Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 437 - RP Strength's Nick Shaw

Episode Date: October 20, 2020

Nick Shaw is the founder and CEO of Renaissance Periodization, a diet and fitness company centered around evidence based practices to help members achieve their health, athletic performance and physique goals. Nick has personally coached numerous world class athletes, including CrossFit Games Champions, UFC fighters, and Navy SEALS. He was also featured in Forbes magazine for how he turned his passion of diet and training into a 7-figure business. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: https://drinklmnt.com/powerproject Purchase 3 boxes and receive one free, plus free shipping! No code required! ➢Freeze Sleeve: https://freezesleeve.com/ Use Code "POWER25" for 25% off plus FREE Shipping on all domestic orders! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Element Electrolytes. And Seema, can you tell me why electrolytes are so important for a keto, low-carb, or even a carnivore diet? Well, first off, you guys know that Mark has done almost like every single diet on the planet. He's done low-carb, he's done keto, he's done carnivore, he's done carnivore a lot. And he mentioned to me how electrolytes have been pretty damn beneficial for him as they have

for me so follow me here guys we're gonna go on a little ride of why electrolytes specifically elemental electrolytes are so important for low carb keto or carnivore athletes so when you eat low carb your insulin levels drop low insulin means the lower production of a hormone, aldosterone. Now, aldosterone is made in the kidneys and that helps you retain sodium. You see, sodium is super important. So low aldosterone on a keto diet or carnivore diet makes you lose sodium at a rapid rate. And when you lose too much sodium, you develop low sodium symptoms like headaches, low injury, low energy, muscle cramps, and insomnia, a.k.a. the keto flu. In turn, you feel like crap, you cramp up, and you don't perform well, which is why you need some electrolytes in your life.

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and then you even get a free box after that. So again, please head over to drinklmnt.com slash powerproject. Hello? What's up? Everything, man. Just back power project. Hello. What's up? Everything, man. Just, uh, yeah. Back from a Trump rally. Where was that? Great way to start off the show.

Everyone's like, click off the show. If you are voting for Trump, hit that like button. If you are not voting for Trump, hit that like button. That's right. Uh, it was in, uh, Nevada. We were in, um, I don't know where the hell i was in nevada but it was somewhere i believe your twitter said carson oh yeah there you go carson city i have a squat rack in carson city do you have a i used to i used to train uh somebody with uh ben alderman

the guy's name alludes me for the moment but he owns a gym in Carson City, and I just had an extra squat rack, and so I gave it to him. It's like one of our original ones. It's a yellow squat rack. Oh, wow. That was with us from the very beginning. I need to go back and take it. I need to take it back. This is what we're talking about.

Yeah. Let's see. Where'd it go? So, shout out to Trump Jrr and some of his peeps for getting me uh some tickets and and uh luckily enough uh my brother and i were able to get uh donald trump's attention and uh he pointed to our jackness that's so funny yeah i put it up posted it on twitter we're playing it right now on our show right now. Hey, I don't know.

Like if he, you know, got like informed, like before I went up there, like, Hey, there's some like, kind of like,

I guess what is his security guys said that, um, cause all the security guys are fans. Oh really? And, uh, one guy actually was like, I was watching,

uh, Sarma Gosa. He's like, I was just watching it the other day. It was like all the security people, they're all really jacked. Yeah. Like really jacked where you're like, one guy is bigger than the next. You're like, holy shit. The way it better be if they're trying to protect the president.

I know, right? And they're like, I saw one guy and he's like, oh, what's up? He's like, Bell Brothers. And he took a picture with us and he's like, you got to go over there and see that guy. See that Jack guy over there? You got to go see him. He's a huge fan. I'm like, okay.

And we went over to that guy. And then the next guy would be like, you got to go over to that guy over there. He's an even bigger fan. Everybody was huge. We're like, what's going on here? That's crazy. That's so funny. But they said that we think he likes it that way.

We think that he likes it that way. We think, we think that he likes, uh, everybody to be Jack. So it's some sort of prerequisite to get the job, I guess. You have to be though. Like,

you can't be like, you know, you gotta have a look. You gotta look intimidating or else. I mean, and then he had a secret service guy with him that probably was like six, eight. Okay.

This guy was a real beast. Like, damn. It was pretty cool. I mean, to, I don't know, just to see, like, you know, I got to see Trump Jr. like two weeks ago, and it's just way different. Like, this is the fucking president.

And the precautions that they take. I mean, he flew over top on the Air Force One deal, and I think it was too big to land at the airport that we were at. I mean, the thing's massive. It's a very small airport, and with the amount of people there, I don't think they were trying to land it there.

So he landed somewhere else and then drove in. But there's, like, you know, helicopters flying overhead. They keep kind of circling around, making sure everything's cool and there's fucking snipers like up on these like uh on top of these buildings and you're like oh those guys like setting up they're probably getting like camera and then you're like oh you're like oh okay setting up guns yeah you're like wow and it's kind of intimidating because you're like they're probably like they probably zoomed in on me a couple times like to check is that mark bell yeah they probably do they probably do check on emailing to the other sniper yeah this guy is suspicious right you probably kind of zoom in on each person to kind

of give them a once over you know kind of look at everybody yeah person to kind of give them a once over, you know, kind of look at everybody. Yeah. I'd imagine. I mean, did the thought like go through your head? We're like, they're definitely working for the president, right?

Like, right. We all like check. Yeah. We know these are the right people. Yeah. Right spots. Oh man.

Yeah. And they're all communicating, you know, with each other on the ear pieces and stuff. And dude, it didn't look like there was like, I don't mind it, but it looked like everyone was just kind of packed together right oh there's thousands of people yeah no one no one cares i saw that i was like so funny yeah it's nevada though yeah it's true but there are different restrictions nevada like yeah there's a little

less that's nice but i'm just curious and and just because I don't follow anything with politics, but what's the point of a rally? Because I would assume everyone that's going is already fired up to vote for Trump. By going to this- And a large percentage of people already voted, too. Right. So is it just to, I don't know, show that you support him so that we can maybe convince other people or is it? Well, what, so what people will say about Trump in particular is they'll just say he's narcissistic and that he just loves to hear himself talk.

But I think he just like, I think he just likes to work. I think he's a workaholic. I think he just, you know, that's what, I mean, that's what I saw from him. And just, you know, doing all these different, I mean, he's there. and just doing all these different... I mean, he's there. He talked for like 90 minutes or almost two hours. And he came from somewhere else in California on the same day and stuff. So I think he's just... I don't think he knows any other way than to be forceful.

And you see that with everything that he does. Sometimes it's to a fault. Sometimes it's not in his best interest. But I think that's just the way that he does stuff. So the rally is really just to, I think, obviously you're not trying to like sway people because they're already for you. Right. I think it's just to hype people up, get people excited. And I think it's just even, it's more practice and it's more of him just, you know, getting his information out there because he talked.

I was telling you, like, he just talked kind of randomly about all kinds of stuff. It wasn't really there was politicalness behind it, but it wasn't like politically charged. He wasn't volatile. He wasn't aggressive. Like, he was super passive and just went up there and just talk. And, yeah, every once in a while he would you know throw in a joke and mess around but like i was telling you he's talking about like water pressure and he was just like water pressure yeah he's like how frustrating is it you know to wash your dishes and like they don't get clean you know he's like you ever wonder

why that happens more and more nowadays and then he talked about taking a shower and um wait he talked about like how many times people have to flush the toilet to get the toilet to work and all these different things. And the reason why he talked about this is because of all the restrictions that they put on these products to try to conserve water. And he's like, that's what California is going to be hit with next is you guys will have a water, you know, though. He's like, they do it just about every year. He's like, they threaten you with a drought he's like you have plenty of water but one of the reasons why he said that it happens is because you have to run your dishwasher five times just to get it to work correctly damn and so okay you know some of and he was just like oh you know he's like you got to do

what you got to do he's like i take those restrictions off or take those restrictors off and he was just you know pointing to stuff like that and then he's you know obviously he's he's selling himself so he's like you know talking about how he talks to different energy companies and how he's pulling all these strings and pulling all these levers and getting all this work done it's hard just it's hard to say it's hard to tell who's doing what or who's doing anything um and so but when it comes to politics i think that's why a lot of people choose to just be like, you know what, I'm just going to stay out of it because I don't know what's true.

And I try to follow some of it and I don't have any idea what's true. I don't have any, you know, I do like Trump. I've been a fan of him since I was a kid. My whole family has been. I've talked about that before. And some people get charged up about that, but I don't know what's true about him, whether he's done things great or whether he's done things.

I don't have any real, real knowledge to know. And I don't know how I would know because I don't know what resource I would go to to find out because everything seems to be so biased one way or the other. So it's hard to say. Yeah. So moving forward, next topic. Now that political news is over, we have Nick Shaw on the podcast today. Pretty fired up. Yeah. So moving forward, next topic, now that he's taken a lot of other great coaches and surrounded himself with those great coaches and they've helped thousands upon thousands of people and he's turned it into an awesome and profitable business. So it'd be great to kind of talk to him

a little bit about the business side of it too, and figure out how the hell he got it all going. Yeah. I heard about RP Strength years ago. I started seeing a lot of people on Instagram post about it. I'm guessing athletes that were like working with them but it's uh it's really grown a lot since it's like crazy i didn't realize how big they were until recently like i knew they were big but not like tens of thousands of athletes like people using the app big yeah and i know like you know algorithms and whatnot but like as far as social media goes but i just feel like every single time i open up some kind of social media i see something with the rp diet or the rp strength program and dude it's it's nuts i've been using it for the

past i think two weeks now how do you like it it's very intuitive i like it a lot um i i don't want to say anything bad about them but it is really cool to be able to text you to be like, hey, I'm not gaining weight or I am gaining weight versus this one. It kind of takes your whole week and not averages it, but like it looks at the data and it's like, hey, like this previous week, it's like you didn't gain any weight and your meals have been on point. We're going to have to add more, you know, calories to every single meal. And it's not like when you track something, it's not like, it's not necessarily if it fits your macros, it kind of tells you what you need to be eating. It's really cool. Like per meal versus, you know, per, I don't know, like just daily caloric intake.

So it works a little bit like a coach. Like if you give the product the information, then it works a little bit like a coach. It's very much, yes. Like if you give the product the information, then it spits it back out to you. Correct, yeah. I think that's a big mistake that a lot of people make with coaches. They don't give them enough information, you know? Like someone has someone that can see them a program for them, and don't tell them that they hurt their back.

And they're like, oh, I haven't seen much progress on my deadlift, and they're not sharing with you everything that's going on. What's up, guys? Hey. What's happening? Not too much. All right. Great to have you on the show today.

Yeah, likewise, man. Thanks for having me on. And congratulations with all the success. We've heard a lot about RP Strength over the years. How long have you guys been in business? How long have you been going for? We have been around since about 2012. So a while.

What got you started? I'm just a meathead. So if Dr. Mike, man, you guys had him on not too long ago. We were just a couple of meatheads. We met in college and we just love to lift. I'm sure you guys know it. I mean, it just kind of drives your passion. That's what gets you started.

And it's no secret. We liked writing diet and training programs for people. And that's what we said we were going to do. And we didn't really have any huge grand ambitions. It just sort of grew naturally. And hey, here we are almost a decade later. Knock on wood. Did you see some holes in the fitness community maybe where you thought maybe things could be done a little bit better?

