot of responsibility, um, at Walmart leadership level that says, Hey, we know that transportation and ingredient sourcing and delays from overseas and different things are creating really significant profit pressures on our business, but we have to keep things the same for our customers.

We have to build trust with our customers. We are too accessible and have too broad reaching of an impact to be able to just pass this on. People need, people need better access. And we can't be the ones to shift on them as much. So there's, there's a lot of pressure to, um, on the medical side, is there any innovation going on as far as like going to see the doctors, like going to any other doctor's office, like the way, the way that you, um, the way that you schedule appointments and the way that you deal with insurance and whatever, whatever going to the doctor is like, is it the exact same here? Or has it been any radical shifts

or improvements or advancements in how you deal with customers? Do you know that? I've only been to the clinic as an observer. I've never really seen the inner workings of it. But I know the customer journey as they come in, they basically have a person at the front that they can talk about why they're there.

And they can just point them. I mean, like imagine just having one person that you go talk to and said, this is what I'm experiencing kind of regardless of what that is, they'll point you in the right direction. So it's hopefully a streamlined communication where you don't have to go point to try to figure out the right person and I'll see this person, person and this person, this person.

So I think they're trying to simplify, pull more things into one house so that you can just come and expect you're going to talk to one person. You're going to take care of it. you're going to get it taken care of. You know what's totally surprising is on the wall out here, which I know that the clinic's not your thing, but here's what really surprised me about where Walmart is going. There's an Ivy League doctor out there.

There's a girl who graduated from med school from the University of Pennsylvania is working in the clinic in Walmart. I'm like, what in the world is like Walmart? That gave me the impression that things are really shifting inside of Walmart. That's not what I expected. I expected like University of Arkansas. This is what I was thinking where I did not think you would have Ivy League doctors in this clinic in Walmart.

So it must be a shift happening. There's a huge investment in it. I mean, and I would say this, you know, this has been my, this was not my impression before I worked at Walmart, but it's become my impression now that if Walmart's going to make a statement and go and invest and do something, they're going to do it the right way. I see that. Do you have, I mean, you have probably one of the smartest training brains

in the world because you've been listening to Barbell Shrug so long. Sorry. It's all secondhand. You're definitely intelligent, for sure. You're hireable. You're hireable in the supplement section, for sure. When you walked in, so anytime I've ever walked into any store and I see the fitness products on there, it's like hand in the face,

and I'm just like, why? Why is this product here? This is serving nobody. And that transition though, because some of those products and those DVDs from back in the day where people are like air kicking in their living room, that stuff, it sells and has sold in the past what i guess kind of in your brain what is the real benefit of bringing somebody like barbell shrug that's like a pure like a real strength and conditioning company in and i would like to say that we're bringing real strength training to people that have maybe never even seen it thank god but anyway yeah that's right this is uh it's kind of scary to be honest with you that's right that's right well think about any awesome scary health tech, it's kind of scary to be honest with you. That's right. That's right. Well, think about any of this health tech,

whether it's like sleeping mats or lasers or infrared saunas or all that kind of stuff. Like that's not selling Walmart today, but that doesn't mean that the technology, that the education, that the results of that aren't legitimate. So I think, I think to that point,

instead of, um, I think it's worth partnering with, with people who are extremely credible and extremely knowledgeable and figuring out okay let's do the hard work because obviously this doesn't exist today let's do the hard work of figuring out what we need to do to make this accessible yeah to to make to figure out the model to get this to be accessible right we're not there with certain technologies and certain things like that but training's been around yeah for a long

time and there's a ton of perspectives on what that means and what you should be doing, what you can be doing. But I think even back to like, when I was in middle school and I was, you know, doing the, those spinning air kicks and videos with my mom in my house, that's like, and like, that was the beginning of a journey, right? Like that was a beginning of caring about something. It was a step that was better than not doing yeah so a lot of these have created on ramps and sometimes you get frustrated with the results if they're not quality but then it's a gateway drug there it is yeah here we go i think about that with with like with the scope of supplements that i offer in the categories that that i do have uh you know say over like we've got we've got to have an on-ramp you've

got to make something accessible and and it's a choice. It's a step better than what they would have made. You have to give them a reason to do that, whether that's a price point, whether that's an influencer and somebody that they believe in that they want to be like. There's some level of aspiration. Anybody walking down that aisle out there, they want to change something about themselves. They're not accidentally stumbling down that aisle and saying, you know what, that seems like an interesting product.

Like, you're in the protein aisle. You're in the weight loss aisle. Like you're wanting to make some type of change and there's a deeper story behind that. Yeah. We've talked a little bit about the actual customer and client makeup of who's in those aisles. And I went and sat there for three, four hours one day just to watch people.

And I mean, I'd never sat and watched people's buying patterns and it's actually, it was like two days before the country shut down, which was probably not the best time to be sitting in Walmart. Like, hey guys, what's up? I'm just going to sit here. But I guess if you were to kind of categorize and like put your client, like where are they in their fitness journey?