Yeah. So one of our things early on was, you know, Dr. Mike, he's got a PhD in sport physiology and all that good stuff. So he had a pretty good idea that if we paid a little bit more attention to the evidence-based recommendations when it comes to diet and training, that, hey, maybe that's a little bit better route to go, maybe a little bit more efficient. And we always wanted to stick with that. That's kind of always been our thing. And it seems to have worked really well for people. And we actually were in New York City for a while as trainers. And we noticed all these really, you know, really talented people, the way they were doing things. We're like, wow, that's really interesting. It's like really different from what we're doing. And that just really drew our interest even more. It was

like, well, what, you know, what are they doing? Why are they doing it that way? You know, could they potentially get better results if they tweak something, if they did something different. And so that kind of led our curiosity again, this was like 2009 or so when we were in New York city. So a while back. Before nutrition and training were even invented. Nowadays. Yeah, for sure. It seems like that. One of the funny things too is, you know we when we got started you know i don't even think instagram existed i'm not even sure like that's how long ago it was

you can't even think like it's hard to think back now right what uh what gave you the idea for the name renaissance periodization so hindsight's 2020 right maybe we would have picked a different name had we known because like can you even spell it i can barely spell it myself dr michael i had a hard time sending out the email because i'm like i'm gonna mess this up i know there's a couple of u's in there and an eye somewhere yeah totally you got me like that's why i go to google and i type in the first couple letters and you know thank god it auto populates i go to google and i type in the first couple letters and you know thank god it auto populates okay good i'll play that one but uh you know that's why i went with rp strength so you know real quick story there um you know renaissance kind of like the

rebirth and again we wanted to be evidence-based we thought that there's a lot of people just kind of doing things because you know whatever reason you know whatever it was and so that was part of it that's where re where Renaissance came from. The periodization is a bit cooler because it's sort of the logical sequencing of different phases to set the next one up for success. So if you want to compete in powerlifting, you're probably not doing sets of 10

the day before, the week before you're competing. I mean, hopefully not or whatever, but that's kind of the idea that's where periodization came from rewinding real quick back to new york um you mentioned that the people there that were doing things differently and it seemed like when you said that you said they were doing things differently in a positive manner or did you mean that they were doing things differently like oh that was weird different both okay you know a decade this is a, so we didn't really know.

Because we're like, they look better than us, so obviously they must be doing something right. And we're like, well, what is that something? And then that's what drew the curiosity to sort of look into it more and be like, is it better? Is it worse? Maybe there's some things that we can pick up from these people because, well, they look a lot better than us. They're a lot stronger than us too. So again, it'd be silly to kind of sit back and bake, Oh, your stuff's totally stupid. Like we're going to ignore all of it. There's probably some good stuff we can gain from it. So it's kind of both.

What kind of stuff did you pick up then? I'm just real curious about that. So I guess just, you know, sticking to the basic compound movements, right? Like you would just watch these guys train, you know, sticking to the basic compound movements, right? Like you would just watch these guys train and, you know, they weren't using a lot of cables and all this accessory stuff. I mean, sometimes they would, but, you know, the first and foremost thing they were always doing was they were hitting the big lifts. And it's like, okay, well, that kind of fits with what we thought was probably the best idea. And we're like, okay, that's a good sign. be the best idea and we're like okay that's that's a good sign um you know we kind of accidentally stumbled upon the idea of deloading sort of by accident and we were like hey if we keep going

you know really heavy deadlifts a few weeks in a row and we start to fall off and feel like crap we're like but you know last week we kind of scaled it down because we were feeling like crap and now this next week, we actually did really well. We're like, I wonder if there's something to that and, you know, just start talking to more people and, you know, talking to more power lifters and they're like, yeah, you know, sometimes we'll do that. And it's like, okay,

maybe that's something we need to think about. And then, you know, Dr. Mike went on to get his PhD at East Tennessee state. And, you know, that's where he learned a lot more. And it's like, well, that's actually a pretty well supported thing. That's, that's where he learned a lot more. And it's like, well, that's actually a pretty well-supported thing. That's it's a good idea to actually do. When did you guys look around and think that maybe this would be an app versus, cause I'm sure you maybe started out thinking that you would help coach people. And then all of a sudden, I don't know,

technology maybe caught up to what you guys were thinking in your head, but like, what was the transition there? If there was a transition, I should say. There's always a transition. So we started, we started with one-on-one coaching. Then that's all we did. That's kind of all we thought we were going to do. And then we did an ebook and we're like, wow, this is, this is really interesting. And funny enough, like we actually sold it through Chad Wesley Smith's site in like 2014.

It was a real long time ago. We didn't even really have like our own site where we could host all that stuff. That's how not even advanced we were at that time. And again, that's what opened our eyes. Hey, this digital product thing is probably a pretty good route to go. And so then we started to pivot. Well, how can we take this one-on-one coaching model that we're doing but obviously it's not super scalable, right? Because if you're a coach, like how many clients can you work with? Let's say it's a hundred, which is a lot.

Like how do you go from hundreds to potentially thousands or, you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. So that was what we were trying to figure out. And we go, Hey, let's try this idea of the diet templates. And we created these really ugly Excel files in like 2015 people kind of liked them they started to get results like we might be on to something and that was sort of setting the stage for okay well this is a good model we kind of know it's going to work we kind of knew long term maybe the app is a good way to go i don't know if you guys know much about software development it is tough it is long and hard and it is tough.

I'll just say that. And so again, like we thought early on, it just took forever to build up. It's a really complicated thing. When companies like yourself started to come around and people started talking about programming, I was so confused.

I got to be honest because I was like, why the fuck do people need help with their workout? Like, I don't, I kind of didn't, I kind of didn't get it to be totally honest. And when I heard the word programming, I was like, why the fuck do people need help with their workout? Like, I don't, I kind of didn't, I kind of didn't get it to be totally honest. And when I heard the word programming, I was like, do people need help with their computer? Like, what, what's programming even mean? Because like, when I was when I was growing up in the sport, and in powerlifting, and bodybuilding, you just got like shown something by somebody else, you had like a

mentor, you had like a guide. And that's how you found out about it. But what sucked about that is it was like secretive and you couldn't really learn. And so like a lot of the stuff that you guys have done and some other companies that have come before, come before you and, and since after you, um, have really shown people the way and you give people a great product, you deliver a product where not only are they lifting kind of under your tutelage, but they're learning, they're learning the reasons why they're doing it. And I think that that's really important. They're getting programming and they're seeing like, okay, I'm doing this for two weeks. And then the third week I kind of, you know, have a deload and so on. And they learn their nutrition,

they learn their diet. And so they learn what I think is really beneficial is they learn tools that they can carry on. Because if you just, you know, it's kind of like the teach the man the fish type thing. If you just show someone like a couple of movements and stuff like that, they can't really be very difficult for them to grow. It's going to be very difficult for them to learn and for them to have the knowledge base to really move forward and to get the health and nutrition, the strength that they need. But with programming and having somebody kind of guiding you through it after you do it for a while, it just gets more and more. It gets easier to understand it as you move forward. Yeah, not everyone can afford coaching. Not everyone's going to stick with coaching for years or even more than a couple of months because it's just not a realistic option. But again, if you give people, maybe they do start with coaching, but now they know that they work with a coach.

Now they sort of know, all right, well, now I can do it myself. Why do I want to pay $200 a month if I can use an app or a template that's roughly $10 a month or $15 a month? It just makes a lot of sense. So yeah, I think you nailed it sounds great in terms of the software programming aspect of things um you said that that was just like a very arduous process what kind of people did you guys like have to bring on for that to happen and like what did you have like did you have to learn a lot of stuff on the software end of things or did you have? Like, did you have to learn a lot of stuff on the software end of things? Or did you just bring people in to help build out the idea?

I know it's probably super complicated to try to explain, but if you can help us out here. It takes people much, much smarter than myself. Much, much smarter than myself. So we basically, it's a funny story because we failed a couple times like it just it took a really long time and you just run into people that will sort of promise you everything in the world and they just can't deliver and then it just gets really frustrating and uh what happened this funny story was eventually we had someone that was using rp for a really long time and he reached out to us and he was like hey i'm in the software like i

think i can help you guys out and at this point we were just we didn't really know what to do because we were just things just weren't going well just having a hard time with it because it's it's a pretty complicated process when you get into all the algorithms behind the scenes and you know dr mike sort of does all that stuff but uh it was really funny because he knew what what he wanted because he was a lifter. He understood it. And so that made the process a lot easier because we ran into a lot of software folks that didn't know anything about fitness. And so you're trying to explain to them what exactly you want something to do. It just goes way over their head. And they're like,

it was really difficult. So yeah, I don't necessarily have a ton to do with that aspect, just more like the business aspect. But, yes, it's really long. It's really complicated. It's going to take some, you know, data science. It's going to take some, you know, just engineers, basically. So we've got a team of engineers that work on it. Because what happens is an app basically becomes like a living organism.

It's not like you just build it and you set it and forget it. And that's it. It's like, no, there's always stuff coming up. Apple, Google are always throwing in new updates. Like you can't just sit back and go, Oh,

I'll hope for the best. It doesn't work like that. So you gotta be on top of it all the time. Yeah. You mentioned going with Chad Wesley Smith early on. I think, you know, this is a learning process for a lot of people when they're getting into business. You're not sure what to do. And you mentioned you guys didn't feel like you were advanced enough to really go out and do it on your own or do you think it was good to kind of learn to go through that process to, you know, have someone like Chad to kind of maybe learn from,

pick up some information from and then be able to move on from there. It was perfect to have someone like him cause he was already doing it. He was already selling eBooks and stuff. I mean, you guys know Chad really well. Yeah. And see him kick his ass. Yeah. I wasn't sure if I can bring that name up. We love, we love Chad. For sure. For sure. Yeah. He's super nice dude. And you know, we're still really good friends with him now. And yeah,

it was really great because he kind of showed us the ropes and he's like, Hey, here's kind of how we do it. Like, here's how we price things. And we were like, all right, we'll take your word for it. Like, let's run. Let's just kind of get it out there and see how it goes. And it's funny looking back. Our original e-book, I look back at the quality now and I laugh. I'm just like, boy, that was – the information was good. Don't get me wrong.

The quality of it was not so great. I don't know. Mark, do you think that when you look back, some of the first stuff you ever designed, you're like, huh? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You're always working on trying to make a better product and make things better for people. I mean, the first batch of slingshots I made, they turned people's skin red, which was not the desired result that we were looking for. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, it's definitely good know befriend or have a mentor like that

that can show you the ropes i can think it's hugely valuable uh having been you know in the industry for a long time and being around fitness for uh as long as you have and you helped a lot of people get healthier um what are some of your thoughts with without being like controversial or anything, but like, what are your thoughts on like COVID-19 and some things that people can safeguard themselves with in terms of fitness, just to be healthier, not to necessarily escape COVID necessarily, but to escape viruses and just to be healthy overall. Yeah. So again, there's some like basic stuff and maybe we'll get into this a tad later but there's a whole idea of like internal versus external locus of control like if you have more of an

internal locus of control like you're going to take charge you're going to do things you want to take action because you believe you can influence certain outcomes and so again like if you have that mindset and you are into fitness, you're already probably healthier than the normal average person. Again, if you are being mindful of your nutrition, again, one way or the other, right? Like as long as you're eating mostly high quality foods, you're on the right track. If you're exercising, you're on the right track. You're probably going to have a stronger immune system. And it's funny because you just don't see that anywhere in sort of the mainstream media like

they're never talking about that it's like why aren't we talking more about that because this is something that would help pretty much universally every single person out there i don't know like it's always been weird for me i don't know maybe people just don't want to do it because it's hard that's maybe a little bit different conversation to have but it's a no-brainer we should be telling everyone to sort of get out and exercise and even have to be crazy exercise that's the thing get out and walk you know go walk outdoors i mean one you get in nature that's probably good by itself and then you're doing some activity and don't eat a bunch of junk food i mean that seems like common sense but you know that's easier said than done, I suppose.

How about the external locus of control you're talking about? Is that more so that you kind of, you don't have control of, like, external outcomes? Or, like, what does that mean exactly? Yeah, it sort of means, like, things happen to you. Nothing you do can really impact that result. A good example might be, so if you think back to like World War I, and you know, so you're like in trench warfare, you don't have much say over what's happening. You're being bombarded, you're being shelled, you're just kind of sitting there

hoping for the best, basically. Whereas like, you had, if you could take more action, again, like maybe plan to go around, you know, the flank or like do something. But if you could take more action, again, like maybe plan to go around, you know, the flank or like do something. But if you're told, Hey, just sit here while they're going to, you know, bomb us basically. Well, that kind of sucks. Cause you're just hoping for the best and you have no control over it. And that usually gives people more of this feeling of like helplessness. And then if you feel you can't do anything to impact your outcome, what are you going to do? You're probably not going to take action in the first place. How important is it to get around like-minded people? Because you and Mike seem very,

very similar in a lot of ways. When Mike was on the show, he made everything sound so simple, he made everything sound so simple and it, and it really is. And unfortunately, I think people want some complicated answer about, you know, don't eat carbs or they want some sort of like, I don't know, magic thing to happen, but it is, you know, a lot of this is very simple when you break it down, you treat yourself well and you, you kind of have normal, healthy practices and you're going to be a pretty damn healthy person. How important has it been for you to surround yourself with like minded people for your business? It's been great. Mike's a super talented guy, super smart guy. One of his strengths is the ability to take this what can be seen as complex, break it down into really simple

information. Like that's always been one of his strengths. You know, he was a professor. I used to sit in on some of his classes here and there, and it was just, it was great to see because, I mean, I don't know. I remember sitting in college and sometimes that stuff would just go way over my head. I'd be bored. I'd be, you know, thinking about 10 other things, but you know, he's pretty engaging, all that good stuff. So it's super important. And, you know, truth be told, like Mike's been my number one mentor. So, you know, like he sort of recruited me way back in college to get into powerlifting. And I was like, okay, like, that sounds fine. Maybe I'll like it. Maybe I won't, but again, he's kind of

always been there. So yeah, it's funny. It's not the first time I've heard that people like to say that all the time. Like if he's ever been on something and then I go on, they're like, Hey, sound a lot alike. And I mean, I guess I take that as a compliment because I have a lot of respect for Mike. When, you know, COVID kind of started, I guess. Yeah. When COVID was like coming up this year, did you guys do anything within the app to, I guess, I mean, I know it works on programming. Then there's also nutritional aspect. But were there any notifications for people in terms of just, don't know things on potential mental wellness or whatever or was

it just like still focused on these habits because i mean i mean generally probably people that use the app will also have healthier natural habits so things won't affect them as much but did you guys make any sort of changes because of corona um maybe not necessarily in the app so much, but maybe just like educational content through social media or a website. And one example was, again, a lot of people are sort of scared to go out to grocery stores.

And so we were trying to tell people like, well, you don't necessarily have to go to the grocery store every day and get fresh food or something. Like if you have some canned foods or whatever, like you're going to be okay. And you can totally get away with that for, you know, a few weeks, maybe even a few months, you know, cause again, like what, like March and April, like there's just mass panic everywhere, right? Like don't even want to go to the stores, anything like that.

And so, you know, we kind of thought, well, all right, well, let's, let's work with that. You know, we don't want to scare people anymore, right? Like you got the news enough for that. But again, just like if you have some stuff at home, you could probably work with that. You know, here are some options. You know, it doesn't have to be perfect, right? So consistency is more important than perfection. So just sort of backing that up, I think was really helpful for people. You mentioned earlier about, you know, some things like people just maybe thinking things

are too hard. You mentioned earlier about, you know, some things like people just maybe thinking things are too hard. What are some simple things that people can do to just kind of pick away at their at their health? You know, just kind of, you know, you mentioned walking. Like, are there a couple other things that people can do? Maybe they can cut something out or maybe they can add something to their to their day to make things just a little easier? Yeah. Be active a couple of times a week, at least again, it doesn't have to be super, super crazy, you know, again, because we're probably all more into lifting and going a little bit harder, but we're the minority for the most part. There's a lot of people out there that don't do anything. So again, it's just, and I think sometimes people see that and they sort of see, you know, folks like us and they're like, oh, well, you got to be really hardcore into it to get results. That's not the case at all.

You know, if you can just do something. Again, like I got my mom into, you know, walking at the start. And then I actually like bought her a CrossFit membership because like one, she's never lifted in her life. She's like 60. And two, I knew she would like the social aspect of it. Like she likes going to the gym because you know she gets to chat with her friends basically so again it's just something like that it doesn't have to be super crazy so that's maybe on the exercise front and again yeah i would love

to tell people to lift a couple times a week but what if you don't like lifting for whatever reason again i don't know why someone wouldn't like lifting, right? Like, preaching to the choir here. But again, like, maybe it's an exercise class. Maybe it's yoga. Maybe it's just walking. Like, whatever it is, something's going to be better than nothing. And then on the nutrition front, you know, mostly stick to basic whole foods. Don't eat a bunch of junk food. And if you don't eat a bunch of junk food, boy, it's really hard to overeat and to kind of gain weight

and get into worse health conditions. Now, I'm curious, like, with the amount of users that you guys have, and I'm assuming it's in the tens of thousands at this point, right? That's a fair statement to make. Right. So how does it, you said it's like a living organism. Does it continue to evolve in the way that it does work with individuals? Or is it at a point now that it can take anybody and it just, it can do the same thing?

Or is it still working off of all the data that you guys have compiled over the years? So a couple of things there. That's a really interesting question. Thanks for asking it. So the longer you do use the app, the idea is it'll kind of pick up a little bit more information. So let's say you run a diet phase, maybe you run a maintenance phase after, and then you go to start another diet. It's probably going to have a better starting point for you that second phase than when you first started the app. And again, it's just, it's probably going to have a better starting point for you that second phase than when you first started the app. And again, it's just, it's kind of able to learn a little bit over time. The other really interesting thing too, is so we were able to pull some data from

the app. So we had like 10,000 completed diets varying in the length, whatever, and how much weight people lost. But we were able to pull some pretty cool data. And what we started to see was that people that were not setting super crazy aggressive goals from the start had better outcomes. And so normally we would recommend people like, hey, maybe you can diet for about three months max. And if you go too much past that, you're going to start to fall off a little bit. Well, what we saw in the app actually surprised us a little bit. It was more like nine weeks was what was the better outcome, which, again, I wouldn't have personally guessed that, but it was cool to see that. So now we're able to take some of that data.

And now when someone starts the app, we can sort of give them like a gentle nudge, like, hey, hey, hey, you know, maybe you don't want to go super crazy. So hardcore, it's like, you know, scale back just a little bit, you know, thing. Cause we want people to be successful, right? Like we don't want people to jump in, go way in over overboard in two weeks, they sort of fizzle out because we're actually trying to look at some data from the app. So what makes people not successful in the app. And that tends to be one of the main things they try starting way too hard. They try going way too fast and then they just fall off. It's like, well, I, again, it's our job to hopefully better educate people as to not do that.

Yeah. I really, really appreciate that about the app. So I finished my first like solid full week this previous week. Uh, what's it called? Um, when I'm roughly at macros, I forget what the term is called at the end of the week. It says it has your like number of meals that you were, uh, it escaped me, but I was like 20 for 20 or whatever it was. And then when I go to weigh in, it kind of like was telling me like, uh, dude, you actually lost weight. I said it to try to gain weight. So I'm trying to gain five pounds in the next eight weeks, try to, you know, keep it pretty simple. But by December I'd like to be one 75. And I was laughing. Cause I'm like,

well, app, you haven't met somebody like me. So it's straight up told me that like, Hey, you need to up your, your macros quite a bit. So I'm excited for this week. Cause I'm getting, I get to eat a lot of carbs, you know, I'm pretty stoked for that one. But I do love the fact that the previous week, or I tried to set it up two weeks ago to gain, and I didn't really understand the lifestyle settings and all that stuff. So when I started again on another gain phase, it stopped me and it was like, you just came off of a gain diet. Are you sure you want to do it again? And because I didn't actually do it for the entirety of the diet, I said yes. But I think it's great because I know a lot of people would fall into or would, you know, yeah, hit a bunch of pitfalls when

trying to do it like a, you know, just like a fitness pal diet app or something. And that's what I love the difference about this app is it really is like a coach in your pocket i know you guys have mentioned that before but if you can in better words can you explain just as quick as you want or as long as you want the differences between this app and something like my fitness power even like the app i was using which was my macros plus yeah so the real quick summary is if you use something like my fitness pal it's sort of just like a food diary right like you just kind of tell it whatever you eat it's not giving you any feedback i mean you can tell it that you eat 10 donut today

and a gallon of milk and it's not going to say anything it's just going to be cool so all we were trying to do is you know someone's going to tell goals. Again, like you can't set super crazy goals in the app. You can't be like, I want to lose 50 pounds in two weeks. You can't do that, of course. But again, like it's going to basically coach you along the way and sort of give you some feedback as to, you know, hey, you put in a couple of weights per week. It's going to track where you should be. If you're behind schedule, it's going to say, hey, we think that you should actually, you know, change your your nutrients for next week. Are you OK with that? And if you click yes, then it goes ahead and does it. So, again, it's just more of the more interaction. Right. So it's not just a diary. It tries to give you a little bit of input and sort of tell you what to do so you're not totally on your own yeah and does it recognize holidays like i'll be dieting through thanksgiving on that day is it gonna be like ah go for it uh not yet maybe that's a real possibility yeah you put your birthday in there right yeah

does yeah no that's that's good stuff no I think that's super interesting because if you could program in your birthday, we could probably put a little thing in there that says like, hey, happy birthday. Enjoy. You know, maybe make a little joke of it. Like, hey, P.S., you know, macros are free today. Like, you know, don't sweat it. That's helpful, right? Like, that's what a coach does. Like, you're working with a live human, you know, like that's part of the process.

So, again, it's little things like that's part of the process so again it's little things like that that i actually think it's a really good idea the only thing i was going to say on top of that is like you can actually you know when your weekly review pops up like let's say your weight spikes a little bit and you're trying to lose weight you actually have the option to repeat the prior week because you know let's say you had a birthday or it was thanksgiving it was christmas the holidays whatever or you're traveling like there's a reason you probably consistency wasn't that great adherence fell off so you can kind of scale that back so again that's kind of trying to

model the coaching process a little bit in there yeah that was the word meal adherence my bad so that's actually really cool how many um uh actually i have two questions so obviously the app does nutrition and yeah it also does programming so i'm assuming that depending on how somebody's trending right it will either maybe increase a little bit like does it meld with the programming side of things the the renaissance nutrition and the renaissance uh i guess exercise stuff? Like, does it obviously increase his training volume over time, or does it increase cardio if they're trying to drop?

Like, how does it meld together? It doesn't do that quite yet. So we don't have a training app quite yet. It's just nutrition. Okay. My bad. Many people. No, no, no, no worries, man.

We literally get asked that question every single day. That's why I was kind of laughing. Yeah, you know long term to to have to add more synergy but what i will say that it does do so like i have my cardio days and then i have my like lifting days and i i input that in the app as a light day even though it says like your cardio doesn't count as just a light day but with, it still will account for my lighter day and my macros do change for that day. So, yeah, it's dope. So my cardio days, I am eating way less carbs. But then on my lifting days, I'm having a little bit more carbs.