If they want to get better at something, where are they coming from to actually be able to find Barbell Shrug products on the shelves? Yeah. So, think about this fact. Walmart, within this sports and performance nutrition space, we only convert 25% of customers, roughly. I don't know if I can actually share this information well if we can't we'll edit it out he said 25 percent but that means that 75 of the people who are are already walmart customers and buy sports nutrition performance nutrition somewhere anywhere don't buy it at walmart at all so you have to think about a lot of these people probably have a training background. They do care, but they're not even coming into Walmart.

So we've got that pool of people to convert, people who are bought in and who want to purchase something better and want to help elevate themselves in supplement and nutrition and wellness and then now, hopefully, programming. Friends, we're going to take a quick break. I've got to tell you about my friends over at bioptimizers do you know that magnesium deficiency could be one of the greatest health conspiracies in history that's right health conspiracies in history first let's be clear magnesium is the single most studied mineral in existence it powers over 600 critical reactions in our body to date thousands of studies have proven it to be beneficial for the heart, energy, metabolism, immunity, sleep, pain, and more. It's pretty much everything.

The only two-time Nobel Prize winner, Linus Pauling, love to have him on the Shrugged show, recommended daily supplementation of magnesium, at least 350 milligrams per day. So do over 100,000 courageous doctors, including the top MDs from Harvard. But there's a problem. Most magnesium supplements fail because they are synthetic and not full spectrum. When you actually get all seven critical forms of magnesium, pretty much every function in your body gets upgraded from your brain to your sleep, pain and inflammation, and less stress. That's why Magnesium Breakthrough is different because it combines all seven essential forms of magnesium into one convenient supplement. With this one simple action, you can reverse magnesium deficiency in all its forms.

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until November 30th, go to buyoptimizers.com forward slash shrugged. That is where you are going to save up to 40% and they're giving away free bottles of Masszymes, which is my favorite product. P3OM, which is the gut health and the HCL breakthrough is also the gut health pill. Bioptimizers, B-I-O-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E-R-S.com forward slash shrugged. I also want to thank our friends at Organifi for the green, the red, and the gold. They're my lifesaver.

I already went through all of my pumpkin spice, people. We didn't even really get the leaves off the trees before I already smashed all the pumpkin spice that they sent me. I don't even know what to do now. I'm back to the green and the red and the gold. The green still crushes every morning. It's like number one. Do you hear the depression right now without having the pumpkin spice? I'm getting more scent though.

Don't worry. Yo, here's the deal. We're launching in Walmart. Do you want to know what that means to my nutrition right now? It means it's not that great because it's crazy. I'm going to write a whole book on how to get barbell shrugged into Walmart one day. It's craziness. But we're working really hard.

That means my stress is a little high. That's why I've got to get some more ashwagandha in my life. That's in the green drink, which you should get. I take the green in the morning. I'm not eating the salads. Everything's just a little off right now because we're working so hard to get this thing finalized and in the stores and on the shelves and in the hands. So check it out. Organifi, saving my life as always because vitamins and minerals are not top of mind right now. However, I can go into my kitchen right now,

which I'm probably going to do as soon as I'm done recording this. I'm going to take a little bit of water. I'm going to put two scoops of the green in. Bam. Now I've just got my daily dose of vitamins and minerals. I don't have to worry about anything. That's why it's so, so important for you to get over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Save the 20%. You're going to get a critical deal. You're going to get all the micronutrients you need to feel healthy love your body and the green go for it if they still got the pumpkin spice which i'm almost positive they're sold out if they're not i better get a lot of it um organified.com forward slash shrugged and then also our friends over at fit together f-i-t-t-o-g-e-t-h-e-r we are wrapping up this week you only have one

week left to get in to the body weight challenge in which you can win $600 in cash prizes. Also, we're giving away $600 in programs. That's a crucial deal because 600 plus 600 equals 1200. That's four digits worth of goodness. And trust me, the coolest part over there right now is that we just dominate. Like, Barbell Shrug straight up dominates the fit together app there's we have the biggest group there's other groups but they're not cool like us there's a lot of other people that show up from a lot of other countries but guess what barbell shrug smashes the fit together app so that's where we're having like real legit all

the listeners are getting together um If you are interested in meeting all of the other shrugged people, Fit Together is the best place to do it. It's F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R. Fit Together at the app store on all of your devices, on all of the companies that make cell phones. And I don't even know much about cell phones, but wherever you download things,

just look for Fit Together. F-I-T-T-O-g-e-t-h-e-r fit together go in there find me find the barbell show group come rage with all your friends but then you've also got the people who aren't even introduced to the space i think that's the broader pool of people sure and that's that's the people that don't purchase the category at all have no idea where to start need somebody to help them navigate the set. So for me, where that most likely hits is, you know, we know that obesity continues to rise. It's over 40%.

Diabetes continues to be a bigger and a bigger concern. And there's a lot of things that not saying that fitness and that exercise and nutrition can single-handedly just do some of those things. A lot of that is pre-existing conditions that you have a hard time doing something about. But we do know. There's a big chunk. There's a big chunk. It's going to make things. It's going to make things.