So it's still, if you're honest with the app, it's intuitive and it follows you and you follow it and have fun. What other metrics does it kind of track? Like, does it track like sleep and stuff like that that that stuff that you wouldn't expect it to track um so it tracks a tracks a few things probably the main thing that's going to be is your body weight to kind of measure your progress each week you can also program in like when when go to bed, when you do wake up, like how often you work out, how hard those workouts are, sort of just daily activity levels, right? Because if you're someone that sits in an office all day long, it's going to be a little bit different than, you know, if you're a construction worker carrying heavy stuff all day. So it does factor in a little bit of that stuff. You know, the other thing that was mentioned earlier is it kind of tracks your adherence.

So, again, you can sort of check in each meal. And it's just kind of like a little accountability tool, basically. So that way you can kind of see, you know, every so often, you know, someone will take a screenshot of that, put it in, like, our Facebook group, and their adherence is, you know, 55%. And like, well, hey, I'm not really seeing results. You go, okay why why do you think that is you know like if you missed half of your workouts would you expect very good results hopefully you would say no so again something like that it's just it's a visual thing you see it and you go okay i could probably improve upon that and again that was kind of the idea like

don't reduce your nutrients it's like you're not even following the plan in the first place right like get your consistency in order first then worry about that a little bit later on because again that's what people get i guess somewhat backwards a little bit you know they're not doing well and then they want to sort of get more aggressive and it's like that doesn't make any sense like why do you want to do that? Yeah, we see that a lot, right? I mean, I think that's what we're dealing with here is there's millions and millions of dollars to be made off of human behavior.

And I think that's ultimately what you're dealing with through this app is you're trying to encourage, you know, some type of human behavior to lean towards the goals that these people are kind of saying that they, you know, want to lean towards, they want to go towards. But it can be very difficult, because I think we're sometimes we're trying too hard. And we're maybe trying to make too many changes at one time, we want to get stronger and leaner. And we want to lose weight and get ripped up and kind of all at the same time. And it's just, it's a really difficult thing to do when you haven't really done much fitness before. Maybe you don't have a lot of experience with nutrition. Maybe you just don't have,

maybe you've never really dieted before. Maybe every time that you have dieted in the past, maybe you've failed. And so maybe you have, and maybe every time you exercised, you had a bad experience, maybe you got hurt. I mean, there's just so many different things that play into this. And I think it's great that you have something that can help people. What do you think is the biggest hurdle? You know, is it adherence? Is it just getting people just to kind of commit to, you know,

what it is they're saying that is their goal. Yeah, I think that's, that's like one A, maybe even one B. Again, the other one goes back to what we talked about a little bit earlier. I think people just, again, it's so easy if we're sitting here right now, totally relaxed, calm, you know, not in the heat of the battle, like lifting, it doesn't hurt or anything. It's easy to say, Hey, you know, I have these crazy goals. Like I'm going to hit all these goals. So easy to say it right now at this time, again, put yourself in your shoes a week or, you know, even tomorrow, like while you're lifting or while you're following your nutrition plan, are you going to think the same thing?

No, a lot of people shoot themselves in the foot by getting ahead of that. And they're like, they're sitting here and they're really fired up, right? They're inspired. They're motivated. They saw something on social media and they're just like, they're so ready to go. And then they set these really hard goals. And again, they go hand in hand. So I don't even know if it's one and two, it's like one, a one B again, you get so aggressive

that you're basically setting yourself up for failure that you can't possibly adhere to that because you didn't give yourself a fair shake from the start. What are some of the craziest like transformations that have, like you've seen in terms of individuals that have used it? Cause I've seen like on the posts from RP people who've lost hundreds of pounds just using the app. So what are some of the craziest ones that come to mind when I mention that? I think the coolest ones are the people that have been around for a couple years and they have sort of bought into the long-term thinking idea.

So the whole, again, this even goes back to what we were just talking about. If you're able to think with a little bit more like delayed gratification, you're able to think more long-term and you're like, okay, well, I'm going to lose a hundred pounds. I'm not going to do it all at once. I'm going to start with losing 20 pounds. And then I'm going to maintain those results for a couple of months. And then I'm going to lose another 20 pounds, maintain for a little bit. And then I'm going to lose another 20 pounds. Maintain for a little bit. And again, you see people really do this.

And again, I know it's hard because everyone wants to lose those 100 pounds as fast as humanly possible. Again, there's some trade-offs there, of course. But the people that stick to that plan for the long term, I mean, my God, that's awesome to see because you look at them and they've completely changed their life. They're like an entirely different person. There's like maybe a couple of them that jumped to the top of my mind. And those are probably the coolest ones to see. Like it's cool to see people that are relatively lean and then they get eight-pack abs or whatever.

Like that's cool. But to see the people that started – actually, actually, no, I got a perfect one for you. Ethan Suplee. Yes. Dude, I mean, again, like he lost a ton of weight on his own a couple years you know again all sort of tried every single diet out there whatever and then i don't know he watched a video with dr mike or something he's like huh this seems a little bit different and And it was really hard because, again, he even said this himself. When you're that big at some point, you have a really hard time with the idea of not getting results and sort of taking a step back and maintaining.

And again, he said that was his biggest struggle. And so that was really cool to see. I mean, he's going to have some pictures here pretty soon. He's got legitimate abs now and he's like two 50. Yeah. That is pretty cool. Okay. That's crazy.

It's tough. 300 pounds. Yeah. It's tough to, it's always tough to continue to go back to your principles. But in this conversation, I mean, you've done it five or six times already where it's a it's a boring and an annoying story for people to hear that you have to be consistent, that you have to.

It's got to be long term. You've got to have delayed gratification. Like, I just want to get better today. Like, I just want to do it right now. And it's so difficult to continue to go back to that. What are what are some of your main nutritional philosophies? Do you guys have kind of an overarching kind of principle that you like to follow in terms of counting calories or certain particular views on carbohydrates or fats? Or is it just like, hey, whatever way we can assist somebody, we're going to do that.

Yeah, so maybe it's one-on-one coaching. There's a bit more flexibility, but you know, Andrew mentioned this earlier that so your activity level is going to kind of dictate kind of how many carbs you eat, right? So if you're someone like Rich Froning, Matt Frazier, well, okay, you're probably eating a lot more carbs than, you know, my mom who, mom, who maybe works out for 20 minutes a day. So you can imagine that that's going to vary quite a bit. Yeah, just like the basic nutritional priorities are half the battle is just adherence, sort of getting people in the right mindset or thinking about the right things that they can actually stick to it. And then calorie balance is obviously really important.

And then for us, it kind of depends on what your goals are. So if you just want to lose weight, that's a little bit different story than if you're a high-level athlete. Because if you're a high-level athlete, we're probably going to start looking at your macronutrient breakdown, your nutrient timing. It's going to be pretty important. Are you taking the right supplements?

Things like that. But if you're just a normal person just wants to lose 10 15 pounds the story changes a little bit and sometimes people get lost in that and they think that it always has to be the same it's like well no like i'm not going to tell someone that's brand new to dieting never has never heard of macros i'm not going to tell them that they need to, you know, time a meal 30 minutes after their workout. Like they may or may not even be working out. So it's like, okay, let's take a step back and make you need a little bit more flexibility. Hey, maybe we just aim for like three meals. We start with some like lean proteins, you know, maybe eat some veggies in there. Um, you know, again, find out what they like. I mean, nothing super earth shattering there.

And again, hopefully you can educate people a little bit along the way, you know, they're armed with those tools, like you said earlier, where they can kind of run off on their own afterwards and do it themselves easier. Yeah. One thing that I'm learning to like that I actually very much disliked in the beginning was the fact that the app does push you more towards whole foods. It pushes you towards, you know, actual things versus the diet that I was previously on where I was making these, you know, fat-free concoctions to keep the calories down, protein high, and, you know, kind of just trying to hack my way into things. But one thing that I was doing every single day essentially was fasting.

And then the meal timing thing kind of just caught me by surprise because I've never done that before either. I've never had a pre-workout meal. I've never had a, you know, the app just told me right now that my next meal is about to be, you know, it's almost due. So that's all really, really new to me, but I do like it. Do you guys think that maybe in the future you'll have like a form of fasting inside the app or is like the meal timing thing, just something that you guys, you know, like part of your philosophy. If you are a super advanced person when it comes

to competing or whatever, it's a little bit more important. Other than that, um, what we've found again, like you get something out there and you got to get feedback. You got to see what people like the same sort of theme. We keep hearing all the time for people is like, Hey, these meal times are a bit too rigid for me. Like, okay, cool. Totally hear you. So our next update that's coming out, like you're going to have, you can sort of set periods in there where you don't want to eat.

So again, like, and I mean, right now, theoretically in the app, like if you didn't want to eat until 10 AM.m., you could just say you're sleeping until 10. It's a little makeshift way around there. But with the next update, you can, you know, tweak that a little bit yourself and be like, hey, I wake up at 8, but from 8 to 10, you know, I'm busy. Like I don't want to meal then. And then it just pushes it back a little bit. Cool. So where did the, I guess like the, the idea when you guys were building all this stuff out to like, to monetize everything, like, where does that like, I guess, knowledge come

from? Is it from you? Is it from Mike? Is it both? Like, like, how did you guys come to the idea that like, Hey, this, we're going to charge a monthly fee for this sort of thing. And all of a sudden we're going to have, you know, tens of thousands of people subscribe to it. Uh, yeah. I mean, Dr. Mike kind of helps write all the algorithms with it and things like that. And then he works with the engineers. Um,

yeah. So people used to buy diet templates. It was like a one-time thing. You'd have to pay like a hundred dollars upfront. And, you know, here's a really cool thing about the subscription model is we have to work our asses off to make sure that we have a good product and it's bug free and it's always working. So people pay a template, they give you $100 up front and then whether they use it or not, it's really up to them. And then that's a fine model? It works. But now with the subscription model, we have to make sure we are doing the best that we can to make sure we have very good customer service. We're very much on top of it. If people complain about something or say that there is a little bug that pops up here and there, because there's always little things that pop up in software development. So it's like now, if someone's paying monthly, it sort of the customer, the member in a much better position. And I think that's pretty

cool because then like we're highly incentivized to do our absolute best because if we fail, if we mess up, like we're going to be hurting from it. So I think that's really cool. And it's sort of beneficial for both sides. I like what you were saying about the food timing and, you know, Andrew saying, you know, and there's probably other people that struggle with staying on top of that timing. But I think something you can also reference is you can always go back to the consistency side of things and say, hey, you know, well, I know that you've struggled with diets in the past. And a lot of times what causes people to go off the rails is hunger, cravings, stress. When we get too hungry, we make really bad decisions. You said it earlier about, you know, it's easy for us to sit here calm, you know, especially like after a meal

and talk about all these great goals that we have after we just ate a giant pizza, you know. But as you get into the thick of it and as you get into weeks and maybe even months of it, it gets to be really, really difficult. So those people that, you know, sometimes are maybe struggling to get those meals. And I think it's just important that they recognize that missing a meal is a little bit like cheating on your diet in a sense, which doesn't sound intuitive at all, because you're like, well, I'm trying to lose weight, so I should just eat less food. And I'm not saying that you constantly need to be stuffing yourself either. If you're really full from a previous meal, you probably don't, unless you're trying to

get those gains, you probably don't really need to be forcing a lot of food down. But I do think it's important that people do try their best to really stick to the plan as best as they can because but we just know that once something's off a little bit the the uh the spokes of the wheel are going to start to kind of unravel and they're going to start to fall apart and then it might not be that day but maybe it's two three days later where you find yourself nose down in some ben and jerry's and're like, man, I don't know where I went wrong, but it was probably two or three days prior that you skipped out a little bit on the protein or missed a meal or something like that. Yeah, no, no, no. That makes total sense. Again, if you are skipping meals, well, chances are

you're going to be more hungry. What happens when you're really hungry, right? We're basically fighting human evolution. You got to eat. Please eat. For the love of God, eat. Well, what happens when you're really hungry, you're more likely to make bad choices. And then it's just this, I don't know, negative feedback loop. Maybe that's a good term.