Talking about what Travis, does Walmart see itself as the center of communities? Absolutely. It is. I'm from the suburbs and when Walmart like pops up all of a sudden, like 50,000 houses grow around it magically. Do they know that they are, I mean, they have to realize that they are the center of communities and kind of

whatever they are, whatever decisions they make influences 50,000 houses times four to five people. Like it's an insane number of you know people that they are going to meet on a daily basis yeah yeah i wonder why i'm just curious you know so the people you said that um 75 of the people who go there don't buy i wonder if it's just like a trend i'll use myself as an example like i recently started buying my pre-workout I've got a problem I've heard about it he listens to it

6.30 in the morning when you're taking a some box squats 8 reps of box squats I'm still sore but so like I go there and it took me a while because I would see like I'm not even going to mention any brands there's a certain brand I like and I've seen it there and it took me a while because i would see like um i'm not even gonna mention any brands which are there's a certain brand i like and i've seen it there and it took me a little bit before

i'm like it's just the same it's the same i had to like talk myself into saying it's the exact same as that i go to some vitamin store so i just now started buying but it took me a minute before i like trusted it's just the same well now you know the guy. Yeah. But think about that. Imagine how educated he is in that. And that level of doubt that was still in there. Yeah. At that level, we got some stuff that we got to overcome. We need people who are going to invest and tell stories and help expand this reach.

Yeah, absolutely. When I go to a typical vitamin store or whatever, I go there and there's normally somebody. And then I'll ask them you know this is sad what's the best pre-workout is i mean i'm going to say what's the strongest is what i'm going to ask and so but like yeah there's just you know one to ask and so it's hard to buy you know but then i just started like just doing my own studies and i started buying you know recently from walmart especially since all this yeah i'm not i'm going to be a patron. Way to go.

But how do we convert that a little faster? So there's probably a year went by that I would go with my wife to Walmart and our kids, and I would look and see, oh, there's my pre-workout. But is it? So how do we do it quicker? Well, I guess one question I have, is it what you really want? Did we fulfill your need? Or what you really want did we fulfill your need or do you still want something slightly you know like no i think one of those got what i

want those biggest those biggest parts are real relationships that say like hey i don't want to have the less than version yeah like i don't want to have the step down like what it was that you're really going for i want to figure out you finally did get what i like and so actually you have it here too i saw it but like so yeah so and so that's and it's a better price point but like it's another thing like i knew it was a better price point but it took me a minute before i finally pulled the trigger but now i pull the trigger a lot too much but yeah yeah it's almost like a cultural thing and in the commercial and the way that the marketing happens at walmart it's starting with this beta clinic that we're in right now and our boy randy actually talking to people and having real relationships but what is has there been a marketing push in in what's

going on i mean like the everyday low prices if that's the main messaging that's going out but if they're going after this like live better approach have they started pushing that in in the marketing yeah absolutely yes and walmart also doesn't like to do stuff as as much like something like this isn't going to be a nationwide pr yeah to say hey we're in dallas georgia we're in elm springs arkansas look at at what we're doing. It's like, let's let, let's let the results speak for themselves in that area. And let's let those people like, let's serve those customers that are really there rather than aspirationally serving everybody, telling everybody how we're serving.

We're actually just going to go into it. I think, I mean, there's just, there's too many examples of the natural disaster stuff that Walmart does. There's a whole emergency operations center that's got a protocol for flipping the switch and just knowing how to get trucks to places to deliver stuff when there's hurricanes or when there's wildfires or when there's different things like you don't get credit for that kind of stuff you don't you don't have to you just have to know that you're really actually making a difference that's so cool i think are you seen

as the weird one bringing kind of like this new approach to what you're doing? Like, are you telling people that you're, you're bringing training programs to the nutrition or performance nutrition section? And they're like, what training programs?

What is that? Yeah, absolutely. A little bit beautiful, but that means we're doing it right. Yeah, that's right. That means we're doing the right spot.

Well, and that there is a little bit of that, like in, in, you know, in merchandising it, we're all super competitive. Yeah.

We're like, who's creating something new? Who's really innovating? Who's delivering their financials? So there's like some healthy competition. It's a little bit like anywhere. But so there's some, you know, it'll be interesting what happens when we launch it. Because, right, it is a downloadable. You're competing with other departments within Walmart.

You mean like you're competing with sports equipment? That type of thing? Sure. Yeah, and protein is becoming more and more of a buzzword. So we've got protein shakes, but then there's protein drinks over in grocery, and there's protein drinks over in healthy beverage. And there's protein stuff everywhere because it's just becoming more and more on trend, and people are looking for it. I saw collagen protein bars in the beauty section at a store.

And I was like, damn, that is genius. Hair and nails. Hair and nails. So it's about creating solutions. So then you've got a little bit of this like, well, if you're doing downloadable programs, maybe if I'm over in books, I'm like, well, what could I do? You're always keeping your eyes out, trying to figure out what you could steal shamelessly and reapply to your business and try to figure out. Because Walmart also, in the store, think about how big it is. How do we help people navigate sets and not have to go literally the whole entire thing

to try to figure out to get what they want to get? Every merchant's incentivized to try to figure out, what all can I deliver to this customer while they're in my aisle? Sometimes you cross some borders, right? Like you don't need to have, this is, you don't need to have chapstick in 15 locations in the store.