But you skip a meal, you're more hungry. And then you just, I don't know, I keep going down this downward spiral. For yourself, what do you, what do you do with your own nutrition? Yeah. I mean, you know, I met Dr. Mike back in like 2008. I've kind of been eating somewhat, you know, RP-ish, if you want to call it ever since I'll usually eat four or five meals a day, something like that. you know rp-ish if you want to call it ever since i'll usually eat um four or five meals a day something like that um generally i'll have some type of like workout

shake around when i work out i just really like that do i need it no i'm not like training super super hardcore anymore uh like i maybe used to um the i will say a little change that I've made is I'll sort of consciously have a bigger meal like at our family dinner because we kind of make that like a priority to you know try to sit down like have family dinner together so I am conscious of that you know I'm not like super you know married to nutrient timing as much as I used to be a little more laid back, so to speak. Currently, um, if somebody wants to use the app and it's, it's really cool that it mainly suggests whole foods, like Andrew said, but if there's somebody who's like, I like to eat more fat or I'm, I'm a keto person or I'm a, this vegan or whatever, can you make

those adjustments so that it's spits out those types of food or meal ideas to you not quite yet okay maybe down the road for sure like so you can you can kind of potentially make it more advanced so you have a little more flexibility um you know right now it's gonna kind of give you more recommendations versus kind of inputting and again we have seen people request that so you know we'd be sort of silly not to listen to what people have to say right like we want to hear what people have to say what would make it a little bit better tool for more people and it could could very much be a real possibility down the line i am interested to find out more about you kind of mentioned how you eat a little bit bigger of a meal with the family.

Is that just to, I guess, just participate in family period? Like, because I think all of us know what it's like to sit there with some green beans and some chicken and some rice and everybody else is eating something different. And it's, um, well, everyone can understand your goals and you can explain to everybody what your goals are. Uh, it's, it's still just a little awkward. It's a little bit weird for everybody. And it's, it's, uh, it's not as enjoyable. Whereas if you have, um, you know, what, what everyone cooked and what everybody prepared, you know, in my household,

we try to have dinner every night. It doesn't happen every night, but we try to make a thing of it. The kids participate in trying to help set the table and stuff. My wife will cook something. I usually participate in cooking something as well. And we try to try our best to make it a thing, like a family setting. And I also, even if I'm on a specific diet, I'll actually eat maybe a little bit before we eat so that I can still eat what we put on the table and I don't

have to be a weirdo. So are you kind of doing that just to participate in the family lifestyle a little bit more? Yeah, a little bit. And again, I could, so my kids are eight and six, so I could explain to them that I have specific goals, but it's going to be totally lost on them. They're like, dad, it ain't working. Kids are brutal, man. Exactly. Yeah.

Kids are brutal. Yeah. They'll, they'll give it to you real for sure. It's actually one of these things that, you know, my wife and I really made a conscious choice of like, cause we didn't do this for the longest time. Cause we just felt like we were so damn busy, you know, working or whatever.

And, you know, the kids, they were like both in school and we just had like a more structured schedule and maybe have a little bit more freedom. Like we weren't so crazy busy. And yeah, it's just a,

it's a really nice thing to kind of be able to sit down with your kids. It wasn't, you know, entire family, whatever. I'm curious, um um especially when you guys started getting some of your bigger growth as far as users are concerned what kind of changes did you guys make in terms of like i guess marketing and maybe the type of money you were spending on

marketing because one common theme you seem to hear with uh and i'm not like some business like mark would be the business owner here in that sense but one thing you tend to hear is like when you start to spend more money on the business you start to actually do more make more etc was there anything you guys did new in terms of marketing or or different types of things that other people weren't doing that allowed you to grow so much uh i mean yeah so i think one of the good things that we had was a pretty good social media presence and you know a lot of people you have a great social media presence not just a good you have a great social media presence i've seen your product uh you know for the last eight years everywhere from from so many different athletes and you have really loyal athletes so you guys

did an amazing job with that. Yeah. So I think, you know, someone asked me that the other day and it's really interesting. So we have an athlete manager now and he does a really great job. His name's Charlie and you guys love him. He's a, you know, meathead, just like, just like all of us, but yeah, he does a really great job with that. And so it's kind of a couple of things. There's sort of making sure that we're not just like having people that, you know, just kind of take money from us or whatever, and, you know, don't actually use it. Like that's kind of something we really want to focus on because

then it's more authentic. So, you know, that's one. And again, it goes back to social media, because here's the thing I was going to say earlier, you know, if we're able to do a good job and people are able to achieve their goals, they very freely want to go talk about it on social media and share it because they're proud of their results. They think it's really cool. I've always been just entirely fascinated by this idea. But 90% of our content on our social media isn't ours. We don't create it. It's people that are doing it for us.

And I've just always been fascinated by that because I'm not a super creative person. I'm like, if I had to constantly come up with stuff, I'd be like, guys, what do we do here? So again, that, that's a big help right there. And, you know, just being able to repost stuff, it's really big. But maybe in terms of like other bigger stuff, you know, maybe some, some bigger partnerships with, you know, some like bigger athletes, you know, like someone like Rich Froning or, you know, maybe working with like Guadalupalooza or something like that. Like that's probably a bigger thing that, you know, a few years ago we probably wouldn't have been able to do. And some of those things you have to be, especially in the beginning, you have to be kind of crafty with them.

Like you, A, you need a good product. I mean, that's number one. I think that sometimes maybe that people don't understand that part of it is that it's important that whatever the idea or concept is that it's good. Uh, that's always a great starting position, but then you have to figure out a way to work your way in. And, and with somebody like a rich froning or, uh, any of these high level athletes that you've worked with, if you don't really speak their language, it's going to be really tough to get in there unless you just have a good amount of money. You know, if I wanted to infiltrate through like jujitsu, like I could start paying people

like a good amount of money and people would be excited, but then it wouldn't have the authenticity. If I was a practicing jujitsu person and I went to a lot of competitions and I really submerged myself in it and I got to know the best coaches, then you could be a little bit more crafty. And we can kind of share this, kind of have a shared sense of purpose almost rather than just trying to throw money at people. Totally. I can give you a really good example of that. So I never really did a really good example of that. So I never really did a lot of CrossFit myself. And one time I was at Rich Froning's house in Tennessee

and, you know, CrossFit's their life, right? I mean, totally. And, you know, they're all like training and doing all this stuff. And yeah, I was there and I was like, oh, I actually like worked out earlier today. So I was just kind of of hanging out but they're just like so into it and i'm like i got home and i'm like that's it uh there's literally a crossfit gym like two miles down the road from me i'm like no i'm gonna start going once a week like just gotta do it i mean and i you know i like it because i like the competitive environment of it i mean you get someone you know I walk in being a meathead bodybuilder power lifter and you know, I would ever think that I'm strong and there's like a, you know, 40, 45 year old lady that's just kicking my ass because I have no cardio and I'm

like, okay, I know what I gotta do. I gotta, I gotta, you know, improve my cardio a little bit. There we go. So for sure. Switching gears just a little bit. Uh, what can you tell me or tell us about your upcoming book? Yeah. So, uh, this is something that, um, I'd not really been working on a whole lot, but, uh, I guess 2020, um, you know, it's kind of been a gut punch to everyone. I think that's fair to say. Would you guys agree?

Yeah. It's definitely been different, right? It has been different. So here's how my 2020 went. January, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. And then she had surgery in February. She started chemo in March. And then after that, you know, COVID hit, quarantine hit.

So she had to go to like all that stuff by herself. And we were having to homeschool our kids, which is like, you know, again, like just the breast cancer probably would have been bad enough. And it really made me like kind of step back. And I've been reading, formulating all these different things in my head, kind of, you know, read a bunch of different books over the last couple of years, whatever. And I had these like main ideas in my head. It's like, well, what makes people more successful than others? And it didn't matter if it was psychology, it was business, it was finance, it was, you know, war, military history, whatever it was. I kept seeing these themes and they kind of overlapped and I was just keeping notes on them. And then 2020 hit and I was like,

boy, I gotta, I gotta really kind of change my mindset and approach to things. And it forced my hand, so to speak. And then I had to adjust on the fly. And then, I don't know, like a month into COVID or whatever, like we were in shelter in place, you know, cause my wife highly immune compromised cause she's in chemo and whatever. So I was like, I think I gotta do something with this. Cause I had all these thoughts and I was applying them and like, we were making it through pretty well. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to sit down. I'm literally not going anywhere for three months or four months, whatever. And I just sat down and just started writing. And it just kind of, you know,

again, it's just like lifting, right? You just kind of go in one day and you just keep going. You just keep showing up like that's half the battle. So I kept doing that, you know, wrote it, got 40, 45,000 words. I was like, Hey, I showed it to a couple of people and and i'm like am i crazy here or not they said i think you're well you are crazy but you know but maybe not crazy in this regard and i sent it to an editor and you know thank god for editors they they make people sound way smarter than than you know you look at my rough draft and it's like sometimes the editor

would ask me he's like what's this thought or tangent here? And I'm like, ignore that. Like how many sentences in a row can you go without any punctuation? You're like, I don't know. I'm trying to set a record. Yeah, totally. Six pages. You're like, that one run on sentence. That's so again, that's, um, that's just kind of how it started. And, um, yeah, I'm just, it's going just kind of how it started. And, um, yeah, I'm just, it's going to come out probably in November. Uh, I'm just really excited because I think it's going to help people because so many people have been negatively impacted, um, by 2020 by coronavirus, by everything, you know, economies and turmoil, all that stuff. I think if you're

able to take the bad and somehow find some good of it and make good of it and all that, I think that's going to help a lot of people. So that's kind of like, what was the inspiration for it? I suppose. Did you find it therapeutic? I did looking back. I mean, now I really love to talk about it because I think, you know, we had a choice to make basically like we could have, we could have played the victim cards, like, Hey, you know what?

Like this just really sucks. And we could have kind of went down that downward spiral, but we didn't. And we sort of choose to, you know, do all the work required to, you know, get through chemo and all that and, you know, homeschool. And again, like we chose to make a lot of positive out of something that was, was bad. And again, like that is, I guess, you know, lot of positive out of something that was bad. And again, like that is, I guess, you know, sort of therapeutic and sort of looking back, I think it probably did help just, you know, not having anywhere to go and all that stuff. I do have a home gym at home.

So, you know, thank God I had my sanity through that. But yeah, definitely. I think there's definitely some therapeutic stuff just getting all that out there. And, you know, hopefully it'll help a lot of people. You know, the idea of the internal locus control that you mentioned earlier, I'm kind of probably assuming that you've had that mindset for a long, long time as is like you've you you have control over certain things and you just control what you can and what you can't kind of whatever. Right. But with 2020, it seems that even when individuals have had that mindset, it just seems that certain things, certain things you just can't, you know, let go of certain things you just, you just can't just throw out of the mind because there's a lot coming right now for you with all of this. coming. Right now for you with all of this, did you ever catch yourself slipping away from that mindset? And when that did happen, how did you, I mean, I'm guessing maybe writing was something that kind of brought you back, but what else brought you back to that thought process?