You don't need to have a protein shake in 15 locations in the store. You probably only need to have it. This is how all the conversations have been for the last eight months. It's just, I just sit down and learn because I know nothing. Now I i know a lot but i still don't know that much um i'm actually interested when you see things that are on the shelves now and you have this beautiful barbell shrugged education and you look at it you're like that's like what do you do you've got these massive contracts with these companies and there's you know they're selling something that is just pure trash like there's some supplements that we just

know science has said they don't work and some fat burners that just don't work and shakes that are just filled with stuff sugar yeah when you when see that, how do you kind of decide what the exit plan is or, Hey, people are buying this and this is still a better option than maybe eating ice cream. Where does that line fall for you? Tough question. I love this question. Actually. At first I'm like, I don't know how I'm not going to say the companies and you don't have to. The cool thing about this is, um, you can try to convince something that somebody that something's bad or you can just show them a better way, right? You can just give people access and eventually they'll see people who are going for that and they'll see,

and then, and then you, you want, if you really, if you want to get better, you want to make a better choice. You just set up a parallel path, right? Here's the path that's that we're going on right here. You set up a parallel path. You run them the same and you just let people vote what's going to get you the best result. If you really want to make a change, eventually, the best result is going to pan out. You don't even have to be the bad guy then.

I like that. There's no reason right now. It would be awful for me to go and say, everybody change your formulations. Everybody doesn't need to change your formulations. I like, and everybody doesn't need to change your formation, but I don't want to put, I don't want to throw in, throw anybody under the bus, but everybody's working hard to figure out how to run their business.

And that's, that's what it is. But most of the time, I think when we interviewed John Berardi, it was something that was like, what if your nutrition client never gets better, but you're the only person that can have a good conversation with them? You're the only, at least you're still a positive option that they can go to whenever they want. And it's kind of in the same position.

Like maybe somebody doesn't change, but at least they have an option in the future when they want to, that they can go find a good training program or find some good products. And they might have a, just having that better option over time sooner or later they're going to choose the right path and i think i think it's so cool that there's so many platforms right now that people can tell stories on to showcase what that whether it's on social media word of mouth people are spending more time at their

house with their family like we've got to figure out how to tell some of those stories of when that better choices drives a result for them and do you go after companies who tell their own stories you know like it seems net in today's world that it used to not be that platform you know if you're joe schmo supplement company you just put your stuff out there and you tried to market the best you could but now we all have our voices. We have a podcast and people do – they're really good with videos. But do you purposely go after companies who have their own voice? Absolutely. Yeah, it makes total sense.

Because that's the trust component. Trust is your most valued asset with anyone. And once that's compromised, it doesn't matter how cheap you sell something. It doesn't matter how good you are at executing efficiencies and getting the product on the store how excellent your store at labor hours are or any of those types of things if you if you don't have customer trust you you miss out on it all the way i think one thing that i was blown away by in the process of this whole thing is really the systems and checks that you guys have along the way i mean i had to go take a bunch of training courses trust me those training courses've never been, I haven't been to school in a long time, but I would just sit there and be like, oh my gosh, this is like the most thorough thing

from your suppliers to the factories to the labor that is used to make those products. Like from top to bottom, obviously a company this size has thought about everything and been through endless, endless scenarios in which they have to protect themselves but i walked out of this process in order for us to get here to do this thinking like man that's like insanely well done and put together to be able to make sure that the factories that people are getting their products from are held to a certain standard the labor's held to a certain standard. And once it gets to the shelf,

like in a way, just having Walmart's name and it being on the shelf has to bring that trust. That's probably a massive battle for you guys. Not just saying I like that company, but levels, you know, I like that company. And then how do we get to the shelf?

They got to go through the ringer to get there. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one thing that we're, that's an initiative that we're working on a lot is trying to figure out how do we partner with emerging brands and say hey you don't have to be ready for a thousand stores right out of the gate that's like three that's hard how many three cities is hard enough yeah for sure yeah yeah and we still got some stuff to go figure out before we got four weeks away and we

got we got to figure some stuff out i think we know how to ship things fast that's right this country yeah um yeah but uh but we want to get better at figuring out how to and and that's the beauty of online with with e-commerce that partnership with e-commerce and stores now happening like how do we simplify the onboarding process for emerging brands, great storytellers, people who have trust, and say, we don't want to just, like, to your point, you said go after. I'm kind of thinking that sounds a little, like, it's not aggressive. I don't want it to be aggressive like that.

I want to say, how do we allow you to use your platform that you've already built and let Walmart be the way that you can actually probably talk to more people through that? Well, yeah, it's about attracting them. Like, when I sent out all the text messages last week just to tell everyone in the industry that's got a podcast, like, let's get the word out that this is happening. And every single person that I wrote to wrote back,

what the hell is going on? You're going to Walmart? Like, it was never even a remote consideration that we would be going in the retail direction when everyone's fighting for online space and then the fact that walmart's actually bringing in like a real strength training company just seemed off the wall to them i mean the number of what the fucks i got back was just insane like every single person because nobody is expecting walmart to be bringing in a strength training company that like does what we do they would you would expect it to be a different brand of fitness um that makes me

so excited yeah it's awesome it was exciting i told my mom my mom like you're going to walk what are you going to do with walmart i was like we're going to sell programs here how do you do that like it was baffling. These are questions that we asked ourselves. Yeah, I'm sure. My mom was like, what? How do you sell your online programs at Walmart? Same way we do anywhere else, I guess.