Yeah, I think everyone slips like it's super easy. No matter who you are. We could talk about us. We could talk about famous people. We could talk about politicians, whatever. I think everyone slips. to work out every day. Like, so I chose to look at it as like, okay, Hey, I'm not going anywhere for a while. What can I do? Boom. I'm going to like, I'm going to make sure my habits, I'm going to, you know, my habits are going to be on point. You know, I'm like, I'm waking up a little bit earlier each day. You know, I'm reading more each day. I'm making sure I do some cardio each day. You know, I'm lifting and I'm like doing all these things. I kind of have this checklist, you know, on my phone and I'll make sure I'm checking them off every single day. So for me, I was just like, I refuse to sit back and sort of be a victim. Like that's not going to happen. That's never going to be me. So it's

like, what can I do? What can I, what can I actually control here? And again, you know, my wife had the same thing. She's probably a little bit more pessimistic mindset in general. And again, like that was a big focus. Well, like now let's shift to a more positive mindset because if you are more positive, you probably have more hopefulness that what you do, that you can actually change your outcome. And again, I think that's big, like no matter what your obstacles are, whether it's fitness, whether it's, you know, battling cancer or, you know, even business, like I think there's just some sort of key universals that overlap on all that. And that's kind of like what I found or stumbled upon. And, and that's kind of just like the main idea of the book.

Okay. Did you find it maybe helpful in a way to approach for you and your wife to approach cancer as, as if to kind of say like, Hey, look, you know, a lot of people have had cancer before. Like, I'm sure the initial, you know, the initial blow of it is like nearly impossible to overcome. But once you kind of get the news and you're like, OK, well, here's the treatment plan. Let's go through with the treatment plan and let's just kind of take it day by day the best that we possibly can. Other people have been through this. Other people have survived it.

It's not really necessarily helpful to be super sad about it, super upset about it. We should try to be, even though it's hard to say and hard to do, was that kind of the mindset going into it? Yeah, I think that's part of it. You have to take it one day at a time because it's so easy if you look at the bigger picture to just be completely overwhelmed like oh there's like too much but again you just what what's right in front of me what can i do right now what can i do today just do that let's just get through it one day at a time because again yeah it's like and again i wasn't the one going through it right so it's you know a little bit easier for me yeah, it's so easy to kind of get lost in that. You know, just cause sometimes, and I think this, you know, happened,

I think it's pretty normal thing, but you sort of just start to wonder like, why me? Like, it's just not fair. And that's a really slippery slope to go down because if you do, again, I just, so the first time I went to chemo with my wife, I remember I was sitting next to her. And my mindset was, I'm going to be here for like four hours. So I got my food. I got my snacks with me, whatever. But I also have books with me.

I'm like, dude, I'm going to learn my ass off here. If this is the hand I'm dealt, I'm going to make some good of it. And the people that were sitting next to me, it's like an older couple, probably like, I don't know, 60s, 70s, maybe. And their approach, their mindset was all they were doing was bickering and sort of fighting and complaining. And I thought to myself, boy, is that the route that we want to go? And I was like, no, what good could possibly come of that? You're just, you're going to kind of have that victim mentality and you're just going to what, sit back and sort of get depressed that this happened to you. Like, no, what can you do now?

Like, what can you control? Let's do that. Let's knock it out. And I mean, knock on wood, you know, my wife's done with treatment now. And, you know, as in a couple months ago now, I think it was August was her last treatment. So like, I think we're in the free and clear. So, yeah, it's, uh, it's tough to have that mindset, but, you know, kudos to you. That's amazing that, um, I think it's interesting too, that you've been learning all this stuff,

you know, and, uh, that sounds like it was helpful to your wife. Cause you mentioned that her mindset previously was just maybe a little bit more, uh, negative to begin with. Correct. Yeah. She, she definitely had the more, you know, if you have the optimism versus a pessimism mindset, she, it was kind of like the, the yin and yang. I'm, you know, probably much more positive. She would, she calls herself a realist, right?

Which is helpful, right? Like, of course it can't be all sunshine and rainbows. Like, no, there are obstacles overcome and all that, but it just kind of happened the right approach and mindset,

I think is a really big help on that. Well, opposite track too, right? Like if you guys were the same, you would, you would probably be like the couple that was bickering back and forth. Maybe. Yeah, for sure. Sure. But like that, that just really stood out to me when I was sitting there and I just,

I'll probably never forget it either. Cause it was just, I was like, okay, I know now what I, what I don't want to do. I think there's two different ways to look at it. Like maybe they're that way because they are older and they're like, you know, F like this is the shit's happening to me. And this could be the end. Right. But another way to look at it is they could also say, hey, I'm grateful that I live this long. You know, it's awesome.

I'm 60. I'm 70. I have grandkids or whatever it might be. And, you know, being around someone like Jason Kalipa and seeing his daughter go through and seeing that family go through what they went through, it was unbelievable. There was kids that would get up and give a speech and like they would talk and they would talk from the heart and they weren't crying. They were pumped. They were happy. They would tell you like a cool story. They were like, I mean, maybe they didn't understand the weight of what was going on, but they would talk about dying. They would talk about like, you know, Hey, if I only have 30 days to live, this is how I want to live my life. And you're like, Holy shit. And there's not a dry eye in the room. Everyone's

just gets, you know, completely devastated by hearing a child say that. But you're like, damn, if they can be strong and have that mindset, then maybe the rest of us should stop being a bunch of pussies. 100%. And I'm actually really glad that you brought that up. So one of the things, so if you read like a bunch of positive psychology stuff, that's like one of the fundamental things is just being able to be grateful. And when you look at it from that approach, again, it's like, oh like oh you know you could complain that you know all this stuff's happening what's like no like i'm actually grateful that you know we're still here um you know rp is doing well you know again like we're able like you know my kids are

still here like we're able to have family dinner every night like when you approach it like that all of a sudden your mind shifts your mindset shifts and it's no longer, oh, what was me? You're like, okay, I'm here. Like, let's do this. I'm ready to go. How can somebody essentially like train their mindset to think more this way? Because I would hate for like, I don't know, like just for myself, like some kind of, you

know, event like this, like what happened to you to like, okay, now it's the time to like turn it on and, you know, think this way. So hopefully nothing ever happens like that. But for somebody listening who maybe is the pessimistic or is the negative person, is there like certain books that you'd recommend or anything like that to where they can actually like start following this type of mindset. Yeah. So, uh, Martin Seligman is a really good author to follow. He's kind of like the godfather of positive psychology. So that's a good place to start. Um, she's a really smart dude, uh, University of Pennsylvania. So, you know, Ivy league school, of course. Um, also an interesting thing is, um, there's a lady, I think she's a professor at Yale and another Ivy league school of course um also an interesting thing is um there's a lady i think she's a professor at yale and another ivy league school um they have a free class i think it's like i forget the exact name of it but it's something about um keys to happiness let's call it um

stopped by laurie santos l-a-u-r-i-e's totally free. Like this is a course they teach at Yale. It's like one of the most popular courses that they have. But when COVID hit, I believe that made them put it online for free because they knew in with all this stuff going on that it was probably going to be a very big impact on people. And then, you know, it's one of the things they talk about, you know, like something even as simple as like savoring, like, you know, while you're there, you know, while you're having a meal with your family, just like being thankful for it, you know it's one of the things they talk about you know like something even as simple as like savoring like you know while you're there you know while you're having a meal with your family just like being thankful for it you know sort of savoring it not just you know being on your phone and you know like not i guess that kind of ties into maybe a little bit like mindfulness stuff but again they talk a lot about the being grateful as well so that's probably a couple good resources

you know what you mentioned there in terms like the savoring thing it's just like i guess the idea of maybe just being present in the moment rather than having your mind somewhere else thinking of all the different types of problems you have like i've noticed honestly like when i can be there it makes a very big difference with how i just feel much happier versus when i'm thinking of something that may be going wrong with somebody i'm working with or whatever and my like even my significant other can tell my mind is somewhere else and it just causes stress. It's crazy. I mean, listen, we're probably all guilty of this, but even, and I'm certainly guilty of this. I've, I've tried to maybe not be as guilty, but you know, again, like my kids are eight and six, so they're, you know, like always around you know always you know super high energy and it's like sometimes i gotta work but you know

sometimes i find myself like i'm not actually working like let's be honest right and then it's like you know in case you're trying to talk to you you're like damn it you know it's kind of like put your phone down and be like okay let's do this because it's so easy, right. To, to sit there and, you know, well, let's scroll through Instagram today. Like what, uh, stupid stuff can we find today? So, yeah, it's just all sorts of little stuff, man. I agree. I think that's really important. I think for every moment that you can concentrate on,

like what it is you're currently doing, uh, it leaves you that much further from your past, you know? And so the things in the past you can't control, you mentioned, you know, having control over certain things. We don't have control over that. We don't have a lot of control over like what might happen. We don't really know. Um, there might be some control that you can have. You can control some variables, but I find it really interesting.

You know, anxiety is, uh, you know, stress over things that haven't happened. Depression is anxiety over things that already happened. You really don't have control of either one. So why did we give a fuck? And the answer is because we're human, you know, and that's human. Exactly. Yeah, we worry and we're not sure about our choices. You know, we're an animal, might have an animal instinct instinct and they're pretty damn sure that they made the right decision.

They don't have to maybe think about it as much, you know, where with us, everything that we do or everything that we did or everything that we said, or we think about things you're going to say. I mean, how about that one? When you think about when you have to have a tough conversation with somebody and you build up tons of anxiety, then you're like, I need to talk to this person. And then you do talk to them and it goes completely opposite of what you thought. You're like, oh, I don't really want to say this to him.

It's going to hurt their feelings and so on. And then you tell them and they're like, oh, I'm glad you brought that up because I think A, B and C. And like, I think this would make everything a lot better. And you're like, uh-huh. You're like, I was sweating it for a week, you know, before we got into this conversation. Totally. I think that whole, you know, again, how do you kind of train this or work on it? Well, it's acknowledging that.

Right. So when something happens, right, someone gives us feedback, let's say it's not the greatest feedback. What's your initial reaction? You're pissed, right? That's normal. We're human. We want to think like that, but it's sort of catching ourselves thinking like that, being able to like, maybe just take a slight step back and be like, okay, they gave me this feedback. Well, one, is it true? Is it not true? Okay. Well, what should I do now? Or should I respond very angrily towards them and really emotional? That's probably not the best idea. Let's take a step back. Think about a little bit. And again, like I'll give a,

I'll give an example, man. I'm a really big Michigan football fan. Like I went to school in Michigan, whatever. I'm just like die hard, everything. And I was terrible watching Michigan football games. Like my family was like, you're not a good person to be around. Swearing and stuff. And, and now I'm just like, okay, that was a year ago. Where am I at now? And I'm like, God, I don't really give a shit that much about Michigan football.

Like I don't have any control over, I'm not out there playing. Like, why do I care? And it's like, if you just acknowledge it and you just, Mark, I'm sure you can probably enlighten me here, but you just, as you get older, you learn and you just become more mature and sort of your perspective changes, I'm sure. But like, I'm seeing that now. It's just, it's kind of mind blowing to me me but i mean i'm sure you know all this stuff's been around for thousands of years right like you know back in time it's like the same stuff which

is just funny to see but just kind of sometimes take something in your life to kind of flip that switch and then you go oh okay duh yeah there's a lot of things i think you can utilize as a practice as a form of practice and for, it might be watching a football game. I think what is okay for people to do, too, is to recognize that certain things charge them up and to maybe just not really watch it or not participate in it. So like the news, maybe social media. Like, I do think that you're better off arming yourself so you can handle more shit and not necessarily have to avoid stuff. But at the same time,

if you find yourself getting really frustrated every time you go to do this particular thing, uh, or you're always telling yourself ahead of time that you're already going to be frustrated when you go to do this certain thing, uh, then you, you may,

you might want to either figure out a way to educate yourself so you're not frustrated with that anymore, or to maybe even just avoid it altogether. How do you deal with social media type stuff? And has that improved over the years? It's improved a little bit. It's something that I'm very much still working on. I got a real good friend. Uh, he actually helped me out with a little bit of the book. Um, you know,

he was a seal and I just like leadership coaching and all that. And, um, yeah, I kind of, I'll text him every now and again. I'm just like, Hey, what do you think of this? What do you think of this? And he'll kind of just explain things to me in a different way that I go. It's funny too. Cause it's just happened the other day. You know, my wife will talk to me about something, you know, again, like if you have cancer, it's sort of always in your mind where like, you're always thinking about it and you're, you know, you get an ache in your arm and like, well, you go to worst case, right? Because this happened to you. And like, you know, I'm a little bit more detached from it, relatively speaking.