All the people that would buy something like this but don't spend their lives listening to Barbell Strug podcasts and watching YouTube videos about how to front squat and training at CrossFit gyms. But they do legitimately want a good training program. They're underserved right now. Totally. If they don't do the internet thing already and they only shop at big retailers like Walmart

and they want good training and there's nothing else available, those people are radically underserved. So I feel like we have a big opportunity there to sell to a lot of people that have been looking for something like this but just haven't it's just not available to them for whatever reason i would have bought it as a kid like i looked for anything that would i get information i can't imagine when i was like 11 and just starting to go to walmart and be like for this price i can get like a really good and think about how much, you know, bad stuff it would have kept me away from. Like, you know, you go to these magazines.

And, you know, if you go to, like, these muscle mags, even the bodybuilders that are in there, they'll tell you, that's not my workout. They took some pictures, and they wrote a workout, and they put it in there. So you don't even know what you're doing in those. I remember trying to do Dorian Yates' program. I did the Ronnie Coleman program. That was really his program, though. I'm sure yes ronnie colman's arms sure it was yeah when you're done did you have 28 inch arms i texted john cena john cena was on men's health i want to say three years ago it was like john cena's arm program and i texted him i said i've

never seen you do this program ever because it's not your arms he goes sometimes i don't have control yeah so but said can you imagine i get to choose who i work for in the future too and i was like yes sir imagine being the middle school kid that actually you know buys this from walmart for a really good price and now it actually works you start doing it in your basement next thing you know you gain 10 pounds of muscle and your bitch goes up your squad goes that was the thing that i was most surprised about when we were originally talking about what programs were we're going to be putting out and and how we meet people where they're at that it's like 60 of your your shoppers are female that's right so that means there's a lot of moms that's right going and buying strength programs for their kids and they don't know what to buy

their kid wants to go lift weights they don't know what they don't know where to go this is and i can tell you what they buy right i got the data i know that i know what they buy and i know there's a a large opportunity to help bundle products yeah to help them figure out what do they buy yeah normally entry-level protein protein which is i mean is great get more protein in your diet sure like especially for for a kid like middle school football, all that kind of stuff. Gain some weight. But, like, from a programming standpoint, who knows? That's something that we can't control.

What's the quality of strength and conditioning at that school? I'll tell you what they're doing. They're going to their local gym, and they're at the mercy of whoever's in there coaching them. Or they're going to their high school, and their high school football coach is teaching them. And no offense, I love high school football coaches. I mean, the guy changed my life. But he didn't know anything about lifting weights.

Like all he did was form a lot of bad habits. But now they're going to get good information from exercise scientists, people who have done it for 30-plus years, who have lived it. This is going to put kids and adults light years ahead of women. I was going to say, I can't wait to do them. I'm going to go through all three of them and see what happens. Absolutely, man. No, but I think as I'm looking at this, right, this is like an exciting launch.

But like if it was just this one launch that I was excited about, I think, you know, it's only so much. But like there's so much beyond this that I see in terms of how do you integrate departments within Walmart to get equipment and nutrition guidelines and meal plans and all that kind of stuff. This is where you start to showcase the need, this need state. You showcase that people want to vote for this. And you say, all right, well, I didn't think they were going to buy a program while they were shopping for supplements, but I guess they did. So now how do we bundle this? And not just bundle for the sake of increasing the basket size but bundle based on increased results well that was the very first thing what

we talked about when we were at fit ops was how do we take the performance supplements and get a pro or get a program to go along with them sure we weren't even thinking about us being on the shelves it was like how do we just partner up and make their product better and be a part of the entire ecosystem and then we kind of grew it out from there. But that really is like, you know, and what you guys are building in the clinic, the ability to go and say, Hey, we're in the, we're in the aisle. This is a high quality protein. This is going to be taken at this part of the day around your workout. And this is the workout you need to be doing because there's three goals, specific programs for you to be able to actually go in and implement. And think about like like that that is a center of the store of the

community type of thing yeah you can come and get those different types of things and the resources that you need and then it's not to say we replace the health and wellness community outside of the store yeah we're not a gym like we're not a personal trainers we're not a park system like there's still yeah or a football league or all those different types of things so you take those things that you've done and increased knowledge that you have and then results you have and you are going able to apply that into the wellness within your community that's what a great time for i mean there's a need right now big time with all the gyms who have you know shut down and yes some are opening back up some are

gone forever. We all know that, right? So right now, especially in small communities like this, they need that. I would have gone crazy. We actually, two of their programs are equipment free. Body weight only for two of them. Yes.