And I'm just like, you know, you can't really think like that. That's just not a great thing. And then like, I find myself doing the exact same thing when it comes to social media and you know, my buddy's texting me and he's like, well, just kind of think about it a little bit differently or do this. And I'm like, well, that just makes too much sense, you know? Cause it's so easy when it's kind of happening to someone else and you're a little bit detached from it. Like when it, when you're in it, right, when we're in the heat of the battle, it's a whole different story. And so that's just, to me, it's funny. And, and it's the more you learn and can be a little bit more aware. And, you know, Mark, I like that you mentioned you just, you keep practicing it, right. And like, you know,

you just, you see some of these things that keep happening every day or whatever. And just, it becomes a little bit easier over time. I mean, I got, it's just like lifting, right? You don't walk in day one to the gym, right? Like all this stuff's kind of universal. It's not, you know, just this or just that. It's like, if you, you can probably apply this stuff to everything. Have you, is there anything you've done to like, uh, I guess control it a little bit better in your life or have you ever necessarily been an individual that has had issues with social media or has always just been kind of like a tool for you? Um, I mean, it's always been, it's always been an issue. I'm on it entirely way too much. I'm sure you guys can probably relate, but, um, you know, the one thing that, and again,

I'm not perfect at this, of course, but,, but generally speaking in the morning, I'll try not to really pay much attention to social media. And that's actually why I like getting up just a little bit earlier because social media is not really that active in the morning. And I can just kind of set my phone off to the side or, you know, maybe listen to an audio book or a podcast or whatever. And I like that. a podcast or whatever. And I like that, you know, like, okay, I'll give myself a little bit of time and then, then I'll kind of get on and then, you know, go exploring and responding to stuff. But that's not really something I love to do first thing in the morning, right out of bed. It's tough to detach yourself from the mindset of like, I'm working, you know, like I'm, you know, I don't know what it's like to be female,

but from a male perspective, you're like, this is what I do. I, I, I'm bringing home the, bringing home the bacon kind of thing. And, and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm working and you kind of just, I think a lot of adults do that men and women where when they're on their phone, their kids trying to get their attention, they're like telling the kid they're working. But I think you're better off trying to set some boundaries and set some specific times that you're actually working. And I don't really think that scrolling through social media

is really working, even though we're going to try to sell ourselves that because we want to justify why we're on there. And it very well could be. I mean, you could be checking out the competition. You could be making a relevant post that's important to your company. But, you know, can you can you put your phone aside for a little bit and pay attention to what's going on currently? I mean, it's not like social media is going to disappear out of nowhere. So it'll it'll be there later on for myself. I've been really fortunate. I've been able to escape it um and it's been amazing

you know because i have people that just post for me so that's been really helpful but uh there's no escaping all of it you know it's it's uh i'm still on like youtube and so i'll still see stuff here and there but um it's actually been amazing to not even know anything about what anyone's doing i don't even i don't even know who some of of them say, hey, you see so-and-so did this or so-and-so posted that. I'm like, nope. And you learn that it just doesn't matter that much. And that actually has been surprising to me that it's pretty irrelevant.

And then if somebody mentions it like 20 times or something, then maybe I'll try to check it out or something. If I think it's something that I need to see or something that's fun or funny, maybe i'll try to check it out but it's been amazing to be distanced from it for a while now how long you've been doing that i'm just kind of curious as to that uh probably about six months or so or yeah about six months yeah i tried before and it didn't work yeah i tried before and i kind of i came and forth and, but it's been helpful to me to like pass over the reins. And then, uh, just from a, uh, business owner perspective of just sometimes giving people

an opportunity and just saying like, you're actually probably going to do a better job at this than I do rather than me saying, oh, it has to be me that does it. I'm going to do a better job. You don't know how to do it like me. Like, why would I say that when I, I mean, if you hired the person to handle certain things specifically, then they should be the right person for the job. And if they're not, then you might have to find somebody else. But just trying to empower them with, hey, I think you're going to do a better job of this than I am anyway. Yeah, it's funny listening to other people say this, you know,

similar things and you kind of think, okay, yeah, like, yep, check, check. Like I'm kind of making mental notes on my side of, it's always easier to hear from other people, right? Than, you know, tell yourself the same stuff as hard. Yeah. Yeah. Very much like your, your Navy SE seal friend uh mark is that guy for me um previously i was or recently i was going through a uh house sale and purchase situation where i was freaking out and i was like man if it doesn't appraise at the right amount and he's just like well hey uh you don't have control over any of it so why are you stressed out i'm just like

all right cool i guess you're right but if somebody doesn't have that uh where can somebody turn to to try to find a little bit of uh some of this like guidance i mean nowadays it's 2020 there's just so much good stuff on the internet. I mean, think about YouTube. Think about just all the free content out there. I mean, anything you could probably want or want to learn about, there's going to be stuff out there. I mean, you can probably Google. Just Google whatever you want to find out. I'm sure people are going to pop up, like, you know, read a book by them or, you know, watch some videos, TED Talks, something like that. Like, go watch, go learn, get that knowledge.

It sort of just gives you that awareness, and that's probably the first step. And once you have that, just hopefully use that sort of positive momentum to keep going. I hate to rewind just a little bit, but I'm really curious about this. At the point of people see RP Strength with the tens of thousands of users and it's a seven-fig figure business and you said 50 employees but in the building process of it were there any very notable moments where you guys were like all right we got to shut this down um or did that ever really

happen or were you guys just so entrenched in it that you just never really felt the need or felt the that you would ever quit to get to where you are currently. I don't know if we hit like that point, but we definitely had some different products that we tried out that just completely tanked, you know, just no one gave, gave a crap about. It's funny. Dr. Mike created these things called like hunger diet templates. And that's kind of excuse food towards more at nighttime.

He's got, this is going to be great, man. This is exactly what people want. People, people, people want results really. Now, again, we were able to sort of learn from that and go, okay, well, like this by itself, probably not a great idea. This main thing that we have people really like it okay how do we sort of merge the two together a little bit kind of take some of the good parts of both and you know eventually you know uh iterated a couple times you know the ended up with like the diet temples 2.0 and then 3.0 and then eventually morphed into the app and you know the app can do

a lot more of all the stuff that the templates couldn't. So I wouldn't necessarily say there was like that crucial moment, but yeah, we definitely, you know, that's the other thing too, right? I mean, that's actually a big part of the book is like, no matter what you do, you're going to fail, right? And so if you know that going in, you look at things a little bit differently and go, okay, well, I'm not afraid of failure because a lot of people are, and they don't ever take action to get going in the first place. But if you know you're going to fail and you have the right mindset that if you do fail, you just kind of adapt, pivot, learn from it and keep moving on. You know, that's just a much better approach, I think.

It kind of all ties into what you said in the beginning is that your app is continuing to learn and it's learning through error correction. You know, somebody goes to use a certain part of the app, especially I'm sure early on. And someone says, yo, like this thing's a piece of shit. Like it's not working. It's giving me weird numbers. It told me I need to eat 785 grams of protein or whatever. But you over a period of time, it advances, it gets better. or whatever, but you, over a period of time, it advances, it gets better.

And I think that that's important for people to recognize that we can do that as people as well. Like you, you error correct. That's what we do. You, you mess up, you screw up, you did too many sets of biceps. You can't straighten your arm out anymore. Or the week before you didn't work out enough and you gained weight and you went backwards or whatever, whatever it might be, but you can make those corrections. You can, you know, as you, as you go along, you can improve.

Sure. And you know that if you're aware of it, because again, I just think back to, you know, think of all the people that are afraid of making mistakes and so they never even get going in the first place. And again, they kind of get into that, you know, mental, maybe negative self-talk. And it's like, they basically convince themselves that they're going to fail and that they never even get going. And boy,

I'm sure there's some really good ideas out there that have just never come up because the person just never chose to move forward with it. And so again, just real quick on the book. So, you know, it's kind of like a pyramid like we have with the nutritional priorities, but at the base of it is hard work. Right. And like, that's the most fundamental aspect of being successful because no matter what it is, like, let's say you have an idea, ideas are just ideas that you actually have to put them into practice. Right. I mean, we could have the greatest training program in the world ever written, but it means jack shit if you don't go into the gym and actually

do it, right? Like then you just, again, now maybe that's a little bit of a critique of, you know, the evidence-based crowd. They like to maybe overthink things a little bit and they sort of undervalue the, how much hard work actually matters, right? You look at some of the more old school people and it's like, well, they had that in spades. So maybe trying to morph the two together, take some of the best of both approaches, and maybe that is the optimal way to go, so to speak. What's the name of the book and where can people find it?

Yeah. So it's going to be called Fit for Success and uh it's going to come out probably november 16th that'll probably just be on rpstrength.com and uh your wife is doing pretty pretty good now you said she's crushing it man she's crushing it yeah did you guys make any changes to uh her diet her exercise were there some were there some changes to any of that to help with, I guess, to help advance her position so she could feel better faster kind of thing? Yes. That's a really interesting one. When you're in chemo, they just kind of tell you to eat whatever you can because you might not even want to eat. You might just feel like complete crap some days. So that one's tricky. They generally just say, do whatever you can. You know, here's the messed up thing, right? And this is

kind of, it was really hard for my wife to avoid this. She was a healthy person, right? She eats better than I do, right? And she exercised, right? She competed in figure and stuff. Like she was a healthy person right she eats better than i do right and she exercised right she you know competed in figure and stuff like she was a healthy person and that's the part that kind of really got to her is like she was doing all the right things and then sometimes shit just happens and that's really unfortunate right it sucks like that's the thing is she's you know it makes her question herself like well if you're already doing all these things and some shit happens to you what do you what do you do after that again that's just kind of going back to i mean you can't really control right if something like that's ever going to come back

you can again you just try to eat well you try to exercise try to not be super stressed out you know have a more positive mindset, things like that. But beyond that, you can't really control it. So she's maybe made a few small tweaks with some foods that she'll eat, but like nothing super crazy. Again, it's just kind of getting back to the basics, mostly whole foods, exercising several times a day. I mean, she's like really into gardening.