So awesome. But if I had not had a gym, I started when I was 11. I would, I mean, I have a brother who's in prison now. If I hadn't had it, I would have been right there with him. But this was my gateway to doing good and, you know, seeing like some, you know, solid ground in my life. And I can't imagine if that had been taken from me like these poor kids nowadays. I mean, it would have definitely been a different person. You probably wouldn't want to be hanging out with me. Yeah, we got two of them that

are body weight only which is like more relevant now than ever since so many people are having to train at their house or just outside but then the other piece of it too is like so many people lost their jobs and like their their income is lower than normal right now yeah and with with the reach and scalability that's the potential at walmart to be in in many more than the 20 stores we're starting in allows us to keep the price point to be very inexpensive. Like the, the amount of good information, the quality of the training program for the prices, we're basically just giving them away. I mean, it's $10. Like it's basically free for what you get and you get, you get 30 days, which really is six weeks. Cause it's five days a week for six weeks for $10. Wow. It'd be awesome. It's an unbelievable deal.

And what you were talking about, the ability to, it's like week one, grocery list, make these meals. Week two, grocery list, go make these meals. They can just follow it step by step all the way through, and it's just laid out. Not to sound like an infomercial, but daggone, six weeks you could seriously go from zero to hero. Zero to hero.

I mean, you could go from, like, I don't know anything to, like, shopping correctly, cooking correctly. Yeah, I mean, we lay out in all the books that people are going to be downloading. It walks you through basically the foundations of nutrition, how to eat, what macronutrients, take your body weight, take your goal, figure out how to get there, and you just punch it into the calculator and it spits it out, and then you just go follow, literally just follow along week by week. I hope every human sees it. Not because I want our company to go huge, but I want to see the world change.

You sold me. I was not sold until you started crying the other morning. And then when that happened, I'm like, whoa, we have an opportunity to change lives. I think when, well, what he's talking about, my dad was like, sent me the dad text. Don't do it. I just wanted you to know I'm proud of you. No, I already got it out. We're good.

But when he sent that, it was kind of like this uh, it was like this real realization that the amount of people that we get to help. And I think it's really easy in our world. And we focus a lot on strength training. It's like the goal is to add 10 pounds to your deadlift. You're like, well, yeah, man, after 24 years of training now, Matt's been training for 30 years, Doug's on 25 years it's like those numbers start to be they're awesome you want people to get strong because that's their goal but how do we how do we make something this platform barbell shrugged how do we how do we integrate it into the lives

of people that need it the most and man when you hear that four out of every 10 people are obese, you know, we have a real problem. And we have the pandemic just was like the nail in the coffin for so many people. And it's an education problem. It's getting people to take action and having the resources to be able to actually do it. So we have this crazy opportunity to be able to meet people where they're at, where they're shopping, at a price point that's super affordable, and we're literally laying out six weeks. Don't think. Just follow along and do what's in the book, and everything's going to work out. It will get better.

Yeah, you do that, and you will get better. And, like, that 40% is such a – it's not even the right number because what they what they consider to be obese i mean the dude's almost dead by the time that they label you obese like there's there's a big population who's well on their way to that right there that they don't even consider obese yet and those people could die just as easily as the people who they're saying is obese i mean we see it i mean i had a debt the only reason my my poor dad you know he's passed away now he had a heart attack and when and with the hospital with his heart attack from eating terrible like everybody does in the mountains. Then they found cancer.

But it was too late. That was, once again, his lifestyle. All this stuff. It has nothing to do with genetics. His dad lived to be 97 years old. But genetics change. People stop moving like they used to. You know, my grandfather would walk everywhere.

My dad was in the generation of, like, go do his job, come home, sit on the couch and eat. And eat terrible. It's good. It's good food. Delicious. Maybe the strongest man in the world. I mean, but like, man. Some upside.

There's an upside to that. But like, it didn't work out for my father or for a lot of people up there who were dying early. You were talking about the way that Jim saved you when you were 11. Like those are the moments that I want to create. I think we can. That we can create together. That like this isn't necessarily the people that are listening to this show right now. But can you tell somebody about this and introduce them to something that for 10 bucks yeah is is accessible and helps that

you can can legitimately change your life yeah i feel like the kids are the ones that uh it's so we used to when i lived in san diego we had this like amazing walk that we would go on every day i didn't have kids at the time so i could just go on a four mile walk no big deal man why not you got time and you would see all these families out playing and you could just go on a four-mile walk. No big deal. Eh, why not? You got time. And you would see all these families out playing, and you could just see. It's like going to the airport. You just see what America looks like.

You get an overview of what everyone looks like, and it's very, very unhealthy. And then you see the parents, and then you see their kids, and you go, oh, man, this kid has no chance. I feel like for nine dollars and 48 cents you kind of give these families an opportunity to rally around something and and give them just the tools and the resources that need they need to maybe make fitness something that they instill into their families and that's why i got all fired up the other morning because it just. Yeah, it got me fired up. The opportunity that we can have to just teach fitness to people

that just don't have access to it. Yes. Like I was definitely not thinking along those terms until that morning. And I started seeing how serious it was that you were taking it. And then all of a sudden it dawned on me this was a lot bigger than just an opportunity to get our business bigger, but it's an opportunity to change lives. Then it totally took a different turn for me.

Was it your idea for selecting the cities, L.A., Vegas, San Diego? Those are obviously healthier cities, especially SoCal. But what was the rationale there? Yeah, so part of it is just uh well i wanted to simplify the distribution methodology for for you guys because we have you know a whole bunch of dcs that are located all over the country and i could have picked probably 20 great stores that would have been all over the place but then you would have had to ship to 15 yeah different dcs and it would have been super super complex so i focused on just trying to narrow down that distribution chain. So there was just one spot that you had to ship to. So that was,

that simplifies that from, from a cost standpoint and efficiency standpoint. And then tried to pick stores that one, we go, we go, we have corporate meetings twice a year where we talk to store managers. Some of these store managers in that area, like when we launched keto or when we launch any type of health thing, they come up to me and they're like, my customers love this. We need more. And like, they're the people that are emailing me like, have you heard this podcast? Like you've got people in those stores that are advocates, man.

And they, they want, they've got, they've got knowledge. And there's, there's an industry there that's already built. And there's a lot of on-trend stuff there. And so there's customers looking for that. But there's also a lot of people that are living in those areas that, that aren't on that lifestyle either. And a lot of the stores in those locations, it's not like they're just sitting on, you know, on the beach and you're by a lot of those people. You're, you're in some different areas in those, in those urban areas

also. And so it gives, there's a lot of aspiration in those areas. And then there's a lot of underserved in those areas too. So hopefully this this will this will help connect the dots between man i see all this health around me and i've never had access to it before and so hopefully it'll it'll be one of the spots that can be like a matchstick like we light it and it would take off the best those are also some of the sets that already perform as a percentage of what they contribute to the box in the categories that we have health and wellness of vitamins, supplements, those types of things. They already perform pretty well. So I also didn't want to put you guys in stores that some dead store.

Yeah. Northern Canada. I don't know why it's not selling. It was like seven people in this town. It's next door to Santa Claus. But don't worry guys. You'd only have to ship to one location. Shipping is going to take you three months.

Right, man. Well, I'm so amped for this. Everybody that's listening at home, I think I got them almost memorized now. But Chula Vista, we have three locations, National City and San Diego. There's one in Orange County. We're all over Palm Springs, which is awesome. I think it's like the Riverdale County maybe, and then four or five of them in Vegas.

In Vegas, yeah. Yeah. I'm fired up. You're rad. We also have three training programs. We have a fat loss one, we have a cardio one, and a strength muscle building one. The only one you need a gym for is the strength training program, of course.

The other ones are all 30 minutes or less, mostly cardio and body weight movements. So they're very accessible whether you have a gym or not. Or buy your equipment at Walmart along with it. There it is. You do that too? There it is. Where can people find you, man?

Are you accessible on the internet? Hold the phone. I'm going to answer this right now. Matt Musgrave has an Instagram account. He may tell you about it, but that is not the place to find him. The place to find him is on TikTok. No! No! The place to find him

is on TikTok. Hardcore TikToker. Are you really? Look at the embarrassment right now. It's not embarrassing at all. TikTok. I haven't used it. I haven't used it for like two months probably. It's so good. I got a suggested account the other day. I started

anyways, it was basically like nobody's on here that I know. So I can use this as my... Until you get called out on Barrelstruck. Now they know. You're done. You're done. I can use this as my video log for my training protocol and I can see how I

look and I can speed stuff up. So it's like super easy. Anyways, I realized very quickly cause I didn't know what TikTok was. I realized very quickly that that is not the format of what most people do on TikTok. So I, yeah. Anyways. So, uh, that's a rabbit hole too. That is a rabbit hole. I went down there and got out of it. So, uh, did, did that for a hot minute. I do, an Instagram, but mostly I really like having real conversations. Yeah, totally. And not that those platforms can't facilitate that, but most of the time, most people that I reach out to that I talk to are actually through LinkedIn. Yeah.

So they'll find me on LinkedIn, whether it's for health advice or nutrition advice or something. Not that I'm a training guru at all, but I've done some, some tried to help a few people out with those types of things, um, on that platform. And Instagram is definitely more my like personal family. Yeah. I like,

I like LinkedIn too. So yeah. Um, you're a garage gym guy. Yeah. What's, what's your training man? I say I'm a garage.

I say I'm a garage gym guy yeah how what's what's your training man i say i'm a garage i say i'm a garage gym guy um i owe all my training knowledge to to listen to you guys and then also uh starting out in the crossfit world like the crossfit asylum springs guy that that mike mike sproul that we that i went to the first time he had broken his back and but he was all about like i mean he was he was the best he was super one-on-one hands-on taught me all the things made lifting weights not intimidating at all taught me how to overhead squat taught me how to front squat taught me how to position my feet how to press how to do ring muscle ups how to turkish get-ups like we did we did all all the stuff there um so i i i have such respect for the that that type of thing and then

also crossfit northwest arkansas went there lee kelly and and and so that was my background so i have such huge respect i wouldn't wouldn't be able to do the garage gym thing we're all if i if i hadn't spent that time but like i say that because i like i never thought that that would be my story i never thought i'd be able to be a garage gym guy because i didn't know anything about lifting weights and all that so like but now yeah i yeah, I love cutting it up in my garage. If you really want to get after it, you can watch me and you duke it out. Yeah. Remember when we did our –

Yeah. Dude, we worked out on Zoom together. We did it live. Oh, I remember you telling me about that. And he went down to go catch it. Was it clean? The snatch. The snatch.