That's kind of her, you know, Zen, so to speak. Was there, uh, was there any like looking into a ketogenic diet or is there not enough evidence, uh, in a ketogenic diet to, uh, help someone's position that might have cancer? That's a really interesting question. I can't speak to that a lot. She definitely heard that from some people. Again, it's one of these things where, you know, she went to one doctor and he was a little all over the place, but that was something he suggested. But like her main oncologist wasn't really a fan of that approach. And so it's really hard because you're hearing conflicting things by experts and i mean i boy i'm not a i don't know how to eat when it comes to cancer like stick to the basics the best you can you know and she'll ask me she's like what do you think and i'm

like listen to your main oncologist that's kind of the best that I can give. And, you know, I know a couple of doctor friends and I would kind of run it by them. And they're just kind of like, yeah, you do the best you can. You eat mostly healthy and exercise. Beyond that, no one's really sure. And that's where, again, maybe 10 years from now, because cancer is so prevalent,

again, you know, we'll either A, maybe have some type of like cure, which would be awesome. Or maybe they're just going to have a lot better advice if something does happen like hey actually you can do these couple things so you know again science that you learn hopefully evolve keep learning five ten years from now we might have much better answers obviously 2020 has caused a lot of uh a lot of pivots for a lot of people, a lot of changes. When you were heading into the year and you had all the things that maybe you wanted to try to

get done this year and try to do, with Corona, did your goals change at all? Did you pivot? Were you still able to hit the things you wanted to hit? I don't even know, did a lot of the things that happened this year, I guess that spurred the book, but were you able to do what you wanted to try to do this year so far? For the most part, I mean, I don't think I would say it's ideal. We definitely saw a little bit of an impact in the spring. For example, we had like a gym-free training program, and it was just for females i mean

no one really ever bought it just because most of our crowd is already in the gym and whatnot and you know as soon as covid hit like we had plans to make the male version already but it was kind of like okay this is obviously a really big thing like we need to get this done and you know that it ended up doing really well um again you know now people are sort of back to the gym so it's kind of trailing back off but you know that was one like fundamental thing that we had to change and shift pretty quickly because again everyone was asking us they're like what do i do at home like i can't go to the gym i can't you know leave my house or whatever and we're like okay like do you have some dumbbells yeah oh we would see really

creative stuff some people were using their kids or you know put them on their shoulders and squat them or whatever and yeah so that was probably the biggest thing that we changed in uh you know along with some of the education like if you're at home can't go to the grocery store or whatever like it's not the end of the world try to eat what you have and don't go too crazy. Congrats on all the success, man. It's been awesome to watch. Well, likewise, man. Thanks so much.

Great to have you on the show. And hopefully we can have you out here to super training sometime. Yeah, I love that. Here's the other thing. I haven't traveled since I haven't traveled at all 2020. So I'm like, I'm itching to get back out there and do some stuff for sure. Seem like that tragedy happened with Kobe Bryant.

And then the whole world just went on fire and just everything went to shit. Yeah. Ever since that. I love Kobe, man. I love Kobe. Yeah.

I know. Brutal. Where can people find you? At RP Strength on Instagram. All right, man. Have a great rest of your day thank you so much thank you sir cool yeah thank you guys thank you some great stuff it is some great stuff him and mike israel have definitely rubbed off on each other oh my god they're so chill they're so like calm like and when he said that they said he's like yeah you know we sound the same i think he meant like some of the like information that they give or but i'm like no you guys sound literally person

it's so it's it's dope they're both cool but cadence for sure yeah yeah yeah both of them are great that's great to hear that his wife is doing well. And hopefully that continues. It's got to be a rough, rough thing to, to go through it. And, you know, cancer is such a weird thing. I think there's a lot of diseases, a lot of illness that we just don't know enough about yet. You can't really just control everything through nutrition. You can't control everything through, you know, the way that we exercise and everything.

And maybe you can control stuff a little better. Maybe we'll learn more as we go forward. I've heard, you know, many times before that a ketogenic diet can help with cancer. But, like, you know, I don't know to what degree, you know, and I don't know how much proof or evidence there is of that. I know our buddy Ron Penna had the keto pet sanctuary that's with dogs, you know, it's not necessarily with people. So there's, there's a lot, a lot more research that needs to be done. But what I do think is cool is that I've heard this repeatedly is that, and he mentioned, you know, the next 10 years, and they've been saying that for a long time with cancer. Uh, but I do believe in the next 10, 15 years that we won't

maybe have a cure because it's hard to have, it's hard to really have a cure because there's so many different types of cancer. Uh, I just think that we'll see less and less people, um, die from it, which will be amazing. I was watching, uh uh something on 60 minutes god i feel old saying 60 minutes watching shows like that or 2020 right like those are old people shows but uh there was a guy that was on he did the genome gnome project uh genome project i don't know how you say that word um but he he's the one that figured out the coding of humans. You know, it was freaking wild. But he basically kind of in a way like reversed or cured sickle cell anemia, which is absolutely fucking crazy. And he did so by it's actually really, really wild story.

And I'm going to mess this up, but I'll kind of go for it anyway. a really wild story and I'm going to mess this up, but I'll kind of go for it anyway. So there's on your, I guess your DNA, there's a T and there's an A and just one letter. If one letter is off, if one of those letters is off, you will have sickle cell anemia. Sickle cell anemia is your red blood cells kind of turn into, it turns into what looks like a sickle. It kind of looks like a little mini boomerang. And then it builds up in certain areas and then it causes tons of pain. And you could have pain anywhere from it. You could have pain in your forearm, your cheeks, your leg.

I mean, it could be anywhere. And for some people, they have it all over their body. Just tremendous amounts of pain. They were like, scale of one to 10, what's this like? And they're like, is there an option for 20? You know, like it just kills. And it mainly happens in black people. And it happens a lot of times with people with African descent because of malaria.

I guess it's a defense mechanism against malaria which is kind of crazy too um they didn't really say whether i i didn't really i guess other people can get it but i didn't really they didn't have anybody else on the show other than other than people that were had african descent but it was um it was wild because there's these kids that are just in tons of pain and all they can do is give them like morphine and stuff like that. And they, you know, the doctors don't know what the kid's going through because they, you don't know what the person has right away, you know, a lot of times. And so these kids are saying they're in tons of pain. Well, they don't want to prescribe them pain medication, but then when they see how severe the pain is that they're in, then they start

prescribing pain. And then you have, you know, nine-year-old kid that's hooked on pain medication. And so it's just a really sloppy thing. But anyway, this guy had figured out a way to reverse sickle cell anemia by basically giving people stem cells. But also, I think there was something in there with HIV, which was really wild. And so he was able to kind of make this blend of stem cells and kind of infuse the stem cells into the person. And it would reverse their DNAna and it it's been working on a lot of people it's been crazy but the story was absolutely mind-boggling to watch i was like holy you know so what are they going to be able to do in the future and this guy was saying

that there's 7 000 um he's like there's at least 7 000 other diseases that are similar that he felt were similar enough to this to where they could fix them so it'd be interesting in the future to see you know what's possible with uh some of these stem cell uh some of the stem cell research and stuff that's going on yeah that's what got uh p prodigy from um mob deep he died of sickle cell oh really yeah yeah no a lot of like i have sickle cell trait a lot of it's it's testable a lot of west africans of sickle cell oh really yeah yeah no a lot of like i have sickle cell trait a lot of it's it's testable a lot of west africans have sickle cell traits just if it actually happens like manifest and turns into something yeah damn well that's i mean that's great because

like you hear about uh not you hear about it but like the like uh like rumors like oh yeah like like magic johnson survived you know or whatever it's like oh they do have the cure but they're you know they don't want to put it out because then they'll lose money whatever so the fact that this guy was like he's actually doing it it's like right hey maybe they're not all full of shit i wonder i want to look at that i wonder what the hiv thinks about like what did that have to do with it um yeah i can't remember i can't remember what that had to do with it but um yeah i wish i could remember that part of it but i think that that just i think that i i can't remember what it was but anyway i i just think it's fascinating it's cool to see like all the just different

you know modern technology being able to assist people and i i hope that you know they can figure out something with cancer because cancer is just so odd. Yeah. You're like, I don't have any clue on why the hell I got it. And some people, you know, might think it's because of technology or satellites or microwaves or we just don't know. Yeah.

Your phone. You're like, oh, put this over here. You know, we just don't we don't know. Sucralose. Yeah. Right. Yeah right yeah yeah i hope that one's not true right i know because it's damn i know but anyway yeah it was great having uh nick on the show today um what a what a great uh business you know that they started up years ago and it's great to see the success that they've had with with rp strength and just the way he was able to like you know and seaman said pivot in 2020 you know to start putting it putting

together a book after something happened like that's i can't imagine trying to stay positive through something like that like right what that takes you know i hope i never have to do that but you know we have examples of somebody that that did do it and did it very well. Yeah, it seems like he has a calm enough personality, even though he said that he can get fired up about stuff. It seems like he's calm enough to where he was able just to be like, oh, fuck it. I'll write a book. Yeah. Yeah.

Just by talking to him, he doesn't seem like a very actionary person. But that that that thing he mentioned about gratefulness and you mentioned that one, he, one day here too, before a podcast that really makes a big difference peeps. Like it really does make a really, really big difference. If you're, even if you're not going through something, just like making it a habit to maybe every morning or something, just think about multiple things you're really grateful for that you're really happy about. And it can really shift how your day continues to go as shit piles onto you. Yeah, I mean, there's so many things in a given day that we just take for granted.

We take for granted that your car starts. And just, I mean, the list of things goes on and on. That you have a refrigerator full of food. Yeah. You know, I mean, and there's a lot of people that are grateful and happy with not a lot. You know, they might live in a different country and they might not have access to the same things that we have here. And they're pretty damn pumped. And then here we are getting pissed because they put too much cream in our coffee or something.

You know what I mean? Like this 4G is not fast enough. Yeah. Right. And it's going to happen. I mean, it's just, you know, it's part of, it's part of human nature. It's going to happen. You're always going to be a little disappointed with whatever the hell your current position

is, but these food stamps don't buy diapers. Nothing can beat the feeling. If someone like, if you really want to eat some cereal but someone drank all the milk like there you have a good reason to actually be depressed like that is depression where's the milk where's the fucking milk can't drink cereal with water

who does that savages protein powder I've done that there's no real yeah I know and there's not really a replace I mean you can try to do stuff but it just doesn't work no there's no real yeah i know and there's not really a replace i mean you can try to do stuff but just doesn't work no there's no replacement for milk or well what about when somebody puts it back in the fridge though and it's like there's like nothing left in there yeah it's like the last bits and you have to i've used that milk with water and tried to save it but no i apologize to everyone in my household because i do that well i'm not i don't i my kids put stuff back completely empty i don't know why like they've

like they'll eat like the last of like a granola bar or something i'll just be sitting there like there's nothing in there oh man and so for me like i'm like what why would they do that so bad i'll measure stuff out and i need X amount of almond milk or whatever. And it's like, well, I don't want to use that much extra in this recipe. It's like 20 calories. I can't throw it away because I'm cheap. So it's going right back in. I mean, and I will go back and use it myself.

But if somebody else, you know, it's like, really? Really? Stephanie, bless you for dealing with this. I think you need to like pour it into like a glass or something so that everyone can kind of see how low it is. You know what I mean? Like a small glass. Well, the carton should have like a window.

Yeah. That has the level that's visible. Yeah. Like they do on like the big five core oil jugs. They have like a line that shows how much is left. It's dwindled down. Yeah. All right.

Well, you want to take us out of here on that note? Yeah. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Again, please hit that like button. If you guys appreciate today's episode, huge shout out to element electrolytes.

I was sipping on some throughout this whole episode for more information on them. Please hit the, the link down in the YouTube and Facebook description, as well as the podcast show notes, or just head over to drinklmnt.com slash power project. Check out the value bundles because that's like buying three boxes for the, or sorry, getting four boxes for the price of three. On top of that, you get free shipping.

Hit us up at Mark Biles Power Project on Instagram, at MB Power Project on Twitter. Yeah, LinkedIn, Facebook, all over the place. us up at Mark Bowles Power Project on Instagram at MB Power Project on Twitter. Yeah. LinkedIn, Facebook, all over the place. My Instagram is at I am Andrew Z in SEMA. Where are you at? By the way, Mark and Andrew, good call on the chocolate electrolytes and the protein powder. Yeah.

It works pretty damn good, right? It's so good. You wouldn't have expected that. It gives it like a caramel flavor. Yeah. Yeah. It's a salted like chocolate caramel flavor. Yes.

That's the perfect way to put it. Yeah. It was dope. I had it like, I don't know, three days ago. It's a salted like chocolate caramel flavor. Yes. Perfect way to put it. Yeah. It was dope. I had it like, I don't know, three days ago. It was really good, but I didn't see my anything on Instagram and YouTube.

I didn't see me on Twitter. Mark at Mark's Millie Bell. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness, never a strength. Catch y'all later.