He goes, I think I hurt my back. And I was like, oh, no. We killed him on day one. This is so bad. We're fired. But then we did another one. And you had me do these plate lap flies. Yeah.

And I'd never done that before. Yeah. Oh. That was the amount of us. My. Oh, that was so sore. We got him jacked on some. That was so sore.

Just some straight up bodybuilding the next time we did this. I had 15 pound plates. And by the end of it, I was like, I was barely getting it. That's why I can't wait to hang out with these guys over here. This morning, we're getting a huge pump. Getting my jack on. But I've been doing EMOM aesthetics.

That's what I've been doing lately. That's very similar, I think, to the programs. Some of the programs that are coming in, right? A little bit shorter. The structure's not the same as the Walmart programs. They're a little more traditional than Metconny. Yeah. But the time domain, yeah.

The programs for cardio and fallows is 30 minutes or less. For the strength training one, it's a little bit longer. But EMOM Aesthetics is 20 minutes. Once you're warmed up, it's 20 minutes. You're in and out. Metconny, he said. Metconny. That's a good verb. My lifetime goal is to be in the one-time club. He needs a coach.

Look at you, coach. Look at you, coach. I got time. I don't need to hit it in the next year. I'm in it for the long haul. You still got four years of eligibility? You want to move to North Carolina? Yeah, exactly.

It's beautiful. You've got a room, too, You want to move to North Carolina? Yeah, exactly. We got a college. We're going to University. Yeah. It's beautiful. You've got a room, too, now. We just bought a house. Oh. Move in. Bring the whole family. You ready for three kids?

Scratch that. My wife and three kids. Scratch that. We already got three kids. Six of them in the house. I actually got two. Our third is due November 15th. Congratulations.

Third girl. Third girl. Third girl. God hates you. I'm so excited. I'm so excited I'm so excited I love my little girl runs the show

at my yeah whatever she wants how am I ever going to spank her I'm confused I don't it's going to be

a rough one or punish her for anyone I can't wait you're going to be you're going to be old enough in 10 years no it'd be like

14 years she's gonna bring home like a prom date yeah you'll be in the garage just front squatting 500 honestly that is the only reason i continue to train is that moment right there that's why i still work out i'm in the same boat yeah i'm in the same boat i'm like i'm not very good at shooting so there's not much of a chance of that happening. But if I can say, well, let's just go front squat. I'm going to have a little bit of both. I'm going to be cleaning my gun and flexing at the same time. You're going to get both guns. This got serious.

This conversation turned serious. Travis, where can they find you? Mashleet.com or LinkedIn. We'll be LinkedIn buddies. There it is. Doug Larson. Bet. Find me on Instagram. Maybe now that we're or LinkedIn. We'll be LinkedIn buddies. There it is. Doug Larson. Bet. Find me on Instagram.

Maybe now that we're traveling again, I'll start posting again. I took a hiatus for the last six months just hanging out with my kids all day long, looking for weights in my garage. Your life is so Instagram-worthy when we're babysitting, sort of working, trying. Just riding bikes and playing on playgrounds. That's my day most of the time. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged.

Get over to barbellshrugged.com, forward class store for all the programs, e-books, nutrition, mobility, and if you're in San Diego, L.A., or Vegas, or in Palm Springs, get over to Walmart right now. We've got three programs on the shelves, fat loss, cardio, and strength training. You can get it. Come hang out with us. We're excited about this.

Walmart.com as well. We'll see you guys next week. That's it, my friends You can get it. Come hang out with us. We're excited about this. Very. Walmart.com as well. We'll see you guys next week. That's it, my friends. That is it. San Diego Walmart, Palm Springs Walmart, LA Walmart, Orange County Walmarts,

and Vegas Walmarts. You got to get in there right now. Come be a part of this fun project that we're working on. We're going to make so many strong people in this world. We have the coolest way to get so many people so incredibly strong and healthy, and we're going to do it.

Walmart. Barbell Shrugged and Walmart. Let's do this thing. Fit Together. Make sure you get over and hang out with our friends at Fit Together. F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R. Fit Together app. Fitness. Friendly. Barbell Shrugged. We're there. Yeah me come find the group download it one week one week left in the body weight challenge also our friends at bioptimizers bioptimizers.com forward slash shrug saving 40 on the magnesium product and they're giving away a bunch of free stuff on top of that for their black friday cyber monday sale which is going on all month long and then organifi.com forward slash shrug to save 20% on the green, red, and gold. You better not buy my pumpkin spice. Friends, we're going to see you on Wednesday.

We've got the merchandising director from Walmart coming on the show to talk about the culture of Walmart, everything that's changing in their organization, and why they chose Barbell Shrugged to be a part of the brand new, everything that's going on at Walmart. So epic. We'll see you guys on Wednesday.